Galactic Blues - Box Set Episodes 1-3: A Newton's Gate Space Opera Adventure (Galactic Blues Box Set)

by C. J. Clemens

  “Lieutenant?” Bechet had asked as he approached, searching for her name.

  “Shaw,” she had responded.

  “I just want the girl. Nobody else needs to get hurt here,” he had said.

  A total lie.

  When she’d threatened to cut the girl’s throat, he raised his rifle and shot her arm poised with the blade. His blast had ripped through the flesh and bone of the appendage—something the medics explained later. At the time, she had lost consciousness. The blast had also caught her in the chest but hadn’t penetrated the armor plating. If it had, she would have been dead.

  Now, all she had to show for it was a robotic arm and a very different career.

  “Commander, I’m detecting some damage around their communications array,” Officer Zain said from his station at the far corner of the bridge.

  Zain pointed to the monitor offering a clear scan of their quarry. The R.L. Johnson had sustained considerable damage but still looked fairly intact.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Shaw said in the cool voice she reserved for underlings.

  As Zain’s chiseled face fell, Shaw remembered back to when she had been an eager officer, keen to prove herself. She had been on the fast track to management level, having aided in taking down half a dozen pirate crews—until she had to spend three months in rehab getting used to her new arm. That time had cost her.

  She would make Bechet pay the toll.

  On her port and starboard displays, the two support ships that Larker had sent to chaperone her were gamely holding their positions. She had strongly objected to their being included, especially the Kapriano, as she knew Captain Langston hated Bechet almost as much as she did—some pitiful argument over Langston’s wife. But she wanted her revenge. No pirate with a pathetic chip on his shoulder would deprive her of the pleasure that was to be hers and hers alone.

  “Commander, is it true they have half a billion credits’ worth of Teez on board?” Officer Jibs asked, a glint of dollar signs flashing across his eyes.

  And there it was—the real reason Larker had sent the two pirate ships. No doubt her boss trusted that her hatred for Bechet would see the captain dead, but half a billion was an awful lot of money. Larker’s trust clearly didn’t extend to her coming home with the goods.

  Guess he isn’t a fool after all.

  “That’s right, Jibs. Fifty thousand chips, worth half a billion credits.”

  Jibs wasn’t the sort to rise more than two ranks in the UNSF hierarchy during his next sixty years of service. A total dullard by some people’s reckoning. But at least he wouldn’t have the imagination or the guts to double-cross her.

  “What about these two?” Zain asked. He was an altogether more promising officer, if irritating at times, and someone she’d have to watch.

  “Once we have confirmation that Bechet is dead and we have the cargo, we kill all of them,” Shaw said.

  “And Larker Max?” Jibs exchanged a nervous glance with Zain.

  Shaw examined her silver prosthetic fingers and let a long and meaningful silence draw out before answering. “To hell with him.”

  The two officers failed to suppress their smiles—the kind of greedy smirks that only dreams of infinite wealth could bring. The carrot was firmly in place. There wouldn’t be any trouble from these two while she conducted her mission.

  Of course, she knew her underlings had discussed this possibility between themselves on the trip out, and no doubt well before that point. They were aware of her reputation. She had been taking pirate payoffs for years now, and that information had leaked out. She had done some unscrupulous, even downright villainous deeds, and officers in desperate need of extra cash—or extra adventure—caught on pretty quickly.

  Hell, she might as well truly be a pirate.

  Pirates, after all, had a very simple code: kill or be killed. And always exact revenge when it’s deserved.

  Chapter 5

  DREYLA

  Dreyla and Tosh had reached the cargo bay. So far, the old doctor was cooperating, if only with a bewildered damned-if-I-don’t kind of vibe. Her plan was crazy as all hell, Remy was probably imploding with frustration up there on the bridge, but the adrenaline pumping through her veins kept her limbs moving on course. Stopping to explain would take too long, not that it would help any. Remy would just say no. The captain had had enough insubordination to deal with today.

  She dragged Tosh by the arm over to Abrams’ lifeless form sprawled in the center of the bay.

