Rogue Sign

by Elin Wyn

  Someone cleared their throat behind me. I turned to find Valtic.

  For a moment my stomach clenched.

  “Fancy some cake?” I asked. Smooth, Lynna.

  “No,” he said. “I came to give you the traditional well-wishes and depart. I have work to do.”

  Oh.

  “Are you sure you can’t stay for a little while?” I asked. “It’s a party, after all.”

  “Unfortunately, no,” he replied, though he didn’t look at all regretful. “Happy Birthday.” He nodded and left the mess hall.

  “Don’t take it personally.” Kovor appeared at my side. “Lighthearted fun has never been his forte.”

  “Parties aren’t for everyone,” I shrugged, trying to push off my disappointment. “Has Aryn eaten all of my birthday cake?”

  “She’s had three slices,” Kovor chuckled.

  “I better get in there before it’s all gone,” I laughed. I made my way through the packed mess hall, accepting birthday wishes left and right.

  I had plenty of friends here, I reminded myself. Even if someone was determined to be difficult.

  The cake was half gone by the time I reached the table. Kalyn presented me with a piece she’d put to the side just for me. It had some of the icing that read my name.

  “Can you put a second piece to the side?” I asked, even as I said the words, a little nervous about the plan that had just sprung to mind..

  “Of course! You’re the birthday girl. You get to eat as much cake as you want,” she exclaimed.

  “It’s not for me,” I replied. Kalyn gave me a curious look. “It’s for Valtic,” I supplied.

  Kalyn looked more confused. “I don’t think he likes cake,” she said.

  “Maybe not,” I shrugged, trying for casual. “But he left to go back to work. I want him to know his absence was noticed.”

  Kalyn furrowed her brow but didn’t say anything more. She cut an extra piece of cake as asked. I felt like I was missing a piece of information, but I didn’t know how to ask for it.

  I went around the room, making sure to say hello to everyone. Kalyn and the other women presented me with a hand-knit scarf they all took turns working on. It was messy and filled with small holes.

  Perfect.

  As the party wound down, I pulled together my nerve.

  “Be right back!” I gave a small wave to the room and took the slice of cake that’d been set aside.

  I knew where Orrin’s workspace was. I remembered Maris saying that Valtic’s office was nearby.

  I tried a three doors near Orrin’s workspace until I found him.

  The only light in the room came from four monitors. Valtic sat at his desk flipping through the same pieces of footage over and over, but nothing looked out of the ordinary.

  “Have a minute?” I asked.

  “What can I do for you?” Valtic replied without turning around. He wasn’t rude, just focused.

  Distant.

  “Nothing.” I stepped into the dark room. “I brought you some cake from the party.”

  I set the plate down on the desk next to him.

  “Why?” He asked.

  “Because you didn’t get any,” I explained. “And you should know that your presence was missed.” Valtic looked at the cake with a blank expression, then to me, then back to his monitors.

  “I have a lot of footage to look through,” he said.

  I pursed my lips.

  “Right. Well, enjoy the cake.” I backed out of his office and closed the door quietly.

  It was dangerous to spend too much time in isolation, I knew that better than anyone.

  Valtic was about to have a special friend, like it or not.

  Valtic

  I was not pleased with the crew holding this…party…when we had so many other things that needed to be dealt with.

  Despite everything that happened the last time we let our guard down, now the crew was doing it again.

  It was an asinine thing.

  Granted, it was a celebration of the day Lynna was born.

  That would be worth celebrating, at any time.

  For the Shein, a commencement day was an acknowledgement of our birth, but it was normally the mother that was celebrated while her child, grown or young, gave a gift commemorating their mother’s life.

  It was how the Shein honored the one that bore them to life.

  I had attended the party only to better understand the confusing sounds of an unscheduled gathering that had come through my monitors.

  When Lynna made an attempt to socialize with me, I remained dedicated to my duties instead of falling into conversation with her.

  I had to maintain vigilance, especially since I had failed so badly before.

  It was the only way to keep us safe.

  I should have been aware of that man, the bounty hunter named Hurd…I should have seen him for what he was.

  I’d had my concerns about him, about that entire job, but I didn’t follow through, and it had cost us.

  I was not going to let something like that happen again, no matter how tempting it was to spend just a few more minutes in her company.

  I left the party to resume my rounds of the ship.

  I began with the system Orrin and Maris had installed in the hangar bay, running the required diagnostics.

  They both growled when I ran extra checks on their system. But I needed to know, to be sure.

  The system was tolerable.

  Actually, it was a brilliant piece of engineering by the two of them.

  It was, once they finished modifying it, something that was capable of doing something that I had failed at.

  Keeping us safe.

  After running diagnostics on the system in the hangar bay, I moved on to the weapons bay, then the engine room, the med bay, the living area, the bridge, and finally back to the hangar bay.

  Everything was nominal, as it should be.

