Sagitta: Star Guardians, Book 3 Read online

  Hierax plucked a winged construct from a hook on his belt and tossed it into the air. It hovered in place until he tapped his logostec. He waved his finger through a holographic control panel that popped up, and the device zipped toward Zakota’s head.

  “What are you doing, fool?” Zakota swatted around his head. “If that thing drills me, I’ll pummel you.”

  “I was going to demonstrate its finesse by having it cut through the thong on your necklace without touching your skin.”

  “This is a totemic pendant, not a necklace.”

  The drone buzzed about but ultimately flew away from Zakota.

  “In other words,” Sage said, “you effectively sabotaged the warship.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hierax caught his device and hooked it to his belt again. “Helps when everybody’s on the same side and nobody has their guard up.”

  “Yes.” That was why Sage had set Hierax to work before announcing his plans by taking off, before any of his fellow captains had a reason to be suspicious of him or his crew. “Did you two disable the command codes?” Sage waved toward Zakota’s console. One of the first things Headquarters would try would be to remotely take control of the Falcon 8.

  “Even the ones we’re not supposed to know about,” Hierax said smugly.

  Sage didn’t mind that smugness now. He was relieved to have good people. Hierax was more than good at his job, and Sage had been lucky to get him. Of course, he’d definitely been able to get the best the Star Guardians had to offer when he’d accepted the position to command the Falcon 8. He had no trouble remembering a time when he’d been a new captain in the space fleet, going into war on a rust bucket, with a misfit crew manning her, the people that none of the more experienced and decorated commanders had wanted.

  “Yup,” Zakota said, double-checking his console. “But we’ll still have to deal with— Uh, two of the warships in orbit are shifting their paths and heading in our direction, sir.”

  “Can you beat them to the gate?”

  Fire falcons were fast ships, with the newest technology in their engine rooms, and warships were known more for devastating power than speed, but outmaneuvering multiple opponents wouldn’t be easy. Even if they slipped past these two, Sage knew from an earlier check that there were other warships farther out in the system, orbiting planets and moons that held human colonies. If some of those ships were alert and ready for action, they could intercept the Falcon 8 before it reached the gate.

  Even if Sage made it to the gate, he wouldn’t be in the clear. High Command knew exactly where he was heading. There were five more gates between here and Gaia, and a trip of over a week. There was a good possibility that he wouldn’t be able to outrun trouble the whole way unless he chose an unexpected and unorthodox route to get there.

  “We’ll see,” Zakota said. “But you might want to warn everyone that the ride is about to get bumpy.”

  Zakota licked his finger, then one-handedly touched each and every charm hanging from his station while he navigated with the other hand.

  “I’ll do that,” Sage said.

  “You sure those women are worth all this trouble, Captain?” Hierax asked softly, his expression uncharacteristically serious and somber.

  “We vow to defend the bodies, souls, and freedoms of all humans, throughout the galaxy,” Sage murmured, reciting part of the Star Guardian oath. “Nobody should be put in a cage. If they had to stay on Dethocoles, it would be better than being eaten by aliens, yes, and the planet offers much, but it’s not their home, and they didn’t ask to be taken there. No matter how nice the cage, to be stuck in it against your will is the destruction of your freedom.”

  “Besides, Orion and Treyjon would say they’re worth it,” Zakota said, winking as he hit full acceleration, and the deck trembled slightly underneath their feet.

  “That’s because they’re getting their bows polished by two of them,” Hierax said.

  “I could stand to have something polished.”

  “If it’s your shiny head, I doubt any woman is going to be interested.”

  Sage frowned at the silly banter. It still disturbed him that Orion and Treyjon had been romancing a couple of the women. Even though the Star Guardians had saved those women from the slavers who’d originally taken them from Gaia, they were still out here against their wishes. Sage called them guests, but when he was honest with himself, he knew they were prisoners. It wasn’t right to make passes at prisoners. Better to get the women back to their homes where they would once again have the freedom of choice.

