Sky Hunter

by Fae Sutherland

  “Well, you don’t pick the jobs, Jeret, I do. You do your job and I’ll do mine, how about that? We’re here, we’re picking up this shipment and then we’re going to get paid.”

  And you’re dumber than I thought if you think it’s gonna be that easy. But Jeret didn’t say that out loud. Most of the time Torin Covell was the most brilliant mercenary and pirate in all of the In-Between, but even brilliant men could be lured into dumbassery for enough money. He grumbled and plopped down on the steps of the cargo bay, watching as Rain and Torin finished their prep.

  Times like these he missed Cookie for another reason. Torin and Rain had each other, like Sonny and Clyde or whoever that Old Earth couple of criminals was. Cookie had told him about them once. Anyway, Rain and Torin were like that, flyin’ round the In-Between, doing crime, having fun, having each other. Not that Jeret didn’t have fun, too, but sometimes it was pretty hard to keep from feeling like an extra wing pasted on to a perfectly sleek, fine-tuned ship—completely useless and in the way.

  Not to mention the fact that the both of them had a bad habit of forgetting that he wasn’t the fifteen-year-old kid he’d been the day Torin had found him snitching food from a vendor in the market here on Acorra almost six years ago. He’d grown up and he was sick to death of being told to stay and keep an eye on Annie while Torin and Rain took off to have adventures and do the real work.

  “We’ll be back in less than an hour.”

  “Great, I’ll just sit here and see how far I can stick my thumb up my ass, bein’ useless.”

  Torin and Rain just chuckled to each other as they left. They never took him seriously. Jeret sighed and stretched his legs out in front of him. He reached out and ran his hand over the wall, the slight hum and tremor of Annie’s engines soothing and reassuring.

  “It’s just you and me, Annie. You wanna be Sonny or you wanna be Clyde?”

  * * *

  “Is that what I think it is?” Torin stared at the contents of the crate they’d just brought on board and for once, Jeret couldn’t really read his expression. Bemused, maybe, with a dash of ‘What is my life?’ That didn’t bode well and Jeret put down the grid tablet he was fixing and came closer.

  “What is it?” he asked, but a second later didn’t need an answer as he caught sight of the contents as well. “Freaking Jesus M. Christ...”

  “M?” Rain lifted one brow in question.

  “Motherfucking. And yeah, that’s exactly what the hell you think it is.”

  Gradium, the raw ore form of one of the most powerful and rarest fuel resources in the known universe—also tightly controlled by the Coalition of Planets. While the C.O.P. might have brokered a deal years ago with Torin thanks to the captain’s knowledge of some top secret stuff, Jeret didn’t think even that amnesty would protect them in this case. The Coalition jealously guarded their control of gradium trade. This was bad news.

  “I’m just gonna go ahead and say I told you so.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I told ya this job was sour!”

  Rain tilted his head. “Well, how bad can it be? Once we deliver it to Shengo, it’s his problem, not ours.”

  “You say that like we’re gonna get halfway from here to your cabin before the C.O.P. drops a metric ton of hurt on us. We’ll be lucky they don’t blow Annie right out the air!”

  “Enough.” Torin finally spoke up, leaning down to slam the lid of the crate shut. “Get this stored away, I want us off this rock within the hour.”

  Jeret spluttered. “But you promised I’d have time for a trip to the scrapyard! No way we’re gonna keep flyin’ if I can’t get the parts I need. I ain’t a fucking magician what can whip a new grav boot out my ass like a string of hankies!” He gestured to the crate, which Rain was hefting off the floor to go hide it in one of Annie’s many cubby spots. “With that mess on board, we’re gonna need Annie in spit-shine perfect shape—’case the law comes knocking.”

  Torin’s jaw clenched. “Fine. You have two hours. Get your parts and get your ass back here, Jeret, no fucking games. Last time you hit a scrapyard we didn’t see you for a full twenty-four hours.”

  Jeret was already grabbing his bag, looping it across his chest. “Gotcha, cap’n. Credits?” He caught the little bag the captain tossed him, the weight and clink of the small, crystal nodules familiar.

