Shadower (12 page)

Her life was finally starting to turn around. She didn't need interference from Sabin Travers, or any other man. She opened communications with Risa, letting the sentinel know she was back, albeit in a strange ship. Moments later, she brought the ship to rest on the hard-packed dirt pad that served as their main landing strip. She was out before the dust settled, arms outstretched as her younger sister raced up the strip. "Celie!"

"Moriah!" Celie charged into her, almost sending them both to the ground. "You're back! We were so worried when you disappeared from Calt, and then we didn't hear from you."

Laughing, Moriah staggered backward. "Silly rax! I contacted you nine cycles ago. You knew I was all right."

Celie hugged her tightly. "But we hadn't heard anything for over four cycles, and we couldn't pick up your homing signal. I knew something terrible must have happened to you."

Moriah pulled back and looked into her beloved sister's brown eyes. "I'm fine, as you can see. I'm sure Turlock altered the beacon, sweetness, which was why you couldn't pick it up. By the Fires! I hated losing that ship."

"You should," came a gravelly voice. "I don't know how we're going to replace the best ship in our fleet." Moriah released Celie, meeting Tyna's disapproving expression. She didn't need to be reminded that her carelessness, and the ensuing loss of the ship, would have a negative impact on the welfare of this entire group.

"I don't know how we'll replace it, either." She looked past Tyna to Roanne and Lionia standing beyond her, and to Janaye, who was making her way slowly down the strip, leaning on a thick Yarton branch for support. "I'm sorry Turlock got a jump on me. But we'll think of something. At least I obtained another ship."

Tyna's mouth curled in contempt as she eyed Sabin's craft. "Hmmph! Can't say as I'd call this a ship. Garbage scow is more like it."

Middle-aged and stout, Tyna had led a tough life, as had most of the women in the group. She'd been trapped on Odera, serving drinks to lowlifes at a bar there, unable to purchase passage off the planet, when Moriah had offered her a chance at a new life. Her rough, bitter exterior hid a kind heart, and the other women had learned to tolerate her acrid comments.

"It's just as bad on the inside." Moriah slipped her arm around Celie and started toward the small group of huts.

"Wh-what h-happened to y-your s-suit?" Roanne stammered. Her stutter was worse when she was excited or agitated. Small and quiet, Roanne had been a slave until Moriah spirited her away from her abusive owner. Speaking little, she was the most observant of the group.

"It got ruined in an altercation with some Jaccians. The flightsuit I'm wearing belonged to the previous owner of our new ship."

"Jaccians! Oh, Moriah, you take far too many risks," Celie protested.

"Nothing but scum," Lionia scoffed. Statuesque and two meters tall, she was a Zarian, a race as   warlike as the Leors. Few could match her battle skills or bravery. "I hope you blasted them into the next galaxy," she added.

Smoke and slime everywhere. Sabin, self-assured, cocky, and undeniably handsome as he holstered his guns. His kiss
—
her first one
—
beneath the twin full moons.
Moriah shook the images away. She'd been far too sedentary these last cycles. That was part of the problem. It was time for action. "Those Jaccians will never bother anyone again," she assured Lionia. "Janaye, how's your leg?"

Janaye stopped, her breathing labored. "It's been better." She raised gnarled fingers and pushed her snowy hair from her face. Her clear, gray eyes focused on Moriah. "What's his name?"

Moriah hated it when Janaye looked at her with those discerning eyes. "Who are you talking about?"

"The man." Janaye lifted her stick toward Sabin's ship. "The one who loaned you that flightsuit." She paused, her eyes sharpening, seemingly fixated over Moriah's shoulder. "The one who disrupted your energy field."

Everyone looked from Janaye to Moriah, whose chest tightened. The last time Janaye had spewed gibberish about disrupted energy, Rayna, the object of the conversation, had been pregnant. The time before that, Janaye had targeted Kasinda, who, it turned out, was secretly in love with an Elysian merchant and planning to elope.

The old woman was becoming senile, Moriah told herself. Neither of those cases applied to her, and she would never see Sabin Travers again, so he couldn't possibly unsettle her life any further.

"I would say I disrupted
his
force field, not the other way around. After all, I ended up with his ship." Tyna cackled and Lionia nodded approvingly. "End of story," she stated firmly. "We don't have to worry about that man any further."

