Smuggler Queen Read online

  None of the bolts she saw came within ten klicks of the target, but her enemies didn’t know that Justiana Fregg couldn’t hit a battleship at ten paces.

  Izza took her chance and jumped.

  Her finger was by the stud to activate the thruster pack, but what she saw at the central cylinder stayed her hand.

  Of the three space-suited figures who’d fired at her, one was either a floating corpse from her earlier shot or was making a good attempt at playing dead. The other two were in an altercation. One was trying to get back in the cylinder and the other was trying to stop them.

  Another burst of Phantom’s cannon fire lit the area.

  This time, Fregg hit something. One of the other gravity units exploded in a fireball.

  A part of Izza’s mind noted that there must’ve been combustibles in that unit, and that implied valuable salvage the earlier scavengers had missed. Maybe there was more she could claim for herself?

  But there was another part that said she had to stay alive to face the daunting prospect of meeting her mother-in-law. The two rival scavengers were looking in horror at the destruction. Izza took careful aim at the one who hadn’t wanted to retreat inside the central cylinder and put three bolts through them.

  The other scavenger fled inside before Izza could shoot them.

  She twisted around to bring Phantom into view. The familiar shape of the animal horn KM conduits brought a smile to her face. “Well done, Fregg. I think you just—”

  Fregg let loose another burst of cannon fire.

  One of the bolts came straight for her.

  In less than a second, the bolt had flown past, missing her by inches. The shock of what had almost happened hit her body a few seconds later. It hit hard.

  She was shaking inside her suit when Phantom shot past. Her suit diaper would earn its keep today.

  “Fregg, ceasefire,” she squeaked.

  Phantom streaked past.

  “Fregg to the captain. Are you alright? You sound weird.”

  Izza’s slow rotation brought Grav Unit 3 into view. She’d been headed there before the trouble kicked off but, now, more scavengers were emerging from it. All carried blaster rifles.

  “It’s not over yet,” she told her team. She hit the thrust pack stud and initiated evasive maneuvers.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 5: Green Fish

  Green Fish loosed the last of her bolts at the hatch and bounded away across the hydroponics compartment to a new position.

  “Green Fish, swapping charge packs.” She announced her status without thinking, just as Sergeant Arunsen had taught her, forgetting she wasn’t in the Militia now.

  She swapped packs without looking, keeping her attention on the hatch in the overhead. Through that open hatch was the central passage tube that ran along the axis of the cylinder.

  Her task was to keep the scavengers bottled up in that central tube. Meanwhile, Sinofar would enter the tube via another compartment and flank them.

  Excitement and fear tingled inside her, fizzing up her guts. The scavengers were there but were keeping out of sight.

  Were they stacking up to assault through the hatch? Perhaps some of them were keeping her busy while the rest of them outflanked her?

  Her gaze switched to the door by the curved deck through which she and Sinofar had entered. Would they come through there?

  She looked up again at the overhead hatch.

  Orion’s arse! She screamed and jumped.

  She wasn’t jumping anywhere in particular, just anywhere but here.

  While her attention had been elsewhere, two scavengers had dropped through the hatch, feet first, firing at her.

  The room was filling with splintered glass from the capillary tubes that led from the plant troughs up to the overhead feed tubes.

  The cylinder was airless. If it had been pressurized, she would have been crapping herself at the ferocity of the attack. Without any sound, she hadn’t even noticed.

  The combination of spin, low-gee, and Coriolis forces was confusing. Her return fire missed.

  Her random leap had landed her on one of the empty plant troughs. She bunched her knees and pushed off higher.

  It was like a deadly aerial ballet. Except without the air. She was jumping higher as the pair of scavengers descended.

  Shit. Shit. Shit!

  She winced as she shot one in the gut as they passed each other in the middle of the compartment. There was no way the other scavenger could miss her.

  She tensed up inside her suit, waiting for the killing shot, though she still took aim at the second scavenger who…didn’t fire.

