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

by C. J. Clemens

  Dreyla shrugged and poked the blade harder into the man’s side. Not enough to break the skin, but enough to make him twitch.

  “Where’s the guy they brought in three days ago?” she asked.

  “W-what?”

  Dreyla pressed the knife deep enough to draw blood.

  “Hey!” he protested, but there was an edge of fear in his voice.

  “Think good and hard,” she said.

  “He’s… he’s in Room 420,” Homer said. “But the sheriff said this guy butchered a bunch of people.”

  “Oh, yeah, he’s a real badass,” Dreyla assured him. “Very protective of women.”

  “This way.” Mosi forced the frightened guard into the control room overlooking the secure wing.

  When the door closed behind them, Mosi turned to face Homer. “Now, what would Sheriff Lilly say if she knew you were out in a back alley smoking scat when you were supposed to be on duty?”

  Leaving Mosi to her fun and games, Dreyla scanned the control panel. It wasn’t secured by anything, just had a bunch of buttons, each representing a room, or cell, as Mosi had put it.

  She pressed number 420 and heard a buzz, followed by a loud click.

  Nice.

  “Let’s go,” she said to Mosi, who seemed to enjoy tormenting Homer just a little too much.

  After opening the door that led to the hallway, she and Mosi forced Homer to walk in front of them to Tosh’s designated room. The door was slightly ajar. Dreyla released Homer’s arm, figuring that Mosi had him under control. But Homer immediately made a move to escape.

  Mosi lifted up on the security officer’s arm, and Dreyla could swear she heard a small pop. Homer let out a yelp of pain.

  “Behave,” Mosi purred.

  Dreyla pushed the door open further, dreading what was to come. What kind of crap were they pumping into the “madman” to keep him sedated?

  Tosh was strapped to a bed, the sole occupant of this room, surrounded by sterile furniture and bleeping, whirring machines. His eyes were closed. An IV was stuck in one of his sinewy arms. This was exactly how she’d pictured him, right down to the defeated expression on his gray, deeply lined face.

  Crap, what if he’s too doped up to move? What am I gonna do?

  She approached the bed.

  Tosh’s eyes popped open, steel gray and alert. Happiness rushed through her system.

  “Hey, kid,” Tosh said amicably. He smiled at her.

  Dreyla sprang forward. “Tosh, Tosh, are you OK?” She studied the nearest machine, trying to figure out if she could disconnect the IV drip without alerting the staff.

  “Sure, other than these straps.” Tosh tensed his arm but couldn’t raise it even an inch.

  Dreyla gazed at the IV with concern. “What poison is this?”

  “Oh, no worries.” Tosh grinned. “Whatever they’re pumping in me can’t be that strong. It’s not even giving me a buzz.”

  “Well, file a complaint at customer services later,” she said, disconnecting the IV. “For now, let’s get you outta here.” Dreyla figured out the restraints and unstrapped him.

  Slowly, he swung his legs off the bed and stretched. Then, as he stood, he realized he was in a hospital gown and that his back end was exposed.

  “Sorry,” he said gruffly.

  The girls both snorted.

  “He doesn’t seem like a madman to me,” Mosi said. “Well, maybe just a little crazy.”

  “Yeah, he’s harmless,” Dreyla said, trying to avoid the continued view of Tosh’s stark white backside as he rooted around for clothes in a cabinet. “Mostly.”

  “What should we do with this one?” Mosi asked, prodding Homer.

  “Just let me go, I-I won’t say anything,” Homer begged.

  “Yeah, right,” Mosi said.

  Dreyla looked between Tosh and Homer, an idea forming.

  “Take off your clothes,” she ordered Homer.

  Homer hesitated.

  Mosi pressed his dislocated arm up even higher, making him gasp in pain. “Do as she says, cuz I seem to remember you saying the same thing to me not too long ago.”

  Homer proceeded to pull off his uniform overall as fast as he could with one arm.

  A few moments later, Homer stood in his underwear. Tosh, meanwhile, was all dressed up as a security guard, albeit one well past retirement age.

