Grace - Chapter 2: Mysterious Cargo
James Devlin would not likely be pleased to find he was still the owner of two hundred, fifty-nine crates of “black lightning” that was supposed to have fetched a pretty good price - at least for gut-rot home brew. Nevertheless, Jess arranged to meet him on the afternoon Grace would touch down on Jericho, one of Delta’s outer moons. Most travelers didn’t even bother calling Jericho by its proper name. To them it was simply “Devlin’s Moon.”
Like all rocks surrounding frontier planets, Devlin’s Moon was home to a scrubby landscape boasting more dirt and rocks than plantlife. But its capital was a decent market town called Jupiter City, where locals and travelers alike could buy goods, hop a ride off-world or hire themselves out. Jess hoped to find a suitable pilot before their meeting, then straighten things out with Devlin and take off toward a destination where they could unload their cargo and get paid. After that, they would find some work more profitable than the jobs they’d been taking. It would be nice to make a good sum for once.
Val set Grace down in the docking area on the outskirts of the marketplace. The ship swooped into its landing, feet down and great metal wings spread like those of a giant bird. With two and a half hours to spare before meeting time, Jess hung a sign on Grace’s hull that read, “PILOT NEEDED” while Val placed two folding chairs in the shade provided by the wings and sat in one to wait, stretching his long, sinewy legs in front of him. Jess put her hands on her hips and surveyed their shelter straight-on, while surveying Val’s lithe body out of the corner of her eye.
“Now see? Didn’t I tell you those wings’d come in handy?” she said, fixing a cord around two canteens, which she slung over her shoulder. “We’re like to die of a heat stroke out here without them.”
Val shook his head, gazing into the crowd. “Not worth the runway space we need to take off,” he rumbled.
“Oh. That,” Jess said, swatting at a fly. “Minor inconvenience. Listen, I’m going to go get us some food. Anything special you’re craving?”
He shook his head again.
“All right,” she said. “Beans it is.”
He looked at her as though waiting for her to say something more intelligent.
She shook her head. “Sheesh, you’d think you could humor me with a chuckle. Maybe even a guffaw.”
“My apologies, Captain,” he said with a graceful bow of the head. “I will try to chuckle more in the future.”
“Can I at least trust you to remain vocal long enough to keep the interest of any genius pilots that might come our way?”
“I’ll be the epitome of charm.”
“Right,” she said. “Just don’t scare people is all I’m asking. Well, people we might like, anyway. Going for lunch now.”
He didn’t respond.
“Yep,” she said. “That charm thing’s really working for you so far.” She whistled to herself and started walking along the row of docked ships. On one hand, it would have been nice to have a more talkative crewman to send after the grub while she waylaid potential pilots. But deep down Jess knew, even if Val had been more of a talker, she still would have done the errand herself. She wanted to move through the crowd, get a feel for it. See how many guns were here and what people seemed to want. Something had not felt right since they had landed on that last moon, and she wondered if it was a sign of things to come.
On her way to the center of the marketplace, she passed about a half-dozen other small freighters and passenger ships, covered in the planet’s dust, but doing their best to gleam in the sun. Most had their destinations posted on their hulls, some with hungry crew soliciting any passersby they saw pulling trunks or carrying packs. It seemed anyone who made eye contact or lingered too long was fair game.
Jess slowed her pace to watch a sweaty man in a rugged vest and T-shirt approach another, who was wearing a long leather coat and sitting on the ground next to a large, bulging pack. The sweaty man bent over and braced a hand on his knee to talk to the sitting man, pointing to what was, presumably, his vessel. It wasn’t much to look at, Jess thought. A newer Centaur Class, but square. Angular, not curvaceous like her Grace. Not poetry riding high on the wind.
The sitting man, who looked to be around thirty, with skin as pale as Val’s and lips like strawberries, shook his head with an apologetic smile. With his tousled black hair, thin face and crooked nose, he looked like a very old, very lost boy.
She hadn’t realized until he caught her gaze that she had been staring. Jess looked away without acknowledging him, but his tentative smile told her he must have seen the curiosity on her face, seen her wondering what a pup like that was doing in this wilderness.
