Keera stepped out of the airlock, closed the inner door, and looked at Eleni one last time before hitting the outer door’s airlock button.
“Goodbye, Eleni. I’ll take care of Tanelis; I promise you.”
Keera ran back to the cargo bay where the fighting had occurred and checked the bodies strewn about the floor. She needed a way off the transport ship without losing her license. She searched the bodies, and on the last one, she found a starship key.
She yanked it out of the pocket and made her way to the cargo bay. Three craft were available; two luxurious liners and a decrepit old merc ship. She knew very well which one she had the key for, but, right now, all that mattered was that the bucket of bolts got her to Pyros III. She would be able to get Eleni’s ship from there.
She lost no time, boarded the ship, and familiarized herself with the controls before running a pre-flight check and making sure to disable any beacon that could be transmitting. Once off the transport ship and into the darkness of space, she set a course for Pyros III and prayed the crumbly old ship wouldn’t explode when she activated its hyperspace engines.
Once inside a hyperspace corridor, Keera ransacked the entire ship and gathered everything she felt would be of use. Grenades, some blasters, and more. She didn’t find anything of real value, but from the looks of the ship as well as the men who had attacked them back on board the transport, she wasn’t surprised.
After exploring the ship, Keera’s body was heavy, and she realized she was exhausted. Having been on the run for days meant she only was able to get very short bursts of uneasy sleep. She eventually found a bunk bed to crash onto and get some much-needed rest.
Before letting her mind go dark, she looked at Tanelis’ holo-picture one more time. This was a way for Keera not to lose sight of what she needed to do. While she followed her heart in doing what she knew was right, her brain was constantly teasing her just to get whatever she could out of Eleni’s hidden stash and get on with her life.
Most bounty hunters worked in a calculating, cold manner; detaching themselves from their feelings and blocking out emotion. She couldn’t do that. Not anymore. Once upon a time, perhaps, and certainly after her first kill warrant turned personal vendetta. But years later, her humanity had caught up with her again.
She would have to seriously reevaluate where her life would go from here on out. But right now a veil of darkness cast over her mind and she fell into the welcoming arms of Morpheus.
The ship rocked, sending Keera crashing down from her bunk bed where she hit her head against the rusty metallic wall.
“What the hell!” she exclaimed. “Where am I?”
It took a few seconds for Keera’s mind to jump-start back to reality and for her to remember where she was. She must have slept a long time because she felt foggy and had trouble coming back to the present.
The ship rocked once more, and that did the trick to clear her head. She ran to the cockpit, sat down, and wiped some viscous liquid from her forehead.
Blood. She must have cut her forehead when she fell out of bed. She hadn’t felt much pain, but from the quantity of blood now present on her hand, she could easily surmise that the cut had been relatively deep.
While she would probably need to patch up the wound, right now the number of alarms and red LEDs lighting up the ship’s old navigational computer told her that she had bigger fish to fry.
She brought up radar information only to see two smaller craft on her six, pounding her ship’s weak-ass shields to oblivion.
She went evasive and turned about to face her assailants. Their digital signatures were unreadable, which told her that she was dealing with either some pirates or perhaps the DT consortium itself.
She opened a channel to the enemy ships.
“Stop firing at once if you intend to live, and identify yourself. This is your first and last warning.”
But the ships kept firing. She used complex evasive patterns and dodged the ships’ incoming fire, all while letting the shields recharge from the nearly depleted state they were in when she arrived at the cockpit.
“Oh, it’s like that,” she exclaimed. “Very well, you asked for it.”
She brought weapons online and took an inventory of the ship’s offensive capabilities. Not in her entire life had she flown such an underpowered, rusty piece of crap, but it mattered not, she had to make it work.
A quick hack of the system’s power distribution allowed her to transfer power from life support, inertial dampeners, and some secondary systems. She injected all the extra power into the measly dual laser cannons. These were old generation cannons; their power output was barely enough to take out the shields on any of the ships currently firing. But with the extra power injected into them, and some fancy flying, there was hope.
Keera swiped more blood from her forehead with the back of her hand. She strapped on an old leathery seatbelt and buckled herself in. With part of the inertial dampeners down, she would feel the Gs and could be easily thrown out of her seat, something she had to avoid. The belt didn’t inspire much confidence though; it looked like it could snap at any moment.
She spun the ship to avoid more incoming fire and repositioned herself behind one of the enemy ships. This maneuver bought her a little breathing room and her ship’s shields were back to seventy-five percent.
She opened fire with her lasers and hit the enemy ship multiple times, only to see a ten percent drop on her instruments. It would take forever to get them down and the second ship was already acquiring a lock on her. She didn’t have forever. She barely had minutes, in fact. She’d have to get creative.
She pushed the throttles to maximum, reducing the distance between her and the ship she was still showering with weak-ass laser fire. She keyed in a few commands on the old school touch-panel screens and wrote on-the-fly macros allowing her to change the firing rate and power distribution of her measly weaponry.
The second ship had also accelerated to compensate and was now entering firing range. Soon, her ship’s instrument panel wailed to inform her of incoming fire.
