Chapter 7
A Girl Named . . .
The floor fell away. How could she know about that? There was no way that she should know about that. Valen had a system, company rules to follow. No assassin was ever assigned two targets that were connected, an easy enough rule to stick by in a place as large as the Milky Way. That this woman would know anything about Merrick Lavigne, let alone that he’s dead, was no passing mistake.
“Are you fucking with me?” Elias asked, stepping closer to her. Lucky stepped back in return. “Are you playing a fucking game?”
“What? No!” Her eyes were wide, but not in fear. She was angry.
He pointed at her with his gun, forcing her back against the table she had previously been hiding behind. “How the fucking hell do you know Merrick Lavigne?”
She jerked her head to the side when the cold metal of the muzzle touched her chin . “He was funding my research.”
A direct connection. What the hell was this? Did Valen know?
“Research for what?” Elias asked. “Research for what?” He repeated the question louder when she didn’t immediately answer, his gun so firmly against her pulse point that she couldn’t avoid it anymore.
“Answer him, Lucky,” a woman yelled. The other three lab rats were standing now, watching the interaction.
“Yes, answer me, Lucky,” Elias said, bringing his face closer to Fandell’s. He stood more than a head taller than her, leaning over her smaller frame in an intimidating gesture that didn’t phase her at all. She stared back at him from the corner of her eyes with hatred, her jaw locked shut. “No matter,” he whispered. “I can find the information another way.”
“Radiation sickness!” One of the men said.
“No!” Lucky yelled.
Elias turned his head to look at the man. “What of it?”
“We…” The man looked from Elias to Lucky, unsure of himself.
“Don’t, Atlas,” Lucky whispered, her eyes pleading with the man.
“Tell me now and you three get to live,” Elias said, nodding to the two other scientists standing behind the tables.
The man named Atlas looked at the woman Elias had trapped against the table, his brows furrowed “I’m sorry, Lucky.”
“Atlas!”
“We’ve been working on a cure,” Atlas said.
Elias’s head snapped back to Lucky, and he stepped back, letting go of the woman as if burned.
Her hand shot to her neck where his gun had just been, and she glared at the man who betrayed her. “You fucking idiot,” she said, “do you really think he’s going to let any of us live now?”
The blood drained from Atlas’s face. His lips moved like he wanted to say something to justify spilling their secrets, but no words came out.
“Did you send the poacher after us?” Elias asked. He could reasonably see Valen giving him this kill as some kind of misguided gift of revenge. Only, Valen had this target picked out before he knew about the poacher, didn’t he? So what was it then?
“Us?” Lucky looked around the room, and then at him like he was crazy. Maybe he was.
“Yes, us. The poacher, did you send her?”
She shook her head, swallowing. Finally, a little bit of fear mingled with her anger. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who’s us?”
Elias looked down at his shoulder, and then the other, but there was no bug to be found. The little shit. “If you could not make me look insane in front of the targets, Mark.”
“Zctckt-ii-zz-tcktit-ckt.” The colorful beetle said, crawling up the back of Elias’s shirt until he appeared on his shoulder again.
“I’m sure you thought it was—”
“Oh my god!” Lucky Fandell took two quick steps forward, reaching her hand out for Mark. She stopped short when Elias raised his gun again.
“That’s far enough, lady.”
She stared at Mark, her eyes bright with emotion. Bringing a hand to her mouth, she laughed, an insane sound in the situation. “I’m sorry.”
“Tcktii-ckt-cktzzcktit…” Mark said, huddling closer to Elias’s neck.
He was right, the woman was off her rocker.
“I’m not crazy,” Lucky said, her hand dropping. A smile spread over her face, tears filling her eyes. “My god… I thought she was the last one.”
“Wait,” Elias said, “did you just understand him?” His arm sagged, gun lowering again. “Have you met Mark before?”
She shook her head. “No, but I knew someone just like him.”
“There are more bugs like Mark?” Elias asked. In all their travels, they had never seen another one.
“We don’t know,” Atlas said. “They’re thought to be extinct.”
Elias had forgotten about the others in the room, who were watching him and Lucky like a free show at Red’s Cabaret. “If you three could go back to hiding so I don’t have to feel you staring,” he said. Atlas and the other man and woman hesitated, unsure looks coming over their faces. “Now, please.”
