by Debra Jess
On the holo, Sorinestro leaned forward and grabbed his son, pulling him into a hug. To his credit, the boy returned the embrace before releasing his father and walking away, trying to look casual. Sorinestro watched until the boy disappeared into a crowd. Mirin motioned Sorinestro back on board the Queen of Hearts.
“If he follows orders and keeps his mouth shut, he’ll have no more trouble from me.”
Kelra relaxed, not realizing how tense she had been. Having Sorinestro on board as an irritant would distract everyone from what needed to be done, from what she needed to do once they found the Queen of Hearts.
A few minutes later, the rest of the bridge crew arrived. Everyone took their usual seat except Rusa, who sat where Kelra had originally, to the left and farther back from Darvik.
“Ezick, what’s the status of the Sea Storm?” Darvik directed the holo to show the rear view of the ship.
“It just detached its tethers.”
“All right.” Darvik activated the clock on the holo. “We’re on countdown. If we miss this window, we might not get another one for a long time. Every moment we remain here is another moment Manitac has to find us. Kelra, show us what you can do.”
“Traffic, this is Firelight.” She activated the fake identification transmission.
“This is Traffic, go Firelight.”
“We have a fuel line backwash. I’m requesting permission to detach tethers, disengage the line, and hover-in-place while my crew cleans up the mess.”
She waited. Hover-in-place was a perfectly reasonable request when a backwash occurred, but it did present a danger if a nearby craft was also hovering, or worse, departing.
“No go, Firelight,” Traffic responded, irritated, assuming she hadn’t checked the port report. “Sea Storm departing. Wait ten, then request again. I’ll have a different answer for you.”
Damn. Sea Storm’s presence made her plan possible. Behind her, someone shifted, probably Mirin. The woman never seemed comfortable sitting still. It wouldn’t have been Darvik, who could sit like a stone for hours if required. They were waiting to see how she would respond to their first tangle.
“Traffic, Firelight. Give me a break. I have a green crew, and they’re bleating about the fire hazard. We’re barely the size of a ferry. Even if we bumped Storm, how much damage could we possibly do?” The cargo ship dwarfed even the largest of Manitac’s warships, its mission to deliver food, supplies, and construction equipment to dozens of colonies and stations before returning to the Homeport to restock.
Again, no response came. The holo buzzed. Sea Storm had activated its main engines. Kelra pulled her stylus across the holo. She targeted the controller and transmitted a file. “Traffic, Firelight. I’ve sent my credentials. Take a look. I’ve got twenty years in this seat without incident.”
Nothing to do but hope the controller was too harried to look too closely at her credentials. The seconds ticked…four…three…two…one…and Sea Storm pulled away from its berth, its speed increasing as its hull cleared the dock.
“Firelight, Traffic. Go ahead and detach. Any accidents and I’ll pull your license.”
As the Sea Storm reached clearance level for their slip, Kelra disconnected the tethers holding Queen of Hearts in place. The tethers waved as the rollers retracted them into the pylons shielding Queen of Hearts from Sea Storm. A short, controlled burst from the aft engines propelled Queen of Hearts forward. Her expert hands guided the ship to the end of the slip. Directly in front of her, Sea Storm passed before them.
“Not yet,” Darvik whispered.
“I know.” She couldn’t blame him for his hushed tone and cautionary voice. The Sea Storm’s massive engines would make anyone think twice about crashing into them.
The moment the huge aft engines floated into view, she nudged Queen of Hearts out of the slip and dropped under the other ship’s engines. Hovering at the juncture between the massive power vents and the fuselage, Traffic shouldn’t have picked up Queen’s image.
Everyone on the bridge held their breath, listening to Traffic’s chatter. The ebb and flow of voices never changed. No one sitting in Traffic’s tower saw her daring move.
Sea Storm increased its velocity just enough to reach the event horizon for the slipstream gateway and take its place in line, with Queen of Hearts doubling the power output to keep pace.
