Star Rebels: Stories of Space Exploration, Alien Races, and Adventure

by Audrey Faye

  “Shepperd?” Fran’s enquiring tone rang up from inside the silo, not quite concerned, but close.

  I could leave her behind, find my ship before Jin gutted it, and be back in black in no time. I’d lose the last fifty percent of my paycheck but could make the first payment last a few cycles, if I skimped on luxuries.

  But if I left, Fran would likely die in that silo. Or Jin would pass the time by running her through one of his compacters. Fleet didn’t patrol Jotunheim. Nobody was going to come by and save her. I’d seen her skirt fleet’s patrols during her smuggling runs. She’d outmaneuvered patrols like she piloted a warbird, not the heap of junk Jin’s guys had stripped. She was too good a pilot to die in a Jotunheim scrappers rig.

  I leaned over the hole and smiled down at her. Anger had tightened her features—now bathed in light—and pulled her lips into a thin line. The heat in the silo had loosened strands of her dark hair from her braid. They clung to her flushed cheeks. But man, those eyes were all wildcat fury. “Say, ‘please.’”

  “Besa mi culo.”

  I was fairly certain that wasn’t “please,” but it did sound delicious. I braced myself over the opening and reached down. She clasped my hand and I heaved her out through the hole. Steadying herself on the silo’s sloped edges, she brushed her hands together and admired the view.

  “That’s my ship. Son of a bitch!”

  “Say it any louder and they’ll hear you on old Earth.” Crouched low, I maneuvered my way off the silo and climbed down a ladder to the platform below. We were out of the silo, but that was the easy part. Getting off Rig 19 would be a whole lot harder.

  She hissed a few more colorful Spanish phrases and joined me on the platform. “That ship was all I had. There are procedures. Formalities. They can’t just steal what they like.”

  I might have laughed had we not been out in the open. Clearly she hadn’t been in the black for long. “Ain’t nobody all the way out here to stop them.”

  Bathed in the rig’s orange work lights, she somehow managed to look both fierce and vulnerable. She brushed grit from her clothes, her strokes short and sharp. The anger was still there—I was beginning to think it never left her—but her shoulders sagged. She’d lost her ride. That was no small thing. I wouldn’t wish being grounded in Jotunheim on my worst enemies, and I had a few contenders.

  “Maybe I’ll give you a ride out of here.”

  She eyed me sideways and brushed a few stray locks of hair out of her eyes. “And what do you want in exchange?”

  Heavy equipment clanged and groaned in the belly of the recycling rig.

  I pushed back against the wall, eager to get out of sight, and spied a nearby personnel door. “I’m sure we can agree on something, once we’re back in black.”

  We made our way from the catwalks into narrow corridors and the guts of the rig. Pipes groaned and the occasional hiss of released steam blasted from pressure valves. Inside my flight suit my tank clung to my skin and rode up my waist. I wiped sweat from the back of my neck and steered my thoughts toward anything besides how close the walls were and how the air seemed to clog my lungs.

  I took a right and climbed a ladder. Fran followed, her boots scuffing the floor. The rig layouts were all the same, so I figured the control room had to be a few levels up, and close. If we could get inside, I could locate my ship’s dock and slip away unnoticed.

  “Was Jin going to kill us?” Fran asked. Her voice carried into the steam-filled corridor ahead of us.

  I stomped on, listening to the distant clang of metal against metal. “Jin’s a ship short of a flotilla—he ain’t all there. Never leaves this rig. That kinda life? Trapped in this place? There’s not much reason left in his head. He’ll kill us both—eventually.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I make it my business to know folks who owe me credits—know what makes them tick, should they ever try and screw me over.” Her hot gaze crawled up my back as we strode on.

  “Why is ex-Fleet Captain Caleb Shepperd hiding out in Jotunheim?” she asked.

  “Same reason a merchant’s daughter is,” I threw back. I’d dug around her dataprint. Her past was peppered with the usual life junk—college, finances, pilots license—but clean. No offenses.

  “You think I’m hiding?” A hint of disgust snagged her voice. From what I’d seen of her so far, hiding wasn’t her way. And the thought clearly didn’t sit well with her.

