My heart rate went from normal to warp drive so fast it hurt. “Who the hell is in Sector 14?” I asked in shock, turning to my first mate.
Jaxon looked pissed off and surprised, but not worried. Jax never looked worried. “No one’s ever in Sector 14. Half of it’s the Black Widow.”
“Well someone’s here now,” I answered more sharply than I’d intended, eyeing the blinking red com button again. This part of the galaxy was off-limits. Usually, I was the only one not following the rules.
I scanned the views outside the enormous window panels again, not seeing the ship that was reaching out to us. I did see the edge of what everyone tried very hard to avoid and felt a little queasy in the pit of my stomach—only half of which I could blame on the jump we’d just made.
The Black Widow was the reason we’d come to Sector 14. The dicey location was a last-ditch effort to lie low and recharge after three days and seven Sectors of hot-on-our-tail leapfrog with hostile Dark Watch vessels.
I was no automatic pessimist, but this couldn’t be good. The Endeavor was out of juice, and the Sectors were crawling with government spacecrafts looking for the stolen vaccines—because of course no one but the military was ever allowed to benefit from them. Instead of emptying the lab’s contents into our own cargo holds, I’d nabbed the whole thing with a vacuum attachment when patrol ships had starting popping up in the same Sector. Now it was sticking out like a sore thumb, weighing us down, and about to get us all sent back to jail. Or worse.
I even had an enormous, leather-clad, bearded man who’d accidentally come with the floating lab. Shit!
My fingers tensed around my armrests. There was no way I was reaching for that com button. Whoever was hanging around Sector 14 and a freaking black hole was going to have to talk first.
Or maybe they would fly right on by…
“Cargo Cruiser model 419, please identify yourself.”
Damn it! They talked.
I stared at the panel in front of me like it was a poisonous snake from one of the green planets.
“I repeat, Cargo Cruiser model 419, please identify yourself.”
I almost physically recoiled at the tinny, no-nonsense male voice that burst out of my console again. Interference from the Black Widow made the communication shriek like the five a.m. wake-up whistle in prison. I’d hated that whistle. It made my stomach hurt.
“Answer him, Tess,” Jax hissed, nodding to the flashing button. “The longer you wait, the more suspicious they’ll get.”
“They’re already suspicious.” Only a ship up to no good would ever be anywhere near here.
I looked from Jax to Miko. Miko’s good hand still hovered over the navigation panel, her elongated, dark-brown eyes bigger than I’d ever seen them. She looked like she hadn’t moved a muscle since typing out the coordinates for Sector 14—where no one was supposed to be.
Taking a tight breath, I turned back to my controls and pressed the flashing red com button. “This is Cargo Cruiser model 419. It’s only polite to identify yourself first.” Even space had etiquette. Granted, I usually ignored protocol, but I could still cite it when necessary.
Jax groaned softly. Miko looked like she was about to pee her pants, which was odd, because I knew exactly what the small woman could do.
The same sharp voice came through in immediate response. “This is Dark Watch 12. Captain Bridgebane speaking.”
Shock jolted me—and fear. Battleship 12? And Bridgebane? He was a high-ranking galactic general and a science freak who’d come close to carving me up when I was a kid. All the higher-ups had wanted to know what made me tick differently from everyone else.
Maybe it was having a freaking heart.
There was no doubt in my mind that Bridgebane would recognize me. I’d grown up, but I hadn’t changed that much. I still had the same straight, reddish-brown hair, wispy bangs, and blue eyes that stood out from a mile away. Before she died, Mom used to tell me that my eyes made her dream of the great oceans and blue skies she’d never see. And she never did. Dad had kept us both under lock and key.
And now ancient history was coming to bite me in the neck and shake me hard. Dark Watch 12 was one of the Galactic Overseer’s premier warships and could blow my faithful little Endeavor to pieces with just two or three direct hits. It was a fully armored beast. And I knew my way around it. Without my oddities—and my conscience—DW 12 might one day have been mine.
“Please identify yourself at this time,” Captain Bridgebane demanded, “or we will be compelled to board your ship and ascertain your identities ourselves.”
And there was the galactic military in all its glory—polite, even while putting a gun to your head.
I swallowed the panic rising in my throat. There was nothing on my ship that wasn’t stolen. Hell, even the ship was stolen. Even the crew was stolen because, well, jailbreak.
I reached out and pushed the communications button without letting my hand shake. “This is Captain T. Bailey. You’re looking at the Endeavor,” I answered in the flattest voice I could muster.
“Captain Bailey, Sector 14 is a no-fly zone. What are you doing in this area of the galaxy?” Bridgebane asked.
I wanted to shoot back an acidic “What are you doing in a no-fly zone?” but managed to refrain. I pressed the com button again and calmly said, “Taking in the view. The crew wanted a peek at the Widow.”
I lifted my hand, cutting off all sound from our end, and the longest few heartbeats of my life passed in total silence as the bridge crew stared at me, waiting for their orders.
My mind bounced from one possibility to the next. I’d given my usual false name—Bailey was one of the most common surnames in the galaxy—and the Endeavor had fake ID numbers stickered on both sides. I could peel them off and get new numbers up in less than forty-five minutes, even with the necessary spacewalk. But I couldn’t do it with Bridgebane watching.
“Power up, Jax. Time to jump us out of here.” The only problem was, we hadn’t found a safe Sector in days. “Miko—move us closer to the Outer Zones.”
“We can’t, Tess.” Jax shook his head. “With hauling the extra weight of the lab and that huge last jump we just made, we don’t have enough power left to get us out of 14. And they’ve locked on to our com channel now and can follow short-range leaps, even if we jump around the Sector.”
I stared at my first mate. I’d known we were low on juice, but that was very bad news.