Drifters' Alliance, Book 2 (21 page)

“How did you get it to work so fast?” I’m staring at the disk peeking out from between her fingers. I didn’t see anyone getting sick before they passed out; one second they were yelling and the next, unconscious.

“You don’t want to know. Come on.” She leaves the pit arena and walks swiftly away.

I run back to grab Mason by the shoulder and drag him up onto his feet. He stumbles along next to me as I hurry to catch up to our savior.

“This is going to end so badly,” he says, losing his breath within ten strides.

“No, it’s not. Come on. Stop being such a wuss.”

“I’m not a wuss. I’m a realist.”

Lucinda seems to know her way around the place. She turns left and right, and left again, bodies of OSG personnel littering the path we’re taking. Sometimes she steps over them and sometimes she has to shove them to the side when there are too many in the way. It barely slows her down.

“Damn, they have a big crew on this ship,” I say.

“Yeah. Looks like they’re ready to go to war, doesn’t it?” Lucinda stops at a turn in the corridor. “We need to leave, but before we do, is there anything on here you think we should take?”

I lift a brow. “Unused assets? Things that need to be repurposed?”

“Exactly.” She’s not even trying to hide her inner Romanii, and I’m totally cool with that.

My eyes light up. “I’d love to get my hands on that sarciossis capsule.”

“They’d miss that too easily. But Jeffers is in there now seeing what other instrumentation they might not. Not right away, anyway. Come on.” She starts jogging again, and soon we’re at the airlock connecting our ships. Baebong is waiting on the other side.

The first thing I do when I get there is hug him. “I thought you’d left me.”

“And have nightmares for the rest of my life? Bad karma to boil my bones in? No thanks.”

I lean back and look at him. “It’s not like you missed me or anything.”

“Hell no. It was a nice Cass-free vacation while it lasted.”

“I was only gone for a few hours.”

“You were gone for half a day, and it was fun, but we’ve gotta go.”

“What about Tam?” It’s the first thought I’ve given to my engineer and friend, and I’m ashamed it took me so long to get there. But I’m also glad I thought to ask before we were on our way out.
Baby steps, Cass. Baby steps to becoming a better person.

“He’s already onboard, in recovery. He’s going to be okay.”

I lower my voice so no one else will hear. “They said some strange stuff about him on the Baltimore.”

“Oh yeah?” Baebong matches his tone to mine. “Like what?”

Lucinda is moving in closer, so I back up. “Tell you later.” I turn to her. “So, get anything good for yourself back there?”

She looks at me funny. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I reach into her coat pocket really fast and come out with a handful of dirt. I hold it up to her face.

She snatches it back from me and shoves it into her pocket. “Don’t touch that. You’ll contaminate the sample.”

I smile. “Yes,
Ma’am
.”

“Captain.” She nods and walks off, putting her hand in her pocket. I’d be willing to bet she’s fondling her stupid dirt ball in there.
Weirdo
.
Weirdo who saved my bacon
.

“Thanks, Lucinda!” I yell at her back.

“Don’t thank me! Thank Gus!”

I look around. “Where is he?”

“He’s on the Baltimore. Scavenging.”

“We need to go. Get him back on the ship. I want as many klicks between them and us as we can manage before they come to.”

“We already have a rendezvous set up with the Alliance.”

I stop short at that. “Really?” Putting my hand on Baebong’s shoulder I look him in the eye. “Thanks, friend. I knew I could count on you.”

He shrugs. “I like this gig. Wasn’t ready to walk away yet.”

“Good thing for me.” I smile and move away toward the corridor that will bring me to the flight deck, as Baebong moves off down the airlock to retrieve the rest of our crew.

“Captain?”

I turn to face Macon. He’s standing at the end of the airlock on our side. “Yes?”

“What do you want me to do?”

Hug me? Forgive me? Make everything go away?
“Go see what you can do to help Lucinda. If that’s what you want to do.” Hopefully he doesn’t want to kill me. I don’t really think he does, though. Mostly because he was doing a really shitty job of it in the pit. He could have broken my neck about three different ways in the time it was taking him to dance around and pretend to warm up. I might have let him, too. But he didn’t take the opportunity offered, and I don’t believe he ever will now. Some bonds cannot be broken, even by big mistakes. Whopper ones.
Thank the universe for that.

