The Relic (The Galactic Thieves Book 1) Read online

  Reycort.

  The asshole spotted me and smirked while I imagined taking his head off. It felt like he’d snagged me in his crosshairs. Knowing him, he probably had.

  The hate I felt rushing through my gut, sapping me of self restraint and IQ points, was dangerous, but it was also well-deserved. Reycort was the juvenile prison warden in that place Sam and Max had called home for seven years.

  By the time he’d left his job to join the Galactic Thieves, he’d made his mark as a “blind man,” meaning that no matter what his guards did to the prisoners Reycort didn’t see it. So, theoretically, it didn’t happen.

  Except it did.

  To girl after girl and boy after boy, that was a place where kids wanted to die.

  Reycort might have eventually ended up dying slow and terrified, but he did die only once. That still pisses me off. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

  Building a New Galaxy, Inc. (BNG) is a multi-planetary corporation that skims pennies off of every legit and shady transaction in its grasp. After hiring my team to snag the Luxor they’d tracked us through the planning and execution of the job. They probably tracked our bathroom etiquette and alcohol ingestion rate, too. These guys have eyes everywhere and an insatiable appetite for data.

  From the looks of it they weren’t just going to hand the next job to us.

  I was surrounded by every top-notch team I’d ever heard of. My guess was that BNG was about to send us out for test number two. That was fine with me, as long as they paid us for the last one. We needed to replace Blue’s ear again. I checked my screen and saw that the deposit had cleared our account. Took long enough. But, finally, my team was out of debt. One more big job and we’d be buying who the fuck knows what. No more rice for me. Great feeling.

  “Please take a seat,” came the smooth, unsettling voice of Akizete Wasen. Now that I saw what he looked like (and now that his check had cleared) I hated him a little less, but he still creeped me out. His gray suit had that classy shine to it that dry-humped the limits of good taste, but didn’t quite get the zipper down. A mane of golden hair reminded me of a lion—before they fucked up the gene pool with bears and rumpets.

  He kept going. “Thanks so much for your attendance, and thank you for your patience. I know you’re all busy entrepreneurs who don’t have time for this cloak and dagger nonsense. It’s not fun to be left in the dark, is it?” He smiled and some of the thugs, who’d never seen a smile they didn’t wipe off with a blade, grinned right along with him. Charming fucker. “I must ask you to trust me when I say that this is worth your time.”

  “Just tell us why we’re here, smiley,” a gruff voice called out from the crowd.

  “We’d like you to find a way to obtain The Relic,” Wasen said.

  The silence settled.

  Thief after thief looked around the room, clearly hoping for someone else to say something. One guy coughed. Someone else sighed.

  Out of all the big, scary bad guys I was the one who spoke first. “Who from?”

  “No one owns The Relic, Miss Keep,” the suit said, clearly hoping his grasp of my name would impress a theater of thieves. “We’re hoping to change that.”

  “Okay, fine,” I shot back, “where from, then?”

  “Better,” he said.

  He was playing with me.

  “No one can claim it,” Gram Abita grunted from behind me. “Can’t claim something that don’t exist.”

  “This is a waste of our time,” Reycort said in his oily voice. Everyone waited for him to finish his point. Such a prison warden. “Can any of you even tell me what The Relic is?”

  If he was still alive and asked me today I could tell him. I really, really wish I couldn’t. Ignorance might seem like a bad thing, but it can’t keep you up all night like the truth can.

  “You’re a relic,” I said to Reycort. “Maybe it’s you?”

  No one laughed. I guess I’m not as charming as Wasen.

  “Oh, it’s real, Mr. Reycort,” Wasen replied, and then nodded toward Abita and added, “and Mr. Abita.”

  “Where it at?” a gargantuan one-eyed brute asked. I guessed it was Herth Gromple because he was known for being the ugliest man to ever sit in a cockpit.

  “We have several leads, which we’ll share with each of you,” Wasen said. I heard a shuffling sound from a few seats down. Reycort had shifted in his chair and was glancing around. This time his smirk didn’t say, “I killed kids and there’s nothing you can do about it, bitch.” This time the smirk screamed, “I know something you don’t.”

  “BNG believes in your talents. Strongly. We’re willing to bet that one of you will find The Relic if you put your minds to it. Perhaps some alliances are in order?”

  He smiled, obviously amused at his own wit. Thieves don’t have allies. They have family and nothing else.

  “And what do we get outta it?” Gromple grunted.

  “The Relic will belong to BNG,” Wasen said.

  The room erupted in laughter and hisses. Not such a great deal. Waste of time looking for a myth and if it happens to exist and you risk your life to take it, you don’t even get a cut?

  “BNG is looking for a new team,” Wasen shot into the din. That shut people up fast. “If you secure the target, your team gets the job.” The Relic might be the most sought after treasure in the universe, but a paid gig with the BNG—or one of their competitors—meant being set for life. “Now each of you have done good work for us. Enough to keep getting small jobs until you die. But the ones who find The Relic will wear the BNG logo on your sleeves. On an undershirt, of course.” He chuckled, seemingly at his own joke. Let me tell you, this guy loves himself.

