“Leave it,” Cas said. They had plenty of shuttles and he wasn’t about to risk another incident over one small ship.

  “But it might have proprietary Coalition technology the simmilists aren’t familiar with. Shouldn’t we—?”

  “Did you hear what I said?” Cas said, his tone clipped. “This isn’t up for debate.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Box replied. When they were close to the edge of the shuttle, Cas stopped him.

  “I need you to act like a shield. You’re the only one fast enough who might be able to stop her if she tries something. Stay close to her until we confirm her identity, and maybe even after that. There’s too much at stake, understand?”

  “Box, the living, breathing shield. Use him as you like! Need to fend off attackers? He can’t be killed.” He turned to Cas. “Oh, wait, yes he can.”

  “Are you refusing an order?” Cas asked.

  Box hesitated for a moment. “Okay. But I get to administer the medical test, not Xax.”

  “Fine.”

  Box put out his hand. “We have an accord,” he said in a strange accent.

  Cas knocked it away. He wasn’t in the mood. Instead, he climbed into the back of the shuttle where everyone else was already seated. Evie sat beside Esterva’s statuesque form on the right side, while Tileah sat opposite them, her weapon in her lap and her eyes trained on Esterva. Box shoved past Cas and plopped down beside Tileah.

  “Captain, I think we have trouble,” River said at the pilot’s chair.

  Cas gave Esterva the side-eye as he walked past, but she only stared into space, as if he weren’t even there. “What sort of trouble?”

  “Hostiles. At least twenty, headed this way.”

  His eyes darted to the controls. “Ground or air?” Cas asked.

  “Air.”

  “Those must have been the ones Captain Beard mentioned to Saturina. Get us back to the ship and fast.” He tapped his comm. “Saturn. You see those?”

  “Yep. Do you want us to engage or protect the shuttle?”

  “Can you do both?”

  “I guess we’ll find out.” She ended the comm.

  “River, what kind of makes are you getting on those units,” Evie asked.

  “Four type-six Slipspeeders, two MKX hydrofoils and at least one AM-55 Rhino, maybe two. I can’t tell from here. The others are smaller, attack craft.”

  “Damn,” Evie said under her breath.

  “What?” Cas asked.

  “It’s one of the local syndicates. Somehow they know we’re here. They must have a mole inside the security forces.”

  “And they don’t care about Athru law?” Esterva asked.

  “They don’t care about any laws,” Evie replied. “One of the main reasons I wanted Sissk to enter the Coalition was so they could come through and wipe out all the rampant crime on this planet. Without a larger governing body, it’s allowed to fester. When I was last here there were only three competing mobs. There’s no telling how many there are now.”

  “What do they want?” Cas asked.

  Evie shrugged. “Anything. Everything. Ships, parts, hostages, slaves. No matter what they find they’ll manage to put it to use.”

  “Sounds like the Sargans,” Cas said.

  “Trust me, if they were on the other side of Coalition space—what used to be Coalition space—they would be.”

  “Can you outrun them?” Cas leaned over the station beside River’s.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Those are some serious mods. We might have trouble getting to the stratosphere.” Her fingers split again and began working the controls faster. “I’m going to try an erratic pattern to keep them off our tail.”

  “How do you know they’re coming for us?” Cas asked.

  “Because we’re the only target out here, remember?” Evie said. “Without any other traffic to blend in to, we’re easy pickings.”

  “This ought to be interesting,” Esterva said.

  “Hey, boss, I think she flinched a neck muscle, but I can’t be sure. Could be the prelude to an altercation,” Box said.

  “Or I could have just been swallowing. But thank you for being so observant,” the Athru replied.

  “You’re welcome!” Box said. Cas rolled his eyes. “Boss, she just smiled. Either she likes me or is about to kill me, I can’t tell which. It’s kind of an evil smile. I think—”

  “Box, shut up!” Cas stared out the window as they lifted off sending dust scattering. Esterva’s motivations wouldn’t matter if they didn’t get back to the ship in one piece. The back hatch closed and cut off the intense heat that had been building outside. Cas had never missed standard life support so much in his entire life.

