Wings of Retribution (65 page)

Paul’s eyes never left hers.  “You don’t know what it’s like.  You can join every rebellion you want.  You’ll never know.”

“Oh quit being a goddamned martyr,” Athenais snapped.  “And don’t put me on the same side as them.  I’m not human.  Haven’t been human since gradeschool.”  At that, she turned and stalked to the other edge of the enclosure and sat down, ignoring the shifters around her. 

Juno, she decided, needed to die.  Really die.  And then her father.  And then the Potion, and then the rest of the Utopia that had been cheating the reaper for the last seven millennia.  Athenais was gonna find a way to do it, and screw ‘em if they couldn’t take a joke.

Tommy returned to his room and closed his door, letting his breath out in an explosive sigh.  This Juno liked to use people as leverage against one another.  First Ragnar, now him.  Clever girl. 

Unfortunately for Juno, Tommy was just as experienced in the art of prisoner manipulation, and she had picked the wrong person as her leverage.  If Tommy had a chance to get off planet, he was going to take it.  Out of all of them, he was the only one who still had the ability.  The mission was over.  They had lost.  It was time to retreat.

Tommy unzipped his coat and threw it over the peg beside the door.  As he did so, something fell from the pocket and rolled across the floor.  It was the odd tinkling sound that caught his attention.

Frowning, Tommy bent to pick it up.  When he did, his eyes narrowed.

The vial of blue floater liquid.  Supposedly the doorway to the gods.

Scoffing, Tommy stuffed it back into his coat pocket.  He disdained drugs and the people who used them.  Most of his time on T-9 had been spent finding and confiscating narcotics instead of seeking out the aliens he had been trained to apprehend.  It had been frustrating work—Tommy had to resist the urge to smash the vial on the stone floor in irritation.

He could give it back.  Hand it to some Stranger in the docking bay, tell him he found it in the cargo hold of his ship.

Why?
his rational brain demanded. 
So the Emperor can use it to shoot up?

Idly, Tommy wondered how many credits the little vial would be worth on the black market.  Probably a lot, if it was what he thought
it was.  They’d called it floater wash.  Very, very little of the stuff ever made it into the markets, and the few ounces that did were immediately snapped up by the Utopian elite.  A whole vial…hell, it might be enough to pay for a new life on one of the colonies.

Now if only he could find a way to get past Xenith’s fleet.

The little cargo ship they gave him was not enough.  It
might
be able to avoid the big ships, but he doubted he could make it all the way out of the Black with it.  He had the feeling that Juno knew that, as well, and was teasing him, seeing if he would bolt.

Tommy
would
bolt, but it would be on a ship of his choosing, not some ancient junker that spent half its time down for repairs.

Sighing, he lay down and tried to sleep.  Outside his window, he could hear the heavy rain thrumming against the stone and dripping into the collection barrels below.  Lightning flashed almost constantly, illuminating his room like the center of a T-9 dance floor.  From the bottom of the wall, he could hear wave after wave crashing into the stone, pummeling it with twenty and thirty foot swells.  Despite its ferocity, however, Tommy calculated that the worst of the storm should hit in two days.  It was then that he’d make his move.

Dallas was bringing her ship around the soggy walls of the main island—which the locals called ‘Paradise,’ but Dallas privately referred to as the Fort, now redubbed the Wet Fort—when she spotted
Retribution.
  It was docked right beside Dallas’s assigned bay, unguarded and abandoned in the rain.  As soon as she saw it, her fingers spasmed on the controls, but she brought the freighter into the loading area as she was supposed to.

She sat in the cockpit long after the docking clamps had taken hold, staring at her ship through the sheets of rain.

The comset crackled in front of her.  Unlike most comsets, she could not turn it off.

Pilot of planetary freighter B-89, please power down so we can begin diagnostics.

Dallas ignored the command, studying
Retribution
.  Longing tugged at her soul as she watched the water run off its sleek black hull.  She knew she could make it off the planet with
Retribution
.  She
knew
it.  All the way home, all the way to whatever planet she wanted to go to, in whatever system, in whatever galaxy, inside the Quads or out.  And the ship was
right there
.

How long would it be in dock?  Was it about to ship out?  Why was it planetside and not riding a hub?  Who was driving it, nowadays?  Would she ever see it again?  What if this was her
chance
?

All these questions rolled like agonizing little rock chips through her mind. 

Retribution
just sat there, abandoned in the rain.  It appeared unharmed, though the simpleton fools they had flying it would probably crash it into the ocean the next time they took it out.  Her heart ached as she watched it.