Jess wondered if she had ever seemed like a lost pup and certainly hoped she didn’t now. She paused at a jagged piece of mirror tacked to a tent pole and surveyed her appearance: Long, dirty-blonde dreadlocks with the top pulled back; fitted button-down shirt, deep red; buckskin trousers; gun belt at the hip; shotgun slung across her back. Something in her eyes flickered between hard and mischievous, and a perpetual smile tugged at the corners of her mouth like she knew something the rest of the System didn’t. It was a look that had led to an altercation a time or two in seedy frontier bars, but luckily she’d grown up with a couple of wild brothers. Later on, she’d met someone who’d thought she would take to learning the proper ways to kill a man. He’d been absolutely right.
A big man chomping a cigar stepped between her and the glass to try on a second-hand, wide-brimmed hat, so she moved on, squinting in the sun’s glare, keeping an open eye for any competing “PILOT NEEDED” signs or anyone who looked as though he might be working for Devlin…or just…working.
Young children ran through the crowd hawking baubles while their mothers worked in log-and-sheet structures selling bright fabrics, cooking utensils and perfumes. Outside one such kiosk, a slightly dented dog raised its head as she passed. One of its eyes lit up bright blue. She had seen one or two of them before in places like this, posted outside an outfit to scan the pockets of passersby for coin. She glared at the shop owner, who looked away. The dog, having detected nothing of interest on her, powered down. Its eye flickered out until the next interesting mark ambled by. The smell of roasting meat caught Jess’s attention and she moved on.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Half an hour later she returned to Val with full canteens, carrying a couple of chicken legs for herself and a large dish of peas and synthetic protein for her first mate, with a couple of potatoes to share. Her mama always said, a place won’t grow potatoes is a place not fit to live.
“Too bad we have business to conduct,” she said, plopping down in the empty chair by Val, who hadn’t moved. “Might be nice to soak up some of the local color…such as it might be.” A large bald man with fat rolls on the back of his neck and no shirt beneath his suspenders, waddled by and burped.
Val gave her a doubtful look.
“Everything looks better in a pub,” she said. “A nice, cool pub with nice, cool ale. And things around here could definitely stand to look a little prettier.”
“You’re not yourself in…pubs,” Val said, taking out his UtiliFork and stirring his peas.
“Can I help it the locals want to get a mite overfriendly sometimes? Making suggestive talk and trying to…” Jess shivered. “Things don’t look that much better in the dark.”
“Must your rejection of their advances always involve hitting someone over the head with a pool cue?”
She peeled the paper away from her meat. “Well, I can’t get a good swing with a barstool.”
“That is, apparently, what I am here for,” Val said with a sigh.
“And you’re very good at it,” Jess said, motioning with her drumstick.
For a while, they sat in silence, enjoying their meal. Jess had no end of appreciation for food that wasn’t synthesized and vacuum-packed, even if it might lead to unpleasant consequences later. She just hoped any gastric situations happened after the meeting.
“Jupiter City,” she said after a while, gazing at the hodgepodge of locals. “You know, I hear one of the planets was called Jupiter - before the exodus. Before the government started planet-hopping after the Mutes. Kind of ironic, idn’t it? Government was bound and determined to kill every single Mute it could find, but if it wasn’t for the Mutes’ technological wizardry, we wouldn’t have all of…this,” she said with a sweeping indication of the terrain. “None of these planets and moons out here would be fit for human life. We’d all be back on Old Earth…wherever that was.”
“It is unwise to concern ourselves too much with what was,” Val said.
“You got that right,” Jess replied, trying not to be reminded of her own past - which included too much lost and too much endured. “At least you tend to make sense when you do open your mouth.”
Just as she was about to take another big bite of chicken, someone approached, so she stood up and held out her hand. Discovering some grease on her fingers, she wiped her hand on her pants and re-extended it.
“This your bird?” the man asked Val, motioning with his head toward Grace. He was middle-aged, with a big belly and a swagger.
