Thief (3 page)

“Trickster had no idea what we would find,” Kraft said. “If you got here first, and found nothing, he figured it’d be funny for me to find it empty too.”

“Even if I found it intact, Trickster wanted you to find it bare.” Jace understood why a misogynistic fetch like Trickster would go out of his way to screw with a powerful woman like Kraft. If not for the problem with
Mutiny’s
engine, Jace would have been here three days ago. Kraft would have found an empty hold, and he never would have laid eyes on her.

“That’s the general idea.” She tossed him another box of freeze-dried food. “If I find a bare hold, too bad. Trickster just covered his deal. If I find the cache, too bad. He knows he can tweak me on the deal.” She grimaced. “Either way, the little opportunist likes his advantage.”

“Then why do you deal with him?” Jace asked.

Kraft tossed him another box. “Why do you?”

He caught it. “Touché.”

To keep flying, a captain of a thief ship
had
to deal with middlemen like Trickster. Jace hated it, but didn’t have much of a choice. Captaining a crew of thieves on the Fringe pretty much dictated the bulk of his choices.

Down in the hold, separated from the others, Jace could hear Danna and Heller arguing over how to split the goods.

With an indulgent grin, Kraft asked, “Does it get any better than this?”

Above them, the fighting grew more vocal as Heller and Danna argued over the ammo and weapons.

“Danna is like an unruly child,” Kraft said.

“So’s he,” Jace said of Heller. “An unruly child with a lot of firepower.”

After a chuckle, Kraft climbed up the short ladder and popped her head out of the hatch. “Play nice, Danna. Just separate the goods. Portions and merits will be debated later.”

When the argument simmered down, she dropped off the ladder and back into the hold. Her thin-soled, worn black boots didn’t make a sound. Like a liquid shadow, she turned back to work and tossed him another box.

“Why do you think they amassed all of this?” Jace asked. So far they’d found freeze-dried food, electronics, fabric, guns and ammunition. A major haul easily worth 10K.

Kraft shrugged and kept working.

“Do you think they looked to start a new colony?” he asked.

“No.” Kraft removed her gloves. “That first box felt desperate, like they were gearing up for something that wasn’t even real.” Lifting her hands out to the goods, she made light contact with the tips of her fingers, and then flinched back. “Terror ran this crew.”

Jace waited until Heller walked away from the hatch. He touched her bare hand with a cautious finger. “Are you a reader?” Psychic abilities would certainly explain a lot of the questions he had, like how she knew his name, and how she seemed to be able to read his mind.

“After a fashion,” she acknowledged, hedging.

“What fashion would that be?” He stroked her hand lightly with his fingertip. Her coffee-cream skin was surprisingly soft and shockingly hot.

She broke the tentative touch by pulling her gloves on and turning back to work. After all her blatant flirting, her retreat from a simple caress surprised him.

“How did you get right behind me without Heller or Garrett seeing you?”

“It’s a secret.” She winked over her shoulder. “Can’t tell you all my super powers, now, can I?”

Without further comment, they stripped the hold and joined the others above. Danna and Heller erupted into a screaming match of epic proportions over the lone Bartlet Blaster.

“Danna, let him have it. You have one,” Kraft pointed out.

“This one’s better.” Danna inspected the weapon critically.

“Fine. Take that one and give Heller your old one,” Kraft said.

“I don’t wanna,” Danna whined.

“The drama of the gifted child,” Kraft whispered to Jace.

Raising her voice, Kraft said, “Take the new one, Danna, give Heller your old one, and then we’ll split the ammo for it.”

“But—”

“Dancing, Danna,” Kraft said with a singsong voice. “Don’t cut in unless you
really
want to dance.”

After darting a glance to Kraft’s silver blade, Danna said, “Bavin, go get my Bartlet Blaster.”

Bavin trotted off like a faithful puppy. Bavin’s clear enchantment with Danna made Jace consider that Kraft, and her whole female crew, might be…lesbians.

Jace cast a speculative gaze to Kraft. She was six-three of dark and deadly Walkyrie with blades and guns strapped to her full, sexy hips. Imposing as hell. Kraft radiated power and authority. Even though he stood a hand taller and outweighed her by fifty pounds, he knew she could take him down without breaking a sweat.

Kraft flashed him that slow, lazy and sexy smile.

