Salvage Conquest

by Chris Kennedy

Cinti began unsnapping my harness.

  “Wha—” I cocked my head at her. “What are you doing?”

  “We have to get out of the exposure suits,” she replied. “Then we’ll have to snap into the harness together for the ejection.”

  “I’m not sure there’s enough room to get out of the suits,” I replied. I knew for certain I couldn’t bend over, which was going to make it impossible to get my feet out of the boots.

  “We’ll help each other. If we don’t get them off, they will probably drag us down and drown us when we get into the water.”

  That applied an impetus I hadn’t thought of, and I began stripping with a vigor I hadn’t had previously. Which, of course, conflicted with everything Cinti was trying to do and hindered both of us.

  “Stop!” she finally exclaimed. “The only way this is going to work is if you take off mine, and I take off yours.”

  Stripping off her suit took me back to the new thoughts and sensations I’d had earlier about Cinti, and caused several involuntary reactions on my body. While I was pretty sure she hadn’t noticed them—yet—there would be no hiding one of them when she stripped off my suit.

  “That’s fine,” I said as I worked her boots off. “There no time to do mine. I’ll take it off in the water where there’s more room.” The sky was starting to get blue again, so it wasn’t a total lie.

  “Don’t be stupid.” She started stripping my suit off. I closed my eyes as she got it over my hips and tried to think of happy thoughts.

  The suit got stuck, and she made an exasperated noise, followed by an intake of breath as she realized what it was caught on. She was a trooper, though, and finished peeling off the suit as if it was something she did every day…which caused me to wonder if it was something she did every day. I didn’t think she had extra time in her day to go out on dates with other boys…but she’d had extra time to find sub-mission 21-C, so who knew what she did when I wasn’t around?

  By the time I worked my thoughts around to the logical conclusion—she didn’t have time to date—she had my suit off and was working herself behind me in the mech.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “We have to be in the harness together,” she replied, “and it will probably work better if I’m behind you rather than in front. For reasons.”

  She didn’t say anymore, for which I was greatly happy. The blush that had enveloped my face because of what she’d said so far had already turned my face bright red, and the temperature seemed to have risen in the mech several degrees. Maybe that was because the environmental systems couldn’t keep up with the atmospheric heating of re-entry, but I’m pretty sure it was my face doing it. I could feel embarrassment flowing off me in waves.

  I shuffled as far forward as I could, and she slid in behind me, causing my body to react all over again. She was right; it was a good thing she was behind me.

  Getting strapped in was a lot more difficult with a second person in the cockpit, but we managed it. The only thing we had going for us was that we were both still young and not full-sized adults, or I don’t think we could have managed it.

  “What does the counter say?” she asked as she—finally—snapped the last latch closed.

  “Thirty-seven seconds,” I replied. “What happens then?”

  “End game.”

  “Um…could you please put that a different way that doesn’t sound like we’re going to die?”

  “Okay, how about, ‘Final maneuvers?’”

  “Better,” I replied as the counter went through 27 seconds. “Could you be a little more descriptive?”

  “Sure. The rocket motors are going to fire. When they run out of fuel, we’re going to eject. We may get a swing in the parachute; we may not. Either way, we’re going to hit the water really, really hard.”

  Twelve seconds.

  “And then we swim to the island?”

  “And then we swim to the island,” she agreed. “Oh,” she added after a couple of seconds, “don’t forget—”

  Whatever she said next was drowned out by the rockets firing at full burn. I alternately watched the fuel tank gauge—I could actually see it moving—and the water coming up to meet us. There was no way we were stopping in time. I had just enough time to wonder if Cinti had lied to make me feel good—knowing we were going to go splat—then the fuel gauge hit zero, and we departed the mech in a blast of fire and smoke.

  The ejection was a traumatic boost where my body seemed to be accelerating in every direction at once, then I hit the water. Like she’d warned, hard.

