Hidden Treasure [Pirates of the Galaxy 1] (Siren Publishing Allure)

by K. D. Austin

  “Okay. Okay. Calm down. We won’t go to the GalMars, but we do need to inform them about the existence of the Khsharayans and the artifact.”

  Hanna nodded slowly, and the color reluctantly returned to her face. Then her eyes lit up. “I have an idea. Maybe we can give the Galactic Marines a bit more than just information. Get me to a public net terminal. I have an idea.”

  Lance prodded her for more, but Hanna stubbornly just smiled at him and told him to wait and see. He didn’t know if the trust he felt for her now was completely unbiased or still a part of the programming she had done to him, but he acquiesced, and they began working their way down the road toward town. Luckily, there was another bridge crossing the river, but by the time they reached, it the sun was well above the horizon. Lance could tell Hanna was exhausted, even with her EXS boosting her stamina. They had simply been through too much not to rest, so he made a camp for them a few meters back from the road, under the protection of some bushes. He helped Hanna into the shelter and crawled in beside her. She was asleep before he had even fully settled himself. He planned to keep watch, but the next thing he knew, it was dark outside again.

  “Hanna,” he said, gently shaking her. “We need to get moving.”

  She mumbled something at him and rolled over. However, the move shifted her ankle, and she cried out and sat up as much as possible in the makeshift shelter. She was fully awake now.

  Lance cocked his ear. He could hear traffic in the distance, along with some type of regular announcement. “I think there’s a bus depot across the bridge. The wind is blowing over the river. I can hear it.”

  Hanna smiled. “That’ll sure beat walking.”

  “Do you have any money?” Lance asked, realizing he had nothing for fare.

  Hanna motioned to her nearly naked form. “Not too many places to store it,” she said.

  Lance quirked his mouth. “Maybe I need to check to make sure.”

  “I think you’ve already done that, but you might need to take another look. Especially down here,” she said, pulling the waistband of her body shorts down far enough that he could see the swell of the top of her pussy.

  “Don’t tempt me,” Lance said. “We don’t have time. Not if we’re going to pull off this secret plan of yours.” His cock began stiffening at the thought of Hanna’s tasty twat. However, instead he helped Hanna move toward the bridge so they could catch a bus to the spaceport. It turned out, with Hanna’s ability to hack systems, money was not an issue.

  Chapter 38

  They debarked the bus at the magnificent wonderland that was the Gallus spaceport. When they had first arrived, Salvor had landed them in the cargo zone, so she had missed the true beauty of the commercial side of the spaceport. Towering white-and-silver cone-shaped buildings poked into the upper atmosphere. Rocket cars whizzed on the ground, and repulsor cars buzzed through the air. Holograms floated every few meters advertising thousands of products, entertainments, and services. In the spaces between the holograms, real-life versions of the products shone brightly. Robots, rockets, space opera actors, even weapons danced before her eyes.

  As fascinating as the spaceport was, Hanna had work to do here. “Okay, let’s head to the nearest entertainment café. The café’s net should give us direct access into the Galactic Net, because they pull their data for the Instant Reality games from the news net. So no matter where Arden may have gone, I think I can trace him.”

  Lance shook his head at her. “Hanna, you never cease to amaze me. What you’re suggesting has been declared impossible by the Galactic Court, the GalMars, and every tech company in the galaxy. You really think you can do it?”

  “Last week, I would’ve said it was impossible too. But Arden opened my mind to so much about how the net works. Ironic that I’m now going to use it to turn him over to the GalMars.”

  Lance chuckled. “Serves him right, unleashing the beast.”

  Hanna glared at him but smiled. “Did you call me a beast?”

  “You definitely were last night,” he said, winking at her. “Now let’s get to that café and get this done. I still don’t believe we’re fully safe while we’re on this planet.”

  Navigating an asteroid field in a ship with a broken stabilizer would have been easier than the path through the crowd of the spaceport at this time of the day. Hanna had never seen so many people in one place before in her life. Her pirating life had lent itself to remote worlds mostly. Here there were people from every planet in the galaxy, several of whom were carrying pets, which looked almost as strange as they did, all walking around with some clear purpose that was anything but clear to Hanna.

  Lance grabbed Hanna by the arm and steered her unerringly through the throng. Hanna hobbled along, her ankle feeling better since her EXS had had time to recharge and begin the healing process as well as flood her body with endorphins. She had also learned it had a setting that allowed her to lock a section of the suit’s strips, basically creating a splint for her ankle. Soon they were standing in front of a glaring display of entertainment that Hanna felt stood out a bit amid the high-scale spaceport.

  Hanna turned to head into the entertainment café with Lance on her heels. The inside of the café was a striking contrast to the colorful holographic outside. There were rows and rows of white pods, about the size of portable sani-stations, lined up around the walls and snaking through the middle of the café. Each of these pods had a door on the front with a small round window at a level a little above Hanna’s nose. She stood and stared. It was nothing like any of the scummy entertainment cafés she’d visited on back worlds. Those usually had a couple of game pods, none of which were white, and always a few men and women for customers wanting a different type of entertainment.

