Galactic Blues - Box Set Episodes 4-6: A Newton's Gate Space Opera Adventure (Galactic Blues Box Set Book 2)

by C. J. Clemens

  Mosi unleashed a shriek of pain. “You bitch!”

  “That’s enough!” Beadic, the woman in charge of the detention center, waddled over. She was even larger than Mosi, but unlike the strong, stocky girl, Beadic was simply fat.

  Dreyla released her grip and stepped back. Beadic wrapped her fingers around the back of Dreyla’s neck, pinching the flesh with her sharp nails, just enough to hurt, and led her out of the room.

  Dreyla had already learned the hard way not to struggle when Beadic did this. The first time she’d tried to pull away, the woman had dug her talons in, leaving vicious gashes.

  She was taken to Beadic’s office and forced to sit on a rosy velvet couch. The fat woman plunked herself down next to her and regarded her in silence.

  Dreyla cringed. The woman was clearly unstable. Brutal and angry one moment and then—Dreyla waited for it, her gut clenching with disgust—Beadic’s fingers slid from her neck, slowly trailing down her shoulder. She shivered. This ogre was trying to flirt with her again.

  Maybe schizophrenia was normal in the universe she, Remy, and Tosh had ended up in. Maybe the people here all swung between two extremes. But, more than likely, Beadic was just a sick woman who took advantage of her position to put moves on the young girls forced to reside here.

  Great way to rehab.

  The first day Beadic had come on to her, Dreyla played the inexperienced card and ignored the woman. The second day, when Beadic tried the same thing, she’d made the mistake of being too forceful in rebuffing her advances. She had seen Beadic’s anger flare up, only to be saved when one of the staff stumbled into the office to inform her of a fight.

  This time, there was going to be no interruption. And that was by careful design.

  Dreyla’s blood went cold. She had to choose between being compliant or getting hurt. Sex wasn’t something she could say she had much experience with—consensual or otherwise. Even if she teased Remy by pretending she had oodles of experience, when it came down to it, she didn’t. How could she, when her only companions were her dad and a bunch of guys as old as he was, all of whom knew they’d be dead if they as much as glanced at her wrong?

  Her skin prickled. She couldn’t deal with this, whatever this was going to be. Her thin tunic made her feel horribly exposed.

  No, she’d rather die.

  Dreyla reached across to the woman. The greedy smile stretching Beadic’s plump, pink lips showed that she thought Dreyla was gonna play ball.

  “There we go,” she cooed softly. “We can play nice, can’t we?”

  Instead, Dreyla grabbed the collar of the woman’s shirt and pulled down with all of her strength, stretching and ripping a hole in it. Beadic’s bra was exposed.

  The move had temporarily bound the woman’s arms in her own shirt. Dreyla saw her advantage, grabbed a lamp from the table next to the couch, and brought it crashing down onto the side of the woman’s head.

  Beadic groaned and slumped. She rolled off the couch, coming to rest in front of the desk.

  Dreyla stepped around her and opened the office door to see if anyone had heard.

  Six other girls, gathered outside the door, tumbled into the room. One of them screeched when she saw Beadic lying unconscious on the office floor. Luckily, another girl clamped her hand over the squealer’s mouth.

  Dreyla needed to make this quick.

  She turned back to the office. Twenty small lockers lined one wall. She glanced down at the bracelet she’d been forced to wear when she arrived. It bore the number 1130. She searched for that locker. It was the lowest one.

  She tried the knob, but the units were all locked. Normally, she could pick a lock in less than fifteen seconds, given the tools, but these were either DNA- or handprint-based locks. She regarded the large woman on the floor.

  This wouldn’t be easy, but there was no other way.

  She turned back to the girls, who were all watching her in complete fascination. Mosi pushed through the group to see what they were looking at.

  “Holy shit,” Mosi said. “You knocked that evil bitch out?”

  Dreyla eyed her for a moment and then threw caution to the wind. “Mosi, if you want to get out of this cesspool, come and help me move her.”