Janaye's gaze settled on her face with unwavering intensity. "You haven't seen the last of him."

Her words sent Moriah's heart pounding, but only because she was fatigued and hungry—that had to be it. "Enough talk about something that's finished." She turned back toward the camp. "What's cooking? I swear I could eat an entire kerani. And we need to make plans."

As she sat near the fire, eating a simple meal, she looked at the faces of the women seated around the flames. They turned to her for leadership and guidance, and the weight of that responsibility lay heavily on her. She had let them down by allowing Turlock to catch up with her and take the ship, as well as the loss of those cycles spent trapped with Sabin Travers. She vowed to be more careful in the future. These women depended on her. She wouldn't fail them again.

After the meal, she told the group about the large shipment of Saija silk, liquor, and spacecraft parts she'd purchased at a cost way below market value, while on her way back to Risa. She had located her credit discs stored in a vault on Sabin's ship, so she'd had the necessary funds.

"Unfortunately, there are several catches on the deal," she explained. "The goods are on Star Base Intrepid, and the seller wants them picked up within the next seven cycles. We'll need three ships to hold the entire shipment."

"Th-three sh-ships?" Roanne gasped. "We only have t-two here r-right now."

"That can't be right," Moriah argued. "We had seven before Turlock took mine."

"Kiah and Marna are delivering those supplies in the Verante Constellation. They won't be back for another ten cycles," Lionia explained. "And two of our ships are down."

"Two of our ships aren't functioning?" Moriah questioned, not at all pleased with this news. "What's wrong with them?"

"Junk heaps!" Tyna sniffed. "As bad as that clunker you brought back."

Lionia shrugged. "I only know weapons, not engines."

"I looked them over, but I couldn't find the problem," Celie said. She had the most mechanical knowledge of anyone in the group, but it was limited to basics. Distress filled her eyes. "You won't let me pilot on pickups or deliveries, and I can't even do ship repairs. Sometimes I feel so useless."

Moriah slipped an arm around her sister's shoulders. "You're only sixteen seasons, sweetness. Already you know more about ship engines than the rest of us do. Give it time. You'll be flying your own ship one day."

"All this talk doesn't change anything," Tyna pointed out. "We're still one ship short."

"Actually, we have three functioning craft," Moriah countered. "We'll be able to make the pickup on time, if we leave tomorrow."

"S-surely you w-won't take th-that ship!" Roanne pointed to Sabin's craft, and Tyna added an uncomplimentary opinion.

Moriah sighed. "I don't see that we have much choice. I've already paid for the goods, and we can make a huge profit with them on Calt. That ship got me home. I'm sure it can make it there and back."
If we're lucky.

"Star Base Intrepid is not the safest place to make a pickup," Tyna observed. "Too many of them cursed Anteks are crawling all over the place."

And Sabin had probably reported his ship stolen, a fact Moriah declined to mention. She didn't like the added risk of going to Intrepid, either, but they couldn't afford to pass up the potential profit. It would cost a lot to replace the craft she'd lost. "We'll just have to be more cautious than usual," she replied.

"We'll take extra weapons." Lionia's eyes gleamed. "I wouldn't mind ridding the quadrant of some Anteks."

"We don't want to draw unnecessary attention to ourselves," Moriah warned. "No fighting unless absolutely necessary. Clear, Lionia?"

The warrior woman nodded reluctantly. Knowing Lionia's word was good, Moriah relaxed, sinking back against a large rock. Spirit, she was tired, but she still had a lot to do before she could rest. Stock the ships and plot the course to Intrepid. They'd have to rise early tomorrow to get a good start.

Then there was the matter of the malfunctioning ships. Those spacecraft were their lifeblood. No way around it. They needed a good mechanic, and soon.

Janaye painstakingly slid next to her, grunting at the exertion. She patted Moriah's hand. "Tired?"

"Exhausted," Moriah admitted.

Concern filled Janaye's translucent eyes. "You need to stay here and rest. Let the others go to Intrepid tomorrow."

"You know I can't do that. I have to be there."

"You need to stay here," Janaye insisted. "I have a premonition about Star Base Intrepid, and I sense it concerns you. Something bad will happen if you go. Let Lionia, Roanne, and Tyna handle this. They're all good pilots."

