Tyche's First Read online

  “Are you Harlow’s friend who’s in the Emperor’s Black?” said Devon, awe in his voice.

  “Ain’t no Emperor’s Black. Leastways, not anymore,” said Nate.

  The jog outside was at least dryer than the inside, and mercifully free of plasma fire. They made the ship, and Nate felt like he was coming home as he stepped inside. He sealed the airlock behind them, and scurried for the flight deck. The acceleration couch greeted him like the hand of a lover. Harlow slipped into the co-pilot’s chair. Nate worked the console, bringing the ship back online, drives rumbling behind him. The ship roared, dust blaring out from underneath them as she nosed the sky, racing up.

  They were gaining some necessary distance when the holo lit. BRACE BRACE BRACE INCOMING MISSILE BRACE BRACE BRACE. “Harlow? Get those PDCs on that problem.”

  “I’m trying!” said Harlow. “Nothing’s happening.”

  WEAPONS SYSTEMS OFFLINE.

  “Why?” said Nate. “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything!” shouted Harlow. “I was with you the whole time!”

  Nate grabbed the sticks, giving them a twist, and the ship barrel rolled, curving back towards the ground. He caught a glimpse of a rocket trailing fire, then they were underneath it. Nate pulled the ship out of the dive, then pointed her back at the compound.

  “Nate?” said Harlow. “Nate, what are you doing?”

  “Bringing those fuckers a present,” said Nate. “They figure if they can’t have my ship, nobody can? Well, there’s lessons aplenty from today.” Nate knew he wasn’t much of a pilot, so he was hoping for a heaping helping of luck. Luck was fickle. You couldn’t rely on it. You definitely shouldn’t ask for it. But sometimes, when you needed it the most, it was there.

  He wasn’t ashamed to admit it: with a rocket on their ass, he really needed it now. The compound approached at high speed, Nate pointing the nose of the ship right at the command center. He feathered the drives, slowing their approach, allowing that missile to catch up. Just a little luck. That’s all I need. He checked the countermeasures the ship had. One chaff set left. That was it. Okay. So, a lot of luck.

  “Nate? Pull up!” Harlow was scrabbling at his own console, trying to make the ship climb, or roll, or just damn anything, but she wasn’t listening. Not to him. The ship was listening to Nate. Just a little luck.

  At well past the last second, and possibly into too late, Nate slammed the throttles forward to their stops, hauling on the sticks. The ship screamed at the ground, nuclear fire raging behind them as they skimmed over the compound, clawing for sky. He slammed a hand down on the chaff controls. There was a grinding noise from the belly of the ship, a clank, and then … nothing. The ship was flying, no problem there, but the chaff hadn’t fired. The missile was close. It was very close.

  With a shudder, the chaff launcher unstuck, shedding burning magnesium. Because the ship had already turned to face the hard black, the chaff littered the deck, falling among the compound buildings. Against all odds, the missile stopped nipping at their heels and veered towards the crust below. It slammed into the ground, blowing the command center into tiny pieces. The blast tossed pieces of building into the sky. Nate didn’t mind admitting that his hands were sweaty and shaking. He also didn’t mind admitting what just happened wasn’t a little luck. It was a huge, galaxy-sized serving of luck.

  He was trying to process that when the shockwave hit the ship, causing a shudder through the frame, and that same unpleasant sound of metal groaning behind them. The holo cleared. NO HOSTILES DETECTED.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NATE DIDN’T REALLY relax until the ship’s skids touched the cool sand of the canyon she’d been stashed in. He managed to lower the ship in between shady rocky walls without scraping the hull this time. With a creak of settling metal, the ship crouched. Waiting.

  “Beers?” said Nate.

  “Prefer a whiskey,” said Harlow.

  “I’d take a beer,” said Devon, from the ready room. He’d strapped himself into one of the couches there. “Only, knowing Harlow, there’s no beer on this ship.”

  “Hey,” said Harlow.

  “Sounds true,” agreed Nate. “I figure you two probably have some catching up to do. Why don’t I go drop some credits on supplies? I’ll take the car.”

  “Then what?” said Harlow.