“This here’s my first mate, Val,” Jess said, leaning in closer. “I’m the captain. You a pilot?”
The man looked her over. “Best damned flier in these parts,” he said with a grin. “Just the kind of man a little lady like you needs flipping her switches.”
Val stopped chewing and fixed his eyes on him. Jess could feel herself put on the smile she reserved for times when she would much rather strangle someone than engage in polite conversation. “Well now,” she said. “That’s what I’d call a matter of opinion. And in mine it appears we don’t need a pilot after all. Good day to you,” she said and sat back down to rip off a chunk of meat with her teeth.
The man lingered, staring at Jess as she ignored him.
Val began to speak softly, in a tone that sounded almost reverent. “The human heart is one of the most complex things created by nature,” he said. “Taken on its own, it is often bitter. Yet with the correct spices, it actually develops a sweet flavor. To certain ancient monastic orders, it was considered…a delicacy.”
Both the big-bellied man and Jess looked at Val as he spoke, the man’s face losing its leer. Jess froze in mid-bite, lulled by Val’s tone and more than a little disturbed by, if nonetheless appreciative of, his words. Sitting stock-still, she stretched her eyeballs to look first at one man then the other. Their visitor cleared his throat, nodded to Jess, and walked away.
Jess swallowed her mouthful. “That was…good thinking. Good…imagination,” she said, staring at Val from the corner of her eye as he went back to his food. “Good creepy story. Good creepy…made-up story.”
Val had grown up on Valeria, which was considered a transitional planet between the inner (”more civilized,” according to government propaganda) worlds and the outer frontier worlds. He was a product of a monastery called the House of Zoan that trained orphaned boys to fight as guards and entertain with gymnastic feats, and sold them off into service. In that way, they would have a family to belong to and a creed to follow. Val had always been very proud of his training and his association with the house, but tended to say mysterious, rather than enlightening, things whenever the subject came up. He had always insisted, however, that the Zoanites were vegetarians and had never once mentioned devouring human hearts.
“Val, you never entertain the notion of murdering me in my sleep and taking the ship, do you?”
He looked up at her with both brows raised and swallowed his food. “I would die rather than harm the one I serve,” he said, a note of hurt in his voice.
“Just checking,” she said. She felt a little tempted to remind him, as she had countless times before, that she was his captain, not his mistress. But this time, she thought she’d let it slide. “What a glamorous life we lead,” she said instead.
Val grunted and went back to his meal.
“Uh-oh,” she said. “I’ve gone and hurt your feelings. The silent treatment for me.”
The next prospective pilot was an unassuming fellow with shoulder-length blond hair and a pleasant face. “Excuse me,” he said. “Are you searching for a flier?”
By that time the heat, bugs and the previous encounter were all gnawing at Jess’s mood. She looked over her shoulder at her sign, then looked back at him. “Yeah, I think we may just be,” she said and stood to extend her hand, introducing herself and Val. “You been flying long?”
“Almost since I was old enough to reach the controls,” the young man said, pulling out a viewer and handing it to Jess. “I have references.”
“Excellent,” Jess said and turned it on to see a list of past employers. She clicked on several, learning what a hard worker and nice guy he was. One employer even said he knew how to handle “any type freight ship known to man,” only he’s spelled it “frate.”
“So your name’s Joe?”
The man nodded. “Yes ma’am. Joe Skinner. That’s a good-looking ship you’ve got there.”
“Yep,” she said, trying not to puff out her chest too much. “She’s a fine catch.” Jess clicked through a few more references and handed back the viewer. “Well Joe, looks like you’ve got yourself a collection of glowing references there. Why don’t you sit a while with us, let us finish our lunch and then you can take Grace up, let me see what you can do. That sound peachy?”
He nodded excitedly and looked around for something to sit on. Seeing nothing, he said, “Maybe I’ll just stand for a minute.”
Jess nodded and went back to her food, partly to see how he handled the silence. Living with somebody onboard a spaceship, it wasn’t possible to keep the air full of conversation all the time, and anybody who couldn’t come to terms with periods of silence could drive you crazy without even trying.
