Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Hair still damp, Justyn yanked on brown woolen trousers, shrugged on a white lawn shirt with a stand-up collar, and followed that with a dark leather waistcoat.
He holstered twin double-barreled pistols at his hips and tugged a leather ammunition belt—filled with honest-to-God metal projectile bullets—sideways over his chest. To finish, he yanked on short leather gloves and lifted his hands.
Hmm, he rather liked the dashing look of them.
Glancing in the mirror, the last thing he did was attach a clunky ocular device over his left eye. It was made of copper-colored metal with a glowing green lens in the center. It would blend in perfectly on Alchemia.
He looked around the cabin, adjusting to the enhanced view. No one would know it wasn’t actually grafted to his skin. And no one—except him—would know that inside the antiquated shell was a modern, high-tech device that provided night vison and thermal imaging.
Time to see how his partner was doing.
He strode down the corridor and up a set of steps to where the captain’s cabin was located. He pressed a hand to the panel beside her door and waited for her permission to enter.
The doors slid open soundlessly. Everything on the Freedom was in top form. Nissa ran a hell of a tight ship.
He stepped into a modest living area with a small kitchen area tucked off to the side. A doorway led into what he guessed was her bedroom.
Bedroom.
Hers.
An instant cue for his brain to start running away thinking about where she slept…and did other nighttime things…
“Just a minute,” she called out.
Justyn gave himself a mental slap and forced his focus elsewhere.
He wandered through her living area, curious about her private space.
There wasn’t much in the way of personal touches.
It was neat and tidy, which he expected.
Stars forbid Nissa Sander had a messy cabin.
There was a framed picture of a man in uniform with a woman with caramel-colored skin on a shelf across the room.
Justyn frowned, his gut tightening. Did Nissa have someone back in the central systems?
He grabbed the frame, ready to smash it against the wall.
Then he relaxed. The woman wasn’t Nissa. The stern-looking older man had gray threaded through his brown hair. The shape of his face and nose were exactly the same as Nissa’s. Her father. The smiling, half-reptilian woman by his side gave a good indication that Nissa would age very well.
“I’m not wearing this.”
He set the frame down and turned. His mouth went dry as space dust.
The black synth-leather pants were so tight they looked painted on.
They were tucked into black boots that hit her knees and were covered with heavy silver buckles.
The white top—he swallowed the lump in his throat—was covered with a tight, black leather corset.
The thin white cotton of the shirt was so fine he could see the shadow of her golden skin beneath.
The corset was so tight it cinched in her waist to impossibly tiny proportions and plumped up her very fine breasts.
Have mercy. He’d planned to tease her with a sexy outfit that was also practical for their mission, not torment himself.
“Phoenix, my eyes are up here.”
Her tone made him snap his gaze up. Ordinary brown eyes met his. She’d used contacts to hide her elongated pupils and derma-patches to hide her reptilian scale pattern. He hated that her beautiful markings and eyes were concealed. A pair of goggles sat on top of her shapely, bare head.
“Nice…goggles,” he managed.
She flashed him a look that lasered right through him. “I want an outfit like yours.”
“That’s what women wear on Alchemia.” He waved at her. “Or huge dresses with enormous skirts. Didn’t think you’d appreciate that.”
“I don’t understand why they have outfits that are so…so…archaic.”
“Alchemia was started by a mad scientist called Nigel Magellan Rowbotham. He had collections of steam-powered technology and manuscripts talking about a time on Earth when airships ruled the sky and steam was king.” Justyn shrugged.
“Most astro-archeologists don’t believe Earth ever went through a period like that, but no one knows for sure.
Maybe it was just fiction, but Rowbotham believed enough to emulate it. And Alchemia was born.”
“And now?”
“And now, Ulysses Mackon won’t let it change. By the way, I have something else for you. I had Luciana help me with it.” He held out his offering.
Nissa frowned. “An old gun?”
“No, a perfectly modern Patrol laser pistol disguised to look like an old weapon.”
“Thank you.” She checked the pistol, then slid it into her belt.
He noticed a buckle at the back of her corset was loose. He stepped up behind her. “Let me tighten this for you.”
He yanked the strap and did up the buckle.
She sucked in a sharp breath, her breasts rising. “Easy!”
Taking a peek over her shoulder, his gaze locked on those curves of flesh.
They weren’t large, but not small, either.