“Okay. I can do that.” He looks like he wants to say more, but then he doesn’t. He just hangs his head, walks off, and disappears down the corridor.

I look around me and take in the exercise equipment that the twins installed for me, the dented, scraped up steeloid that surrounds the cargo bay, and the airlock still linking me to a group of people who are going to wake up soon and wonder what the hell happened and where I went.

Talk about making enemies. I thought the OSG was after me before, but that’s nothing compared to what I suspect their new mission will be: find Cass Kennedy at all costs, and when you do, annihilate her, her crew, and whatever technology she has that knocked us on our asses.

Yeah. I’m pretty much screwed.
I doubt the Alliance will want anything to do with me, now that I’ve brought so much heat to our cause.
So where does that leave me and my crew?
I have no idea, but I’m not going to worry about it until I actually talk to the people who will say yay or nay to my membership in the Alliance. My father always said that there’s no use worrying about things that might never happen, and he wasn’t always wrong.

Chapter Thirty-Two

AFTER A VOYAGE PUTTING SOME serious distance between us and the WS Baltimore, a brief nap filled with nightmares, and a quick de-briefing with Baebong about our next steps, I join my entire crew on the flightdeck. They’re facing me from the bottom of the stairs, and I’m standing in front of my chair. Even Tam is there, although he’s being propped up on one side by his brother and Baebong on the other. His face has pretty decent color to it, all things considered.

“Thanks, everyone. For still being here, for coming to get Tam and Macon and me.” I gesture at my friend. “We’ve known each other for a long time, it turns out.”

Macon looks at the floor. “Too long.”

“Not long enough,” I correct.

“How come you didn’t recognize him?” Gus asks, bending over to see Macon around Jeffers.

“He’s had a little MI,” I say sarcastically.
More than a little. More like a shit-ton.
I look to the others. “We’ll give you the details later, but suffice it to say that he, more than any of you, has great reasons to choke me to death, but for some crazy reason, he’s decided not to. At least for now.”

Several smirks come out and Gus laughs. He stops when he realizes he’s the only one doing it.

“We have a meeting with the Alliance down on the surface of Ogadana in one hour, thanks to Baebong.” I give him a nod. “Before we get there, I want to clear the air among us and get your thoughts on some things.”

There’s a general shuffling of feet and a couple of coughs, but I get no flack so I take that as a good sign and continue.

“As you know, I called up the Baltimore to get some MI for Tam. MI he needed as a result of my mistake.” I look over at his pale face. “I’m sorry, Tam. I never should have left my weapon there for that pirate to use against you.”

He shakes his head. “Hey, now I know what it feels like to be stabbed. Don’t apologize.”

“We’ve always wondered that,” Gus says by way of explanation. He looks at his brother. “I’m so jealous of you right now, it’s not even funny.”

I shake my head at their wacky gingerness. “Anyway, without all of you and without your efforts, I wouldn’t be standing here.” I try to smile, but it’s not really working out, so I quit. “Now… I heard some things on the Baltimore that make me question how and why I’m really here. Like, first of all, how me winning this ship might not have all been left up to chance. Regardless, now’s not the time to worry about it. It’s something we can try and figure out later when we don’t have the OSG up our butts.”

I glance at Macon, but he’s staring at the floor.
I’ll get into that head of yours later, Macon.

“
For right now, all we need to know is that the Alliance is waiting on us, and they’re going to decide if we can join today. However, based on the fact that I now have a giant target on my back, I’m not sure they’re going to want to take that risk on.”

“You mean
we
have a giant target on
our
backs,” Lucinda says. Her arms are folded across her chest.

So much for singing hallelujah, I guess.
“Right. You’re right. And I’m sorry about that too.”

Jeffers speaks up. “We all voted. We made the choice to help you both willingly.” He looks first at me and then at Macon. Macon nods at him in thanks.

“Technically speaking, I didn’t vote,” Tam says, holding up a finger, “but I
would
have voted to help.”

“Thanks. Thanks to all of you.” I bow, hoping they’ll understand that I fully appreciate the sacrifice they’ve made. I pray none of them will have to die for it.

“So, what are we going to do now?” Macon asks.

I want to jump and cheer about the fact that he’s included himself in that ‘we’, but I won’t. It might have been just a slip of the tongue or my hope reading something into his comment that wasn’t really there. Besides, captains of DSes don’t jump for joy.