  Dreyla looked at Homer. “Get on the bed,” she instructed.

  The guard was docile now, as if removing his clothes had also stripped him of any authority or free will. Mosi’s eyes were glowing with vindictive pleasure.

  Dreyla picked up the needle end of the IV and glanced at Homer.

  “No,” he said weakly, eyeing the tip of the needle. “Please.”

  “That’s not strong enough to do much,” Tosh remarked as Dreyla strapped Homer down. She found a vein, even as the man attempted to struggle, and jabbed in the needle.

  It only took about five seconds and Homer was out cold.

  Mosi looked curiously at Tosh. “You were saying?”

  “He… well, let’s just say our doc has built up a tolerance to most hard drugs,” Dreyla explained, then headed into the hallway.

  Chapter 8

  LILLY

  Despite the prisoner’s lingering question, an awkward silence ensued after Gono’s departure.

  “Just check out my ship,” Remy Bechet insisted again, “and you’ll know I’m telling the truth.”

  Lilly smiled mirthlessly. The truth. Would that be the same truth as attested by every other damn guilty man, woman, aflin, or dworg who had ever sat in that chair? He was wasting his breath. She had learned to ignore the pleas, no matter how heartfelt their delivery.

  She had also noted how tense he’d seemed around Tara Shaw. There was definitely something going on between those two. Clearly, nobody here was innocent, but would Lilly have time to unravel what the hell was really happening before all her Rot-infested citizens died? No, she wouldn’t. Her tolerance for mind games was hitting rock bottom. She just wanted those meds—justice came second.

  The man across the table from her didn’t look like a sadistic killer, but then again, looks could be deceiving. Case in point: the suave, well-dressed Gono Darkbur. And Bechet did have a slight Bane air about him—the scruffy, renegade, anti-establishment, fringe-living aura of those who didn’t want to deal with laws and taxes and such.

  “I need to see Dreyla and Tosh.”

  She avoided his direct gaze. This had become a constant refrain with him. “You know I can’t let you. Not until we know more. One of my teams is checking out your story,” she said, then focused on Mayor Cansen.

  He seemed more than ready to convict the captain, mopping his brow and shifting his portly frame from leg to leg in frustration. Less because of any conviction of the captain’s guilt and more because the story of the dead med crew was already hitting the streets. Strange, since it hadn’t been officially announced.

  Cansen wasn’t a bad man, but serving as the mayor of Naillik made him often act out of political motivations. That, in turn, sometimes contradicted what his constituents required to be safe. Being able to tell people they had caught the murdering thieves played well. Spending long hours figuring out the actual guilty party and then rescuing the meds didn’t offer immediate results in the popularity contest of being an elected official.

  “Sheriff, I think we can see that this man is, in the very least, the sort of scum that would do something like that,” Cansen harrumphed.

  “Hey, asshole, who are you calling scum?” Bechet asked.

  Lilly squeezed her eyes shut. OK, this was not helping. But before she could reprimand the prisoner, he’d started talking again.

  “You think I wanted to land—crash—on your stupid planet? Trust me, if that portal hadn’t sprung out of nowhere, we’d be safely on the other side of the moon right now.”

  Interesting. Vox’s moon wasn’t exactly difficult to reach, so either this guy was crazy, lying creatively,
or telling the truth.

  Also, she’d seen a report from the Vox Council about some mysterious portals opening on the home planets, but nothing like that had ever happened on Vox. As far as she knew.

  She exchanged a glance with Cansen, whose curt shake of the head indicated he thought this was the next level of bullshit. And it kind of sounded like it.

  She strolled to the window to buy time. It was on such occasions she wished she had a hard heart as Tim had possessed when it came to dealing with suspects. He’d always been able to mentally torment them when necessary. Likewise, all she’d have to do was pretend to be torturing Bechet’s friends, the girl and the old man, to elicit some answers. This would work, as the captain seemed to have a soft heart toward them, especially where the girl was concerned.

  But she wasn’t Tim. Not yet.

