Hotter on the Edge 2

by Hotter Edge

  The heavy clouds began to boil, the gray masses bubbling and churning. A blinding yellow glow blistered through, and the clouds peeled back to reveal a sheership.

  The blunt, sleek shape emerged like the megalocanth she’d imagined earlier, powerful and lethal with its gun mount front and center, making no pretense of its aggression. The design was brutally utilitarian, even ugly, but flawlessly executed. Here was immense wealth and purpose combined, without a care for impressions. She scanned its length for identifying markings—nothing—but she sensed the mind behind the ship would make a dangerous and implacable enemy.

  She could almost hear the amused thought: What chance had her little pleasure planet?

  She flicked the focus on the hazer to high and tight, and the weapon hummed in her tightened grip. “Let’s get our essence back.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The hovering sheership was a unique model, like nothing Icere had seen in his sol-year of travels. Immediately he captured an image and added the detail to the information he’d amassed, wondering how it would fit in. Were they dealing with a shockingly rich private citizen or some experimental craft from a governmental agency? Something else? Obviously they were willing to risk this distinctive ship to retrieve Omel and her stolen goods.

  Desperation or overconfidence? Either way, they would have to pay.

  Ky touched his shoulder. “Look. There’s Omel, across the field, in that clump of trees.”

  “The Saya and her people must be close.”

  “Where’s your ship?”

  He didn’t answer but he quickly sent another message to the Asphodel, updating them on the situation. He relayed what he could see of the raider ship’s weapons system, and after a heartbeat, he added, “Worth the risk?”

  Benedetta would say yes without hesitation, but he knew Corso would take the question seriously, not only because the Asphodel was his but so was Benedetta, and he would imperil neither of them without cause. As a sheership captain, Corso needed the stars, but he loved his l’auralya more.

  Rynn had said a l’aurlyo required a mercenary sheership captain to teach him to gamble, but Icere knew he’d needed the former lone-wolf captain to show him a more elemental balance: the vastness of the universe weighed against the depths of love.

  But for the first time, Icere wondered if he still needed an outside force to provide that balance.

  Maybe he had his own star to guide him now.

  Though the ship still hovered, Omel rushed out from the cover of the trees, gesturing madly and more than a little rudely.

  Ky grunted. “I don’t see them yet, but she must know Mother is right behind her.”

  “The ship’s people are obviously thinking the same thing.” How badly did they want the liqueur?

  Omel held a package in her hand and now she ripped the cover free to hold the malac sachet aloft, clearly taunting the ship: Come get me or you get nothing.

  One of her compatriots suddenly emerged from the trees as well, his hazer fixed on Omel.

  “Double cross,” Ky murmured. “They sure are making this easy.”

  Omel spun and shot the man in the chest. He stumbled back and fell, a thin curl of smoke from his wound quickly lost in the rain.

  The blood took a longer time to dilute.

  “Not so easy for him,” Ky said.

  The hazer in Icere’s hands felt unaccountably heavy. “Where is the Saya?”

  “Letting them fight it out amongst themselves while she lurks. That was always her way with Luac and me. Then when they least expect it, she’ll glide in and set them straight.”

  Icere considered. That wasn’t what she’d done with him. If anything, she’d done the opposite, trying to ignore what was between them.

  He added that piece of information to another database he was keeping just for himself.

  The anonymous ship unfolded its landing gear slowly, as if with great reluctance. Omel’s remaining two henchmen emerged from the trees, their hazers aimed not at Omel but at the forest behind them, clearly not caring who carried the malac sachet as long as they got off the island.

  With a delicate precision for its mass, the ship settled on the sandy soil. The backwash from its engines nearly flattened the foliage, and Icere’s heart stuttered, wondering where Rynn, Luac and the others were sheltered. That gun turret could swivel in seconds and lock on its next target.

  The ship’s hatch descended like a plasteel tongue coming from the dark throat of the walkway beyond. Omel strode for the opening, her two men still sweeping the forest behind, where Rynn and the others must be.

