The Relic (The Galactic Thieves Book 1) Read online

  Moving through Lashen-7 was challenging at best. The streets were so crowded that it would prove a horrific life for anyone suffering from claustrophobia. Fortunately, Laender was tall enough to see over most people, so navigation was simple.

  Checking the signage, he found a weapons and maintenance building that he hoped would suit his needs. Worst case was that he’d just walk down the street further and find another and another until he located what he needed.

  “Welcome in, stranger,” said a man behind the counter. “What can I do you for today?”

  “I’m seeking a number of armaments,” Laender replied, handing the man a piece of synthsheet.

  The guy whistled. “Woah, fella…you’re going to need a lot of coin to pull this kind of—”

  Laender reached over and handed him a 1 million credit slip.

  “No problem,” the guy said, blinking almost as fast as he started moving. “I’m sure we’ve got everything you need.”

  “One thing,” Laender said firmly, stopping the man in his tracks.

  “Yes, sir?”

  Laender moved in close and looked down at him. “If I find anything less than supreme quality, I will become very agitated.”

  The man took a step back and paled. “Well, we wouldn’t want that, now would we? No, sir. We would not indeed. I’ll make sure everything is tip-top stuff. Only the best, I assure you.”

  “Here is my slip number,” Laender said. “Deliver everything there and my robots will signal me when you are done. They will check all the items to verify everything is good and they will handle the unloading. If there are any problems, I will return.”

  “I understand,” the man croaked.

  Laender had the urge to see if this man could give him answers. He was old. He’d seen things. Had experience. Laender paused and decided that weapons were more important for now. Besides, after the initial studies he’d done on the previous inhabitants of his ship, Laender had promised Father that he’d only study people who threatened him. Otherwise, according to Father, it was just murder.

  “Where can I find a whore?” Laender asked, after a moment.

  “A whore? Oh…OH! Yes, sir. Uh…you just go down about three blocks to the left and you’ll see a building with a red sign on the front. Can’t miss it. Best place in town, too.”

  Laender looked the man over once more, nodded, and began his walk.

  It would do him good to have some relief from the day’s events. There was something about rutting that brought him a different kind of peace than repairing broken systems.

  Light was beginning to diminish as he pushed through the crowd. He felt a tug on his pocket and reached out with lightening speed, grabbing a young boy by the wrist. The kid shrieked, causing a group of onlookers to glance menacingly in his direction. To Laender’s surprise, the kid maintained his grip on the credit slip.

  “Let go of me, mister!”

  Laender considered things. It was well within his rights to study this child, but the number of people around him would prove more than challenging in a fight.

  “Drop the credit slip and I will,” Laender stated flatly.

  The kid dropped it and Laender let go. As the kid scurried through the crowd, everyone went back to minding their own business. Just in case, Laender placed all of his valuables to the inside of his jacket before moving on.

  He arrived at the red-signed building, named “The Comfort House.” It was rundown compared to the other establishments along the strip, but Laender hadn’t expected posh accommodations from a whorehouse. The woman who stood at the main entrance was looking him over hungrily as he approached. He’d seen the look before and knew she was merely doing her job. Soon, though, she would learn a hunger that she’d never thought possible.

  He stopped and studied her. Red hair and green eyes, wide-hips, and large breasts that were certainly fake. The top of her head came up to his chin causing her to crane her neck back in order to look up at him.

  “Say handsome, why don’t we—”

  “You will do,” he said, cutting her off and grabbing her hand.

  She barely kept her feet as he pulled her into the building and walked up to the front desk where a burly man was standing.

  “This one,” Laender said and placed a credit slip for 10,000 in his hands.

  “She’s all yours, pal,” the guy said with wide eyes. “Take the King Suite at the end of the hall.”

  Laender pulled her roughly down the hall, pushed opened the door and threw her inside.

  “Hey,” she said as she got awkwardly back to her feet while rubbing her arm. “I’m not into the rough stuff, okay?”