  Something was sticking out of the inside of the scavenger’s elbow joints. Daggers.

  She fired anyway, blowing the back of the helmet out in a geyser of blood. As she reached the apogee of her leap and began to drop back down, she covered the overhead hatch and saw a figure standing there wearing one of the suits they’d found in Ghost Shark.

  Sinofar gave her a thumbs up. “This is Sinofar. Central tube is clear. Green Fish, retrieve my lucky daggers and join me at the exit to Grav Unit 3. Sorry for the delay, boss. We’re on our way.”

  * * *

  “Ditch the cutter,” ordered Sinofar.

  Green Fish looked guiltily at the heavy laser cutter in her hands. Its weight felt comforting, which was why she’d grabbed it from the deck of the hydroponics room. “Might come in handy,” she replied. “Besides, I’ve brought it this far.”

  They were stacked up behind a closed hatch. On the far side was the staging area with access to the tether the boss had used to escape.

  Sinofar turned and glared through her faceplate at the junior crewman behind her. “It’s a 22-megawatt laser. That’s a lot of power, but its focus point varies between one and ten centimeters. It’s not a weapon. Ditch it!”

  Green Fish dropped the cutter and drew her hand blaster. Sinofar gave a silent countdown with her fingers and then opened the hatch.

  “Get some!” yelled the Pryxian as she sprayed the room with her Z’Lox “Slammer.” The shallow drum strapped to Sinofar’s back slowly rotated, delivering a constant stream of ammunition to the five rotating barrels of her minigun.

  She leaned forward into the recoil that had to be pummeling her like a thousand mailed fists.

  Sinofar could lift objects that beggared belief, but she wasn’t entirely immune to the laws of physics. She only managed a short burst before the Slammer’s barrels lifted high, and the recoil pushed her off the deck and into a backward jump.

  By then, Green Fish was already charging through into the compartment, edging to the left to give Sinofar a clear fire zone.

  She was too late. The only scavenger in the room had already been shredded into a red mist that was sluggishly falling onto the deck.

  Green Fish took a moment to check for more hostiles, but there were none in view. No concealment to hide them, either. “Clear!”

  She pushed on to the open exterior hatch and took in the scene outside the central cylinder. A taut cable only a few inches thick stretched through space and connected to the grav unit a kilometer away, spinning it around to give it pseudo gravity like that on an Earthlike planet’s surface. Two-thirds of the way toward the grav unit, the boss was using a thruster pack to zip around while sending blaster fire toward the module’s open hatch.

  The return fire was far fiercer.

  The boss had been matching the orbital’s rotation. Now, she abandoned that and drifted up and out of Green Fish’s field of view. She’d rotate back into the enemy’s field of fire in just over a minute

  They had to do something. Fast.

  Green Fish raised her hand blaster but thought better of it. Her bolts would carry that far but hitting a target a klick away was impossible.

  “Out of the way!” yelled Sinofar.

  Green Fish shifted aside to let Sinofar set up with the long-barreled blaster rifle. The Pryxian had shouldered the Slammer, a weapon too heavy for Green
Fish to lift.

  Next time, I’ll bring the binocs, she told herself because she felt helpless. The faceplate of her spacesuit lacked magnification capability. All she could see of the distant grav unit was a white smear.

  Four of these grav units had been tethered to the central cylinder she was on, though one had just been destroyed. The central hub rotated once every sixty-seven seconds.

  As the planet below gently rotated into view, displaying its sickly yellow and green atmosphere, Grav Unit 3 slid down the star field and revealed two incoming scavenger ships.

  “I see two ships inbound,” Green Fish reported. An idea hit her, and she set a timer running. “Sinofar, keep their heads down in Grav Unit 3.” She hurried back inside the central cylinder. “Fregg, where are you?”

  “I’ve flipped about,” Fregg replied, “but I’m still headed in the wrong direction. Shall I open fire?”

  “No!” cried Green Fish and Zan Fey simultaneously.