“Let’s try something crazy.”
She activated her macro for super rapid fire. In this mode, her lasers would fire ten times faster than usual, but deliver ten times less destructive power. They would, however, drain the enemy shields faster. The ship had entered evasive action, but there was no shaking Keera now that she was locked in and determined to blow it to smithereens one way or another.
The more her prey tried to go evasive, the closer she got, which helped her own evasiveness, and the ship targeting her only managed to score the odd lucky hit, which didn’t do much damage to her continually recharging shields.
This gave her an idea, though. She located one of the engine coolant pumps and began venting some behind her ship. She then transferred additional power to the weapons from the shields. Once the ship following her hit part of the coolant, it would ignite and appear as hull damage from the outside.
A smart pilot would double-check that data with its sensors, but from the way these bozos were flying, they were anything but smart. It was time to send them to meet their maker. Keera had to adjust her flight path and slow her evasive action so the pursuing ship could get a couple of hits off her aft shields, which was crucial to her plan. Upon the third hit, she released smoke from one of her engines while pounding the ship in front of her with more and more laser fire. Its aft shields were almost entirely gone.
Her instrument lit up red, and an alarm wailed to inform her of a double missile lock.
“Right on time. Now, let’s have some fun, shall we,” she smirked.
A handful of seconds later, the pursuing ship launched two missiles her way, almost precisely in sync with her prey’s shields going down. She smiled as she redirected every ounce of power to her engines and pushed the throttle beyond the ship’s safety limits.
With two missiles coming up her tail pipe, she soared forward, ignoring the ship’s structural integrity moani
ng and multiple warnings blinking on the instruments. She switched her laser from rapid fire to maximum power and sent two supercharged laser shots that took out one of the ship’s engines upon impact. It slowed down considerably. She spun her ship and passed in front of the enemy ship missing it by only a couple of feet.
At that moment, she brought her ship’s nose back up and aligned herself perfectly with the ship that saw the move as an opportunity to bring her down. Deadly mistake, as it never saw the twin missiles destined for her as they tore the enemy ship to pieces, accompanied by a bright explosion.
“One down!” she cheered.
Keera killed the engines and spun her ship on its vertical axis. She locked the only two missiles at her disposal onto the pursuing ship that was now on a collision course with hers. Luckily, she had more than enough speed and momentum to make her next kill and take her time doing it.
Laser fire impacted her frontal shields, and the second ship emerged from the dying flames and smoke caused by the first ship’s destruction as Keera sent her missiles away.
She then immediately diverted every ounce of juice to only two systems: lasers and frontal shields. She redirected so much power, in fact, that even the lights in the cockpit were reduced to a soft flicker. She timed her shot and sent two supercharged laser shots toward the enemy ship at the exact millisecond her missiles hit the ship’s shields.
While neither her lasers nor missiles had the ability to bring that ship down, a perfectly timed impact of both, however, had an exponential result.
“Die, motherfucker!”
The enemy fighter exploded into a million pieces.
Keera patted the ship’s console. “You may be a piece of junk, but you still have some life in you; thank you for not blowing up in my face.”
She checked her star map positioning, which showed she was only a couple of hours at sub-light speeds from Pyros III. Her navigational logs showed that a solar flare had taken her ship out of hyperspace and the remnant activity made it too dangerous to try another jump.
She entered the coordinates and let the computer fly the ship while she assessed the ship’s damage. They were minimal, and unless she had another unfortunate encounter, it would bring her to where she needed to be.
Her next stop was to medical where she patched up her still gushing wound.
Landing the ship and finding a rental hoverbike had been relatively easy. It had cost Keera the better part of the minimal credits she had left, and she hoped Eleni’s stash and ship were real; otherwise, she might be forced to leave Pyros III with that junk of a ship that had gotten her there. Not that she would necessarily mind that, if push came to shove, but the ship’s engine ran on purified, military-grade quadrinium and that stuff was way more expensive than it ought to be.
Most ships in the galaxy were now running on raw quadrinium. The engines themselves were designed to use the quadrinium and discard the impurities. But older ships still required fuel with a ninety-nine plus purity or their engines would stall, or worse, overload.
A strong wind blew through Keera’s hair as she had opted to skip wearing a helmet on her hoverbike trip to Tanelis’ last known coordinates. Speed limits were also something Keera decided to blatantly ignore.
The view of Zorga, Pyros III’s northern hemisphere capital, was breathtaking at this time of day, with both suns setting behind the tall, crystal-based skyscrapers. If Keera weren’t worried about getting Eleni’s daughter before the deadline, she would surely stop and take holo-pictures of the view.
The setting suns’ reflecting off the thousands of flying vehicles all over the city made the crystal-looking megalopolis appear like sparkling gold, giving it both an eerie and surreal quality.
Twenty minutes later, Keera arrived at her destination and parked her hoverbike by the side of the tall hotel. She took the elevator to the seventieth floor and looked for Room 7034.
She realized something was wrong when she knocked on the door, and the door pushed open on its own. She grabbed her blaster and burst into the room. On the floor lay a dying man.
