Bringing Stella Home (18 page)

“
Welcome to the
Tajji Flame
,
Mister—”

“
McCoy. James
McCoy.”

“
Ah.”

She extended her hand. The boy took it
and gave her a surprisingly firm handshake.

“
You’re Danica Nova,
right?” he asked, his voice a bit too eager. “Pleased to meet
you.”

“
Yes,” said Danica. She
gave her soldiers a curt nod. “Wait for us outside.”

They turned and left. Roman took his
customary seat and watched her with an amused expression on his
face.

“
I assume you got my
message,” the boy said. “I wanted to talk about, er, hiring your
services.”

“
I see,” said Danica. “And
exactly what services were you looking to hire?”

“
I need some help with a
rescue operation. My brother and sister were, uh, taken by the
Hameji.”

Behind them, Ilya snorted. Danica
ignored him and stared at the boy without saying a word.

“
I’ve got proof of it,” he
said. “At least, proof they were alive when the invasion started.
They can’t be far—”

“
Are you planning to pay in
cash, gold, or diamonds, kid?”

The boy floundered. “Well, I have a
couple hundred in cash—”

“
And?”

“
And, uh, I have my
ship.”

“
Numbers, kid. Give me a
number.”

James bit his lip and swayed back and
forth on his feet for several long moments. “I don’t
know.”

Who is this kid?
Danica wondered.
Too
stupid to be an Imperial agent—but are they tracking
him?

“
So let me get this
straight,” she said. “You’re—what? Fifteen? Fourteen?”

“
Nineteen.”

“
Bullshit.”

James blushed deep red. “Fifteen,” he
admitted.

“
Right. And you lost some
of your family to the Hameji.”

“
That’s right.”

“
And you want us to rescue
them for you.”

“
Yeah.”

“
But you have no idea where
they are.”

“
Uh—”

“
And you can only pay us
with that obsolete shuttle, which you probably stole.”

James’s eyes lit up with anger. “I
didn’t steal that ship,” he said. “It belongs to my family. I took
it out as—as part of my inheritance.”

“
Even so, it is small
vessel,” said Roman. “It is not going for more than six million
Gaian credits, even as new.”

“
It’ll sell for more at
Karduna,” said the boy. “Any ship with jump capacity is going to
sell really well—”

“
How well?” Danica
asked.

“
I—I don’t know. A
lot.”

“
If we’re going to do
business,” said Danica, letting her annoyance bleeding into her
voice, “‘really well’ isn’t going to cut it.”

“
It’s all I have,” said
James, his composure breaking apart. “Please—I need your
help.”

Danica folded her arms and sighed
inwardly. The boy was right to come to them for help—the Imperials
certainly wouldn’t help him with a petty rescue operation. His
proposal was absolutely crazy, but still, he had lot of guts to
come this far. Danica admired that.

Besides, something seemed strangely
familiar about him. Had they met before? Of course it was
impossible, but for some odd reason she couldn’t shake the notion
from her head.

“
You know,” said Ilya, “we
could just take the
Catriona
for ourselves—the station registry has no record
of him.”

“
What?” shouted James.
“No—you wouldn’t!”

Danica turned and gave Ilya a sharp,
reprimanding look. He shrugged in response. “It was only a
suggestion.”

“
Thank you, Lieutenant
Ayvazyan. When I want your suggestion, I’ll ask for it. Is that
clear?”

“
Yes, Captain.”

Danica turned back to the boy. “I hope
you realize the magnitude of what you’re asking. No one has ever
conducted a successful rescue operation against the Hameji. For me
to put my men in a situation like that—”

“
I know,” said James, “but
just because no one’s ever done it doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”
The look he gave Danica was nothing short of desperate pleading,
but she saw a determined resolution in his eye. He wasn’t going to
give this thing up.

All at once, it came to her. The hair,
the eyes, the shape of his face—in every way, he was the spitting
image of her brother Karen. Her breath caught in her throat, and it
took every last shred of her discipline not to cry out in shock.
How long had her brother been dead? Too long—far too
long.

“
And where will you be
while we carry out this job?” Danica asked, quickly regaining her
composure.

“
I was, uh, planning on
coming with you,” he said. “I want to be there when we rescue
them.”

Danica broke her stoic expression to
raise an eyebrow. “You want to join us?”

“
Yes,” he said. “I—I want
to join for the mission. I’m not afraid.”

The kid’s got
spirit,
Danica thought to herself. She drew
in a deep breath.

“
Let me think about it,”
she said. “My men will escort you to the lounge. I’ll call you when
I’ve made my decision.”

“
Yes, of course,” he said.
“Thank you.”

Roman stood and showed him to the
door, where Peter and Nicholas led him away. Anya and Ilya watched
silently from their posts.

“
Well,” said Danica, facing
her officers as she sorted out her thoughts, “what do you
think?”

“
The boy’s probably right
about selling his ship,” said Anya. “The
Catriona’s
not much to look at, but
from what I can gather from the chatter on the civilian bands,
thousands of people are desperate to escape the system. I wouldn’t
be surprised if we could get a hundred million credits, or
more.”

One hundred million
credits would be enough to carry us to the New Pleiades,
Danica thought to herself.
Not much further, but far enough.

“
We should just take the
ship and leave the kid,” said Ilya. “I mean, come on—there’s no one
to stop us. He isn’t registered anywhere, and so far as I can tell,
no one else knows he’s here. If we—”

“
We’re a private military
unit, Ayvazyan, not a band of pirates.”

“
Yeah, but still, why take
his contract? It’s suicide.”

Danica looked off, deep in thought.
The others drew silent.

