His female companion shifted her gun, lifting the sights to me. Caleb noticed her intention and lunged, sending her shot wide.
“Fuck, Ade!” he snarled. “Don’t shoot. They’re unarmed.”
“They should be dead,” she growled back at him.
Brendan’s hands settled on my shoulders and eased me aside. “We are unarmed, but we have crew throughout the ship who aren’t.”
That dry humor still sparkled in Caleb’s eyes, or maybe it wasn’t humor, but irony.
“You mean the crew we’ve already taken out?” His gaze flicked between me and the commander, but if Bren recognized him, he didn’t show it.
Bren inclined his head to me but kept his eyes on the pirates. “See to Doctor Lloyd.”
James. He’d fallen and was sitting back against the bulkhead, clutching at the spreading wetness in his chest. The wayward gunshot. I read his diagnostics, but by the pallor of his face and his glassy eyes, I already knew he’d bleed out within minutes.
“You’ve been boarded,” Caleb said, matter-a-fact. “Now if everyone would form an orderly queue to the shuttles so we can steal your ship, that’d be grand.”
“You won’t be taking this ship,” Brendan replied, equally as blasé. He was far too calm. Something wasn’t right.
I slid my gaze to the female pirate, who had murder in her eyes. Ade, Caleb had called her. I marked her in my mind, then turned to James.
“Synthetic, don’t move,” Ade ordered, lifting her rifle.
I smiled. “Please, try and stop me.”
Caleb’s next words saved her. “Don’t taunt the synth. She’ll rip your heart out. Let her go to him.”
I knelt beside James and took his cool hand in mine. He wasn’t dying on that bridge. I wouldn’t let him.
“Everything will be okay.…” I took his hand away from his chest and peeled open his sodden shirt. “Commander, throw me your jacket.”
Bren shrugged off his fleet jacket and tossed it to me. I wrapped the sleeve around my fist and leaned into James’s wound, tugging a ragged cry out of him.
“Let him die,” Ade snarled. “All you fleet bastards can die for all I care. Get moving to the shuttles now, or I’ll execute every last one of you. I want to do it too. Just give me an excuse and I will. So move!”
The commander nodded for his crew to go.
“Ade, go with them,” Caleb said. “Don’t shoot them unless they give you trouble.”
“They won’t,” Bren replied.
Ade cocked her head and studied the commander. Her eyes narrowed. She lifted her rifle at Bren. “Commander, what’s your name?”
“Brendan.”
“Brendan what?” she snapped.
Bren hesitated and flicked his gaze to Caleb. So he had recognized his brother. But there was more here, something unspoken—something that accounted for Bren’s calm response.
James gripped my arm and whispered his sister’s name, asking me to help her. He knew he’d die here. I swung my glare back to the pirate woman. “Let me take this man to the med bay.”
“No!” Ade snapped. “You wanna know why? Because this—” She stepped away from Caleb, inching around the bridge so she could swing the gun on any of us. “This is a setup.” She fixed her glare on Caleb. “You slippery son of a bitch. You”—she lifted the gun—“set this up. The commander, he’s your brother.”
Caleb tore the scarf free.
“Now that you mention it, there is a resemblance. Fancy that, halfway across the fuckin’ nine, and it has to be his ship. Luck, I guess.” He shrugged.
Bren wasn’t surprised to see Caleb; his heart was still beating a steady rhythm. He’d known his brother was on board. He’d known Caleb was coming. They’d been in contact long before this moment. “I take it, Caleb-Joe, that she’s the wildcard you mentioned.”
Ade’s eyes blazed.
“You…!” She jerked the gun at Cale. Everyone but Caleb twitched. “Caleb Shepperd, every word that comes out of your mouth is a lie!”
“You really thought I was going to steal you a fuckin’ freighter, Ade?” He snorted a laugh. “That’s some Cande ego you’ve got there.”
“I’ll blow your ship—”
“What with? The cargo Fran jettisoned?” He mock-winced. “Kinda sucks to be you right now.” Caleb turned to me. “Take the doctor to Starscream. Fran will be there. Quickly, synth. I don’t want any more blood on my hands.”
