by Justin Sloan
She thanked them and returned with Robin to the ship, ready to do her best to find a random shuttle somewhere out there.
Robin gave her a look that expressed the same doubt she herself was having, but said only, “Sounds like this’ll be fun. Like a treasure lost at sea, only in this case it’s space.”
“And the treasure is a random name given to us by what appears to be a slaver.”
Robin nodded. “Exactly. The uncertainty is what makes it fun, right? I mean, worst-case scenario, Colonel Walton kicks us out of Bad Company and then we fly off to some other planet and become assassins for hire. Doesn’t sound so horrible, does it?”
“Don’t joke about that,” Valerie pleaded, laughing. “You’re going to tell me you left your parents on Earth to come up here and defend the universe, but would settle for becoming some mercenary?”
“I said ‘assassin,’ which sounds way cooler,” Robin replied, then frowned. “And no. Shut up.”
“Then let's be sure we succeed.” Valerie clasped her friend’s shoulder and they entered the ship, ready to get down to business.
CHAPTER TWO
Space: The Singlaxian Grandeur
“We have a visual,” Bob said, leaning back in his chair and gesturing at the screen before him. There was the blip of a ship out there, still in the distance, but likely the one they were after—their key to finding and entering the Damu Michezo.
“Earth’s first step toward competing in an intergalactic fight club,” Robin said with a chuckle. “Well, that we know of, anyway.”
“That little contest back on the ship with Colonel Walton was a bit of a fight club,” Corporal Flynn pointed out. “But it wasn’t intergalactic, was it?”
Valerie frowned and everyone looked at her hesitantly, which made her even more annoyed. She didn’t like to think about that, and especially didn’t like to remember how it had felt to have her kneecap broken. She had healed from all manner of gunshots and stabs back on Earth, but a broken kneecap was its own level of misery.
She’d have to remember to not square off against Colonel Walton anytime soon, or if she did, to strike first and show no mercy. Seeing as he was pretty much her supervisor now, in a sense, she doubted that would be happening anytime soon.
“What’s the plan, boss?” Sergeant Garcia asked, breaking the tension.
Valerie stared out at the system, amazed by the vastness of their undertaking. She hadn’t spent much time in space, her only experience thus far being when she had traveled with Colonel Terry Henry Walton to reunite with Michael and finally meet the glorious Bethany Anne.
Somehow she had imagined that a new galaxy would be different. Instead of vast stretches of darkness and more stars, she had half-expected to be able to see every planet in a display of multicolored orbs for her viewing pleasure.
What she got instead was the view past the transporter ship of a planet that from this distance didn’t look so different from Earth. The system’s star shone brightly beyond it, casting most of this side of the planet in darkness.
“Is that what a transport ship looks like?” she asked.
“That’s her, all right.” Bob pressed the screen and made a few swiping motions. “We don’t know much about the people this far out, but here’s what the Etheric Federation has. Hell, we’ve never had a team out here. I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Best way to learn the lay of the land is by befriending a local,” Valerie replied.
“And if the locals are giant lizard men?” Garcia asked. “I’m not exactly ready for that sort of friend.”
Valerie turned to Robin, who was at her side, and said, “I think we can handle it.”
“Lizard men?” Robin scoffed. “Just be happy they aren’t lizard women. More aggressive, I hear.”
“Are you making that up? There are no actual lizard people in space, are there?”
She laughed. “No, Bob, I don’t think so, though I actually have no idea.” She nodded, then added, “Follow her, for now. No reason to scare them off just yet.”
“Yeah, got it,” Bob replied, then leaned forward, and coughed. “Uh, shit. Is that… Yup. That’s another ship attached to the far side.”
“And another one coming,” Garcia pointed to another object moving in from the opposite side of the transporter ship, making it difficult to see. “A friendly chat, you think?”
“Dammit, looks like we’re going to have to find out.” Valerie took a seat next to Bob and said, “I’ll take the controls.”
Bob glared, but held up his hands. Typical Bob, Valerie thought as she started maneuvering the Grandeur around the transport to get a better look at the approaching shuttle.
“Anyone here know a damn thing about spaceships?” she asked.
Everyone mumbled, but Garcia spoke up. “Not a thing, but if I had to bet I’d wager that’s an attack vessel.”
“And I’d wager you’re right,” she replied. “I’d also point out that we don’t like attack vessels moving in on transport ships that are supposed to be the key to our mission. That being the case…”
With a surge of energy at the thrill of the fight running through her veins, she increased her speed and readied her weapons.
Civilian Transport Shuttle
Kalan knew he was in trouble the moment the airlock opened and the six Pallicons marched aboard, weapons drawn.
Up until then, it had been a fairly uneventful flight. He’d barely made it to the transport in time for departure to Tol, and when he’d seen how crowded the shuttle was, he’d almost wished he hadn’t. He’d even strongly considered getting off and transferring his ticket to the next shuttle, but that would have meant missing his appointment, which would mean he wouldn’t get the job. And he badly needed the job.
So instead of getting off, he’d squeezed himself into a seat and waited for the transport to lift.
