“Do you really believe that?” Jinx asked meekly.
“I do.”
Amara scoffed. “That’s a little naïve, Yan.”
I crossed my arms. “Or maybe it’s optimistic. I like to look at things through rose-colored glasses.”
“More like hunra-clouded glasses…”
That made me laugh, though I didn’t deny it because she wasn’t necessarily wrong.
Silence descended upon us for a long moment, heavy in the air, suffocating almost. I was optimistic as a start, but of course I did consider the possibility that one of us had sold us all out. But, I mean, who would do it? It wasn’t me, and Jinx and Rowan were my best friends. I knew that Amara and Pivek had always disliked Rowan, but he’d proven true more than a handful of times. As for K, Pivek, and Amara, well, we’d crewed together for years. What would their betrayal net them?
Plus, everyone in the tavern could have been killed. Wouldn’t the bounty hunters have made sure not to hurt them? They didn’t seem to be hesitating in the slightest to shoot at any of us. Pivek had been fueling up, but he had his own colored history with the Elexaes so I knew he wouldn’t ever work with them.
So, who could it be? None of us, because we would never do that. This went beyond optimism. This was about trust. This was about family, and I trusted my family. Was I being naïve? Maybe. But I’d rather be an optimistic fool than believe one of my friends, one of these people that I loved, would betray us.
If that was wrong, well, I didn’t want to be right.
Finally, Rowan snapped us out of our stupor. “So, what do we do now?”
I shrugged. “Depends.”
“On?”
“On if Pivek has figured out how to get in the security tower without physically being there.”
He buzzed. ‘I didn’t realize I was the one holding us all up.’
“You’re fine, friend. No pressure.” I patted his hard shell. “Getting past the security measures and Xarren’s bio-encryption are the main obstacles I’m worried about.”
“You should be more worried about Xarren killing you on sight in your idiotic plan to be captured.” Amara was often too pessimistic. Maybe that was why I was so optimistic. We had to balance each other out. She was the doom and gloom, and I was the hope and sunshine. Both points of view were important in maintaining a healthy mindset.
‘What is she talking about?’ Pivek asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” I replied.
‘I really feel like I should.’
“You got enough to worry about. You deal with those problems and let me and Amara figure out a way for us to get in and out without dying.”
“Yeah, we still don’t have an escape plan.” Amara.
“I’m liking our chances less and less.” Rowan.
“I appreciate the confidence, you all.”
For the next day or so—it was hard to tell when you’re jumping from system to system—we all did our best to come up with solutions. Rowan was hard at work in his quarters gathering information through his shady backchannels, which he let none of us have access to. That was his process. None of us were allowed to touch Pivek’s workshop either, so stuff like that was fair. We all had our skills and specialties.
Jinx memorized the work schedules and sent in a digital application to be a scullery maid for the Xarren estate using one of Rowan’s contacts. So, we made some progress. Still nothing from Pivek though, but brilliance was often a slow process.
My rudimentary escape plan involved Amara using her terroristic skills to cause one heck of a diversion, but that was some rough planning on my part, and I doubted she would appreciate it very much. Still, it was something to think about. The main problem was getting access to Xarren, because even Pivek doubted we could simply bypass the bio-encryption. Those things were pretty tough to crack even for the best hackers.
Jinx did have an idea, but I didn’t like it.
“I can seduce him,” she told me as we sat on my bed. I was against it. I didn’t like her being in that type of vulnerable situation.
“No,” was my obvious response.
“Why not?”
“Because.”
She’d crossed her arms and arched an eyebrow with a pout. “Because?”
I doubted my answer would please her. “I don’t want you in harm’s way.” A weak argument.
One she tore apart immediately. “If you didn’t want me in harm’s way, we wouldn’t even be doing this heist, as it’s easily the most suicidal thing we’ve ever attempted.”
Also true.