After a while, Joe said, “There is something I should probably tell you about.”
Jess looked up at him, still chewing. “What?”
“We can’t fly in certain areas at certain times.”
“Why not?”
He looked over at Val, who was ignoring him, and then sighed. “My star chart expressly states that I can’t be anywhere near Delta during the equatorial rainy season, which is one reason I’m leaving now. Of course, I’ll work up your charts too.”
Val looked at Jess momentarily before hunching over his food as though somebody was planning to take it. Jess scootched around in her chair, trying to make sense of what she’d just heard. “Joe, how can I say this without…we don’t navigate by star charts. We navigate by coin. Where the money is, we go. So you can feel free to make as many charts as you want to, but they don’t tell me where I can and cannot take my ship.”
Joe put his hands together as though he were about to start praying, and smiled at her as though she were fragile and stupid. “I understand your skepticism,” he said. “But wouldn’t it be useful to know where the trouble is ahead of time, so you can avoid it?”
“If you can find a way to tell me where the money is ahead of time, then we can talk. But if I need you to land on Delta at any given hour, then that is where you’ll need to land. It won’t be open for discussion.”
“I see,” he said sadly. “Perhaps I’d better book passage elsewhere.”
“Perhaps you’d better,” Jess said. When he’d gone, she looked up to find Val watching her. “What?” she said. “We’ll find somebody. Couple of fine specimens like us? The only reason there ain’t a line up to our door is because all the genius pilots are at the pub. Where we should be.”
“Perhaps there are no genius pilots,” Val said. “Or perhaps there is only room for a genius captain.”
“Again, not sure if you’re yanking my chain. But right now I’d settle for ‘not weird…-er than us.’”
Just then a young woman came up, tugging a young child by the wrist. “You looking for a pilot? I can fly.”
“No children on board, Miss,” Jess said.
“I thought maybe we could drop him off with my sister on Atlantis. That’s just a couple weeks away.”
“And the other one?” Jess said quietly. She moved her eyes to the girl’s swollen abdomen.
The girl looked down at herself. Jess wondered if she’d even realized she was showing.
“I got nowhere else to go.”
“I’m sorry,” Jess said. “I truly am. But I can’t take on your babies.”
The young woman nodded, glanced at Val and gripped the child’s hand. “Come on Sam. We know where we’re not wanted.”
“Damn,” Jess said when the young woman had gone, and not much else until she’d finished her food and emptied her canteen. Then she said, “It’s about time to go. Do you have the remote? We’ll have to make sure she’s locked up good and tight. Might be thieves about.”
Val nodded once and patted a pouch on his hip.
“Good,” Jess said, taking the canteens. “I’ll be back shortly.” She stepped up onto the ramp and let her boots make the metal groan. “Gotta get ready to sweet-talk the devil.”
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Shortly after purchasing Grace, Jess and Val had discovered how difficult it was to get supplies back to the ship without ground transport, so they had found a couple of four-wheel PTVs - Planetary Terrain Vehicles - each with its own detachable cart. The carts allowed them to get small amounts of supplies or cargo to the ship and the vehicles allowed them to move around planetside without having to wear holes in their boots or pay for rides. That latter part was the most compelling reason to have them, as cash was always in short supply.
Today, they put on tiny ear ‘coms and left the carts behind so that they could ride the vehicles as quickly as possible to Devlin’s manor just outside of town. Even pushing the PTVs to the limits of their little motors, the ride there took over half an hour. They arrived covered in a fine layer of dust.
The manor - constructed of the dark purple stones native to Jericho - stood at the end of a drive flanked by bushes. There were few actual trees on the outer planets, as the Mutes had not had the time to take them through the final stages of terraforming, which would have made them as lush as the inner planets in time. Jess suspected that, if this moon had been taken through those last stages, this walk would be lined with stately shade trees of the type she had only read about. She sneered at the thought, as she had always taken pride in plain folks’ ability to thrive in scrubby environments like this one, though her home world had not been quite this barren.