  “Everyone hang on, the negators may not be able to handle the g-forces,” River said.

  “Need some help?” Evie asked.

  “I wouldn’t say no,” she replied. Evie jumped up and took the station next to River’s, forcing Cas back behind the main seats. The only one open was beside Esterva. Reluctantly, he sat down, slipping into his restraining harness. Tileah did the same while Box placed his hands and feet on the closest metal objects, the bulkheads, magnetizing himself to them.

  “You better put on a harness unless you want to end up with a concussion,” Cas said. “If you even get concussions.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Esterva replied, remaining stoic with her hands folded in her lap.

  Cas shrugged. What did he care if her own stupidity gave her a head injury? At least then he wouldn’t have to deal with another spy onboard.

  “Contact in twenty seconds,” River said. “Everyone hang on.”

  10

  The world outside flipped on its head. But inside the shuttle everything was normal. There was something to be said for gravity plating and negators that dampened the effects of a planet’s natural pull on normal people. Evie had no doubt if either of those systems failed, every person in the ship would be dead. Except perhaps Esterva. She still wasn’t sure what to make of her, but at the moment it didn’t matter. They were being pursued by no less than three dozen Sissk vessels, though none had come close enough for her to identify which of the prominent crime families they belonged to. Often the families would soak up ships and personnel from other families, always in an unending tug of war for power, with the only currency being death. For a brief time she’d considered joining planet security like Run’ak, but realized she didn’t want to be cop for the rest of her life. She’d wanted to be a captain.

  “Coming up to port,” River said. Evie checked the indicator, saw their pursuers were coming a little too close to port and she input a diving sequence she’d come up with back before she’d even joined the Coalition. All those days piloting planetary shuttles hadn’t been for nothing, after all.

  “Gramos, we’ll hang back and see if we can’t pull some of these guys off your tails,” Jann said over the comm. “At least we have something to fight back with.”

  “Understood, captain. Thank you,” Evie replied.

  “The systems are having trouble compensating,” River said as the shuttle dove straight for the surface of the planet again.

  “You’re pointed the wrong way!” Box yelled from behind them.

  “Will you shut up and let them work?” Cas yelled back.

  “No, because I’m a pilot and I know about this stuff. All we need to do is get back out of the atmosphere, I don’t see why we’re—” An explosion cut him off, rocking the shuttle as the negators failed and everyone was jerked to the left side of the shuttle. Evie turned back to see Cas straining against his harness, while Tileah was pressed back against the bulkhead. Esterva, however, hadn’t moved, other than to position her feet in a way that braced her against the pull. She remained seated, with her hands folded in her lap. When Evie’s eyes met hers, she smiled.

  “You’re doing great,” she whispered.

  Evie shook it off. She wasn’t used to compliments by people she didn’t know, especially people claiming to be her mother. And while she wanted to get to the bottom of this, a part of her said she should have just left the Athru back on the planet and run like crazy.

  “Maybe you should take over,” River said, holding on to the panel as the shuttle continued to careen toward the surface. “I can plot us a course back to the ship better than I can fly.”

  Evie nodded, and River input a quick series of commands that flipped the controls on their stations. Evie now had full control. “Let’s see how you bastards like this,” she said and pulled the shuttle up, so it curved in an arc, blasting it back toward the bluish-green sky. The negators couldn’t keep up and the occupants of the shuttle were pulled back. Evie could even feel her chair start to give, but she pushed the thrusters harder, working to gain altitude as fast as possible.

  “Course plotted,” River said. Her mechanical fingers had extended longer than normal to give her additional access as she was pressed back into her seat.

  Evie checked their surroundings to see a few of the Sissk ships had managed to keep up with her, something she found curious. The mobs didn’t employ hotshot pilots, they were often more interested in enforcers, couriers, or sociopaths. Because often jobs for pilots paid better than the syndicates. That wasn’t to say it was unheard of, though it was…rare. She needed to try something.

