Ariston_Star Guardians Read online

  “Those ships are traveling faster than we did,” Dev observed, watching the sensor display as well as the view screen.

  Considering how excited she had been about landing when she first sat down, Mick found it odd that she was so worried about two other ships in the system. Did she know something that Mick didn’t? Was it possible another corporation had sent some competition?

  As far as Mick had been told, this mission had been okayed by the United States government, but Umbra was handling everything. The scientists on this mission were all people who had applied to join the NASA program at some point, and some of them had even gone through astronaut training, but none had been accepted. Apparently, they’d all jumped at the chance to go on a mission for Umbra. The world governments were getting expeditions together to explore the galaxy, but corporations could and were moving much faster.

  “Should we hail them or whatever they do on Star Trek?” Dev asked.

  “I didn’t know they had Star Trek in India.”

  Dev smiled faintly, though she still looked worried. “Star Trek is everywhere. But even if it wasn’t, I’ve been in the US since I was sixteen, so I’ve had plenty of time to come across it. Star Trek: Enterprise with Scott Bakula was popular with the girls in my dorm at Oregon State.”

  “Because it was good?” Mick couldn’t remember seeing any of the spinoff series.

  “Because Scott Bakula was good, I believe.”

  “Good or good-looking?”

  “Yes.” Dev grinned.

  “There’s the communications panel if you want to talk to those ships, though I suggest we mind our business and hope they mind theirs.”

  Dev considered the comm panel, lifting her hand toward it, but then letting it hover.

  “Did you say Oregon State?” Mick asked as she flew around the pyramid, looking for a promising spot to land amid boulders that littered the dusty earth like marbles spilled from a bag. “I thought all you NASA-aspiring science people went to MIT and schools like that.”

  “My Ph.D. is in soil science. You have to go to a school with an agronomical track for that.”

  Dev let her hand settle back onto her lap.

  Mick thought she might not know how to use the comm station, but she’d given her passengers a tour of the ship when they’d first boarded back in Houston, and almost everything was labeled. She and Katie had gone over the entire ship, translating the technical manuals and outputs from Dethocolean—a language that had its origins in Ancient Greek—to English.

  “Is there a lot of interesting soil in Oregon?” Mick saw a spot between the pyramid and the remains of the stone walls of a town, and she guided them down.

  “Oh, it’s quite lovely. Did you know there’s a giant Armillaria ostoyae in Oregon’s Blue Mountains that covers more than twenty-three hundred acres and is estimated to be between twenty-four hundred and eight thousand years old?”

  Amarillo-what?

  “Nah, I didn’t see that mentioned in the tourism brochures when I visited,” Mick said.

  “It’s all one organism, a single honey mushroom.”

  Well, that explained Dev’s interest in coming to a fungus planet.

  As Mick tried to settle them onto her chosen landing spot, an alarm beeped, informing her that a boulder on the edge of her potential pad was too large. Even with the landing struts extended, the belly of the ship would hit it.

  She grumbled to herself, not sure why it mattered. So what if there was a two-degree tilt to the deck? She was just dropping these people off, helping them unload their gear, making sure they wouldn’t die here, and then leaving until it was time to pick them up.

  But the alarm beeped insistently when she tried to ignore it, and a vibration went through the flight stick in warning.

  “It’s as bad as those cars that bitch at you if your tires kiss the white line,” Mick muttered.

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing.”

  Someone knocked at the locked door.

  “Sit down. We’re not on the ground yet,” Mick yelled over her shoulder. She tried moving the Viper, but the damn boulders were everywhere. “Hang on.”

  She took the ship up a few feet, flipped open a panel to reveal the weapons controls, and targeted the most vexing boulder.

  “What are you doing?” Dev asked.

  Mick fired, blowing the rock into a thousand pieces. “Clearing the runway.”

  Dev offered a lopsided smile. “You wouldn’t have been selected for one of NASA’s planetary protection officer openings.”

  “Darn.”

  Mick extended the landing struts and settled them firmly—and evenly—onto the ground. She slumped back in her seat, releasing a long, relieved breath. She hadn’t realized how tense she’d been.