“Now, we go to Ogadana and have the meeting. See what they have to say.”

“What if they want to take the disk?” Baebong asks.

“Not a problem,” Gus says, smiling. “We have our own now.” He looks at Tam. “It was way simpler than I thought it was going to be. Once I had that picochip…”

“What picochip? You don’t have a picochip,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him.

He gives me a lopsided grin. “Well, we kind of do. See, we put some mods into that water uptake chute … sweeps for electronics that might have gotten loose? Holds onto ‘em. Sends me a signal. Forgot to mention that before. Sorry about that.”

I should probably be angry that he kept my picochip and chose not to tell me, but I get why he didn’t. And if he hadn’t, who knows where we’d be right now.

“We’ll discuss that later.” I focus on the group as a whole. “Right now, I need everyone to get ready for a short flight and a landing at Ogadana.”

“Will I have time to pull samples?” Lucinda asks.

“I’ll make sure you do.”

She’s the first one to leave the group, headed for the nearest corridor.

“Dismissed!” I say before she’s fully out of the room. She hesitates, but then continues without a word.

Baebong leaves his job as prop for Tam and takes his seat on the flightdeck. The engineers limp out together, and Macon departs through the same corridor Lucinda did. That leaves Jeffers looking up at me from the bottom of the stairs.

“You have something to say?” I ask, expecting a reprimand.

He shakes his head. “Just glad to have you back, Captain.” He gives me a slight bow before walking up the stairs toward the empty chair on the flightdeck.

“Glad to be back,” I say, taking my seat at the helm. I want to sing and dance and cry all at the same time, but instead I stare silently out at the Dark.
One step at a time. You can dance when this is all over.

Chapter Thirty-Three

OGADANA IS AS DRY AS an old bone that’s been stuck in a dehumidification chamber for a week. A single huff of air sends dust flying up in the air for long periods of time before it settles again. My engineers are freaking out about keeping that crap out of our systems.

“I have to run the filtration exhaust the entire time,” Tam says, sounding very tired and frustrated. He’s not fully recovered from his injury, and he won’t be for another couple days. MI can only do so much before the body has to take over and accomplish the rest.

“We’ll be all right,” I say, hoping I’m not lying. I’ve never gotten this close to the dusty planet before. “Just keep it steady and let me know if you run into any problems.”

“Look!” Baebong says. “Right there!” He’s pointing out the clearpanel at a mountain range coming into focus. Three ships are hovering in a circle, exactly where they said they would be. The thrusters on the bottom of their hulls are sending up big, cup-shaped plumes of dust that are starting to wrap up around the top of them.

“They’re filling the atmosphere above so they can’t be seen,” I say as I watch them in action. “Brilliant.”

“We need to get over there before we’re stuck in the middle of it,” Baebong says.

“Yes. Right.” I work the arrays on my left and right to guide us over. “Just taking it nice and easy…” My eyes jump from the clearpanel to the radar, making sure I get close but not too close.

When we’re within range, a big cloud of dust covers our ship, making use of the clearpanel impossible. Piloting instruments-only, I move into position, my blood pressure skyrocketing to new heights. I hate having this big of an audience during such delicate maneuvers.

Once we’re in position and I can set up an anchor thrust, I finish up the sequence and open up the comm. “DS Mekanika, this is the DS Anarchy, extending a reach.” Using the coordinates provided to Baebong, I keep the reach open, not worrying about sending it encrypted. If anyone else were here, we’d know about it. The Alliance assured Baebong that they always scan the area around their meetings before settling in.

“DS Anarchy, this is Captain Beltz. It is good to hear your voice again.”

His cheerful, accented transmission has me smiling. “Likewise, Captain. So what’s the procedure here?”

“Just one moment while we clear the air a little bit.”

There’s a big whooshing sound and then suddenly our clearpanel isn’t useless anymore. We’re in a circle of drifter ships, all hovering at a similar altitude with heavy, accumulated dust in the atmosphere above us. Our ship is the fifth one to the party, but I don’t see any of Langlade’s Kinsblades in the group. I want to ask why not, because I assumed he was a part of this somehow, but I’m going to wait to see what Beltz has to say first. I have a feeling I’m going to need to do some begging, so I don’t want to push my luck right off the bat with an interrogation.