  I’d done plenty of swimming in my life, and I waited for a couple of seconds for the motion to cease. It didn’t, however, and we continued to go deeper into the ocean. After another few seconds, I realized what Cinti had been saying—don’t forget to hit the parachute release tabs on water entry. The only thing that made me realize it was her tone—her voice matched the drill instructor in the seventh mission of Worlds at War when you have to learn how to parachute.

  I reached up and popped the release tabs, and the parachute continued on to the depths without us. Air was starting to be a problem, but I turned to look for Cinti—happily, she was already stroking toward the surface. I followed her up, lungs straining, and made it to the air—pure, sweet air—just before I would have had to take a breath of water.

  Cinti was close by, gasping for breath, herself, then she leaned over and punched me. “Don’t forget to hit the parachute release tabs on water entry!” she yelled in her best drill instructor voice.

  I smiled ruefully as I treaded water. “I got it…eventually.” I nodded to the shore I could see in the distance. It looked a lot farther than half a mile. “Let’s get going.”

  Cinti turned and started swimming.

  * * *

  I pulled Cinti up onto the sand and collapsed next to her. She had been right; the swim had been doable, although I’d had to bring her the final two hundred yards in a rescue stroke after she ran out of energy. Still, we’d made it. I could hear sirens in the distance and knew the Tuskers were on their way, but I didn’t have any energy left to try to evade them. I was spent.

  I looked up into the sky but couldn’t see any evidence of our fight with the aliens. As I tried to catch my breath, I realized that although we’d gotten close to the alien ship, we’d never seen a single one of them, and there were still lots of things we didn’t know about them. At some point, though, I expected the aliens on their home planet were going to miss the ship and its load of goodies, and then they were going to come looking for it. If there was only one thing I knew, it was this. They’d be back.

  * * * * *

  Chris Kennedy Bio

  A Webster Award winner and three-time Dragon Award finalist, Chris Kennedy is a Science Fiction/Fantasy/Young Adult author, speaker, and small-press publisher who has written over 25 books and published more than 100 others. Chris’ stories include the “Occupied Seattle” military fiction duology, “The Theogony” and “Codex Regius” science fiction trilogies, stories in the “Four Horsemen” and “In Revolution Born” universes and the “War for Dominance” fantasy trilogy. Get his free book, “Shattered Crucible,” at his website, https://chriskennedypublishing.com.

  Called “fantastic” and “a great speaker,” he has coached hundreds of beginning authors and budding novelists on how to self-publish their stories at a variety of conferences, conventions and writing guild presentations. He is the author of the award-winning #1 bestseller, “Self-Publishing for Profit: How to Get Your Book Out of Your Head and Into the Stores,” as well as the leadership training book, “Leadership from the Darkside.”

  Chris lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia, with his wife, and is the holder of a doctorate in educational leadership and master’s degrees in both business and public administration. Follow Chris on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ckpublishing/.

  # # # # #

  Traitor’s Moon by Christopher Woods

  Chapter 1


  “On approach to Traitor’s Moon, Captain,” Trebitha said.

  “You know I hate that name, Trebi,” I growled.

  “What do you want me to call it?” she returned. “Moon 456?”

  Trebi was young. She hadn’t lived through the war. We fought for freedom, and we lost. The survivors fled to the frigid moon that orbited our single gas giant, Helene. Now, it was known as Traitor’s Moon.

  “Call it what you want,” I muttered.

  “I’ll call it Fluffy,” she said as we skimmed the top of the atmosphere.

  I tried to glower at her, but she just grinned.

  “You still bitching about the name?” Corca asked as she slipped into the gunner chair on the shuttle. “Next time, win the war, and we can write history. As it is, we live on Traitor’s Moon.”

  “Fluffy,” Trebi said.

  “Really?” Corca asked. “I’m close to seven feet tall and barely fit through the hatches, and you want me to call the place Fluffy?”

