Current drift, p.1
Current Drift, page 1
CONTENTS
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
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Also By Kate Sheeran Swed
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CHAPTER 1
Once upon a time, Sloane’s life had not involved politics, battles, or takedowns of illegal deep-space mining operations. Ever. At all.
She hadn’t fully appreciated that time. In fact, she owed that time an apology and a dozen roses. Because at the moment, she was involved rather heavily in all three.
This particular deep-space mining operation, pinpointed because of the data she and Gareth had stolen from the Federation’s headquarters, was constructed from a dizzying network of clear-sided bridges. She found herself running across one of those bridges now, escorting scientists to help stop the Cosmic Trade Federation from mining stasis fields out of the galaxy’s trade Currents.
That would be the take-down part.
The bridge’s colorless walls made it all too easy to see the battle raging outside, where Fleet vessels fired on surprised CTF guard ships, cutting off access to the nearby Current and preventing their escape. All the spiraling and shooting out there made Sloane feel as if she were running upside-down through the middle of open space, though her feet were locked to the ground by the station’s gravity. She tried not to imagine Captain Lager standing on his ship, with his gravity locking his feet in the opposite direction. It was enough to make a girl seasick.
A trio of CTF guards came roaring down the corridor ahead of the boarding party, and Sloane flattened herself against the nearest pillar to take aim. She didn’t know why an otherwise colorless tube had white pillars running down the center, but far be it from her to criticize the Federation’s aesthetic choices.
She’d set her own shooter to stun, but judging by the blast marks that blackened the floor and ceiling, the CTF had not done the same. One of the guards made a run for her, and Sloane’s next shot hit him square in the chest, knocking him back, while Gareth and Ivy shielded the scientists with rounds of cover fire from behind a second pillar.
Sloane blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Storm the station, you said.” Her shooter whined as it recharged, and she gave it a shake, willing it to power up faster. “It’ll be easy, you said.”
Gareth moved out from behind his pillar, ducking as a shot whined over his head. “I didn’t say that. I said, ‘leave it to the soldiers, you can shoot at the CTF from Moneymaker.’”
“But it’s my scientist they need.”
Alex was walking calmly behind them, as if sauntering through a museum rather than a war zone. She kept gazing out of the windows, like the raging battle out there—or in here, for that matter—didn’t bother her whatsoever. Like it would merely be an object of interest if an out-of-control frigate came barreling into their glass tube. Next to Alex, Chief Escher looked equally distracted, frowning distantly as she picked her way along the corridor. Like her mind was on this morning’s crossword puzzle.
Ivy, at least, had her full concentration aimed on the battle.
“Again,” Gareth said, “my soldiers could have taken care of your scientist.”
“I’m my own scientist,” Alex protested. “Thank you very much.”
Sloane scoffed, still scanning for unfriendly guards ahead. The fire seemed to have tapered off somewhat; maybe the Fleet soldiers were clearing the way. About time. “I care more about her than they do,” she said, “and also, you were very recently knocked unconscious by a stasis field. I don’t trust your judgment.”
She had, in fact, argued rather strenuously against his accompanying them here. She didn’t relish the thought of spending another night at his bedside, wondering if he’d ever wake up. But the man was impossible to deter once he’d decided on a course of action. It could be infuriating, really.
Gareth pulled her behind another pillar as a fresh round of CTF soldiers came roaring out of the hallway ahead. The Federation might not have been expecting this particular attack, but they’d definitely staffed the place with a fair amount of protection by default.
Despite the guards’ best efforts, though, Sloane’s party had almost made it out of the glass-tube section and into the heart of the station. They’d caught the Federation by surprise, and with Captain Lager hammering their guard ships’ defenses, they were left to defend it without support. They didn’t have the same numbers as the Fleet.
Unless reinforcements arrived, of course. That was the main concern, time-wise. But Lager was out there preventing anyone from diving into the Current, so real-time messaging would be impossible unless someone managed to slip away unseen.
The Fleet did put on a coordinated operation. Not that Sloane would ever tell Gareth that.
A disk the size of a button came skittering out of the group of guards, landing several feet short of where she and Gareth were hiding behind the pillar. On instinct, she dove for the thing, using the side of her hand to whack it back down the corridor.
The disk exploded, sending a pulse of screaming noise through the tube. Sloane clapped her non-shooter-holding hand over one ear on instinct—little good that would do—and sent a retaliatory stun shot back toward the soldiers. Just because her ear drums were throbbing did not mean she’d let the CTF advance here. The Fleet soldiers were making a path ahead of them; she and Gareth were only supposed to be cleaning up stragglers.
A lot of stragglers, clearly.
“Was that Interplanetary Dwellers’ tech?” Sloane asked, ears still ringing. She’d never seen anything like it. “I’d have expected it to do something fancier.”
