Steel Coyote

by Beth Williamson

  Remy stepped toward them. “Come in and tell us what you know.” She held out her hand. “We’re in this together now, like it or not. I reckon it’s best if we all tell what we know.”

  The boy looked at his sister, and a silent communication passed between them. “We ain’t going back, no matter what. I will kill if I have to.”

  The fierce, guttural threat was at odds with the young man’s soft features and flop of curly brown hair. Max had been right. The past haunted these two, enough to make them consider murder to avoid a repeat.

  “If we do this right, nobody has to stay on Haverty. But we can’t do it without you and Morgan.” Remy waited, her hand poised in midair.

  Morgan was the first to move. She stepped toward them, her tiny pixie face more serious than a grown adult. “I won’t give up my knife.”

  Katie smothered a snort while Remy tried to control her own surprise. Where was the girl hiding the knife? She was no bigger than a minute. “I won’t ask you to give up anything.”

  “That’s good, ’cause I ain’t afraid of stabbing no one.” Morgan’s small chin came up, defiant and strong. Who knew what hid beneath the small girl’s innocent exterior?

  Remy patted her pistol. “I prefer a gun myself, but defending yourself isn’t a crime.”

  The young girl nodded. “Just so long as everyone kens my meaning.”

  “I ken.” Max put his hands on his hips. “I was born on Haverty.”

  The twins’ eyes widened.

  “For true?” Mason’s voice had dropped to a whisper.

  “Every goddamn word of it. Now, if you want to stuff this shit down Delmar’s gullet, you’ll help us figure out what’s in these cases.” Max’s techniques were a bit more straightforward, treating them as one of his own, which she supposed they were. “Tell me what you know.”

  Mason walked with more assurance than Remy had seen from him since she first laid eyes on the twins. His shoulders back, chin up, and expression tough, he circled the cases.

  Morgan followed, but she was more hands on, touching the cases with her fingers even as her brother did the same with his gaze, sweeping over every inch of them. Remy stepped back and watched them, noting Max did, too. Katie and Foley looked confused and a little wary.

  “These are for sure biometric locks. You won’t be able to pick them.” Mason glanced at Max. “I saw a man try to force one open and it blew up. Turned him into a bowl of beef stew.”

  The image of a man blowing into small chunks was pretty vivid. How would a boy have seen such a thing? And how had it affected him?

  Max touched the side of one of the cases. “It’s cold. All right, Filch, or are you Pilfer, what do you reckon we do here?” He stared at the boy, his gaze serious, very unlike the lighthearted, flirtatious pilot. This entire situation had brought out what he hid beneath the handsome charm. She was both impressed and concerned.

  To her surprise, the corner of Mason’s mouth kicked up in a small grin. “I’m Filch. I move fast and take what I want.”

  Morgan paused at her brother’s words. “I guess that makes me Pilfer. No one ever sees me.”

  Shock passed over Max’s face and then he threw back his head and laughed. “You two are pains in the ass, but I like you.”

  Mason stepped beside Morgan. “Well?”

  The young lady frowned. “It’s them. Again.” Her eyes shone with what Remy assumed was tears. “They’re trapped.” Her words fell heavy into the air.

  “Who’s trapped?” Remy didn’t want to touch the cases now.

  The young woman turned to Remy. “The new crop. They’re trapped in the cases.”

  Remy’s gut tightened at the bleakness in the girl’s eyes. “New crop of what?”

  “Babies. They bring them in cryostasis before they’re grown, ready to start their lives on Haverty. They use some kind of science magic to make a perfect slave, raise them to serve, and then sell them,” Mason answered before his sister could.

  Remy looked between them, and a certainty, like poison on her tongue, made her swallow hard. “You were them.”

  “Hell’s bells.” Katie finally spoke up. “You were brought there like frozen ice-block slaves? I don’t believe it.”

  “I do.” Foley crossed his arms. “There be great evil in the world.”

  “Delmar?” Max’s voice rasped across Remy’s ears, dark and dangerous.

  Morgan cocked her head and laid her hand flat on the case. “He’s our father.”