Stepping close, she whispered, “Half are, half aren’t. I’m in the no pile.” As she leaned close, she gave him another taste of her musky perfume and breathed, “I like men.”

She ran her gaze over every inch of his body. Jace swore he could damn near feel it, like a good, hard rubdown that touched all his private places with heat. When she finally settled on his eyes, she winked, and he felt certain his decade of celibacy showed in his blushing face.

Lifting her mouth to his ear, she breathed, “I like
you
.”

Before Jace could even grasp at a response, Heller screamed.

Chapter Four

“Shit howdy!” Heller yanked open a crate of universal ammo. He fondled the hollow-point bullets with a gleeful, face-splitting leer. He let Danna look, but not touch, and they soon fell to squabbling again.

Kraft wanted to throttle Heller for interrupting her moment with Jace, but realized she didn’t have time to linger, not with an IWOG mothership close by.

“I’d still like to know why these folks abandoned ship,” Jace said.

When Kraft first touched the ship, the ugly vibrations made her recoil, but her own desire to know overshadowed her reluctant foreboding. Slipping off her gloves, she laid her hands flat against the durosteel hull. She’d read the ship lightly when they docked, just enough to board and secure the vessel. Now she closed her eyes and let her awareness flood deep into the ship.

Emotional residue and disjointed flashes assaulted her in a swarm that threatened to drop her to her knees. A stoic face looming above terrified crew. Bellowed orders and frightened responses. Big eyes and gaped mouths. Hands frantic in work to prepare for destruction. Raw and sharp, the stench of fear and insanity overwhelmed her.

“Captain lost his mind. Apocalypse coming. He ordered all hands to abandon ship, then tossed himself out an airlock.” She opened her eyes and looked right at Jace. “Everything hinges on the captain.”

Terror crushed her like a vice. The reckoning she’d been running from for eight years felt close. Darkness plunged like sudden blindness. Kraft clasped Jace’s hand.

“IWOG mothership approaching,” Shar said over the Basic’s com. “Please maintain silence on all com channels.”

In the dark, she leaned close to Jace. “I hate those bastards.”

Almost a decade on the run, and she’d done countless jobs since she’d acquired
Whisper
, but this had to be the most intensely strange of them all. Her terror slipped away when she discovered she liked holding his hand while feeling his body heat in the dark. Too soon, the lights came back on, and she pulled away when she really wanted to press him to the wall and kiss him until neither of them could think straight.

“We’re clear, Captain Kraft,” Shar said.

“Did they alter course?”

“No, Captain Kraft.”

Relief surged. Her time would come, but not today.

“I think there’s more than enough for both our crews.” Jace nodded to the piles of goods that filled the room.

“Jace! It’s ours!” Heller bellowed.

“Technically, the cache is hers,” Jace said.

“How do you figure that?” Heller argued.

“Bailey isn’t blind. Her ship had to be here all along.”

“Intelligent, handsome, honorable and fair?” Kraft poked him with a thrust-out finger, impressed that he figured out she’d docked her ship to the Basic, making her ship look a part of it.

Jace gave her jabbing finger a curious brow.

“Just making sure you’re for real,” she said, trying to think of other ways to touch him. Any excuse would do.

“That’s debatable.” Heller kicked a box of ammo and winced.

Jace glared at him, then turned to Kraft. “You’ve been fair with us. More than. I think we’ve got a situation with an obvious solution.”

“Being honorable thieves.” She smiled.

“Such a deal is like to tweak Trickster’s nose.”

Her smile widened. “It is at that.”

“Half?” Jace offered his hand.

Heller and Danna erupted, “It’s ours!” then glared at one another.

Kraft clasped Jace’s hand and said, “Deal.”

As they divvied up the goods, Danna and Heller couldn’t stop sneering or lunging at each other.

Jace asked, “How long?”

Kraft tilted her head to the side. “How long is my ship?”

“No.” Jace laughed. “How long have you been in the Void?”

Kraft shot him a grin. “Whole of my life.” She thought for a moment. “Been flying
Whisper
about five years. You?”

“Never flown your ship.” Jace gave her the same cock of the head with a grin. “Been flying
Mutiny
about seven, though.”

She laughed. Her gaze drifted to her crew. Her smile faded and her voice dropped. “Gets harder every day, doesn’t it?”