  “So… you’re telling us you’re from an entirely different, what, galaxy?” she asked, unable to keep her pitch from rising into the octave of incredulity.

  “Or universe,” Bechet said, scowling now.

  “Oh, come on,” Cansen snapped.

  Bechet twisted his head to address the mayor head-on. “When a bunch of scientists—assholes much like yourself—tried to build a gateway to travel faster throughout our galaxy—”

  “This was on your home world?” she asked, cutting in over Cansen’s protests.

  Bechet nodded. “Well, out in space, anyway, and they mucked it up. Damn thing exploded, and the end result was we had to deal with the randomness of portals.”

  “And you expect us to believe that these portals can instantly transport you from planet to planet?” Cansen asked, punctuating the question with a loud snort.

  He looked ready to punch the restrained captain. Lilly was tempted to let him do it.

  The captain, as if sensing this, spoke rapidly, focusing on her. “Well, the idea was to utilize Newton’s Gate to travel aboard a spaceship to anywhere in the galaxy, or perhaps even universe… but when it exploded, it ended up… how did they explain it? Look, I’m no physicist, but it created a, uh, tear in space-time, which resulted in an infinite number of portals popping up on the planet and out in space.”

  “And why did you fly your ship—”

  “He doesn’t have a ship,” Cansen butted in.

  “—through the portal to Vox?” Lilly finished.

  Her tablet flashed. Deputy Davis wanted to chat, but wow, bad timing. She reverted her gaze back to Bechet. He was taking deep breaths, trying to calm himself down. Something told her he was more used to being the one calling the shots.

  “The portal I was trying to go through would’ve led back to our moon,” Remy Bechet said more slowly. “But another appeared right before it, and we accidentally flew the Jay to your planet instead. That portal must’ve led to just outside your atmo.”

  Lilly’s tablet flashed again. She pressed her lips together. “Mayor,” she said in a tight voice. “If you would, please?”

  She rose and Cansen followed.

  At the door, on a whim, she looked back at the prisoner. “I think we have a report coming in from my team.”

  Davis was just outside the door, ready to pounce.

  “What is it, Davis?” she asked.

  He cleared his throat. “They didn’t find anything.”

  Cansen snapped his fingers. “See? He did it.”

  “I don’t know,” Lilly said. She was examining the video feed from the mission. A typical Vox desert scene.

  “What’s that?” She pointed at some sand that seemed displaced in an odd way—by something much bigger than a man.

  “Yeah, could’ve been a ship there,” Davis said. “Brand noticed that, too,” he added with a note of pride.

  The mayor snorted in disgust. “Just means he had accomplices.”

  Milo and Jacer squeezed past Davis as they reentered the interrogation room. They had each been forced to attend emergency meetings about the missing nano-biotic shipment. Neither looked happy.

  “Sheriff, if we can’t figure this out, things are going to get bad,” Milo said.

  Lilly looked at him sharply. “For whom?” She already knew things were bad, but the way he said it made it sound even worse.

  “For all of us,” he added.

  “But especially for you here in Naillik,” Jacer cut in. “Our council in Elocin is—”

  “Blaming us?” She shook her head. “Come on, Jacer, that’s complete crap, you know it is!”

  “Since the plan most likely originated in Bane,” Jacer said in his reedy, now toneless voice, “and that’s still considered a human establishment—”

  “But there are almost as many aflins and dworgs there,” Lilly countered.

  “I’m afraid Yerdua feels the same way.” Milo, at least, sounded genuinely sympathetic.

  Brand dashed toward the open door, almost knocking Davis over in her excitement. He clasped her shoulders to steady her.

  “Sheriff!” she panted. “The girls escaped!”

  “Girls?” Lilly stared at her red-cheeked deputy, nonplussed.

  “From the JDC! The drug addicts!”

  “Who escaped?” Lilly asked, already suspecting.

  “All of them. But it was instigated by that new girl, Dreyla.”

  Son of a bitch. Maybe it was time to torture some answers out of Remy Bechet after all.