  “Well, I figure on us getting off Edinu. Looked nice on the brochure but it’s got nothing but sand and assholes,” said Nate. He released his harness, sliding free of the acceleration couch. He moved to the ready room. “You two stay here.”

  “You don’t want some company?” said Devon. He winced, rubbing at his ribs as he released his harness.

  “No,” said Nate. “Look, no offense, but you both suck in a fight.”

  “Suck?” said Harlow, joining them.

  “You’re really bad. You get underfoot. You don’t shoot the bad guys. You can’t even throw a punch, Harlow.”

  “Okay,” said Harlow, nodding.

  “I mean, there’s bad, and then there’s bad,” said Nate.

  “No, I get it,” said Harlow.

  “Really bad,” said Nate.

  “We’re reading you, loud and clear,” said Harlow. “Thing is, why you figure on needing to fight while getting supplies?”

  “Aside from that being the way my day’s gone so far?” said Nate. “Well, there will be repercussions for that base. I can’t imagine everyone being conveniently at the impact point of the missile. There will be a few pirates that want blood. Vengeance. A reckoning. Eye for an eye, Harlow. They’ll have blasters, and a will to use them.”

  “I figure we can stay with the ship,” said Harlow.

  “Good idea,” said Nate. “Be back soon.”

  • • •

  The ground car grumbled its way back to the settlement, as if it didn’t like the way this day was going either. Probably just a low charge, but Nate didn’t have the time to top the fuel cell off, and there weren’t any warning lights on the holo. No warnings meant no problems, and there was beer to be getting to.

  He pulled into Briar Glen, lights welcoming him in like a set of landing beacons. Nate’s boots crunched gravel as he walked from the car to a store with a holo promising REAL EARTH BEER. That would be a fabrication too outrageous to be anything but a lie, but beer was beer. Especially if you were thirsty after a day of people shooting at you. Nate walked inside, taking in a casual crowd. No one here looked like Apollo Alliance, and no one looked like a pirate playing at soldiering either. Good enough.

  He snared a collection of beers and a bottle that said PLAIN WHISKEY, black letters on a white label. Looked local, no one paying extra for the packaging. Harlow would just have to make do. He approached the register, a bored teenage girl eyeing him over a console. “Help you?”

  “I hope so,” said Nate. He put the beers and whiskey down, pulling out some credits.

  She shook her head. “Those aren’t good no more,” she said. “Republic coins. That what we take.”

  “You what now?” said Nate. “This morning, it was Empire credits.”

  “No Empire,” she said, like that explained everything.

  “How’s a man get Republic coins?”

  “I can change ‘em,” she said. “One for one.”

  Nate frowned. “You can’t take the Empire’s money, but you can change it for Republic cash—”

  “Coins.”

  “Whatever. And then I can buy this stuff? Feels like there’s an unnecessary step in there somewhere.”

  She nodded, bangs falling over her eyes. “I know. I know! I don’t make the rules. New law, apparently. Empire’s gone.”

  Nate sighed, dropping his remaining credits down. The teenager swept them up, turning to a machine behind her — it looked new, maybe fab’d locally just this very day — and fed the credits in the top. A healthy jingle sounded as coins fell out the bottom. She handed them back to Nate. He picked one up. “There ain’t no head on this coin,” he sa
id.

  “Ain’t no monarchy,” said the teenager. Her eyes looked maybe a little frightened underneath her hair. “Right?”

  “Hell, I guess,” said Nate. He paid for his liquor, then paused. “Hey. Look. Ain’t no monarchy. But people are still people.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said.

  • • •

  The drive back to the ship was made in darkness, the sun having slunk below the planet’s horizon, hiding until another day called it back. The ground car was still grumbling, but about the same as before, and Nate figured that meant it was just plain ol’ fucked.

  The car’s lights lit the way through the canyon walls to the ship. Rounding the corner, he slammed on the brakes. On the ground outside the cargo bay airlock, Devon lay face down. Nate switched off the car, then jogged to Devon’s side. Blood pooled underneath him. Nate rolled Devon to rest in a recovery position. Blood seeped from a wound in Devon’s gut. It was an ugly gash that spoke of a blade. You didn’t knife a man in the gut to kill them straight up. Nope. The gut was where you cut on someone so they’d hurt the entire time they were dying. Devon was out, well down the road to the dying part. He still had a pulse, but weak, like a frightened bird. Inside the ship there would be first aid supplies, Harlow, and someone who needed killing.

