Trinary (SCAR Force: Delta Faction Book 1)

by Gaja J. Kos

  Muttering heated strings of curses under my breath, I looked over my shoulder at the black-and-red crates. The merch was definitely not worth getting picked up by SCAR Force, nine figures or not. But if I managed to sell it off, I could pay the right people to bust my crew out of prison.

  A damn weak consolation, but it was better than nothing.

  The four larger vessels accompanied ours towards the southeastern edge of the city where Carrow and Donovan would be processed and the Devious confiscated. But the KS-1, the newest addition to the SCAR Force fleet with a sleek design that hinted it excelled at swift maneuvers, lingered.

  Had they already scanned the hull and realized there was no contraband there?

  I blew out a breath and flicked on every last one of my scanners. I aimed them towards the SCAR Force ship.

  The top-of-the-line shields kept me from seeing the full schematics of the vessel, but the monitor did show there was only one pilot inside. I relaxed into my chair. Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe the ship wasn’t waiting for dear ol’ me and the cargo I was hauling.

  The Space Combat And Retrieval Force had a strict structure for missions. A minimum of two vessels on every enemy ship. Or, in case of solo pursuit, the vessel in action needed to have at least two people on board.

  One for piloting. Another for operating the weapons and capture equipment.

  If they’d known I was out here with the load, they wouldn’t dare risk deviating from the established routine.

  Unfortunately, even if this was just a scout left behind to check the perimeter, I’d have to move. The modern monstrosity that was my hiding spot wouldn’t hold against thorough scrutiny, even with all the stealth shields on.

  I waited until the KS-1 started to move, heading towards the facility’s perimeter. A Stormborn Inc. hovercraft met them right on the seam between private and public property but didn’t grant them entry. Brazen, though definitely not unheard of.

  Most of these private corporations wanted nothing to do with SCAR Force if they could help it, and some downright refused to let our interstellar oligarchy’s good little soldiers onto their premises. Too often any such incursion ended up with the elite vomiting copycat merch, which was just plain rude and bad for business.

  I pushed both primary throttle levers forward and eased out of my hiding spot without taking my eyes off the two ships. If past experience was any indication, they’d be at their verbal battle for a while, each holding their own stubborn ground. I swooped down low once my cover ended, basically crawling no more than a meter across the scorched grass and dry earth before clearing the hulking bridge up ahead. As soon as I was out of its shadow, I powered off the stealth panels and climbed up to cruising altitude.

  A few of the hovercraft pilots shot me curious glances when I passed them, but in this town, weird was almost the new normal. Once I merged with the traffic, a combo of hovercrafts and private vessels like mine, my unconventional appearance was already forgotten.

  The Taran flyway map blinked to life on the nav-screen, the warning to abide by flight regulations at all times running along the top. I snorted, then checked my position lest the damn planet-wide sensors plaguing the flyways took control of my ship. A single step out of line that the machines deemed a threat to other vessels’ safety and you could say bye-bye to your controls.

  That was one thing not even Carrow’s genius brain had been able to override.

  The thought of him going to prison tightened my jaw.

  I banked right at the next turn-off, deciding against a direct route to our hideout or my personal lair despite the gnawing need to spear for the safety they offered. The thief in me, though, refused to relent. As the industrial zone brushed the sky up ahead, I checked the rearview scanners for any sign of pursuit—then breathed easier when all I saw was a couple of private vessels going about their own business. I sped up a little when the regulations allowed it, closing the gap to the hovercrafts up front. As we cruised down the flyway, I let my gaze roam ahead.

  The industrial zone taking up a good quarter of Amory was a butt-ugly thing with its bulky, dark-gray structures and omnipresent grime. Made a person wonder how the fuck the officials hadn’t shut it down yet with the atmosphere concern that had become the norm over the past five years in play. They were all too eager to establish zones within cities you could access only with crafts sporting the latest engines and exhaust systems that minimized pollution, ratcheted up the fees for older vessels if they didn’t want to end up grounded, but tackling the industrial zone growing like a parasite on the capital’s northwestern side? Nope.

