Angle of Truth Read online

  “Got it,” Austin said, startling her.

  Her concentration lapsed, and the determined rock-slingers almost made it to the ramp. She refocused, erected her barrier, and pushed them backward with it. They were confused and afraid, but not yet ready to give up. They felt themselves so close. It was worth risking pain for this much food.

  Lemaire turned toward the boys and fired, absolutely no sympathy in his jaded heart. But this time, her barrier was up, and it worked both ways. His blazer bolt ricocheted off it and zipped back over his shoulder.

  Yelping, he flung himself to the ramp. “What in all three suns’ hells was that?”

  “A Starseer shield,” she said, leveling a cool gaze at him, hoping he would connect some dots and realize he’d been foolish to grab her wrist.

  “Here,” Austin said, tapping something tucked under his arm. A box of exposed wires and circuitry. Then he opened his palm, displaying small objects. “Put these in. You, too, mister.”

  Jelena managed to keep her barrier up while she accepted the items Austin pressed into her hand. Were those earplugs? He gave two to Lemaire, who was still on his belly on the ramp, glowering into the smoke around them, then ran down the ramp, calling, “Erick?”

  Jelena struggled to extend her barrier to protect Austin as he moved closer to the truck. She would never forgive herself if she let Erick’s little brother get killed.

  Another grenade came sailing out of the smoke, this time, toward the truck. Jelena was on the verge of dropping her barrier so she could knock it away, but a breeze whispered through, stealing some of the smoke, and she saw Thor flick a finger. The grenade not only bounced away, but it flew so high into the gray sky that it detonated a thousand feet above their heads where it did not harm anyone.

  Thor whirled to face two men as they leaped onto the cargo bed from the side—it was clear they had intended to get to the truck under the chaos created by the grenade. Its failure did not deter them. One swung a board with sharp nails protruding from the end. Thor swiped through it with the curved blade of his sword, then threw a side kick. His heel slammed into the man’s stomach, the power of the blow hurling him out of the truck where he landed hard on the road. Without pausing, Thor knocked a makeshift weapon out of his second foe’s hands and flung him back, too, this time, using pure Starseer power rather than a physical attack. The man flew farther than his comrade, his back hammering into a shipping container.

  Jelena only glimpsed Masika before the smoke curled in again, obscuring her view, but numerous foes were down around her. Jelena took some solace in the fact that Thor’s sword hadn’t been dripping blood, but she had no idea if the people at Masika’s feet were unconscious or dead. An angry, frustrated ball formed in the pit of her stomach.

  “Stop attacking!” she yelled, trying to infuse the power of persuasion into her order, hoping something might get through to these people. They couldn’t win. Didn’t they understand that?

  Austin appeared out of the smoke again and set his machine at the base of the ramp. He tapped a button, and an ear-splitting wail erupted from it. Ear-splitting was no exaggeration. It was all Jelena could do not to crumple to her knees.

  Austin pointed at her hand, and she thrust the earplugs in. A horrible caterwauling came from the cargo hold. Alfie. Jelena sensed her fleeing from the ramp—from that machine. She raced all the way to NavCom and flung herself onto the folded blanket under the console, her paws over her ears.

  Jelena could still hear the awful noise through the earplugs, but it wasn’t quite as debilitating. Lemaire rolled to his knees and stuffed his own plugs in. Two men ran past the base of the ramp, clutching at their ears. One had blood trickling down his jaw. Damn, that was an effective weapon, whatever it was. But a weapon that didn’t kill. Those who were capable of it ran away. Earlier, there had been other people on the road and the docks, but they had disappeared into their ships as soon as the fighting began. Far in the distance, a couple of people leaned out of hatches and shook fists in Jelena’s direction before disappearing back inside. Those without ships to retreat into ran toward the city. Except for those who were too injured to manage. At least five people were dead, Jelena realized, letting her senses trickle over the road—over the battleground.

  All of them had died from blazer fire. That of Lemaire and his helpers. The woman who’d been loading cargo was injured, her arm hanging limply at her side, and Jelena couldn’t blame her for opening fire, but the entire situation frustrated her.