  “Whatever you’re doing, Green Fish,” said the boss, “make it snappy. This thrust pack is the only thing keeping me alive, and it’s almost out of fuel.”

  “Can you hold on for…” Green Fish checked the timer and made a quick mental calculation. “Forty-three seconds?”

  “I’ll try,” said the boss. “But no longer. What’s your plan, Greenie?”

  “Have you heard the tale of David and Goliath?”

  “Can’t say I have. Yes! Good shooting, Sinofar. They’re retreating inside the grav unit. Oh…shit. Those scavenger ships are almost here. I am heading back to the hub. Who was David and what did he do with Goliath?”

  Green Fish was hurrying along the deck of the hub, the heavy cutter back in her hands, and her breathing loud in her helmet. “Allow me to demonstrate, boss.”

  She returned to the tether point and was relieved to see the cable moving away from the boss. The system of cylinder tethers and grav units rotated onward, and Zan Fey appeared to rise overhead.

  With each rotation taking sixty-seven seconds, that left Green Fish about twenty seconds to cut the tether.

  Sinofar finally grasped the plan and got the hell out of the way.

  Green Fish set to work, slicing the cutter’s beam through the cable.

  It cut through easily.

  Which was bad. Cutting the cable too soon was as much of a disaster as too late.

  Her timer said she had eight seconds remaining.

  The uncut section began to fray.

  Green Fish ignored it.

  “I’m on my way,” Fregg told them.

  Six seconds…

  “Keep it steady, Phantom,” said the boss. “If this works, park as close as you dare, and we will come to you. Do not overshoot!”

  The cutter jerked in Green Fish’s hands as she finished slicing through the cable.

  The severed end gave a deadly flick, but it was already moving safely away from Green Fish and the hub.

  Blaster fire and destruction had come to the floating mausoleums that had once housed a secret dream to transform the galaxy. Until the team from Phantom had arrived, its rotational mechanics had continued serenely as they had for a dozen centuries. A fact that made Green Fish suspect the station couldn’t be as dead as it appeared. Not if it had remained stable all that time.

  Every sixty-seven seconds, the world of Omicron-San would rotate into view, dazzling observers on the station with its vivid planetshine. Then it would slide out of sight, though its light still reflected off the facing sides of the gravity units.

  That ancient motion had been disturbed when Fregg shot up Grav Unit 2. Now it was shattered.

  The central cylinder wobbled beneath Green Fish’s feet, sending pulses out from the two grav units still connected.

  Grav Unit 3 flew away at a surprising speed. More important to Green Fish than the velocity was its trajectory.

  It was aimed directly at the two scavenger ships.

  She watched, barely daring to breathe. She unashamedly wanted to see what would happen when a space station module slammed into a space vehicle filled with people trying to kill her.

  They panicked. That was what happened. The two ships veered away and opened their throttles.

  On the grav unit she’d converted into a slingshot missile, scavengers were crawling onto the hull. From the way they were gesticulating, she guessed they were arguing whether it was best to abandon the module or stick with it. They couldn’t agree. Half of them jumped, which made little difference to their velocity, but would gradually separate them from the module.

  Phantom returned to Green Fish’s field of view.

  And then vanished as the cylinder rotated it out of view again.

  When it slid back a minute later, Fregg was shooting at the nearest of the scavenger ships. Her aim hadn’t improved, and was no match for the scavenger ships trying to cut through Phantom’s cockpit with turret lasers.

  Phantom’s shields were easily up to the task, flashing briefly as they absorbed the energy attack. The KM horns glowed with lilac fire as they safely radiated the energy out into the Klein-Manifold Region.

  The scavenger ships were outclassed, and they knew it. They veered away to retrieve their fellows who had been cast adrift and then stayed just outside Phantom’s effective weapons range. They were wrong, of course. Phantom had a lot more firepower to dish out than the nose-mounted blasters Fregg had used.