His gaze followed hers. He watched their crews move the cache into their respective ships. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Kraft leaned close, looked right into his eyes, pinned him with both her gaze and rolling whisper voice. “They get like family. More so day by day. More a captain cares, the harder life gets. The Void is a brutal bitch to those who care.”

“Makes us special,” Jace defended.

“Or crazy.” She winked.

Jace blushed. In the whole of his life he’d never met a woman who made him feel like a giddy school boy and a lustful monk all in the same turn. Disconcerting. He managed eye contact, but he couldn’t stop blushing as his thoughts turned.

Kraft touched his arm. “I wouldn’t live it any other way.”

“Me either.”

Heller and Danna erupted into another screaming argument they decided to settle by arm wrestling. It degenerated into a mad, grasping tussle on the floor.

“
Mutiny
is an odd name for a ship,” Kraft said.

“
Whisper
seems odd to me as well.”

“Does it?
Whisper
is descriptive. Is
Mutiny
?”

“You asking me if I stole it?”

“Did you?”

“
Mutiny
is honestly mine. Is yours?”

“Lock, stock and barrel. There’s not another ship in the sky like
Whisper
. Best part of my ship is her crew, though.”

“Seems like you’ve got some pretty tough ladies.”

“Don’t let them hear you say that,” Kraft said, leaning close. “Especially Danna. If you want to see her head explode, call her a girl.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

“We’ve defeated Berserkers, more than once,” Kraft said, looking at her crew. “My crew knows hell. Does yours?”

“They do.” Jace nodded. “We do our best to outrun most.”

“As do we.” Kraft nodded. “
Whisper
isn’t much to look at, but she’s fast. She’s docked underneath.”

“I thought that looked odd.” The zeppelin-shaped Basic had a smaller cylinder clinging to its belly, like an overstuffed cigar with a cigarette attached.

“Not odd enough to stay away.”

“Script was too good. It’s funny how that can sometimes cloud a captain’s vision.”

“You were willing to give it all up to save your crew.”

Incredulous, Jace glared at her. “Enjoy pouring salt into my wound? Would you like a splash of vinegar with that?”

Kraft lifted her hands in surrender. “I didn’t mean it like that. You’d give almost any script to keep your crew safe, and you know it.”

“You’d do the same for yours,” Jace pointed out.

“Touché.”

“Ha! Say it, fetch! Give! I
own
your ass!” Danna screamed as she pinned Heller to the floor.

“I ain’t giving over to a she-freak!” Heller bellowed.

“Give, or I swear,” Danna lifted her hand to draw her blade.

“You’ll swear up a whole mess of trouble if you do that,” Kraft said. “Leave off your boy-toy, Danna, we gotta go.”

“I
so
won,” Danna said as she climbed off Heller.

Kraft turned to Jace. “This time? Everybody won. All of us live to dance another day.”

Before Jace could answer, Kraft disappeared with a slow, lazy and sexy smile.

Chapter Five

“You’ve been pissy ever since we salvaged that Basic a month ago,” Garrett said after Heller lumbered out of the galley.

Jace let the comment slide as he picked at his plate of nasty glop. “Is the engine fixed yet?”

“Spit and bailing wire, but
Mutiny
will get us to Byzantine.” Garrett leaned back in his chair, his own supper mostly untouched.

“When we get there, you get the part to fix the engine, got it?” Jace stabbed his fork around his dinner, searching for something edible amongst the garish goo. Noticing that Garrett had picked out the red bits, Jace rooted around, found one, chewed, then spit it out. “That’s the best of it?”

“Want more nasty? Take a bite of the green things.” Garrett shivered. “Ewww.” His whole face scrunched up. “Red is the best of a bad lot.”

Jace tried again. If he didn’t think too much, the red bits vaguely tasted of tomatoes. “I can tolerate bad food if the ship is running right.”

“Don’t get bristled at me, Jace. I told you two months ago to replace—”

“You’re right.” Jace tossed his fork aside and held up his hand. “You did.” It wasn’t fair for him to blame Garrett for his lack of script. “I’m going to be plush soon, okay?”

“Okay.” Garrett leaned forward with a horse-toothed grin. “You took a shine to that pretty lady thief, didn’t you?”

Rather than answer, Jace considered his plate. Dinner smelled better than it tasted, but that wasn’t saying much. What looked like wads of vibrant yarn smelled like dirty socks and tasted like something he’d accidentally stepped in.