  Let’s get this cargo unloaded and off our hands, Erick spoke into her mind as he stomped up the ramp, his face like a storm cloud. He gave a significant look to the dead boy, and Jelena knew he shared her frustration.

  Austin left the machine running, and Jelena’s small team passed Lemaire to grab hand tractors and finish the task. He made a quick comm call, then positioned himself at the top of the ramp, on guard instead of helping. As if anyone would try again with that noise generator blaring.

  In an impressively short time, the cargo was out of the Snapper’s hold and piled into the back of the big truck.

  Austin turned off his machine. Jelena’s ears still rang, and she didn’t hurry to remove the plugs. She tapped Lemaire’s shoulder and held up the holodisplay, needing his virtual signature. She made her eyes steely, hoping he wasn’t going to balk again.

  He gave her an exasperated look, as if that mess had all been her fault, but swiped his finger through the air above her netdisc.

  A small truck rolled down the promenade. Jelena expected the authorities or maybe an ambulance. Instead, a few people in black, collared shirts like Lemaire’s jumped out, all wearing flak vests and carrying blazer rifles. He strode down the ramp without a farewell, directed a couple of them into the back of his company’s truck and another into the cab. He claimed the driver’s seat for himself and drove away. The other truck followed. Security escort.

  “Enjoy your food,” Jelena muttered and turned toward the hold.

  She almost bumped into Erick. He was scowling after the trucks.

  “What a mess,” he said.

  “Not quite what I expected from our first freight run out here,” Jelena admitted.

  “No?” Erick snorted. “What did you think it would be like working out among the border worlds? The Alliance’s reach doesn’t extend out here, and most of the moon and planetary governments, if they exist at all, are corrupt. There’s a reason your parents don’t take runs out here that often.” He shook his head and stomped toward engineering.

  He hadn’t said it, but Jelena couldn’t help but feel he was blaming her for this predicament, or at least the fact that they were running freight out here. If so, it wouldn’t be misplaced blame. Her fiasco back on Alpha 17, rescuing lab animals from a corporation that had a long reach, had led her parents to decide their new freighter—and its crew—would be better off taking jobs in a part of the system that fewer people paid attention to. Jelena still didn’t know if the Alliance wanted her arrested—or worse—for the damage she had done to a space base when they’d been escaping pursuit.

  Austin grabbed his machine, tucked it under his arm, and headed for engineering.

  “Austin?” Jelena decided not to call him Little Ostberg, as her mom sometimes did. After his help, he deserved to be called by his first name. “Thanks. That was a good idea.”

  “Welcome.” He gave her a crisp salute, as if he were an Alliance military officer rather than a seventeen-year-old kid working to save money for the university.

  Jelena looked around their dock and the road again as she reached for the hatch controls. She shook her head at the dead people, the potholes created by the grenades, the broken boards and clubs that had once been used as weapons, and at the utter lack of any police, enforcers, or similar authorities coming out to investigate. Coming to help people.

  Feeling like she was running from the scene of a crime, she let her chin drop to her chest as she tapped the buttons to withdraw the ramp and close the hatc
h.

  “It’s only going to get worse,” Thor said quietly, as he walked over to stand beside her.

  Jelena scowled, not wanting another lecture, or something she would interpret as a lecture. He’d been assassinating his father’s old enemies when she’d talked him into taking a break and lying low with her crew for a while—surely he didn’t have the right to lecture. “I didn’t know prognostication was among your Starseer talents.”

  “It’s not, but I’ve traveled out here. For training exercises and to make contact with old allies of my father, people who find it preferable to live out here rather than in Alliance territory.” He tilted his head, almost reminding her of Alfie, as he regarded her. “If you can, you need to harden your heart to the poverty and desperation, or you’ll be miserable every time we stop.”

  “Harden my heart? Thor, I rescue animals, never want anybody to feel bad, and don’t eat meat that isn’t vat-grown because I can’t stomach the thought of something dying on my behalf. What makes you think I could possibly harden anything?”

