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  “You never did tell me what happened; how you ended up on that mine; but when you got there, I could tell something had changed.”

  Saturn opened her mouth but no sound escaped. Her expression grew irritated and she finally replied, “I thought I said I didn’t want to talk about it. I’ll tell you when I’m good and ready.”

  Liam lowered his hands from his head and regarded her. Saturn’s arms were crossed now, hugging herself tightly while gazing out the window to her left. With her arms still crossed she unbuckled her straps and was out of her seat faster than Liam had thought possible. She disappeared out the cockpit and down the curving corridor to the cargo bay. He thought he saw her silhouette wiping her face in the low light of the passage.

  Now he’d done it. Just when things were starting to turn around, he had to go and ruin it. Liam kicked the panel next to his boot and the vibration carried up his leg. He winced in pain and cursed aloud. The flow of purple energy overhead hastened and the console flickered with a dozen colored lights.

  “Sorry,” Liam apologized.

  •

  Liam had never had occasion to use the sleeping quarters on The Garuda. There were four rooms off to the port side of the cargo bay lined up in a row, each only large enough for a thick sleeping pad. They would have to share the single bathroom at the end of the corridor. Liam was beginning to see why Nix liked shorter trips.

  Liam removed his palm from the door’s control panel. Text scrolled across the screen in the Dinari language, which was quickly translated in Liam’s mind by his implanted translator. His handprint had just been stored as the resident for that room. A door to his left opened and Saturn stepped out from her quarters and into the hall. She’d changed into a loose-fitting white garment that trailed down to her knees, her bare feet digging into the grated metal floor. She stopped and regarded Liam momentarily before clenching her jaw and taking off toward the bathroom.

  His outstretched hand fell down to his leg and he entered his small room. All he could hope was that things wouldn’t be awkward with her going forward. In the past she tended to be the type to ignore awkward situations, pretending they didn’t exist.

  Inside his quarters there was little room between the door and the sleeping pad, which was made from a thick fabric with the stuffing coming out in places. From what he could tell, the bed was filled with straw or some other rough material, and it lay directly on the ground without support. Apart from the sleeping pad there was a mirror above a small ledge sticking out a few inches from the wall.

  Liam put his hands on the ledge and regarded his reflection. His thick jaw was covered with the shadow of a day or two’s growth of dark blond facial hair. Liam’s lengthy hair was getting too long in his opinion. The last time he’d had it cut was on the mine and that had been months ago. His blue eyes turned toward his bed.

  He plopped down on the cobbled-together mattress and stared at the ceiling. There was a single orb of light hanging there, which blocked his view of the purple lines of energy flowing overhead. He kept running over his brief conversation with Saturn in his head, trying to think if he could have come at it from a better angle. Soon, his thoughts drifted to the energy flowing overhead. What was it? Where did it come from? Trailing thoughts of the alien technology carried him into a deep sleep.

  7

  Planet Surya – The Caretaker’s Chambers

  Toras flipped his tattered cape out of his way and stepped around his large stone desk to examine the man standing before him. He was a whole head shorter than Toras and wore a deep shade of blue that clung tightly to his entire body, the rough material giving the appearance of hardened scales that accentuated his toned frame. His face was obscured by a matching oblong helmet which ensured no skin on his body was visible. The black visor reflected Toras’ own eyes back at him. At his side hung an Ansaran laser pistol.

  Toras didn’t like working with this sort of ilk, but sending his own men would be too obvious. The small man came with a reputation for discretion that was unparalleled in the system. Toras needed the best. He’d seen what that Kidd’s ship could do in battle and he couldn’t let him out of his sight.

  “I want them followed,” Toras instructed. “Keep your distance. Don’t interfere with their mission unless you have to. Do what it is you do. Report your findings solely to me.”

  The small man was silent, standing there before him with his hands calmly held behind his back. Toras wondered if he’d understood him. He let the silence continue a moment longer, and then said, “You came highly recommended, but I was never told your name.”

  The man shook his head in response.

  Toras retrieved a small device from his pocket and pressed his thumb down on top. A projection came to life several inches above his outstretched palm and a spinning image showing several sets of numbers was displayed in orange light.

  “Your fee is steep, two million Anasaran Rooks. You know on Ansara you could buy a ship for that. I hope my colleagues were not mistaken in endorsing you.”

  The small man pressed a finger on the metallic device in Toras’ hand and the numbers subtracted to zero, transferring out of the account. Toras closed his fingers over the device and the image disappeared, his hand falling to his side.

  The mercenary turned on his heel and stepped silently toward the door. On his back was a small gray cape which had been torn to shreds, a gleaming blade partially hidden beneath.

  Toras called after him and the small man stopped.

  “If it costs this much to follow a man, what do you charge to kill?”

  The man’s head turned and Toras felt eyes watching him from behind the blacked-out visor. The small man replied in a distorted and metallic voice, “Killing is on me.”

  With that, he exited the chamber and Toras was left standing dumbfounded, one hand resting on his cold stone desk to prop himself up. The Caretaker raised up his other hand and looked at the small device in his palm. This was why he didn’t like working with bounty hunters, or mercenaries, or any of them. He never trusted a man he had to pay up front. Even less so when he didn’t know their name.

