by Celeste Raye
Talon grinned. “That is so true. I can’t even argue that.”
Harlon stood. “You tell me what you decide on this one. The crew and I will follow you. You know that we will. We always have, and even the ones who have not been here to know that I have owed you something. Even if that something is our lives, which it very well may be this time.”
“I know that, but it could be our lives every single time.”
The words held the harsh ring of truth because they were true.
Every ship could bring death, whether it was from fighting the Gorlites or fighting off a ship’s crew so they could wreck the ships they took. Any and all of those ships that they had gone after over the years could have meant their death.
Harlon nodded. Talon stood and walked to his small porthole window. They had slid behind a star system and were still waiting for the fleet, moving slowly to conserve fuel, to pass by.
The darkness of space rolled around them, broken by a colorful and beautiful stream of light from the star shine.
He stared at it. Once upon a time, when had been a child, he had loved standing on the warm soil and grass of his homeland and looking up at the skies, wondering if his father was flying past.
He had always wanted to fly.
For as long as he could remember, he had wanted to fly.
The skies had called him like the sea had called the sailors of old lore. He frowned, trying to recall what planet had been known for those stories of beings that made ships and then set them on the seas.
On Revant, fish hunters took boats out to trap the enormous Sturg-fish and landlers that would feed several families for a whole sun and moon phase. They spoke of the sea the same way he spoke of the skies, and he found himself thinking hard about how strange it was that all beings seemed destined to wander and seek out things that should not have been theirs.
He turned away from the windows and went to his bed. The day had been long and tiring, and the fleet would take hours to pass. After it did, they would have to go slowly to come up behind it and stay far enough behind it to pick out any stragglers that they might be able to take.
That had been a smart idea.
He dropped his clothes to the floor and crawled into his bed, folding his hands behind his head.
Jessica. She was an odd one, always ready to go up against anything and anyone. She was a warrior in every way, and she was the one woman he could not have, but the only one he wanted.
Just his luck.
“There.”
Talon squinted, and a grin filled his face. “It is slowing down.”
“A lot.” Jessica’s forehead wrinkled. “Maybe too much.”
Talon asked, “You think it is a trap?”
“No, but…but maybe.”
He gave her a long glance. She wore a pensive expression. She said, “I think I am jumping at shadows. The whole thing is stupid, you know. We should likely call it off.”
“True.”
She drew a breath. The breath lifted her chest in an enticing way, and he had to turn his eyes away to stop staring at that magnificent physique of hers.
She said, “Oh look, it was slowing down for…” Her mouth opened and closed. A frown came and went, but he had seen it too. He spoke softly. “It’s a cloaked ship!”
Her words held worry. “It is a Gorlite ship, and Talon, look!”
Talon had already seen it. So had Harlon and several other crewmembers. They crowded around the windows, all of them watching but not speaking.
Talon could not believe what he was seeing, but he was seeing it anyway.
The Federation ship had slowed down and the Gorlites, rather than trying to take the ship, were standing down.
Harlon spoke up. “Boss, they are refueling the Gorlite ship!”
“I see that.” Of course he did. How could he not?
Talon scowled at the ships. He dropped his ship back and raised the cloaking devices before ducking the ship behind a small ripple in the warp around the system they were riding through.
It would not be enough if they had already been spotted though. His eyes narrowed again as he jockeyed the ship into a better position so he could see the ships.
Refuel and resupply.
Why in the hell would a federation ship be supplying a Gorlite ship?
The Federation shunned the creatures and had outlawed them from planet surfaces, not that there were many planets that would suit the creature’s bug-like bodies and burrowing habits. The race was homeless; they lived on ships they took and then used until it was ruined and no longer able to sustain them, and then they took another.
They had destroyed many a planet before the Federation outlawed and hunted them to the ends of the universe and back. They had been harried into near-extinction, but they were far from dead, and now he was watching a Federation ship give supplies to a Gorlite ship.
It was always easy to spot a Gorlite ship. The creatures secreted a slime that encased everything and eventually caused a particular type of damage to the hulls of the ships that they took. It was part of the reason that they had to always take new ships; their own bodies ate their home.
Harlon said, “We cannot take that ship. Hell, if we did there would be precious little to take. It looks like the Gorlites are getting it all, and we all know once it hits a Gorlite deck it’s not anything anyone would want.”
Jessica’s teeth worried at her lip. Her lovely eyes met his, and he saw a question written largely in her eyes. He said, “I need to know what is happening here. I do.”
He did. There was no way that could be happening, but it was.
He watched as the Federation ship took up its fuel and supply lines and the Gorlite ship headed off. He said, “The rest of the fleet is far ahead now.”
Harlon asked, “You can’t be serious; you still want to take that ship?”
“Damn right, but now what I want off of it is information.”
Harlon shook his head. “You got all the info you need, boss. It was supplying a Gorlite ship, you saw it. We all saw it.”
Talon’s ire notched higher. “Yes, we did. Now I want to know why.”