  “So you’re opting for misery?”

  “Maybe the stars have deemed it my fate.”

  “The stars are indifferent to us. We create our own fate.” He extended a hand toward the cabins and NavCom, perhaps offering to walk that way with her.

  “If you believed that was true, you wouldn’t be trying to do your father’s bidding ten years after his death.”

  His face grew closed, and Jelena wished she could retract the comment. Unlike Erick, he hadn’t been blaming her for anything. He’d almost seemed consoling, or at least as close to it as someone could get while dressed like an Old Earth ninja, carrying around an uber sword, and wearing a chip on his shoulder the size of an asteroid.

  “Trying to become the man my father groomed me to be isn’t casting my fate to the stars,” Thor said. “The more I see of these planets out here, the more convinced I am that the empire needs to return. The Alliance is too content with the territory it has—you’ll notice that they took the wealthiest, most resource-rich planets for themselves while abandoning the rest—to care about what happens out here. My father wanted everyone to be protected and have a job and food and shelter. Not just those born on desirable planets.”

  He walked away, his back stiffer than it had been before they started talking, and Jelena resisted the urge to point out that a lot of the employed people in the empire had resented the utter lack of freedom they’d had. They might not have been physically hungry, but their souls had been starved.

  She kept the words to herself. She didn’t want to argue with Thor, and she also didn’t want him pointing out again that she’d been eight when the empire fell and didn’t truly know how it had been. He never seemed to want to accept that he’d only been ten and had been so sheltered as the son of an emperor that he hadn’t had any idea how it had been, either.

  “Jelena?” Masika called from the corridor. “Comm message for you.”

  Jelena waved in acknowledgment but grimaced too. Maybe it was only because of Thor’s prediction, but she doubted that message would herald anything good.

  Chapter 2

  In NavCom, Jelena checked the exterior cameras to make sure no further trouble was heading for the Snapper before sliding into the pilot’s seat and answering the comm. Her mother and stepfather, Leonidas, appeared in the holodisplay above the console. It was a recorded message rather than live, the origination stamp reading Demeter. Her parents and their freighter, the Star Nomad, were doing runs within the heart of Alliance territory, as usual. Of course, they hadn’t blown parts off any Alliance space bases or irked any big medical research corporations lately.

  “Hello, sweetie,” Mom said, lifting a hand in greeting.

  Leonidas arched his eyebrows at Mom. “Are you sure you should greet her so warmly for this news?” His eyes glinted with humor, but the words made Jelena uneasy. What news?

  “You think I should greet her with stern words? She might close the comm before hearing the whole message if I did that.”

  “Just promise to send along some brownies if she listens to the end,” Leonidas said, winking toward the camera. “Or maybe some horse dolls.”

  “Jelena recently assured me that she’s too old to play with dolls.”

  “Then what are all of those fur and plush horses lining the ledge above her bed?”

  “I believe she said those were collectibles.”

  Though Jelena wished they would get to the point and not keep her in suspense, she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of nostalgia for her cabin back on the Nomad. After a month aboard the Snapper, the ship didn’t feel so strange—and she’d had warm feelings toward it ever since they bought it, since it was shaped like a turtle—but it wasn’t home, not yet. She didn’t know if it ever would be when Leonidas and Mom and her sisters, Maya and Nika, weren’t here, but she was glad Erick, who had been like a brother to her for the last ten years, had joined her crew. And Thor… well, they’d been childhood friends, not siblings, and after more than ten years apart, she wasn’t sure what they were now. Still, she was glad to have him back in her life, for however limited a time that might be. Austin and Masika were much newer acquaintances, and she didn’t know if she would ever think of them as family. For now, they were the crew. A crew that, strangely enough, she was in charge of. Being a captain seemed odd, even if she’d been the one who had wheedled and pleaded for the family to add a second ship to the business. Or maybe especially because of that. She hadn’t truly earned her position, not yet.

