Victorious Dead (The Asarlaí Wars Book 2) Read online

The ship rattled a bit as she left the docking bay, something she’d have to fix. Even a little rattle could send one of the temperamental ships spinning out of control.

  The approaching warship was older than she’d originally assessed, but at this point a life pod armed with a firecracker could take out the Warrior Wench.

  Gunning the engine, Vas moved the Fury between the warship and the Warrior Wench and hit the communications switch. “One more time. Back off. I know you’re pissed at Mac, but you are not going to take it out on my ship. This is a Fury, in case your system doesn’t recognize it. I can blow you out of the sky before you can scratch your ass.”

  The warship had frontal alpha-class lazon cannons, an indication it was a bit long in the tooth. They had been starting to track to the Warrior Wench, but now stopped. Thank the goddess, there was a chance the girl had come to her senses.

  Vas swore as the guns started moving toward her instead.

  4

  “ Clearly, you don’t know what you are facing, or you’re too stupid to care,” Vas said. “One more time. Back off.” She switched open the weapons console and shook her head. Every time she opened this thing, it amazed her anew. Eighty class twelve missiles waiting to go. Hopefully she wouldn’t need those and could use one of the two smaller guns mounted on the front.

  “Are you the one he left me for? I’ll kill you first, bitch!”

  Vas moved before the weapons on the other ship fired and spun clear. She probably shouldn’t have bothered. Their aim was way off and only one of the pair fired, something those guns would never do unless broken. The shot went low over the Warrior Wench but didn’t hit anything. The warship might look shiny and pretty, but it obviously had serious problems. Shaking her head at the stupidity of love, she fired one of the smaller guns at the edge of the warship. Enough to graze but not hit.

  “Are you trying to kill us? You want him that bad, you can have him!” The warship pulled away and tore off towards the gate.

  Vas waited a few minutes, just to make sure Mac’s former lover was freaked out enough to stay away. Then she gunned the Fury back home. The same rattle she felt going out of the bay, happened again. Really not a good sign.

  As soon as the Fury was docked and the landing bay secured, Vas hit the comm. “Mac, when you’re done out there, you and I need to have a long talk. And I need you to go over the Fury.”

  By the time Mac pinged back, she was to the door of her quarters and her insanely needed shower.

  “Aye, Captain,” He sounded sullen and remorseful. Good. “There are some things Walvento and I need to show you too.”

  Vas stopped with her hand above the panel for her quarters. That wasn’t good. In fact, she couldn’t think of a single time when anything Mac had to show her had been good. But she was tired of smelling like booze.

  She palmed open her door. “Agreed. And whatever it is, document it and research it before we meet.” She went inside and tried to drown her thoughts of Mac and his problems with the hottest sonic shower she could stand.

  Vas kept her shower quick—there was no way to tell how long she’d have a reprieve from the normal shenanigans of her crew. They were all exceptionally good at what they did. Some of the best people in the business were on her crew, and the best of the best were on her flagship, the Warrior Wench.

  They could also get into more trouble than a pack of puppies let loose in a sausage factory. Vas had never realized how much interference Deven and Gosta had been running to deal with the normal problems her crew could manage to fall into on a daily basis.

  Until they were not there to do it anymore.

  Gosta should meet up with them on the Xenlian space station, a small, higher-end space station than her crew normally frequented, but it was closer to Home. They were supposed to meet with him after retrieving the items for their client.

  Thanks to her work at the restaurant, they had the copy of the ident card for the lock to complete their job on Mayhira, the planet they’d just fled from. But Vas wasn’t sure about going back down there until she figured out more about what happened to Deven.

  She had no idea when and how they were going to be able to get Deven back. She had tried having Terel send her into a deep, coma-like state medically to try and communicate with Deven in the last few months. Terel did it, begrudgingly, twice, but wouldn’t even let Vas start talking about it after that.