  Dimming the lights, Laender walked over to her and placed his hand over her mouth and pulled her hair back hard. She whimpered.

  “After tonight,” he said in a sinister voice, “you will beg for the rough stuff.”

  NUCLEAR TAG

  Max had done 50 reps before she broke a sweat. 50 reps of three chin-ups. Let’s see, that’s 49 reps and two chin-ups better than I’ve ever managed. On the Trumble job, she carried two of the team on her back with five broken legs between them. She strapped her rifle to her leg as a splint and did it with a fractured thighbone.

  The only problem with her workouts was that they wore her out so bad that she could be pretty useless around the ship.

  “Cool it, Max,” I said, ducking under some workout equipment. “We need you strong.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said, and dropped to the gym floor. I handed her some water. She dumped half of it down her gullet and the other half on her red face.

  “I smell that Max has been working out again,” Sam said as she walked in.

  “Funny, sis. Better than getting my ass pulled out of the fire every gig we get.”

  “You know my motto, Max,” Sam said.

  “Yeah,” Max said, standing up and putting her hand on her hip, “’Stay heavy so my sister can barely throw me over her shoulder.’”

  Max shoved her sister into the wall. Sam shoved her back. Then they glared at each other, waiting for someone to make a move.

  “Take it to the ring you two,” I muttered.

  These two could go back and forth forever. The only thing able to shut them up was a good game of Headcube. It was sometimes tough keeping them in check. One, they were barely past the age of allowance, and two they were from Heenocron, the infamous planet that churned out adrenaline junkies and lunkheads. At least the ones I got weren’t complete lunkheads.

  Max threw her sister a cube helmet and slipped another one over her head. The make was a simple full back cover, including flaps for the ears. A shield dropped on the front, covering down under the nose while letting the mouth hang free. In the back, an automated cable plugged into to a chip that was integrated into the wearer’s head. Since everyone except for those on backwater worlds were equipped with Cranial Chips, the game worked on pretty much any world that subscribed to universal protocols.

  Our workout room wasn’t exactly big, but it was big enough for a match if the equipment got moved to the walls.

  The ladies stretched and chose their weapons while I hauled the weights and racks.

  Max chose her favorite, the lance. Sam liked to be unpredictable. She yanked a pair of one-handed clubs from the supply crate. There’d be bumps and bruises, but nothing permanent. At least not on my ship. I made sure that real weapons were used for bad guys only.

  With typical instinct, Blue chose that moment to stroll in. She loved blood. No one said a thing as we moved the equipment, of course. We’d done this enough times to know what happened next.

  The sisters got into position. Their helmets activated. The sound of hissing gas filled the room.

  “Oh yeah!” Sam yelled as her helmet’s eyes clouded over. Her shield was filling with Guh, soaking in through her eyes. That shit will make you higher than heaven. A few seconds later it cleared.

  The first Headcube challenge was on.

  The two of them ran
at each other faster than any stoned person I’d ever seen. Max’s lance grazed off of one of Sam’s clubs and her forward motion made her stumble to the floor. Sam’s clubs slammed the steel grating about a half inch from her sister’s head. Not bad aim considering she was probably seeing three and three quarters of everything.

  Max twisted on the floor stretching her legs out as far as she could. Her feet barely reached Sam’s knees. But it was more than enough. The POP sound that came from Sam’s kneecap made me flinch. She shrieked. That was a sprain at best. Nothing the Table couldn’t fix in 5 minutes, so I let it go.

  Max was actually winning. For once. Sam had a 42 and 0 record against her sis, mostly because she was the fastest thing on two legs I’ve ever met. Max may have been strong, but Sam would hit her five times to Max’s once.

  But with speed taken away, Sam got desperate. She started swinging her clubs in circles, crossing each one in front of her. She moved toward Max with as much velocity as she could manage on a dead leg.

  Then the helmet’s shutters slid in front of the eyes.

  They couldn’t see.