  Phantom parked near the hub. Her crew thrusted over to her, taking turns imparting momentum to the boss, who had finally run out of fuel.

  * * *

  “Do we skragg them?” Green Fish asked once they were aboard and helmets had been removed. “They did fire first.”

  “Negative,” Zan Fey replied. “None of this was personal. Just business. Always best to keep it that way if you can, kid.”

  The other crew had stations to go to. Green Fish didn’t. At a loss and still buzzing with the adrenaline rush, she followed Zan Fey onto the flight deck. “But they fired first!”

  The boss hesitated. She seemed torn inside. “They did,” she said angrily.

  “No one messes with Phantom’s crew,” said Green Fish. “The sector should know that. And those scavengers might not have seen our ship before, but they have now.”

  “That’s a very good point.” Zan Fey turned and placed a hand on Green Fish’s shoulder. She seemed impressed. “Let’s see what we can do about that.”

  Zan Fey took her seat and gestured for Green Fish to join her in the copilot position.

  Green Fish looked at the small seat dubiously. Her butt was big in a space suit. Before she could say anything, the seat expanded until it was the perfect fit. Still got a lot to learn.

  The boss removed her gloves and stretched out a long green finger to flick on the intercom. “Captain to all hands, get ready to look out the portholes and observe some tactical showing off.”

  The crew acknowledged their readiness in their various ways.

  “Strapped in and sick bag ready.”

  “C’mon, Cap’n. Show your moves.”

  “Is this really necessary? I have some reading to do.”

  The tension left Zan Fey, and a sly grin slid into place as she unleashed the awesome potential of Phantom’s engines. They crossed the gap to the scavenger ships at a speed that must have had the skraggs testing the limits of their suits’ body waste management systems.

  “Verlys,” she said. “It’s time for your target practice. See if you can take out those lasers.”

  “Roger that,” Sinofar roared from the ventral turret.

  The flight deck filled with whoops of joy. Zan Fey was in her element, sending Phantom swooping like a space bird around the hapless scavengers. Green Fish enjoyed the flying display from her copilot seat, her eyes glued to the stunning view through the cockpit window.

  Only when Phantom turned the tightest of her loops did she feel a slight pull of g-forces.

  “Can I have a go in the other turret?” she begged.

  “Nex
t time.” Zan Fey laughed. “Sinofar will be done before you get there.”

  Phantom darted close to the scavenger ships, holding station for a second or so for Sinofar to lock on and shoot out the enemy lasers.

  The surviving enemy weapons accurately returned fire.

  It made no difference. Phantom’s captain always had the shields angled the right way to meet the attacks, using the KM horns to disperse the energy to upper dimensions.

  Zan Fey pulled the ship through a final series of loops just for the hell of it and then opened the throttles to race for the outer system.

  There was nothing Green Fish could imagine wanting more than to be Izza Zan Fey.

  She was sublime.

  “Arse!” The boss face palmed. “Five Hells!”

  “What is it?”

  “The quantum bias generator. Someone please tell me we did retrieve the damned thing.”

  Green Fish stood and turned her back to the boss. “J-shaped tube. Is it still on my back?”

  “Azhanti’s Grace!” Zan Fey removed it and clamped it safely to the bulkhead attachment point. “If we ever meet up again with Fitz, never tell him what a hash we made of our first job without him.”

  “Everyone has teething problems,” said Green Fish, sitting back in the copilot seat. “Even the girls’ team. We just need to learn and get slicker for next time. We like having Fitz and the others around, but we don’t need them.”

  Zan Fey gave her a peculiar look Green Fish couldn’t interpret. “Girls’ team?” she asked after a few moments. “Are you forgetting Catkins?”

  “Nope.” Green Fish grinned.

  Zan Fey’s eyes flashed with color as she chuckled. “Girls’ team. I can run with that. First, we need to get to safety. Then we celebrate.”

  She pushed forward the drive activator, forming a jump tunnel in front of the ship’s nose.

  Phantom fell through.