  Mosi, either despite or because of their previous encounter, didn’t hesitate. She entered the office quickly and took Beadic’s legs. Together, they dragged the heavy woman over to the lockers. Mosi held Beadic’s hand up to Dreyla’s locker, and it buzzed, followed by the telltale click of a door opening.

  Before Dreyla could retrieve the contents, Mosi was pulling the woman’s hand up to the next locker and repeating the process. Dreyla abandoned her own locker and helped her cohort instead. They worked together, sweating and cursing Beadic’s deadweight, until all the lockers were sprung open. Meanwhile, the other girls milled around the office, hysterically grasping their long-lost possessions.

  There were muted squeals of delight and moans of recognition. Some lamentations that the drugs had been taken.

  Most of them only had a few scraps of clothes, maybe some mementos if they were lucky. Dreyla was pleased to discover all her clothes were still here—and even her knives. The sheriff had confiscated her guns and the enviro suit but had allowed Beadic to deal with the rest of the stuff.

  She dressed and then sheathed the knives in the holsters by her thighs. Wow, that felt so much better. She bundled the scratchy, gray inmate’s tunic in a ball and flung it into a garbage disposal unit.

  “How’re we getting out, though?” Mosi was squeezing herself into some weird leather strappy dress that complemented her blue-and-purple hair and made her look even more badass. Her blue eyes were accentuated, radiating intelligence not present before.

  “Guard that door,” she told Mosi. “We’re going out the front.”

  Because now it was we. Funny how a taste of freedom could bring people together. All the other inmates had fled, no doubt fearing getting caught red-handed.

  Dreyla moved around Beadic’s desk to access her system display. Gritting her teeth, she pressed the most obvious button and prayed that it would be similar to what she was used to. The display flashed to life. She scrolled through some menus and found the building security section. Unfortunately, it required a password.

  “Well, damn,” she muttered.

  She dropped out of that section and managed to pull up a source code screen. It had the same fallibility as many of the systems she’d accessed in numerous hack jobs she’d pulled for Remy. Scanning through the various functions, she found the backdoor she was looking for. She typed feverishly. A moment later, the building security section appeared, in bright and flashy 3D on the screen.

  “Cool...” Mosi said, craning her neck to see from the doorway. “That what I think it is?”

  Dreyla nodded. She found the system locks and released them. Ping. Ping. Ping.

  The familiar whoosh of the front door sliding open made Mosi’s eyes grow even wider.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Dreyla said.

  Chapter 6

  REMY

  Remy sat in a chair, his hands locked down to the table in hard, steel cuffs he had no chance of breaking free from. He had been in more than one interrogation room over the years, but this whole situation was screwy. The sheriff, the dworg, and the aflin were all here. After having used the “e” word again, he had been corrected by the last man to enter the room—namely, Mayor Jett Cansen, a man on the verge of cardiac arrest if ever there was one.

  He had quickly learned that all three races spoke a common tongue, which was, as far as he was concerned, English, no matter what they chose to call it. The dworgs and aflins each had their own language, which they spoke among themselves.

  But now his lessons were over, and they were the ones asking the questions.

  “I’ll ask you again. Where are the drugs?” Sheriff Lilly Greyson leaned closer, and he noticed the delicate rings of lilac circling her brown irises.

  No two ways
about it, this woman was damned attractive, even if his current situation shouldn’t be putting such notions in his dumb skull.

  She sighed impatiently. “If we don’t distribute them to those that need it, an awful lot of people are gonna die.”

  It was as bad as he’d suspected. Barely conscious and he was already public enemy number one. All he could do was repeat the same mantra. “Sheriff, like I told you, we crashed our ship not far from that area. We just stumbled onto the scene.”

  Unlike most women, this one was unreadable. He didn’t know whether to appeal to her vanity or her greed or something else entirely.

  “He’s lying.” Jacer, the elf—or, rather, aflin—jiggled on the spot. “He and his people were trying to steal the ship!”

  “Why would he hide the drugs and then return to steal the ship?” Milo, the dworg, challenged.

  “To hide the evidence,” Mayor Cansen said, flashing a knowing grin at Remy.