  I checked over my shoulder. “You think I’m hiding?”

  “I know you are.” She smiled a playful smile and fell into step beside me.

  So damn confident. I wanted to see her rattled, find out who she really was underneath all that swagger. “I didn’t tell you why before. What makes you think I’m going to tell you now?”

  “I spotted your ship.” She lifted a shoulder in a half shrug, like it was no big deal, when we both knew I’d gone to great lengths to stay off her proximity sensors. “It took a bit of digging, but I tracked your ship’s outdated ID and your name showed up on an old purchase order. There’s a whole load of interesting things about a Caleb Shepperd in the cloud. Aren’t you supposed to be in Asgard, Captain?”

  Just mention of that godforsaken prison twisted my gut. Most folks didn’t survive Asgard. Some days I wished I hadn’t. I swallowed hard enough to clear the hitch in my throat. “Keep talking and I’ll be leaving you here for Jin. He’s too old to get it up, but he has his own unique way of getting his kicks. It’s probably been a while since he last had a woman visit.” I unzipped the upper half of my flight suit and shrugged it off my shoulders, letting it hang about my waist in the hope the air would cool me off. It didn’t.

  “Are you always such an asshole?”

  “You bring out the best in me, honey.”

  “Shit, what are you like on a bad day?”

  “Drunk, mostly.” I picked up my pace. She matched it.

  “Just when I think I’ve seen the worst the black can throw at me, I meet some lowlife piece of shit who lowers the bar for the rest of ’em.”

  “That’s some high horse you’re riding.” I stopped dead and squared up to her. “Did daddy buy it for you? This lowlife is your only route off this rig.”

  If her dry, haughty look was meant to demean me, she’d have to try a whole lot harder. “You’d still be in that silo without me.”

  “You—honey—were the reason I was in the silo.”

  She shrugged and canted her head. “Maybe I’d rather take my chances with Jin than with a hired criminal like you.”

  “Be my guest. I don’t take live cargo, anyhow.”

  The clang of a door slamming and the thud of boots reverberated down the corridor. Fran shoved me in the shoulder, shunting me deep between tightly packed pipes, then pushed in after me. A scalding-hot vent burned against my shoulder and a U-bend dug into my leg, but that wasn’t the worst of it. When she eased back against my chest, her ass nudged me in the all the right places. She reached up to brace herself. I got an eyeful of the black dragon tattoo coiled around her biceps and squeezed my eyes shut. Breathe. This might have been easier if my heart had quit trying to hammer its way out of my chest. The heat, the hole. Shit, I needed air. I needed off this fucking rig. And whiskey to wash away the taste of confinement. Fran’s shoulder nudged me in the chest. I huffed out a grunt. She shifted her hips and my thoughts veered toward more-familiar territory. The distraction of her pushed against me would do just fine. I gripped a pipe above my head and allowed my thoughts to dive deep, chasing the fantasy.

  Boots stomped nearer.

  If she screwed with the same anger she lived by, I needed to get myself a piece of that. I bowed my head and whispered close to her ear, “Just so you know, this is pressing all the right buttons. If you could maybe move a bit more, that’d be grand.”

  She turned her head slightly and smiled a sharkish smile. “Make it last, Captain,” she whispered. “This is as close as you’ll ever get.”

  That didn’t stop
me from hoarding the feel of her pressed against me, for later use.

  One of Jin’s guys stomped by. I listened to the sounds of him descending a ladder, and then Fran was out and moving—the wrong way.

  “Hey,” I called, staggering out of the gap.

  She raised a middle-finger salute over her shoulder and sauntered back the way we’d come.

  I admired the sway of her hips. If she was going to walk away, I was going to watch.

  Shit, it had been a while, but I had more important things to focus on than her ass, such as saving my ass. Suck it up, Shepperd. If she wanted to get lost on the rig rather than let me help her, that was her mistake. She had a dagger and could clearly look after herself—if she kept that sharp tongue clipped.

  I made my way toward the control room. Jin and his crew wouldn’t be too difficult to slip. The rig was vast, and manned by just a handful. If it was my lucky day, I’d be black bound and looking for my next job before Jin noticed I was gone.

