Chapter 2 #2
Zayn knew that just like he lived to go fast at the controls of a ship, Mal lived to tinker around with engines and pull scrap parts off broken-down ships.
He glanced across the hangar. Their moon, actually a captured asteroid, was covered in the ruins of ships, like some sort of spaceship graveyard.
Mal ran the scrap business while he and his brothers ran the treasure hunting.
But Zayn knew more about ships than the others and often helped her out.
“I’ve got another shipment coming in soon,” Mal said. “Actually, from our cousins,”
“Not those deep-space reprobates.” Zayn had only met his other cousins two or three times. After his father was estranged from his brother, the cousins had drifted apart. The other three Phoenixes were deep-space explorers running convoys beyond charted space. Crazy, in Zayn’s opinion.
“Yep, the ‘other’ Phoenix brothers. They’re running a convoy out of the Sahara Quadrant.”
Zayn grunted and tried to focus on the job, but she popped into his head. He promptly scraped his hand against a ragged piece of metal. “Flaming son of a bitch!”
“You want to talk about what’s bothering you?” Mal swung a hammer at a large exhaust pipe. The clang of metal-on-metal rang out.
He hunched his shoulders and rubbed the last of the blood off his finger. “No.” He kept thinking of the woman. Mystery Woman.
“Sometimes it helps to clear the air.”
He cast a sideways glance at Mal. “How would you know? You are the most cheerful person I know. Do you even have problems?”
Amethyst eyes stared up at him. “We all have problems, Zayn. Challenges, things that get in the way of what we want.” Something flashed in her eyes before she turned back to her beloved scrap metal. “Or who we want. Just remember I’m here if you ever want to talk.”
He knew better than most that some obstacles surrounding who you wanted could never be resolved. He stared at his cousin’s bent head. “Same goes, Mal.”
She glanced up and smiled at him. “Thanks.”
“Zayn?” Eos’ shout echoed through the hangar.
“Yeah,” he called back.
“Meeting in Mission Control. I have more information on the derringer.”
“Be right there. Catch you later, Mal.”
“Later.”
He headed toward the stairs that led up to Mission Control, dodging the piles of junk.
Some of it was Mal’s spare parts, and some were bits and pieces pilfered from hunts.
He passed the rusted chassis of a genuine Earth automobile.
He ran a hand over the metal symbol on the front of it, a circle with three spokes.
It almost looked like a wheel. Even damaged, he could tell from the sleek lines that she’d been built for speed.
Eos kept threatening to start The Phoenix Museum. Dathan protested about it every chance he got. Vocally. Loudly. Said it’d ruin his reputation and he didn’t want people traipsing all over their moon.
Zayn had money on Eos talking him around eventually. The woman was mad for sharing artifacts with everyone in the galaxy.
He ran up the steps, hoping to burn off some of the edgy energy winging through him. Once again, he thought of her and that tantalizing hint of her across the bar. That glimpse of creamy skin and blonde hair. He shook his head. It was driving him mad and dredging up things best left unremembered.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, his fingertips touched metal. He pulled out the silver bird and turned it over in his hand. “I’m going to find you.” He slipped the bird back into his pocket and entered the large room where they planned all their treasure hunts.
Eos and his brothers stood crowded around the holo-table.
Images were displayed on its flat screen surface.
In Mission Control there was no disorder, no junk.
Artifacts were lined up on the shelves on the wall, all neatly tagged and bagged.
Treasure hunting was about adventure, but it was also their business.
“What have you got?” he asked.
“Okay, I found an image of the Lincoln Derringer.” Nik tapped the screen. “It’s grainy because the file was damaged, but I recovered what I could.”
The image appeared and Dathan whistled. “Now that is a tiny little beauty of a gun.”
The derringer was a gentle curve of wood inlaid with metal. It was small, Zayn mused, maybe fifteen centimeters. But size didn’t really matter. It was still dangerous and had taken a life. “Is that silver?”
Eos shook her head. “We aren’t sure what it is, but I think silver would have been too expensive at that time except for the wealthiest clients. My guess is some sort of metal alloy.”
“Now, look at that,” a feminine voice drawled. “That is one very old and very cute-looking weapon. I’d carry something like that over a boring old laser pistol any day.”
Zayn shook his head and saw Dathan roll his eyes. Zayn cleared his throat. “BEll, you’re a computer. You can’t carry anything, let alone a gun.”
“A girl can still dream.”
Dathan mumbled under his breath. “Sometimes I regret stealing her. A bio-sentient computer is a pain in the butt.”
“You didn’t steal me, you won me in a card game.”
“I cheated. So, you’re stolen.”
“And you love me.” A sniff. “Besides, without me, you’d be lost…or dead.”
Eos raised a brow. “She has a point.”
“Don’t agree with her, Eos,” Dathan pleaded. “She’s not really a girl, you don’t have to stick together.”