  The Saya and her people needed to take the ship intact if they were going to stop the threat permanently, but it would be impossible for them to emerge when Omel and her rescue ship were focused on the forest where they must be hiding.

  Without another thought, Icere bolted from the roots where he and Ky had hidden, firing his hazer full bore.

  Ky screamed, but he didn’t turn back. If he could disable the nearest strut on the open hatch, the hatch would be unable to close. The ship would be unable to escape atmosphere before sealing off the damaged section.

  Meanwhile, everyone’s attention—and the gun turret—swiveled his way.

  The first blast from the ship took out a huge patch of earth, blasting sand over his wet skin. But he’d already swerved after his opening volley. Still, the shot was close enough to warm him as it vaporized the rain.

  He fired again.

  Over the shrill whine of the hazer, he heard another shout, and his heart stumbled faster than his feet.

  Rynn.

  She burst from the trees, Luac only a step behind. From another spot farther around the circle of the clearing, Rynn’s lieutenant and a second guard appeared. All of them converged on the ship, and the gun turret swiveled again, seeking a target though a sheership’s gun wasn’t ranged for close-quarters fighting.

  Suffering no such shortcomings, Omel’s men fired toward the new arrivals. Omel herself raced toward the open hatch, focused solely on escape. Icere fired at the strut again, throwing sparks. She swerved away from the danger, the sachet tucked against her belly.

  Behind him, a modest thwang reverberated. A flechette whirred past his ear to bury itself in the strut, just one more sliver of metal in the hatch mechanism.

  He glanced back at Ky. “What is that going to—?”

  “Down!” She caught him between the shoulders and shoved him to the earth.

  A fireball engulfed the strut.

  As fireballs went, it was only a few hand-spans across, but Omel was knocked backward, and the strut buckled, wrenching the hatch tongue askew.

  It wouldn’t be closing again without an overhaul.

  Icere grabbed Ky and rolled as the ship’s gun opened fire where they’d been. Apparently the gunner was reconfiguring on the fly for close range.

  “Nice shot,” Icere said.

  “The flechettes are fitted with small charges. You don’t think we fish malac waters with plain old darts, do you?”

  “I’ve never gone fishing.”

  “It’s very relaxing.”

  Omel pulled herself to her feet, though she swayed. Behind her, Rynn’s lieutenant and his second had pinned down Omel’s men.

  Icere caught a glimpse of one of the barge guards crumpled in the grasses at the treeline. Alive or not, he didn’t have time to guess, because Rynn was running toward Omel, zigzagging to evade the targeting of the gun turret.

  Luac split off from her side to aim toward the gaping hatch. He sprayed the interior of the ship with the wide-open beam of his hazer; not immediately lethal at that spread, but enough to force back any lurkers. He was going to force his way inside against an unknown force.

  Engines wailing, the ship began to rise.

  “Ni-Saya, wait!” Icere bellowed.

  Rynn had her hands on Omel and had spun her around to grab the sachet, but when she realized where her son was headed, she released the other woman. She altered
course for Luac and knocked him aside with her headlong charge just as the ship’s gun finally locked on them and shattered the earth.

  Icere staggered sideways as the ground seemed to lift up beneath him. He caught a glimpse of Omel lunging toward the dangling hatch. Anonymous figures dressed in dark fatigues caught at her and pulling her inward, already reaching for the sachet tucked under Omel’s arm.

  They were escaping!

  The realization hit him almost as hard as the ground when he returned to earth. His ears rang with the force of the blow, but he found himself crawling through the torn sand and grasses.

  Luac was prone, half covered in sand, eyes dazed but blinking. Icere passed him then rolled to his side in shock as Rynn rose up just a step away.

  Her shift hung in tatters and her dark hair tangled around her in a wild halo on the engine’s blowback as she raised a spear gun. The little vermillion shells in her hair glinted like tongues of flame, and the qva’avaq key shone around her wrist, silver with the rain. The flechette she set in the launcher was tipped with not one but three charged points, and he couldn’t decide if he was more horrified or amused that she’d obviously hunted this way before.