  Maybe that’s why it never worked. Deven was already back on this plane of existence, but with no memory. Damn it. They needed to find out whom he was with. Being one of the empress’s gahan didn’t mean he was for her alone, as evidenced by him escorting a woman who was definitely not the empress.

  Gosta would be able to track down information on any of the gahan in the empress’s stable. Including whoever Deven thought he was now.

  To start getting her life in order, she needed Gosta back. They also needed to run this simple job on Mayhira, and take the chance Deven was still down there escorting some other woman around and not having any memory of Vas or his friends on this ship.

  Vas realized she’d broken the comb she was holding.

  There was a good chance Flarik had been right, they might need to get the mind-doc out of hibernation early.

  Detouring to retrieve Gosta would push back their reclaiming of the items on Mayhira. But Vizier Ramoth wasn’t expecting a result this soon anyway—and what difference could it make for some family heirlooms if it was a few days late?

  The old Vas would never allow for the possibility of being late—but the old Vas was long gone.

  She tapped her comm. “Mac? Are you back on deck?”

  “Almost. I’m almost there.” Mac was out of breath and Vas had a nice chuckle at the image of him flailing about as he ran down the corridor. Not only was he one of the best pilots on the rim, he was also good for comic relief—whether he intended it or not.

  Vas had finished getting dressed and was heading toward the lift herself. “Excellent. Lay in a course for the Xenlian space station. We’re getting Gosta back. Then we’ll work on a few other missing items.”

  The groan that Mac didn’t quite cover told her he thought she meant the Victorious Dead. While she was serious about them relaunching the search, she was actually talking about Deven. But she wasn’t up to telling Mac she’d seen him. At least not until Terel and Flarik confirmed it.

  “Captain, don’t we need to finish our mission down on Mayhira?” That was Ragkor. No matter how many times she told him they were jobs, not missions or military airstrikes, he still called them what he wanted. You could rip the Marine out of the service, but you couldn’t rip the service out of the Marine.

  “We’re good, Ragkor. We need Gosta back and we still have days before the drop. If we’re late, the client can wait.” The lift seemed to be taking forever. Now that she had decided to get Gosta back, she wanted him back now.

  “But, Captain—” Ragkor was getting better. This time he cut himself off, saving her the need to do it. “Aye, Captain.”

  At that moment, the comms were pointless, as Vas was walking on deck.

  “Captain on deck!” Ragkor yelled the instant her foot hit the floor out of the lift.

  Vas stopped next to him and dropped her head with a shake. She’d come close to breaking him of that habit. It was her fault. Gosta and Flarik had originally said they could step in as Deven’s replacement. But Gosta, while a wonderful navigator and gadgeteer extraordinaire, was not good at confrontation. Flarik, on the other hand, was a little too good, and her temper was very short.

  A few months ago Vas had found a drunken, down on his luck, former Marine and recruited him as her second-in-command. The logic being he’d be tough enough to handle her crew and their work. A hooligan to help control a bunch of hooligans. She had no idea she’d gotten a former officer who’d fallen on bad times because he actually followed the rules and got kicked out of the service.

  But she’d kept him.

  His face flushed and he mouth
ed, “I’m sorry.”

  Vas resumed walking and sat in her chair. “Can someone contact Gosta? We’re a bit early, and if he is too, we can get moving sooner.” Nothing against the space station in question, but high-end establishments tended to make the back of her neck itch. And she was sure the feeling was mutual.

  “Already have him on line one, Captain,” Xsit said. “He sounds disturbed.”

  Vas rubbed her forehead. Gosta was supposed to help reduce the problems, not increase them. “Is he on the station?” They’d be there in about fifteen minutes; it was a short gate hop. But he might be somewhere else if he was upset.

  “Aye, Captain, and I’m patching him through.” Xsit seemed much happier at her usual communications station.

  “Vas here, what’s gone wrong now?” she asked as she settled into her command chair. Even after all these months, it still amazed her how comfortable it was. Maybe she should see if someone could make her a bed out of the same material.