  Too bad she didn’t have anyone around who could massage her shoulders. It had been almost a year since she’d broken up with Dave, and he’d sucked at massages, anyway. Unfortunately, there weren’t any prospects among her passengers, either. Most of the scientists were on the white and nerdy side—even the non-white ones—and she preferred bulging biceps and six packs. Dr. Cecil Woodruff was the exception, being nicely muscled and not as geeky as the others, but Mick had caught Dev looking at him with puppy-dog eyes.

  A beep came from the console.

  “Now what?” Mick straightened in her seat.

  The blips that represented those two ships flashed. She bared her teeth at them. They were in the atmosphere now, heading down to the planet. Maybe to this very continent.

  Mick poked a finger at the closest blip, hoping the sensors could share more information, especially on whether it belonged to other humans or to one of the space-faring alien species in the galaxy.

  “That’s a human ship,” she said, reading what popped up. “Out of Kukulcani.”

  “That’s the planet that sent a lot of criminals into space and made the Dethocoleans regret inviting it into the Confederation, isn’t it?” Dev asked.

  Mick looked at her. “You’ve done your homework, haven’t you?”

  “Even people who graduate from schools other than MIT know how to open books.”

  Mick snorted. She hadn’t meant to imply there was anything wrong with Oregon State. She hadn’t even graduated college, so who was she to judge?

  “There are books on the Confederation and the humans of the galaxy?” Mick shifted her attention back to the display—the second ship was flying extremely close to the first ship now. That was surprising. Why would they crowd each other if they were coming in to land? As Mick could attest, the landings here were already challenging. “Two years ago, nobody on Earth knew they existed.”

  “There are non-fiction and fiction bestsellers all over the charts now and a slew of wildly fanciful self-published e-books.”

  “Huh. I—” Mick broke off, her mouth dangling open as the sensor display changed. “The second ship is firing at the first ship.”

  “Where’s it from?”

  “Our information on it says… Dethocoles.”

  “Oh, is it a Star Guardian ship?” Dev asked. “I’ve heard about them. Maybe they’re nobly and valiantly pursuing criminals.”

  “This says it’s a salvage ship.”

  “Do salvage ships usually have weapons?”

  “This one does. Big ones. And it’s a huge ship. Huge and armored.” Mick thought about how quickly both ships had flown to the planet after coming through the gate, and how quickly the second had overtaken the first. “And fast. I wouldn’t want to mess with it.”

  She tapped the view screen controls, shifting the focus to the battle in the sky above. She had to zoom in, but the ships came into view.

  The smaller craft, which looked like it could support a crew of six or eight, zigzagged and looped, trying desperately to avoid fire. But smoke already billowed from one of its thrusters on its port side.

  The salvage ship pummeled it mercilessly, firing en-bolts as well as what appeared to be shell weapons out of rotating turre
ts on the top and bottom of the craft. As Mick watched, torpedoes sped away from the tubes on the front end of the large, rectangular craft.

  “What kind of salvage ship has that many weapons?” she asked. “Space fleet dreadnoughts aren’t that well equipped.”

  “Maybe it destroys ships and then salvages them,” Dev said.

  “I’ll admit the galaxy has an Old West feel to it once you get out of the Confederation systems, but that can’t be legal.”

  “Who would there be to enforce laws in systems with no inhabitants?”

  “The Confederation has a pretty long reach.”

  “Mm.”

  Something about that noncommittal syllable made Mick look over at Dev.

  For the first time, Mick wondered if Umbra had asked for permission from the Confederation to come out and explore Mustikos. Was that something that was required? She wasn’t sure. But just because there weren’t any inhabitants didn’t mean someone hadn’t already claimed the planet.

  The torpedoes landed, catching the smaller ship square in the ass. A fiery explosion appeared far above. The ship’s evasive maneuvers ended abruptly, and it turned into the equivalent of a boulder falling out of the sky—a flaming boulder.

  “Shit,” Mick said, glancing at the navigation display as a warning flashed on it. “It’s coming straight toward us.”