  Remy’s mouth dropped open. Only she knew the story of her pilot’s birth and to find two young people who claimed the same sire seemed too much of a coincidence. They had to be lying. It was too farfetched to be anything but a fabrication.

  “I think Filch and Pilfer are telling a tale.” Remy widened her stance and crossed her arms. “The doe-eyed sob story isn’t going to work on me.”

  Max scowled. “It’s plausible.”

  “But not probable. I think there’s something more valuable in these cases, and not frozen babies. The whole thing smacks of a tall tale.” Remy ran her finger along one of the metal seams. “With these locked, there’s no way to check if they’re telling the truth, so I have to believe they’re lying. Ridiculous, loony lies.”

  Morgan threw her shoulders back. “I ain’t lying.”

  “There’s a way to open them.” Mason appeared to be angry.

  “You can’t just pop a biometric lock.” Foley squinted at them, not that he could see very well in the cargo bay. “Ya gotta have the right key, and that’s a person.”

  “No, it’s a person’s makeup. Their blood.” The teenager held up his hand. “If this is coded for Delmar, mine will open them.”

  He looked very certain, but Remy wasn’t convinced. She turned to Katie. “Go get a syringe from the medical kit in the galley.”

  The engineer ran out of the cargo hold. In less than a minute, she was back with the supplies in hand. She looked between Remy and Max then set the kit on the closest case. “Don’t ask me to use the needle. It makes me woozy.”

  “Needles make you woozy?” Remy flipped the case open. “You have your arms up to fluids every day in the engine, but you can’t handle a little piece of metal?”

  Katie shrugged. “I don’t like little pricks.” She smiled innocently and stepped back to stand beside Foley.

  Mason rolled up his sleeve, exposing more muscle than she expected. Remy didn’t know how the boy hid that beneath his clothing. His skin was darkened, perhaps from working in the sun on Haverty, which perhaps meant he wasn’t spending time in someone’s bedroom. These youngsters were a conundrum.

  She opened the package with the syringe and depressed the plunger to release the air within the cylinder. Morgan stood at her elbow, watching with her intense, odd gaze. She was acting like a small mother hen protecting her chick. If Remy knew one thing, the twins were devoted to each other, which spoke to their character. It didn’t, however, alleviate her suspicions.

  She pressed the needle into the crook of the boy’s elbow and withdrew a tiny amount of blood into the syringe, then blotted the spot on his arm with a swatch of cloth. “Now show me what to do with this.”

  Max took the syringe. “I’ll do it.” He flipped the case until the handle side faced him. He felt beneath the metal strip and stopped. With one finger held in place, he lowered the syringe in place and depressed the plunger and then stepped back.

  The six of them stared at the case as though something magical would happen. Long seconds ticked by and still nothing. Remy frowned at the twins.

  “Biometric lock and matching blood, hmm? I think we’re done here.” She turned to leave, satisfied she’d been right, but strangely disappointed.

  A beeping sounded from behind her, followed by whooshing and a snap. She whirled around to find a bluish glow emanating from the case. Everyone formed a half circle around it, their gazes glued to the black case.

  The metal strip had receded into nothing. Remy wondered where it had gone an
d how. The glow pulsed from beneath the seam now revealed by the missing strip. Remy reached for the case, and Max hissed.

  “Don’t touch the fucking thing. It’s probably liquid nitrogen. Might freeze your hands off.”

  She retreated with a scowl, waiting but impatient. The case opened at a snail’s pace, filling the cargo bay with the blue light. Wisps of cold steam snaked out of the case, reaching the floor and winding around their feet. She resisted the urge to move farther back.

  “What in tarnation is that?” Foley’s chin jutted out. “It can’t be good.”

  “Too right, old man.” Max took out his pistols and set them on a crate near Katie. “Don’t hurt yourself.” He stripped off his shirt, revealing that jaw-dropping chest. Remy had to stop herself from touching him, licking him, biting him. The man was distracting at the most inopportune moment.