“Jinx…”
She laughed and laid back on my bed, her hair splaying around her head like a halo. “Don’t be prude now, Yan. Let’s not pretend that I’ve never done this to steal and survive. It’s a tactic that I can use to great effect.”
I groaned and laid beside her. “I know, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
Jinx rolled onto her side and looked at me. I did the same. She reached out and placed her palm against my cheek. She smiled. “I appreciate your concern and trust me, I’m worried too. But we have to keep every option on the table. From what I’ve heard, Xarren is a lecherous old fiend, so I should be able to pull this off.”
She could pull it off, I knew she could. Jinx was strong and capable and kind and determined. She was damaged, but who wasn’t? If this was how we could get Xarren’s bio-encryption, then we… I would consider it. That wouldn’t stop me from worrying excessively.
“I just… I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
Jinx smirked, which sent a surge of warmth through me. She took my face in her hands, pulled me to her, and kissed my forehead.
“If we pull this off, everything will change for the better. Don’t worry about me, Yan.”
“It’s my job to worry about you.”
She snorted. “It’s your job to annoy everyone.”
“I can have multiple jobs.”
We both shared a laugh. One that didn’t last long, because just then, the ship rocked violently. We were thrown from the bed, with Jinx landing on top of me. I groaned as the wind was knocked from me.
“Oh, sorry, Yan!”
“Ow,” I groaned. “I’m fine.”
But that wasn’t true. I was fine physically, but something was wrong.
“Get in here now!” K roared. Hearing K raise his voice in any context was a major cause for concern. We stormed out of my quarters and into the cockpit, along with Amara and Rowan. Pivek was probably down below, and I hoped none of his large inventions fell on him.
I came to a halt in the cockpit alongside Ketellin. I had to keep my jaw from dropping, though I couldn’t help myself from spewing forth a stream of curses. Outside the cockpit flew dozens of small fighters, and they were all firing at us.
We could never catch a break.
7
Blue bolts zipped around the ship, with a few landing every few seconds, rocking the ship and making it hard to stay standing. Ketellin was as focused on the controls and the blackness of space beyond as I’d ever seen him. He maneuvered as best he could, but there were far too many fighters. He didn’t need to say anything, because it was obvious to everyone what had happened. We’d been followed. Or ambushed. One or the other. Point being, this wasn’t a coincidence.
Maybe Amara was right. Maybe I was too naïve.
We’d come out of a jump and were readying for another, and then we were beset by this swarm of fighters. Now it was a fight for our lives. Again. Only this time, I didn’t very much like our odds. But that wouldn’t stop me from fighting.
I whirled around and found the others staring in shock, Pivek included. I was not used to this. They were usually so calm under pressure, but we’d only ever been in a few minor scrapes with bounty hunters, and K always got us out of it. This was a whole new level. It was amazing that I had to be the voice of calm.
“Amara, get on the gun!” I yelled. She blinked, nodded, and bolted down the hall. “Jinx
, Rowan, strap in. Pivek, turn on the forward guns and then do…whatever you gotta do to make sure we don’t blow up.”
They dispersed, and I took my seat next to Ketellin. I buckled in and gripped the arms of the chair as we went into a barrel-roll. With the artificial gravity, we barely felt more than a slight shift. Jinx and Rowan buckled up behind me and kept their mouths clamped shut as Ketellin shifted and swerved and worked the controls like a master. I did what I could, monitoring the shields, redirecting power to the rear or portside or whatever was needed. K didn’t usually want or need a copilot, but this was not one of those times.
Outside, as bolts blasted all around us, black and purple fighters, sharp and small and wickedly pointy, buzzed about like a swarm of insects. But I was able to make out the faded, scratched symbol on the side of one—the intricate seal of the Elaxaes. These were mob ships, not bounty hunters or imperials, then it was obviously not the empire. If it was the empire, they would have brought something a tad bigger.
But that begged the question. How did they find us? Pivek already swept our ship for trackers, and K would have known if we were followed manually. Those were questions we needed answers to, but we’d have to survive first.