  “If you don’t have to, don’t spend it all, huh? I’d like to turn an actual profit on this job.”

  Jeret snorted. “For the risk we’re takin’ shuttling this stuff, I say you hit Shengo up for a fat hazard pay bonus. See ya in a few.”

  Once he was out of sight of the ship, though, Jeret didn’t head for the scrapyard on the other side of the small town that had sprung up around what remained of a former C.O.P. spaceport. Instead Jeret hid the bag of credits in his boot and backtracked around the other side of the spaceport to a little hole-in-the-wall bar where maybe he could get some answers.

  Somebody had to know who that shipment had come through. He didn’t need to know where it’d originated. Hadrian. Home. Or it had been nearly six years ago. All of his instincts said to dump that shipment and run as fast and as far as Annie could take them, but since that wasn’t likely to happen thanks to Torin’s stubbornness, Jeret needed to know what exactly they were dealing with.

  He slipped into the bar, taking a second just inside the door to gauge the vibe of the place. Rough, loud, but not inherently dangerous unlike some other outer-moon watering holes. Relaxing a little, he made his way to the bar, sizing up a few of the patrons there as he did. Jeret set his target on a plump, middle-aged woman. Women liked him in a nonthreatening sort of way, whereas men either looked at him as a nuisance, an easy target or a piece of ass. He was all but the middle one, as most learned very quickly.

  It took barely a minute or two of buttering up before the woman was spilling what she knew. Two days earlier a ship had come in from Hadrian, unmarked and under the radar, and sat on the spaceport deck with nobody coming or going until today. Then it left again this morning—coincidentally right after Torin and Rain had come back with the gradium. Jeret considered that information, but it didn’t tell him who was doing the smuggling.

  “Whisper is the king himself were on that ship.”

  Jeret’s head lifted abruptly, staring at the woman. “Why would you say that?” The king—here? Had they been sitting there on the deck so close and not even known it? His insides trembled. Why, he wasn’t sure. What difference did it make? His fa—the king didn’t give a damn about him one way or another.

  The woman glared in the direction of the ships outside. “Ships just like ’em been comin’ and goin’ for months, sometimes like that one, other times maybe they get a little lazy, come in fer a drink or two while they wait. Them’s no ordinary sec—them’s soldiers. The kind what protect somebody real important.”

  Jeret’s eyes narrowed, staring down at the bar top. Somebody was smuggling. Someone with access to Hadrian’s royal guard. That didn’t necessarily mean it was the king. Any number of people used them, and hell, it might even be some of the guard themselves doing the smuggling. Regardless of who, it was upper level and that made the Ansata’s involvement even more dangerous.

  He had to make Torin see reason before they left Acorra with that ticking time bomb of a shipment on board. No amount of money was worth the trouble they were courting by taking this job.

  “Thanks.” He pushed away from the bar, head spinning. Was his father really smuggling gradium off-planet to sell to criminals? And if so, why? What kind of dire straits was he in that he’d risk so much? And if it wasn’t the king, then who?

  The questions nagged at him, but he tried to push them away. Hadrian wasn’t his planet anymore and the answers to those questions were none of his business. He just needed to convince Torin this job was bogus and get the hell out of there, as far away as possible.
Just like the last time he’d run from Hadrian.

  “Jadikira Adar, I compel you by edict of your king, stay right where you are.” The voice was commanding, familiar and attached to a state-of-the-art laser gun aimed right between his eyes.

  Jeret froze. Not because of the gun or the order, but because of the man behind both. It was like his past climbing out of a memory to smack him right in the face. Or shoot him, he supposed was a better analogy. “Dagan,” he breathed.

  Then he bolted.

  * * *

  Dagan muttered a curse as he raced after the young man. He should have known his wayward prince hadn’t changed. “Jadi! Stop!” he shouted, his greater stride and longer reach enabling him to get close enough to snag Jadi by the back of his jacket—an awful brown ratty thing that looked like a dozen wild animals had died to provide the matted fur—and yank him behind the closest ship. He pressed him face-first against the side of the ship, and wrenched one of Jadi’s arms up behind the prince’s back so he couldn’t get away.