  Nate checked the list, then reordered it in his head. Someone needed killing first.

  He unholstered his blaster and unslung his sword, the black blade hiding in the darkness. Nate moved quickly to the open airlock, marveling that his mechanical leg was so quiet. It still felt like someone had bolted an uncomfortable hunk of metal to him, but at least it didn’t clank or whine. Nate ignored the spatters of blood on the ramp, ducking inside the hold. Quiet greeted him, broken a moment later by a hoarse scream. It sounded like it came from Engineering. Nate moved up the ladder to the crew deck, then made his way aft.

  “You’ve just got to turn the ship on,” said a familiar voice, hard in all the wrong places. That’d be the tattooed asshole Nate had stuck a tracker to. How he wasn’t floating ash with the rest of his buddies was a mystery that could wait to be solved.

  Another scream, then Harlow: “I can’t. Ship won’t fly for me.”

  “The reactor,” said Tattoo. “Just turn it on.”

  Nate slipped through Engineering’s airlock, blaster leveled. Tattoo had Harlow suspended in chains, a pair of pliers in one hand. Nate’s quick assessment said Tattoo was using the pliers to break Harlow’s fingers. That there made Nate want to gun the man down, but Harlow was hanging in the way.

  Tattoo caught the movement of Nate’s entrance and further hunkered behind Harlow. A blaster appeared in his hand, first pointed at Nate. When Nate didn’t appear to show concern over this, Tattoo pointed the blaster at Harlow. “I knew you was too good for a local boy,” said Tattoo. “Your friend here says you flew with the Emperor’s Black.” He jangled Harlow’s chains.

  “The Black don’t really fly,” said Nate.

  “What?”

  “Not the Navy,” said Nate. “More of a personal guard. I mean, we went on ships when the boss did, but—”

  “I look like I give a shit?” Tattoo was well covered behind Harlow. Not a shot Nate wanted to risk.

  “Uh,” said Nate. “You did raise it.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You said—”

  “I don’t give a shit what I said!” shouted Tattoo. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to back up, nice and slow, and then—”

  “Nah,” said Nate.

  “I’m giving the orders!”

  “It’s just that you were going to say that I’d back up and leave, and you’d make an exit. Maybe fly the ship, something like that.” He waited for Tattoo’s cautious nod, then gestured around Engineering. “This ship doesn’t love you. She won’t fly for you.”

  “I’ll make the damn ship fly.”

  “How’s that working out for you?” said Nate. He made a careful step back, putting the lip of the airlock within easy ducking distance. While Tattoo appeared unhinged, and thus not pointing his blaster at the right person, unhinged people did erratic things, and Nate didn’t fancy getting shot today.

  “We just wanted the ship,” said Tattoo. “Could have used it for raids, or honest pirating. But you had to come along.”

  “You wanted a ship that wouldn’t fly for ‘honest pirating?’” said Nate. “I’m not sure I follow.” He kept his blaster and sword ready.

  “I saw it fly. Today.”

  “Before you ran away?” said Nate. “Left your buddies to die?”

  “Nate,” said Harlow.

  “Not now, Harlow,” said Nate. “In the middle of a thing.”

  “You shut up,” said Tattoo, jiggling Harlow’s chains.

  “Anyway,” said Nate, “nothing you can do to make this ship fly. She won’t start for you, and even if she did, she’ll buck you off. Doesn’t like a mean hand.”

  Tattoo thought about that, then pointed his blaster at the wall of Engineering. “I said I’d make her fly.” He fired. The plasma bolt hit a metal clamp, blasting it free. The clamp ricocheted off a drive cowl with a clang, causing Tattoo to duck. Still flying, the clamp lodged in a metal pipe.