The passengers were mostly Skulla, but there were a few Pallicons too. He’d always envied Pallicons a little. They were shapeshifters, and Kalan would have given anything to be able to do that.
It would be nice to be something other than a muscle-bound six-and-a-half-foot-tall gray-skinned freak every once in a while. To not have everyone cast a cautious eye at him anytime he walked into a room.
Kalan hadn’t been to the planet Tol before, but he’d spent most of his life in the Vurugu system. Six planets revolved around an ancient star. The outer five had been terraformed and were populated mostly by Skulla, a species that decorated their skins—faces included—with countless tattoos as part of their strange religion.
Skulla only stood about four feet tall and were thin creatures, but they made up for their small size with razor-sharp wits, and were often ruthless.
The planet closest to the center of the cluster was the home of the Pallicons. It was almost impossible to spot them when they were shapeshifting, but Kalan’d had a lot of practice. The key was to stare at the edges. Focus on a single hair or a knuckle; something small and specific. If you watched a shapeshifted Pallicon for ten or twenty seconds like that you’d see a tiny flicker, and then you’d know.
He was starting to relax about an hour into the flight when the ship was attacked. Less than five minutes later, the six Pallicons boarded, through the airlock, their weapons drawn.
“This ship is hereby commandeered in the name of the Bandian!” one of them shouted.
A murmur ran through the passengers when they heard that name, and Kalan raised an eyebrow. If these guys really were from the Bandian, that was bad news indeed.
While the first Pallicon spoke the others spread out, one heading toward the cockpit while the rest dispersed to either end of the transport to cover the passengers.
Kalan watched all this silently. He carefully controlled his breathing, and reminded himself not to get involved unless he absolutely had to. This wasn’t prison. He didn’t need to step up to every tough guy who crossed his path. He didn’t have to prove himself.
Yet, as he watched t
he four of them work, Kalan grew more uncomfortable. He spotted their weapons, handheld Tralen-14s. Those were not cheap, and they were difficult to get in this ass-end of the galaxy. These guys were well funded.
The other thing that worried him was that they seemed absolutely disinterested in the jewelry most of the Skulla wore. If they weren’t there to rob the passengers, probably they were there to steal the ship itself—which wouldn’t be good news for the passengers.
Maybe the hijackers would keep them alive and try to ransom them back to their families, but it seemed more likely the Pallicons would escort them out the nearest airlock at the earliest opportunity.
The small Skulla female next to him clasped her hands on her lap, and it was clear she was trying to keep them from shaking. She kept shifting her gaze between the six Pallicons, eyes darting back and forth frantically.
Kalan leaned over to her. “It’s going to be okay.”
As soon as he’d said the words he regretted them. He didn’t make a promise unless he intended to keep it, and now that he’d told the female things were going to work out, he was going to have to do whatever it took to make sure he wasn’t a liar.
The female kept her eyes on the hijackers. “I don’t know. The Bandian doesn’t leave witnesses.”
Kalan had no idea what the average Skulla lifespan was, but this female had to be near the end of it. Her facial tattoos were so faded it was difficult to imagine what they’d once been.
“Hey, you ever seen one of my kind?” he asked.
The female reluctantly turned toward him, which had been his goal. If she stopped looking at the hijackers, maybe she’d stop thinking about them for moment or two.
“No, I don’t think I have.”
He smiled. “I’m not surprised. There aren’t a lot of us, especially not in this part of the system. As far as I know, there are only two of us Gah’har’zakanew in the system.”
Her eyes narrowed as she tried to repeat the name back to him. “Gah’har-what?”
“You can call us the ‘Grayhewn.’ Everyone else does.” He nodded toward the Pallicon at the far end of the ship. “Point is, they’ve probably never heard of my kind either, which means they don’t know what kind of trouble they’re in right now.”
He winked.
Kalan hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. He was used to fighting against long odds, but Pallicons were scrappy even when they weren’t carrying cutting-edge weaponry.
The hijackers had gathered the flight crew outside the cockpit and had them on their knees, weapons to their heads. If Kalan was going to act, it had to be now.
“Wish me luck,” he said to the old female. Then he drew a deep breath, unstrapped his safety harness, and started to rise.
A loud chirping sound came through the open cockpit door, and Kalan had piloted enough ships to recognize it. That was the proximity alert.
The Pallicon who had been shouting orders smiled.
“That’s their friends, isn’t it?” the old Skulla next to Kalan asked.
Kalan didn’t have time to wonder how the old female recognized the sound of a proximity alert from forty feet away. Instead, he focused on the fact that she was right. Likely it was a large ship that would take the small transport shuttle aboard, effectively making it impossible to locate once they’d stripped it.
If the larger ship had arrived, they were lost. The thing that got Kalan out of his seat was the thought of these Pallicons’ bosses boarding the transport to find the hijackers beaten silly and Kalan’s smiling face looking down on them.
As he was getting out of his seat, the Pallicon in the cockpit called to the others, “Uh, we’ve got a problem. There’s not one ship outside, there’s two. And the other one seems to be attacking ours.”
The Singlaxian Grandeur
“You’re not going to open fire, are you?” Bob asked, aghast.