  I had found Aryn’s little escape hatch and had put a small strip of tape both inside and outside the hatch. It was a simple technique, but it was effective. Neither had been disturbed between hers and Kovor’s return and when we left Qasar.

  Next on my rounds were the service tubes. I worked my way through service tube two, half listening to the sounds of the party. The women were teaching the others a child’s song, gathering dates for future parties.

  More of this madness.

  At the top of the service tube, I opened the hatch, and stepped onto the bridge. I was delighted to see that the crew on the bridge already had their weapons drawn on me, as they should.

  “Good work. Routine check complete,” I complimented them.

  Their weapons lowered, but not holstered, the crew nodded to me and waited for me to leave. They had done exactly as instructed, although the night crew were the only ones to do as I wanted.

  Captain Dejar’s, as well as Commander Aavat’s, bridge crews rarely acted accordingly. Any time I brought it up, both of them essentially shrugged me off, telling me that they trusted me and trusted I would never betray them.

  It was true, but it was a breach in what I thought was necessary protocol to ensure the ship’s, and crew’s, safety.

  Commander Kovor’s night crew was the only one to take me seriously. Odd, considering I’d never seen Kovor himself take anything seriously.

  I made my way to another tube, doing my best to make sure I didn’t put myself into a predictable pattern with the service tubes, or with my rounds.

  A routine could be another weakness.

  Only constant vigilance could keep us safe.

  As I lowered myself into tube six and closed the hatch behind me, I could hear the sounds of the party echoing up to me. I wondered again if I should join them.

  Lynna had been very polite to me, something I didn’t deserve, but appreciated. Her hair cascaded down from her head like waves, and her deep green eyes sparkled more than a Halandian emerald.

  She was as gentle as could be and always see
med to be smiling. She truly enjoyed making people feel better.

  Lynna was everything goodness and light.

  When she’d brought the cake to my room, she’d brought her own light with her. I hadn’t dared look at her for too long.

  She was a distraction. Even now I was thinking of her, her lovely, soft form.

  I should stay far away.

  Make sure nothing threatened the crew, threatened her.

  Three steps from tube ten when the ship’s red alert went off, the blaring alarm cutting through my thoughts like a hot blade.

  Sper, the overnight pilot, came on the overhead speaker system, voice crisp and clear. “Proximity alarm has been triggered. I repeat, proximity alarm has been triggered. All non-essential personnel to assigned stations.”

  I brought up the exterior cameras on my tablet and searched, but it was hard to see on such a small screen.

  I rushed to the wall-screen on the science lab, swiped what was on my tablet onto the wall-screen.

  I cycled through the different camera angles until I saw it.

  Rather, I didn’t see the stars that should have been there.

  Something dark, almost impossible to see was approaching.

  I opened up a sub-routine in the defense system, activated exterior spot lights, and maneuvered them into the direction of the darkness. It might be invisible to our sensors, but not our eyes.

  There is was.

  It was the Dark Ship. What Kovor and Aryn had discovered to be called The Terror.

  It had found us.

  I sent out a communication blast to Dejar and Aavat, then rushed for my office.

  I was closest and knew what needed to be done.

  I pulled the tube five hatch open, and jumped in feet first, swearing all the way as I slid down to engineering.

  I needed to activate the new stealth system and give it time to build up power.

  We’d never fully tested it.

  We didn’t know if it would work.

  But now, we were out of time.

  I rushed into the room and the ship rocked hard, knocking me to my hands and knees.

  My head hit the metal legs of the workstation and for a few brief moments, all I could see were dancing lights in front of my eyes. I blinked quickly, and as my vision returned, I got back to my feet.

  I began the process of activating the system, but we needed two people to get it started.

  Umbba.

  It was so new, we hadn’t assigned this as a crew position yet.

  Of all the…

  The power drain from the stealth system was so great it had made sense to require two points of activation in order to prevent accidental activation or deactivation.

  But now that caution might get us killed.

  I couldn’t reach the other station, to activate it.

  Both stations had to be switch on simultaneously.

  Where was anyone?

  The haze that was my constant companion focused my vision to a pinpoint. Calm, slow breaths beat it back.

  Then, I heard footsteps rushing towards me and returned to the stealth controls to prime the system up once again.

  Whoever it was, they better move fast.

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  Given: Star Breed Book One

  Kara

  It was all Juda’s fault.

  I kicked him out of my bed three weeks ago for cheating on me, but apparently, he wasn’t done screwing me over.

  I crouched low on the roof of the abandoned gambling den across the street from Sary’s “general store” and cursed the limp-dicked bastard all over again.

  There wasn’t a lot of traffic at this time of day. Not that that meant much in Ghelfi; the thieves’ city never truly slept. There was no point in waiting for night, like in the old vids Mom used to watch over and over. Like all sealed cities on the surface of Neurea, lighting in Ghelfi varied throughout the day’s cycle, but never to a true night.