  “Whoa, slow down, girl.” Tosh raised his palms and patted the air. “You want to what?”

  “Pack a hundred Teez chips into him… and this.” Dreyla held up a device that was about the size of half a loaf of bread.

  A streak of blood trickled from Abrams’ face onto the deck. She felt nothing for the dead man. He deserved it. He was a prop in her plan now, nothing more.

  Tosh tugged the device from her and twisted it in his hands. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “A small dark matter reactor wired to a short-range receiver.”

  She knelt onto the deck and pulled Abrams’ shirt open, exposing his flabby stomach. Already the sight of his pallid skin, with its smattering of dark hair down the center, disgusted her.

  She looked up. Tosh’s eyes were wide and fixated on her face.

  “We need to plant all of this in his gut and then dress him again,” she explained.

  “You’re turning Abrams into a bomb?” Tosh’s voice was faint. “This is your plan?”

  She grimaced. “Come on, Doc. We ain’t got time for this. He’s dead. You look like a med student at his first dissection. Besides, I got the idea from you.”

  “That’ll teach me to think out loud.” Tosh shook his head and hunkered down on the other side of the body, his gaze darting between the dark matter reactor and the man’s white stomach, as if calculating how best to fit Exhibit A into Exhibit B.

  Dreyla unsheathed her knife, flipped it over, and offered it to him. She nearly sagged with relief as he pulled it from her fingers.

  “Wait ’til Remy hears about this,” Tosh growled.

  “Reckon if I keep him alive, he won’t mind.”

  Hell, Abrams had been a mutineer, so the captain wouldn’t mind if she just released the body out into space and used it for target practice with the Jay’s rear guns.

  Tosh held her gaze. “OK, but just a warning, Abrams always ate like a pig. No telling what’s gonna pour out when we remove his guts.”

  “Hey, we all been eating the same protein bars. How weird can it get?” Still, she gagged a little at the thought.

  “Well, it ain’t gonna be rainbows, missy.”

  Tosh gave her a last warning look before positioning the knife at Abrams’ sternum and sliding it down the torso in a long incision. The first few seconds were okay. The thin dark red line was precise, almost artistic.

  But she wasn’t prepared for the stench that followed, and the horrifying way the dead man’s gray, balloon-like innards spilled slickly to the floor as Tosh pulled them from the corpse. She shrank back, covering her lower face with her arm, afraid to swallow. She fought her instinct to back the hell off and find a distant corner to puke in. On a distant ship. In a distant galaxy. Maybe disgusting crap like this explained why Tosh was perpetually stoned.

  “Why don’t you get the device rigged up to the chips? I got this,” Tosh said in a gentle voice.

  Dreyla nodded, and stole another look at the body, morbid fascination still rooting her to the spot.

  She rose shakily and moved as far away as she could get in the cargo bay, but it didn’t feel far enough. Swallowing hard, she hooked the Teez chips up to the dark matter reactor and tried to ignore the squishy, splashy sounds coming from the center of the room. Each splash made more of the blood drain from her face. Each splatter sent another pang of queasiness from her stomach to her throat. They weren’t sounds she wanted to associate with the human body… even a piece of scum like Abrams.

&
nbsp; Dreyla soldiered on, swallowing bile, thanking her lucky stars she’d never opted to study medicine. Not that she’d had the choice, having been raised in the slaver colony on Dihous Four. Never knowing her parents, she had only left that highly illegal hellhole when she’d been sold to the mining outfit on Kofax Prime, one of the largest rocks in the Belt.

  She always laughed whenever someone mentioned how slavery had been abolished on Earth two centuries ago. In truth, some UNSF officials knew about the slaver operations, but they’d just chosen or been paid to look the other way. Humanity still sucked as bad as it ever had.

  “I’m all done, Drey,” Tosh announced some minutes later, just as she’d finished with the Teez chips.

  She returned to the bloody mess on the cargo bay floor. Abrams’ torso had been hollowed out, leaving a liquid hole where his guts should’ve been. She had witnessed men being killed, and even some pretty gross spectacles, like an arm being blown off someone… but the deck resembled one of those old horror films Remy used to watch with her. The ones where zombies ate people alive.

