A Shift in the Sky
In The Stars Romance
Suki Selborne
Copyright © 2018 Suki Selborne
Cover by SilverHeart
Editing by Picky Cat
All rights reserved worldwide
No part of this book may be reproduced, uploaded to the Internet, or copied without permission from the author. The author respectfully asks that you please support artistic expression and help promote anti-piracy efforts by purchasing a copy of this book at the authorized online outlets.
This is a work of fiction intended for mature audiences only. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events, locales, business establishments, or actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
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Contents
1. Corby
2. Jalton
3. Corby
4. Jalton
5. Corby
6. Jalton
7. Corby
8. Jalton
9. Corby
10. Jalton
11. Corby
12. Corby
13. Jalton
14. Corby
15. Jalton
16. Corby
17. Corby
18. Jalton
19. Corby - Epilogue
20. Jalton - Epilogue
In The Stars
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Also by Suki Selborne
About the Author
1 Corby
“Put the weapon down, Ms. Frayne.”
“You first.”
The leatherclad enforcer and I circle one another, guns pointed squarely in each other’s faces. Neither one of us shows any sign of giving up.
“This is a Lazerjet 7TX. Fastest blaster in the galaxy.” The enforcer looks down at my thrift store ray gun and smirks. “You don’t stand a chance, lady.”
I smile mysteriously like I have an amazing secret, and the secret is that my gun is actually way more powerful than his. But I’m bluffing. He’s right. My gun’s a beat-up piece of shit. I’m just hoping my cockiness will encourage him to walk away.
Enforcers don’t like taking risks unnecessarily. After all, if they had any guts, they’d work against the Imperial Order, not for it. Like I do.
He sighs sharply. “If you don’t drop your weapon, I’ll have to shoot you.”
“Really? Well okay then, if you have to.”
He shakes his head, frowning, like he can’t quite believe my sarcasm. Can’t blame him. Openly defying an enforcer like this really is insane. His firepower way outclasses mine. A single blast from his Lazerjet would atomize me. All I have to bring to this fight is attitude.
Still, attitude has never failed me yet.
He hits some button or touchpad or something, and his gun pulses with a blue glow. Is he trying to intimidate me into backing down?
Then I realize he’s scanning me. Good luck with that.
“Nice trick,” I say, raising my eyebrows in mock admiration. “What a pretty blue light on your gun. Does it play a little tune too?”
His eyes narrow, and a jolt of adrenaline hits me. For the first time, it feels like there’s a real risk of getting shot here. Is he mad enough to hit the trigger after all?
He waits just a second too long before he responds. I take that to mean he doesn’t plan to hurt me. Interesting. And it’s true, because instead of shooting, he just hits the blue glow button again. Then he smirks at me.
“Yeah. My pretty gun plays the Stars and Stripes every time it blows a guy’s head off.”
“So cute. And if it blows a girl’s head off?”
The enforcer is quiet again for a second. There’s a high-pitched bleep noise, and he frowns. “Both scans say you’re clear.” He looks up at me, all the wind knocked out of his sails. “Then where the hell have you stashed the stolen goods?”
“What stolen goods?”
I grin, because we both know I do have something illegal concealed somewhere. But he’d flip if he knew what it was, or where.
Anyway, he’s not getting it today. My retina camera transmits footage directly to my probation officer during working hours, and the enforcer will be only too aware of that. He’ll have my entire checkered history at his fingertips. And no matter what this dumbass thinks he knows about me, a clear scan means he has to let me walk out of here. That’s the law. He can’t do a damn thing to stop me.
“Fucking Wildcats,” he says under his breath, as he shoves his gun back in his belt holster.
Wildcats is what enforcers call freelance space couriers like me. We’re wily and fast, and live on our wits. We’re also small-time punks, and no real match for the trueborn members of the Imperial Order. God forbid I ever run into one of those guys. “Neither fish nor flesh,” as my grandma used to say. I can deal with the average human patrol enforcer, no problem. Handling an Imperial Order pureblood would be way above my pay grade.
If an Imperial Order dude decided a human Wildcat was taking liberties, he’d swat them like a fly. Even if galactic law ordered them otherwise.
The Imperial Order families are all shifters, with patchwork DNA that combines to make them super-strong and super-tall. They’re part-human too, believe it or not. But with threads of ancestry drawn from all over the galaxy, they’re capable of kicking more ass than the rest of us put together. They’re the alphas of this corner of the universe. Luckily they don’t really bother with us little people much.
But this guy here? This enforcer is all-human, and pretty low down the food chain, and I thank my lucky stars for that.
“Pleasure talking with you, sir,” I say, because the sass never stops. He glares at me, and I saunter back to my ship, whistling.
Once I’m on board, I drop the calm act. I slump into my pilot seat, elbows on the dash, head in hands, panting. My hands are trembling. I feel like I just ran a marathon, in high heels.
“Narrow escape?” my ship’s computer Neela asks.
“Yeah.”
