The Ghalian Code: Space Assassins 3 Read online

  “Demelza! Jump!”

  She was not as proficient as Laskar in emergency plotting and jump execution. He was a pilot and navigator, while she was an assassin. But necessity was one hell of a motivating factor. Demelza engaged the jump just as the shuttle craft slammed into the surface of the moon right behind them.

  Just as the two konuses exploded in a massive blast of magical destruction, sending debris containing personal effects, supplies, and even body parts scattering about the surface of the moon.

  The ship was gone. Destroyed by their own foolish tactics and their pursuers’ deadly magic.

  Or so it seemed.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The spacecraft that exited its jump in the middle of nowhere had done so abruptly, and with an unusually strong bit of magic. The space around it crackled with the overflow of dangerously discharged power before settling back into its normal inky blackness.

  The term “middle of nowhere” was particularly apt in this instance, as the ship had jumped not to one of the myriad systems in the galaxy, but to that empty space where nothing dwelled.

  The darkness between the solar systems.

  It hadn’t been intentional. An emergency jump to whatever coordinates were available had been all there was time for, and Demelza had done her best to simply get them out of the mess they were in as fast as she was able.

  But in the process, Uzabud’s ship had been flung to a place utterly devoid of light and life.

  People would venture into the black from time to time. It was perfectly normal, and even needed at times when the jump between systems was particularly long. But to do so unintentionally was never anyone’s choice. Yet here they were.

  Uzabud was the first to question their circumstances when he roused from the abrupt nap caused by the pressures of what might very well have been his final maneuver had he failed. He quickly scanned the area, trying to get a fix on where they were and what their status was.

  Hozark was already up, kneeling beside his fallen friend. Demelza had not been strapped in when they jumped, which was normally not a problem. But with the forces of Bud’s daring maneuver in play, she had been rudely slammed to the deck the moment the jump engaged.

  “What––” she said as she began to wake.

  “Slowly,” Hozark said. “We are safe. Take a moment and gather your bearings.”

  She did as he asked, slowly taking stock of her body. She seemed intact, but the throbbing told her she would have a decent bump on her head, and quite an ache to go along with it. But it appeared that aside from that, she was all right.

  “Oh, my stomach,” Laskar said, unslumping in his seat.

  Hozark was about to move to check on him when quite abruptly he and Demelza quite abruptly began floating. A few moments later, they were dropped back to the deck.

  “Ouch,” she grumbled with annoyance.

  “Bud, the Drookonus,” Hozark called out to his friend.

  The pilot wasted no time, quickly pulling the magical device free. It was still orange-hot from the excessive power that had been pulled from it, thin wisps of smoke trailing up into the compartment’s air.

  “Ouch! Shit, that’s hot!” he said, dropping it to the deck with a loud thunk.

  The sound woke Henni. The violet-haired woman slowly raised her head, taking a deep, pained breath. Even more than the others, the rigors of their escape had taken their toll on her wee body. She immediately passed out once more.

  “Where the hell are we?” Laskar mumbled as he cleared his head and looked at his console. “What happened? Who jumped us here?”

  “That would be me,” Demelza said, rising to her feet. “And as for where we are, I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  “I’m sorry, you what, now?”

  “I found the first clear pathway I could and jumped us. You had passed out, and we were about to be killed, so I was left with few options.”

  “But we’re in the middle of the black. There’s nothing around us. Like, nothing.”

  “Not intentionally, I assure you. When the blast erupted behind this craft, it was just as the jump was being cast. There was konus magic in that event, and its eruption pushed us far out of line with the intended jump.”

  “That would explain the fried Drookonus,” Bud mused.

  “Likely,” Hozark said.

  “Are you all missing the fact that we’re drifting in the black?” Laskar said, once again pointing out their dilemma.

  “But we are alive, so at least there is that,” Demelza said before abruptly floating in the air once more.

  “Bud, will you please see to that?” Hozark asked, floating beside her.

  “On it.”

  The pilot pulled from the konus embedded in his command seat and reached out to his ship’s many spell systems. It took a minute to pinpoint the breakdown, but soon enough he had managed to right the ship’s gravity spells. For the time being, anyway.

  “Okay, that should hold for a bit, but we’ve got some problems.”

  “What kind of problems, Bud?”

  “The kind that mean we can’t jump.”

  “We’re stranded here?” Laskar said, a shrill note of panic creeping into his voice.

  “Not stranded. Not exactly. But the gravity is spotty, the ship needs a top-to-bottom check to ensure the hull’s integrity, and the Drookonus is fried. So yeah, we can’t jump. Not now, anyway.”

  “But Hozark has an extra Drookonus.”

  “Did you miss the part where I said we need to check the hull? There’s way too much stress that is put on the ship by flight to use one now. I mean, for all we know, it’s the magical shielding that’s keeping the air inside. And if that fails and we haven’t patched any hurt the ship may have incurred, we’re screwed. And I mean the dead-and-floating-in-space kind of screwed, if you catch my drift.”

  Demelza walked to the slumped-over young woman in the far chair and checked her for a pulse.