She and Val cut the motors on their PTVs and dismounted to greet the four big men who had come out on the porch to meet them. They were wearing their holsters, but that wasn’t a strange thing in these parts. Still, Jess had to wonder just how Devlin envisioned this meeting going. His pretentiousness at having the men meet her like this caused a smile to flicker at the corners of Jess’ mouth, but she restrained herself. It wouldn’t do to insult her host right off. Timing was everything out here in the void.
“Mornin’ boys,” she said as she mounted the steps, though it had been afternoon for at least a couple of hours now. “We have an appointment with…”
“Governor Devlin’s expecting you,” said the one with the thickest neck.
“Governor Devlin,” she repeated. “Now he never mentioned he was a title-bearing man.” Turning to Val, she said, “I wonder why he never mentioned that, Val. Got any ideas?”
Val shook his head, but kept his eyes on the men.
The neckless one held open the front door with his massive frame and motioned inside with his oily head. She went in, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the lack of light, trying not to relish the cool too much, trying to keep her mind on business. And part of that business involved being as observant as possible when in the den of a businessman. It could be a very dangerous place, but was chock full of information that could save a person’s life if a situation turned sour.
For instance, Jess knew from her last visit here that Devlin was a collector. Paintings lined the hallway leading to his office, and that was filled with shelves of books (an old-world way of keeping information on leather-bound paper) and decorated with sculptures. Jess knew that little fact because, their last meeting had actually taken place in that office. She had speculated that, if he met them in that office today, among his prized possessions, it would mean he did not expect shots to be fired. Which was why she felt extremely dismayed when the neckless man led her and Val down the stairs to a dungeon-like room with walls made of the same purple stones that comprised the manor, lighted by sulfur lamps. There were no decorations there.
“Is this the game room, Devlin?” she asked as her heart pounded in her ears. “I’d at least put in a pool table.”
Devlin, who had been sitting in a corner easy chair, the only chair in the room, looked up from the book he was reading. He was a large man, though not a tall one, with a thick face and small, round eyes. He wore a thick handlebar moustache and a candystriped suit which made Jess thankful for the dim lighting.
He shut the book with a snap and leveled his gaze at her. “So how was it?”
“Oh it was peachy…if you don’t count the fact that your customer failed to show at the drop and we nearly got roasted by an overexcited officer of the law.” She walked right up to his desk, Val beside her every step.
Devlin nodded, sucking on his teeth. “So am I to understand you didn’t deliver the goods?”
His tone made her gunhand itch. “Not at all,” she said, keeping her voice level. “We delivered, just as agreed. It was your customer didn’t make the rendezvous. Thought we’d be nice about the whole thing and offer you another go at getting this here gut-rot placed.”
“That wasn’t exactly the agreement.”
“Like I said, we did our part.”
Devlin laced his fingers atop his stomach. “Not from where I’m sitting, you didn’t. And that doesn’t make me very happy.”
“We’ll,” Jess said, glancing around at the placement of the men. The four had them surrounded, with two near Devlin and two more near the door. The only door in and out of the room, Jess noticed. “I’m real sorry you’re having a bad day. But the fact of the matter is, I’ve got a boatload of cargo I’m aiming to unload. Now we can go about this all civil-like…”
The two men near the door moved closer.
“Or we can talk about it some more,” she said quickly.
“Since you failed to hold up your end of the bargain,” Devlin continued, “I’m entitled to compensation. But I can forgo that, because you’ve done something for me that is far more valuable than deliver several crates of bullshit merchandise.”
The one thing Jess was sure of at this moment was, she didn’t like the sound of that. “I’m not sure I follow,” she said.
“There’s something on your ship that belongs to me, Miss Anders. I’ll just send some of my men along to get it - and the unsold merchandise, of course - and you can be on your way.”
She flexed her jaw. “This is all becoming somewhat clear.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. You planted something on my ship while pretending to do business with me…which is not a very neighborly thing to do, I might add. But I wager that something’ll bring a hefty sum in the right circles.” She looked around, considering the collectibles in the rest of the house. “Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just something that could get you roasted alive if the wrong people found out about it.”