  “Everyone hang on,” she said.

  “What do you think we’ve been trying to do back here?” Cas said, his voice full of panic. She grinned, it was fun seeing him squirm, especially when he was out of his element. She pulled the shuttle into a corkscrew, plowing up through the clouds as the world spun in a perfect circle outside the main window. Once she was sure she had it perfect, she banked right, still in the corkscrew, and skirted along the upper edge of the clouds, leveling the ship out. She’d pulled some serious g’s on that maneuver and only the best Sissk ship would be able to keep up. When she checked the indicators she wasn’t surprised to see one last ship still on their tail. The others were back there too, but much further behind. Evie sighed, tapping the comm.

  On one of the monitors to her left the image of a man appeared. Evie shook her head. “What are you doing, Run’ak?” Somehow he’d gotten in with one of the syndicates. At least now she knew how they’d found out about her and the others.

  “I’m doing what is best for my planet. You never should have come back,” he replied. There was vitriol in his voice that hadn’t been there before. She wasn’t sure if it was because one of his fellow officers was dead, or if he’d just been hiding well before.

  “I didn’t have a choice. You could have let us go.”

  He shook his head. “Couldn’t happen. The Athru made their directives very clear. They have the power to destroy worlds, Evie. What are a few human lives compared to the entire population of this planet?”

  “We’ve got an Athru right here, telling you different,” Evie said, pointing behind her. From his vantage point Run’ak wouldn’t be able to see Esterva, but she was sure he knew who she was talking about.

  “Ah. That. Well, when the order comes from a traitor to the Athru cause, I’m not so inclined to listen, am I? You better watch it, your vector is drifting.” A series of blasts to starboard caused Evie to jerk them back into position. She chanced a look back at Esterva, whose brow was down in confusion.

  “How does he know?” she asked.

  “I don’t—” She put her finger to her lips instead of finishing.

  “Oh, do you mean how do I know she’s not a true Athru, and abandoned their cause long ago? Did you forget procedure, Evie?” There was a snarl, but also satisfaction in Run’ak’s voice.

  Procedure? What was he talking about? She racked her brain. The only way he could know was if he’d heard. And the only way he could have heard was…

  Fuck. She patted the back of one shoulder, while keeping her other hand on the controls. Finding nothing she switched to the other shoulder, finding a small black piece of cloth there. A monitor.

  “So you do remember. All Sissk arrestees are automatically fitted with surveillance devices—”

  “—so their testimony can be used to incriminate or exonerate them. Dammit.” She rubbed the piece of cloth between two fingers.

  “It’s no use,” Run’ak said. “You can’t destroy it, it’s designed—”

  A metal hand reached over and plucked the cloth from Evie’s hand and smashed it using the force of a hydraulic press. When Box opened his fingers again, little bits of the cloth fell away, fluttering to the floor. “Designed to what now?” Box asked. “Go suck on an afterburner.”

  “Captain—Evie, he’s closing on us,” River said.

  If Run’ak had been thrown, it was only momentary. “It doesn’t matter, we have a lock on you now. You can’t escape here, not with an unarmed shuttle. And think of what the Athru will give us for finding and killing one of their traitors. They may even grant Sissk amnesty forever.”

  “That’s not how my people operate,” Esterva said over Evie’s shoulder. “You should have let us go. Because when they come and you don’t have us in custody, they will destroy the planet.”

  Evie, concentrating on the controls and getting back to Tempest, dropped the ship into the clouds again, angling at a one-hundred-ten degrees. It was the opening gambit of something she called the fisherman’s knot, because once the full sequence was done, it was as if she’d traced a knot in the sky. And she was sure Run’ak would recognize it. Right on cue, he made the same bank into the clouds.