  “She lives,” the assassin said, then gently rubbed the nerve point on Henni’s neck to stimulate increased blood flow to her brain.

  A moment later the typically perky woman roused once more, but slowly, and with watering eyes.

  “What happened?”

  “We survived,” Demelza said.

  Henni’s eyes finally focused and she looked around at her shipmates. All were well, it seemed.

  “Oh, shit. I’m so sorry,” she said, spying the splatter on the far wall. “I’ll get a rag,” she said weakly as she fumbled with her seat restraints.

  Bud rose and helped her to her feet in a rare display of concern. “Go lay down. We’ll take care of it. Demelza, would you see her to her room?”

  “Of course. Come along, Henni. Let us get you to a bed to better regain your energy.”

  “Okay,” the violet-haired girl said, allowing herself to be led down the corridor.

  “Now I know she feels bad,” Bud said. “No way she’d have gone along with that normally.”

  Hozark gave him a curious smile. “You surprise me, Uzabud. I did not think you had it in you.”

  “Hey, she may be an annoying little shit, but she’s part of our team, right?”

  The Wampeh nodded once.

  Bud walked around the command center, running his hand over the ship’s smooth interior. “She performed well, this old girl,” he said. “Not designed for those kinds of forces. Not by a long shot. But she got us out of there in one piece.”

  “But to where is the question,” Laskar noted. “I’m going to have a bit of work with the star charts, I fear.”

  “Then get to it,” Bud replied. “Hozark and I are going to get started going over every bit of this ship. She seems all right, and we’re alive, but you never look a gift Malooki in the mouth.”

  “Of course not. They’ll bite,” Laskar joked.

  “Not quite how it goes, but good enough,” Bud said with a grin. It seemed his copilot’s snark was returning, and that meant he would be okay. “Come on, Hozark,
we’ve got work to do.”

  The two men walked the ship they knew so well, each focusing on opposite sides of the compartment or corridor they were passing through. They both wore powerful konuses, hoping they would not be needed, but ready to use them if necessary.

  Either one of them could make a survey of the ship on their own, but with damage and decompression a possibility, having backup was the wisest move. It also allowed them to discuss the surprising turn of events that had led them to this point.

  They had reached the galley when Demelza joined them, likewise wearing her strongest konus for the task. She reached out with her magic as did the others, probing the craft with specialized spells, seeking out any flaws or weaknesses.

  Normally, that bit of magic was used to either sabotage or infiltrate a craft. But now the pair of assassins were using it for a far different purpose. Fortunately, thus far, at least, the craft had seemed to be intact and unharmed. But they still had a long way to go.

  “That was a lot of ships back there,” Bud said as they swept for damage.

  “Indeed,” Hozark agreed.

  “No, I mean a lot of ships.”

  “I know what you are getting at, Bud, and I agree. This is not a fight we wish to engage in, nor one we could win with our limited numbers.”

  “Not just that, though. That wasn’t normal. We jumped into that system and made a normal approach. There was no reason for that many of them to have been standing by. They came at us as soon as we were close. And to cast a jump net to keep us there? That spells out just one thing.”

  “I agree, Bud. They obviously were tipped off that we were coming. Or that someone was coming, in any case.”

  “Arvin?” Demelza asked. “We did let him live.”

  “I do not think so,” Hozark said. “He did not strike me as the sort who wanted to give up his comfortable lifestyle. And if he did make it back to town in one piece, he was very well aware that any negative actions on his part against us would result in very serious ramifications. He would have had to give up all he had. And I do not believe he would do that.”

  The others considered that point. It was a sound assessment of the man.

  “If not him, then whom?” Bud asked.

  “With all of the stones we have been turning over in this search, I am afraid anything is possible. And now we are in a difficult position, almost certainly unable to approach Zargota without detection.”

  “Yeah, even if they bought our fake death, which we did quite expertly, I might add, they’ll still be on high alert for some time,” Bud said.

  “But we did gather an important clue in this encounter,” Demelza interjected. “And one that may well mean we do not have to return to Zargota at all.”

  “Oh?” Hozark said. “Explain.”

  “When we were in combat, I noted something unusual about a few of the attack craft that were pursuing us. When their pilots lost consciousness their slowed movements allowed me a better look.”

  “What did you see? They just looked like a bunch of assholes trying to blast us out of the sky to me,” Bud said.

  “Did you not see the markings on the ships?”

  “Markings? No, sorry. I was too busy trying to keep us from getting shot down.”

  “Which we all appreciate. But I did get a good look, and they were not just Ravik’s Council ships. Several of them bore the markings of Emmik Urtzal.”

  Bud looked confused. “But he’s a low-ranking emmik. Not even a key player in Council affairs. Why would he have ships there?”

  “An excellent question. I would be willing to wager they were not there by accident,” she replied.

  A faint smile began to form at the corners of Hozark’s lips. “The man craves power, and what better way to curry favor than to help out one of the Twenty? There would be no reason for them to be present unless he was somehow involved.”

  “Exactly. And if Visla Ravik knew a rescue attempt would be coming to his base of operations––”

  “He wouldn’t want to keep the kid there, just in case,” Bud said. “Holy shit. Do you guys know what this means?”