The cannons beneath the Sanara boomed, and bright orange bolts blasted out into the darkness of space. A fighter exploded in a ball of flames.
“That’s one,” Amara called from below.
I whooped and pumped a fist. “Atta girl!”
“There’s many more,” said K, ruining the moment.
“Don’t be a killjoy.”
The ship intercom buzzed to my right, and three loud clangs sounded, muffled and distant. At the same time, there was a whirring hum all around the cockpit, and two green lights came on. I smiled. “Forward guns are online.”
“You better use them, Captain.”
I flashed a wicked grin. “It would be my pleasure.”
Unlike fighters and star runners, whose weapons systems were integrated right into the piloting systems, freighters often liked to mix things up. Thus, K was the pilot and I was his humble little gunner. It made it hard to aim, because K had to line up my targets for me and that wasn’t his priority. His priority was keeping us from being blown away.
So I had to make do, and I did.
It was always a practice of holding your nausea when gunning for him. He jerked us around and around, though it was all he could do to keep us from taking a direct hit. Ketellin was one of the best pilots across the stars, but he was still mortal.
Amara’s orange bolts blasted beneath us, and I pulled the triggers of my own guns. Streams of rapid-fire darker orange bolts sprang forth. It was hard to hit anything, but our return fire scattered the Elexae fighters and made them reconsider their approach. Amara didn’t let up, as the bay cannon could swivel and move so she had a full 360-degree range of motion. I didn’t have that luxury. But I fired, nonetheless. Plasma bolts were unlimited energy as long as you didn’t overload the cores.
We went at this for a long time. We zipped and zoomed around, doing our best to avoid fire. Ketellin was a class above any of the mob pilots and had us outmaneuvering them easily. If there weren’t so dang many of them, it would be over already. But they’d done their research. They knew how good our pilot was.
It was a dance of ships, an explosion of color. If our lives weren’t in danger, I would have marveled at the beauty of it all. That was weird to say, but with all the bolts and explosions and the backdrop of nebulas and stars, it was truly something awesome. An artist would weep for the chance to capture this scene, but one wasn’t here, and we couldn’t let up or we would die.
Amara hammered away below, taking out a ship or two every minute of flight. I had much less luck. It was hard to focus on anything with all the lights and turns. Us humans had lower perceptive skills than, say, Zarthians. Jinx or Rowan wouldn’t have done much better, not to mention they didn’t have any training whatsoever on the gun.
I managed to blow up three fighters, so I helped.
But there were still another two dozen or more. K was brilliant, but we were a big target. Fast as we were for a ship our size, fighters were faster and could maneuver far better. If we had a less than superb pilot, we would’ve been dead long ago.
“We’re not going to last much longer,” Ketellin said without sparing a glance. His voice was grim. Not encouraging.
“What can we do?” asked Jinx. The fear in her voice made my heart flutter. I had sworn to her once that I would do my best to make sure she was never afraid. I was failing that mission today.
Before any of us could answer, there was a boom below us, and the ship shuddered violently. Amara’s orange bolts ceased. I turned around, even though I knew I couldn’t see the gun bay.
“Amara!”
For a heart-stopping second, there was no response, but then, “I’m fine!” Another pause as bolts still boomed around us, rocking the Sanara. “The gun is dead. I’m useless down here!”
Well, that was an unfortunate turn of events.
“What do we do?” Jinx asked, the panicked tone in her voice leaking into me and notching up my nerves. Rowan was cursing beside her, growing more and more vulgar with each passing second.
Two mob fighters zoomed toward us. I redirected our shields to the nose and started firing, just as K put us into a wild spin. One of those dizzying moments, but I kept my eyes ahead and had the bolts firing. The fighters didn’t know what to do. They just kept at us, firing, their bolts slamming against our shields. The ship shook, but we kept on flying, and I kept on firing, and K kept us spinning, faster and faster until my bolts hit home. The fighters exploded in front of us, and we flew right through the flames.