They looked at each other.
“Is he serious?” one of them whispered.
“Just do it,” another whispered back. Slowly, they lowered themselves behind the tables until they disappeared from view again.
“You,” he said to Lucky, “tell me what you know about Mark’s kind.”
“I only know what Lox told me.”
“Zzcktii-zcktit?” Mark asked.
“No, sorry,” Lucky answered him. “She’s gone.”
It was a strange sensation to have someone else answering Mark’s questions. “You killed her to extract the cure?” Elias asked.
Mark growled, clicking his shell in anger at the idea.
Lucky glared at Elias. “No, of course not!” She looked at Mark, her expression softening. “I would never do that.”
“We’re supposed to believe that?” Elias asked.
“I don’t care what you believe,” she said. “You’re the only killer here. We’re trying to save people.” She waved an arm at the room, at the others who were still hiding like good little scientists.
“What do you care? What do you get from it?” Elias asked. He struggled to believe that anyone would go through the trouble out of the kindness of their heart to figure out the impossible cure to an illness that had plagued every society for generations. People were never so altruistic in the galaxy. He should know.
“Other than saving billions of lives?” She asked, her tone dripping with disdain.
“Yeah, other than.”
Before she could answer him, her eyes darted to his side, widening.
Shit, he forgot. Spinning on his heel, he took three large steps to reach the door right as Felix walked through it.
“It’s time to meet your maker, Lucky Fand—”
Elias wrenched Felix’s wrist to the side, slamming the barrel of his own gun into Felix’s nose, cutting off his words. The shot that Felix fired embedded in the wall, the sound of it bouncing around the room and making Elias’s ears ring.
Felix’s gun clattered to the floor with a metallic bang, and he covered his face with his hands. “What the fuck!” His voice was muffled. “I think you broke my nose!”
“Let me see,” Elias said, pulling the other man’s hands away. He hadn’t meant to hit him that hard. There was a cut across the bridge of Felix’s nose, and his nose was bleeding like a faucet, but nothing was crooked. “I think you’re alright,” Elias said, putting hand on Felix’s shoulder with a smirk. “What the hell were you saying when you walked in?”
“I don’t know!” Felix said, pushing him away. He leaned his head back, pinching his bleeding nose shut. “Thought I should have a cool line, or something. All the greats had cool lines.”
“Meet your maker?”
Felix gave him a sideways glance from beneath his hand. “Shut up.”
Elias grinned. “I’m sure it would have been very cool under the right circumstances, which is not now. Pick up your gun.”
“Tcktit-tckt-ii?” Mark asked.
“We’re out of time. Someone would have heard the shot,” Elias said, holstering his own gun and walking back to Lucky. He grabbed her arm, pulling her with him. “Door, Felix. The rest of you, don’t speak a word of it if you value your lives.”
“What?” Lucky dug her heels into the floor, trying to pull her arm out of his grasp without success. “Let go of me!”
Elias stopped abruptly and turned to face her. “If I leave you here, another assassin will come along to finish the job. You’ll be dead within a week. If I take you with me, you live another day, Miss Fandell. Right now you’re valuable to me. You know things about Mark that I need to know. So, would you like to come along, or would you stay and meet your maker?”
“Dude,” Felix said.
“Hm,” Elias smiled. “I guess it was a good line.”
Lucky looked up at him with wide eyes, her mouth hanging open. “You’re not going to kill me?”
“Not today,” Elias said, “and I can give no guarantee about tomorrow.”
Her eyes didn’t leave his while she contemplated his offer. She swallowed. “Ok. I’ll go with you.”
“Wise choice.” He pulled her to the door with him.
“Wait,” a man’s voice said.
Elias stopped, looking back at who spoke. It was Atlas. He was standing behind his table, the others remaining hidden. The man walked to a shelf against one wall of the room, keeping an eye on Elias as he did so. Picking up a cylindrical device, he stopped in front of them, handing it to Lucky. She accepted it, giving him a questioning look.
“Just in case,” Atlas said. He looked at Elias. “For your friend.”
Elias said nothing, leading Lucky from the room and down the hall. Felix jogged a few steps to catch up.
“Is this ok? Won’t you get in trouble for not killing her?”