  He’s dead, she told herself.

  Tosh’s face creased with grandfatherly concern.

  “We don’t need to sew the body back up,” she said quickly. “We just need enough room to get an enviro suit on him.”

  Since the suits were skintight, a giant handmade bomb wouldn’t fit unless it was inside the body. And the suit was key to her plan. She handed Tosh the reactor, but hung on to the converter lines tied into each individual chip.

  “Hate to be pedantic, but isn’t that enough Teez to blow up… well, all of us?” Tosh asked.

  “Trust me,” Dreyla said.

  She winced in ridiculous, empathetic pain as Tosh adjusted the device in Abrams’ cavity, but she held it together enough to hand him the chips and the lines, all still attached to the reactor. Hopefully, the depravity of this plan would prevent anyone from seeing through it.

  “The reactor isn’t strong enough to convert enough energy to blow us all up,” Dreyla explained. “I hope.”

  Tosh halted his stuffing. “You… hope?”

  “I-it’ll work. We’ll be OK. Now let’s get the enviro suit on him and, uh, grab one of the shielded helmets.”

  Tosh raised a wiry eyebrow.

  “I don’t want them to see his face,” she explained.

  “Oh, yes, that gutted expression of his,” Tosh murmured. “Off-putting, isn’t it?”

  Dreyla couldn’t even manage a smile. Her head spun with the sheer number of things that could go wrong. That command blade had every kind of sensor and camera on board; they would be checking everything.

  Well, maybe not absolutely everything. It was their only hope.

  “So, we put him in the airlock with the Teez shipment and release it all?”

  Tosh’s deadpan tone didn’t give any hints as to his assessment of their chances, and that was fine with her. She didn’t want to know. Even if it was stupid and suicidal, it was better than doing nothing. Of course, that was precisely what she’d asked Remy to do—nothing. Any second now, he’d be crashing in here, demanding an explanation.

  She looked up at Tosh and let her gaze linger on his face, which made him cock his head at her curiously.

  “What?” he asked. “You stealing my ideas again, girl? This time, I didn’t say nuthin’.”

  “You need a hat,” Dreyla said.

  Tosh rolled his eyes, his fingers grappling the pocket where he kept his stash of dope. “I don’t dare ask what for.”

  Chapter 6

  REMY

  Remy stood over the nav station, squeezing and flexing his fingers. If they ever got out of this alive, he was going to kill that girl. His instincts screamed at him to power up and run. Between his flying skills and Dreyla’s navigation prowess, they’d have a fifty-fifty chance. But the nav station still showed the main engines doing a big, fat load of nothing.

  Why had she asked him to stall? And why the hell had he agreed? Whatever she’d planned, it’d better happen soon. Those three ships were creeping closer, and they didn’t look any friendlier the nearer they got. He didn’t want them to reach umbilical range.

  A commotion from the corridor made him turn.

  Dreyla was dragging Tosh onto the bridge. But this was a Tosh that Remy had never seen before. He had two large blades strapped to his chest. He carried a double-barreled blaster as if he knew how to use it. His face and clothes were drenched in blood. And strangest of all, perched on top of his head, was a black pork pie hat with a red feather.

  Remy pointed at it. “Hey, that’s my hat.”

  “Remy, meet the Jay’s new captain,” Dreyla said with a smirk.

  Tosh gave a goofy wave. “Sorry about the hat, Captain.”

  Another warning crackled through the comms. This time accompanied by a large plasma beam blasted across the Jay’s bow.

  Remy gazed down at the nav console, noting the encroaching enemy ships on the display, then glanced back at Dreyla, one eyebrow cocked quizzically.

  Dreyla stepped toward her station and pushed him aside. “Captain, there’s no time to explain, but if this is gonna work, you need to keep outta sight.” She slid into her seat and brought up the display for the ship’s main reactor and a secondary reactor.

  The steel-like urgency of her tone prompted him to move his ass over to Newman’s former station, just as Tosh stepped up to his.