  I saw real night, once. I stowed away on the back of a surface crawler that was heading to Lashell. I don’t know why, somehow I’d thought it would be better if I got out of Ghelfi, started over somewhere else.

  The velvet sky, studded with stars, shone clean and cold. Perfect. Not like the barely organized chaos of the cities.

  But halfway there, the crawler broke down, had to be towed back. I realized then that there was no way out. Not for me.

  In the old vids, everything always turned out alright, something swooped in at the last minute to save the day.

  That’s how you knew they were only lies.

  So here I was, half-hidden among old wires and debris that had been kicked up to the top of the store years ago, long forgotten. Watching time slip away on the chrono, crossing my fingers to old gods I didn’t believe in.

  “What’cha doing?”

  I jumped, furious with myself.

  Bani crouched next to me. His dark brown hair hung down in his face, but I could still see the twinkle in his eye. Snuck up on me and was proud of it, little bastard.

  I socked him gently in the arm, just enough to let him know I cared.

  “Everybody’s looking for you, Kara,” he said under his breath. He didn’t look at me but instead kept his eyes scanning across the street, trying to see what I was interested in. Smart kid.

  I ran my hand through my own tangle of hair. It was past time to cut it, but things had been a little busy lately.

  “How mad is Xavis?” I really didn’t want to know the answer.

  Bani shrugged one bony shoulder. “He’s playing it down a little bit, but I think he’s pretty steamed. If you, of all people, don’t show up by the end of the tithe, he’s gonna lose a lot of face.”

  A light crackled, the burnt smell of frying wires wafted by. But I wasn’t paying attention to the noise or to the stink of ozone that permeated the air of Ghelfi. If Xavis really was mad, I was in trouble.

  I shoved the thought far to the back of my head. Nothing to do about it but keep moving.

  A shuffling sound below surprised me, and I risked another glance over the ledge. A miner, wrapped in rags so filthy there was no telling the gender, half-staggered down the street. He, she, whatever, paused in front of Sary’s storefront, then stumbled inside.

  Ice gripped my spine. Rings willing, he’d be quick. Claim whatever he came to trade, and get out. Not stay there, spinning stories of life in the Waste, screwing my timetable.

  “Is that the job?” Bani’s wide eyes fixed me. “A snatch and grab on the miners after they bring in the dust?”

  I rolled my eyes. “They’re just trying to get by, same as us.” Besides, credits were no good to me, not with so little time to clean them. But the antonium dust the miners brought in was untraceable. ‘Dust knows no provenance’ was the saying. I just needed to get enough of it.

  Agonizing minutes passed until he left. I glanced at my chrono again. If she didn’t show up today, I didn’t have a backup plan. This was my backup plan. No more nets to catch my fall.

  I closed my eyes to try to find the calm, cold center within that had kept me alive so far on the streets of Ghelfi, and waited. I didn’t need to see, didn’t need to check the time. I could only wait and listen.

  Finally, the s
ound came. The sharp click of stiletto heels across the permasteel walkway. I opened my eyes and leaned forward ever so slightly to peer down the street.

  There she was. Charro’s secret indulgence. Silver hair teased into a high fall down her back, her face paint marked her as one of Sary’s working girls. When I first found out about Charro’s extracurricular activities, I’d half thought of sending a note to Sary, stir up the nest a bit. Then I started thinking long term. That’d been almost two years ago.

  Two years of planning and waiting brought to a crash by that bastard Juda. I should have gutted him like a fish instead of just kicking him out.

  Bani glanced at her and then looked up at me, frowning.

  “That’s your mark?” He risked another look but I pulled him back sharply by the collar of his jacket.

  He glared at me, with all the scorn a preteen could manage. “I know her. She works the landing pad. Even if she did have the sort of money you’re going to need to get out of trouble with Xavis, she isn’t gonna be carrying it with her on a job.” His eyes narrowed. “So what are you really up to?”

  I grinned. I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t pleased to have to use this job to get out of the hole Juda left me in, but it was pretty brilliant.

  “Just keep your eye on the alley, kid, okay?”

  I checked my chrono again, but I didn’t need to. I’d timed this pattern so often. Like clockwork, the shadows of Charro’s two goons came into focus on the tinted plex of the storefront. Just like every other time I’d watched, they paced back and forth, no doubt joking about their boss and his hobby.

  “They’re supposed to be guarding the back room, but he always kicks them out when she visits.” I checked the time again, stupid habit. Couldn’t help it. “He might be there, but he’s more than a little distracted right now.”

  I worked my way across the roof, down to the collection of rubble in the back alley that had let me gain my vantage point.

  Bani followed me and I glared at him.

  “Stay up here,” I snarled. “I don’t know how this is going to turn out.”

  “Then you’ll need a second pair of hands.”