  But instead of continuing along the path, Evie immediately banked the ship to the left, throwing the passengers up against the bulkhead again. She knew the shuttle and its systems just weren’t built for this kind of punishment, but she didn’t have a choice. She dropped down again just below the clouds, coming around to where Run’ak should come out and sure enough, his ship emerged from the clouds right in front of them. She hit the accelerator and shoved the front end of the shuttle into one of his primary engine pods, causing it to partially shear off, exposing the guts inside. On her screen, Run’ak cursed in Sissk and turned around to see what was happening behind him. Evie swung the shuttle out to the side like a weighted ball on a string and once she was sure she had the proper apex, flung the shuttle back down so it plowed directly into the engine pod.

  The pod exploded and the image of Run’ak inside his shuttle disappeared. Outside, as the pod lost power, the ship tried to compensate, but with only one engine (which Evie guessed had also been pushed to its limit), it just couldn’t stay up. It began a slow decline toward the surface. And unless Run’ak ejected, he’d die in the crash.

  “At least you didn’t plow straight through him,” Cas said. She hadn’t heard him come up beside her, but he stared out at the descending ship, no doubt thinking about the first time he’d witnessed her piloting skills. “Now I see where you get it. Dealing with assholes like this all day long.”

  Evie grinned. “How bad is it?”

  “We have some structural damage, but the engines are okay. If we can get to Tempest quickly we’ll be okay.”

  Evie nodded, and jerked the ship up through the clouds again. It was time to be done with this bullshit and get back to the ship. Never did she think she’d have to fire on, and maybe kill, one of her best childhood friends. Then again, everything else about her formative years had been a train wreck, why not this too?

  They emerged from the clouds only to find four more Sissk ships waiting for them. “Of course,” Evie said under her breath. She’d been so focused on Run’ak, she’d forgotten the others were still pursuing them. All around them the spacewings were attempting to keep the other Sissk ships engaged and were doing a good job of it. “Everyone hang on…again,” she said. Without Run’ak there wasn’t much chance of the rest of them keeping up with her again, but damaging Run’ak’s shuttle might have left them vulnerable. She wasn’t even sure if the ship could get all the way back to space.

  Instead of slowing, Evie hit the accelerator again. She flipped the ship on its side and skirted between the two closest Sissk ships, scraping the ceiling of the shuttle against one of them.

  “Holy shit,” Box said. “Even I’m not that crazy.”

  “Where are the spacewings?” Evie asked.

  “Jann and Blackfield are above us. See is to starboard, engaging three different hostiles,” River replied.

  Evie leveled the ship back out again and, following River’s pre-programmed course back to the ship, headed up again. Maybe without Run’ak on their ass they might actually have a chance.

  “We’ve got another contingent coming in,” Jann said over the comm. “It looks like a swarm, I’m not sure we can hold them off.”

  The screen to Evie’s left flickered back on, showing Run’ak’s bloody face. Smoke filled his cabin. “I guess it really is kill or be killed, huh, Evie?”

  “You left us no choice,” she replied, though deep within guilt had already formed into a hard rock. There was no way she’d make it back to Tempest if she tried to save him. And even though she reminded herself it was either him or her, she hated she couldn’t come up with a better solution.

  Run’ak coughed. “It won’t matter. I put a call in to every syndicate ship on the planet. You’re not leaving here alive. To be frank, you’re more valuable to us dead.” The words stung and she cut the comm, the screen going black. The only thing that mattered now was getting back to the ship.

  “Remind me again why we didn’t outfit these things with weapons?” she called over her shoulder.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.” Cas sounded so sure of her ability to get them home safe. It was an added layer of pressure she didn’t need.

  “Gramos, we’re going to try and open a hole for you,” Jann said. “Once you’re through, get back to the ship and don’t stop.” Evie’s heart fell. She knew what that meant even if it had escaped everyone else’s notice. Jann and the others would have to stay behind to allow the shuttle to return. She shut her eyes for a moment.

  “Acknowledged, Captain,” she replied.

  “Wait a second,” Cas said. “What is she doing?” He’d come up right between Evie and River’s seats, a hand on each chair.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26