Kellee wet his lips. “I have a very dangerous criminal in custody, and I am commandeering your ship so I can safely escort her to the processing facility on Calicto.” Blinks all round. “See this.” He tapped the star pinned to his coat. “This means what’s yours is mine.” He pointed the pistol at the nearest guard’s face. “Do I have to get personal?”
Violence. The universal language. The authority cops stepped aside, and Kellee pulled me through the airlock doors, swiftly locking them behind us. Pressurized air hissed. He let go of my cuffs and dropped himself into the pilot’s seat. The shuttle was tiny compared to the ferry we’d spent the last hour in. Big enough for a two-man crew, but little else.
“You’d better sit down.” He flicked a bunch of switches on the control panel. “I don’t plan on hanging around while they realize I just bluffed my way into stealing their ride.”
I eased into the co-pilot’s chair and watched his hands sweep across the controls with efficient ease. “You don’t have the jurisdiction to commandeer this ship?”
He snorted and nodded at the front-facing screen curved around us. “You see that?”
I saw a whole lot of black nothingness outside.
“Out here, Messenger, jurisdiction is just a word like any other. It all comes down to the delivery.” He strapped himself in and hit a button that disconnected our shuttle. A mechanical jolt trembled through the floor. “And who’s holding the biggest gun.”
I strapped into the co-pilot’s seat.
The marshal entered what I assumed were coordinates back to Calicto. I watched his hands closely, committing each button push and entry to memory.
“You’re some hot property, Kesh Lasota.”
I side-eyed him. I didn’t recall telling him my name.
“Those weren’t real port authority officials.” He pushed a button, and the shuttle bolted into the black, rattling the cabin. “My guess is they were Crater’s men and your shuttle ride was doomed from the beginning. Like I said, you’re not as invisible as you think.” He glanced over. “Have I done enough to prove I’m not out to get you?”
“That depends on where we’re going.” And what you want from me.
“To a rock in the middle of nowhere.” He flicked his screen and sent our destination onto my screen. He was right. We were heading out into deep space. Not much out there but rocks, criminals and pirates. Which one was he?
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” he asked.
I shifted in the chair, sinking deeper into its embrace, and eyed the cuffs still locked around one wrist. If only I could, Marshal…
Chapter 7
Marshal Kellee removed the cuffs as soon as the shuttle was locked on course. We traveled the rest of the way in silence, until a tiny shining mass took shape beyond the shuttle’s screen, growing like snowflakes on the glass.
I peered closer. “What is that?”
The marshal glanced sideways and must have seen the anxiety I was working hard to hide. “You don’t travel much, huh?”
“No, not much,” I admitted, trying not to let on how this was only the second time I’d been space-bound in my entire life. I gripped the seat’s arms, digging in my fingernails. During my first space-faring trip, the ship had been huge. So vast, in fact, that it had felt as though the planets moved around it. This little shuttle felt more like a ration can.
The marshal nodded at the growing station, its branches spinning lazily. “That’s Point Juno. We’re in Halow’s outer system. That station is about all that’s around here unless you want to travel a few days farther toward the debris zone. There’s a few unregistered points out that way, built by scavengers mostly.”
Closer and closer we drew, pulled as if by some magnetic force, until the station filled the screen. Specks of dust fluttered between Juno’s jutting branches, buzzing back and forth. Ships. I pushed to my feet and leaned over the shuttle controls. So many ships.
I caught the marshal watching me and settled back in the seat, shrugging off the sight like I saw enormous space stations every day.
He chuckled, sparking a filament of annoyance inside me. Not at him, but at myself. I was better at hiding my thoughts than this. I had to be better.
The marshal swept the shuttle under one of the station’s arms, threading it through buzzing traffic. Colored lights blinked, painting the scene in neon greens and pinks. Our little shuttle seemed to speed up now that we were close to the station’s superstructure, but the marshal’s hands deftly maneuvered us around, up, over and through.
My gut lurched as the shuttle dipped. My nails bit into the seat. Was all this whooshing normal? The marshal’s gaze was glued ahead, switching from the controls to the window. He didn’t seem concerned.
By the time the marshal spun the shuttle around and locked it in a dock, sweat dampened the back of my neck.
He turned and paused after seeing my face. “Are you okay?”
I stared at a static point ahead. Some kind of antenna array. Whatever it was, it helped anchor me and stop my head from spinning. “I’m absolutely fine.” I would be fine once my head stopped spinning and the motion sickness passed.
He unbuckled himself from his seat, keeping his face turned away, and headed to the rear of the shuttle.
“It takes some getting used to.” His deep voice rumbled with repressed laughter.
I couldn’t summon enough energy to care. Pressure seals hissed, and a welcome blast of cool air swept into the shuttle. Peeling my trembling body out of the seat, I breathed in, filling my lungs with fresh air, and touched my whip. The weapon’s coiled energy skipped into my palm, and my magic threaded warm fingers across my skin. The combination of pleasure and pain distracted me enough to put one boot in front of the other until I had passed through the depressurizing locks into a single-level apartment. Low couches grouped in one corner, a table and two chairs occupied a spot by a window and, outside, glittering metal funneled to a patch of black space. We were in what I assumed was the marshal’s home, inside the station’s belly.
He shrugged off his coat, draped it over the back of a couch and crossed the apartment, rolling up his shirt sleeves past the elbows, revealing well-defined bronze-skinned forearms. He had the physique of a manual laborer, something used to physical exertion, not a paper-pushing street-marshal.
He stepped behind a counter, hands working across some flat panels with the same familiarity as when he’d piloted the shuttle. A soft sound rang out, and two drinks containers rose out of the countertop.
He scooped one up and took a long drink. I watched his throat move and trailed that movement down to the gaping neckline.
He set his glass down and finally noticed me at the door. “You can come in. I don’t bite.” His gaze lingered on me, and mine on him. There was a challenge in the way he looked at me. It had been there from the first moment we’d met in the sinks. But what kind of challenge, I wasn’t yet sure. Was he daring me to contradict him, waiting for me to figure him out?
I took another step inside, and the pressured door automatically hissed closed with a comforting weightiness behind it. The vacuum of space was right outside, way too close for my liking. It occurred to me that I was a million miles from my home, on an unfamiliar waypoint, in an unfamiliar part of space, with no knowledge of how to pilot a shuttle, and my only company was that of a lawman who I knew could be lethal.
I shrugged off my coat and laid it over the couch, next to the marshal’s. He wasn’t so tough. He was just one male, albeit his species was unknown. My whip was safely stowed inside my coat. If the marshal was as innocent as he claimed to be, then I wouldn’t need it. But if he tried anything, he’d soon learn that my whip wasn’t my only weapon.