He wanted to shape them with his palms, flick at her nipples until they were tight little peaks.
He settled a palm on the nape of her neck and felt the heat of her skin through the fabric.
She froze under his touch.
“Nissa.” Just a tiny taste of her. That’s all he wanted. Needed. He kneaded her skin, lowered his head, and pressed his lips to the delicate spot beneath her right ear.
She shivered against him. “Phoenix.” A breathy whisper. When he flicked his gaze up, he saw her eyes were closed.
“All this golden skin…it gives me so many ideas.” He slid his fingers along her shoulder and dipped beneath the white fabric, feeling the toned muscle beneath. She was strong as well as sexy, and to him, that made her even more attractive.
She arched her back, pushing those gorgeous breasts up.
He had to touch her.
A chime sounded. Justyn ignored it.
Then Allard’s voice filled the cabin. “Captain Sander? Mr. Phoenix? We’ve just hit the galaxy boundary and are crossing over into uncharted space. One hour until we reach Alchemia.”
Nissa hissed out a breath and stumbled away from Justyn.
He thought for a second that she’d refuse to look at him, or race for the safety of her bedroom.
But she didn’t. Of course, she didn’t. That wasn’t Nissa’s style.
She straightened her shoulders, any remaining hint of the woman beneath the uniform vanishing. “Do whatever else you have to do to get ready. I’ll meet you in the teletransportation room in an hour.” Her eyes narrowed. “And Phoenix?”
“Yeah?”
“Keep your hands to yourself.” She swiveled and left the cabin.
As Nissa stepped out of the Alchemia Space Transport Station and onto the giant floating raft that made up the main level of the planet’s capital, Cirrus City, the sights, smells and sounds overwhelmed her.
She stopped, neck arched, staring at the huge balloons floating above the city like giant starcruisers. Airships and smaller rafts were tethered to the main raft, giving the floating city a haphazard feel. Under her feet, she felt a gentle rocking that she figured the locals didn’t even notice.
The narrow street was lined with ramshackle two-story houses made of plas or wood.
Steel or stone would have been too heavy.
A mass of people hurried along the sidewalk—men in outfits similar to Justyn’s, people enhanced with mechanical limbs and other crude devices, clockwork droids passing with a distinctive clacking noise, and women in huge skirts and tightly-corseted bodices.
All kinds of transports trundled past—people peddling single-person transports and a few steam-powered rickshaws.
Above her head, some people were flying tiny gyrocopters.
The whirr of the gyrocopter blades competed with the huffs of stream from the rickshaws below and the shouts of hawkers selling their wares on the street.
“Takes a bit to get used to.” Justyn appeared unaffected by the chaos.
“It’s so different than any world I’ve visited.” She watched a woman rush past holding a wooden basket filled with clothes on her hip. “I just can’t understand why they don’t have more…modern tech. Steal it, smuggle it, something.”
“They can’t afford it.” Justyn studied the street now.
“Mackon has a stranglehold on the planet.” He nodded at the transport station.
“He controls who can come and go off planet. Only way in or out is the transport station where his very own starships transport people to the orbital station. For a hefty fee, of course.”
Where they’d left a disguised shuttle from the Freedom.
They couldn’t risk bringing a Patrol ship in too close.
Instead, her maintenance team had hastily painted a shuttle and modified any features that screamed “GSS”, and she’d piloted herself and Justyn to the orbital station.
“So, very few of these people have ever been off planet?”
“That’s right. They’re more worried about using their coins to feed their families.” He nodded along the street. “Come on, we’ll head to the Flying Compass.”
“Flying Compass?”
“An inn. It has the best ale in Cirrus City. And also the best information.”
Nissa followed him down the street. She waved off women trying to sell fresh fruit and vegetables—guessing that somewhere in the city there had to be gardens.
She caught a tiny street urchin in the act of trying to pick her pockets and sent the young boy off with a coin—another old-fashioned item they’d created on the Resolute Freedom’s goods printer.
Most of the rest of the galaxy had been using e-creds for centuries.
It was surprisingly cool in the city. A brisk wind blew down the streets, finding its way through clothes and ruffling anything in its path. She shivered.
“Cold?”
She glanced up to find him watching her. “I’m fine. Part-reptilian, remember? I’m more susceptible to the cold.”
“You’re from Thusia, right? It’s a pretty cold planet.”