Shackleton's Folly (The Lost Wonder Book 1) (20 page)

Dancer emerged in the landing bay with the
Quest
first. He had communicated with the ship, which had followed the program protocols and readied itself for a fast getaway. The ship followed Dancer and Electra, who had come from the corridor behind Dancer, with sensors and big, nasty guns for anyone who tried to stop them. No one seemed to notice them as they crossed the bay and came to the heavy bulkhead of the outer hatch. Dancer used his encrypted access to enter the
Quest
; the outer force field replaced the heavy bulkhead. Electra followed him into the
Quest
.

Dancer made it to the flight deck, with Electra right on his heels. He jumped into his seat as Electra made it to the engineer’s station. Dancer quickly went through the preflight checklist. Outside, the
Quest
’s thrusters started to fire up.

“Hold on, Dancer,” yelled Electra. She killed the thrusters from her station. The thrusters shut down quickly. “We are waiting for Alec,” she said bluntly.

“Electra, he has placed your safety in my hands. He knows what he is doing.”

“Men are the same everywhere. We will not be leaving until Alec is on board. Got it?” She punctuated her commands with a hand weapon pointed at his cranium.

“Where — or should I say when — did you pick that up?” asked Dancer.

Electra said elaborately, “Does it matter?”

“Not really. Just trying to make pleasant conversation while we wait,” said Dancer.

“You know good and well you would be out there helping him get aboard right now if I weren’t here.”

“Yes, I would.”

“Do not let me stop you. Go get him. We both want him on board, so move it,” commanded Electra.

Dancer got up and ran from the command deck. Electra abandoned the engineer’s station and took command of the
Quest
.

Alec burst out of the foot traffic in the corridor. He was about ten steps ahead of Gino and Worrell, who had followed him from the platform. Gino raised a gun only to have it shot from his grip by Dancer and a rifle he had left in the air lock. Worrell had been alerted to the danger. He flung himself behind some crates and pulled out his weapons. His weapon repeatedly fired, hitting points all around Alec, who caught a flesh wound to the upper outside thigh. It did slow him down, but he reached the airlock. Rapid-fire blasts sprang from the gun turret of the
Quest
and took out all the crates and part of the wall behind them. Worrell lay flat on the floor of the landing bay and waited for another volley, but nothing came. Alec had made it to the airlock, and Dancer helped him board the
Quest
.

Quest
’s thrusters fired up under the command of Electra. The
Quest
lifted from the landing bay floor and rotated simultaneously. The ship stopped its rotation as its bow reached a point where it was ready to leave. Worrell and Gino stood in the torrents of gases coming from the thrusters. The low-temperature thrust was the only thing that kept them alive. They fired systematically at as many points on the
Quest
as they could, but their hand weapons were no match for the shields of the
Quest
. They swapped out energy packs from the weapons they had drained and restarted their attack on the
Quest
. The
Quest
seemed to wait for something to happen above it. It moved slightly forward and seemed almost to peek out from under the rock face sheltering the honeycomb of landing bays in the trench’s wall.

The
Quest,
having found nothing of consequence above, came out of the landing bay, increasing both its speed and vertical climb, putting the little outpost as far behind as possible in the shortest amount of time.

*

Electra had not vacated the pilot’s position. Dancer was in his copilot seat and watched for hazards ahead.

Alec sat at the engineer’s station. He had the crystal that O had given him inserted into a reader to extract the data files. “Dancer, I’ll send you our final coordinates. Please put together a few hops and jumps that will make it hard for anyone to follow.”

Dancer received the coordinates and made his calculations. “This will be like making a four-cushion bank shot.” He keyed in the course, with the addition of some extra stops. “Course for the Frontier plotted and laid in.”

They all saw it on the sensors. Something big was dropping from FTL to regular space.

Alec said, “Go, go, go!”

Dancer manipulated the touch screen in front of him and then engaged the FTL engines.