  Remy and Dreyla had pulled a lot of jobs together, and he’d taught the girl everything he knew about being a pirate. He’d shown her that a job didn’t always mean attack and conquer. If at all possible, he preferred doing it nonviolently, conning his way in and out of sticky situations. He wasn’t afraid to fight, but stealing and fleeing often guaranteed a better chance of keeping him and his crew from getting shot up.

  Needless to say, Larker Max preferred the old-fashioned way: kill and take what you want. From the look of the situation, and whatever scheme Drey had set up, it seemed as though she was following in Remy’s footsteps: con and flee.

  Tosh activated the video and audio comms to respond to Commander Shaw. Remy chuckled inwardly, imagining how her temper was heating to white-dwarf levels at being made to wait. If the situation weren’t so life-and-death, he might actually be enjoying this.

  “Who the hell are you?” Shaw snapped.

  “I’m Captain… Captain Robert Tosh,” the old man said amicably.

  “And who made you captain?” Shaw narrowed her green eyes to slits. “That weasel Bechet?”

  “You did, when one of your mutineers killed him a few minutes ago.” Tosh had continued his amiable tone with a remarkable poise that Remy could only admire.

  “Killed him? Abrams and Joss killed Bechet, is that what you’re telling me?” Her greed for the truth made her voice all kinds of screechy.

  “We’ve been fighting them for the last twenty minutes. After Abrams knocked out our power, Captain tracked him to the cargo bay. Killed the scum.” As Tosh continued to spin his tale, a note of cold menace entered his tone. “But Joss, the coward, managed to slip away for a while, set a trap, and shoot Captain Bechet in the back.”

  “Where’s Joss then?” Shaw asked. “Why hasn’t he contacted me?”

  “Because, Commander, I rammed a twelve-inch blade through his throat.”

  Remy examined Tosh’s menacing face. The old man’s craggy features looked downright livid, an emotion the captain had never actually seen in him. Given his aging, rockstar-like fitness, sinewy muscles, and pointed expression, someone could actually mistake him for a fierce pirate.

  “You killed him?” Shaw’s delicate nose scrunched with incredulity, but a new understanding dawned in her eyes.

  “And now I am captain of this ship.” Tosh straightened his posture against the captain’s seat with a natural ease that made Remy smile.

  “Fine,” Shaw snapped. She was clearly rankled at having been robbed of the pleasure of killing him herself. Of course, she might still get that opportu
nity. She glared at Tosh. “Prepare to be boarded.”

  “I don’t think so,” Tosh said, and before she could argue, he added, “I get that you wanted the man dead. And I get that you want the cargo. I’m prepared to give you both, but after that, we’ll be on our way.”

  There was a heavy silence. It reminded Remy that only the ambience control system was running, not their engines.

  “No.” Shaw’s voice hardened to its full, vicious power. “We will board you, take the cargo, and then decide whether or not we wish to let you live.”

  Her trademark, closed-lipped smile appeared—one that turned weaker men to quivering idiots. But Tosh was no such man.

  “Commander,” Tosh said, with a hint of forbearance. “I’m prepared to scuttle this ship—an action that will leave your boss, Larker Max, upset. Some might say very upset.”

  Remy watched as another image popped up alongside Shaw’s. Langston’s scrawny face.

  “Where’s the body?” Captain Langston yelled.

  “Langston, I told you to keep off the comms,” Shaw hissed.

  Langston and Shaw started arguing. It was clear the commander’s patience was wearing thin with the pirate. After a few sparring rounds, she ordered one of her officers to block all communications coming from the Kapriano. Diplomacy never had been her strong suit.

  “As much of a pain in the ass as he is, Langston does have a point,” Shaw announced with a toss of her blonde head. “I want to see Bechet’s body.”

  “We will send it out through the airlock, along with the shipment of Teez. Your guys can pick both up and we’ll all be on our way,” Tosh said, all cooperation personified.

  Remy glanced toward the nav station and saw a smile creep across Dreyla’s face.

  Shaw pressed her own face closer to the camera. “When I see his dead body, we will discuss what the future of the R.L. Johnson is. Then and only then.”