Harlon whistled through his teeth. He rubbed a hand over his head. “I will admit to being curious.”
Talon grinned. The grudging words meant one thing: Harlon hated the Gorlites and the Federation as much as he did. As much as every single being on that ship did. He said, “We take the ship. Now. Before it can catch up and before any more Gorlites can show up to get supplies. We can’t fight two ships, especially if one is filled with Gorlites.”
Harlon called out the order. They zoomed high, and the speed increased as Talon guided the cloaked ship deeper into space. His every instinct was wound up and humming. Running into a cloaked ship would be disastrous. There was no way to know if there was one out there without a good set of eyes watching the skies and those kinds of ridiculous accidents did happen all the time in space, usually when pirates bent on hiding ran into a ship filled with pirates also bent on the same thing.
They drifted over the Fed ship. His hands guided the ship closer still, jockeying for a position directly above. He looked over at Harlon, who held his hand over the controls for the metal spinners, vast and powerful drillers that would puncture all but the strongest of ship metals.
Harlon nodded, and Talon said, “Go.”
The spinners shot down and out, punching through the cap of the Federation ship. Just that would be enough to cripple the ship. The holes made would be too large for the ship to fly even if they drew back now. It would crash and burn, and its crew would die if they took the spinners up and back, and for a moment he considered doing just that, but he needed info. That thing he had just witnessed refused to leave his mind. It had to have an answer.
The crew was already moving. They had their weapons, and their faces said that they were after whatever could be had.
They wrecked for profit, and Fed ships often carried high credit-bearing goods.
Talon and Jessica wound up side by side, running for the portals that would take them through the tubes that would take them to the ship. That was the worst part for him, every single time. He always had a crazy fear that he would somehow end up in space instead of another ship and, as always, he heaved a sigh of relief when his feet hit deck instead of nothingness.
The battle started right then. His weapon came up, and his arm shot out, his fire taking the chest of a Fed officer out. The officer fell, blood spilling.
Jessica was involved in a hand-to-hand combat with a creature who wore the red and blue uniform of the Federation, and for a moment he paused, just watching her.
She was magnificent.
And distracting. He heard the laser whine in time to get out of its way, but just barely. He turned his attention away from Jessica and took out the com-call center, making sure the crew could not contact the rest of the fleet, not that it would matter if they did since Talon and his crew would be long gone before then.
Chapter 5:
The battle was heated. Jessica dispatched a Fed officer and then another. She ran down a hallway, looking for something but she didn’t know what; laser fire crumpled the wall she had been standing near a moment before. She ducked and then hit the deck, rolling to one side. She bounced back to her feet, her weapon drawn. Beams of killing light shot from the tip, and she heard a long groan.
But beyond that came the sound of many feet running. Her head went back and up, and she moved, ducking low and trying to get something between her and the half dozen armed officers firing at her. The walls splintered and the floor buckled. The idiots were destroying the ship!
Well of course they are, her fevered mind whispered to her. They know they are going to die if they do not get to the pods, which are just past me. So let them get by, and they will stop firing. She dove behind a low wall and then rolled again, sliding into an open doorway to find herself in a small tech room with lit up panels and controls.
What the hell?
She frowned, trying to understand what she was seeing.
Ships were new to her. She had never been on one until she had been captured and sent off on the slaver ship, and she had spent much of that trip in a cryo chamber. Talon had taught her much in the time since he and his siblings had rescued her and the others from that ship, but still, tech for ships was not her thing at all.
The officers had given up trying to kill her and had pinned all their hopes on the pods and escaping to the larger ships ahead. She waited, her back against a wall and her ears straining to hear any sound. When none came, she slid out of the door and back down the hallway toward the sounds of a pitched battle.
She burst into a room to see several wreckers firing at officers who had taken cover and had the advantage. She had managed to come in behind the Fed officers, however, and her laser swept their ranks, thinning them enough that the others could lay down cover while she went back out the door to prevent herself from being mowed down by return fire.
Talon slid down the hallway on his back, laser firing. Her head turned to the right, and she watched as a Fed officer who had been about to fire at her exposed back went down in a heap.
Talon grinned at her. His eyes were wild, and his teeth shone. “You’re welcome.”
“I came from in there. I went in and ambushed a few but they started firing, and I was unprotected.”
Talon said, “I don’t hear anything now.”
He darted his head around the corner and shouted, “Harlon!”
Harlon shouted back, “We’re all good boss! Found a massive credit cache! Must be at least a million credits in here! Grabbing it and heading for the hold!”
Jessica said, “Come on.”
She got to her feet. The deck was slick with blood, and she jogged along it, being careful to stay away from the walls. One crack could suddenly turn into a massive rift, and that rift could suck her out into space with no trouble at all, and she knew it.
They went slowly as they found the bridge. The crew was either dead or gone. The lights of the bridge blinked and flickered, casting it in stripes and splashes of alternating dark and light. The place felt creepy and strange, and Jessica blinked hard as she tried to focus her vision.