  “Captain, thank the stars,” Gosta sounded out of breath. Very unusual, since he rarely moved faster than his long-legged stroll. Syngerins weren’t known for running, their oddly double-jointed knees made it very awkward. “I have seen someone. Now I don’t want you to get upset, and this might upset you. Oh dear. He’s getting away.”

  Vas never thought she’d need to tell Gosta this. “Calm down. Who have you seen? We’ll be at the station in less than fifteen minutes.”

  “Deven, Captain. I saw Deven.” He must have stopped running, or whatever passed for that among his people, as his voice sounded less ragged. “It was in the common store on the station. It was him, I am sure of it. But, Captain? He had a full set of pirate tattoos up his left arm. And looked right through me as if I was a total stranger.”

  5

  V as dropped back into her seat. When Gosta said he’d seen Deven, she first wondered how he’d managed to get from Mayhira to the space station so quickly. Of course, he’d been with the empress’s envoy and they had fast ships, not to mention she’d had a nice detour thanks to Mac.

  Aside from the tattoo on his neck of a kept man, there had been no markings on Deven when she’d just seen him. He’d been showing enough skin to make that abundantly clear. How in the hell could he have gotten to the space station, shaken off the empress’s people, and joined a pirate gang all within a few hours?

  “Gosta, where in the station are you and where did he go?”

  “I’m near the main docking bay. He got into a rapier-class cruiser. The sensors say it’s the…” Gosta’s voice dropped a bit as he obviously checked something—most likely some illegal tech he’d picked up along the way. “The Sahabine. It’s lifting off in twenty minutes.”

  Vas looked to Mac at the pilot console. “You said we’re completely recovered from the net incident, right? Get me to the space station in eight minutes and prove it.”

  Mac tilted his head in thought, and then nodded. “I can do it.” He started doing whatever magic he worked with his console to get more power out of the engines. “I still need to tell you something though, Captain.”

  “It’ll wait.” Vas stopped and turned. “Hold on, is it anything that will blow up my ship or crew?” At Mac’s shake of his head, she tapped the comm to her navigator. “We’re coming, Gosta. Keep an eye on that ship. He could still get off of it before it leaves.” At Gosta’s grunted affirmative, Vas closed the comm.

  What the hell was going on? She knew she slammed into Deven on Mayhira—there was absolutely no doubt in her mind. But Gosta was one of the best observers she knew—if he said he saw Deven—he saw Deven.

  She looked up the ship Gosta had mentioned. The Sahabine was originally a trading vessel. Its original crew had lost it to pirates two years ago, and that’s where the information about it ended.

  Two Devens? Vas had no real idea what species Deven was. She knew he wasn’t from within the Commonwealth, but aside from trying to pass as human, he refused to say anything more. Considering that Vas didn’t know of any species who could come back from the dead, let alone come back from being blown apart, there was no way to tell what else he could do.

  There was only one thing to do, she had to talk to this Deven, get some DNA, then find the one back on Mayhira, and find out what in the hell was going on.

  She opened a comm down to Terel in the med lab. “We have a second Deven sighting—can you get together a blood testing draw with a tracker insert?” She’d had a tracker put in her blood a few months ago, and thought it was a crappy thing to have done to her. But that didn’t mean she was beyond using it herself. At least in an extreme case like this one. If she couldn’t convince this lookalike that he was her second-in-command, she might have to settle for stealing some blood and tracking him.

  “Not willingly, but yes, I can,” Terel said.

  Vas opened another channel back to Gosta. “How many people are on board?” The original complement had been no more than fifteen, but she knew pirates often gutted the interiors to fit in a larger crew.

  “I’ve seen seventeen so far, Captain. None of which look like the leader, unless our Deven is. From the outside, the ship looks in ill-repair.”

  Now that didn’t go with her Deven at all. Vas could see him as a pirate. He could even be a captain. But he would never have a ship in bad condition. This Deven mystery was getting weirder.

  Mac was true to his word. He got them to the space station in seven minutes and thirty seconds.