“Just a precaution,” she replied, pressing more buttons. With a sigh of exasperation she added, “How do we hail them?”
“Hail?” Garcia asked.
“You know, send them a message.”
Bob leaned forward and hit the large button that—now that Valerie looked at it—was clearly a talk symbol, then the image of the ship on the screen. “That’ll send a message in their direction.”
“And the implant chips will translate?”
He nodded. “Like on the planet we just left. Unless it’s a very obscure language, the chip will translate automatically.”
She nodded. The message button had now lit up, so she assumed it was live.
“This is Valerie of the Singlaxian Grandeur—”
“The grandest little ship you ever did see,” mumbled Bob in a sing-song way.
She glared at him, then continued, “We are new here, but have reasons to see this transport vessel on its way. If you are hostile, we must warn you… We can be hostile back.”
They waited for a moment, Valerie’s fingers massaging the triggers, and then the response came. Not as a message, however, but as a barrage of blasts from three mounted railguns, one on each wing and one at the bow.
“At least it’s an answer we can understand,” Garcia quipped as Valerie threw the ship into an evasive maneuver, spinning around the shots and then counterattacking with her own weapons.
As a blast hit and the blue energy field that protected the Grandeur glimmered, she was clearly reminded that out here she could die like the rest of them. If the Grandeur exploded, she was damn sure her body wouldn’t heal itself from the effects of space. Or if it somehow could, she imagined a lifetime of torture as she suffocated and burned—or whatever happened in space to one’s body—and then regenerated, only to repeat the process all over.
Now that would be hell.
She had to ensure it didn’t come to that. Luckily for her she had flown plenty of antigravity Pods back on Earth, and this wasn’t so different. Faster and equipped with more firepower, but other than that… She was getting the hang of it.
By the time the enemy ship had recalibrated and was ready for the next wave of shots she had already dived, avoiding the attack and coming around to blast the enemy in the underbelly.
Their shields held momentarily, and then they were gone like a fizzle of a candle being snuffed. The enemy ship maneuvered out of the way of her next shot but she pursued, knowing that it was only a matter of time.
CHAPTER THREE
Civilian Transport Shuttle
Kalan didn’t consider himself much of a strategist when it came to fighting, but he did know this much: if your enemy’s looking the other way, it’s a good time to hit him.
As the Pallicons reacted to the mysterious appearance of another ship, Kalan turned to the old female next to him and nodded toward the oversized bag at her feet. “You wouldn’t happen to have a handgun in there, would you?”
“Sorry, I left it in my nightstand.”
The response was so deadpan that Kalan didn’t know if she was joking.
“Okay, guess I’ll do this the other way then.” He winked once more, then stalked down the aisle.
The guy closest to Kalan, the one whose job was almost certainly to watch the passengers on this end of the shuttle, was so distracted by the news from the cockpit that he didn’t notice Kalan coming. Kalan shook his head at the gross dereliction of duty as he approached. You had to be really bad at your job to miss a six-foot-five gray-skinned brute coming at you. Maybe the kid would learn a valuable lesson from this—assuming he survived.
Kalan knew he would have to move quickly once the fighting started. There were fifty-odd passengers aboard this shuttle, all cramped into a space designed to allow for maximum profit. If even one of those six well-armed Pallicons got spooked and started shooting wildly, things would go badly for the passengers very fast.
He eyed the hatch that led to the cargo hold. If he could get down there, any shots they fired at him would be aimed away from the passengers. That became his goal, but first he had to deal with
this distracted hijacker.
Kalan waited until he’d almost reached him, then gently cleared his throat.
The hijacker turned in time to see Kalan’s massive fist rushing toward his face. When it connected, he collapsed in a heap.
Pallicons were easy enough to take down if you caught them unaware—and if you could punch with the force of a small handgun—but Kalan knew he wouldn’t have that luxury with the other five. When their friend hit the ground, the four in the aisle were already turning toward him.
He reached down and grabbed the fallen man’s weapon, then sprinted toward the hatch to the cargo hold, arms pumping as he dashed past the rows of passengers. They stared at him with their tattooed faces, clearly unsure whether he was their savior or another threat.
Kalan wasn’t so sure himself. If the hijackers got their Tralen-14s up and started shooting before he reached the cargo area, every passenger on the transport better hope the Pallicons’ marksmanship was better than their ability to secure a hostage situation. A single stray shot could blow a hole in any of the passengers.
When he reached the cargo hatch, he glanced back. The old Skulla female who’d been sitting next to him was watching wide-eyed, so he gave her one last wink before ducking through the doorframe and down the ladder to the hold below.
There wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver down there, which Kalan took as a positive. Close quarters meant they wouldn’t be able to surround him.
He wove through the crates and cases, and found an advantageous spot between two larger ones. It allowed him a bit of darkness to hide in, but it also didn’t pin him down too much.
The first head peeked into Kalan’s line of sight and Kalan immediately fired, dropping the Pallicon. Two down, four to go.
No second head appeared. Instead, Kalan heard the click of feet on the metal floor scurrying past his location.