“I’m glad you understand, Miss Anders. You have to protect your own interests out here.”
“Right,” she said. “I understand completely.” She turned to Val and said cheerfully, “Well, let’s allow the gentlemen to collect what’s theirs and get on with our lives.” Then she turned back to Devlin. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to pay for the fuel I wasted on this little venture?”
Devlin shrugged and smiled. “I’m running a little short of cash at the moment.”
“Ah,” she said. “I know the feeling.”
“I have a large hovercraft that can hold eight people and about fifty crates. You can ride that back to your ship with my men. It’ll get you there in ten minutes. Within an hour and a half you can have my goods back here and we can call it a day.”
Wondering if Devlin’s plans included bullets for her and Val, she nodded at his words.
“Now, what is this special thing you’ve hidden on my ship and where can I find it?”
Devlin smiled. “Clever, Miss Anders, but no. My men know where it is. You just do what you’re told and everything will be fine.”
Those words made Jess bristle. If there was one thing she absolutely did not like, it was being told to do what she was told. Mustering all the self-control she could manage, she gave him a tight smile. To Val, she said, “This is me doing what I’m told,” and turned to go, giving Val a glance she hoped he’d recognize as meaningful. There was no way in hell she was going to let Devlin use her and her ship like this, no way in hell she was going to do a job and not get paid. And, most especially, no way in hell Devlin’s boys were violating her vessel. She sincerely hoped Val had figured this out before the shooting started.
On the porch, she paused in the sunlight. “Whew! It is a powerful hot day. The kind of day a man could get himself burned.”
Val looked at her. The fingers on his gun-hand twitched, which gave Jess a warm feeling right beneath the ribcage.
“Get going,” one of Devlin’s men said. “I got me a nice little piece of fluff waitin’ in Jupiter City at six o’clock sharp. ‘Course, if I miss that one…” He looked Jess up and down.
“Well,” she said. “If you insist. But a girl likes a little foreplay first.”
And, with that, she shot him right in the gut. If there was one thing this lifestyle had taught her, it was quick, decisive shooting. She often wished her aim was better - like this minute, when she’d been aiming for his heart. That would have sent him right to his grave, but a belly-wound would take several days to kill him, giving him plenty of opportunity to fire answering shots in the meantime.
Fortunately, the lead in his gut hampered his own aim a little bit, and he wound up shooting the side of Devlin’s barn.
“Well at least he can hit that,” she said and took off toward the PTVs. Val took a moment to finish off the man and take down another. Jess turned to shoot over her shoulder, but injured one of the remaining men just enough to get him good and mad. He went for the hovercraft in the open garage, while the other grabbed a PTV which was, depressingly enough, a much newer model than hers. And it had a new red paint job, not a scuffed-up yellow one like Jess and Val’s.
She spent a great deal of the ride back to Jupiter City thinking about how flying bullets seemed to affect the flow of time, because it sure seemed to take a heck of a lot longer than half an hour to get back. She figured some of that was probably due to the swerving of vehicles in an attempt to get Devlin’s hovercraft to run into something big enough to do it some damage. But since there wasn’t a whole lot out here except for bushes and rocks, getting Devlin’s PTV rider to wreck his vehicle by running over a large rock while trying to shoot Jess was almost all they could manage.
Plus she drew her shotgun and put a nice big dent in the hovercraft, which made her very happy, even though the ricocheting shell spray caught her in the arm.
She let out a whoop at the sight of the vehicle turning over in the dust. “Take that, you newfangled piece of feek!” she shouted. Val gave her a wide-eyed look that let her know her mic had been on. “Sorry about that,” she said, and switched it off. Then she whooped again.
Jess had never been so glad to see a bunch of ragged booths and sweaty people as she was when they tore into the marketplace. People scattered at their approach. Some of them called her bad things. She didn’t care. She just wanted on her ship and away from here. But just as she was about to give the order for Val to whip out his remote and let Grace’s cargo hatch down, Jess noticed something very odd: The hatch was already down.
She switched her mic back on. “Val,” she said. “We locked her up good and tight, right? Put up the hatch and everything?”