“Begin countdown to main engine shutdown,” she ordered.
Queen of Hearts jerked as the Sea Storm increased its power.
“Why is she speeding up? She should be slowing…Oh, I see.”
Voices from Traffic crowded out her complaint, some human, others automated, directing ships to hover-in-place or steer clear of the bulk carrier. One mentioned an anomaly in the space lanes. Another ship had drifted out of line, hoping to jump a few slots ahead and beat the huge craft to the finish line. Sea Storm sped up, engaging its engines to half power. Queen of Hearts would have to go full throttle to keep Traffic from spotting them, but the Sea Storm made it clear to the smaller ship that they would have to wait their turn.
“We’re going to have to reset the clock. Counting down again to main engine shut down.”
This time, the Sea Storm reached the huge slipstream just as it yawned open.
The display buzzed as it reached zero.
“Hang on, this is going to be tight.” Kelra maneuvered the Queen of Hearts out from under the cargo ship, heading straight down as far as she dared as the slipstream sucked Sea Storm into its maw. There was always a pulse of energy that disrupted communications and tracking for a total of three seconds. In those three seconds, Kelra pushed Queen of Hearts to her limits and sent the ship skating along the edge of the slipstream before slipping around, reaching for the massive converters that held the construct in place. While slipstream swallowed the Sea Storm, the Queen of Hearts charged full throttle toward the permanently closed and much smaller slipstream hidden behind this one.
The countdown clock buzzed again. “Shutting down engines now! Shutting down communications and life support.”
The Queen’s engines fell silent, and the rest of the ship hushed to nothingness.
She reset the countdown clock again, her heart beating double-time. They were on target, allowing inertia to propel them toward their own slipstream so Traffic couldn’t see them. They had plenty of oxygen to survive at least an hour without generating more, but they couldn’t send the stolen passcode to open the smaller slipstream until the bigger one opened again to give them cover.
Once more the timer buzzed. Behind them, the large slipstream opened, its flare blocking everything behind it. Time for Ezick to do his thing.
“Transmitting the code now.”
Kelra dared a moment to look away from the holo. Ezick looked as if he were about to faint.
Seconds passed; no response came. The slipstream creating the cover would only stay open long enough to allow one ship through at a time. If there were no delays, they had two minutes, maybe three.
“Stars and Guardians!” Kelra slammed back in her chair, her curse not helping at all.
“Ezick…” Darvik growled.
“I don’t know. It was the only code I found that wasn’t currently used for the four other gates. It has to be correct, or else they erased the proper code so no one could steal it.”
They had no funnel, no maw, and no answers. “Now what?” Darvik asked.
“Wait, give me another chance.” Ezick’s fingers flew along his holo screen.
“We’ve shut down all power. Nothing more is going to transmit, Ezick. We don’t have time…” Kelra stopped her ranting.
A small spray of light flashed along the holo, robbing her of her eyesight for a moment.
“The gate’s opened. Get the engines online, we’re going through.”
“The funnel isn’t standard size.” Mirin pulled her arms closer to her torso, retracting the ship’s cannons as much as possible. “It’s not as wide as it should be.”
“It’s wi
de enough to allow Queen of Hearts her entrance.” Kelra had to believe that. She had no choice. “Just relax, I’ve got this.”
Every second wasted risked drawing attention from Traffic or the other ships. Kelra punched the engines to full power. The quick switch rattled the bridge as the Queen of Hearts shot forward. In the blink of a star, the ship plunged into the funnel a split second before the mouth contracted shut.
“We did it.” Relief soaked up her anxiety and left behind a puddle of adrenaline.
Darvik left his seat, walking over to her. Without hesitation, he bent low so he could wrap his arms around her. “No, you did it. You deserve all the credit for this.”