  The pipe groaned, a metallic tink-tink-tink coming from stressed metal. The pipe ruptured, coolant spraying into Engineering. The metal clamp spun across the space, hitting Tattoo’s blaster hand. The man screamed as the scalding clamp buried itself in his flesh, his blaster dropping to the ground. He stumbled from behind Harlow, right into the spray of coolant. His screaming hit a new pitch as superheated liquid stripped skin and flesh from his torso and face — no more tattoos — and what was left of him stumbled towards Nate, arms outstretched.

  Nate stepped forward, and ran the black blade through Tattoo’s chest. The man stopped screaming, sliding off the blade and falling to the ground. Nate hurried to Harlow, releasing his chains and catching his friend. “Let’s get you out of here,” he said.

  Harlow nodded, then looked at the remains of Tattoo, and at the ruptured coolant pipe, the deluge slowed to a trickle. His eyes traced the clamp’s journey back to its point of origin. Harlow said, “Well, that was lucky.”

  “It was, kinda,” said Nate. “C’mon. Devon needs some seeing to. And I’ve got beer.”

  • • •

  The small medbay on the ship was mostly broken down, but it had rudimentary supplies. Nate patched up the hole in Devon, slipped a line in him, and started pumping a blood substitute back into the man. The packaging said it was past its use-by date, but in Nate’s experience old blood was better than no blood. Good Empire tech, just like the ship. A little worn out, but it’d do right by you when it counted.

  Leaving Devon be, he ushered Harlow into the ready room. Nate snared a beer, and handed Harlow the whiskey. They sprawled into an acceleration couch each. Harlow eyeballed the plain sleeved wrapper, shrugged, then took a pull from the bottle. “Where you going, Nate?”

  “Been thinking,” said Nate.

  “Not a destination,” said Harlow.

  “Might not be,” said Nate. “Still. I’ve been thinking.”

  “Sounds risky.”

  “Thing is,” said Nate, ignoring Harlow, “I saw this holo once. Guy goes back in time, terrified about making a small change in the past that would mean a big change to his present.”

  “I think there’s a hundred holos like that.” Harlow took a longer draw from the bottle, wincing at the end. Whether the whiskey was bad or his damaged fingers were causing him mischief, it was difficult to tell.

  “Thing is, Harlow,” said Nate. He thought of the teenager who’d changed his credits for coins, and her frightened look at the uncertainty of the future. That’s what I’m afraid of. “None of us think about doing something small today that could mean a big change for our future.”

  “Huh,” said Harlow, turning that over.

  “Empire, Republic, doesn’t much matter.” Nate pointed to th
e roof of the ship, and the stars above it. “There’s still people out there. Some need our help. Some need reminding to not hurt others. One burnt-out old soldier could do something small on a daily. If he had a ship, to take him where people needed helping or reminding.”

  “You can’t keep the ship,” said Harlow.

  “She won’t fly for you,” said Nate.

  Harlow nodded. “You thought of a name?”

  “Yeah,” said Nate. He reached his flesh and blood hand down to touch the deck. The old metal was worn but strong. Maybe a little like him. “She’s a goddess, this ship.”

  “She’s a heavy lifter, Nate. Carried people’s socks.”

  “Now she’ll carry dreams,” said Nate. “She’s got fangs of light and fire. She’ll choose her own Helm, someone worthy of her gifts. She’ll have hope in her heart and grace under her wings. Like the galleons of old, she’ll have black powder ready for all that cross her. She’s made of fortune and favor. And that there will save us all. I name her after the Goddess of Luck. This ship? She’s the Tyche.”

  “Okay,” said Harlow, after a while. “Maybe you can borrow her.”

  It’d do, for now. The night turned on, the hard black above them. Waiting.

  • • •

  You’ve finished Tyche’s First. I hope you loved it!

  If you want to continue the Tyche’s discovery of her crew, grab the next in the series. Tyche’s Chosen is where the ship choses her Helm. An excerpt is included at the end of this book.

  Buy on Amazon

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  Reviews help me a hyoooge amount by getting attention for my stories. I am not Tony Stark, able to throw cash at my marketing department for building-sized advertisements. What I do have is you: a loyal group of fans who love my stories. Tony Stark wants people to love him too, which is part of the reason he’s an alcoholic.