“Yes,” Val said.
“Yet it’s not that way anymore.”
“Yes…uh, no.”
“Have any thoughts on that?”
“It’s very strange, Captain.”
“Strange. Eerie. Downright unsettling, if you ask me.”
“I suggest we investigate.”
They rumbled up into the airlock and Val’s PTV sped over the threshold into the cargo bay while Jess jumped off hers and smacked the control panel to raise the ramp. Then she jumped back on her vehicle and rode it into the cargo bay and parked it. Val, who stood by the control panel, shut the cargo bay door. Then they both took off for the bridge to the sounds of bullets ringing against the hull of the ship.
“You’d think Devlin’d spring for laser weapons,” Jess said as her boots pounded up the metal steps. A moment later they burst onto the bridge, startling a petite girl with dark brown skin and long braided hair. She wore gray trousers and boots - most likely cast-off military gear, Jess thought - and a flowing blouse of deep greens and purples.
“Augh!” Jess hollered. Her hand went to her holster, but she managed to stop herself before drawing her weapon. Instead, she stood in the middle of the dim little room breathing heavily and staring hard. “What the hell are you doing on my bridge?”
“I’m sorry,” the girl said, attempting a smile. Her eyes skimmed Jess’s hand, which was still very close to her holster.. “You were gone and I really like older-model ships. It was open and I…couldn’t resist. You had a sign.” She appeared to be in her early to mid-twenties.
Val gave Jess an urgent glance.
“You here for the pilot’s job?” she asked.
The girl nodded.
“Good. Get us out of here.”
“Captain,” Val said. “Someone set up a booth on our runway.”
Jess leaned over to look out the view shield. The sight of a family in her path made her stomach hot, especially since they were right next to the hovercraft containing a man who would gladly have shot them dead. “That’s unfortunate,” she said. “But if those men catch us, they will likely kill us.”
“You are aware my training strictly forbids the killing of innocents.”
“Innocence is a relative term, Val. I’ll wager there are more pickpockets out there than there are hairs on your head.”
Val narrowed his eyes.
“Figure of speech,” Jess said, exasperated. “Anyway, I’ll bet your training has something to say about taking what don’t necessarily belong to you, which you’ve gotten pretty good at. And, by the way, I consider that one of your best assets.”
“We can conduct ourselves with honor, no matter what lives we lead,” Val said.
“Charity begins at home, my friend. And right now that means, you, me and -”
Before she could finish, Grace lifted straight into the air, causing Jess to wobble on her feet. Jess glanced at Val, then looked out the view shield once more. Sure enough, the ground was falling away.
“I didn’t know the ship could do that,” she said. “Did you know the ship could do that?”
“I hadn’t a clue,” Val said.
“Might want to grab something and hold it tight,” the girl said, and banked hard to the right. Jess fell into Val, who held on to a low pipe. They held on several tense minutes while the ship burned its way through the atmosphere. When they straightened back up, Jess went over to the pilot’s seat.
“That’s a mighty fine piece of flying, and some good hide-saving to boot. What’s your name?”
“Amber,” the girl said, swiveling the seat around with a wide grin. “So do I get the job?”
“Job? Hell, I’ll cook you dinner,” Jess said, holding out her hand. “I am very, very glad to meet you, Amber. I’m the captain, Jess Anders. This here’s Val. He’ll show you to your room while I go play captain elsewhere.”
At the moment, playing captain involved looking for a buyer for Devlin’s booze and finding what he’d hidden on her ship. Knowing Devlin’s expensive taste, she hoped it would be something that could bring in enough money to stock the kitchen with something a little more interesting than beans. Looking forward to new prospects, Jess turned to go, but Amber’s uncertain voice made her stop just as the bridge door hissed open. “Captain?”
“Yes?” she said, and turned back around with one foot up on the raised threshold.
“Him?” Amber motioned with her head toward Val, who regarded her impassively.
Jess kept her smile to a flicker. “Yeah, him. He’s harmless,” she said, and stepped out into the corridor. “Mostly.”