“Your heart rate is approaching one hundred sixty beats per minute. Please assume the meditation position.”
I obey, because Neela knows her shit. It’s actually a relief to hand over responsibility for a few moments. I fold my legs into the lotus position and rest the backs of my hands on my knees. The ship’s lighting dims to a soft pink, and the sound of Earth rain surrounds me.
I close my eyes, still and quiet. The sound of the rain is hypnotic, especially when I haven’t heard it in so long. The last time my feet touched Earth was months ago. That’s because I don’t have anything to go back to, since my hometown was razed in the last Milky Way war. Homesickness floods through my stomach, mixed with leftover adrenaline. I feel a little nauseous, and my limbs are tingling, but I know it’ll pass.
The scent of lavender drifts across the air. My heart still hammers against my ribcage, but the sense of acute terror is gone already. Neela drops a little birdsong into the soundtrack. I concentrate on steadying my breathing, moving it from shallow and fast to deep and slow. My mind feels tidy again. My nausea fades away completely.
“Your heart rate is now seventy-five beats per minute. Would you like to continue into a full round of meditation, or return to flight mode?”
I fill my lungs with one last hit of lavender-scented air, and exhale. “Back to flight mode, I guess. I need to get off this planet before another enforcer decides to mess with me.”
Neela obeys instantly without a word, because robots aren’t assholes like me, and
the flight deck lights up again. I tap the touchscreen and pull up our coordinates.
“We need to get to Quintagon as soon as possible. I have a contact standing by to take the chip into safekeeping. Can you plot our route, Neela?”
“Indeed I can, commander.”
Star charts and cosmic debris forecasts flicker across the screen and disappear again. I use the time to scroll through my messages. A bunch of outstanding payment reminders, a weekly check-in notice from my probation officer, some spam from a company selling holographic vehicle cloaking devices… And a parking ticket for leaving the ship in a no-fly zone on Drancolia. Aw, shit. The last thing I need is an unexpected expense.
“I was only parked for a few minutes,” I whine, as I hit Open. What do I have to pay? I scan the message. Seven thousand xenons! Holy shit. There’s no way I can afford that.
But if I don’t pay, I’ll have to stay out of this quadrant altogether. That means I can’t work. All the work is here. And I can’t come back without having paid the debt. There’s no way around it. If my ship gets logged in the quadrant with an unpaid fine, it’ll be zapped to ashes before I can say “Who, me?”
Maybe my next job will have to be stealing one of those holographic vehicle cloaking devices, so I can sneak back to this quadrant for business. I’m sure as hell not going to be able to afford one the legal way.
“Commander, we have a problem,” Neela says, in her tranquil voice.
I tap my message screen closed. “You’re not kidding. Wait, you mean another one? What’s up?”
“There’s an Imperial Order ship in our path.”
“Just fly around it.” Those patrol ships are everywhere. They don’t care about little nobodies like me. It’s not like Neela to bother me with something so trivial.
“Not really possible.” She pauses, to ramp up the suspense a little. “It’s one of the big ones.”
A picture of the ship fills the viewing screen. It looks like a small planet, all by itself. I gape at it. We’re on a backwater planet, light years from anywhere significant. This seems all wrong.
“Fuck, Neela,” I bluster. “It’s a Level A ship. What the hell is that monster doing in this part of the galaxy?”
“I will attempt to find out. Please sit down and fasten your safety belt in the meantime.”
I do what I’m told, without taking my eyes off the screen. With a lurch, my ship launches vertically into the air, then darts across the sky at an oblique angle.
“This diagonal flight path is happening for a reason, right?” I shout, as my cheeks flap around from the sheer force of our acceleration. Dignity is impossible.
“We are deliberately launching at an unexpected trajectory, yes. This will allow me to analyse the other ship’s response.”
My nails dig into the armrests. I can’t move my head at all, because we’re accelerating so fast. My ship might be old, but she’s pretty nimble. At least, if you don’t call on her for a speed boost too often.
At last, we burst through the atmosphere into open space. Neela switches off the boosters, and we cruise for a moment.
“So what did the other ship do when we left the area?” I ask.
“It recalibrated its flight path in response to our movement.”
I stare at the gigantic ship on the screen. My little ship flying toward a ship of that size is like a bug buzzing around a whale. Put it this way: the Imperial Order ship does not have to move to allow us to pass. Why did it move at all?
“Wait a second, Neela. Recalibrated its flight path? You mean it responded to our movement? It’s watching us?” I stare at the screen as the truth sinks in. “Where’s that ship going now?”
“It’s heading right for us,” Neela says, her voice as gentle and soothing as ever. “Yes, when we moved, it did too. The ship now appears to be following us.”
I swallow, my mouth suddenly dry. Why would a massive ship like that be coming for a little wildcat like me?
The chip.
“They know,” I whisper. “Fuck. They know.”
I tap the tiny recess in my boot with my other foot, to check it’s still there. The chip is safe for now, inside its anti-scanning container. That tiny recess is secret Quintagonian technology that far outstrips anything humans have achieved so far. Even the establishment enforcer couldn’t locate the container. It means the chip is almost entirely undetectable.
