The Relic (The Galactic Thieves Book 1) Read online

  THE RELIC

  Book 1

  The Galactic Thieves series

  THE TEST

  So much could go wrong that it felt right.

  The team was ready. Backup was in place. Plans A, B and C were all things of genius, concocted in a blazing fast strategy session where I swear I’d seen lightning shoot across the room. Of course, that could have been the whiskey, too.

  It wasn’t that the plans were all that unique. It’s just that they were delivered by a confident team. A single word from Blue became an idea. Max’s bad joke became another. The gun that Blue held and the gun that Penn cleaned gave rise to a third conversation that morphed into the last idea. We drank, we laughed, we talked about our dreams, and then we slept on it.

  The next morning’s review—called the Hangover Rehash—just made things look even better. It was as if we were meant to snap this gem up…like the gods wanted us to have it.

  So as I sat on a dusty moon hill, surveying our target, all I had to do was raise my hand to launch the plan.

  I smiled first.

  And then I raised my hand.

  Like a reservoir releasing a flood of kick ass, all five of us, women with a solid claim to “Best Thief in the Galaxy,” slid into our roles.

  Blue was out of the gate a little fast, as usual. Her winder bike’s engine sparked like a son-of-a-bitch, which let everyone know we were coming. But that was fine. All part of the plan.

  Meanwhile, I could see that the twins were already having trouble getting along.

  Max, being the princess, preferred sniping. It kept her hands clean. But for this job she got assigned the Jeet. She hated the rubber orb vehicles. Can’t say that I blame her since flying a Jeet meant total concentration if you wanted to avoid bouncing off everything at the speed of sound. Even the inventors of the damn thing knew it was a crazy stupid. Hell, they’d included a patented oxygen/barf bag mask with each sale. Max wasn’t happy, but that was too bad. We all had jobs to do. She just needed to get in, do her thing, and get out fast.

  Instead, she bickered with her sister, Sam.

  Again.

  Luckily, I’m the type to prepare. I activated the Noosenik and gave Max’s throat an electric jolt from a quarter mile away. I watched her distant form convulse and fall on its ass. Yes, I laughed. I love that thing. I even use it on myself when I get whiny.

  Back on track, the Jeet zipped off and I cloaked up, going full-on invisible, before I leaped down the hill toward the guard station.

  Plan A was simple, but I reviewed it in my head one last time to be sure.

  1. Distract with the sparkly winder engine.

  2. Rush with the quick Jeet.

  3. Sneak with my invisibility cloak.

  4. Surprise with a big fucking boom.

  Then the boom hit.

  Right on time.

  Goddess, I love Penn. Her single shot, slammed down on the enemy with tremendous force, leveling the control tower near the center of the moon base. When I play pool with Sam, she says she can see imaginary lines on the green felt of the billiards table. She follows the illusion to sink the balls. Well, Penn is that way with missiles. Like Robin Hood with a knack for thrusters. A bullseye every time. And I do mean every goddamn time.

  “That may be the best yet,” Max screeched over the comm.

  “Max,” I said, ready to let her have it with the Noosenik, “shut up. Radio silence,”

  “Sorry, Kat,” she whispered, as if whispering over the comm was better than just talking. It’s a good thing she’s the best at what she does or I’d have killed her ten times over. That day. She’s not smart, no. But she’s our Max.

  The guards were Minutemen. That was a surprise, I’ll admit. They’re as expensive as chocolate and just as mind blowing. Not the wow-that’s-amazing kind of mind blowing. More like the brains-all-over-the-wall kind of mind blowing. I guess I shouldn’t have been too shocked. Our target was valuable. Delivering it to our client would let me and the girls get out of debt and buy an army of Minutemen for every day of the week.

  So the problem we faced at that particular moment was that Minutemen were droids that were armed to the teeth, propelled by jets, and programmed to kamikaze all over your face. They’re called Minutemen because they only live, on average, around one minute after they spot their target, chase their target, catch their target and obliterate it. I figured we had about fifteen seconds to save our tomorrows.