  “It’s not me,” she said and took her hand from the steering to point at me. “It’s him. I’m perfectly willing to call it Traitor’s Moon.”

  “Every damn time,” I muttered. Then I said in a louder voice, “Both hands!”

  “I can land this thing with my feet,” she said, “even if she flies like a brick.”

  “I’d rather you land us in one piece,” I said. “Just let me know ahead of time if we’re gonna crash. I want to make sure I land on Corca. She’ll break my fall nicely.”

  “You’re going to make fun of a Doleradi?” Trebi asked as she gripped the steering levers with both hands. “I thought I had hired onto a ship that had a captain with a little sense.”

  The ship jerked to the left a little, and she compensated easily. “I guess I was wrong. Although, I might actually get to see her break someone in half. So it’s all good.”

  “Sometimes, I wonder why I hired such a smart ass as a pilot,” I said looking back at Corca. She filled the gunner seat that would have held three Trebi’s. Or two people the size of me.

  Doleradi are big. Their world, Dolera, is a heavy gravity world. They were strong and pretty damned good in a fight. I found her almost dead on a backwater planet out on the rim. I never asked what she had tangled with that left her in the shape she was in. She would have died if I hadn’t brought her back to the ship and hit her with a full nanite package.

  Since then, she’d saved my life countless times, and she was hell on wheels in the gunner chair of the Eagle. The front and aft cannons were the only weapons, but she could work them like a charm.

  “She can fly very well,” Corca answered.

  I shrugged and saw the grin on our pilot’s face in the reflection of her console. She was right. The girl could fly.

  “Landing, this is incoming shuttle from cargo vessel, Eagle,” I said as I pressed the comm button on the command chair. “Max Warrick, commanding. We are on approach and waiting for a bay.”

  “Acknowledged,” the port authority answered. “Shuttle, proceed to Bay 478.”

  “Roger,” I said.

  I pushed another button. “Seg? Everything smooth up there?”

  There was a chittering, before the translator began, “All is smooth in engineering, Captain.”

  The Smilp was a damn good mechanic. He was a bit of an oddball for his race. He was a loner in a race that lived and worked in packs. They had diagnosed him as insane by their standards. He fit in with the rest of us just fine, and he was far from the craziest one of the crew. Dallas probably held that title.

  “Dallas,” I said into the comm. “Keep your eyes peeled. There’ve been rumors of people trying to slip onto ships after cargo.”

  “Maybe I’ll get to kill something,” was his only answer.

  “I hope not,” I muttered. “Paperwork is a bitch for killing on the Ring.”

  The Ring was a large station in orbit around Traitor’s Moon. All cargo went through the Ring and was sent down with big cargo shuttles. Well, all recorded cargo. Some things couldn’t go through channels. I looked at a small box strapped to the bulkhead to my left. People paid a lot of credit for things they couldn’t get out here. Inside the box was a diamond from Zalisar 8. They’re hard to come by because of Zalisar’s hold on their shipping. To get one through any way other than official channels costs a nice chunk of credit. The waiting list for one of the official diamonds is over three years.

  Tarvis Kellogg wanted one for his soon-to-be third wife. I had a few connections, and it never hurt to get on the good side of the president of a planet. It might be a frozen hunk of crap, but it was still a thriving world under the surface. The tunnels under the ice held a population of several million people and aliens. They exported minerals and imported almost everything else.

  The shuttle jigged to the left as it hit turbulence, and Trebi swung it smoothly back on course.

  “Don’t kill us before we can turn over that diamond, Trebi.”

  “I know,” she answered. “We need groceries, or we’ll end up eating that nasty crap the Eagle makes.”

  “No doubt,” I said. “It’ll keep you alive, but it tastes like shit.”

  We came within sight of the open bay on the ground.

  “This is Landing. Incoming shuttle be warned, crosswinds are forty miles per hour.”