  Challenge two.

  They started stumbling a little. Blue thought it was hilarious.

  “Kat,” Penn’s voice came from the ship’s comm.

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  “We have a signal from Musasho’s ship.”

  Max and Sam dove around the room, surging at all the wrong moments and striking almost everything except each other.

  “You still have Reycort?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the action.

  “Yeah, but the thing is, Musasho was tailing him too for a minute. Then he just jumped.”

  Max almost slammed into Blue, who twirled through the door and out of harm’s way.

  “How far?” I asked Penn.

  “One quadrant, maybe. Not far.”

  A blinded Max leapt straight up a few times. I wasn’t sure what she was up to until she grabbed onto one of the pipes running across the ceiling. She hung there with one leg dangling.

  “Okay, keep an eye on both of those ships, cool?”

  “Yeah,” Penn answered.

  “You okay?” I added after a second. “Want me up there?”

  “No, I got it.”

  I realized what Max was doing. Hanging from the ceiling allowed her to use her one leg as a kind of sensor. If her blinded sister skimmed past it she could get an idea of where to attack, but Sam wouldn’t know that her target was above her.

  Smart.

  And it worked.

  Sam backed into Max’s foot and swung wildly. But Max quickly lifted her leg out of harm’s way and dropped on top of her sister, ass-first. She landed on Sam’s jaw, snapping it right off her head.

  Sam let out a wet scream that still makes my stomach clench.

  “Shit,” I yelled, “that’s enough!”

  I pulled the helmet off of Sam’s head and tried not to gag.

  “Yes!” Max stood, triumphant, arms raised. She raised her helmet, saw that her sister’s lower jaw was wrapped around her nose, and threw up on the spot. The Headcube games were only supposed to be Bump-n-Bruise exercises. With the way I had it rigged and the weapons I allowed, it was set to give way to aggression without doing any permanent damage. But flukes still happen and I just fucked up. Note to self: never let a couple of Heenocronians play Headcube while on a serious mission. Too damned unpredictable.

  It figures that the first major injury happened right before Penn barked over the comm.

  “Kat! You better get up here!” I didn’t like the panic in her voice. Not like Penn to panic.

  “Give me a minute,” I said, lifting Sam’s feet while Max picked her up by the shoulder causing her to spit out another scream. We had to get her to the Table fast. She was going into shock and the pain must have been fucked up.

  “We have a hole opening,” Penn said, her voice growing more agitated. “Like right here.”

  “Musasho?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Shit!” I dropped Sam’s feet and ran. I yelled back at Max and Blue as I slipped through the door. “Get her to the Table. Do NOT turn it on!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Max called out. I put the odds of her following my orders at 3:1, mostly dependent on whether she passed out from the sight of all the blood before they got Sam to the Table in the first place.

  “Penn,” I yelled, “Musasho’s going to try the—”

  “Rope-a-Dope,” she said over the comm. “Yeah. Here comes the missile now. Shit!”

  “A nuke right?”

  “Yeah, fucking asshole.”

  “It’s his way. Head toward the wormhole.”

  “That’s what he wants, Kat.”

  “Just do as I say!”

  The Rope-a-Dope is an old trick where you open a wormhole near your target and shoot a missile through it. That leaves the target a few options: Outrun the missile, re-target it, set off countermeasures, or, my favorite, try to guide it back through the wormhole it just came through. Most ships these days are so fast that the Rope-a-Dope doesn’t work anymore. But Musasho added his own special signature to the maneuver by making the missile a long-range nuke. It could outrun and outlast almost any ship, including ours, and its payload was massive. Even at this distance, launching countermeasures would result in an explosion that would cause a load of damage to my ship.

  Which left us only one option in open space. Head back through the wormhole.

  Musasho would know that, of course, and that made us a sitting duck. The bastard was certainly on the other side with all his guns pointed at where we’d emerge.

  Quite a trap.