  Lady Luck and me have never really gotten along.

  Piles of junk cluttered an otherwise-empty control room. I made my way through mounds of spare parts, scrap metal, and shit I didn’t even want to identify and stopped in front of the live-feed monitors. Maintenance used them to pinpoint any problems with the machinery. I scanned the screens, searching for the distinctive shape of my tugship. If Jin had laid his hands on her, I’d run him through one of his machines and scatter his remains throughout the nine systems.

  “Well?” Jin asked, jolting my heart into my throat. He moved about his rig like a damned ghost.

  I didn’t turn. There was little point. He either had a pistol on me or didn’t.

  “She’s capable.” I continued to scan the screens for my ship, fighting the urge to bolt. “Maybe even privately trained. Old Earth, or she’s spent long enough there to pick up a trace of the accent. Dataprint says she’s the only daughter of a merchant running supplies from the original system to Lyra. She was all set to inherit daddy’s business, and she must have figured she’d take off. There’s a lot of black to get lost in. She doesn’t quite know yet how things work out here. Hardly a threat.”

  “Then why’s she sniffing around my business?” Distrust snarled through his words. “Why her? Why now? This is all mine. I won’t let it go.”

  Now I turned. Slowly, like everything was perfectly fine and I hadn’t been about to hightail it off his rig without upholding my end of the deal. His hunched frame blocked the doorway. I’d compared his crew to vultures, and with his long nose and narrow face, Jin sure looked like one. He had a pistol tucked into a makeshift holster, within easy reach of his filthy clawed hands. His skin was the color of rancid meat, his hair a stark white. He should have died years before, but the stubborn bastard was hoarding his remaining time like he hoarded scrap metal.

  “As far as I can tell, she’s out here for the credits.” Same as me, I added silently. I sure wasn’t on Jin’s rig for the scenery. “She’s not interested in you personally. Just easy money.” Just trying to get by in the black. Weren’t we all? I didn’t know what Jin’s paranoia had him all excited over, and I didn’t care. He’d paid me half up front to get answers, and half would follow when I killed her. Or so he thought. The first half would do me just fine. I’d killed for money, but I wouldn’t this time. Not for this old man and his mountains of metal.

  “That’s all you got out of her?”

  “Whoever searched her did a piss-poor job. She had a knife. Cut herself free in the silo. The plan doesn’t work if she escapes before I can talk her ’round.”

  “Clearly,” the old man grunted. His hooked fingers drifted over his pistol. “Nobody worth their weight in iron comes out here without a good reason. She wants something.” Jin darted his tongue across his bloodless lips and then rolled them together. “What about you, Shepperd?”

  “Me?”

  He moved through the cluttered room slowly, like a wounded animal, but the old-bastard routine was all for show. I’d seen him slap down one of his crew and put a bullet between his eyes in the time it took him to lament the loss of the good ol’ days.

  “What are you doin’ out my way?” His gaze shifted, never really settling on anything long enough for his watery eyes to focus.

  “I needed a change of scenery when your call came in.” Why were we talking about me? We’d already had this conversation when I’d taken the job. “There’s only so many jumps I can do before my routes get flagged for suspicious activity. I gotta shake things up, make it look authentic-like.” I turned my back on him, hoping to give him the impression all was well, and scanned the screens again. Where had the old guy put my ship? Boots thudded behind me. I turned, projecting nonchalance until one of Jin’s heavies ushered Fran into the room. She screwed her nose up at the stench of machine grease but seemed unharmed and unruffled. My gut sank.

  “She—” Jin thumbed over his shoulder at Fran, “—says you’re fleet.”

  Shit. “Fleet?” I spluttered a laugh. “What? I’m not fleet.” My heartbeat drummed in my ears. I had a hostile audience, and in the middle was Fran with her crazy-ass smile. “She’s lying.”