  “What are you do—”

  The words dried up on her tongue when he wrapped his shirt around his hand and flung the case open. A cloud of blue-tinged vapor burst forth from within. Remy waved her hand to clear the air so she could actually see what was in it. She stepped closer.

  “What is it?” Katie asked from far behind her.

  “Devil’s work is what ’tis,” Foley grumbled, sounding even farther away than the engineer.

  “Shut up, both of you.” Remy stepped up beside Max, waiting for her eyes to adjust and the vapor to disburse. She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until her ears started to hurt.

  Three cylinders lay side by side within, covered with a thick coating of frost. They were eighteen inches long, perhaps twelve inches wide, with metal caps on either end, a glass center, and a digital readout. A red light pulsed every few seconds like a heartbeat. Metal numerical labels adorned each cylinder. These read 3450, 3451, and 3452. Her heart pounded as Max wiped away the frost with his shirt. The material scraped against the frozen cylinder, loud in the cargo bay. The only noise seemed to be her breath and the steady thump of the red lights on the cylinders.

  Remy leaned in closer and squinted. A surprised gust of air whizzed past her lips when she focused on what the case contained. “Holy shit.”

  A tiny, perfect baby lay within the glass.

  Mason held up his arm, revealing his bicep where the tiny numbers 734 were printed. Remy held her hand to her mouth to hold back tears or vomit. She wasn’t sure which.

  “Are all the babies from Delmar?” She couldn’t imagine three thousand children from one father.

  Mason shook his head. “No, not all, but there are at least twenty of us. We were the top stock to pick from.”

  Mason wasn’t only the son of the bastard who ordered babies like he ordered his groceries, but Coddington’s own children were slaves. She wondered how many had escaped, like Max and the twins. And those who weren’t Delmar’s children, the thousands who were sold. The very idea of this wicked, terrible business made her sick.

  The air in the cargo bay crackled with the dark dealings they had revealed.

  How could this place, a distant moon, be such a den of snakes that they’d grow babies to be slaves? And how long had it been going on? She wasn’t one to take on a cause for the greater good, but her ire outmatched her disgust and horror.

  “Fucking hell.”

  “You use that curse a lot. What exactly does it mean?” Morgan’s puzzled expression came into focus beside her.

  “It means we’re going to bring the rain down on Delmar Coddington, Haverty, and that fat son of a bitch, Cooper. It means nobody, fucking nobody, uses me to transport baby slaves or half-grown ones.” She met Max’s gaze. “It means we’re going to shove their dirty, rotten shit down their throats until they choke.”

  “What about the babies?” The young girl looked at the tiny cylinders with pity and infinite sadness.

  “We’ll do our best to save them, but I don’t even know where to start.”

  “I might.” Katie had moved closer, her arms crossed and her face paler than normal. “I can rig up something to keep them alive in the case we opened. Then, we’ll find people who can make them live outside of this monstrosity. Hopefully, they’ll never know what life they were supposed to have.”

  Remy always knew her friend kept secrets, but how she knew people who did fantastical things like defrost babies and make them normal was a surprise. “I thank you for that. These poor wee ones won’t have a chance unless we do something.”

  Max shook the frost off his shirt. “Are you sure you want this? There’s no going back if you take this road.”

  Remy thought about the consequences of what she was about to do, hell, what she’d already done. She’d tried to survive, to keep her head down and pretend nothing had changed when Gunnar died. It had all been a lie, and her self-realization earlier made her decision.

  “I’m sure. This is the right thing to do, and I’ll be damned if I let those assholes ruin my life.”

  “You tell ’em, Cap’n.” Foley stomped one foot. “’Bout time you found those balls you was missing.”

  Max’s brows rose. “You have balls?” he asked Remy.

  “Big, fat, hairy ones.”

  A smile cracked his mouth. “I believe you do.”

  “Will you really save them, Captain?” Morgan slipped her small hand in Remy’s, startling her.

  “I’m damn well going to try.”

  Mason nodded sagely. “I’ll help.”

  “Me, too.” Despite what she’d gone through as a child, Morgan looked innocent.