  8

  Eight Days Later

  The cockpit was abuzz with warning lights, flashing yellow and red, dancing along the walls and reflecting off the windows. Liam snapped awake from his nap and wiped caked drool from the corner of his mouth. In a daze, he examined his computer screen and scrolled through the foreign text.

  “No, no, no,” Liam said quickly before jumping from his seat and tearing down the corridor.

  Liam stopped when he reached the kitchen. The rest of the crew was sitting around the lone metal table eating compact orange buns Nix had made the day before from a grain native to the planet Surya. The table and its stools were bolted to the floor and against the wall toward the front of the ship was a series of built-in steel cabinets and drawers where their food was stored. Saturn and Ju-Long looked up at him from across the table questioningly.

  Nix turned his head and was half out of his seat. He asked anxiously, “What is it?”

  “We have a problem.”

  Nix abandoned his bun and replied, “Lead the way.”

  Liam led the crew back to the cockpit, where lights still flashed vigorously, making it difficult to see out the angular windows. The windows took up most of the front wall but narrowed down to slits less than a meter wide and offset by steel struts along the sides. The center console ran the length of the window, control panels lining the sides of the room all the way to the back. The two leather seats behind the pilot’s each had a workstation that extended out from the side hull.

  Nix sat down in the pilot’s seat and examined the readouts. His golden eyes grew wide and he turned to regard Liam and the rest of the crew. He told them, “I knew they were not ghost stories.”

  “Reapers?” Saturn asked.

  “A telltale sign, yes. We’ve received a signal from a distress beacon. It’s a small Ansaran merchant ship. The damage to it looks extensive.”


  Ju-Long clutched the back of the pilot’s chair with both of his bruised hands. His wounds had begun to heal nicely with regular treatments of Nerva plant, but the remnants still remained. One thing the plant couldn’t do was prevent scarring. Ju-Long bore several pink lines along his chest and arms shaped like the electrified knuckles of the tournament. Though he’d been spending a lot of time without his shirt so he could continue his treatments, he wore a loose-fitting brown shirt akin to Liam’s garment and brown pants of a rough material made by the same tailor. Ju-Long leaned over the chair and examined the console. He asked, “How far away is it?”

  “It would take us several hours out of our way,” Nix replied.

  “Shit,” Ju-Long cursed. “Looks like they’re on their own.”

  Liam crossed his arms and regarded his aloof crewmate. It was clear despite his speech a week earlier that Ju-Long only had one thing on his mind. Liam said, “Who said we’re not going to help?”

  Before Ju-Long could make his case, Nix spoke up. “If I may. I think we should investigate. If there are survivors, they may have seen a Kurazon Reaper. We may not get this opportunity to know our enemy again.”

  “And we might be able to help them, right?” Saturn asked Nix.

  Nix gazed at Saturn for a moment with a blank stare and then finally nodded and sighed, “Right, that too.”

  Nix’s reluctant agreement struck home with Liam. It was more apparent all the time just how much he loathed the Ansarans. If Liam were in his position, he might have felt the same way. Liam had made his decision, though. “Sorry, Ju-Long, but Nix is right. We may not get this opportunity again and the information we could glean from the attack might prove useful.”

  Ju-Long cursed in Chinese and left the cockpit. Nix stood and moved to follow him but Liam put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

  “Let him go, Nix. He just needs a minute to cool down.”

  “He needs to understand.”

  Saturn cocked her head to the side and asked, “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t care what Zega says, the Reapers are a real threat. If we have a chance to find information on them besides rumors, it will be a first for my people. Everything up until now has been unsubstantiated stories from merchants and mercenaries. If we get proof, it could change Zega’s tune.”

  “Why is it so important that Zega believes in these Reapers.”

  “They are the vanguard of the Kurazon Throng. The stories are growing in number and now this? The Kurazon are moving while the Ansarans and Dinari do nothing. Our people have their heads in the sand and if we don’t do something about it soon, I fear we’ll be too late. Their recent attack on Surya was no fluke. The Kurazon are back and stronger than ever.”

  Liam removed his hand from Nix and said, “I’ll set a course. Go and talk to Ju-Long. It will take a couple of hours to reach the ship. I’m going to need both of your heads on straight for this, got it?”

  Nix nodded and brushed past Liam, down the long corridor to the cargo bay.

  Liam sat in the pilot’s seat and took the controls, adjusting their heading to match the distress signal. Once locked in place, the computer spat out a number of readings in Dinari script. Liam’s head translated the text for him. It would take just over two hours to reach the ship at their current rate. The warning lights on the console began to die off until only the light from Liam’s screen remained.

  “Two hours,” Liam said aloud. “Then we find out just what we’re dealing with.”

  Saturn took the co-pilot’s chair and put her feet up on the console. Her boots were made from dark brown leather strips that were tightly woven together. They were different from the ones she wore on the planet. Liam wondered for a moment who she’d conned into making them for her.

  “What do you think we’ll find?” Saturn asked. She adjusted her shoulders, digging into the hard leather seat and trying to find a comfortable position.