  Of course, with the Pioneer Empire owning several of the facilities in there, I guess I really shouldn’t have been surprised.

  I kept to the right-hand side once I approached the zone—to stay as far away from the aforementioned facilities with their SCAR Force security in place—and hit the commands on Slipstream’s cloaking device to switch up the shields. With the liveliness of this area, blending in with the rest of the grimy ships was the best way to go unnoticed.

  The monitor floating in the lowest tier displayed the change in real time—a detailed simulation of just what was going on on the outside, which allowed me to tweak the design in case I spotted an error. Not that I ever had. Carrow had written this particular beauty of a program, and it never ceased to amaze me how well it worked. The false grime accumulated slowly, staining and transforming my ship in a gentle manner that would go unnoticed to the casual observer.

  Fucking brilliant, that’s what it was.

  Once the process was complete, I banked left and steered the ship between two sixty-story-high factories. Movement caught my eye on the rearview screen, and I tensed—

  Just a company ship on its cargo drop route.

  I blew out a breath then aimed for the larger intersection up ahead. I glanced at the screen again thanks to my nagging instincts that refused to leave me alone. My palm nearly slipped from the controls.

  What the—

  The pearl-gray design. The single-pilot operation. The bloody SCAR Force insignia on the hull.

  I lurched forward, aiming fast, not for the intersection, but the underbelly of the industrial zone.

  “Track that, fuckhead,” I muttered.

  The scout-that-was-obviously-not-a-scout was on my tail with frightening speed. I dodged the vessels standing between me and the access ramp, hoping the SCAR Force ship would clip one of them.

  No such luck.

  The damn thing was too sleek of a motherfucker to make maneuvering mistakes like that. But I was willing to bet the pilot had never tested out this rodeo.

  No one in their right mind willingly would.

  Sending a quick prayer to the stars, I punched a hole through the measly force field and dove into the zone’s lethal bowels.

  Chapter Six

  “POISON LEVELS AT 3%,” my ship’s sultry female voice informed me.

  I cut a quick look at the monitor, then banked sharply to the right, cutting straight through the cloud of toxic shit wanting to make its way through Slipstream’s exterior and murder the fuck out of me.

  I loved my ship, but she wasn’t built for altitudes higher than 8,000 feet—and even that was pushing it—so her primary ventilation systems were linked to the air around me.

  Right now, that was not a good idea.

  “Activate ship-wide inner seal,” I commanded. “Interior ventilation system on. Activate oxygen reserve tank.”

  I dove beneath a low-hanging construction and wove between the sturdy foundations, dodging the automated service bots. The toxic fumes thickened the deeper I went into the underbelly. Behind me, the KS-1 remained close on my heels.

  “INNER SEAL ACTIVATED.”

  With a pull of the lever, Slipstream’s nose turned upward the instant I cleared the building.

  “INTERIOR VENTILATION SYSTEM ON.”

  I put more power into the thrusters and propelled us up. Thank fuck the piston propulsion my ship ran on wou
ldn’t react with the gasses polluting the air. Otherwise, Amory would be in for one hell of a fireworks display.

  “OXYGEN TANK ACTIVATED.”

  I climbed between the two hideous buildings shooting up from the ground. A tight fucking fit, but I kept my baby steady and didn’t decrease my speed.

  “POISON LEVELS AT 7%.”

  I gritted my teeth, then twisted into a backwards dive. Blood rushed to my brain as I hung upside down from my seat and guided Slipstream through the narrow opening between levels. At 7%, the toxins could cause permanent damage to my nervous system if I didn’t get out of here in five minutes tops.

  The scanner showed the KS-1 persisted in its pursuit but was losing ground thanks to the jutting dark metal bits that hindered its movement. It was only slightly larger than my ship, and, thankfully, that small margin made all the difference in the world. I pushed hard towards the opening up ahead, then pivoted sharply, reining in the retracting wings as I rotated the ship on its axis before spreading them out again.

