Rogue Pursuit: A Space Opera Adventure (Shades of Starlight Book 1), page 15
She laughed. “Fine, I’ll stop criticizing.”
Her lack of fear was both appealing and concerning.
His world narrowed to the ship, the map, the readings on the screen. Adrenaline fueled his hands, sharpened his mind. It was no contest comparing this to the missions spent watching, waiting, doing nothing for hours, constantly analyzing every word and gesture. Out here he could just be and live and see.
Maybe Perrin wasn’t the only one addicted to adventure.
But adventure and duty didn’t mix.
Perrin ignored three more attempts to hail them, but finally McCombs sent a broadcast audio transmission. His voice filled the bridge.
“Lawson, if that’s you, I promise I will find out. And I will end you.”
A flash of lightning lit the screen, the sky punctuating his words.
“Charming guy,” Perrin said.
Tai grunted. They’d reached the heart of the storm. Though they couldn’t hear the thunder, the screen flashed at frequent intervals, washing the bridge in white light, a contrast to the pitch-black sky. He continued steering through ravines and over rivers, rain lashing the ship, clouds shrouding the rocks, visibility almost zero.
The Confed ship might’ve had weapons, but Tai had purposely selected one designed for speed. And his was smaller, able to fit through more tight spaces. Gradually he extended the distance between them and McCombs.
After several minutes, Perrin said, “No sign of him on scanners. Did we lose him?”
When Tai had put another hundred miles between them and the cave entrance at full speed, he headed for space. He hovered in the cloud cover long enough to see if anyone else left the surface. No ships appeared. McCombs had probably returned for Tai’s mom, making this a good time for them to escape.
“I can’t decide if I’m extremely impressed or never letting you pilot ever again,” Perrin said once they cleared the atmosphere.
“You know you liked it.”
“I’ll only admit that if you watch the next wormhole. It’s one of my all-time favorites.”
“Deal. Then I expect raving about, ‘oh, Tai, you’re the most amazing pilot, that was the most thrilling ride of my life, I’m in awe of your skill.’”
“My voice hasn’t been that high since I was six years old,” she said. “And I don’t know if you can compete with the most thrilling ride of my life.”
“That sounds like a challenge.”
“Don’t take on things that are bigger than you, Son of Law.”
A strange reading flashed across his console. He isolated what appeared to be a tachyon signal emanating from behind a moon of another planet in the system. But when he scanned again, the signal was gone.
Maxing out the engines, he set course for the wormhole and left to take off the now-useless boots and change clothes. He was going through clothes faster than the sonic cleaners could keep up.
The exciting escape had left him buzzing. His dad would’ve been proud of Tai’s piloting.
After he’d spent a couple hours running diagnostics on the ship’s systems in the engine room, the expected message from his mom arrived.
“Hey, Tai, it’s Mom. How are things at the cabin? Any word from your friend? We’re making progress. I feel confident I’ll have what I need before your hearing. Thanks for your patience. Love you.”
Surely McCombs had shared his suspicions about Tai, but she gave no hint in the message that she doubted her son. Motherly trust, or playing spy games on him? What would she have said to an agent in his situation who wasn’t related to her? And how should he respond?
He couldn’t straight-up lie. He hadn’t gotten away with lying to her a single time in his life. If even a fraction of her believed McCombs might be right, a reply was risky. But no reply was worse.
He typed and retyped several messages, finally settling for, “No word from K. Glad the investigation is going well. I’ll eat a fish for you.”
She’d probably read it and immediately know what he’d been doing the last few days.
He scheduled the message to send in a few hours and went to the bridge to finish his diagnostics, and Perrin joined him, taking her seat and scanning the wormhole. “Ready for your part of the bargain?”
He clenched his jaw. “Bring it.”
“I read two trails. One yesterday, one more recent.”
“Maybe the Amber agent didn’t stop on the planet.”
She nodded. “Okay, here we go.”
The wormhole opened, and colors surrounded them. Pale aquamarine, deep sapphire, bright sky blue, with thin trails of sea green and sandy yellow and streaks of leaf green. The exact colors of every image he’d seen of a tropical beach. He barely noticed the shaking.
Perrin released a slow sigh, a faint smile on her lips, bright eyes locked on the screen. Now he wanted to watch her watch the wormhole.
Her expression shifted to a smirk as she entered commands on the console. “Good, right?”
“It’s okay, I guess. If you like blue.”
She scowled and punched a setting that made the rattling double.
The dried eggs he’d eaten for breakfast threatened to make a reappearance. “Fine, fine. It’s awesome. Best one I’ve seen.”
“Thank you.” She stopped the rattling once more. “Since there aren’t any authorities out here, and hardly any ships, when I have to cut through this system, sometimes I go through it and back a few times just to enjoy it.”
This time, he couldn’t stop staring, but because it mesmerized him rather than terrified him. The movement reminded him of the sea the one summer they’d visited with his grandfather, to celebrate Gramps’s retirement and his mom’s promotion. Waves of color surged along the length of the wormhole, brushing sandy shores, with green palm leaves occasionally flickering into view.