  Liam knew from experience it wouldn’t be an easy task. Saturn had changed out of her tightly woven tank top and into a soft cloth shirt that hugged her body in every place and came down just over her wrists. Its lightly colored fabric offset against her tanned skin, especially in the low light of the cockpit.

  “Once we’re closer we can scan for survivors,” Liam explained.

  “And if there are none?” Saturn said, turning her head and regarding Liam.

  He got the feeling she was testing him somehow. “What would we have done in our own system? Salvage what we can and move on.”

  Saturn smirked and turned to look out her window, the stars slowly drifting by. “I was worried you’d lost your edge.”

  “The rules aren’t the same in this system. We’re in unfamiliar territory.”

  “I’ve never known you to be a stickler about the rules.”

  Saturn’s tone was cutting, but she had a point. When they would run missions together in their own system there was only one rule: take what you can. It was a different place and a different time. A lot had happened since then. Even if she wouldn’t admit it, she’d changed too.

  “There are larger things at stake here than profit. That said, I’m not going to turn my back on a golden opportunity.”

  Saturn dropped her feet to the ground and raised herself out of her chair. She stepped into the aisle between the chairs and spoke softly, “There’s only two things that matter in our system or in any other. Money and Power. They say there’s no currency here by the outer planets, but that’s bullshit. We need to acquire favors. The more people in our debt the more power we’ll hold.”

  “And what would we do with that power? I’m sure you don’t have a righteous goal in mind.”

  Saturn looked surprised, as though she didn’t understand the question. For all of the time Liam had known her, pursuing the next job was all she thought about. It had never occurred to him that she might not even know why herself. Would any amount of money or power ever be enough?

  Saturn responded, “Don’t ask stupid questions. You know what I mean. If a war really is brewing, we could only benefit from being owed favors. We need to keep Zega indebted to us at all costs.”

  Saturn was saying one thing, but her eyes told a different story. In the past, Saturn had tried on two occasions to short him money, taking a larger share. Not that he’d ever let her get away with it. It was that give and take that was the hallmark of their friendship. Back then they both knew the other wasn’t to be trusted.

  Despite that fact, they’d held a certain chemistry that was unexplainable. More often than not he’d found her vexing and impossible to work alongside, but then they’d share a moment together and they would talk like old friends rather than occasional accomplices. Liam felt their relationship changing all the time now. He never knew where he stood one minute to the next, and on top of that, she was hiding something important from him.

  “Let’s say you’re right,” Liam began. “We’re not going to get very far off physical goods in this system. Our way forward lies in gathering information.”

  Saturn started pacing the aisle between the chairs and asked, “You want us to be spies rather than smugglers?”

  “You said it yourself, a war is on the horizon. Information can be deadlier than laser blasts.”

  “I prefer smuggling. You can touch and feel stolen goods.”

  Liam stood up from his chair and raised a finger up to Saturn’s chest. He was growing more heated the longer she talked. He spat, “Like it or not, we could play a big part in what’s to come. If you’re looking to be owed, sure, look at the small picture. Do a few smuggling jobs and earn the favors of a few. Or, we could turn the tide of the war and earn the debt of millions.”

  Saturn batted his finger away and crossed her arms. She shook her head and replied, “Underneath all of that talk you’re becoming more self-righteous every day. I can see it. You’re not the same as before.”

  “Every situation shapes who we’ll become. This is one of those moments. Are you s
till looking for that next job, or do you want something bigger?”

  Saturn was beginning to get on his nerves. They could go on like this for hours and they had before. She was convinced her way was the only way even when evidence to the contrary was presented. Saturn’s expression darkened. Liam had seen that look before. She was about to burst.

  “Don’t think I don’t know what this is about,” she shouted. “You couldn’t have saved her, Liam. Dwelling on it won’t bring her back, and neither will gallivanting around the galaxy being a do-gooder.”

  Saturn turned and stormed off before Liam could reply, quickly disappearing down the curving hallway and out of sight.

  Liam was left alone in the cockpit, only the faint hum of the engines keeping him company. He glanced at his console. Still one hour and forty-five minutes left. Liam’s mind reeled, his eyes glazing over while he watched the stars go by. His jaw clenched tight and he gritted his teeth. He slammed his fist down on a flat metal piece of the console, the clank reverberating off the walls. Deep inside the recesses of his mind, he wondered if he was making the right choice. What if this was a trap?

  9

  One and a Half Hours Later

  The Garuda was approaching the drifting Ansaran freighter, the alien vessel spinning slightly off-kilter through space and its engines dead. The craft was boxy for an Ansaran ship, with little of the flair of the sleek vessels Liam had seen at Akaru Colony. Its hull was lit by flickering white lights, scorch marks emblazoned on it where it was struck by laser blasts.

  “Run a 360 scan,” Liam ordered.

  Nix sat in the co-pilot’s chair fidgeting with the controls. He brought up a hologram of the space around them out to two million kilometers. The orange glow of the image was strong to Liam’s eyes after sitting in the darkness of the cockpit for so long.

  “Nothing,” Nix said. “Running a diagnostic of the Ansaran Vessel.”