“No, the Queen of Hearts did it.” Kelra rubbed the arms of the pilot’s seat and closed her eyes. “Good girl.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
If walls kept secrets, Silt would have had his hands around Shade’s neck by now. Instead, he had to explain to the vice chair of the board of directors why he hadn’t found the Queen of Hearts yet. Flying the Silt away from the Calypso arm hadn’t gone unnoticed and had left the new colonies without serious firepower. Hart might be the most successful pirate in the quadrant, but he wasn’t the only one.
Silt closed his eyes against the litany of ways he should have handled the pirate situation but hadn’t. Under other circumstances, he’d have disconnected the comm before the vice-chairman could utter another word against him, but he needed the rattus eater’s support if he were ever to make admiral. At least this comm was voice only, so no one could see him mashing his knuckles into a soft stress ball sitting on his desk.
After making the appropriate noises about how much harder he’d work to find the Queen of Hearts, he disconnected despite the fact protocol dictated that the vice chair should be the one to disconnect first. Let him suck air for a while. Silt would remember the condescending tone and inflict retribution at a later time, when he had better access and more power.
His comm chimed. “What is it?”
“We followed the tracker per your orders, sir,” his second said. “It would seem the tracker was found and transferred from the woman we injected to a young man.”
Stars and Guardians, the one sliver of a lead, and it slipped through his fingers. Surgery was required to remove trackers once they were inside a body, which meant she had help. “Where is the tracker now? Where was it before this?”
“It’s currently on board a shuttle going to Station Four. Prior to boarding, it had been on a small cargo ship, the Firelight, which is docked in the slip right next to us, sir.”
Son-of-a-beast! “Why didn’t you secure that ship? Guardians damn you! Direct a squad to secure the Firelight and intercept the shuttle.”
His second didn’t respond to his orders right away. “Sir, I’d like to remind you that most of our squads are still recovering from the operation on Station Seven.”
“Well, how many can we gather?”
In the background, he could hear his second comm the question to the sick bay. A lower voice barked back a number, so Silt knew the answer before his second repeated it. “We have enough for one squad, but no more. We’d have to split them between the Firelight and the shuttle.”
“Get them off this ship and secure the Firelight,” Silt ordered. “Keep tracking whoever is on the shuttle. We’ll handle that one later.”
“Aye, sir.”
He wouldn’t join them this time. It was bad enough that this new squad was cobbled together from what was left of all three. He would wait until they secured Firelight before heading over. If what he suspected was true—that Hart had commandeered a smaller, weaker ship to fly to the Vaynix hub—then it was only a matter of time before he discovered where Hart had stashed the Queen of Hearts.
While he waited for his second to get this new operation underway, he composed a carefully worded message to the director of the Torensia colony. It was a long shot, but it was possible Hart had managed to commandeer a ship from that sector before heading into the slipstream. Which would mean the Queen of Hearts was still in the Calypso arm. Wouldn’t it kill Hart to not only lose the Firelight, but the Queen of Hearts as well? All within a few days’ work. It would get the board of directors off his back. The only question was, had Shade followed Hart to Vaynix or had he kept her prisoner on the Queen of Hearts?
It would take time for his message to wind its way through the multiple relays before it was received at the colony. In the meantime, he’d start preparing his report for the board about his success.
His comm chimed. It was his second, again. “Now what? Why are you not with the squad securing the Firelight?”
“The ship is gone, sir. It’s no longer docked at this station.”
Blazing balls of rattus droppings! There would be more blood spilled before this operation was finished, and he looked forward to being the one to do it. “Where is it docked?”
“I’ve received a response to my query to Traffic. According to them, the captain had requested permission to remove the tethers and hover-in-place while they cleaned up a fuel line backwash. At some point, the ship just…disappeared.”
“Ships do not just disappear.”
“I understand, but Traffic cannot account for the Firelight at this time.”
“Cannot account for it? How can…no, never mind. Tell Traffic I’m shutting down all travel out of this system until further notice. I want every slip on every dock on all seven stations searched. I also need a list of every ship that has left the system and which slipstream they used.”