  “This meeting is a dream,” Wasen then added menacingly, losing the smile. “If you leak one word outside of this room we will kill you and your team and blah blah blah. You know the way it works.” Silence. “Okay, our best-guess information on The Relic’s current whereabouts has been sent to your screens. There are 73 possibilities. You all start with the same knowledge. Good luck.”

  One more glance at Reycort’s sly grin made me doubt that claim. I was willing to bet his ridiculous number of Guild connections had given him a heads-up on which of the 73 spots was hot.

  And I was willing to bet The Relic on it.

  While everyone else huddled and checked their screens, I followed the scumbag out of the theater.

  He was in a hurry.

  “Penn,” I whispered into my comm, “ready the ship.”

  FATHER

  Have you learned the meaning of life yet, Laender?” said the holographic head as it floated through the pillar, coming to rest a couple of feet away.

  “No, Father,” Laender replied, almost sadly. “I have 274 attempts, but nothing to show for it.”

  Laender headed back to the bridge. There was still blood to be cleaned up. He had robots for this sort of thing, but Laender felt that the use of technology to soak up the essence of those who had tried to help him understand the meaning of life was callous. They deserved better for their efforts. Reaching in to a drawer by the communications panel, he pulled out a linen towel he had purchased at an outpost on Menauth. It was a bit archaic, sure, but Laender believed it gave dignity to the deceased.

  By the time he was finished soaking up the mess, he had gone through 17 of the towels. He would not wash them as reuse was out of the question. Instead, he headed for the air lock, set them inside, decompressed the chamber, and released them into the ether.

  As he watched the towels float away, he said, “What I don’t understand, Father, is why they won’t tell me their secrets?”

  “But I have already told you how to find out, Laender.”

  “And I have followed your advice, Father. 274 times.” He turned and looked into the eyes of the floating head. “Maybe I am missing a step?”

  “Shall I repeat my advice to you?”

  “No, Father. I remember it: In death, you shall find the meaning of life.”

&nbs
p; The old man smiled and nodded. “Correct.”

  “Yet I have found nothing,” Laender replied.

  He stepped back through bridge and took the winding stairs to the lower-level. Looking up, he saw that Father was still up on the main level. Laender adjusted the channels to allow a repeater signal so that Father could join him.

  “The field is clear now, Father,” he said.

  The head didn’t need to follow the stairs down. It crossed over the crescent edge of the upper level and slowly sank down until it was next to Laender.

  His ship had a fair amount of damage from the barrage that his latest victims had inflicted as they took him over. This had been expected, of course, even to the point of being deliberately allowed. There could be no learning if Laender had simply destroyed the offending ship and its inhabitants. He needed that one-on-one communication as they gave up their souls.

  He broke out his tools and got to work.

  While he had robots for most repairs, Laender always kept a few items to himself. He found peace in fixing mechanical things. Replacing wires, soldiering leads, working with tools, and just plain getting his hands dirty gave him a bit of the meaning of life Father always spoke about.

  “This is good,” said Father as Laender worked to open one of the singed bulkheads. “Breaking down and rebuilding. This leads you to the meaning of life.”

  “So you say, Father.”

  “But what of the other ship?”

  “I have already sent robots to scavenge supplies.”

  The panel shifted uneasily, threatening to slice Laender’s hand open. He slowed his pace and freed the metal casing. The wires were a mess.

  “This will have to be completely replaced,” Laender said almost happily.

  “Would you like to talk while you work?”

  “Yes, Father, but I am afraid that you will not be able to help me any further than you already have.”

  “Maybe,” said the holographic head, nodding, “but let me ask you something. How do you feel about the prospect of rebuilding this panel?”

  Laender sat back for a moment and looked at the mess in front of him. “Peaceful.”

  “Yes! This is what I have been alluding to.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Equate the wires to death, Laender. Are they not dead?”

  “In a manner of speaking, Father.”

  “And what is it you are about to do with them?”

  “Repair them.”

  “Does this not bring you joy?”

  Laender thought about this for a while. Joy? What was joy? How could he know?

  Life to him was a series of events, each one different in its own way, but none of them brought him what he would consider joy. He had seen the faces of many men, women, and even alien beings as they experience the world. They would smile, cry, laugh, giggle, scream, and so many other things. He saw them embrace; he saw them fight. In every instance they were, as Father had explained, “living.” To Laender, though, everything was cold and sterile.

  But Laender was no fool. People had not accepted him until he began mimicking their emotions on the outside. In order for society to accept him, he had to react in a way that they could comprehend.

  Hopeful to solve the problem he had even gone in for psychiatric assistance, but none of them were able to solve his angst. After 10 years of trying to feel the same things that others felt, he took the advice of one doctor who had suggested he go and “find” himself. Laender took this to heart and contracted a ship to drop him off on the world known as Terra.

  It was a largely unpopulated place that was full of ancient ruins.

  During his time there, he studied the archeology and read ancient texts, learning much about a culture that had grown too fast for its own good. The work was interesting, and it did bring him peace, but not happiness. At least, not what he’d read as the meaning of happiness.