  Mom took a deep breath, and Leonidas, as if he could read her thoughts, sobered, his eyes turning toward Jelena.

  She grabbed her stallion mug, sipped from the blazonberry vitamin drink inside, and mentally braced herself, certain they were about to get to the meat of their message. She was relieved she could contemplate a response before sending it. From this far out, it would take hours to be relayed back to the core worlds.

  “We received an invoice, Jelena.” Mom lifted her eyebrows, as if Jelena should know all about it.

  “Erm?" Jelena hadn’t tried to order anything on the company account.

  “Jelena?” Erick asked, popping into NavCom. “Oh, never mind,” he added when he saw the message playing.

  Jelena paused it, certain she didn’t want to know about any invoices her parents were bringing to her attention. “What is it?”

  Erick paused a step inside the hatchway, looking like he intended to retreat and give her privacy.

  “I just wanted to say sorry. About being grumpy back there.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder toward the cargo hold, or perhaps toward the docks outside.

  “You don’t have to be.” Jelena sipped from her mug. “I’m grumpy too.”

  “You don’t look grumpy when you’re drinking out of a horse’s butt.”

  “It’s a stallion, and his butt isn’t up here.” She pointed at the rim of the mug.

  “Are you sure? The handle is his tail, and your lips are close to that.”

  “My lips are above the handle. This could be his croup—his rump—but definitely not his butt.”

  “Aren’t the rump and the butt the same thing?”

  “It’s clear that you didn’t take an anatomy class at that fancy university of yours.”

  “No, nobody cares if an engineer can locate a horse’s butt. Or his own.” He grinned and thumped her on the shoulder. “Are they telling us what our next assignment is? Should I come back later? I wouldn’t mind getting the Snapper out of the vicinity of these docks.”

  Yes, Jelena planned to take off as soon as she played the rest of the message.

  “You might as well sit down.” She waved to the co-pilot’s seat. “I assume that information will be coming after I hear about the invoice.”

  “Invoice?”

  Jelena hit play.

  “Yes,” Leonidas said, “a bill caught up to us when we were making our last delivery. From the Alliance government. Our company, we were inform
ed, owes over fifty thousand tindarks for damage to a space base on Upsilon Seven. It seems that the Snapper blew up a large chunk of its support structure.”

  “With the star cannon mounted in the turret atop the ship,” Mom added. “Jelena, how could you blow up part of a star base?”

  “There were armored thugs on it trying to storm the Snapper,” she blurted, even though her parents couldn’t hear her.

  “You didn’t tell them about that part when we were back on Arkadius?” Erick asked.

  “I said we had to depart Upsilon Seven in a hurry due to extenuating circumstances.”

  “Exploding space bases are extenuating.”

  “It was just the ramp. And the ramps under the ramp. And the framework attaching the ramp to everything else. And some of the everything else.”

  “I’m sure more specific details are on the invoice,” Erick murmured.

  “I got a message from Senator Hawk, who’d heard about the invoice and the incident,” Mom went on. “Apparently, we’re lucky that our business is only being fined, as a lot of the local enforcers were hurt. More than a dozen armored men were killed, too.” Mom gave Leonidas a dark look. Or maybe that was a darkly concerned look. “But since they were with a mercenary outfit based out of the border worlds, and their supposed employers later denied having anything to do with the attack on the base, the Alliance isn’t putting out an arrest warrant for those who killed them.”

  “It sounds like Hawk may have pulled a few strings to make sure of that,” Leonidas said in a disapproving rumble. He didn’t like owing people favors, especially not Alliance people, not with his imperial background.

  “We’ve taken out a loan to pay off the debt,” Mom said.

  Jelena winced. Her parents were supposed to be saving money for the twins to go to college, not paying off egregious debts. Fifty thousand tindarks? Up until a few weeks ago, Jelena’s allowance had been ten tindarks a month. She couldn’t fathom tens of thousands of tindarks, or how one made that much money. She was fairly certain they were only getting about a thousand for the delivery they’d just made, and she had to pay people’s wages and resupply the Snapper with the majority of that.