I slid the knife back into my pocket and sat up. Grit gathered in the corners of my eyes. I rubbed my hands over my face and tried to get my brain to kick into gear. “How long was I out?”
“A little over five hours. It’s almost time to clip in for entry.”
Five hours shouldn’t have left me this groggy. I’d kill for a cup of real coffee. Hell, I’d be happy with a cup of the synth stuff at this point. I shook myself out of caffeine dreams and climbed down the ladder set into the wall between the cots.
Every muscle protested. I must’ve been tense in my sleep, fighting off invisible demons. I didn’t have nightmares often, but when I did, I usually went all out. I stepped down to the floor and lifted my arms overhead, stretching left then right. I folded forward and put my hands on the floor, enjoying the stretch along the backs of my legs.
After I’d put sufficient distance between me and Rockhurst, I was totally getting a massage. I figured getting captured by mercs and fleeing for my life with a murderer meant I was overdue for a little luxury. And the one true perk of being daughter of a High House was the ability to afford luxury. My House accounts might be under surveillance, but I’d funneled money into several private accounts before I escaped.
I straightened to find Loch watching me with deep brown eyes. Every so often the light would catch them just so, and they’d flash, luminescent. If one of the other Houses had achieved ocular implants of his level, this was the first I’d heard of it.
All of the implants I knew about permanently altered your eye color to milky white and glowed in even the faintest light. It made it easy to determine who could see in the dark. If implants existed that could be hidden behind normal-looking eyes, that would be a strategic advantage.
I tilted my head, studying him as he studied me. I hadn’t planned for more than escaping the ship then running again. But I was tired of running, especially now that every merc in the ’verse had heard of me. I wanted a house and not to have to look over my shoulder every minute of every day.
My von Hasenberg genes kicked in—perhaps Loch was the key to that future. Father would drop my bounty if I gave him Loch. Oh, he wouldn’t do it easily, but Father could be swayed with the right incentive.
I shook off the thought. Loch had helped me, even if it was just for the money. While a true von Hasenberg would have no trouble stabbing him in the back in appreciation, I tried to keep my backstabbing to a minimum.
But by the calculating look on Loch’s face, I wasn’t the only one contemplating a double-cross. I’d need to be vigilant once we landed. After I paid him, I needed to disappear.
I stretched one last time then dropped into the navigator’s seat. Tau Sagittarii Dwarf Nine loomed large in the front window. We were approaching at the border of light and dark, so the planet looked like it was broken in half. Only a few faint lights glimmered on the dark side of the planet—a giant metropolis this was not.
“Atmospheric entry in five minutes,” the computer chimed. The window shutters slid closed, leaving us with video screens. I tried not to think about how long it had been since this ship had received routine maintenance. Landing was hard on ships.
The screens showed a bleak brown planet. A line of white-capped mountains marched across the border between light and dark. No greenery or oceans broke up the monotony.
We were close enough to tap into the planet’s information network. I pulled up the depressingly short wiki entry. It was dated a month ago. TSD Nine used to be a Yamado mining planet. Then the ore ran out. The miners and the diplomats moved on to the next planet, leaving behind the seedier elements that were all too happy to take over.
The wiki warned that the dark side of the planet was best avoided. Smugglers had taken over the abandoned mining shafts, and outsiders were unwelcome. Those who wandered in often went missing.
Lovely place, this planet.
The light side wasn’t any better, as it was rife with mercs. Every so often they’d go bounty hunting through the smugglers’ tunnels. The largest city, Gamamine, sat in perpetual twilight on the border between the two worlds.
Getting a better ship was going to be tricky. Usually I’d just book passage on the first ship off-planet, but I had a feeling the options were going to be few and far between—this wasn’t exactly a booming tourist location. I could afford to buy a new ship, but throwing that much currency around after landing in an escape shuttle would raise some eyebrows.
“Atmospheric entry beginning,” the computer chimed.
Loch settled into the captain’s chair and clipped in. The planet filled the video screens. After time in space, it was always weird to realize that you were intentionally hurtling yourself at the ground in order to land. And that there was ground at all.
It’d been over a year since I’d set foot on a planet, because I mostly bounced around between space stations. Stations always had flights available at the last minute and weren’t always the strictest about checking documentation. And the biggest stations were larger than surface cities anyway, so it was easy to get lost in the crowd.
The escape ship shivered as it decelerated. We had to slow down before we slammed into the atmosphere or we’d end up in itty-bitty pieces spread over half the planet. All of the data on my screen showed our entry was proceeding as expected, but the next ten minutes were the hardest on the ship.
A few minutes later, the telltale buffeting of atmosphere vibrated through the ship. The turbulence got worse as we descended. Thankfully these seats had shoulder harnesses. I’d landed in a subpar ship with just a lap-belt before and came out bruised for my effort.
We were on course to land at the small spaceport in Gamamine. The city was both our best chance of getting off-planet again and our best chance of getting caught. If the mercs caught wind that the two highest bounties in the ’verse had just landed in their backyard, we wouldn’t have a moment’s rest.
Loch’s hands moved across the screen and the ship blared a warning. Before I could ask him what he’d done, the ship dropped like a rock, throwing me into the shoulder harness. Blood rushed to my head and I fought the redout that lingered on the edges of my vision.
If I didn’t know better, I’d assume we were accelerating toward the ground.
Another alarm went off before Loch silenced it. The uniform brown landscape shifted into hills, valleys, and fields as we descended. We were coming in way too fast.
My hands flew over my own console as I tried to slow our descent, but he’d locked me out. “What are you doing? We can’t come into the spaceport like this; they’ll shoot us down.” When it came to casualties, spaceports defaulted to protecting the assets already on the ground unless they had a really, really good reason to do otherwise.
“We’re not headed to the spaceport and we’re sitting ducks in the air. The faster we’re on the ground, the safer we are.”
“We won’t be safer if we hit the ground at this speed—we’ll be splattered.”
He grinned at me with a flash of white teeth. “Trust me, sweetheart. I know what I’m doing.”
Trust was earned, and so far, Marcus Loch had done some, but not nearly enough to earn mine. I debated trying to override the lockout on my control panel while I watched the ground hurtle closer. But trust was a two-way street and I didn’t think Loch was suicidal, so I clutched the edge of the control panel and did nothing.
Giving up control of my fate was harder than I anticipated. Even though I knew Marcus must have a plan, doing nothing went against everything in my nature.
Proximity alarms blared to life. Loch was laser focused on the control panel. I dug my fingernails into my palms and said nothing. Distracting him would not help us land.
We were coming down in a gently rolling area gouged by deep canyons. Flat areas big enough for the ship were few and far between. As we got ever closer, I realized the canyons were both deeper and wider than I first thought.