  “You didn’t think it’d be that easy, did you, Your Highness?”

  Jadi snarled, wriggling in his grasp. “Get off!”

  Dagan gave him a little shake. “Calm down! I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to bring you home. Christ, I don’t know what kind of incompetents your father hired before, Your Highness.” Jadi hadn’t been hard to find at all. He’d followed the trail from the leaking of the brothel list to a young man on that list named Neith, who now lived on a little planet called Nephele. He’d been only too happy to talk about his very good friend Jeret who’d saved his life, along with the rest of the crew of the Crux Ansata.

  Finding the ship had been nearly as easy, though Dagan was surprised to find them so close to Hadrian. He’d have assumed Jadi would want to be as far as possible from a place that held so much history for him—if he was trying to forget who he was, that is.

  “Stop callin’ me that! And I’m not goin’ home! That ain’t home anymore, anyhow.”

  “Well, won’t your daddy be shocked to hear his only son talking like a common street criminal.” Not only sounding like one, but dressing and looking like one. This wasn’t the young prince Dagan had known. Jadi wasn’t a boy anymore, and it showed. In his lean muscles, the depth of his voice. Gone was the wicked-eyed little imp that had amused Dagan. In his place was a young man who, were he not Dagan’s current prey and his prince, might very well have found himself a different sort of prey, the sort who ended up mussed and naked in Dagan’s bed come morning.

  Jadi glared at him over his shoulder, dark curls tumbling into his eyes. “Better that than an uppity asshole with more money than sense. What’s my father paying you, huh? Enough to retire, I bet.”

  Dagan’s jaw clenched and he yanked the young man around to slam him back against the side of the ship. “Retire?” he ground out. “Hard to retire when spoiled little brats cost a man his career, Highness.”

  Jadi stilled for a moment, a glimmer of surprise and—was that regret?—in his dark eyes. Then he went back to glaring, chin lifting arrogantly. “Well then, enough to keep a fallen hero in liquor to soothe his bruised ego and pride, I’m sure.”

  The jab hit home, just as he was sure Jadi had intended. Ever a weaver of words, his prince. “If you say so. I don’t give a good goddamn what you say, Jadikira. You can curse and threaten all the way back to Hadrian for all I care. But you are coming with me.”

  The sound of a gun cocking brought Dagan up cold. “Well, now, I’m going to have something to say about that, unfortunately for you. Let him go.”

  Dagan cursed inwardly, jaw clenching. He didn’t move at first, too angry that he’d let his personal feelings and history keep him from hauling Jadi back to his ship straight off and had instead given the prince’s criminal comrades the chance to sneak up on him. When he didn’t let go right away, a second gun cocked and Dagan glanced to the side to find a handsome, blue-eyed man grinning at him.

  “Sorry, fella. We gotta have him back, though.”

  “Rain, do not apologize to the guy trying to kidnap our mechanic.”

  Torin and Rain, the captain and the devil-may-care pilot who was also his husband. Dagan cursed himself again, then reluctantly let go of Jadi’s arm, flinching when the prince elbowed him hard and darted out from between him and the side of the ship.

  “Now what? You shoot me?” Dagan didn’t expect anything more from a crew of criminals, but he held some shred of hope that perhaps Jadi wouldn’t be able to let it happen. They had been friends once. Surely he wouldn’t just let his new friends gun him down. Would he? Dagan turned, unwilling to take a bullet to the back. He’d at least look his death in the eye.

  The large, dark-skinned captain relaxed his grip on the gun. “Actually, I prefer not to kill hapless peons just following orders. It bothers my husband, you see.”

  “Aw, babe. So romantic,” came the retort from Rain.

  Dagan was busy trying not to explode at the insult of being called a hapless peon. He gritted his teeth. “Then what?”