The
Quest
blurred from space and vanished into the night. The
Illia
and
Saleen
emerged from the far side of the rock in the proximity of Blind Load. The battleships broke formation. One took the northern hemisphere of the space rock to blockade, and the other took the southern. Several flights of fighters deployed to stop any ships from escaping their net.

The door of his compartment closed behind Alec. It had been a long day; he stretched his arms and shoulders to work out some of the day’s heavy abuse. He was a little fuzzy on what he needed most — the soft embrace of his sheets or a shower. A film of blood, sweat, and dirt covered him from head to toe. Alec pulled his shirt off and tossed it into a corner. He checked the healpad on his ribs. He pulled it gently from the corner. It revealed that the skin underneath had healed but was still a little tender. It was amazing how some of these new treatments worked. Alec left the healpad on his thigh in place. He kicked off his shoes and pulled off the sweaty socks. This seemed to free his feet, and each article of clothing he removed seemed to bring a general sense of relief. He looked at himself in the mirror. Alec made a self-appraisal in the full-length mirror built into the closet door; he was getting too old for the races. It was one thing to race — but in the unlimited class? He knew it had been necessary, and it had been up to him to man up.

Instead of a piece of the inscription, O had given him a location, where it was supposed to be. That wasn’t the deal he’d made with O, but he had little recourse.

He had noticed his own behavior had changed since Electra had come aboard. You can go a thousand light years knowing what was needed, what had to be done — at least conceptually.

He began to reflect on what it was, exactly, that he was doing.

He was continuing the quest to find the land his father had said was out there for humanity. The Falls of Ur were the key to discovery. They were supposed to be near the new human home world. How to find them was the problem when you didn’t exactly know what they were. Yet the goal remained the same: At the end of all of this was a new world, a safe one, where humans could raise families and live a full life.

When Alec had finally struck out on his own, he bounced around hitching a ride on a human supply transport visiting all the human communities. Alec had thought that, if he looked hard enough, he would find the companionship he craved. It quickly became evident that the everyday hardships had taken their toll on everyone. He visited one of the large transports, aptly named the
Mayflower
. The ship was in desperate need of maintenance and the crew were struggling to keep the ship in one piece. The communal life allowed for the upbringing of the next generation, but the population was still on the decline. The limited government made it patriotic to have children, but that had lost its attractiveness as hope for any kind of future had dwindled and was close to extinction.

At one point, Alec had found himself sitting next to a little dark-haired boy with an arm cast, green in color. Alec had struck up a conversation and had asked about how he had hurt himself. The boy, Devin, said that he had fallen on the deck and broken his wrist. Alec said he had done much the same when he was Devin’s age. He pulled his datapad from his shoulder pack and showed Devin some pictures of him at about the same age playing in the tall grass of a world with two daytime moons and a hot blue star. Devin said that was a funny way to paint a room. Alec said he wasn’t in a room — he was planet side with his father. Devin looked at him blankly. It turned out that Devin had never been outside. He had never experienced running across an open field to play, and an open sky was not part of his world.

Alec had thought,
Why start a family if this was all we had to look forward to?

His mind, snapping back into the present, instantly went back to images of Electra. Alec stood in his shorts and shook off that idea. She was real — so real, in fact that, ideally, she was the reason he was doing this. If he could find her home, he would go to their government and request asylum for all the human refugees. He hoped the return of Electra would garner the favor of her family and government officials. Alec had not talked to Electra about it. She knew the plight of humans out in the galaxy. He did not want her to feel that the only reason he was helping her was to try to get his people accepted on her world.

She had become reason enough for him to move heaven and earth to get her back to the people who loved her and, without a doubt, missed her dearly. Alec took a deep breath and let it out slowly. A shower to scrape off the grime was what he needed —
and a cold one
, he thought, feeling his excitement grow.