  “Plan B,” I said into the mic.

  In an instant, we were on the same page. No more rush, cloak, distract, and boom boom. Now it was 100% confuse.

  We weren’t expecting Minutemen, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t ready for kamikaze tech. Like I said, our strategy sessions were a gift from on high. Like five minds thinking as one, we’d agreed to weigh ourselves down with invisibility cloaks.

  Cloaks that were activated before the words “Plan B” were out of my mouth.

  The team was out of sight.

  The Minutemen stopped where they were and hovered. They scanned for ionic footprints, moving dust, broken light, a shadow out of place. The cloak’s AI took care of most things, including footprint removal, but having only a 10-foot radius was a bit too small for us. Fortunately, we had that covered too, thanks to Penn. She’d worked her magic on the cloak’s grid, giving the invisibility effect about 25-feet in every direction. The only problem with this enhancement was that it drew from our life support, meaning we had about two minutes before we turned blue and called out to the gods and wondered if we should have been accountants.

  The Minutemen simultaneously blew their loads all over the ground 15-feet away from us. Yeah, it hurt but the cloaks held and we kept our feet.

  Then we advanced.

  Before the human guards came to their senses from Penn’s little howdy-doo, we were out of our ships and inside the perimeter. At least what was left of it.

  Six hundred feet straight down below the former control tower was our target. About six guards were still with us on the surface. We could take them easy. In fact, by the time we reached the silo they were all dead. Mostly because Max got her sniper rifle back with Plan B.

  The surface was all ours. But the hidden army below the surface had me worried.

  We gathered in a circle around the steel door in the ground. Blue tapped on it and then gave a thumbs-up. I pulled out my welder and began to carve a hole. The steel spit sparks and popped white hot bubbles and then fell. Max got on her belly and peeked into the darkness. Her sister’s program kicked in, lighting up her visor with a green-blue glow. Sam called the app Bullseye because it can target a hundred hostiles, track them in real-time, and highlight (in blood red) the next recommended target, all based on a trillion variables. Or a quadrillion. I get them mixed up.

  We saw what she saw through our visors.

  Standing over an arena-sized cavern, about one hundred feet high, were 896 hostiles. We all jumped back. Sky bound laser blasts flooded the hole, making it look like a volcano of light. The ground beneath us started to shake. We scrambled back, falling over each other to get some distance.

  “896 hostiles down there,” Blue yelled.

  “And they’re all firing at the hole,” I said.

  We grinned at the same time.

  “Morons,” we said in unison.

  I tapped the ground in front of me with one foot. The fine dust shifted and started to run downhill. Then plates of crust cracked all around us.

  We ran a tad bit faster. Max slid back as she ran and I just managed to snag her hand. She caught her heavy boots under her and booked ahead. One inch more and I would have mi
ssed her.

  The ground was collapsing into the cavern. The hostiles’ blasts had made a mess of their ceiling, and it was coming down around our feet and on their heads.

  Once we reached safety at the top of a hill we caught our breath. What a mess. Blue’s ear was blown half off. Sam had a gash in her forehead the size of a beer bottle. As usual they had huge grins on their faces, happy as can be. It takes a special kind of person to be a galactic thief.

  Sam popped out her blaster’s battery and used it to cauterize her wound. That wiped the smile off her face for about 13 seconds.

  At this point, my biggest concern was the target. Could it survive an avalanche?

  My gut said that if they thought the target was in real danger of being heisted they’d move it. My gut can be a thing of beauty at times, and it was right again.

  Suddenly, a Jeet shot out from the smoky hole and zipped across the moon’s horizon. It was out of sight within a second. We were hoping they’d try to escape with the target in a long-distance ship. That way we’d use Penn’s boat to catch up. But a Jeet meant we needed a ground vessel.