  Remy turned to Max, waiting for him to agree to her crazy plan, too. He stared at the cylinders. She wouldn’t force him, but she needed him to be with her on Haverty.

  If she were honest with herself, she wanted him there. He was a hell of a pilot, a damn good lover, and he was the first person to yank her out of her self-induced isolation. Max made her feel something, good or bad.

  “We’ll probably all be dead after this.” He slipped his shirt back on, wet patches and all. “But I’d rather go down with my guns blazing than let those fuckers sell one more slave.”

  He took his weapons from where he’d left them and held them at his side. With his black clothing, black hair, and fierce expression, he appeared to be an avenging angel, one who’d fight at her side. Her father would have liked Max. For all his flirtatious charm and his ridiculous behavior, he was a good man. She wouldn’t admit this under torture, but she was glad he’d be beside her for this battle. It was going to be bloody.

  Remy looked at all of them, her small but determined army. It was a motley crew, to be sure, but they were smart, driven, and they had guts.

  “Katie, get on the comm and do what you need to do to get the babies in the open case safe. If we’re lucky, they won’t be hurt from us breaking into it. Filch and Pilfer, you get lessons in how to use a weapon later. For now, get some rest. Foley, fix the damn water purifier now. It’s still trickling like an old man’s piss.” She turned to Max. “Let’s get to Haverty as fast as we can. If we get there early, we might surprise them.”

  Everyone disbursed, leaving Remy and Max alone in the cargo bay. He glanced at the open case and then back at her.

  “They likely had a sensor on that and know we opened it.”

  She grimaced. “I figured as much, but it had to be done.”

  “Coddington has done too much to not be called to task for it. I’m glad you decided to take him on.” That heart-stopping grin spread across his handsome face. “We’ll use the hyperdrive as much as we can. Katie will need to keep an eye on the engine so we don’t cause damage.”

  “She knows, but right now she will need to take care of these little innocents.” Remy resisted the urge to touch the cylinders. She wanted to do something for the children but that wasn’t it and she knew it. For now, she would stand guard until Katie came back. “You should get up to the bridge and get ready. As soon as we get these babes secured, we’ll hit hyperdrive and ram this ship right up their asses.”

  Max chuckled an
d moved to stand in front of her. He was barely an inch from her body; the heat from his skin sent a shiver up and down hers.

  “You’re a helluva captain, but you’re an even more incredible woman.” He took her chin in his hand and lowered his mouth to hers. His lips were soft but firm, pressing against hers briefly. He pulled back and smiled. “Let’s kick some ass.”

  Remy felt something inside her move, sliding forward until the floor beneath her feet shifted. Her heart thumped once, hard. She stared into his eyes and recognized she was falling in love with him.

  Fucking hell.

  Chapter Seven

  Max used the hyperdrive as much as he dared. He didn’t know how far to push the ship. It was the fastest turtle he’d ever seen, but that didn’t mean it had no limits. Katie seemed to know what she was doing with the engine, but everything had a breaking point.

  Even him.

  Foolish man that he was, he was falling for Remington Hawthorne. She wanted nothing to do with him. After he’d bedded her once, she completely ignored him or, rather, treated him as though he was perhaps the lowliest member of her crew, not the man who had been in her bed. Then he’d gone and kissed her in the cargo bay.

  He couldn’t help himself. She’d taken on a battle she was sure to lose, looking like the Valkyrie warrior he’d met in the bar. Remy was magnificent, passionate, and inspiring. He was proud of her, and at the same time, he wanted to bury himself inside her. It was an awkward, idiotic position to be in, but he was there just the same.

  Max had had his fair share of relationships with women, or at least physical ones. He was out of his element with Remy, and that made him unwilling to make an ass of himself. She made it clear he was a pilot, the man who’d help her achieve her goal of sticking it to Delmar Coddington. It was a goal he firmly supported and damn if he didn’t get hard watching her fierce speech the day before in the cargo bay.

  Yet now he was caught between doing what he wanted and doing what he should. And he goddamn well hated it.

  It took him hours to remember he’d turned off Saint. With one click, the hologram appeared on the console.