  2

  Ariston of Dethocoles strode down the dark gray metal-and-rivets corridor of the Pleasant Journey, a hulking salvage ship out of Speka on his home world. The name was about as apropos as a four-hundred-pound snarling svenkar called Li’l Miss, but it was probably the reason neither the planetary police nor the Star Guardians had batted an eye at the fact that the ship had enough weapons to demolish a small moon.

  Until now.

  Before Ariston reached the bridge, two men turned around a corner at an intersection ahead of him. Drak and Makk, brothers and crewmates with the personalities of sledgehammers and the looks to match. Their dark eyes lit up when they saw Ariston, and they exchanged looks with each other, looks that promised trouble.

  Ariston didn’t let his expression change, but inwardly, he sighed. He’d expected this since Captain Draco had promoted him to second-in-command of engineering.

  “Whatcha doing, Ston?” Drak asked as he and his brother strolled forward, shaking out their arms for a fight.

  The way Drak emphasized the name Ariston had given the captain when he signed on made him hesitate. These two mental giants couldn’t have figured out who he was, could they?

  “Reporting to my duty station,” Ariston said, meeting their eyes fearlessly. “As you two should be doing.”

  “Your duty station on the bridge? Kissing the captain’s ass?”

  “Nah,” Makk said, “he must be sucking the captain’s cock. You don’t get paid a double-share for kisses.”

  They shared smirks, but there was no humor in their eyes. Ariston could see them seething under their thuggish exteriors, resenting that he’d been on board six weeks and was making more than they were after however long they’d been part of the crew. Years, likely.

  “Do your jobs instead of whining in the corridors, and maybe you’ll get more of a share too,” Ariston said, flexing his shoulders as he approached them.

  He knew from past experience that diplomacy would be wasted on them. Besides, he always struggled to keep his commander’s don’t-give-me-shit-you-lower-ranking-slug tone out of his voice. After all, he’d been a space fleet and then a Star Guardian engineering chief for a lot longer than he’d been working undercover.

  His wife, who’d been even tougher than he, would have known how to deal with these idiots without resorting to blows. After more than four years, he still missed her. Her death had left a sucking black hole in his life.

  “We do our jobs,” Drak said. “We just don’t suck dick while we do it.”

  “And we can’t kiss ass as well as you because we haven’t made buddies with the first officer and can’t talk to him and the captain about the good old days in the fleet.”

  Ariston would push by them if he could. Even though they stood shoulder to shoulder and made it clear they didn’t intend to let him pass, he might barrel through if they reacted slowly. At six feet tall, Ariston wasn’t a towering man, but he had broad, powerful shoulders and a muscled physique, despite being north of forty now. His job, his real job, demanded superior physical fitness.

  Makk turned and reached for him as Ariston tried to push past. Though he had hoped to get by without a skirmish, Ariston was prepared.

  He lashed out like a whip, catching Makk’s wrist in a lock. He twisted it under the man’s arm, spun him, and yanked it up behind his back.

  Drak tried to stop him by throwing a punch, but Ariston ducked it while completing his maneuver, then shifted his weight and slammed a side kick into Drak’s solar plexus. The thug stumbled back to the bulkhead, eyes widening when he tried to gasp for air and his stunned lungs couldn’t grab any.

  Knowing it wouldn’t take him long to recover, Ariston jammed Makk’s face into the opposite bulkhead hard enough to smash his nose. These thugs didn’t respond to threats. Only pain. He yanked up higher on Makk’s arm, and the man screamed, a mixture of sheer pain and a mangled curse toward Ariston and his ancestors.

  As Ariston opened his mouth to ask if they were going to have more trouble, he saw Drak out of the corner of his eye, recovered enough to renew his attack. He sprang toward Ariston, fingers groping for his neck.

  Without releasing Makk, Ariston slammed another kick into Drak, aiming lower this time.

  Drak cried out, grabbing his groin and crumpling to the deck. He joined his brother in cursing Ariston’s ancestors.

  Ariston grew aware of someone else stepping into the intersection a second before an irritated voice snapped, “Didn’t you idiots hear the comm? Get to your battle stations before I space all three of you.”