Her other senses took over. She could smell blood and weapon fire discharge on the air. There was the acrid reek of the control panels burning. The sound of the ship groaning as the wrecker crew broke it apart so that it would be unrecognizable as it drifted off into space.
She heard a muffled groan. Then the sound of a weapon leveling and preparing to fire. She moved, her arm coming out and pushing Talon along with her.
They landed in a heap on the floor, their limbs tangling and winding together. Her heart, already sped up by the excitement and the danger, increased yet again. Her mouth went dry. It was so very sexual, whether she wanted it to be or not.
She did want it to be sexual. She wanted him more than she could say and the insistent thrust and push of his muscular and very masculine body against hers just made her even more aware of that fact with each passing nanosecond.
They untangled and wound up on their bellies, side by side. Their weapons went to work, and their enemy fell. The sound of lasers whining and things shattering created a deafening din.
Talon’s hand yanked her up off the floor. His touch electrified her even as her body moved. She pelted along behind him, racing toward the end of the bridge.
Talon found the control panel and set it so that the ship would keel off course and fly directly into the star system, where grav-pull would help to dismantle what was left of it, a thing guaranteed to make sure that they left very little evidence behind as to who they were and how they had taken the ship.
Crewmembers under attack always had conflicting stories, Talon had told her early on, and sometimes those conflicting stories were really all the cover that they needed, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. They found an officer, wounded but alive, hiding below a table. Talon hauled him out.
Talon put his weapon to the officer’s forehead. “Why were you supplying the Gorlites?”
The man shook his head. His eyes were wide with fear. Talon said, “Listen, there are still escape pods. You are not seriously wounded. There is still time for you to escape but you are not going anywhere until you tell me what I want to know.”
The man sagged. His eyes went from her face to Talon’s. Jessica watched the officer’s body language. He was huddled and bent, one hand cupping his stomach and bright blood showed on the shoulder of his tunic.
Her senses kicked into high gear. Her body moved, speeding through the distance between her and Talon. Her foot lashed out and met the officer’s hand just as he tried to draw the weapon he had been holding below his tunic. The weapon hit the deck with a clatter and chink, and a short burst of fire came from its muzzle, spiking into a control panel and creating fire.
Talon said, “Now you just pissed me off. I asked you once nicely; now we will have to do it the hard way.”
The officer shouted, “No! No, wait! I don’t know why; we just do. We always have! There’s a …there’s a standing order that we resupply them!”
Jessica’s mind went perfectly smooth and blank; the memories came up. Yori standing before her in their secret meeting room below ground. The dim lights flickering as he spoke in his slow and educated voice.
“The Gorlites are our enemies, but not all in the Federation see them as such.”
She gagged. The flood of memories came harder, threatening to break down the barriers in her mind. She could hear Talon talking to the officer, hear the officer talking in return, but she could not focus on them. Her eyes closed and a tide of things she had locked away came washing over her.
So many secrets. So many lethal and killing secrets.
The resistance on Old Earth. The Federation officer who had taken one look at her when she had been a child and declared she was perfect for the Capo ranks. The death all around her, much of it caused by
her. Her need to make things better.
And the words written on a piece of paper she had swallowed after reading.
The Gorlites and the Federation, working together for centuries to disrupt planets and ships and trade routes, all so the Federation could gain power.
Her legs went weak. She felt the heat rolling off the officer’s body as he fled away from her.
Talon’s fingers locked down on her shoulders. His voice came into her ear. His breath washed across her cheek. “Jessica. Jessica!”
More weapons fire. She had to move. Had to go, and fast, but her feet were locked into place, unbending and unmoving. Sickness filled her, making her body sag toward the floor. Talon’s hands met her upper arm, and he moved, dragging her along with him.
Time sped and slowed down all at once. Her head rang with the sound of voices that she had not heard in years as the memories, all of them locked away in that mind-trapping method that Yori had taught her, burst free from their boxes and took her out of the present and into the past, hurtling her into a place where there was no safety and only the sure and dread certainty that this entire universe would soon collapse and die and that there was nothing she or anyone could do about it.
They ran into hell. Harlon shouted, “We got Gorlites, Talon! They’re trying to take our ship! We have to get back over there.”
Time coalesced and hardened. Jessica’s mind snapped back to the present. They ran for the tubes, gathering weapons to replace the spent ones they would not have time to reload. Talon and she were the first ones in the tubes, and she carefully checked her weapons in the small amount of time allotted to them by the journey to their ship, but her brain had gone smooth and blank again.
She was operating on pure instinct now, and as soon as the tube opened, she was out and firing at the Gorlites, a species that resembled a cross between a worm and a cockroach, and whose ability to fight and kill was legendary. If they got within reach, they could spit deadly venom into the faces of their victims. They could handle weapons, and they could stab an enemy to death with their appendages.
The scene was straight out of a nightmare. The only way to kill a Gorlite was to go for its head, and Jessica's aim was true. If they could burrow, they would and leave eggs that would become Gorlites, and those infant Gorlites could take over a ship just as well as their adult counterparts.