“Yeah, probably.” Elias sighed. At the exit of the building, he stuck his head out and looked in each direction. No one on the street. “Come on.”
They jogged to the hangar behind the building, making it back to the Barbara Anne without incident. Elias pushed Lucky down to sit on the lower bunk once they were inside.
“Stay.”
“I’m not a dog,” she said.
“I don’t care. Watch her, Felix.” Elias pressed the button to shut the hatch and made his way to the front of the ship. The hinges of the door groaned, beginning their long descent. Sitting in the pilot’s seat, Elias flipped the master switch. The lights on the console turned on, illuminating every button and screen, the ship humming to life. “Hold on. We’re going to have to launch without clearance from the tower.”
New Los Angeles, being stricter than places like Murder City, as well as smaller and busier, required every ship to schedule a launch or landing with their tower so as not to risk collision with any others. More of a concern for the larger ships, really, or that’s what Elias was intent on telling himself at the moment.
“Are you crazy?” Lucky asked.
“Sometimes,” Elias said, bringing up the radar reading on the console. There was a flurry of activity around the asteroid, like a swarm of bees around a hive. He pulled the harness on his seat over his shoulders, Mark crawling out of the way. Buckling the harness into place, he pulled the loose ends of the straps tight. Mark returned to his shoulder, standing on the thick nylon that now covered it.
“You might as well kill me here and get it over with,” Lucky said, “it would be faster.”
She wasn’t wrong. He’d have to be crazy to fly through that. Space wasn’t like driving a car in a place with gravity. Yes, there were ships moving backward and forward, left to right, but there were also ships moving up and down, and diagonally from every direction. There was only so much visibility to be had. Elias pulled up an exploded 3D view of the radar scan. It filled the space between his face and the windshield. “I’m going to need your help with this one, Mark.”
Mark flew from his shoulder to land on the yoke, putting himself directly below the image. “Tckt!”
Elias flipped a switch, and the front glass of the ship darkened to black. Better not to have the distraction.
“You can’t be serious,” Felix said.
Elias smiled. “Wanna bet?”
“Stop!” A deep woman’s voice yelled out, a bit muffled, followed by several thunks against the side of the ship.
“Shit!” Felix yelled, ducking against the wall beside the door. A bullet made it through the gap of the closing hatch, a chiming ping ringing out when it hit a wrench behind the workbench. “We’ve got company!”
Elias flipped the last switch again, the window clearing and revealing a group of city police pointing their pistols at him. One shot at his face, perfect aim, cracking the windshield.
“Zcktit-i!” Mark yelled, ducking down on the yoke. “Tckt-i-Zcktit!”
“Thank you, Mark,” Elias mumbled, flipping the switch again. The window went black. “I’m aware.”
“They’re here for me!” Lucky yelled over the sound of bullets hitting the hull.
“They don’t seem to be all that concerned for your welfare, if you don’t mind me saying!” Felix yelled, followed by a much closer bang.
Elias looked over his shoulder to see Felix firing his gun under the door, which was almost shut. Lucky was huddled against the far side of the bunk, hands over her ears. “No, Felix! Do not fire!”
“But they’re shooting at us! They’re trying to kill us!” He fired another round under the door, blind to where he was aiming.
“Stop shooting!” Elias pulled on the yoke and jerked it to the side, bringing the ship up at an angle. Felix fell back into the workbench, away from the door, and Lucky screamed as she was thrown against the wall. The door locked into place with a hiss. Finally. “Hold on to something!”
The Barbara Anne launched forward at his urging, swinging left and right as he dodged other ships parked in the hangar. He kept his eyes glued to the radar, the end of the lot coming up fast. “Alright Mark, here we go!” They passed through the exit. For a split second that lasted a lifetime, there was silence, and then…
“Zzcktitii!”
Elias pulled up on the yoke at Mark’s instruction, then left to dodge another radar blip flying in from the right. The flat plain of the hangar was one thing, but the vastness of space outside of it was a whole new game. He could watch for some of the blips, but not all of them. That’s where Mark came in.
“Zzcktit! Zzckti!”
He followed Mark’s directions, adding in his own adjustments for any ships that Mark missed.
“Zzckt-i-zzcktit!”
“I see it,” Elias said, swerving down and to the right.
“Zzcktit-tckt! Zzcktit-tckt!”