  “Shit.” Drak leaped to his feet, still grabbing his groin, and scurried down the corridor in the opposite direction.

  Ariston released Makk, and the man also bolted, shaking out his wrist as he ran.

  Ariston turned toward the speaker, Captain Eryx. The white-haired man wore a perpetual scowl, and he had a tendency to flex and loosen the gloved fingers of his bionic arm. The men speculated about that arm, as to whether it appeared human or machine underneath his sleeve and glove, but apparently, nobody had ever seen it. Ariston had seen some of the seat backs and consoles the man had crushed with it when irked. As the ship’s new assistant engineer, he got tasked with fixing such things.

  “You men can handle your problems however you see fit,” Eryx said, spearing Ariston with his steel-eyed gaze, “but not when we’re heading into battle.”

  “You didn’t mention battles when you called us to our duty stations,” Ariston pointed out, not flinching from the gaze. His first instinct had been to utter a meek yes, sir, but he’d learned early on that Eryx didn’t care for what he called “spineless suck-ups.” He seemed to prefer people who spoke their minds—while obeying him.

  “I don’t explain myself to the entire crew over the comm,” Eryx growled before spinning and stalking toward the bridge. “What’d you think we were doing in this gods’ forsaken system?”

  “Salvaging a ship.”

  Eryx smirked over his shoulder. “And so we are. Maybe two. This system was unexpectedly busy when we came out of the gate. You may get to buy yourself a new set of combat armor with your double share of this salvage gig, so you’re not walking around in that dented fleet suit you stole off who knows what dead soldier.”

  Ariston walked after him without defending the piecemeal armor he’d shown up with, a set he’d assembled from his old gear, mixing and matching the parts to make it appear like the suit had been scrounged. None of the pieces were dented. What kind of engineer would let himself walk around in dented equipment?

  Not important, he told his wandering mind, snorting at the indignation that had arisen.
As if what Eryx thought mattered.

  He was here to catch these people breaking the law, and he had a feeling he was about to get his chance. That was what he needed to be focused on.

  As Ariston walked onto the bridge, the captain barked, “Status report.”

  “They’re trying to evade us,” the helmsman said, “but we’re not having any trouble tagging them. They fired back, but our shields are still at one hundred percent. They’d do more damage spitting at us.” The man snickered.

  Ariston rubbed his chest, thumbing on a camera integrated into one of his shirt’s fasteners. He took careful note of the helmsman, the captain, and the other bridge crewmen, then turned so it would record the view screen. It showed a passenger ship ahead of them, smoke coming from its thrusters as it spiraled down toward the desolate brown planet below.

  “That a Kukulcani cruiser?” Ariston asked, though he wouldn’t be surprised if the captain berated him for speaking—and for standing in the middle of the bridge instead of at the engineering station.

  “That’s a Kukulcani bastard ship full of relic thieves,” Eryx growled. “We’re catching them before they loot the ruins down there.”

  “I wasn’t aware that Mustikos’s ruins had anything worth looting.”

  “There’s a new rumor going around that scans from a science vessel mapping the system with upgraded equipment caught signs of ancient Wanderer tech down there. It figures that Kukulcani scum would be the first ones here to loot.” Eryx truly seemed indignant at the idea of thieving, even as he ordered his weapons officer to keep firing to destroy the unsuspecting ship.

  Ariston’s jaw clenched as he recorded the event, though he wanted nothing more than to leap at the weapons officer and stop him. And to club Eryx in the gut on the way past.

  This, he reminded himself, was exactly what he’d been waiting for. Rumors had said Eryx was destroying ships in backwater systems with no witnesses around, killing the crews, scrapping their vessels, and selling the parts on the black market. So far, Ariston had been on three completely legitimate salvage missions, funded by insurance companies wanting the remains of wrecked ships. He had begun to believe that the Pleasant Journey, no matter how heavily armed and how brutish its crew, was part of a legitimate business, despite what the rumors said. Now, as smoke wafted out of the ship ahead, Ariston had evidence to the contrary, the evidence he’d been sent out here to get.