  Jadi chimed in now. “Let’s just go! Tie ’im up, toss him in his own ship’s hold. We can be off this rock and long gone before anybody finds him.”

  But Torin was giving Dagan a considering, curious look and shook his head. “I don’t think so. What I’d like to know is why you’re trying to nab Jeret in the first place and why you called him...what was it?”

  “Jadikira,” Rain supplied.

  Jadi glared at them both. “It ain’t nothin’! Just a mistake, that’s all. Guy thinks I’m somebody I ain’t, let’s just dump him!”

  Rain glanced at Torin. “You think that’s the truth of it?”

  The captain didn’t look convinced at all. “That’s the truth like I’m a pretty little schoolgirl. Jeret, do you want to do the explaining or should we just bring our new friend here back to Annie and get to the bottom of this?”

  Dagan was beginning to relax. At the very least he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be killed. He might still end up hog-tied in his own cargo hold, which would pretty much suck ass, but he was also beginning to think there might be a third option. Might be the captain would be willing to deal if he knew the whole story and knew what kind of a reward Jadi would bring. Criminals turned on their own all the time.

  Jadi scowled, glaring at all three of them, and didn’t say a word. After a few seconds, Torin shrugged and grabbed Jadi’s arm. “You, with me. Rain, bring our guest. We’re not doing this out in the open. The last thing we need is any more attention.”

  Dagan grinned inwardly. Oh, he’d go with them without a peep. His best chance was to cut them in on the reward promised for Jadi’s return. He didn’t want the money anyway. He wanted his honor, his life and his home back. He’d happily give this bunch of criminals every credit due him if they’d just look the other way and let him leave with Jadi trussed up in the cargo hold.

  That was looking more and more like a possibility.

  Chapter Two

  Jeret scowled as he stomped along beside Torin back to Annie. This was such crap. If he’d come across some guy trying to drag one of them off, he’d just shoot first, ask questions later. Stupid Rain and his stupid ‘killing is a last resort’ nonsense. At least Rain had the sense to confiscate Dagan’s gun, though Jeret knew firsthand that a gun wasn’t the most deadly thing about Dagan Nu’aim. He’d once seen the bounty hunter—before he’d been a bounty hunter, back when he’d been the captain of the Royal Guard—cripple a man to protect the king when a riot had broken out, all with his bare hands.

  Which was why he’d said they ought to just tie the bastard up and leave him. Bringing Dagan back to Annie? That was just asking for even more trouble. First the gradium, now this. What next, a plague of freaking locusts?

  Regardless of his protests, a few minutes later Jeret found himself pl
opped down on an overturned crate, Dagan leaning against the cargo hold wall and Torin and Rain standing there like angry fucking schoolmarms wondering who started the classroom fight. Well, Jeret wasn’t going to be the one spilling, that was for sure.

  Dagan, however, apparently had no such qualms. “His name is Jadikira Adar, the only son of King Adar and Crown Prince of Hadrian. He disappeared almost six years ago, right about the time you picked him up here on Acorra according to my sources.”

  “Your sources? You ain’t got no fuckin’ sources, just rats makin’ up lies!” Jeret snapped.

  “Jeret, enough. If you don’t want to tell us what’s going on then we’re just going to have to get the information from someone else.” Torin turned to Dagan. “Or have you changed your mind about talking?”

  Jeret glared at him and pressed his lips together tighter. Dagan continued.

  “The king approached me six months ago after having no luck with the other searches he’d had conducted over the years. I tracked him down through your involvement in the brothel scandal. He’s needed back home and it’s my job to bring him back. The reward is substantial and I’m sure you and your crew could use the money.”

  Torin didn’t say anything, but Jeret relaxed immediately when the captain straightened slowly, dark eyes pinned on Dagan. Torin wasn’t one of those shouty types when he was furious. He was the silent and deadly type. Good, maybe now they could get rid of Dagan and get the hell out of there.

  “Jeret is my crew. A lying little shit, but crew nonetheless.”

  “Hey!” Jeret threw the captain another glare. That wasn’t fair.