  Galactic Blues

  Episode 5:

  Got My Mojo Working

  A Newton’s Gate serial

  by

  C.J. Clemens

  Copyright © 2018

  C.J. Clemens

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the authors.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the authors’ imaginations and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, businesses, and individuals, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, visit the authors’ website: NewtonsGate.com

  For Andy and Chris...

  two brothers who have given us unwavering support.

  Chapter 1

  SHAW

  “Shaw,” Gono Darkbur asked, “what kind of trouble is this Captain Bechet likely to be?”

  Commander Tara Shaw had been walking behind her newly acquired employer when he came to a sudden stop on one of Naillik’s overcrowded streets. As he shifted his laser focus onto her, she and her two cohorts, Jibs and Zain, halted as well.

  A current of annoyed pedestrians faltered around the four of them, but the older man remained rooted to the spot, his dark eyes drilling into Shaw, trying to make her feel small and defenseless. It wasn’t working.

  Shaw had grown weary of arrogant men striving to control her. For now, though, she’d do the bare minimum to keep Darkbur happy until he proved useless for her own intentions.

  As the leader of the controlling faction in Bane and the boss of several lucrative mines, Darkbur aspired to control the entire planet, and as the megalomaniacal glint in his eyes indicated, that would mean he’d also control the valuable mineral Vox7 throughout the galaxy. So, sticking beside this rich, powerful crime lord was presently Shaw’s best option.

  Upon first sight, she’d considered the tall, hefty, red-bearded man just an everyday corrupt official. But that was before he’d opened his mouth, and she’d heard the authoritative tone laced with a definitive, fearless cruelty. It was also before she’d realized how much power Darkbur’s crime syndicate held in Bane.

  “Well, Bechet’s been a pain in my ass for a long time.” She flexed the fingers of her prosthetic hand behind her back. Darkbur didn’t need to know the details.

  Three members of his private security team, who’d been trailing their boss, joined the group. Thick-necked, dead-eyed, and armed to the hilt, they were obviously more than mere secur
ity.

  “We’ll have to deal with him,” Darkbur said.

  Although Shaw kept her face blank, this comment made her pause. Surely someone was dealing with Remy Bechet? He was in jail, after all.

  True, some of the sheriff’s goons seemed amateurish, barely capable of handling the wily pirate, but the sheriff herself, while laughably bad at extracting information, appeared competent. And those bars and walls were solid tech, such that not even Bechet, with all his resourcefulness, could spirit himself out.

  Shaw reflected on that assumption for a moment. OK, maybe Bechet could escape. He was pretty damn slippery.

  But first, before she gave Bechet too much thought, she’d have to figure out the best way to handle Darkbur. Whatever he had up his sleeve, she’d better stay one step ahead.

  “I think he’s pretty well contained,” she said, studying his craggy face for clues.

  “That’s unlikely to last, as the situation becomes clearer,” Darkbur replied.

  As he turned away from her, she scowled at his broad back. These enigmatic statements were meant to keep her on her toes—a novice’s trick—but he didn’t know who he was dealing with. She should probably kill him now while she had the chance.

  Darkbur spoke in a low voice to his men, who, in turn, kept their own volume down. She strained to hear them—or at least read their lips.

  Zain stepped beside her. “You don’t actually believe Bechet killed a bunch of people to take their ship?”

  She shook her head, still watching Darkbur as he issued orders to his men. “I think we’re lucky we crashed where we did.”

  Because if they’d had the misfortune of landing closer to Naillik, near the site of the massacre, they would be the ones sitting in a jail cell right now. Still, it had become obvious that Darkbur was, as the sheriff suspected, involved in the incident.

  Shaw wasn’t sure how she felt about that. On the one hand, she’d already worked for a psycho scumbag of a pirate king. Gono Darkbur was small potatoes compared to Larker Max, and she had certainly killed at Larker’s behest many times. Their targets had always been people who operated in the criminal world, people who more than deserved it. But a med crew delivering needed drugs to civilians? She’d never stooped that low.