I scooped James up. He groaned, barely hanging on to consciousness.
“Don’t anyone fuckin’ move,” Ade growled. “I don’t know how you Shepperd bastards set this up, and I don’t care. This freighter is mine. Nobody leaves the bridge until it’s docked in my backyard.”
“The freighter belongs to the Fenrir Nine,” Caleb replied. “You wanted to get back at fleet? This is the way to do it. If you weren’t a fuckin’ psychopath, I’d have you on board.”
She recoiled “You’re giving this ship to the Nine? Does your fleet second-in-command know?”
He tried to maintain his grin, but it fluttered, weakening.
Bren caught my eye and nodded toward the door.
Ade Candelario fixed me in her sights, and for a few seconds, neither of us moved.
“You can shoot me if you like,” I said, “but it won’t stop me. And while you pull the trigger, the captain will return fire. Given the angle of his gun, the phase bullet will punch through your right eye socket and kill you before you hit the deck.”
She snarled. I ignored her and carried James off the bridge. Whatever the Shepperd brothers had planned, they didn’t need me, but James did. He couldn’t—wouldn’t die. I wouldn’t let it happen. I needed him to live.
Chapter Thirteen: Caleb
My brother had somehow neglected to mention, during our brief, but numerous comms chats, that he had #1001 on board his freighter. I would’ve thought he’d have said something.
Hey, Cale, funny thing. Your dead ex-girlfriend, the one who’s now a machine and who recently shot you in the head? Yeah, her. She’s cruising around the nine with me.
I’d be laying into him about that, once I talked Ade out of filling me full of bullet holes.
I jerked my rifle, finger resting on the trigger, just like hers. “Ade, if you shoot me, you’re never getting off this freighter.”
She shifted her weight from foot to foot and darted her gaze between me and my brother, but kept the business end of her gun aimed true on me. Bren was standing behind his control panel, hands slightly raised at his sides but otherwise pretty fucking calm. He would be calm; he wasn’t the one in Ade’s crosshairs.
I was meant to turn on her the second we’d gotten Bren’s crew off the bridge, but seeing #1001 standing beside my fucking brother had blindsided me. I hated surprises about as much as I hated Mondays. Then Ade had gone all crazy psycho bitch and here we were, in a pirate-smuggler standoff. Ade would shoot me out of spite if nothing else. Fran was always fucking right.
“Shoot me and you start a war with the Candes,” she hissed. “You’re a dead man, Shepperd. You crossed the wrong family. My brothers will hunt you to the corners of the nine systems. Your career as a smuggler will be over—they’ll make sure of it. Nobody will go near you or Starscream. You might as well hightail it back to Asgard and hide there, because it’s all—”
I dropped my aim and shot her in the thigh. She collapsed in a writhing, swearing, hissing ball, and would have snagged her gun had I not kicked it out of her reach.
“Ah, quit your bitchin’. You’ll live.”
She spat a string of deliciously murderous Spanish.
I smiled at my brother. “Women make my life so very interesting.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be such a bastard,” Bren replied, lowering his hands. “It’s good to see you, Caleb-Joe.”
“Drop the fucking Joe. Have the shuttles detached?”
I left Ade grumbling on the floor and joined Bren at the freighter’s main controls.
“Yes,” he said. “
The ship’s ours.”
“Not for long. The Nine are waiting. Link her controls with Starscream and let’s tug this freighter to the jump gate before the Candes and fleet catch on. Until we’re through, we’re vulnerable.”
Bren lightly tapped the control panel, commanding the freighter’s behemoth size with a few strokes. “Fran doesn’t know you planned this from the second you got out of Asgard, does she?”
“No, and she can’t know yet. She’s fleet.”
“Fleet?” he scoffed. I must have had the same look when the Nine had told me my second was compromised. “She can’t be.”
“She admitted it before I could blast her from the airlock. She’s fleet, Bren.”
His hands stilled over the controls. He lifted his head. “And she’s on board with stealing the freighter?”