  “Plan C, dammit,” I grumbled.

  “Shit,” Max said.

  “Language, Max,” her sister hissed.

  “Fuck you, Sam,” Max hissed back, with Blue mouthing the words along with her. It was just about the only thing they ever really said to each other these days.

  “What about salvage?” Blue asked.

  “Plan C with full backup,” I answered.

  “Aw, man,” Blue whined.

  “Shit,” Max said.

  “Language, Max.”

  “Fuck you, Sam.”

  A flash of light erupted in the dark sky. Backup was on its way in the fastest racepod this side of the sun, a One. Its launch from Penn’s ship looked picture perfect. It scraped across the lunar terrain, smacked a boulder, arched through the sky and landed with a thud about 10-feet away. Its two doors opened and the four Bunnies hopped out.

  “Where ya want us, broad?” Sgt. Potts, the largest Bunny, somehow said with a cigar stuck in between his long front teeth. Kat had never gotten used to the damned things. She loved bunnies, but these were more of a genetic mutation that came from an experiment involving twelve somewhat compatible alien genomes and some bunny thrown in. It’s what you get when you slip a mickey to one of the most brilliant geneticists of the last few hundred years.

  “Clear the dust” I said, trying to hide my disgust. “Grab what you can. And one of you drives the One.”

  “That’s it? You want us for clean up?” Sgt. Potts said. “Come on, chica. We’re not janitors!”

  “You are on this job. And it’ll pay more than any other job you’ve ever had, so what’s that tell you?”

  “Tells me yer lucky you have a nice ass or I’d take the treasure for myself,” he said, more for his friends’ ears than mine. I stuck my blaster in his face, which required me to bend over, which made all the bunnies whistle. Potts’ eyes widened and he said, “Kidding! Jeez, no sense of humor in this broad.”

  “Call me a ‘broad’ again and I’ll skin you right here, Bugs.”

  Sgt. Potts and his three bunny assassins growled an adorable little growl as I climbed into the One. Sgt. Potts slipped into the drivers seat. Our teams stayed behind to salvage what they could.

  We’d catch up to the Jeet within seconds. My guess was that it was on its way to a spaceport for transport to a nearby planet. Probably Yule.

  “I hope you brought your puke pack or it’s gonna be a ripe fuckin’ ride,” my grumpy pilot grumbled.

  He shut the doors and accelerated so fast my tongue curled back down my throat.

  Using Potts was an excellent call if I do say so myself. Bunnies are the only ones with fast enough reflexes to drive a One. He caught up with my target within seconds and matched its maneuvers turn-for-turn. The dance between ships was so beautiful that my nausea floated away. It got to the point where the crafts were in such perfect synchronism I could have stepped from one craft to the other at 800 miles per hour.

  “You want the honors, boss?” Potts asked me.

  I flipped the cap off the stick beside my seat. I thumbed the red button. When I got a clear shot at the lower part of the round target I pressed it. Our One jerked from the force of the missile launch and Potts slowed us down to get some distance. We watched the Jeet spin away, twisting in circles as it scraped across the dusty ground.

  “Spotlight,” I commanded.

  Potts switched on the Red Blanket, covering the target in red, serving only to freak out the people under its ominous blanket. A human emerged after a few seconds, hands up, one of them holding a small package.

  I climbed from the One, blaster ready.

  “Throw it,” I said, adding that growl at the end which makes men listen to women a little bit more. He threw it off into the distance. “I meant to me, moron.”

  “Sorry,” the guard whimpered.

  I kept the gun on him and made my way to the object in the dust.

  The small box was a class act. Gold, shiny, bejeweled. I scanned it and smiled. No booby trap here. I flipped it open and I believe that my eyes might well have popped out of my head.

  A Luxor Amethyst.

  I’d never seen one up close before. It could sit on the crown of the richest monarch or it could power a city. Its unique properties allowed it to channel and magnify energy a thousand fold. Many thieves consider it the second biggest prize in the galaxy, only behind The Relic. I think there are four verified to exist, but who knows? Our worlds are one blanket of black market laid over another.