The disk exploded a second time, and Sloane threw herself to the ground as spikes erupted from the center of the disk before she’d hit the floor. It looked like a huge sea urchin, only its spikes were made of a clear, glassy substance, a match to the stuff in the floors and walls. As if the coin had actually pulled the materials up and around itself, rearranging them into an obstacle. At least her well-timed toss had landed it in an off-center position.
“Never mind,” she said. What the hell was that thing?
A Fleet soldier appeared on the other side of the spines, peering around them to beckon the party forward. There were still sounds of shooting out ahead, but they were muffled now, and more occasional.
Sloane hoped that meant they’d be getting to the lab soon, where Alex and Escher could deactivate the mining tech. She stepped around the spiky ball, eyeing it cautiously in case it decided to explode a third time. And maybe shoot those spikes through her flesh, or make new spikes out of her flesh.
“As I mentioned,” Gareth said, as Alex, Ivy, and Escher climbed around the now-crystalized leftovers from the bomb and hurried to catch up, “my soldiers could have handled this.”
His soldiers. She risked glancing away from the spikes, just for a second, to look at him instead. He was totally in Commander mode, his expression set in that unreadable mask he liked to wear in battle. Though Sloane flattered herself that she could read it pretty well by now; he was just focused and ready to start giving orders.
“Are they your soldiers?” she asked.
Gareth shot her a glance, his attention still mainly focused on the corridor. His hair was damp enough to have gone all curly, his forehead smudged with dirt or maybe char. Battle mud. Ever ubiquitous. “What?” he said.
The ceiling shuddered just ahead of them, where the glass tube met the metal plating of the level ahead, and Sloane whipped her shooter up in time to stun a would-be attacker before the person could stick their head out and open fire. The soldier fell from the ceiling, thumping to the floor with a shout and a groan. Sloane was definitely getting better at this.
She stepped over the fallen guard, refraining from pausing to tell him it’d been a good idea, in theory. “I got the impression you might be thinking about, you know, bringing your talents elsewhere,” she said. “Changing careers.”
Gareth was now scanning the ceiling, likely considering other ways the guards could attack them. “Are we doing this now?”
“I mean, we’re in another life-and-death fight,” she said. “Why not? Though I know a change of career at your age could be—”
“Stop,” he said. “Please. I beg you. I’m not that old.”
“We need to unpack why your age bothers you so much, Fortune.”
They exited the tube, which was a relief since those windows were making Sloane nauseous, and emerged in front of a heavy silver door. At least, it looked heavy; the hinges were massive, and a bunch of Fleet soldiers were bent over the lock pad, one of them aiming some kind of laser tool at it while three more pointed and offered suggestions. Or so she imagined. It was the kind of scene that begged for a joke, one that started with ‘how many Fleet soldiers does it take to…’ Unfortunately, she was too distracted to think of a decent punchline.
Thankfully, they had Ivy with them. She strode to the front of the group now, inlays pulsing with silver-white light, and the metal door cracked open with a loud clang. Startled, the Fleet soldiers leapt back, weapons ready, but there were no attackers waiting on the other side. Just a large, cylindrical control room with unfortunately clear walls.
The Fleet soldiers tried to clear the room before allowing anyone else in, but Ivy was already halfway across it, and Alex practically shoved the soldiers aside as she followed, making for the center console. Chief Escher rushed in on her heels, and Gareth sighed again as he and Sloane took up the rear.
“They can’t be controlled,” Sloane said.
“I don’t see you trying very hard.”
“Chief Escher’s your charge.”
“Acknowledged.”
Once again, she’d found herself in a space that was entirely made of viewports. These people had been really excited about the prospect of gazing out into space. Unfortunately. Shutting her eyes wasn’t an option, so she decided to face it instead, stepping right up to the window to watch as Sabre twisted into view, shooting holes in the side of a defending corvette. The ships zoomed up from under her feet, once again shifting her sense of ‘up’ and ‘down’ as the corvette exploded into a sphere of orange fire.
“Space is weird,” she said.
Gareth was hovering, as if he wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to pass out as she contemplated the vastness of space. A distinct possibility, given how she was still traumatized from getting trapped in multiple stasis fields and blown out of deep-space stations. Not this one, but still.
Of course, he’d actually fallen unconscious after ripping her from yet another stasis field, so she should be the one hovering over him. He shouldn’t be here at all; he should be resting, and it was her fault that he wasn’t. He’d have stayed behind if she hadn’t insisted on accompanying the party.
Oh, well. It was safe enough now. Probably.
From the window, the mine’s setup looked like the gaudy set of jewelry her great-aunt Germaine had once presented her at a Balchal’s Feast celebration: shiny, expensive, and heavy enough to make her knees ache.