  “Come on, Hanna, you look like a tourist,” Lance said, grabbing her arm and pulling her farther into the café.

  They bypassed several pods that appeared to be empty, but Lance clearly had a destination in mind. Finally, he popped the door on a white pod near the middle of the snake of pods and close to the center of the café. He stepped inside, and Hanna followed.

  “What do we do now?” Lance asked, shutting the door.

  “Get a game going so we don’t get kicked out for loitering or anything.”

  Lance plugged the game jacks into his wrist ports, and the plain white interior of the pod disappeared. Lance and Hanna were now standing in a long virtual corridor that was open to a nighttime sky unlike anything in reality. An elliptical galaxy hung low in the sky while a variety of ships sped by, illuminated against the brilliant stars. Suddenly disoriented, Hanna fell back and was surprised to slam into the wall of the pod, which was no longer visible. If she’d been plugged in like Lance, the scene would have shifted for her, but she had other things to do besides play a game.

  The pod rumbled. “Hanna, this may get a little disorienting for you,” Lance said as he started running in place.

  “Get disorienting?”

  The scene shifted again, and Hanna realized they were not in a corridor but a huge maze with something chasing them. Well, they’d had plenty of experience with that lately. Every few steps, there were glowing stones that Lance would stop and “pick up.”

  Since Hanna wasn’t plugged in, she couldn’t hear the sounds or see many of the features that Lance clearly could. He kept swiping his hands left and right, poking random points in the air, and occasionally jumping.

  “The sooner you get started, the sooner I can quit playing this stupid kids’ game.”

  “You’re the one who picked it.”

  “Yeah. Because it’s easy.”

  Hanna tried to ignore the shifting maze and focus on her HUD. She pulled the jacks from her EXS and stuck them into the open ports in the pod. It took a few seconds longer than it should have since she could no longer see them, as they were part of the virtual world now.

  The entertainment café’s net popped onto her screen. Hanna rapidly rushed through its systems until she found the news ne
t feed. From there it was rather simple to pull up a link to the Galactic Net. That’s where it became a little trickier. Now she was in the middle of the mess that was the entire galaxy’s network, doing what she planned almost seemed as impossible as it was supposed to be.

  “How’s it going, Hanna?” Lance asked as if he was reading her mind.

  “Pretty good. Just play a little longer.”

  “Okay, but kids’ games aren’t as easy as they used to be. Whatever is chasing me is getting faster and craftier, and with you in the pod with me and not playing, I’m limited in my motion.”

  “You’re a GalMar. I think you can handle it.”

  Lance turned and glared at her briefly, but there was only humor and affection in his eyes. The look still shocked Hanna, not because it was in Lance’s eyes but because she knew it was reflected in hers. How had she allowed herself to fall for a man who had tried to kill her, who she had then programmed to like her? She didn’t have time now to worry about the right and wrong of it. All of her concentration needed to be focused on this hack.

  She renewed her efforts to use her unprecedented access to the Galactic Net to locate Arden using the very system the man had invented himself.

  The tracker code began scouring the net, focused on Arden’s personal identity on the net, something that Hanna only had access to because she and Arden had hacked Lance together. His personal biological DNA and computer DNA sequence were encoded in the hack on Lance. By using it, she should be able to pinpoint Arden no matter where he had gone. Then she could alert the GalMars to his location, and she and Lance could just disappear into the galaxy. At least, she hoped she could convince Lance to go with her. Maybe she could give him his real life back, but she didn’t know. She also didn’t know if she wanted to.

  It had already been twenty minutes since Lance had begun the game and she’d initiated the hack. Suddenly, a bright spot lit up on her HUD. She’d found Arden, and he was close. Too close. She killed the hack, and the entire simulation while she was at it. The game suddenly disappeared.

  Lance gasped. “What’s going on?”

  “Arden’s here. In the café! Or right outside.” Hanna moved for the door, but Lance stopped her.

  They could hear confused voices outside the pod. Something was happening.

  “Okay. Follow me, and stay close.” Lance slowly opened the pod door and stepped out, Hanna right behind him. People poured out of all the pods, looking confused, annoyed, and even scared. The café was a cacophony of voices, and then a short burst cut through all the noise, and someone screamed. A small army of GrayMars exploded through the front door, bashing and shooting people indiscriminately.

  “Bova!” Hanna said.

  Chapter 39

  Lance grabbed Hanna. “Come on,” he said and pressed his palm against the pod they had just exited.

  Boom! The pod crackled and exploded into flames. The smell of burning electronics filled the air. Lance screamed and charged the crowd that was pushing away from the storming GrayMars. Now trapped between a raging fire and gunfire, the crowd erupted into complete chaos and charged the Khsharayan, desperate to escape.

  Smoke obscured everything.

  “Don’t let go of me,” Lance said, placing Hanna’s hand onto the back of his belt. Then he grabbed two nearby customers, one in each hand, and crouched behind them as he shoved them forward toward the door and the intervening Khsharayan army. The aliens seemed confused and disorganized for the first time that Lance had seen. Some in front began firing and dropped a couple of people, but the frightened masses couldn’t be stopped. They pushed right through the line and out into the street. With his human shields taking a few blows but no shots, Lance led Hanna out of the café. He immediately pushed the two frightened, but now thankful, bystanders aside and grabbed Hanna’s arm.