  The sheriff seemed to consider that a distinct possibility, her eyebrows drawing together pensively.

  “But that’s crazy,” Remy said. “Go find my ship. That’ll prove—”

  “We’ve sent people to locate this ship of yours,” she said. “We’ll see if that checks out. But that still won’t prove you didn’t kill the med crew and steal the shipment.”

  Just as Remy sank against the hard chair, the door opened and another large man, not quite as big as Yercer and some twenty years older, stalked in.

  “So, you caught the murdering scum,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Who is this idiot?” Remy snarled.

  Probably not the smartest thing to do.

  The man’s fist collided with Remy’s cheekbone. The old man moved way faster than he should for someone his age. And man, did he pack a punch.

  The sheriff rose. “Back off, Gono, this is my station.”

  The man slowly stepped back and gazed down in amusement as Remy hunched up his shoulder and tried to wipe the blood from his nose. It really wasn’t fair to mess up a man’s face whose hands were locked to a table.

  “Gono Darkbur is my name, and you are?” the brute asked.

  “This, Gono, is Captain Remy Bechet,” the sheriff said, “and he was just about to tell us—”

  “—that we didn’t kill those people,” Remy said. “We didn’t steal your meds. And I’m not from here.”

  The blood trickling down his face and into his collar was aggravating him. The sheriff didn’t seem to have any compassion for his plight.

  “He’s lying,” a familiar voice said from the hallway.

  Remy’s jaw almost hit the table as his gaze met the sharp, green eyes of the person he’d least expected to see… Commander Tara Shaw.

  “Oh, hell, no,” he muttered.

  While she was no longer wearing her uniform, she still portrayed the arrogance of her rank in her white, razor-sharp bodysuit and her furry shoulder wrap that might or might not have been skinned from an unidentified dead animal. She had tried to hide a recent gash on her forehead by letting her hair down. She must’ve crashed on the planet just as he, Dreyla, and Tosh had.

  “I’ve had dealings with him in Bane, you see,” Shaw said with affected laziness, waving her metal hand. Her terrible eyes gleamed when she looked at him; she clearly relished this moment.

  “She’s a lying bitch,” Remy growled. “You don’t know what you have here.”

  “Sheriff Greyson, this is another of my associates, Tara Shaw,” Gono said, ignoring him.

  The sheriff eyed the woman. The only hint of any misgiving was a slight upward tilt of an eyebrow, and even then, Remy couldn’t be sure. But at least they didn’t shake hands.

  “Shaw here tells me he’s been smuggling scat onto the planet for the last year,” Gono continued in a deceptively soft voice.

  “I don’t even know what that is,” Remy said, bracing himself for another hit.

  He had started to get the distinct impression that he wasn’t going to be able to talk his way out of this. From the look of things, the aflin thought he was guilty, and Gono was using Shaw to support that conclusion.

  On the other hand, the dworg still seemed skeptical, so there might be some hope. But he couldn’t get a read on the sheriff. Her pleasing curves didn’t help or the crooked smile he’d seen her shoot one of her deputies. Damn, he was cursed to fall for pretty faces and small acts of kindness. He didn’t need his brain getting cloudy.

  Then the sheriff did something unexpected. She rounded on Gono Darkbur. “I don’t know what’s going on, but for some strange reason, I get the feeling you’re behind this somehow.”

  Gono’s face turned dark crimson.

  Shaw’s superior smile didn’t falter.

  “Yes, where were you, Darkbur?” Milo’s deep voice boomed out. “How come none of your people showed up at the landing site?”

  “I, too, find that a little strange,” Jacer’s frail voice quivered.

  “Yes,” the sheriff joined in. “Given that the news didn’t go out over the broad-wave, there was no way for you to know the shipment had been hijacked and the med crew killed.”

  The silence was incriminating.

  Remy liked where this was going. The focus was off him and onto this Gono Darkbur guy, whom Shaw was obviously working for.

  He caught a quick glance from her and couldn’t tell if she was about to draw a weapon and shoot him or if she was almost as confused as he was.