  Even as he had the thought, Tala’s face came to mind again, her black hair always bound tidily back at the nape of her neck. She’d stood out from the others right away, with her warm brown skin, her high cheekbones, and her tall, athletic form. He’d heard she had some unarmed combat experience and had kicked a couple of the slavers. Effectively. He would like to have seen that.

  What expression had she worn while kicking them, he wondered. She had such dark, thoughtful eyes, eyes that always seemed to have an inward focus rather than an outward one. He could understand that. He spent much time living in his head.

  One of his flaws, he’d been told by superiors over the years, was that he sometimes forgot to explain his thoughts clearly to those under his command. He often assumed that what was clear to him was clear to everyone else. And sometimes, even when he knew he was being terse, he lacked the patience to amend that. He had a tendency to see the men as moving parts in a machine where it wasn’t that important for each piece to have knowledge of the bigger picture. Fortunately, he somehow managed to make the machine do its job effectively.

  He wondered if doctors had similar experiences, focusing on the problems and forgetting to keep their staff apprised of everything. If so, it was something he could work with in a ship’s doctor. Had the stars been aligned differently, he could have seen himself inviting Tala to stay aboard the Falcon 8. She might not yet have the experience that Dr. Svetloka had possessed, but she was certainly more attractive than he had been. Not that he would choose a crew member because of that. He’d already observed that she was a quick study, and she was calm, quick, and methodical when she worked on an injured man. He had a feeling she wouldn’t break down even if sickbay were inundated with men in the midst of the ship being fired upon.

  “Captain?” Hierax asked, shifting to stand in front of him.

  Something about his tone made Sage think he may have spoken more than once.

  “You all right?” Hierax added. “You contemplating strategies?”

  Er, yes, that was what he’d been doing.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’d been contemplating getting his bow polished,” Zakota said, grinning again.

  Hierax snorted. “Right.”

  “Just get us to the gate, Zakota,” Sage said, ignoring the innuendo, even if it was closer to the mark than he wanted to admit. “You can get something polished later.”

  “That a promise, Captain? You’re getting me a little excited. Shit, there’s a third warship coming in from the blue moon.” Zakota focused on the panels and his controls and dropped the polishing topic. “And there’s a little courier ship going through the gate right now. You think they’re warning someone in the Medea System about us?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.” Sage reached for the intercom to warn the crew—and their guests—that the ride was about to get… turbulent.

  2

  Tala Matapang watched the display on the osteokevi device attached to Katie’s wrist. They were in sickbay, along with Indigo, thanks to a fall Katie had taken from one of the exercise machines in the gym. After overindulging in the pastries Treyjon had brought on board, she’d apparently felt so guilty that she programmed in a strenuous workout, not realizing that the machine went up and down as well as forward and back. It was like some overly zealous treadmill with a trampoline built in.

  “It’s almost done,” Tala said, bemused that she was doing an orthopedist’s
job. Not that she was doing much. She’d taken the equivalent of an X-ray with a small handheld device. Then she’d tapped a couple of buttons to feed the data into the osteokevi, which used a technology she didn’t understand to heal bones, tendons, and ligaments without breaching muscle or skin.

  Tala imagined that everyday medicine was fairly simple and non-invasive here. It still took some hands-on knowhow in the case of grievous injuries that left body parts exposed or protruding, and she’d used her cardiothoracic-surgeon experience more than once on Star Guardians who had been shot with those wicked energy-blast-flinging bow weapons.

  “Good,” Katie said. “I feel stupid for getting hurt like that. I’m not usually so obsessed about my weight that I jump on a treadmill every time I look at a donut, but I got a sugar high there, and it was either do something or bounce off the walls.”

  Katie wiggled on the exam table, as if to demonstrate the bouncing.