  Horrified, definitely horrified.

  The ship lurched at an awkward cant, its systems no doubt protesting the hazard of the open hatch. But the pilot compensated, tilting the ship. The turret struggled to swing back to target them and locked just as Rynn loosed the spear.

  The flechette hit square, blowing apart the ship’s gun in a hail of sparks and plasteel shards.

  The ship turned tail, as if to run, but Icere’s heart stopped.

  “Get down!” He grabbed for Rynn in the instant before the ship opened its engine and climbed for the sky.

  He pulled her close. The wash of energy was almost pleasant at first, but the heat turned scorching. In front of him, a blade of grass blackened, and he curled tight over the smaller shape beneath him.

  “Icere!” Her breath against his throat was almost cool compared to the fire all around them.

  He wouldn’t let her go.

  Never again.

  The angry scream of the struggling ship redoubled, and for a bitter moment, he thought they were coming back, that they’d sear the clearing in retribution before he could ask Rynn about the key around her wrist.

  But the new shriek of power was higher. A second ship.

  The Asphodel pierced the cloud cover high above the raider ship, vapor curling in intricate, dreamy patterns. The raider ship banked toward the ocean, trying to get out from the threatening shadow of the hovering Asphodel.

  Beneath him, Rynn squirmed. “Icere? L’auralyo! Rouse yourself. I need you.”

  For a moment, he wanted to tell her that intimate congress in the sand was never as pleasant as it seemed, but what came out was a groan as his back and shoulders flamed.

  He shook his head as she struggled to pull her upper body out from underneath his.

  Her brow furrowed. “You have to contact the Asphodel. Tell them not to lose sight of the raider ship. They will have to go to ground to fix the hatch, and Omel and the sachet are doused in neurotoxin. They’ll be in an uproar, but we can’t lose them.”

  Remembering how Rynn had grabbed at Omel, Icere could imagine the spy was already comatose. The crew of the ship would be touching her and the sachet, spreading the poison.

  A short distance away, Luac was digging himself out of the sand with Kylara’s help, looking dazed but functional. Ky popped the comm-link from behind her brother’s ear and crawled to Icere. “Here.”

  He murmured his passcode, his voice rough.

  “Brother!” Benedetta’s cry made him wince. “We see you. Are you—”

  “Bené, hush.” He relayed Rynn’s message. “Don’t let them up into the cloud cover where they can hide. With those engines, they’ll have a speed you can’t match. Force them down.”

  Across the clearing, Pisey and his second were assisting the remaining guard to his feet. The guards hastened to the Saya, who waved them toward Luac, her face turned upward, fiercely focused on the battle above them.

  With the guards’ help, Luac was quickly unearthed. “Come on,” he shouted. “They’re heading out to sea, toward the barge.”

  The guards started after him to the shoreline, Kylara right behind, but she paused to lever Icere to his feet. “You’re hurt.”

  “But not dead.” He glanced back at Rynn who stood with her hands clenched in front of her, violet rings glistening with poison. The qva’avaq around her wrist shimmered brighter yet.

  She stared at him but did not try to touch him. “Let’s go.”

  They hastened toward the beach. When they cleared the trees, the sky opened up overhead to a view of the Asphodel harrying the raider ship, trying to nudge it back to land. But the raider dodged, seeking an opening to bolt for the clouds. For all its bulk, the raider whirled like the vicious attack vessel it was. The Asphodel, with her slim nacelles and tapered fuselage, shrieked as she matched the turns, sounding as if she cleaved the air with her cries.

  Each screaming circle took them farther out to sea, toward the crowded barge.

  “Tell them to shoot it down.” Rynn’s voice was flat.

  “They’re almost over the malac field,” her lieutenant protested. “A spill there—”

  Rynn looked at Icere. “Tell them. We can’t let this go on.”

  Icere opened the comm. “Bené, you’re heading toward a floating city. Too many possible hostages or victims. We have to bring them down.”