  Man, she’d moved fast to find a new master, although this guy seemed like a low-rent version of Larker Max... which was saying a lot. She must’ve gotten caught in that same portal. But how had she crashed and already found employ on the planet? And was her ship still functioning?

  “As the official representative of Bane and the surrounding territory,” Gono blustered, “I take great offense to the accusation that I—or, indeed, any of my people—had anything to do with this incident.”

  In other words, he didn’t deny it.

  Shaw leaned in and whispered something to Gono.

  “And I’ll be filing a complaint with the Vox Council when they reconvene,” he added.

  The sheriff took two steps toward him and raised her chin up to look him straight in the face. Remy found himself smiling. This woman had balls.

  “You do that,” the sheriff said tonelessly.

  The room fell quiet again. Everybody avoided everyone else’s eyes, then Gono turned and left the room.

  Shaw lingered a moment, a tiny smile crossing her glossy lips as she gave Remy a pitying once-over. Then she followed Gono out.

  When the door closed shut again, Remy looked up at the sheriff. “So, you’ll be letting me go then, right?”

  Chapter 7

  DREYLA

  Dreyla raced ahead of Mosi until they reached the end of the street. Then she turned, panting. “Mosi, we have to part ways here.”

  Mosi skidded to a halt. “Why?”

  “I need to find Tosh.”

  “Tosh?”

  “An old friend. They brought him in same time as me.”

  “Wait. I overheard Beadic talking with one of the workers about some lunatic druggie responsible for killing a bunch of people. Guess they dragged him to the psych ward at the hospital.” Mosi eyed her skeptically. “Could that be him?”

  Dreyla recalled how Tosh had appeared before they were all captured. With blood splattered all over him, he’d kind of looked like a psycho-killer. “Yup.”

  “Oh, boy.” Mosi tugged at a blue forelock of her hair.

  “Look, you don’t need to get involved—”

  “First, we find Homer,” Mosi interrupted.

  “A friend?”

  “Not quite,” Mosi replied stonily. “A hospital guard, but a useless one. Spaced out on scat most of the time. It’s a long shot, but we’re all out of better options. Maybe he can tell us where your friend’s at.”

  “OK.”

  Gratitude washed over Dreyla. Her unlikely new ally could so easily leave
her and never look back. But she was choosing to put herself into danger. Why?

  There was no time to ponder it further because Mosi had already darted ahead. Dreyla quickly followed her.

  Sure enough, Homer, a tallish, balding guard with a paunch, was loitering down one of the alleys beside the hospital, smoking something that produced greenish smoke, which could only be the famous scat.

  “He’s more of an addict than the folks they force through treatment in the secure wing,” Mosi whispered as they crouched behind a garbage container. Her blue eyes narrowed. “On my count, we go grab him, got it?”

  Dreyla nodded, slotting naturally into the role of assistant that she often played with Remy.

  “One... two… three.” Mosi sprang up and took the guard from behind in a movement so swift Dreyla missed it.

  “You’ll pay for this, Mosi, you little bitch! Get off me!”

  Homer’s face flamed red with the effort of squirming free from Mosi’s grip, but he was getting nowhere. She had his arm twisted up behind him in a compromising position. Seemed the big punk girl knew nearly as many tricks as Dreyla did.

  “Funny,” Mosi said with infinite coolness, “when they had me locked away in your rehab cell, you wanted to pay me for sex. When I told you to piss off, you tried to force yourself on me. The only reason you stopped was because Kingsley showed up on the floor and sent me to juvie.”

  Dreyla abruptly lost any sense of pity she’d had for Homer. She joined Mosi in pushing the man through the side entrance and down several corridors, keeping a strong hold on his other arm. As they headed toward the secure wing of the psych ward, Dreyla suspected Mosi could probably handle the guard herself, especially while all fired up in this berserker mood.

  Dreyla removed a blade from her thigh holster and pressed it against Homer’s side. “So, you like to abuse little girls, huh?” she asked conversationally.

  Mosi slid her a look as if to ask, Who are you calling a little girl?