Alec dropped his shorts, tossed them into the hamper, and opened the door of the shower. He stepped in and turned on the water. The pulsating water stream was so inviting. He let the water beat on his body as he turned himself so that every centimeter of skin had the chance to get invigorated by the heat and water droplets. He grabbed the body wash and used it liberally on his hair and upper body. The heat of the spray massaged his aching muscles and rinsed him clean. The water jets ran through a cycle of slow, longer pulses to short, fast pulses and started over again. He reached for the bottle of indulgence and found it missing from the shelf. Hands came from behind him working his shoulders and back with the body wash. He reached out and steadied himself, both hands on the wall. The hands massaged his neck and worked down his shoulders slowly, melting away the stiffness and fatigue. A fire blazed within his heart; the passion burnt full and focused, engulfing him.

Alec’s arousal was complete as the hands continued to work on his lower back. Gentle, yet firm, they took away the pain at their touch. They worked downward from his beefy thigh to his foot. He felt her bare skin bump against him. He forgot everything that was weighing on him physically, mentally, and spiritually. Alec could not contain himself any longer and turned to her. She was as he had seen her the first day aboard ship — so beautiful. He was a man fresh from the desert, finding a miracle of an oasis. She was that to him.

He moved closer, searching for what he felt in her hazel eyes. Electra, the beautiful, vibrant woman, was there just as he had witnessed before, but this time she was with him. The water pulsed slowly from above to wash away everything between them, leaving them fresh. He started to take a step toward her; she flew up and pressed against his chest, keeping him at a distance. Her eyes were ablaze with desire. He raised his hand slowly and took her by the top of the wrist of the arm holding him back, lowering it to her side. Then he slid his hands around to the small of her back, closing the distance between them.

Alec was about to say something, but she pressed a finger of her free hand to his lips to silence him. Electra arched back, plunging her head into the fast-pulsing water stream matching her heart beat and shook herself free of the last vestiges of inhibition. She suddenly melted against him with a deliciously feminine sort of willingness. Alec freed her wrist and took her in his arms, their naked bodies pressing together, exploring one another — eager, ravenous for release. Alec lifted Electra up by her thighs and pressed her to the heated shower wall. She wrapped herself about him as they moved rhythmically, as one. He arched upward, thrusting all the closer into her. She grabbed his neck as she moaned, “More.”

She kissed him again with intense passion, surrendering to it and him. Electra arched back, pressing herself hard against his body. Their movements became frantic, rising with their emotions. The shower’s heated spray pulsations were climaxing, taking them over, its rapture enveloping them.

A heaving breathlessness fell over them as Electra gently caressed his face and playfully nibbled on his ear. Alec did not let go, her arms around his neck, her legs still wrapped about him. He carried her back to his compartment.

The life in Blind Load would need time to heal the wounds inflicted by the Koty. Troops scanned every nook and cranny in every landing bay on the dwarf planet. What authorities there were gave the Koty all the information they had on the
Quest
— the supplies it took aboard and what the crew did while in the city.

Media files were provided to Wolfgang Gray of the race at Nowhere Downs. He pursued them while being shuttled to meet with a shopkeeper who had sponsored Alec in the race. Gray arrived at the shop in an armored transport. He leapt out of the vehicle and walked up to the shop’s front entrance. The troops had been busy searching the premises for any sign of Alec and Dancer. The media bots had captured Alec’s surprising win of the race.

Gray was more interested in what had happened on the dock. The video of the woman who had administered first aid and took care of Alec was of interest to him. He slowed the video down as it got to the part where they let themselves go. Gray watched as the passion the two felt for each other was unleashed. He enlarged the part of the screen showing the woman. She was beautiful. How did Alec end up with her, and, for that matter, who was she? Gray had scoured the Registry for a woman who would join him in his self-imposed exile. He found no one who met his criteria who would join him. This woman was not in the Registry. She was truly beautiful and full of passion. He would have her. He touched the image on the screen he held. Gray would start his own little colony somewhere safe. He would lead his handpicked colonists to lend credits to those with a little credit and nowhere else to go. They would lend at fantastic rates of return, and, if they didn’t get paid, they would hire some of the worst Skiptracers in the galaxy to get their money for them.