Pilot of planetary freighter B-89, you must power down the ship for us to begin maintenance procedures.

Furious, Dallas threw off the shoulder harness, shut off the engine, and stormed from the cockpit.  Outside, industrious Strangers were already unloading her freighter’s cargo—green slimy stuff that the locals used as food.

“I’m hungry,” Dallas snapped, not bothering to sound brainwashed.  “I’ll be in my room, getting some food.”  At that, she turned and marched down the hall, frustrated beyond all reason. 
Retribution
was
there,
so close she could
touch
it.  She glanced down at her hands and squeezed them into fists, regretting not fighting it out with Everest.  So
what
if the ship was bigger than any warship they’d ever seen?  So
what
if it was mounted with so many guns it looked like a porcupine?  She should have
fought.

That was twice she’d put down the controls because she’d been afraid, twice she’d lost her ship to people who didn’t deserve it.

Slamming her domicile door, Dallas vowed it would never happen again.

“Not in a
million years
!” she screamed at the woven seaweed matting that made up the door.

Someone cleared his throat behind her and Dallas spun, heart leaping into her throat.  “I mean…” she babbled.  “Praise the Emperor’s Will?”

Two strange men stood in the corner of her bedroom, watching her.  Dallas’s heart suddenly leapt into her throat, panic tracing painful lines through her gut.  Had she taken too long to get out of the cockpit?  Had the boobalicious little dead-eyed ape in the karate gi been watching her?  Had it really been a trap?  Were they here to brainwash her a second time?  Oh God, without Stuart, she was so dead…

“I’m Stuart,” the bigger of the two said, looking amused.  “That’s Ragnar.”

Dallas let out the breath she’d been holding in a laugh of relief.  “You
scared
me!”  Grinning, she ran up and gave the bigger of the two men a hug.  “Stuey, I
sooooo
missed you.  I was all alone and nobody to talk to and I was scared and I kept doing things wrong and I think they might know I’m not brainwashed and—”

“I missed you too,” Stuart interrupted, pushing her back to look down at her, “You got something to eat?”

Dallas pouted.  “You just got here and you want to
eat
?”

“Ragnar’s about to eat the seaweed in the floor matting,” Stuart said.  “We were talking about it before you came in.  He’s bad off.  Anything you can find would really help.”

She took another look at the Warrior.  He was small-boned, the size of a child.  “Ragnar?  How’d you lose so much weight?”

“Shifting,” Ragnar said.  He was leaning against the wall, his voice sounding strained.  “Please.  Do you have
any
food?”

“They deliver it here,” Dallas said, going to the chute and pulling the drawer open.  Inside, a steaming plate of green slime and fish awaited her.  She wrinkled her nose and offered it to Ragnar.  “You want it?  I hate that stuff.”

Ragnar didn’t even talk.  He simply yanked the plate out of her hands and started devouring it.  The way he ate the food reminded her of a starving dog she had fed on Derkne.  She took a step backwards.  That same dog had attacked her when it had run out of food.

“The situation’s bad,” Stuart said as Ragnar ate.  “They’ve got all the shifters locked up in a vault that it would take weeks to get into.  Genetic ID.  Airtight, laser resistant walls.  Athenais is in there with them.  I can’t find Rabbit.”

Dallas’s brows furrowed.  “Athenais?  I thought they dumped her off a few hundred miles from here.”

“It’s her,” Ragnar said, setting the plate on her dresser.  “And they put her in with the other shifters, thinking she was me.”

“So there’s the three of us,” Dallas mused.  “Stuart, have you thought about taking over that Juno bitch?  She’d probably have the access to get them out of there.”

Stuart gave a wan smile.  “I’ve thought about it.  Problem is, I can’t find her.”

“You check out the
Retribution
?  Maybe she’s using it as her personal limo.”

“
Retribution’s
abandoned.  Too expensive to fly it in the atmosphere, and too complicated for these fools to put into orbit.  And, thanks to Rabbit, it’s got long-range com.  I’ve been doing some research and they don’t have anything in space with long-range com.  They’re afraid of giving away their location.”

Dallas groaned.  “
That’s
why it’s docked?  They’re removing
Retribution’s
com equipment?”

“No, that equipment is too expensive to waste.  They’re just keeping it on Xenith for the planetary interference until they figure out a failproof damper.  I have heard talk they’re going to be adding her to
Everest’s
fleet here in a few days.  Looking for someone to pilot it.”