Cosmic Justice, Page 3

footsteps vanishing one by one. He had a good idea as to what was about to happen to him and he’d like one last cup before it went down.

  “Guys?” An edge of panic crept in the pilot’s voice. “Guys? This is not—” The speaker system shut down with a loud click, leaving only the faint hum of the ship’s engines.

  “Steven?”

  “Good to hear your voice,” He smiled and took another swig from his coffee. His smile widened to a grin as he leaned his elbows on the table in front of him. He felt surprisingly good for somebody who was about to die. “I gather the rest is slowly turning blue in the holds?”

  “They deserve it."

  “Yeah, we do.” He nodded down at the table. “It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.”

  “What? We were supposed to grow a non-oxygen dependent set of lungs?” He could hear her voice tremble with anger. “Good plan.”

  “Zang surprised me. I was going to leave you guys in the hold with your masks on,” He rubbed his eyes with a sigh. They always told him he wasn’t very smart and right now he felt even dumber than that. “I was going to come back. Or at least, all of you were going to be alive.”

  The last hours made him realize that the chances of Oon’s men letting him live were about as close to zero you could get, so he probably would have been trying to learn how to breathe vacuum by then, floating somewhere out between the stars.

  “You really aren’t the brightest light on the panel, are you.”

  “Guess not.”

  He didn’t know how she managed to control the pirate ship, but he suspected that it would only take a push of a button to either vent him out into space or just let him suffocate in the privacy of the empty pirate ship. Not a good way to go either way, but he was ready.

  “You know who ordered the job?”

  “Gangster called Oon got me in, could be someone hired him to do it.”

  A moment silence.

  “You want revenge?”

  Steven sat up straight, frowning up at the speaker that held Lora’s voice with a puzzled expression.

  “Can I?”

  “Well, I can. You can help.”

  Hope expanded his chest with butterflies as the possibility of not dying hooked onto his brain.

  “Hell yeah!”

  “Let me dock you back up.”

  Five: Steven

  The surprise on Oon’s face when he saw Steven on the docking camera told him everything he needed to know. Not that he doubted that the man squinting at him through the ship's camera ordered his cronies to throw him out the lock as soon as the job was done, but the expression on his face made Steve's miraculous survival taste even sweeter.

  “Where’s Suuz?”

  “We had some problems,” Steven pretended to push something on the console. A collection of dead buttons and levers, since Lora extracted their destination and diverted the controls to the Silver. “Wanna let us up?”

  To his credit, Oon hesitated with a thoughtful frown before he gestured to someone behind him to let them dock. Steve felt the clamps locking into place and tried not to let his elation show. Their plan, well Lora’s plan, was going to work.

  “Steve,” Lora’s whisper sounded urgent, even through the poor connection of his earpiece. “Get to the evac pod.”

  He nodded. Seeing Oon stare at him from the screen, he pointed a thumb behind him.

  “The boys need a hand.” Once he walked out of view of the camera, he ran.

  His vac-suit hung at the entrance of the minute emergency hopper and he pulled himself into it in record time, still closing flaps as he sat down behind the blinking console. Operating the hopper from inside the suit would be a pain, but the margins were narrow and he’d be close when the pirate ship blew. Bloody shame if he died of vacuum now.

  The blast shook the ship like a leaf in a storm.

  “Steve? Steven!”

  “Hmm... I’m here, I think. Just hit my head.” Steve blinked, considering whether he should tell her that sharp balls of cotton seemed to have replaced all his organs, and his hands.

  “I can’t take over steering from here, something must’ve broken,” Lora started to sound far away and a light on the console in front of Steve's helmet blinked red. “Just hang tight, I’ll come get you.”

  He must have fallen unconscious, because the next time he woke up it was inside Silver’s medical bay. He blinked against its probing lights, when a shape appeared at his side.

  “Hey stranger.”

  “Owf...”

  “Yeah... Silver says you’ll be good as new, but I guess it’s gonna hurt in the meantime. You should be up when we get to the mining station.”

  “Did we get him?”

  “Nothing left bigger than matchsticks.”

  “Good,” Steve said, giving up his attempt to sit and laying back down. Lora reached into the recovery unit, eliciting an annoyed bleep from the computer. He could feel the pressure of her hand closing around his numb fingers.

  He turned his head and forced his lips into a smile.

  “They're bound to have some hands to spare to help you fly the Silver back to base.”

  Lora shook her head at him.

  "I'll be fine." He said, closing his fingers around her hand.

  "No you won't, and you know it." One corner of her mouth inched up in a miniature smile. "And I worked hard to save your ass, so I'll be damned before I let some miner's tribunal shoot my last crewmate."

  ***

  ***

  Thank you for reading Cosmic Justice.

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  Titles by F.E. Hubert

  Tales of Mufroen and Dun

  Sword of the Sands

  Book of Magic

  Sword in the City

  Isles of Krake

  Coming soon:

  Dog’s blade

  Swords and Magic (Tales of Mufroen and Dun 1-5)

  Land of imagination

  Dark Temple

  Cosmic Justice

  Coming soon:

  Haunted