Keera secured the area, aiming her gun as she rotated around, making sure there wasn’t anybody ready to ambush her. Once satisfied nobody was in the room, she sat next to the man.
“What happened?” she asked. “Where’s Tanelis?”
“They took her. Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of her mother,” said Keera with a twitch.
“I did everything I could to protect her. Please, help me.”
“I will; how do I find her?”
“My left pocket...tracker. Help...”
Keera took a scanner out of her pocket, set it to perform a medical scan, and checked the man. The overlaid holo-scan showed more red areas on his body than it should for someone still breathing. The man was bleeding internally in multiple places. The prognosis was imminent death.
“Hang on; I’ll get hel—”
But the man was already gone. She grabbed the tracker from his pocket and located Tanelis’ position. She was moving fast, most likely inside a flying car, by the looks of it. They had about a five-minute head start on her, so she needed to act now.
Keera delicately closed the dead man’s eyelids and left the room, running.
Soon, she was on her hoverbike, pushing it beyond safety limits in the middle of heavy traffic. Flying cars, smaller craft, and other vehicles were lines of blurry colors.
I have to get that girl back to her father; if it’s the last thing that I do.
She had magnetically attached the tracker next to the hoverbike’s holo-display, and it began to beep faster, indicating she was approaching her target. She identified that the signal came from a matte black luxurious flying car about three hundred feet in front of her bike.
Keera was only a few seconds away from the target car when it changed lanes quickly.
Could they have detected my approach?
She stayed in her lane and adjusted her speed to not overcome the car. She needed to approach and not be detected, if that was still an option at this point. After a minute, she slowly made her way into the same lane, trying to not attract any attention to herself.
She was only a few yards away from the car when she made her move; she set the bike on autopilot and then climbed onto the seat, gaining some height and moving slightly forward toward the back position of the car. Keera took a deep breath before jumping off the bike.
Blustery winds blew her upward as she tried descending in a free fall toward the car. She crashed on the trunk of the vehicle with less grace than she had hoped but managed to secure herself by grabbing the sides of the car.
Before she could reach her blaster, the car turned upside down and threw Keera off of the vehicle where she floated in the air.
Her heart went from agitated to a panic galloping pace in a split second. She had to find a vehicle to grab, or she’d fall to her death. The first car she tried to latch onto was just out of reach, and all she achieved was to get her hand brutally thrown to the side, putting her into a spin.
Crap! This shit isn’t happening!
Before she could look around to find her bearings, she was swooped up and brutally landed on the empty backseat of a convertible, pink-colored car.
“Are you insane?” shouted the driver, a humanoid with orange-colored skin and a tribal tattoo on his hairless skull. “You’re lucky I saw you fall.”
Keera took a long breath of relief before climbing forward to the passenger seat.
“Thank you for your help, but I’m going to have to ask for more.”
“Oh no; I’m already late for an appointment; just be happy you didn’t fall to your death, and, in the future, I suggest that you—”
Keera grabbed her blaster and looked at the driver.
“I don’t want to sound ungrateful here, but you see that car,” said Keera pointing to the black car that was accelerating and getting away. “There’s a little seven-year-old girl that’s been kidnapped in that car, and
I need to get her back to her dad. Do you have children?”
The man looked at Keera intensely. “I have two daughters.”
“Ok, then let me ask you this: if that was your daughter in there, what would you do?”
“Anything I could.”
Keera pointed to the car with her blaster. “I need you to get me under the car; can you do that for me…” Keera paused.
“Jackson, my name is Jackson.”
“Nice to meet you, Jackson; I’m Keera. Now, about that car.”
“I’m going to regret this. I would tell you to strap in, but something tells me you’re not going to.” Keera smiled and did an infrared scan of the car and saw a youngling’s heat signature inside the trunk of the black vehicle.
“Just get your hood under the trunk of that car and let me do the rest.”
“Look, you clearly have a death wish, and I’m not going to argue, but who the hell are you? Police?”
“Not exactly. And right now is not the time for chit chat, wouldn’t you agree?”
Jackson nodded as he brought his car closer to Keera’s target.
“A little closer,” pleaded Keera as she climbed out of her seat and jumped onto Jackson’s hood.
“You’re one crazy lady!”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, thank you.”
Keera positioned herself under the black car; she grabbed her nano-blade and looked straight into Jackson’s eyes. She could see the fear in them.
“Just keep steady, and be ready to get us out of here at a moment’s notice. Understood?”
She could tell Jackson was too scared to reply with words, but he nodded vigorously.
Keera grabbed a sonic grenade, activated a six-second timer on it, and stuck the cylindrical explosive device between her teeth.
Here goes nothing.
In a swift but fluid motion, she carved a large oval-shaped, unclosed hole through the bottom of the car. She sheathed her nano-blade, grabbed her blaster, and shot the bottom of the trunk. The shot made the oval carving swivel, and a young body rolled and fell from the car.
Universe in Flames – Ultimate 10 Book Box Set: An Epic Space Opera Adventure Page 86
