Wings of Retribution (14 page)

The silence on the other end of the comm system bored into Athenais’s eardrums like a pickaxe.

Everyone was going to die.  Except for her.

“Damn it, Fairy, where’d you put us?”  Athenais tossed the headset aside in disgust, turning to glare at her copilot.  “I haven’t heard a single crackle.  Nothing.”  She turned to Fairy, who was leaning over the darkened controls like a woman leaning over a dead lover’s casket.  Despair tugged at the her features. 

“Fairy!”

The girl jerked and looked up.

“How far are we from the road?” Athenais repeated.

Fairy leaned back against her chair with an explosive sigh.  “I don’t know.  Two, three thousand.”

Athenais glanced back at the headset.  Her com array was good for five hundred Standard Intergalactic Distance Units, or SIDUs.   Squirrel could probably boost that up to seven-fifty, maybe eight hundred, tops. 

As it was, some mining armada on its way to an unexcavated planet would probably find
Beetle
drifting a thousand years from now amidst a string of space debris.  Inside, they’d find four frozen skeletons and one very pissed off pirate.

Oh, she was going to make Smallfoot pay. 
No one
crossed Athenais Owlborne.  She would hunt him down and skin him and throw his carcass to Uresian tree bats, right after she— 

“Captain.”  Fairy’s low voice interrupted Athenais’s thoughts.  She turned to look at her copilot.  Fairy was staring down at the lifeless controls. 

Inwardly, Athenais thought ‘despair’ was a good look for the little twit.  It was certainly a welcome change from the bright-eyed, energetic, ratlike scurrying naïvete that the Utopi airhead usually beamed around in a blast of youthful exuberance.

“What,” Athenais barked. 

Hunched over the controls, Fairy hung her head.  “I told Smallfoot about the shifters.”

Athenais froze, suddenly wondering what it would be like to scramble the young pilot’s brains on her own control panels.  As calmly as she could, she said, “You did?”

The girl nodded miserably.  She kept her eyes on the console in front of her.  “That night in The Shop, right before we left port.”

Athenais fought the sudden impulse to strangle the little snoop.  “You were spying on me again.”

Fairy flinched.  “I heard Ragnar say it after we left the meeting in the mess hall.”

Athenais slammed a fist down on the console, making her copilot jump.  “I
told
you to stop spying on me,” she growled, rage bubbling up from deep within.  Of
course
it had been the sneaky little twerp.  Of course.

Hunched over the controls, Fairy hung her head.  “I didn’t think it would hurt…”

She didn’t
think
… 
It was all Athenais could do not to introduce her pretty face to the dash a few times in her fury.

Gripping the com unit to keep from reaching for the little blonde’s throat, she said, “So it was
you
.  I told Goat and Dune and Squirrel, but I couldn’t figure out which of them would be dumb enough to tell Smallfoot.”

Fairy looked up, surprise etched on her face.  “You told those three, but not me?”

Athenais snorted.  “Lookin’ at what happened, you see any reason I should’ve done differently?”

Shame began to redden Fairy’s face and the girl looked away.

“I keep my new recruits on a short leash,” Athenais growled.  “Smallfoot was the newest, after you.  He’d only been with us for eight years, since my last surgeon retired.  You’d only been with us two.  Truth be told, I thought
you
had been the one to turn us in, then they turned on you.”

Fairy looked up, horrified.  “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.  I just overheard you and Ragnar and then I got drunk and Smallfoot…”  She glanced back down at the controls and lowered her voice.  “I ain’t no turncloak, Captain.”

Athenais gave the girl a level stare.  “So what are you, girl?”

Fairy’s face flushed.  “I may be stupid, but I’m no turncloak.”

“Maybe,” Athenais told her, “but I don’t suffer fools on my ship.  You’re lucky there’s no power, ‘cause if there was, I’d put you in the airlock and open the doors and be done with you.”

“But,” Fairy stammered, “you keep saying I’m the best pilot you’ve ever seen…”

“
I’m
the best pilot I’ve ever seen,” Athenais snapped, irritated that the girl had latched onto that one misplaced sentence, two years ago, and run with it.  “And I don’t care if you shit diamonds and vomit osmium ingots.  You’re no use to me if you can’t keep my secrets.”

It took the girl a moment to digest that.  When she did, Fairy’s pert little lips parted in horror.  “Does this mean I’m off of
Beetle
?”

“If we get back to port, you’re getting off my ship.”

“But I
stayed,”
Fairy whined.  “Doesn’t that prove I’m loyal?”

“It proves you felt guilty for getting the rest of us killed,” Athenais snapped, her anger flaring again.  She stood, her fingers digging painfully into her palms.  The only reason she didn’t slug the little twerp was because it wouldn’t be a fair fight.  “I’m going to go get something to eat.  If I were you, I wouldn’t be here when I came back.”  At that, she picked up a flashlight and walked through the security doors, ignoring Fairy’s whimpered complaints.

Damn her.  Athenais should have
known
that the girl was too young to take aboard, regardless of how gifted she was.  Not only were her snoopy, borderline-klepto tendencies huge warning bells that should have gotten her ass dumped on a desert planet years ago, she was too cocky.

Her gut had warned her, but Athenais had seen too much of herself in the young pilot to pass her up.  Watching Fairy at the wheel was like taking a spin down memory lane, and Athenais missed being that young and exuberant about everything.  The very first week, Dune had suggested that she let Fairy ‘ripen’ a few more years, but Athenais had been too bullheaded to listen to him.  She insisted they give the little brat a chance.  Now everyone on
Beetle
was going to pay for her mistake.