Almost.
But if I wind up anywhere near Imperial Order shifters, they’ll sniff it out in a second.
Pulling my bootlace tighter, I take one more deep calming breath.
“Neela, take any steps you need to take. Fly down a black hole. Hitch a ride on a comet. Anything. I have faith in your ability to find an alternative.” The huge ship looms closer on the screen. “Do what you’ve got to do, Neela. Just get us the hell out of here.”
2 Jalton
“You’d better have an ace up your sleeve, Jalton. Or you are screwed, little brother.”
I concentrate on keeping my face blank. Damn it. My cards are terrible. And I’m rapidly losing the ability to style it out, because it’s nearly time to turn them over. Reago’s going to beat me yet again. Same as it always was, since we were kids.
I think fast. One last bluff? I never was very good at lying, but I’ll give it a shot.
“Let’s make this more interesting,” I say to Reago. “One more round, and if I beat you…” I think for a second. “I get your personal jetship for a year.”
Reago laughs, like this is hilarious. “Sure thing. You’re not going to beat me, Jalton. There’s no chance of that.”
“Try me,” I say, stony-faced. That just makes Reago laugh all the more.
“Okay, fine. If you win this hand, you get my jetship.” He beams at me, obviously not concerned that this is a possibility. “And what do I get if I win?”
I shrug. “Who cares? You’re not going to.”
Shit - what’s he going to say? My face is hopefully a blank canvas, but my heart sinks to think of the punishment he’s likely to inflict. Once an asshole older brother, always an asshole older brother.
“You get his wife-to-be,” our friend Kaljo offers. “Lady Simla is mighty fine. A worthy prize.”
“Simla has a mind of her own. And she’s not my wife-to-be,” I say, irritated. “Just because our fathers want the match, doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”
“Oh, it’ll happen,” Reago nods. “She’s hot. And you’re going to obey our father.”
I shake my head. Simla is beautiful, but I’m not at all interested in dating her. She thinks of nothing but jewels and finery. She has no conversation at all. I find her company dull, even after a single encounter, let alone a whole day. The idea of spending a lifetime in the company of such an empty vessel is dismal.
“So, Reago. If you’re not going to steal Simla away from your baby brother, what are you going to do?” Kaljo asks.
Reago looks down at the table. “I thought of something,” he says, with a wicked grin. “A challenge.”
I raise my eyebrows at him. “A challenge?
“If I win, Jalton, you have to do the lowliest job on the entire ship for one day.”
I still can’t work out what he means, so I stare at him. “Job?”
“The lowliest job. The most demeaning, menial task on this whole ship.”
“Like cleaning it?” Kaljo leans forward, looking interested. “You’d give him a droid’s work to do?”
“No, dummy. The most menial shifter job.”
“And what would that be?” I yawn, pretending I don’t even care because… no, I do care. Because realistically I’m going to be doing it. The bet is unwinnable, with these cards.
“Well, I don’t know yet. Kaljo? What’s the most menial shifter job on this ship?”
“Prisoner check-in.” Kaljo sits back, with a smug smile.
Reago frowns. “Prisoner check-in? Like, what even is that?”
Kaljo chuckles. “You princes need to get o
ut in the real world a little more. We’re in charge of the galaxy, right? This isn’t just a pleasure cruiser. We patrol the skies in ships like this. We take in prisoners where we find them. Those prisoners have to be checked into the on-board cells, and their own ships are searched by hand. You can’t give droids those jobs. They can’t tell when humans are lying. So we give the work to shifters. Specifically, to part-human shifters. They’re not as sharp as pureblood Imperial Order shifters like us, naturally. But they’re sharp enough to sniff out crime and deceit among humankind. And then justice is dispensed according to the crime.”
“Oh yeah, Imperial Order shifters can always see when someone’s lying.” Reago’s eyes glitter cruelly at me. “Like you are right now, brother. I know your cards suck. Don’t try to hide it any longer.”
I start up with a new bluff, but then realize it’s pointless. “Okay, fine. You got me.” I throw down my terrible cards, face up. Reago and Kaljo guffaw at how bad they are.
Reago lays his own straight flush out with a flourish, and nods. “Well, what do you know? I won. As usual.” He shoots Kaljo a wry look. “My baby brother has to do penance. Fifty bars of gold says he’s a big failure at prisoner check-in, just like he is at card games. Jalton’s too soft for hard work. He’s only good for lazy royal life.”
Adrenaline surges through me. Reago always knows how to push my buttons. Even though I know he’s deliberately provoking me, I react.
“Oh, I’ll do your stupid job, Reago. And you’d better hope I don’t win next time. You don’t want to know what I have planned for you.”
Kaljo hoots with laughter. “Down to the cells with you tomorrow then, Jalton. You’ll be in your lion form all day, dealing with crooks and killers. Good luck with that.”
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