  Outside the café, chaos reigned. Local law enforcement had arrived and were making the fatal mistake of engaging the Khsharayan. Lance pushed his way through the swirling mob, trying to stay as far as possible from the confrontation. He had them halfway across the street when the world exploded.

  Lance came to on the ground, realizing he had blacked out but was unsure for how long. He quickly took stock. He didn’t think he’d been out for more than a minute or two based on the shadows. They hadn’t changed significantly, although everything else around had. Everyone who was not Khsharayan now lay on the ground. Most appeared to be either unconscious or possibly dead.

  Lance turned his head in every direction. Hanna was gone.

  Chapter 40

  Hanna couldn’t focus on anything. Her mind was fuzzy. A hand grabbed her and hauled her halfway to her feet and began dragging her toward a nearby alley. She tried to get her feet under her but couldn’t. Her legs felt like they had weights tied to them.

  “Lance, slow down,” she said through a mouth that felt as if it were stuffed with cotton. The hand holding her released her, and she collapsed onto her knees with her face smacking into the cold metal alley wall. “Easy,” she tried to say, but it only came out as a grunt. She felt the warm trickle of blood from her nose run down over her lips.

  A disturbingly familiar voice called from behind her, “Hello, Hanna.”

  Hanna struggled to turn her head. “Thought you’d be halfway across the galaxy by now, Arden,” she said with painful slowness. Her head was clearing from whatever had knocked her down, but even with the EXS pumping her with additional adrenaline and increasing her oxygen levels, all action was effort.

  “And skip out on the profit? You should’ve come with me when you had the chance, Hanna, or at least died the first time I tried to kill you.”

  “You know me. I’m a survivor.”

  “Until now, that was something we had in common. I will miss you, Hanna. You knew how to fuck better than anyone I ever met. Much better than that Khsharayan whore Venus I’ve been stuck babysitting for the last several years. I had really thought you would be my first mate in this new enterprise. So disappointing.”

  With the surprising speed for a man so large that he always exhibited, Arden’s hand shot out and caught Hanna’s shoulder. She found herself dangling in the air in front of the giant man. Her mind spun trying to come up with anything that would help her.

  “Why kill me? I’ll leave you alone. Just let me go.” Hanna knew it was a pathetic plea, but she was willing to try anything at the moment. He had dumped so much information at her, her mind couldn’t find a handle to use to negotiate.

  “I know what you were doing in the café. That didn’t seem like leaving me alone. In fact, you’ve forced the Khsharayan to escalate their plans and may have cost me several billion credits. So you can either die quickly now, or suffer with the rest of humanity under the new Khsharayan Empire. I’m killing you now because I actually like you, Hanna.”

  With that he hurled her against the wall. She crumpled to the ground. An entire galaxy of stars swam before her eyes, but Arden wasn’t done and apparently, no matter what he’d said, had no plan of killing her quickly or easily. He moved toward her, and Hanna used her EXS to shoot out her right foot and connect with the side of Arden’s kneecap.

  Arden screamed incoherently and staggered. Hanna struggled to get up. She couldn’t best Arden in a fight. She had to get away, but the giant was already over her, swinging his planet-sized fists at her in an attempt to remove her head from her body. Hanna instinctively rolled to the side and managed to throw up her arms in a block. But the force of Arden’s blow knocked her forearms into her face. A sickening crunch came from her nose.

  Hanna collapsed back to the ground, but Arden wasn’t done with her yet. He grabbed her and tossed her body at another wall. Hanna’s back hit the wall hard and slid down, sprawling on the ground. She felt the skin on her back scrape off.

  Darkness invaded the edges of her vision. Arden loomed over her, his hand moving toward his belt. For a brief second, she thought he was going to rape her, but then realized he was clearly done playing with her.


  Slowly Arden drew a nasty-looking pistol. He raised the barrel and leveled it at her head. “Good-bye, Hanna Seldon.”

  Chapter 41

  The alley echoed with the blast of a weapon. Arden slumped against the wall. Hanna couldn’t understand what had happened.

  “Hanna! Hanna! Please be okay.”

  Lance crouched down in front of her.

  “Uhh,” Hanna grunted. She tried to form Lance’s name but couldn’t quite make her mouth work.

  “Hanna! You’re alive,” Lance said, gently lifting her up.

  Hanna tried to smile but just managed a bloody grimace.

  “Oh, Hanna. You’re a mess. Here, this should help.” Lance plugged the jacks from his enhancement suit into her open wrist ports. Hanna could immediately feel the effect of the nanobots released from his suit into her system. Her head was clearing quickly. Then Lance set her down gently, and she heard a wet thumping sound. It took a second for her brain to register the sound, and then she realized that Lance was kicking the downed Arden.

  “Is he dead?” she managed to say as the pain decreased.

  Lance grunted and kicked the former pirate captain’s head one final vicious time. “Yes.” Then he gently picked up Hanna and carried her throbbing body in his arms. “We have to get out of here fast.”