Galactic Hellcats by Marie Vibbert

Author:Marie Vibbert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Vernacular Books
Published: 2020-12-15T21:04:16+00:00

After breaking into a planet and stealing legitimate crown jewels it was a little beneath Ki to try locks on unguarded buildings, so she walked past the nearest warehouses.

Ki’s breath puffed in front of her as her feet crunched gravel. She could feel heat radiating off the ground, but her nose was running and she had to put her gloves back on. The temperature had dropped hard when the sun went down. Well, Zuleikah had said it would last night, hadn’t she?

The warehouses were big, the space between them wide and empty. It was a desolate environment. Her tracker indicated a warm body a mile ahead. Ki headed toward it. That was what she wanted: a living guard to outwit.

It was a woman with a machine gun, pacing around and around a particular warehouse. Ki watched through three repeats of the guard’s circuit. She made no random stops or side-trips. Just round and round like a toy train. Boring! The machine gun was exciting, though. Ki found a door and waited until the guard passed. She recorded the time it took the guard to re-appear around the corner. Two minutes, thirty-seven seconds. Ki set her timer and waited for the next go round. She ran to the door and fished out her sticker circuits. Crap, she had her screen in her hand so she could watch the time. Four seconds, at least, were spent wondering if she should put it down. Another four deciding not to. Ki didn’t have the right circuit. She had to use a pick. Fifteen seconds left. She put the screen in her mouth. The last tumbler clicked. As she shut the door behind her, the timer flashed its “time’s up” warning. She held it to her stomach and breathed as quietly as possible as she counted to fifty to give the guard time to get back around the corner. She let the lock snick back into place.

Then she did a little dance.

The warehouse was full of cargo boxes big enough to live in, each one locked. They all had the same logo. Ki picked the one farthest from all four doorways. Its lock was easy—she used the same sticker she’d used back on Earth for the sporting goods store. Inside were stacked storage tubs. Ki dragged a tub off the top of a stack. It was heavy and fell like a sack of sand, splitting one side of the box when it hit. Slippery bags of candy-sized stones spilled out. Each bag was maybe the size of her fist and contained stones of roughly the same size and dusty translucence as wild grapes. Ki had no idea what these were or what they were worth, but she pocketed two bags in each of the zipper pouches on her legs. Hrm. She could fit more. She paused with another bag in hand. She put it down. Best not to be greedy.

She had dinner to find.

It was clear this was a gem warehouse. Not a place to find food.

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