  “Odd, I didn’t have that experience,” her friend, Indigo said with a smirk. She was heavier set and curvier than Katie, though Tala had occasionally seen her strolling on one of the treadmill-like machines. “I was thinking of a post-donut nap myself. My body is very confused about what time it is these days.”

  “Mine too,” Katie said, “and I’m tired of being cooped up. I’m used to being out hiking or riding or driving when I’m not working, and work is flying, so I’ve got the sun and the sky around me. Being in this box of a ship is nuts. I need to talk to whoever flies this thing and see if I can at least get some lessons.”

  “I don’t think flying a spaceship is much like flying those little prop planes the USGS uses,” Indigo said, reminding Tala that the two women worked together at the geological survey office back in Flagstaff.

  “Just be glad the captain is taking us home,” Tala said. “If he’d decided not to, we might have been stuck on that planet forever.”

  “I wish we’d seen more of it,” Katie said. “I miss home, of course, but I’d love to wander around a city on an alien planet. I’d like to see the cockpit of a spaceship too. The technology is so cool. Don’t you agree?”

  Tala, admiring the bone-mending device as she removed it, could only nod. “Yes, I wish I could smuggle some of it back home for my… well, I don’t have an office anymore. Or an operating room.”

  Her mouth twisted, as she remembered that she’d quit her job and gone up to Flagstaff to “figure things out,” as she’d told her colleagues back in Phoenix. She still hadn’t confessed that to her mother.

  “Why did you quit?” Indigo asked. “You still seem really interested in medicine.”

  “Politics.”

  Indigo raised her eyebrows.

  Ignoring the prompt for more information, Tala opened a drawer to put the equipment back where she’d found it. She paused thoughtfully before depositing everything, dwelling on the smuggling idea. Maybe she could slip one or two of the more impressive devices into her pockets to take home for study and perhaps reproduction.

  She supposed Eridanus, the ship’s AI that had been helping her and that inhabited some of the medical robots during surgeries, would notice. Not that she could imagine herself trying to start some medical device company or research program for studying the technology when she got it home. She’d never had any interest in business or lobbying for grant money for research. That all involved interacting with people, and that wasn’t her specialty. Oh, she could smile for a patient, but she was in control when she was the surgeon. Dealing with people then was fine. She didn’t have to worry about customer service, and she didn’t have to ask anyone for anything. She hated doing those things. Admittedly, she hated not being in control, period.

  Shaking her head, she put the devices away. It was a moot debate, since she wouldn’t truly entertain theft. Though maybe she could ask the captain if she could have something before she left. She hadn’t asked for anything in return for the surgeries she’d performed here, and generally, she wouldn’t, but dealing with him was difficult, and she almost felt he owed her a favor because of that.

  She still got angry when she remembered how he’d called her to the brig to monitor that patient—all right, his prisoner—during an interrogation, and then hadn’t let her try to resuscitate the man when he’d died. Of some poison, Sagitta had claimed. But she only had his word—a snap judgment call, as far as she’d been able to tell—about that. He’d been too busy to let her take time to examine the man. Why he’d called her to help in the first place, she still didn’t know.

  She also didn’t know why she had such a hard time dismissing the incident. For some reason, she often found herself thinking of it and the other interactions she’d had with Sagitta. He was a frustrating man, but she’d worked with plenty of those and hadn’t agonized over incidents afterward.

  “I didn’t know doctors were so secretive,” Indigo whispered to Katie.

  Tala frowned at them, and it took her a second to remember what they were talking about. Her quitting, right. She’d never met either woman before they’d been captured, so she wasn’t sure why they were curious about her past or thought she wanted to divulge it to them.

  “Doctors can be private,” Tala said. “We—”

  The deck shuddered under their feet, and she gripped the exam table for support.

  Katie grabbed her leather jacket and slid off the table. “I was wondering when we’d get that turbulence the captain mentioned.”

  “Was that an attack?” Indigo asked. “Are his own people really going to fire at him—at us? Because he’s taking us home?”

