That recentcontract would have put him in a nice new Phonecianbut he’d had no luck. Now, he was reduced to raiding the smallertrade runs.
He’d used his lasttrip-line to tumble a convoy out of path and his teams were searchingtheir prey now. The whole free-company knew he was running on vapors.
If they failed tofind anything of value, he’d be facing challenges. MaybeI should step down, he thought.Beats a bullet in the head.
He growled.Speaking of bullets in heads…“What the hells is wrong with you idiots?” heshouted at the bridge crew.
They were all standingstock still, as if… “Oh Nergal’s turds!” he croaked,realizing they were frozen in place. He’d heard of that before.
He turned, emitting astrangled yelp.
Standing there was anarmored figure, its flat-faced helm painted with a white skull.
Hilchazzarhad never fully bought into the stories before but now… Standing infront of this creature, he felt an absolute certainty he was lookingat a servant of theunderworld.
“You lookingfor me, Mercenary?” theterrifying figure asked him.
Hilchazzar mewled interror. The question had been asked inside his mind.
Whatidiocy had led him to think he could simply capture one of thesecreatures?
Underworld
The Deathstalker, Kurnugian Orbit
Gabrielladropped on the couch, shuddering with exhaustion and undefinedemotions. Stupidbitch doesn’t know when to shut up and leave a person in peace,shethought, though it was clear that Ereshkigal knew exactly when notto leave if she was looking for information.
Gabriella didn’tthink she gave away anything they could use but they could read aperson’s feelings, so who really knew?
She knew she shoulddrag herself into the bedroom, rather than fall asleep on the couch,just to wake up shivering but she was so tired. There’d be blanketsin there…
And then she realizedshe was alone for the first time since she’d left her bedroom onBabilim.
She couldn’t sleep,not when there was finally a chance to escape. A ship this size hadlots of places for her to disappear.
She activated thenet-phone implanted in her sinus, a graduation-gift from hergrandmother, and brought up her snippet menu. There were no hatchesin this suite, except for the one she’d walked in through and itwould still have guards outside.
Even if theguards weren't there,the door itself would have a security override. Maybe Ican get that hag to take me for a walk and I slip away? shemused, frustrated at the lack of options.
She sat up, her leftheel striking the floor with a hollow sound. She froze, absurdlyworried that one of her empathic captors would read the sudden surgeof emotion.
There was no securitylockout on the decking itself.
She used the snippetfor hatches, adding in a few extra parts of code from an overrideHack used on a regular basis. She killed the parts that created anactual hatch mechanism, keeping only the parameters for the openingthat it would have fit into.
Gabriellainterrogated the layout schematics for this class of cruiser andfound a large space under the decking. Itwas a pocket of space in the main trunk of cabling that connected thebridge to the engineering spaces.
There was no waythrough the tangle of conduits but there was enough room down therefor her to hide. Sheactivated the newly coded snippet and the nanites beneath her footrearranged themselves tocreate an opening.
She slippedthrough the holeand into a world of darkness. She killed the snippet and the portalturned back into a section of decking. A new snippet created a smalllight emitter from sparenanites showing her the runsof real cables and data fibers that couldn’t be formed by nanites.
Gabriella took a bundleof spun-crystal lines and spread them out to make a hammock. Sheeased into them and let her eyes close for a short rest.
She woke, feelingsuspiciously rested and ravenously hungry. It took a moment toremember where she was.
“Where is she,Gods damnyou?” anangry voice intruded from above, followed by anominous click-whine.
Indistinct mutteringcame from the direction of the door. A shot came from above her,followed by a thud near the door.
“Gods!” thevoice said, but quieter now, and fearful. “She has their magicalready? No wonder I’vebeen acting strangely. We thought we were being so clever and she wasin our minds the whole time! Thedamned witch might be killing my bridge crew as we speak! She’llkillall of us!”
“Unlikely,lord,” a female voice said. “If she has their ability, then shehas more than enough range to reach the hab-ring around Kurnugia.”
“We’re well rid ofher then,” the first voice, most likely Memnon, said with evidentrelief. “We have the information we need.”
“You still mean tosterilize the planet, lord?”
Gabriella’sblood ran cold. Sterilize? They’re going to wipe outeveryone…
“It’s time to senda message,” he said firmly.
“A message for whom?”
“For everyone,Ereshkigal. For everyone.”
Thefootsteps moved away from above her, leaving through the door to hersuite.
She didn’t hearthe door closing.
Why didn’t shehear the door closing?
She’d expected lesssecurity on her door, if they thought she’d already escaped, butdid they typically leave suite doors open like this? Were they stillstanding out in the hallway, close enough to keep the door open?
Should she wait alittle longer? I might be losing my only chance by sittingdown here. She shifted back overto where she’d entered her sub-floor hideout and reactivated theopening in the deck.
It made the usualrustling sound but anyone in the hall mightnot notice, especially with the couch between it and the door. Shecrouched in the opening, eyes just above the decking so she could seeunder the couch.
The door hadn’tclosed because one of the guards, presumably shot by Memnon in a fitof anger, was lying dead across the threshold. She heard nothing fromthe hallway, except for a distant rush of air from a ventilationshaft.
She waited a fewmoments but she realized she wouldn’t hear anything with her heartpounding in her ears. Putting her hands on the edges of the hole, shelifted herself up to sit on the decking.
Still no sounds fromthe hall.
Better get moving, Gabriellathought. Even megalomaniacs eventually send someone toclean up the bodies on their own ship.She lifted her legs out of the hole in the deck and padded over tothe door.
Straddling thecorpse, she leaned out to check the hallway. Clear.She opened a new hole in the hallwaydecking and lowered herselfinto a far less cluttered space – one that had more freedom to movearound.
She