“
Sikorsky,” said Danica, “I
need to step out for a moment. If you see any suspicious movement
in the Imperial fleet—and I mean anything—get us the hell out of
here. Am I clear?”

“
Yes, Captain.”

A nod was all it took for Roman to
leave with her. In the hallway outside the bridge, they were
alone.

“
Well, Sergeant,” she
asked, “what do you think?”

“
The boy is crazy,” said
Roman. “This ‘rescue operation’ against the Hameji is strange way
to commit suicide.”

“
I know,” said Danica.
“Still, it’s the only offer we’ve received since our
arrival.”

“
Pff,” said Roman, throwing
up his hands. “Perhaps this is true. Does it matter?”

“
I hate to admit it, but we
need to take this mission. With the Imperials swarming this
position, who else is going to approach us with work? Besides, if
the boy wants to join our crew for a while, maybe I can talk him
out of it.”

“
Talk him out of rescuing
his sister and brother? I am not thinking you can do
this.”

“
Perhaps, but who knows?
Maybe he’s right—just because no one has ever done it doesn’t mean
that it can’t be done. If we did pull it off, it would certainly
boost our reputation.”

“
Reputation is for the
living, not the dead. And this boy’s promised price is no
good.”

“
We don’t know that, and
Sikorsky has good reason to believe otherwise.”

“
Still, I do not believe it
is so. Fifty million, perhaps, but hundred million?” He pursed his
lips and shook his head.

“
Are those your only
misgivings about this job?”

Roman nodded. “Yes.”

“
Thank you,” said Danica.
“And if I decided to take this mission in spite of your misgivings,
would you follow my orders?”

Roman snorted indignantly. “Why do you
ask question if you already know answer?”

* * * * *

James paced nervously across the floor
of the empty lounge. A hundred doubts assailed him—that the
mercenaries wouldn’t take his job, that they thought he was crazy,
that they’d steal his ship and leave him stranded. He could imagine
the lecture his father would give him if he were here. Dealing in
the black market with crooks and criminals—what was he
thinking?

Just when he decided that
he’d made a huge mistake, the door hissed open and a man in battle
fatigues stepped through.
“Mister McCoy,”
he said, “Captain Nova will see you now.”

James swallowed and nodded. He
followed the soldier up a narrow ladder and down a long, dim
corridor to the ship’s bridge.

To his surprise, he found the place
packed with half a dozen men and women, most of them in varying
styles of military dress. Captain Nova stood at the front of
them.

“
Congratulations,” she
said, extending her hand. “We’ve reviewed your offer and found your
terms acceptable. Welcome aboard the
Tajji
Flame
.”

James’s heart leaped in his
chest, and an eager smile spread across his face.
I knew it!
he told
himself, taking Danica’s hand in both of his own.

“
Thank you so much,” he
said. “I—”

“
Allow me to introduce my
officers,” she said, stepping aside and waving him in. The curt
gesture caught him off guard.

“
This is Master Sergeant
Roman Krikoryan,” she said, pointing to the older man James had
seen before. “Roman is my senior NCO and has been with us since the
beginning. He’s career military and knows how to run a ship better
than anyone on this crew, including myself.”

“
Welcome,” Roman said as
they shook hands. He stood almost a full head taller than James,
with a balding head, silvery-gray goatee, and a heavy, muscular
build. His uniform, though faded, was the sharpest of any of the
other officers: olive green with a button-up front, white epaulets,
and a gold patch with three black chevrons on his upper arm. He
looked James squarely in the eye as they shook hands; James nodded
and offered a weak smile in return.

“
This is Anya Sikorsky,”
said Danica, motioning to the young, blond-haired woman who had
been on the bridge when James had first come aboard. “Sikorsky is
our chief pilot and astrogator.”

Anya was stunningly gorgeous in every
possible way. She had the stature and physique of a goddess, and
even in the dim light her golden hair practically radiated. She
smiled warmly at him as they shook hands.

“
Hi,” she said.

“
Hello,” said James, his
voice weak. He hoped he wasn’t blushing.

“
This is Ilya Ayvazyan,”
said Danica, “our cyber-ops and intelligence officer.” She motioned
to the scrawny, greasy-haired guy who had wanted to steal
the
Catriona
.

“
McCoy,” he said, nodding
curtly as they shook hands. A moment later, he snaked an arm around
Anya’s waist. James knew at once that they wouldn’t get
along.

“
This is Vaclav Nicholson,”
Danica said, directing James’s attention to a tall, slender man
dressed in a pilot’s uniform: white shirt and navy blue slacks,
with a black tie and gold-striped epaulets on his shoulders.
“Nicholson is in charge of our drone fighter fleet.”

“
Pleased to meet you,”
Vaclav said, nodding rather than shaking his hand. James nodded in
reply, a bit awkwardly. Something about the man was off-putting,
though he seemed crisp and professional enough.

“
This is Mikhail
Konstantin,” said Danica, gesturing to a man in an old, greasy
jumpsuit with a full utility belt around his waist. “Konstantin is
our chief engineer and mechanic. He practically rebuilt this ship
by himself.”

“
Welcome aboard,” said
Mikhail. He was almost as tall as Roman, with olive skin and a
thick, muscular build. Unlike Vaclav, he smiled cheerfully at James
and gave him a solid, friendly handshake. James smiled back and
decided he liked the man.

“
And this,” said Danica,
gesturing to a short, silver-haired man with a wrinkled brow, “this
is Nizar Abu Kariym, our chief medical officer.”

“
Abu Kariym Nizar Al-Hakiym
Bin Sathi Bin Hussayn An-Najoumi Al-Gaiani Al-Jadiyd, to be more
precise,” the man said. “But you may call me Abu
Kariym.”