  One day, during a deep-cave excursion, Laender found a metal box. He opened it and found that the wires inside the box were damaged. It hadn’t taken him long to correct them and to put power to the device.

  That was the day he’d met Father.

  Laender could not remember his true father, and this holographic representation acted in a way that Laender felt was fatherly.

  “No, Father,” he said, bringing his mind back to the question about fixing the wiring, “it does not bring me joy. It brings me peace.”

  “That is close, Laender,” the holograph said with the skin around its eyes crinkling. “You can grow from there.”

  THE GAME BEGINS

  Fuck that, Kat,” Sam said with her usual humor and thoughtfulness, “you can go work for BN fuckin’ G, if you want. I’m out.”

  “We just worked for them!” Max yelled at her sister. “Now you get a conscience?”

  “One job, yeah,” Sam said back. “I’m not gonna be under their thumb to do whatever, whenever. These guys think they can do anything. What if they wanted a hit on a kid or something?”

  “Could happen,” Penn said, sticking a cleaning cloth down the muzzle of her Z-8.

  “You bet it could,” Sam said, leaning back now that she had someone in the ship’s mess hall agree with her. “Likely, even.”

  “They have other people to do their killing, Sam,” I said. “Stop being dramatic.”

  She crossed her arms and pouted, which she did when she knew she was wrong.

  “Anyways, I don’t think we have a choice,” Penn offered.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. Penn always saw an angle no one else did. And she was right 51% of the time. Which outdid the rest of us by a factor of too fucking much.

  Penn looked up from her polishing. “You think they’d put us through a test like that moon job, call us in for a private meeting about a mythical treasure, and then be okay with us saying, eh, no thanks?”

  “Good point,” Blue mumbled.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Okay. We all prepped, Penn?” She nodded. Good old Penn. “So this job is just like Trylox-27, okay?”

  “That the satellite job?” Max asked.

  “The asteroid,” Penn corrected. The girls stared at her blankly, not saying a word. “The one with the flames and shit,” Penn continued.

  “Oh, man,” Blue said. “And how is this like that?”

  “We follow. We track. We stay close.”

  “We let the other guys do all the work,” Max and Sam said together.

  I waved my finger over Blue, Sam, and Max. “You three fan out and put a tracker on as many ships as you can. I’m pretty damn sure Reycort has some inside info from Guild HQ. Start with his.”

  Within two seconds they’d all left. Great team. They had their reservations about the whole thing but when we agreed, we did the job. Period.

  “You worried about Sam?” Penn asked as she flicked some switches that were probably important.

  “Should I be?”

  Penn didn’t seem to like something she saw on the screen, so she sat down and started to dig in. “She’s fast to talk-back these days is all.”

  “Yeah, well, the moon is full.”

  “Which one?”

  We laughed at the joke for the thousandth time and I left her to do her work.

  The ship was in great shape. Penn and Max had done an excellent job keeping it mint and even upgrading when possible. It was tough, though. We’d been living hand-to-mouth for almost five years to get out of debt. Sam and Max had not been easy or cheap to secure. Twins are a delicacy in some parts for fuck sake. Springing them was the best thing I’d ever done for the team. They earned their keep times ten. But it was also the dumbest thing I’d ever done, survival-wise, I’m saying.

  I ran my fingers over some sheet metal that Blue had welded in place after the run-in with police over Mylan. Actually, no, she welded it during the run-in. That was a tough job.

  I had one of those moments when I felt grateful for what little I had.

  I wish I’d known it would be the last
quality time I’d ever get to spend with my home.

  “Reycort is flying,” Sam’s voice came in over the comm.

  My stomach dropped. “Shit. Did you get the tracker on before he left?”

  “Of course I got the tracker on!” Sam yelled back.

  “I got two on,” Max said.

  “Three on,”said Blue.

  “That’ll have to do. We need to stay on the warden. Get back to the ship. All of you.”

  I took a deep breath and reminded myself to have faith. My team could handle anything. Me, I wasn’t so sure at that moment. I thought of using the Noosenik on myself for a kick in the skirt.

  LASHEN-7

  If there was any one necessary evil that bothered Laender, it was having to garner supplies for his ship. From his perspective, everything should function of its own accord, without the need for constant feeding and care. Granted, he found peace in repairing damaged things, but that was different.

  His wishes aside, provisions were required so he checked the maps and found the closest station was Lashen-7. It was the 7th moon of the planet Lashen, sitting just at the edge of the Carnarus System.

  Laender had never been to this particular settlement, but they accepted his credentials without question and he was soon docking and prepping his ship’s security system. Anyone foolish enough to try to break into his ship would be ripped to shreds within moments. On the off-chance that they did break through the defenses, though, they would be attacked by the robots, and finally by Laender himself, assuming he were able to make it back to the ship before it lifted off. He had a plan for that eventuality too, of course. A simple trigger device that he had on his person at all times. One click and the ship would detonate.

  The moment he stepped off his ship there was a line of workers begging to do repairs, cleaning, refueling, and various other services. He paid one of the rougher looking characters a few hundred credits to refuel and clean the outside of ship, and then offered him an additional five hundred credits to watch it, payable upon Laender’s return.