“Fuck no. She thinks I’m stealing it from the rich to give to the poor. Since she came out as fleet, she’s gotten a righteous chip on her shoulder the size of a small moon, as if she’s doing the nine systems a favor. She thinks she’s one of the good guys—or maybe she thinks she can turn me into one.”
One of his dark eyebrows lifted. “Clearly, after two years, she doesn’t know you very well.”
“Nor you, brother.” I gave him a hefty slap on the back. “Welcome to the dark side, where there’s contaminated drugs, whores a-plenty, and toxic alcohol galore. You’ll hate it.”
He mustered something of a half smile and sucked down a deep breath. “This feels right. Fleet hasn’t felt right for years, not since you got kicked out. Maybe even before that.”
Finally, my brother and me saw eye to eye on something. It didn’t make up for him being an asshole, but at least now it made two of us.
“We need to get back to Fran before she freaks out over the synth. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me she was here?”
“I picked her up on Janus. You’d have gotten cold feet had you known she was on board.”
“She almost executed me.”
He was right. Seeing the synth again undermined my attempts to forget she’d ever happened, the memories of which would all come rushing back once I came down off my adrenalin high.
“We’ll talk about her, and everything else, once we’re back on Starscream and out of trouble,” I said.
“Controls are patched into Starscream, the crew have departed, and the fleet tracker unit is disabled. We’re clear to proceed. What are you going to do with the Cande pirate?”
I slid my gaze to Ade and found her clutching her thigh and watching me with unnerving serenity. Good question.
Chapter Fourteen: #1001
I set James down on Starscream’s dining table and tore open his shirt. Fran ripped open a med-pack with her teeth and, after wiping the puncture wound in his chest, sprayed it with med-filler and applied a staunch-pad. It was a temporary fix, but it would immediately staunch the blood loss. I rolled him onto his side, and she did the same to the exit wound. She worked quickly, with the kind of familiar efficiency of someone who was used to dealing with physical trauma.
“He can’t die,” I said, easing him onto his back once more.
He mumbled some incoherent nonsense.
“He’s not going to.” She jabbed an injector against his neck. James’s lashes fluttered. “Is he hurt anywhere else?”
“No. What did you give him?”
“Something to take the pain away. He’ll be stable for a little while, but the sooner we can get him somewhere with better facilities, the happier he’ll be.”
“The freighter has a well-stocked med bay.”
She straightened and wiped her bloodied hands on a towel. Her unforgiving eyes narrowed on me. When I’d arrived on Starscream, she’d seen James in my arms and had reacted without a word. Now that James was stable, her glare turned hard and penetrating.
“Where’s Caleb?”
“On the bridge with the commander.”
“Alive?”
“When I left, yes.”
“Wait … the commander?”
“Brendan.”
Her eyes widened. “The freighter is his? But … h-how is that…? How are you here? How the fuck is his brother here? The entire fuckin’ nine systems—an entire fleet of freighters—and we have to steal Brendan Shepperd’s? That’s not possible.”
She sunk a hand into her short hair and backed away from the table. “Fuck. He set this up. He set this whole fucking operation up. That slippery son of a bitch—”
She cut herself short and bolted from the rec bay. Whatever she was about to do, it frightened her.
“James …” I leaned over and touched the young technician’s face. “You aren’t going to die, because I need you to live. I’m broken, and you’re going to fix me. Do you understand?”
His eyelashes fluttered, but he didn’t wake.
“You are an asset. I will save you. But Francisca is about to jeopardize everything. Rest.” I brushed my thumb against his warm cheek. “Everything will be all right.”
I found Fran on the bridge, hands working fast over the controls, flicking switches, dialing coordinates, and priming Starscream’s engines for departure. The freighter’s gigantic hull filled the entire obs window.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
When she ignored me, I moved next to Shepperd’s empty flight chair and examined the sweep of her hands. “Those coordinates … you’re taking us back to old Earth? To fleet headquarters?”
Caleb and Brendan hadn’t stolen a freighter only to give it back to fleet.
I recalled Bren’s words to me, about allegiances and the Nine. Bren was working against fleet. Caleb and Bren had stolen the freighter from fleet command, and Fran was about to take it back.