Colonel Howlen came stalking into the cell immediately after docking, looking ruffled.  “What is it, colonist?” he snapped, glaring at Stuart.  He ignored the other three entirely.

“I got a deal for ya,” Stuart said.  “I can tell you where ta find more of ‘em.”  He tilted his head toward his friends, amidst curses from the shifters.  “
Lots
more.”

“Where?”  Howlen sounded impatient.

“I got some conditions,” Stuart began.  “First—”

“No,” Howlen interrupted.

Stuart frowned.  “No what?”

“No conditions,” Howlen said.  “I don’t make deals.”

“I just want fair treatment,” Stuart insisted.  “How do I know you’ll give me what I deserve if I help you?”

“You’ll get what you deserve,” Howlen assured him. 

Stuart did not like his tone.  He said so.

“Well, truth is,” Howlen said, giving him a long, cold glare with eyes as unyielding as packed dirt, “I don’t like deserters.”

He’s serious
, Stuart thought, panic beginning to trim the edges of his awareness.  He fought to keep his tone level, knowing that he
needed
the colonel to let him out of his shell.  If he didn’t, and they put Stuart through a more thorough scanner—which they would—all four of them were dead. 

“A few hours ago you were beggin’ me to help you,” Stuart objected. 

Howlen narrowed his eyes.  “I never beg.”  At that, he turned and left the room.

Stuart couldn’t believe it.  His opportunity for escape had just walked right out the door like he’d offered shit-sandwiches and not the entire shifter mother-lode.  He stared at the door for minutes, wondering if it was some sort of ploy to scare him into blurting out something important. 

When Howlen didn’t come back, however, Stuart began to get that sinking feeling that maybe the colonel really was just as much of a hardass as he appeared.  He had almost resigned himself to being discovered when hope flared anew with the arrival of a subordinate S.O. officer.  The young woman was directing a group of soldiers that had come to ready the stasis shells for transport.

“We can help each other,” Stuart said when she paused near his shell.

She gave him a look of mingled suspicion and interest. 

“I can tell you where to find more of ‘em,” Stuart said.  “They’ve got a whole
town
on Penoi.  I can tell you where it is.”

“Then tell me.”  She glanced away to watch the crew wrestling with Paul’s shell.

Stuart scoffed, bringing her attention back to him.  “Penoi’s huge.  You think I could tell you right where it is without a map?  All I know is it’s between some mountains and there’s a little fork in the river—”

“You turncoat piece of shit!” Ragnar interrupted.  “You keep your damn mouth shut.  We helped you back on Penoi.  We gave you a place to live, food to eat, and this is how you repay us?!  You have the conscience of a tapeworm.”

Stuart gave Ragnar a narrow look.  Tapeworm, was he?

The woman glanced at Ragnar, scowling.  “Shut him up.”

A corporal that had been removing the bolts holding Morgan’s stasis shell to the floor got up and thrust a taser into Ragnar’s neck, making him scream.

Stuart felt a little better as Ragnar’s head collapsed against the front of the shell.  “So as I was saying,” he began, “They’re on this little river—”

“You’re just a parasite,” Paul spat.  “You use people and cast them off once they’ve served your purpose.  You’re just—”

“Him, too,” the woman said with an irritated gesture.

Stuart was still glaring at Paul long after the corporal had jolted him into unconsciousness. 

“Well?” the officer demanded.  “Where are the rest of them?”

Stuart tore his eyes away from Paul with some effort.

“You’re worried about the wrong species, dear,” the woman said, following his gaze.  “Who cares what they think of you?  They’re aliens.”

Stuart gave her a grim smile.  “I’m going to need a map.”

The officer bit her lip.  “The only map I can show you is programmed into the table in the war room.  Just give me a description from here.”

“There were lots of trees, a river, and mountains,” Stuart offered.

The woman gave him a disgusted look.  “What are you?  A goddamn fortune-teller?  That describes just about every place on Penoi.”

“I can’t give you the right place without a map,” Stuart protested.

“Give me something solid and I’ll give you a map.  Otherwise, stop wasting my time.”  The woman turned to go.

“Standing in the village, if you look up to the east, you can see a mountain that is shaped like old-fashioned gun-sights.”

Morgan’s head jerked in his stasis shell and he gave Stuart a long look.

“Gun sights, eh?” the woman said, watching Morgan’s reaction.  “I suppose I could set the computer to look for that.” 

“Give me five minutes at a map and I can put my finger on it,” Stuart replied.

The woman cocked her head at him.  “You realize that we will hold you until we prove your information is correct.  Lying to us is not going to help you get out of here any faster.”

“But if I’m proved right, I get a reward, don’t I?” Stuart insisted.  “I heard that there’s a bounty on shifters’ heads.  A big one.  That’s what that doctor was saying, anyway.”

“There’s bounties on colonists’ heads, too,” the woman replied.  The suspicion, however, melted from her face.  Humans, after all, were simple creatures. 

…Simple creatures that thrived on the material and liked to annihilate everything that made them nervous.

To the blonde corporal that had relayed Stuart’s message earlier, the woman said, “Let this one out of stasis.  Keep an eye on him until I get back with the Colonel.”  At that, she turned and strode from the room.

The corporal gave Stuart a long look before unlocking the shell.  The other soldiers stopped what they were doing and stood, waiting, their hands on their weapons.