“I expect there will be pushback, sir. Shutting down the entire hub with no end date will backlog travel for a week, maybe even a month. The board of directors might countermand this order.”
“They can’t countermand what they don’t know.”
There was pure silence for two beats before his second found his voice again. “I’m not sure we can stop folks from contacting the board, sir.”
“We can by shutting down all communications as well as travel.”
Another long pause stretched out, but Silt already knew what his second was going to ask, so he cut him off. “We’ll also jam all signals for this entire sector. Anyone attempting to make contact with the board, or complain to anyone else, won’t get far.”
“A dangerous move, if you don’t mind my saying so. If there’s an accident or security incident…”
Lesser men always worried about things they couldn’t control, always thinking they had to be responsible for everything. “It should be handled by hub security. We have a job to do, and I intend to do it. Hart was here. Shade was here. I want both of them in my brig by any means necessary.”
“And after they’re in our brig? What will happen then?”
“We’ll reopen the hub with all due apologies and explain that we’ve apprehended Darvik Hart and his pirate crew.” Silt tired of this conversation. “Everyone will be compensated for the interruption to their travel.”
“As you say, sir. I’ll issue the necessary order and have those lists available to you within the hour.”
“See that you do.”
Nothing about this operation was going according to his plan. If gross incompetence by this second-in-command resulted in him losing his chance to find Shade and Hart, he’d have the man jettisoned out the garbage shoot alive, which was a far faster ending than what he had in store for Shade and Hart. He could already hear the screams of those two rattus eaters as he dismembered them personally. They deserved no better, and he deserved no less.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Traveling by slipstream to the haunted nebula might have cut their travel time from months to a few days, but that didn’t mean life on board the Queen of Hearts stopped. Darvik made sure everyone’s daily routine continued unabated. Once Cuff informed him that he’d cleared Rusa to return to her duties, Darvik ordered her back to the bridge. As soon as Rusa returned, she ousted Kelra from her seat.
He’d thought about how to approach Kelra about
taking on a few duties to keep her occupied until they exited the slipstream, but it turned out he didn’t have to talk to her at all. She took the initiative to offer to take over chores for others without asking for his permission. She offered to assist Mirin with unpacking the last of their new munitions and storing them in a secured armory. While not a challenging job unto itself, Darvik had put his foot down about allowing the puppets to do it. Allowing puppets to handle the pallets piled high with crates of food was one thing, but munitions were too dangerous, even for the most careful of the puppets.
Mirin didn’t verbally respond to Kelra’s offer right away. Darvik remained in his seat, staying out of range of Mirin’s death glare. Kelra, however, didn’t even flinch, so Mirin tossed her a preprogrammed jack designed to slave multiple grav-resisters together so each would follow her into the armory.
With the munitions stored, he received a message from the crew member assigned to oversee the puppets directly.
“Sir, I have a request from Kelra Shade offering to cover the night-cycle launch bay sterilization.”
“I see. How does this impact your schedule?”
The woman hesitated. “To be honest, the night-cycle operates on its own. Once I make sure the puppets have their wash supplies and safety goggles, I sit in a corner repairing anything that needs fixing. I wouldn’t object to an evening off.”
“As long as the repairs are made, I’ll approve this change once. Shade is not a permanent member of the crew, so don’t get used to it.” Shade working a night-cycle shift meant she wouldn’t be with him in his bed. As much as he wanted her there, he also needed space to think about what was happening between them.
Did she make this offer to give her an excuse not to sleep with him? Other than further ingratiating herself with his crew, wanting to stay away from him was the only other reason he could think of for her volunteering. Or maybe she too needed space to think.
Which wouldn’t bother him, except…he missed her. Mind-blowing sex had him craving more time with her, but the closer they got to the haunted nebula, the closer he came to having to decide what to do with her. They both wanted to find Majesty of the Stars, and if what she said about aliens was true…