  Penn was in the pilot’s seat, hands clasped tight around the sticks.

  “Get beside it and take us through.”

  Penn turned to look at me. Her eyes said it all, but she opened her mouth anyway. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

  “Come on, Penn,” I said, grinning. “Side thrusters. We’re in space!”

  She started laughing. “You’re fucking kidding me!” she said again, louder. I think that meant she was on board with the plan. Regardless, she knew an order when she heard one. She turned on the targeting.

  “Max, how’s Sam?” I asked over comm.

  “Not good, boss,” Max’s voice came back. She was crying. My stomach sank. The shock could kill Sam. “Please, ma’am. You gotta let me use the Table.”

  I looked to Penn. She was grim. She shook her head.

  “Max, listen. We have a nuke on our nose at the moment. We need the power on the side thrusters so we can outmaneuver it. We can’t feed any power to the Table, yet.”

  Silence. Penn and I watched the nuke get closer. I could just make out the missile’s shape against the blue flame coming out its ass.

  “I get it [click],” Max muttered, closing the comm.

  “So if this doesn’t go well,” Penn said, guiding the oncoming missile into her cross-hairs, “I want to say thanks, Kat.”

  “No one’s ever thanked me for getting them killed before,” I said, suspecting that Penn wanted to be straight with me, which made me panic even more than having a nuke with my name on it.

  “Not that and you know it,” Penn grunted. “You got me out of that place. You didn’t have to, but you risked everything. I still don’t know why, but thanks.”

  “I don’t know why either,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Now get us out of this mess, will you?”

  “Strap yourself in everyone,” Penn barked into the comm.

  I buckled up and knocked on the cockpit glass which was the closest thing to wood that I could find. I did it to invite in some good luck for Sam. Either I was in denial about the danger we were all in, or I had supreme confidence in Penn.

  “Penn,” I said when my gut told me we needed to move.

  “Not yet,” she replied.

  Three seconds passed.

  “Penn,” I said again.

  “Shut up, Kat,” she growled.

/>   I could have sworn I’d seen the metal of the missile gleaming…the smooth curve of the tip, glistening red like a fireball.

  “PENNGODDAMIT!”

  CRACK

  The ship’s side thrusters fired on the left side at 100% snapping my head into my shoulder.

  I watched Penn’s screen. Two orange dots danced across the surface. One dot was us. The other was our death. Our ship barely dodged, saving us from our finality.

  But the missile corrected itself and began it’s arc back toward our tail.

  “Head toward the wormhole.”

  “Already on it,” Penn said, her fingers flying over the console. “We need to get Blue to the silos to set our sig on one of the missiles.”

  “Brilliant,” I said and then clicked the comm. “Blue, get your ass in to the silos and set our sig on one of the missiles. It’s going to be our patsy.”

  “Aye aye,” she answered.

  “This is fucking crazy,” Penn said, shaking her head. “You know that, right?”

  “Best way to survive.”

  DOUBLE-CROSSED

  It was the dead of night when Laender had finished with the whore. Even though she was battered and bruised, she had pleaded with him to take her along. The weak minded were such easy prey. Again, though, she had done nothing to warrant him studying her. If anything, she could study him.

  He stopped in an alley and checked in with the robots on the ship. All of the manifest was on board and correct. Repairs were completed and so was the outside cleaning. The only thing out of place was that security showed a perimeter breach on sections 9 and 11 of the ship. Nobody had gotten inside, so it was clear that they were laying in wait for the owner of the ship to return. Also, the man he’d asked to stay with the ship was gone. Likely either got a better offer or was threatened.

  Clearly the old man had set him up.

  He considered returning to pay the man a visit but he’d surely either disappeared or was sitting in a perch somewhere to manage the attack.

  Extending the ship’s scans he found a few more signatures registering. They could have just been bystanders or members of other ships. There was no way to distinguish. Just to be sure, though, he ran a directed check on the tops of surrounding buildings. Sure enough, there was one signal registering.