  The two assassins most certainly did.

  “Yes, Bud,” Hozark replied. “It would seem quite likely that young Happizano Jinnik is not on Zargota at all. He is likely with Emmik Urtzal.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The process of inspecting and repairing Bud’s ship took nearly twelve hours, even with Laskar joining the party once he had finally figured out where they were out there in the middle of nowhere.

  Apparently, while the hull remained unbreached, some sections of the ship’s superstructure had become stressed to the point of damage. Not failure, but weak spots had sprung up, and they needed to be addressed before they dared fly into potentially hostile space again.

  The process was relatively simple. It was just time consuming. And now that they had a better idea of where Visla Jinnik’s boy was truly being held, they wanted to get moving far sooner than later. Unfortunately, the repairs would take as long as they did, and there was no way around that.

  “With the damage the overloaded Drookonus did when it crapped out in that most spectacular fashion, I would estimate we’ll be able to fly at about eighty-five percent efficiency until we can get this old girl in for a proper overhaul,” Bud said when they finally powered the craft up and tested it with a very short jump.

  “Okay, so it’ll take us a bit longer, then. But at least it’ll hold together, right?” Laskar asked.

  “Yeah, she’ll get us where we’re going. I just sincerely hope we don’t run into any significant problems along the way.”

  “You and me both,” his copilot agreed.

  “Did we jump?” a groggy-eyed Henni asked as she padded into the command center.

  “We did. You feelin’ any better?” Bud asked.

  “Yeah. How long was I out?”

  “Over twelve hours. It would seem the wear and tear on your body was a bit more intense than we had originally realized,” Demelza said.

  “I don’t do good with that kind of thing,” Henni said. “Not that it’s a regular occurrence, but I remember when I was a girl, I would get sick a lot from it.”

  “Why would you get sick from travel?” Laskar asked.

  “Oh, they didn’t use the good spells in my part of the ship. Didn’t want to waste precious magic, you know.”

  They had all known their newest guest had gone through some rough times and had even been enslaved, but now it appeared as if she had an even more difficult past than she’d let on.

  For her to have been kept in such conditions meant the cruelest of slavers. Not the kind who cared one bit about their cargo. People died in those conditions, and regularly. While Ootaki or Drooks would undoubtedly get preferential treatment, anyone else would be seen as having the same value as a pack animal, if not less.

  Hozark and Demelza were Wampeh Ghalian, and their order had a very, very negative outlook on slavery in general. That this had happened to one of their friends made it even more repugnant.

  Laskar took it in stride, as was his laissez-faire way. But Bud felt a visceral rage bubble up within him. Annoying or not, the idea that this poor little woman had been abused so terribly made him want nothing more than to punish those responsible, likely leaving a trail of their remains as warning to any who would think to copy their actions.

  You can take the pirate out of his fleet, but you can never take the pirate out of the man.

  Uzabud quickly got his anger under control, turning his attention back to the task at hand, but the vein on his neck was still visibly throbbing.

  “You ready, Laskar?”

  “Yeah. Just say when, Bud.”

  He double-checked their systems. “Jump.”

  It took fourteen jumps spread out across a far longer period than they’d have liked before they reached Emmik Urtzal’s system. Tempting as it was to push themselves and make it in eight, Bud knew full well he had to go easy on his shi
p until it had been properly repaired.

  “This time we take the shimmer ships,” Hozark said. “Demelza and I will do a recon of the emmik’s domain. You stay well clear of his homeworld. We likely have the element of surprise, but given what happened back at Zargota, we must be prepared for anything.”

  “Can I come?” Henni asked.

  “I am sorry, little one, but not for this mission.”

  “Come on, I want to help.”

  Hozark glanced at Bud. “But you will serve us so much better here, keeping an eye on our friends, standing ready if they need assistance. All Demelza and I will be doing is flying around and reconnoitering the location. Why, we probably won’t even set down.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course,” he lied.

  There was no way he and Demelza would not gather intel on the ground firsthand if they could safely do so. Even if it wasn’t safe, in fact.

  “Skree us if you find anything,” Laskar said.

  “The skrees appeared to have been damaged by the surge of magic during our escape. I fear they will need to be replaced.”

  “Well, that’s just great. What if things go to hell on us?”

  “Then we improvise,” Hozark replied. “But first and foremost, we must know what exactly we are dealing with. For this emmik to have become involved with the likes of Visla Ravik, there must be more in play than we know.”

  “Why’s that?” Laskar asked.

  “Because Urtzal is a low-level player within the Council’s organization. He has little to offer aside from his service and loyalty. Power-wise, he is nothing of note, though he has enough to be an emmik, of course.”

  “So what’s in it for him?” Bud asked.

  “He has aspirations, my friend. And men who aspire to be more will often sell their souls for the opportunity for advancement. In this case, by helping Ravik, he may very well be positioning himself for a stronger position within the Council’s ranks once Ravik makes his move. Whatever that may ultimately prove to be.”

  “But why take the kid to go through all of this? I mean, I get it, his dad’s really strong. But Ravik has him doing ridiculous little jobs. Things way below his abilities.”