I chuckled. “That was something. Good flying, K.”
“This doesn’t solve our problems,” he said back, stone cold.
He was right. There were twenty more ships, and it was all we could do to avoid a crippling blow. I didn’t have an answer, didn’t know a way to get out of this. None of us did. If Pivek did, he was sequestered below making sure the shields and core and guns were still functioning. We were out of options.
This was it. End of the line. After all we’d been through, we were going to get blasted into the cold depths of space and left to float on forever. I reached back for Jinx and squeezed her hand. She returned the favor, her eyes glistening. Of all of us, I wanted her to live, wanted her to have a full and happy life, one where she could be whoever she wanted and follow her dreams. After all the horrors, all the pain of her life, Jinx deserved to be happy. This wasn’t the end I wanted for her.
But it was the end we got.
Even though K kept flying valiantly, avoiding the mobster bolts with precision, there were just too many of them, and our ship shook each second, impact after impact. I released Jinx’s hand and kept shooting, but it was all I could do to line up a shot. We moved too fast and the fighters were even faster. I was hopeless.
The ship shuddered violently. One of the lights in front of me beeped repeatedly, shrill and alarming.
“Shields down to twenty percent,” I said, my voice hitching.
Then it really sunk in to all of us that this was it. Even Ketellin, so stoic and calm, shuddered and took in a large breath, the tubes of his breathing apparatus bubbling with effort. Jinx sniffled as tears spilled down her face. Rowan kept on cursing, until he finally undid his safety harness and bolted from the cockpit. I didn’t know where he meant to go, whether he meant to go pray or call someone or…or I didn’t know. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t help.
Amara appeared a moment later, breathing heavy. She said nothing, just looked at me and out the cockpit with the same stunned acceptance. She sat down beside Jinx and took her other hand. Jinx was crying in earnest now, and even a few tears came to my eyes. Not for me, but for my family, my friends, my crew. My heart ached in my chest.
So, we readied ourselves, ready for the moment the shields finally gave out, for the explosion, for the cold o
f space. For the end.
But then the bolts stopped flying and the ship stopped rocking. K stopped maneuvering, and his black eyes narrowed as he looked about in confusion. We all did. We should have been dead. I glanced at the shields and found that they were at only five percent. Only a couple more hits and that would have been it. So why were we alive?
A chime sounded in front of us on the console and echoed from the comm room. K blinked. I blinked. I imagined that Jinx and Amara stared at it too.
“We… We’re being hailed,” Ketellin breathed.
I frowned. “By who?”
As if to answer, there was a tearing sound outside that could only mean the arrival of a ship coming out of a jump. There was a red static strike that lit up the area for a brief flash, and then a large cruiser suddenly shot forth from the great black abyss and loomed over us.
I undid my harness and shot out of my seat. I stomped out of the cockpit and into the comm room, with Amara and Jinx in tow. Rowan arrived same time as me, looking baffled, his hair all mussed.
“Why have we stopped, and why did they stop shooting?”
All I did to answer was point to the blinking light on the central comm console, the one we hardly ever used, the one we ate off of and played cards on and kicked our legs up on and occasionally spilled alcohol on, but didn’t break because it was high quality. Now it blinked a soft yellow light every couple of seconds. Hailing us, beckoning us. Ominous.
We stood around it in silence. It took too long before my limbs moved. I didn’t want to keep whoever was in the big ship waiting, lest they lose their patience and blow us up out of sheer annoyance. Though wouldn’t that be something, my annoying demeanor finally getting me killed?
No, not now. If I was to die because of annoyance, it would not be like this. I inched forward and found the switch beneath the flashing light. I flicked it up. There was a whir and a beep and the light at the base of the table and above beamed to light, projecting a holo before us.
The Elarri Heist (Plundering the Stars Book 1) Page 9