Admittedly, she didn’t know all that much about how a deep-space mining station ought to look, since her experience on the subject was limited to a cartoon series she’d been obsessed with as a kid. Though, upon adult reflection, she couldn’t help but wonder why a purple fox would have been recruited to work in a deep-space mine in the first place. The custom atmo suit alone would have cost a fortune. Not worth it.
The real-life mine featured a hefty collection of wheels, tubes, and bubble-like vats that, somewhat surprisingly, did call Fruitie the Fox’s unconventional home to mind. But since the Cosmic Trade Federation was using this particular mine to extract stasis field technology out of the Parse Galaxy’s Current network, they’d covered all their equipment in a shining layer of jaevin. A precious metal defined by its swirling mix of green and silver, it was the one known material that didn’t get stuck when plunged into a stasis field.
Add the cool, watery light of the Current, which flowed a little too close for Sloane’s comfort, and the whole thing looked like a strange aquarium exhibit.
“Punch the code in here,” Alex was saying. “They wouldn’t have changed it yet. We surprised them.”
The data Sloane and Gareth had lifted from Obsidian City was stuffed with codes and protocols from across CTF operations. Too many to change on a whim, or so they hoped. Unless the Federation knew exactly which target they were aiming for. Or had a system for changing compromised passcodes. Now that they were here, that seemed unnervingly likely.
The mine was a good test; the Fleet had taken them by surprise, so it was clear they had no idea. A win, finally. It felt good.
Or it would, as long as they could stop these machines from pumping stasis-field tech out of the Current.
Striker had to be insane to think that this was a good idea.
“I think the code is entered after the prompt,” Chief Escher said, leaning over Alex’s shoulder. Her glasses were sitting askew on her long nose, which she didn’t seem to have noticed.
“Absolutely not.” Alex mashed the screen with her finger. “It’s standard.”
“If you enter it now, you’ll blow us all up.”
Ivy rolled her eyes. “I’m in the system, and you’re both wrong.” She hit three buttons simultaneously, and a sequence of numbers began running across the screen. “Now enter the code.”
Escher reached for the screen, but Alex got there first, batting Escher out of the way as if her speed were an indication of her superiority. She and Escher had only just met, and already they were forming a rivalry. Sloane appreciated Alex’s prickliness, she really did, but sometimes she just wished they could all be team players for once.
Not that she was one to talk.
Outside the viewport, Moneymaker came screaming into view, flipping through the melee like a fat dolphin. A fat dolphin with laser cannons, which took out three CTF cube ships in a blink of fire and shrapnel. Hilda was outdoing herself. Brighton would be working the guns, and with fire rocketing out of both sides, Damian must be feeling up to helping him.
Up close, the mining contraption that hulked alongside the core of the station looked even uglier than it had from a distance. Like a deformed camel, with three hump-like vats to hold the stasis and multiple trunks extending into the Current. All of it held together by a trio of rotating gears, each one as big as Moneymaker itself.
“Got it,” Alex said, triumphant. She tapped the screen, and the lights flickered. Sloane restrained herself from making a crack about it being hard to find the light switches.
Outside, the gears slowed, and Sloane could almost imagine them screeching as they ground to a halt, the attached tubes sagging as if emptied of whatever they’d been holding. Sloane didn’t understand how one could pump a stasis field through any kind of machinery, when its very nature was to hold things in place.
Though truthfully, she didn’t want to understand. She’d leave understanding things to the experts.
“Nice work,” Sloane said. “Now what?”
“The station is secure,” one of the soldiers said. Sloane thought her name was Pitorski; she seemed to run a lot of the landing parties. “We’re searching for intel and equipment. We’ll transfer the scientists to Sabre’s brig.”
“Good work, Captain,” Gareth said. “Make sure Lager gets an update.”
Pitorski nodded and turned on her heel. Alex and Escher were bent over the console, trading suspicious looks at each other, while Ivy stood back with her arms crossed. Maybe Sloane’s presence here really had been superfluous. Maybe she hadn’t needed to risk it.
Before she could prod that thought more deeply, the viewport pulsed with violet light. As Sloane whipped around to see what was happening, the Current exploded.
CHAPTER 2
Before this moment, Gareth would not have said that light could roar. But light roared out of the Current now, both figuratively—in a wave of purple and yellow colors he’d never seen from a Current before—and literally, the sound blasting into his ears so forcefully that it nearly dropped him to his knees.
Except that it wasn’t sound, not really. He heard it as sound, but clapping his hands over his ears did nothing to quiet it. And Sloane was staring out at the Current, her lips parted in surprise, the purple light reflecting on her face. Not cringing, wincing, or holding her head against the sudden barrage of noise. She wasn’t hearing it.