Eos turned away from him. “BEll, can you display a map of old Earth, please?”
“Someone with some manners. So refreshing.” A map appeared on the screen.
Eos pointed. “From what Nik and I have pieced together, the derringer has a fascinating history. It was utilized by an assassin who used it to kill Abraham Lincoln. From what we know about Lincoln, he was a great man and a great leader. The assassin…I think his name was Booth, but I can’t corroborate that yet, shot Lincoln while he was out watching a play.
” Eos’ face came alive, as it always did when talking about Terran history.
“The assassination took place here.” She stabbed a finger at the map.
Zayn leaned forward. “Washington D.C. That was the capital of the United States before it became the United Countries of America.”
Nik stepped in. “Correct. The theatre later became a museum, and the derringer was housed there. It was feared destroyed during the nuclear devastation of the Terran War. But while the world was fighting over everything, even over whether they should call the planet Earth or Terra, rumors have always persisted that the derringer and other presidential treasures were smuggled out of Washington D.C. by loyalists. That they possibly made it to the Pacific Federation capital in Sydney, Australia—” he touched a spot on the map, then another “—or maybe were stolen by the Northern Federation. But after that…nothing.”
Zayn frowned. “Until our mystery female treasure hunter appears saying it’s in the Devil’s Nebula.”
“We have to find it.” Eos’ voice was firm.
“It must be worth a huge fortune,” Dathan said.
She shot her husband a sharp look. “This is an important piece of history. I can’t bear the thought of one of the guilds having it. Wasting it. Wrecking it.”
Dathan smoothed a hand over her shoulder. “Okay, okay. Then we’ll get it back.”
Zayn resisted the urge to kick the holo-table. “So we just wait around for the mystery woman to make contact?”
“I’m running some searches for blonde females from the Devil’s Nebula, seeing if I can identify her.” Nik shrugged. “But it isn’t much to go on.”
“For now, we stock up on supplies.” Dathan looked at Zayn. “Have the Infinitas ready to fly at short notice. If the woman makes a move, we’ll be ready.”
Zayn nodded. “Mal and I did some maintenance on the engines. And I’m just finishing upgrading the gravity plating. She’ll be ready.”
“So, we wait,” Dathan said.
Not something Zayn was good at. Twenty minutes later, he headed to his quarters. He wasn’t good company and the edginess inside him was driving him crazy. He felt like a million Argent fire ants were crawling all over him.
He considered taking the Infinitas for a run, but it would just be a waste of fuel. Maybe he’d take out the smaller space runner he’d been rebuilding in his spare time.
He flopped on his gel bed, trying to enjoy the undulations beneath him. The runner still needed work and wasn’t ready for much action yet. He snatched his entertainment visor from the bedside table and slipped it on. Maybe a little simulation would take his mind off things.
Instantly he was in the cockpit of an old Earth fighter jet. He’d always been obsessed by them when he was young. He saw them as an early precursor to the Talons he’d flown with the Strike Wing. Sleek, sexy, and powerful.
The engines fired and then the plane was racing down the deck of a ship.
He pulled at the controls and then he was airborne.
The plane soared out high over a vast expanse of azure water.
All Zayn could see was ocean, all the way to the horizon.
They said what was left of Earth today still had oceans—but they were black with sludge and full of mutated sea creatures from the nuclear fallout of the war.
The plane roared through the sky, and he turned it into intricate maneuvers.
Speed. It fueled his blood, made him forget.
He pushed the plane, feeling the G-force pushing him back in his seat.
Modern starships could adjust for acceleration forces, so flying wasn’t quite as physical as it had once been.
But reflexes were still important and his were honed superfine.
But none of that had helped him when he’d needed it most.
The simulation, linked to his thoughts, morphed. He was back in his TH47 Talon. Ahead, he saw a neon-red haze fill the sky. The ocean beneath him turned into the impenetrable dark of space, dotted with bright, white stars.
The Devil’s Nebula enclosed him, trapped him.
Ahead he saw Lucifa, the hunk of rock the criminals, slavers, thieves, and killers called home.
His hands trembled on the controls. He wanted to open fire, to raze it to nothing with his laser weapons. Jesus. He fought for air. He didn’t use guns anymore, of any kind. Guns killed in an instant and sometimes they killed the wrong people.
Lucifa came closer, filling the viewscreen of his ship. He heard sobbing, a woman’s sobbing. Zayn’s heart pounded, his chest tightening. Now he was running, rushing through a maze of rooms.
Then he heard the gunshot.
And the silence after it.
Then alarms blaring.
Fuck. He tore the visor off. The low light in his room speared into his eyes. He leaped off the bed, trying to shake off the past.
It was done. Gone. He had to learn to live with it.
It was then he realized the screech of the alarm hadn’t stopped. He glanced over at the control panel on the wall.
It was the proximity alarm for their base.
Shit. Someone had infiltrated the Phoenix headquarters.