Three blips converged on them. Elias pulled the yoke against his stomach, as far back as he could get it, and leaned hard to the right. Barbara’s forward momentum slowed—not a complete stop, there was no such thing in space. The ship spun like a wheel, with her nose at the center of the rotation, while also like a coin on its side. One ship passed below at a diagonal, then another on the left. Elias slammed the yoke forward again, the fusion drive whirring as she stopped spinning and raced ahead. The third ship clipped Barbara’s tail end on the upper right, jerking them down and to the left before they straightened out again. They flew by one last ship in the cluster around the asteroid, sailing out into empty space.
Elias let out a breath once they were free of the tangle, leaning over to type coordinates into the console before flipping on Barbara’s autopilot.
“Tckt-i-cktit-zztckt,” Mark said.
“Yeah,” Elias laughed, turning off the radar projection and flipping the switch to clear the windshield. “Not so bad.” He unclipped the harness, turning in his seat. Felix was laying face down on the floor, holding onto a cabinet for dear life. Lucky was glaring at him from the bottom bunk, her hair falling out of her bun. He raised his eyebrows at them. “Alright back there?”
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Felix mumbled. Lucky said nothing.
Elias got up, opening a drawer at the workbench and pulling out a roll of silver tape. He pulled off a couple of strips and used them to cover the crack in the windshield from the cop’s bullet. It would have to do until they could get to a shipyard.
“Come on, get up,” Elias said when he returned from the cockpit. He poured four servings of whiskey, setting one on the workbench, which Mark promptly leapt into. He stepped over Felix’s prone form and offered a glass to Lucky.
She stared at him with distrust, crossing her arms over her stomach.
Elias shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He dropped the drink onto the workbench, the liquid sloshing up the sides of the glass.
“Where are we going, anyway?” Felix asked, sitting up and accepting the drink that Elias offered him. He pressed the tumbler to his forehead, glancing at it when it didn’t have the desired effect and sighing. “We should get an ice machine in here.”
“On your points, my friend,” Elias said, “and we’re on our way to have a visit with the Wraith.”
Felix choked on his whiskey, Mark’s chirping laughter ringing out as the man coughed.
Elias huffed a laugh and glanced at Lucky, whose face was several shades paler than it had been a moment before. “Oh, you recognize that name, do you? Maybe you know mine as well. I’m the Chauffeur, and he’s the Amnesiac.” Elias waved a hand to Mark, who popped over the side of his glass to wave a skinny leg at their new guest before diving back into his whiskey. “You’ve gotten yourself into a spot of trouble with your research, eh? It’s not every day that someone attracts the attention of the top three.”
She looked away, staring at the floor with a haunted look.
Elias grabbed the discarded drink from the table, offering it to her again. “Here, you look like you could use this.”
She reached out, accepting the cup, and took a sip. Her nose wrinkled at the taste. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said, turning away from her to return to the pilot’s chair with his own drink. A chill ran through his chest and the glass trembled in his hands when he brought it to his lips. He’d gotten the liquor out for himself, not them, but the burning liquid only served to turn his stomach. Valen was going to shit a brick when he found out that she was still alive.
Reminder: This story is unique in that it’s being posted as it’s being written, and that it’s up to you, the reader, if it will continue. So, don’t forget to vote in the poll above if you’d like to see another chapter. If majority yes, there will be a new chapter. If majority no, the story will end here. :)
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Oh my god it was a task and a half to get that radar scene right. Surprisingly difficult to describe how anything can move in any and every direction in open space. lol But it was a fun challenge. Hopefully you guy were able to imagine it well enough with my descriptions. I’m sure I’ll want to refine it more in the next draft.
Alright, another chapter done, and a new cover to boot! Maybe I should make a new one for each phase of the book. Maybe not. We’ll see.
I hope you like this chapter. Please let me know in a comment if you did. We’re finally diving into the thick of it I think, the inciting incident that changes their normal routine, and the ship is getting awfully crowded. And what, oh what, will happen with Lucky Fandell? Even I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out. :D
Until next time, space beetles.
P.S. You may notice that I changed up the last two chapter names. Shh, it’s better this way. haha
I thought it was Zctckt-ii-zz-tcktit-ckt!! 😂 loving every minute! Can’t wait to find out who ‘She’ was!
So good!!!!!!