He’d never thought a wormhole could make him long for something, and he didn’t know what it was.
“It makes me… calm and restless, all at once.” Perrin’s voice was soft and distant. “Like I’m on that gorgeous beach and I should be enjoying the moment, the sun and the sand and the waves. But instead I can’t help but stare at that strip of darker blue on the horizon, where the water gets deep. Then I want to know what would happen if I sailed forever, and it sort of… aches inside.”
Her words represented by far the most honest glimpse of herself she’d given him, too fragile for him to risk replying. She’d perfectly captured his emotions, foreign and strange and bursting.
When black space appeared, Tai wanted to ask her to go through it again, like she used to. But they were a day behind Kel, and he needed to stop enjoying the way Perrin’s eyes widened in awe. The way she made him see beauty in the universe.
Focus on the mission, he told himself.
A shudder rocked the ship, wrenching his attention to the present.
A voice came over the comm system.
“Attention, fine vessel. We’ve taken a liking to your ship and have decided it now belongs to the most honorable and noble Order of the Silver Cutlass. Submit, or we shall target your undoubtedly necessary life support system and wait for your lifeless corpses to suffocate before taking the lovely ship for ourselves.”
“Don’t be so dramatic, brother,” another voice joined the first. “You there. We’re pirates. Surrender or die.”
15
Perrin didn’t know which situation offered greater danger, the fact that they’d been stopped by pirates or the fact that she’d done business with these pirates.
Every possible outcome she foresaw ended one way—with Tai discovering her secrets.
Or death. But she preferred not to dwell on that possibility.
“Why didn’t you pick a ship with weapons? Don’t accept video feed. Do you have a voice scrambler?” Her words tumbled over each other in their haste to get out.
Tai blinked. “I think so.”
“Turn it on. Let me do the talking.”
“Are you—”
“Do it. Fast.”
He entered a few commands on the console and nodded.
She sat up straighter. She was rusty. And she was sitting next to a SARC. Good thing she liked a challenge.
“Greetings, most honorable and noble Order of the Silver Cutlass. As you might well imagine, we on this fine vessel are quite fond of our ability to breathe. I fear we are unwilling to part with our craft, but as recompense, in place of such an admittedly valuable commodity, I should like to propose an alternative exchange under the Code of Transactions, recognizing that your eminence of course has every right to make an ultimate determination as seems best to you.”
She held her breath.
Tai stared at her like she’d lost her mind.
She probably had.
With the voice scrambler, she wouldn’t immediately give herself away. That would come the moment Digger laid eyes on her.
“You suggest an intriguing proposition,” Digger said. “May I have the honor of knowing with whom I may or may not be conducting business before I elect to grant your request or implement the aforementioned destruction of your life support?”
“You may not.”
Tai grunted, but Perrin ignored him.
“If you wish to see the end of our lives,” she said, “we shall die in anonymity and your curiosity shall burn for the rest of your days at the possibility of what might have been.”
On the other side of the comm, Digger hummed. “Unsatisfied curiosity remains one of life’s most vexing problems. I reject your offer of an alternative exchange and instead propose an honorable duel to take place on the moon of the third planet in the venue of your choosing. You have five seconds.”
Her breath whooshed out.
Tai grabbed her arm with one hand and muted the line with the other. “This is insane.”
“Does this ship have plasma cannons?”
“No.”
“Then we have no choice.” She reopened the line. “We accept. Please transmit coordinates with all haste. I eagerly anticipate the opportunity to match skills with one who matches words so eloquently.”
“As do I, my unknown opponent. Transmission forthcoming.”
The comm went dead.
She sagged in her chair. She’d bought them—herself—a couple hours, long enough to fly to the moon. Until she had to face the man and he saw her and knew exactly who she was, and hugged her, and Tai figured out everything and her life was over.
“What,” Tai asked, “in all the shades of the spectrum, was that?”
Enough worrying. Time for action.
“How are you at cards? I don’t suppose you know how to tango? Belly dance? Maybe strip tease?”
“What is going on?”
Uh-oh. Law Enforcement Voice. Scary how much he sounded like his mom.
“They’re pirates,” she said.
“Kind of caught that.”
“They like stealing, but they like entertainment more. That moon belongs to them. Every comfort, every pleasure, every indulgence you’d possibly want this far from the primaries, you can find here. They love nothing more than making people dance—figuratively and literally—before robbing them. But if you hold your own, impress them enough, put on a good show, they may let you leave.”
“You know this how?”
“We’ll have to pretend to be criminals.” She couldn’t have them knowing she’d teamed up with a SARC, or they’d be dead before she could say smuggler.
“Excuse me?”
“First, change your accent. It’s a dead giveaway you’re from Prime. Second, that hair.”
“I happen to like my hair.”
She reached out and messed it up, trying not to notice its softness. “Do you shave every single day? Or is your face naturally that smooth? Oh, well. Can’t fix it now, Baby Cheeks.”
“I happen to like my face, too.”
“Can that magic closet of yours make something if I describe it? You need a different jacket. Maybe a few chains. Or an earring.”
“I am not piercing my ear for a bunch of pirates.”