  Saying a silent thank-you to Carrow for coming up with the unique design, I shot upward.

  “Pull up map. One kilometer radius from my location.”

  The schematics projected within easy sight.

  “Zoom in 30%.”

  I did another backwards dive and raced through the maintenance access area where several bots harboring various equipment waited in neat lines for their turn to tinker with the bowels of the zone. Even higher up, the toxic fumes coming from the factories were thick. They had vents installed to suck in and break down the waste into less harmful components, but with the sheer output the zone was generating, the technology just couldn’t keep up. My time was running out.

  A glance at the map revealed a diagonal pathway that would take me to the western edge. I retracted the wings again and used the secondary motors to steer the ship into the opening, then snapped them out as I flew forward, tilted on my flank.

  The scanner showed the SCAR vessel had followed me up here, but with the advantage I had, I could clear the industrial zone before the KS-1 could lock on me. That was the idea, at least.

  Pushing everything I had into the thrusters and my own maneuvering, Slipstream blasted forward. Rogue bits of metal and concrete scraped the hull. Warnings blared, but I paid them no heed.

  The light at the end of the fucking tunnel was within arm’s reach, and I sure as shit wasn’t letting go now.

  I all but exploded into the open, daylight momentarily blinding me before the windshield dimming kicked in.

  “Revert ventilation systems to normal,” I rasped out, then quickly banked again to get the fuck out of sight.

  Sweat rolled down my temples—from the toxins and the exertion alike.

  “POISON LEVELS DROPPING. 5%. 3%.”

  I rose and merged with the traffic.

  “POISON LEVELS AT ZERO PERCENT. DO YOU WANT ME TO RUN YOUR DIAGNOSTICS, CAIRO?”

  “Later.” I wasn’t quite ready to get any bad news. Not until I was in the clear.

  As private vessels surrounded me from all sides, I pivoted in my seat and checked the merchandise. Just one crate had ripped free from the magnetic field and looked a little worse for wear, but otherwise, all was good in lootville. I let out a long exhale, then veered towards the settlement on the outskirts of the city I’d made my home.

  Even the air filtering through Slipstream’s vents was cleaner here, the small but numerous parks dominating this part of Amory a damn relief on the eyes after the gloom and grime of the industrial zone. I dropped my speed to cruising levels but remained vigilant. The scanner showed no trademark SCAR Force signatures, just the people from my neighborhood flying around.

  A cough hacked free from my lungs. I brought a hand to my mouth.

  It came away bloody.

  “Great,” I rasped, then said to my ship, “Run body diagnostics.”

  Slipstream, the good girl she was, eagerly complied.

  As I eased down towards the low, widespread building housing several high-end apartments and aimed for the hangar sitting on the ground level, the diagnostics came back. Along with a diarrhea-colored vial that popped up from the medicine compartment. One of Donovan’s ideas, though he had to outsource the scientists to get the nifty little nursing station up and running. Needless to say, Carrow hadn’t been thrilled Donovan hadn’t given him the time to figure everything out himself.

  I eyed the vial. “Please don’t tell me you want me to drink that.”

  “DRINK CLEANSER.”

  I grimaced. Not that I was really hoping for a different outcome.

  Steering with one hand, I uncorked the bottle with the other and downed the entire damn thing. It tasted about as good as it looked.

  Bile rose at the back of my throat, but I shoved it down.

  Better this than long-term harm from toxin exposure.

  I threw the vial in the trash, then remotely activated the hangar door and leveled Slipstream with the ground. “Home sweet home, girl.”

  With a gentle boost to the thrusters, I eased towards the open hangar, but before I could cruise inside, a vicious impact from the side sent me spinning into the reinforced wall.

  Chapter Seven

  “LEFT ENGINE AT 13% CAPACITY.”

  “AUXILIARY MOTORS DOWN.”

  “SHIELD MALFUNCTION. RUNNING DIAGNOSTICS.”