  “Terel, I need that kit. Meet me at the particle mover.” Yes, she didn’t like using it, and this would be the second time in a few hours. But there was no fast way she could get from where the Warrior Wench was docking to the bay with the smaller ships. Not and have enough time to confront Deven.

  “It’s ready. But, Captain, I don’t think—”

  “Not up for debate. I’ll be there immediately.” Vas jogged to the lift, keyed in the bottom level, and punched it.

  Her jog turned into a run to get to the equipment. Walvento was there with a very annoyed medical officer. “I assume the particle mover won’t be tracked by the station?” Vas asked as she yanked the small black med kit out of Terel’s hands. A quick flip of the flap told her it held a syringe. One of Terel’s sneaky double barrel ones. It looked thin enough to be a single needle, but there were two—one injected, the other withdrew. Actually, the withdraw part worked first, so it didn’t pull a contaminated sample. Now to get close enough to use it.

  Walvento nodded in response to her question, but said nothing.

  “Don’t send me down in eyesight of the ship, or any life signs you can pick up, and notify Gosta to hold his position, but not to contact me.” She reached back and started pulling out her nice, neat braid, tossed her duster to Terel, then folded her shirt up to a midriff baring height, and pulled down one shoulder. “I look trashy?”

  Walvento carefully held his mouth tightly closed but Terel nodded as she folded Vas’s duster. “Acceptably so. Send her down, Walvento.”

  Vas held her breath as the beam hit her. Terel had repeated over and over again that she couldn’t actually be feeling anything, however, Vas felt a sting go through her every time. Only when going out of the ship though. Pickups never did that.

  The particle mover was always a dicey choice. If she or any of her people appeared or vanished in front of strangers there would be hell to pay. No one could know about the tech on her ship. At least no one who was going to keep breathing long enough to tell the authorities about it.

  Luckily, the Warrior Wench had a far narrower scanning ability than her missing Victorious Dead did. Walvento put her down behind a mountain of shipping crates without a soul around being the wiser.

  Damn, no wonder this tech was illegal as hell. She could have been anyone; criminal, murderer, terrorist monk, anything, and she went from ship to station without so much as a checkpoint for illegal fruits.

  She shook her shoulders to shake off the chill. They’d have to seriously rethink keeping that par
ticle mover, and if they did keep it, she’d need to tighten security on it.

  Vas waited a few minutes, just to make sure no one was near enough to be startled when she walked out from behind the crates. She took a deep breath, concealed the med dart in her hand, and moved out into the station.

  Not only was this twice in one day for the mover, this was twice in a day for pretending to be someone she wasn’t.

  Thing was, she liked who she was. She looked tough and she was fine with that. Acting and dressing like something other than that was disconcerting. She’d gone a few feet down the walkway when she realized she was marching—something completely at odds with her slutty, space tramp persona.

  A true station hooker would have been wearing far slinkier clothing, especially on a station like this one. But, she’d work with what she had. They couldn’t take a chance that the Sahabine would launch before she could get a tracker into this Deven.

  This end of the docking bay was starkly divided into the haves and have-nots. Behind her were the luxury-class ships, the ones that could outrun even something like the Warrior Wench with no problem and serve gold-wrapped grapes while they were at it. In front of her, where the Sahabine waited, were the have-nots. She’d been down at this end once in her storied career, before she took over the Victorious Dead. Vas had never felt such an overwhelming need to get off a station in her life. It was thoroughly illegal, but she had a feeling the conglomeration that owned the station employed high-level espers to keep the unwanted moving along. After they left behind some of their money, anyway.

  The Sahabine came into sight, but the ship looked ready for the drop. Ships on the Xenlian space station had to drop out of their berth, clear the atmosphere lock, and then head to space. A decidedly awkward way to handle it, but the only other way to leave the station involved a lot more money being paid to said station. Money that people at this end either couldn’t or wouldn’t pay.

  The loading door of the ship opened as she moved closer, and Deven came out.