Whenever possible, Moriah oversaw the transfer of goods onto her ships. She made the deals, and she wanted to be sure everything was in order. Once the ships were loaded, the other women made the bulk of the deliveries, except for the most dangerous ones. She handled those.

This time would be no exception. The arrangement involved a huge inventory, with a lot of gold at stake. Plus it was the first time she had done business with this particular seller. She had to be sure he held up his end of the bargain.

She shook her head, and Janaye sighed. "You won't be swayed into staying here."

"Of course not."

"Then Spirit go with you," the old woman whispered, squeezing Moriah's hand. "Be careful, child. Be very, very careful."

Unease slithered through Moriah. Janaye had never voiced such warnings before. She shook off a feeling of impending doom, attributing her reaction to fatigue. This would be a routine pickup, like dozens of others that had gone flawlessly. Nothing would go wrong.

Absolutely nothing.

Sabin paced the cockpit, McKnight’s larger flightsuit flapping around him. "Not one more word about how I look," he snarled when his partner started to say something. The man had enjoyed enough entertainment at Sabin's expense. Seeing the expression on McKnight’s face when Lani fluttered her feathers at him, Sabin had wished he'd had someone else—
anyone else
—to contact besides his partner.

Ever since they had become partners a season ago, Sabin ribbed McKnight whenever the opportunity arose. Now payback rebounded with a vengeance. Who'd have thought a guy who acted like such an old man could dish out abuse, and with such relish?

McKnight shrugged, turning on his viewscreen. "Just thought I saw a blue feather sticking to your flightsuit."

"Very funny," Sabin muttered, throwing himself into the co-pilot’s seat. He drummed his fingers on the console, wishing, as he had every one of the last fifteen cycles, that his new ship was ready. But the manufacturer needed at least seven more cycles. He didn’t know if he could tolerate his smirking partner that long.

He'd thought the three cycles waiting for McKnight’s arrival at Saron had been bad, having to put up with Lani's overzealous concern; having to convince her he didn't need, or want, physical release with her—or any other female. Leaving with his partner had appeared a welcome reprieve. For about two milliseconds.

The last twelve cycles cooped up with McKnight had been like a stay in the Abyss. It wasn't the ribbing from his partner; Sabin could give as good as he got. It was the numerous urgent matters weighing on his mind. His inability to act only increased the sense of urgency.

Galen was still on the loose, roaming the quadrant and committing atrocities against innocent citizens. And Aron's death was a blood debt crying out to be paid. Money was also a major consideration. The bounties Sabin collected went mainly to Shielder colonies, whose resources provided their inhabitants with the barest existence at best. They depended on his monetary donations, as well as his deliveries of supplies and weapons. Also, he was funding the purchase of his new ship with bounties.

Maybe it was wrong to earn money from tracking criminals, especially when turning them over to the Controllers meant certain death. The Controllers were evil, but Sabin had to admit they had a swift and efficient method of handling criminals. He had grappled over the questions of morality many times during the long lonely hours of space travel. That was why he only hunted the really vicious criminals, those with no remorse for their crimes. Still, who he was, what he was forced to do to ensure the survival of his people, weighed heavy on his soul. To work for one's enemies to further the cause of right was often hard to accept.

He'd continue to do what he had to; he had no alternative. Though, right now, for the next seven cycles, he was out of commission, unable to do anything. Unless Moriah turned up and he got his old ship back. At the mere thought of that golden-eyed thief, his blood pressure shot off the chart. What he wouldn't give to have his hands on her—literally. He could think of myriad ways he'd like to demonstrate his seething anger, starting with blistering her shapely bottom, then throwing her in the brig for a few hundred cycles.

The vision in his mind shifted, as his body joined the fray, casting a vote for what it would like to do with her. Fragmented images of her lying naked beneath him swirled through his mind. Fantasy or fact? He honestly couldn't say, because he'd lost a chunk of time between his last concrete recollection of Galen's taunting disclosure of Aron's death and waking up to blue feathers.

It hadn't been a fantasy in the cockpit, however, when he'd foolishly given in to temptation and kissed Moriah again. He could still remember the texture of her hair tangled in his fingers, the taste of her, the feel of her pressed against him, her vehement withdrawal and taunting retort. The lady had a way of shredding his ego. So she'd had better, had she? He'd just have to prove her wrong.