  I groaned and peeled myself off the console. Slipstream kept chattering away, listing all the things that had malfunctioned in the crash—though I suspected it would have been a lot easier to just name what did fucking work. I pressed my palm to my forehead, but all that did was smear the shitload of blood seeping from my wound.

  Fabulous.

  My five-point harness had prevented me from splattering against the console entirely, but now it dug into my flesh and cut into my shoulders hard enough to make me grit my teeth. The impact must have jammed the tension release response. Still, I had to try.

  “Slipstream, release harness.”

  “HARNESS RELEASE MALFUNCTION,” the sultry voice informed me.

  “Great.”

  I fumbled with the sleek disk where all five straps joined, but the small pressure pad for manual control failed to activate under the body-markers and heat of my fingers.

  “Fucking great.”

  With no scanners active and no way to see what the fuck was going on around me since my only view was of the wall I’d crashed into after Slipstream’s pirouette, staying pinned to my seat was not an option. My entire body protested as I leaned against the straps to reach the knife secured to the inside of my boot, but the pain was worth it once I had the blade in my hand. I started hacking through the straps. Close as they were to my body, I didn’t dare risk the laser.

  More warnings sounded—alerts of the damage to the harness I was causing. Despite the circumstances, it was a bloody fucking effort not to roll my eyes.

  With a snick, the blade cut through the last strap. I wasted no time getting my ass out of the seat and into the back. The stuff we stole had no usable weapons among them, so I rushed over to my own personal stash kept in an impact-proof case and loaded myself with as many lasers and straight-up bullet shooting guns as my body could accommodate. I also switched my two vambraces from flight to combat mode, then inputted the command that erected a thin shield around my body. It wouldn’t hold back a heavier assault but could catch a couple of bullets or laser blasts—usually all I needed before I got away.

  I ran my hand through my short hair, thrust it away from my face, then approached not the back exit, but the inconspicuous third one that would allow me to drop out below the ship, right beside one of the auxiliary motors.

  Smoke filled the hull when I pulled the lever and slid the panel aside.

  The motor was down all right, but at least the smoke wasn’t coming from the shattered mess it had been reduced to. I brought one hand to my nose and peered into the fog.

  If I got out of this alive, the next addition I’d make to the suit
and ship was better protection against fumes.

  I dropped down on my feet and quickly sank into a crouch. The smoke wasn’t quite as thick so close to the ground. I nearly flattened myself against the asphalt, trying to get a read on the situation.

  A pair of SCAR Force, standard-issue, dark-gray boots approached my ship.

  Motherfucker.

  I’d lost that damn vessel. There was no way they could have tracked—

  Shit. Curiosity winning over common sense, I crawled closer to the rear end, as far as I could go without revealing myself to the SCAR Force officer. Sure enough, among the scrapes and banged-up metal, a tracker no larger than a damn ring was glued to the graphite gray surface.

  Now that just pissed me off.

  I inched back, headed firmly in the other direction. The footsteps continued their advance towards the cockpit. I crawled under the ship, keeping up. The officer would have to skirt around the extended wing if they wanted to get to the front. And with them presuming I was still inside the vessel, that was the only time they would let their guard down, even if just for a sliver of time.

  Not that I needed anything more.

  My steps silent, I quickly advanced beneath the wing as the officer took the exact route I’d suspected. Just as they reached the tip, I sprang.

  Crouched as I was, I didn’t have that much momentum, but it was enough. I barreled straight into the officer’s uniform-clad legs, knocking them back against the asphalt and burning out both of our body shields in the process. A gun already in my hand, I lifted the weapon set to stun—

  The sight knocked the air from my lungs.

  The tight blonde curls escaping from beneath the SCAR Force standard-issue black helmet. The rosebud mouth pressed tight and hatred burning in her vivid blue eyes.

  “Gray?” I whispered.

  But my sister just glared at me—then zapped me with a fucking taser.

  Chapter Eight