  “If he’d taken us home as soon as he recovered us from the slavers, he wouldn’t be in this situation now,” Tala said.

  She appreciated that Sagitta was disobeying orders to fly back to Earth and drop them off, but wouldn’t it have been much smarter to have taken them home first and then asked for forgiveness later? After it was too late for him to change the fact that he’d done it? She wagered he would have gotten in less trouble that way, but instead, he’d obeyed orders to come directly home. And then been told Tala and the others couldn’t return to Earth, since they might blab about the existence of wormhole gates and humans all over the galaxy.

  “I’m just grateful we’re going,” Indigo said. “I’m not like Juanita. I don’t crave adventure. I crave a fulfilling day of challenging problems to solve at work, a good paycheck, and the latest episode of Survivor on the DVR at home.”

  “That’s it?” Katie wrinkled her nose as if she couldn’t imagine such mundane tastes.

  “I do miss my dog. I think I told you my ex got him in the divorce. Because he supposedly had more time to spend with him. Of course, he had time. He doesn’t have a job most of the year. The deadbeat has all the time in the world.”

  The deck shuddered again, and Tala’s stomach flipped as the artificial gravity lessened for a moment. There weren’t any portholes in sickbay, so she had no idea what was going on. She hated not knowing what was going on, even though she should have been used to it after the last couple of weeks on this ship.

  “Brace yourselves for jump in thirty seconds,” Sagitta said over the ship’s intercom.

  Tala, Indigo, and Katie headed for seats locked to the deck, each with a belt that could be unfurled from underneath. Tala hurried to clasp her belt, but the deck lurched again, and she fumbled with the fastener. All she had to do was touch the ends together, and they would affix themselves automatically, but the deck rattled, and her entire body shook.

  The lights flickered, and a groan came from somewhere in the depths of the ship. She was inches from tapping the ends of the clasp together when the world dissolved into purple confetti. She had the sensation of falling, her shoulder striking against something hard, and then she blacked out.

  When she woke up, she didn’t know if seconds or hours had passed. She was on the deck on her side, the cold, textured metal pressed against her cheek. The lights were out.

  “Katie? Indigo?” she asked, and grimaced
when she tasted blood in her mouth.

  Someone muttered a groggy acknowledgment. Indigo, she thought. It sounded like she’d stayed in her seat.

  Tala sat up only to feel like she was swaying. Was that the ship? Or her brain?

  Finally, the sensation lessened, as did the fluctuations in gravity that were wreaking havoc with her stomach. Surprisingly, the lights did not come on.

  Tala found her chair and used it to push herself to her feet.

  “Who’s flying this thing, anyway?” Indigo muttered.

  “Must be that Commander Zakota,” Katie mumbled, sounding like she was in pain or at least had a headache. “Remind me to punch him if I see him later. That was a horrible ride.”

  “Are we sure it’s over?” Indigo asked.

  Tala hoped so. But what if their pursuers followed them through the wormhole jump? Did that mean they would follow the ship all the way back to Earth? And keep attacking it?

  “Is anybody injured?” she asked, then rubbed her own shoulder. It was sore, but just bruised.

  “No,” Katie said.

  “We stayed in our seats,” Indigo said.

  “I’m sure Sagitta would appreciate your obedience,” Tala said.

  The ship shuddered again. Damn it. They were being pursued.

  Because of her. Her and the other women.

  As much as Tala wanted to go home, at least for long enough to tell her mother not to worry and to make sure someone was taking care of her cat Mindy, she couldn’t help but wonder if this was a mistake. Was it selfish of them to ask that Sagitta risk his crew and give up his career for them? Not that he’d asked their opinions. He’d made the decision on his own. But had he anticipated this much trouble? Or had he imagined slipping away before people noticed and then dealing with the repercussions when he returned?

  Maybe it was wrong of her to presume to speak for everyone, but maybe she should talk to him and let him know that she, at the least, wouldn’t blame him if he turned around.