  Her voice was quiet in his ear. “Whatever it takes to stop them. That’s what you told me when you left.”

  “I know.” But there was so much more to lose now. “Tell Corso—No, wait.”

  “Icere,” Rynn said. “Do it.”

  He held up his hand as he spoke rapidly into the comm. “Tell Corso to come down hard from above. But give them a bottom out.”

  “Give them an out? But they’ll make a break for it, and the Asphodel can’t—”

  “They’re diving to evade! Do it now!”

  Across the tossing waves, the Asphodel stooped like a hawk attacking a shark: an impossible fight. The raider ship rolled to its side, a masterful move that left the Asphodel aiming at nothing, and had the raider ship skipping nimbly over the waves, the broken hatch raised like a mocking wave.

  The raider cleared the Asphodel’s wake, with only open sky above. Its powerful engines screamed a farewell, blasting the water into a giant foaming curl.

  But as the ship started to climb, the curl unfolded in a writhing mass of tentacles.

  The malac launched itself from the waves, its mighty siphon expelling a towering pinnacle of water that seemed to hold it aloft as it snagged the bow of the raider ship with one thick appendage.

  The engine screeched, but the ship was already nose-down, and the burst of energy only hastened its descent as the huge, enraged and aggressively territorial malac took the intruder down. The ocean foamed, huge breakers spouting in all directions. The ship listed, still momentarily buoyant. The malac snaked its other tentacles around the dark plasteel in a terrible embrace. A silent scream of bubbles gushed from the mouth of the open hatch.

  “So there’s a practical reason you don’t let sheerships land here,” Icere noted.

  Luac grunted. “Not a problem we advertise to the tourists, for obvious reasons.”

  The raider ship rolled with the weight of the clinging malac. One tentacle slapped the water in rage, and the siphon spouted again, high enough that the Asphodel had to dodge.

  “Water pressure could rupture the seals on the downed sheership,” Kylara said. “Resisting the vacuum of space isn’t the same as the pressure of the deeps. But with the engines intact, there should be no environmental danger.”

  “To the malac field, anyway,” Luac said. “But even if the water pressure doesn’t get the raiders, the malac will crunch right through the hull.”

  Rynn stepped into the surf. “W
e need the information they have. Between the neurotoxin and the threat of drowning, they should be no threat. I’m going—”

  Icere grabbed her elbow. “Let the Ni-Saya.”

  She flinched away from him, keeping her hands carefully clear, but she glanced at Luac, who stepped forward eagerly.

  “I want to do this.” His eyes narrowed. “I need to talk to one of those raiders in particular.”

  Ky nudged him. “Icere and I brought a sub. We have dive gear and more spear guns.”

  Rynn nodded at her lieutenant. “Go with them. Bring me the crew, mostly intact. The Asphodel can help raise the ship itself. I think both will have much to tell us about who paid them to steal our aphrodisiac.” She tilted her head toward Icere without meeting his gaze. “And then you’ll have answers to the questions that brought you here.”

  The note of dismissal made him wince more than the pain in his blistered back. The others certainly seemed to take it as a dismissal. They tromped down the beach toward the sub Ky had left at the shore.

  To his surprise, he realized the rain had stopped. As if the ships had burned ragged holes in the clouds, fitful rays of sun danced over the waves where no remnant of the raider ship remained.

  Rynn bent down to wash her hands in the surf.

  “Wishing you could be rid of me so easily?” he wondered aloud.

  She didn’t glance over. “I need to look at your shoulders and I can’t do that if my hands are dripping poison. Sit down here so I can rinse the sand off you.”

  “Oh, I’m mostly intact.” He let a note of derision creep into his voice as he settled in the lapping waves at her feet.

  That did bring her gaze up. “Through no good sense of your own.” She knelt behind him to ladle water over his shoulders. “What were you thinking, jumping out of the bushes with a hazer?”

  He winced at the sting of salt, but in another moment, the pain of the burns faded as the diluted neurotoxin washing from her skin numbed his nerve endings. “Seemed better than shooting a spaceship with a dart.”