“You need to tell me what you’re doing,” I said.
“I don’t need to tell you anything, synth.” Her voice quivered. Her data blossomed with the telltale signs of fear, from her rapid breathing to her racing heart. She would either fight or run, but which? “He lied to me, to the Candes, to everyone. I got him out of Asgard and this is how he repays me.”
It was more than that. “He wouldn’t want this. He and Bren are taking the freighter to the Nine.”
Her hands froze. She slowly turned in her chair. “He’s selling the freighter to the Nine?”
Why didn’t she already know this? “As far as I can assume, after assessing the available information.”
An ironic smile tugged her lips up at one corner. She looked at me as if she couldn’t quite believe my words, and then laughed softly.
“That bastard has balls of fuckin’ steel. His brother too, apparently. Fuckin’ Shepperd’s.” She returned to the flight dash and reset the coordinates to the nearest jump gate. “If he’d just told me we were going to see the Nine, I’d have happily obliged.”
She was lying. This Francisca Franco wasn’t the same woman I’d met several cycles ago. Anxiety strummed through her, as well as fear and doubt. Perhaps even regret lurked in the skitter of her glances. It all added up to someone in conflict with herself.
“You’re not who you appear to be,” I said. “You’re fleet.”
“And you’re a Chitec synth.” She kept her gaze ahead. “Don’t judge me.”
I closed my right hand into a fist. “You’re fleet, and a liability to Starscream’s crew.”
“You’re more of a liability to this ship than I am. I’m the second-in-command, and you’re the machine that almost killed the captain. I’d be careful where you point that finger, synthetic.”
“You called fleet to Mimir the night I shot Caleb.”
She huffed a dry laugh. “You’re just now putting all the data pieces together, huh? Well, form all the neat little conclusions you like. You don’t know me, you don’t know Caleb, and you sure as shit don’t know what it’s like living in-the-black.”
“It’s why Caleb doesn’t trust you. Why he didn’t tell you about his brother, or the real reason he’s stealing the freighter. You are not an asset.�
��
Fran caught the finality of my tone and pulled a pistol out from under the dash. She swung it around and fired, but I’d already moved in. The bullet went wide. I snatched the pistol from her grip, flung it aside, pushed the ball of my hand under her chin, and jerked her head back into her seat—all in the time it took for her to gasp. I hemmed her in with my body, pinning her down. I could kill her. The angle of my hand, where it was pushing under her chin, could easily break her neck.
Not an asset. A threat.
But Caleb cared for her in ways I didn’t understand. A part of me, the darkest part, the part that harbored dangerous memories, wanted to kill her, but James’s earlier words prevented me from making the last, final movement. Killing is never a viable option.
I leaned closer, pushing my face so close to hers that I could taste her fear. “You once threatened to tear me apart if I hurt this ship or Caleb. Now I return your words to you, Francisca.”
“One Thousand And One.” Caleb’s clear voice pushed through my precise desire to kill. “Stand down.”
“She’s fleet. Fleet are Chitec,” I replied, my glare drilling deep into Fran’s conflicted soul.
“Oh, believe me, I know.”
“She intended to return this freighter to fleet.”
“Stand down.”
I slowly eased off Fran and backed away. Caleb stood a few strides inside the bridge, rifle relaxed at his side. His cool stare appraised me, as though I were the enemy. Perhaps I was.
“She is afraid, and a liar.”
“That she is.” He sauntered forward, tossed the rifle against his shoulder, and stopped behind his flight chair. “Much like the rest of us.”
He turned his face to look at me, and I recalled how I’d last seen him: on his knees on the Mimir pier, hands raised, his face wet, and his eyes bright while the storm raged around us.
‘Nobody and nothing gives a damn about Caleb Shepperd.’ I did. I cared that he was alive, that I hadn’t killed him.
He smiled, shattering his hardened expression and my nonexistent heart along with it. “It’s good to see you again, One Thousand And One, but if you could please not kill me or my crew, at least until we’re out of the Cande neighborhood, I’d sure appreciate it.”
Girl From Above Escape (The 1000 Revolution Book 2) Page 13
