Warden by Natalie Grey

Author:Natalie Grey [Grey, Natalie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing
Published: 2018-07-02T05:00:00+00:00

16

Zinqued lounged in the ship’s tiny rec room with a few other members of the crew, playing a new game called ‘checkers,’ when Paun strode into the room in a fury.

“Did you think you would just get away with it?” he demanded.

Zinqued shot a hard look at Chofal, who gave a tiny, terrified shake of her head. She hadn’t told Paun what happened.

Paun saw the look, and his lips tightened in anger. “I reviewed the ship’s logs,” he said contemptuously. “I saw that we pursued a ship last night and that you launched something. I saw the record of the message that came in from the human. Why would you take such a risk? You know how dangerous that human ship is.”

“If we catch that ship—” Zinqued began.

Paun barked. “Don’t tell me again that we’ll be rich if we catch the ship. I spent a long time assembling a crew that wasn’t stupid enough to do things like that—or, I thought I did. The people who go for the big prizes are the ones who get killed. They get greedy, and greedy people get stupid, and stupid people get dead. Are you stupid, Zinqued?”

Zinqued stood up. Anger pounded in his blood.

“How long since we’ve caught a ship?” He stared Paun down. “We haven’t had a haul in weeks. You said yourself that good catches are getting fewer and farther between. Catch this one, and we’re set for months—years, even.”

Paun’s face was still unfriendly, but he didn’t look as sure anymore. “Just because we haven’t had a good take doesn’t mean we should do something stupid,” he said.

But the weakness was there.

Zinqued pressed his advantage. “We don’t have to do something stupid. We know what kinds of tricks they can see through now, and we have information about the other people they took down. We can learn their weaknesses and set a trap for them.”

Paun crossed his arms. He was listening, and so was the rest of the crew.

“They have good detection systems,” Zinqued explained. “So we need to arrange an ambush somewhere they won’t be able to see us coming. There are places nearby with electromagnetic interference or a lot of radio traffic. We’d want to find one of those. Their anti-hacking systems are top-notch, so we can’t rely on hacking to bring the ship under control. We need to use good, old-fashioned manual controls.”

He snuck a glance at Paun and was pleased to see the other alien looked amenable to this.

“Finally,” Zinqued resumed. “We know they can fire multiple spreads of weapons at once, but that they don’t like to hurt innocent ships. My suggestion would be to get multiple mercenary ships and disguise them as cargo or transport ships, meaning that the Shinigami won’t fire on them. A few of them will be able to dock, and board and they can overpower the relatively small crew.”

He’d almost had it, but now Paun’s brows snapped together.

“Multiple mercenary ships?” Paun sounded halfway between incredulous and absolutely filled with rage. “Are you insane? We’re going after them because our funds are running low.

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