  Jin’s shrewd eyes narrowed. “Shepperd, I hired you on recommendation. I don’t put much weight in a man’s past. You don’t get by in the black without tough choices. I reckon it’s the choices we make today which matter. Can’t change the past, right? But after we caught this ’ere woman breaking into your ship, and she starts bleating about a fleet captain on my rig, I had one of my guys do some more digging.” He sucked in air between his few remaining teeth. “I don’t like them fleet fuckers, which means I don’t like you, Shepperd.”

  They caught her breaking into my ship? Oh, Fran was good. When had she figured out I was playing her for intel? From the first word, probably. So what was her angle? Turn all eyes on me so she could slip away? I mirrored her smile. “C’mon, Jin. I might have been fleet. Once. A long time ago—”

  “Two years.”

  “Okay, two years ago.” A goddamned lifetime for me. I did not want to be explaining my short fleet career and subsequent prison stay to Jin, and I scraped a hand across my chin. “You’re right about the past. Doesn’t mean shit right here and now. We had a deal. Just you an’ me.”

  “Yes, we did. She also says you were planning to depart without notifying me. Our deal isn’t done. Is it, boy?”

  My shallow smile grew. I opened my mouth to explain, or lie, or bluff, but the tangle of words lodged in my throat.

  The old man’s hand rested over his pistol. He’d shoot me down and grind my remains to dust for entertainment. His crewmember stood quiet, face blank, but his eyes were hungry for violence. A very real smile curled Fran’s lips.

  Jin’s shrewd, unblinking glare pinned me still. Outnumbered and outgunned, I had limited options. “Jin.” I lifted my hands, palms out. “I hate fleet as much as you do. Probably more.”

  “Or maybe they sent you out here to spy on me?”

  I snorted, tossed my gaze around the room, and sighed. “Your rig, your mountains of crap—there ain’t nothing here worth their time.”

  His watery eyes widened and his gun hand twitched.

  “Fleet don’t give a shit about Jotunheim, and couldn’t care less about some crazy rig owner stripping ships and not paying his dues.” I inched forward. Only crazy folks reasoned with crazy folks. Talk wasn’t going to save me. Fran reached down and slipped her fingers inside her boot. She’d obviously reached the same conclusion. I swallowed, licked my dry lips, and continued, “Why do you think I’m all the way out here?” I laughed a little and stole another step forward. “It certainly ain’t for the hospitality. The pay’s good, but the alcohol’s like thinners and the women all look like you. Stop worrying about me and start worrying about her—”

  Jin drew his pistol. I lunged. The gun fired too fucking loud in the cramped room. Fire blasted through my right arm, but I was already moving. I plowed shoulder first into Jin’s gut, slamming hi
m into the wall. It wouldn’t be enough. Pain throbbed up my arm and radiated through my shoulder. Jin smacked his forehead into my face. The inside of my cheek split, spilling blood across my tongue. I wrangled with his wrist and arm, trying to pin him down—Damnit. He’s a whole lot stronger than he looks—but he bucked like a mule. I brought a knee up, and it impacted hard with his gut. But all that did was double him over so he could shove his face in mine and try and bite a chunk out of me. His hot breath smelled like wet metal, and those crazy eyes rolled back. But I had him, if I could just—

  Arms grabbed ahold of me from behind. A sharp blow to the back of my skull jolted down my neck, then a rapid silence and numbing dark rushed in.

  Shit can always get worse. Unless you’re dead.

  I hurt too much to be dead.

  Cracking open my eyes, I winced as needles of pain jabbed me in the back of the skull. I should never have agreed to this job. I could have been on Ganymede, running drugs, getting drunk in Tink’s bar and forgetting.

  I dangled by wrist ties hooked into a pulley system, arms stretched high. And I wasn’t the only one. At first, I couldn’t wrap my head around why Jin would have a butchered animal carcass hanging around his storage rooms. And then the stink hit me. The slab of flesh hanging from a pulley system like mine was human. Jolting out of my daze, I twisted, scuffing my boots against the floor. Pain beat hot and hard down my arm and into my shoulder while sickness rolled up my throat. I swallowed excess saliva and wet my lips, praying I didn’t throw my guts up. Jin could have killed me while I was out, but that wasn’t his way. The crazy bastard liked to have his own brand of special fun first. By the time he was done with me, I was gonna wish he’d been a better shot.