  “Oh, joy,” I muttered. Then I pushed the comm button. “Acknowledged. We’ll try not to miss the bay.”

  Even with the crazy winds, Trebi slipped the shuttle into the bay with a confident hand. Corca was right about the girl; she could fly.

  As the shuttle settled to a stop, Trebi turned and grinned. “Time to go shopping.”

  “You get to do that part this time, Trebi,” I said. “I’m going to deliver these.”

  I released my belts and started unstrapping the box with the diamond. “Grab that other box, Corca, if you don’t mind.”

  She nodded and unstrapped. Behind the seats was a large metal crate. Corca unstrapped it from the bulkhead and lifted it. It would have taken three normal humans to lift the crate. The items inside weren’t all that heavy, but the crate was one of those designed to survive when the ship did not. We would make almost as much for the spices inside that box as we made for the diamond. Amazing what people would pay for cinnamon and ginger in a place where neither could be produced.

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  “Do you have the package?”

  I was standing in the frigid landing bay, across from a tall, thin man known by everyone on the Moon. Kilpatrick worked for Kellogg, and no one wanted to tangle with the enforcement arm of Kellogg’s staff. We hadn’t gotten completely out of the grimy bay before he and his followers met us. Even if I, by some miracle, could take the augmented man, I doubted I could take the other twelve at the same time.

  Kilpatrick’s cybernetics were expensive, but augmentation could make you stronger and faster than most of the people on the Moon. I was pretty sure there was no way I could take him, even with the military augments I had. A lot of the systems out on the rim didn’t even have the tech to do the augments, several of them by choice. In some places augmentation was considered offensive. I made it a point to avoid most of those in my travels.

  “I got Kellogg’s package.” I tapped the box I carried. “You got my money?”

  “When I see the diamond, your money will be transferred.”

  I stepped forward to meet the enforcer in the center of the open area. “She’s a beauty.”

  I opened the box so Kellogg’s agent could look inside and waited for his approval.

  My sensors detected the signal between Kilpatrick and his boss, but I chose not to listen in. If Kilpatrick’s sensor package was as good as mine, he’d know I was listening. No use poking the Gorlonak.

  “It is authenticated,” he said. “Your credit is transferred.”

  “Trebi?”

  She checked the instrument in her hand. “All there, Boss.”

  “Pleasure doing busin
ess with you,” I said and passed the box over.

  He nodded. “I had been hoping it would go less smoothly. I understand you are quite fast with that.”

  He was looking at the blaster at my side.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But it’s something we’ll have to find out another day. I’ve got some products to deliver.”

  His smile was a little unnerving. “Another day, indeed.”

  He turned and walked out of the bay with his guards following. They were for show. He was much more dangerous than the whole lot of them put together.

  “That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy,” I muttered. “Nothing like having ‘Slender Man’ wanting to shoot a person to make them feel wanted.”

  “Jesus, Boss.” Trebi watched the group leave the bay. “I don’t think he likes you.”

  “He doesn’t like anyone.”

  “Yeah, but does he want to shoot everyone?”

  “Probably.”

  “Jesus, Boss.”

  “You already said that.”

  “Well I really meant it.”

  Corca chuckled.

  “At least we have enough credit to get some decent supplies,” I said. “Wish there was enough to get the grav plates fixed in Cargo 5.”

  “I know,” she said. “Hurts the overhead when we have to close off a whole cargo bay.”

  “Yep.” I looked in the direction Kellog’s men had gone and scowled. “Corca, I want you to go with her. I’ll get a grav sled and deliver that box.”

  Corca nodded and scanned the area for a sled. Her gaze landed on one, and she strode over to it. A guy started to grab the sled and decided not to as he saw the Doleradi. She dropped the crate onto the sled that floated about six inches above the ground.

  She returned, pulling the sled behind her.

  “I can handle a grocery run, Boss.”

  “I have a bad feeling. I’d feel better if you had Corca backing you up.”