King of Kings by Michael-Scott Earle

Author:Michael-Scott Earle [Earle, Michael-Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction
Publisher: MSE Publishing, LLC.
Published: 2018-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

“What’s going on?” I asked as Elana and I jumped out of the elevator and onto the bridge. She had slipped her dress on while I pulled on my pants, and we both ran out of my room and into the elevator as I put on my shirt.

“Check it,” Juliette said as she gestured to the screen.

I looked at the display and felt my stomach leap up into my throat. We’d somehow exited hyperdrive in an area of space that was dotted with the wreckage of a good hundred spacecraft. Their designs were immediately recognizable, and I shook my head.

“Those look like Nordar ships. How did we pop out so close to them? That’s a one in a bazillion chance.”

“We were actually pretty far away,” Zea said as she gestured to one of the terminals that was covered with playing cards. “We popped out in the middle of a card game and decided to wait until the hand was over before firing up the warpdrives again. Then the long range scanners picked the wreckage up, and we flew over here. Still pretty unlikely though.”

“Our route is actually somewhat well-traveled,” Paula explained. “It has the least amount of gravity swell, and it’s the shortest distance to not just Nseling -24 -f, but a few hundred other mining and trading outposts that are in Queen’s Hat’s master navigation system. So this probability is more like one in a hundred thousand.”

“Did you ID the ships?” I asked.

“Yep,” Juliette replied, and the rest of my wives smiled.

“Jotnar?” I asked, and they nodded.

“Other ships are Waymund,” Paula said, and we all looked at Elana.

“They must have not changed their tags yet,” the brunette beauty said as she tried to smooth the bed-head from her short wavy hair. “It will probably take three months to reach across all of our domain.”

“What were they fighting over?” I asked as I glanced at the scanner readouts on the right side of the screen.

“Hard to tell,” Paula said as she tapped on her controls. “Might have been a ship that is already gone. I don’t see any sort of planet or outpost nearby. The galaxy is mostly a lot of nothing, and this is right in the middle of a bunch of nothing.”

“Their logs will have the info,” Juliette said. “That’s part of the reason I wanted you to look at it so quickly. Heat signatures are still warm, and I’ve got engine burn on some of them.”

“Shit,” I said. “This battle happened recently.”

“Yep,” Juliette said. “I’m guessing maybe seventy hours ago, maybe a hundred.”

“It could have been long enough for someone to escape and then come back,” Zea said.

“Or maybe they haven’t come back yet, and they will come back at any moment,” Paula said.

“Check this guy out though,” Juliette said as she clicked some buttons on her terminal and the screen highlighted one of the Jotnar carriers and then zoomed in a bit. “See that hole in the side?”

“Yeah,” I said as I saw the gap on the starboard side of the bird-like ship.

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