  “Good job,” came a man’s voice over the comm.

  “Who the hell is that?” I asked.

  “Akizete Wasen,” the smooth voice answered. “I’m with BNG.”

  Building a New Galaxy, Inc. My client.

  “I didn’t know we were being watched,” I said, hoping he’d gotten that I was pissed off…in a diplomatic kind of way.

  “We always track our investments,” Akizete replied snootily. I hated him immediately. “You’ve passed the test quite well. Quite well, indeed. Congratulations.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked, throwing diplomacy into the darkness of a moon’s midnight. “What test?”

  LAENDER

  Laender Kless sat at his main console, poring over the feeds that encompassed the entirety of the Remboff System.

  His ship, The Kless, was almost always under attack, by either law enforcement or thieves. It was simply the reality of his existence. He had amassed items that criminals found interesting, which made for the perfect lure to bring them in and put them under his “tests.” Those tests resulted in gaining the interest of law enforcement.

  The death toll of infiltrators was called “staggering” by the police reports that Laender had gained access to over the years. By his last count, including those he’d decimated in order to take over this ship, he had taken 273 lives in the last 10 years.

  But Laender struggled with this because none of deaths had resulted in what he needed to learn.

  Father had told him that if he wanted to learn about life, he had to understand death.

  He had tried.

  Repeatedly.

  He’d studied the brain scans of those he was killing, he’d spoken with his victims, asking question after question, and he’d even just sat watching their eyes as life slowly slipped away. But it was all for naught.

  “What happened?”

  Laender turned away from the feeds and looked back at the man that was currently tied to one of the ship’s chairs. He was large, with matted hair, a bruised cheek, and more scars than any man should ever have.

  “You attempted to board my vessel,” Laender answered calmly.

  “I did?” the man asked, groggily.

  “I was forced to subdue you and your crew.”

  The thief looked around the room and his eyes widened. “You killed them.”

  “Yes,�
� Laender said as he pulled up a chair. “How does this make you feel?”

  “Like ripping your fucking head off,” the man replied, pulling at his bindings.

  “I have heard such a saying many times,” Laender replied, “but I don’t understand the emotion behind it. I just want to understand why life is worth living.” Laender lifted a knife and pressed it against the thief’s shoulder. “Maybe you can help me to understand?”

  “You’re fucking crazy!”

  Laender pressed the knife forward and watched the man’s eyes. They widened at first and then scrunched tightly together as he let out a scream.

  “Tell me what you’re feeling,” Laender demanded, yelling louder than the man.

  The response was unexpected. He just slunk forward, gurgled for a moment, and then died. Usually they lasted much longer. Laender assumed his victim had suffered a heart attack.

  “Two hundred and seventy-four,” said Laender with a sigh.

  He moved the bodies to the space-lock and dumped them inside. Then he closed the door and released them to the vacuum of space.

  The ship was again empty aside from the team of maintenance robots that were ever enhancing and repairing his ship.

  Laender entered the main hull and walked up to a column that sat at its center. He placed his hands on either side of the column and it became translucent. Inside sat a gleaming metallic case. Laender had built this column specifically to house the contents of the case because those contents represented the dearest thing in the world to him.

  He reached under the lip of the column’s overhang and allowed the system to read his fingerprints.

  The case sprung open and a three-dimensional head appeared and began floating upward until it was face-to-face with him.

  Thinning, gray hair hung loosely over the gaunt face that looked at him. The green, sunken eyes, though ancient, shined ever so slightly when Laender looked into them.

  “Hello, Laender.”

  “Hello, Father.”

  THE JOB

  I sat in a cushy chair in a theater that was so big I got dizzy when I looked up. But the burping nausea hit hard when I noticed who else was invited. He sat about ten seats away from me.