Why was she expending all this effort? The instant they left the ship, she was doomed. Of course, there was doomed and there was doomed. She didn’t want the pirates to kill Tai. But she wanted them to kill her even less. Which meant first ensuring they didn’t suspect he was Confed, and then worrying about hiding the truth from him once her life wasn’t in imminent danger.
“What are you waiting for? Go change. Don’t they teach you anything at that training place of yours? What would you do if you were out here on a mission and they stopped you? What would your partner have done?”
She suspected Kel would’ve been prepared to pay them off. He knew how things worked. But she also suspected Tai valued the law too much to bribe a pirate.
“They did teach us about this. But usually I’d be here in a ship with proper weapons, or pretending to be someone not worth robbing.”
“Then next time bring a ship with weapons. Now move.”
He did but paused at the door. “Have you been robbed before? You seem like a pro at this.”
“I’ve been stopped.”
The first time, her hidden compartments had been stuffed with stolen tech—comp-pads, comm units, power cells—bound for a tertiary world. When she showed the pirates, their young leader thought it was brilliant, admired her “jewels,” and, after taking a fifteen percent finder’s fee, let her go on her way. There may have been a bit of flirting too, until Digger learned she was sixteen and taken. Not that the taken part usually discouraged him.
After that, his ships occasionally waylaid a shipment headed from a colony to the core. They let the crew live and return to the Confed empty-handed, but left the goods for Perrin to distribute where they were needed. As thanks, she catered to the pirates’ occasional requests for luxury items, alcohol, or the latest entertainment trends from the primaries.
Not her proudest accomplishment, but sometimes a girl did what she had to do.
Tai returned, minus his plain jacket, wearing a tight tank that bared impressive arm muscles, a chain around his neck, and a leather band on his wrist. He’d added black around his eyes and mussed his hair so it fell across his forehead. The change took him from straight-cut lawman to edgy outlaw, and the result made her mouth dry and her cheeks warm.
“What type of duel are we talking?” He seemed unaware of her staring. “They taught us about trying to make deals, but no one mentioned duels. Will this involve killing?”
“Hopefully not.” She forced herself to focus on the console instead of the way his shirt clung to his chest muscles. “They’ll let us choose. Only some of the options involve weapons. This is a pirate’s playground. Gambling, girls, food, entertainment. They like a challenge and a show. What are you good at?”
“Piloting. Surveillance. Tailing people.”
She twirled a finger for him to keep going.
“Hm. Picking locks. Convincing people to spill secrets. Lying.”
“Bluffing? You play cards?”
“Sure.”
“That’s probably your best bet. No pun intended.”
“What about you?”
She tapped the holster on her thigh.
“Seriously?”
“Stick with your strengths, right?”
They aimed for the coordinates, which led them to a rocky island on a moon mostly covered in water. Jagged spikes filled the landing area, the ships already there perched among the rocks. She kept silent as Tai showed off his skills, his jaw clenched in focus.
He landed the ship between two rock spikes with a foot to spare on either side. Wiped sweat off his forehead and huffed out a breath. “That should count for something.”
“You probably disappointed them. I bet they enjoy it when people impale their ships or crash into the water. Good job, though. We lived to see if certain death awaits.”
“Let’s not keep death waiting.”
They opened the hatch and exited the ship, watching where they stepped to avoid tripping. Smooth water glistened in most directions, reflecting the silver of the stone. Occasional spiky rocks speared through the surface.
A series of square silver bubbles floated on the water, forming a sprawling complex the size of a small city. The bubbles were connected by clear walkways that swayed in a slight current.
The pirates’ ramp lowered, and Digger strode out, coat snapping around his calves.
He was as handsome as ever, warm bronze skin darker than Tai’s, pale green eyes, long dyed blond dreads mixed with beads and chains, tattoos peeking out from the collar of a tight shirt. The look he achieved fell somewhere between warlord and beach bum, and she knew he planned it that way. Like his intentionally over-the-top speech patterns, it threw people off.
If she hadn’t just met Kel the first time she’d encountered him, she would’ve been smitten.
Pirate and double agent and son of the Confed intelligence director. If her dad were still alive, she would’ve received such a pointed lecture about her taste in guys.
Digger was followed closely by a man with long, dark hair, a full beard, an eyebrow ring, and what appeared to be a permanent scowl.
Digger’s eyes lit on her, but he glanced at Tai and tilted his head. He inspected their ship too, stroking his chin as he contemplated them.
Please let him be as smart as he thinks he is.
“To which of you remarkably beautiful people did I have the pleasure of conversing with when you so ably convinced me not to destroy you instantaneously?”
Perrin stepped forward. Tai tensed beside her but didn’t move.
She met Digger’s gaze. “We are eternally grateful for the staying of your mighty hand and are fully prepared to ensure you do not regret the wise and merciful decision. To whom do I have the honor of speaking?”
“Well spoken, young friend. As I have decided that I approve of your vocabulary and your visage, I shall inform you that you converse with Digger du Bois, leader of the Order of the Silver Cutlass.” He swept an arm to the side. “I would parley with the sharp-tongued one in private to satisfactorily agree upon our terms.”
