Page 138 of Star Claimed Omega
Kaal grinned. ‘Better believe it.’
Landon gave the Signet man a quick, stressed look.
Kaal leaned forward and clapped the man on his shoulder. ‘We’re not always heartless.’
He removed a small bag and spilled a few rubies, diamonds, and gold nuggets on the table.
Santi also pulled out a credit strip and flicked it on the table. ‘Enough for you to share?’
Landon lifted it, pressed a button to view the schills loaded on it, and licked his lips, his greed evident.
‘Sawa?’ Santi rasped.
The Lombardi man jerked his chin. ‘It’ll do.’
He tapped his temple, and a hologram lit up, projected from his synthetic lensed eye.
It showed a map of the Cerulean Dimension, a quadrant proximate to a spatial rift haloing a collapsed dark stellar entity.
‘They’ve moved their holdout near here.The Red Skullsare using the gravity field to cloak their base. The only way in is to ride the curve of the swell, without burning your ship’s engines.’
‘You for real?’ Kaal grunted.
‘You asked for truth, not comfort,’ Landon replied, shutting down the vision and flicking the file to Miral. ‘That black star eats ships. But yourBrutomight survive if a twin-pulse deflector boosts her. There’s a tether path embedded in this map. Use it right, and you’ll make the jump.’
Santi eyed him. ‘Why help us? Other than the loot?’
Landon’s voice was calm. ‘Because my son’s body came back in a Signet bag after the Lombardis ripped him apart in the Gaillo straits on a raid. You honored him. Tis the least I can do.’
Landon bowed, caught the booty and credit strip Kaal tossed at him, nodded, then vanished through the back door.
Outside, the team returned to theBruto, where Miral waited with systems humming, ready for warp.
Santi stood for a moment on the gangplank, gazing out at the void.
Then up at the sky, where the Cerulean Dimension glimmered like a wound in the stars.
‘Time to bring her home,’ he growled and boarded the ship.
23
Chapter 23
SOLEIL
Soleil sat curled on the cold alloy floor of her cramped berth aboardThe Crimson Shrike, theRed Skulls’battered command station.
TheShrike, once a salvage rig, nestled in the outer belt of the Cerulean Dimension like rusting carrion hidden within a cosmic fracture orbiting a spent, dark singularity..
Magnetic welds, spite, alloy rope, and patchwork synth steel girders held its structure together.
Coolant leaks, scorched circuitry, and bloodied nostalgia tainted the interior air, a rank cover over pirate bravado.
Outside her bulkhead window, a trio of beaten-up fighters hung in space, glinting under the blue sheen of the nebula.
Two patrol gunships chugged past the depot, their hulls listing, with scars of old dogfights gouging the metal.
The armada, what remained of theRed Skulls’ might, floated like broken teeth, jagged, charred, a far cry from the empire her father once commanded.
