Home Front: A Science Fiction Adventure Series (Sever Squad Book 4) by A.R. Knight

Author:A.R. Knight [Knight, A.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781946554697
Publisher: Black Key Books
Published: 2020-12-21T16:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

Threats and Bets

Eponi held onto the bravado like a star that would grant her every wish. The rush suffused her twitchy hands as they gripped the Prisa’s flight sticks, her eyes as they blinked from the scanners to the systems and back again, searching for a flaw and knowing they would find none. She listened to Sai say the words Aurora had set for them, putting a fatherly spin into the demands that Deepak would have to carry out, and every damn sentence pushed Eponi closer and closer to the edge.

You did not desert DefenseCorp without consequences. Those were dire enough. But threatening to ram a DefenseCorp ship? An Odin-class cruiser, with man-hours and material tons by the millions, no less?

There would be no coming back from this. Eponi wouldn’t fly a kart again, no matter how much cash she made—not that she’d live long enough to make much. No racing team, no bank-rolling brand would risk angering DefenseCorp.

A deserter could be let go. An enemy would be killed.

“I think that was it,” Sai said, letting go a long exhale as he wrapped up the list. “Did I get it all?”

Eponi filtered Sai’s speech back through her own haze, “Let’s see, you had’em pull the lockdown, declare any agents to be hostile, and clear our records? That about covers it.”

“How much you think they’ll do?”

“Better be all of it,” Eponi said, “or I’ll goose these engines and poor little Deepak’s gonna be so much space dust.”

Sai nodded slow, looking not too thrilled with that potential outcome. And why wouldn’t he? Man had a family, chose to leave’em, in a decision that Eponi could never reconcile. She’d been forced to play this game, swing laser smut all across the galaxy at the behest of a dangerous dealer, but Sai? He could’ve stayed home. Could’ve tucked his kids in every night and whistled them awake with the morning light.

Eponi’s jealousy had bled away to pity over the missions, and she couldn’t let go of the feeling now, watching him watch the too-small faces on the bridge through its giant glass bulge. He’d chosen to dance with a devil that wouldn’t ever let the song end.

Maybe Sai knew that and didn’t care.

The comm crackled and Sai tapped its broadcast open. This time, Sai’s left console fluttered and morphed into Deepak’s clear face. No transmission jaggies here, seeing as Eponi calculated Deepak’s nose sat fifty meters away from her cold metal cockpit.

“I’ve done as you asked,” Deepak said, and Eponi could swear the man had aged a few years between the time she’d seen him in the bay and this moment. Renard stood behind the admiral, free and frustrated on the bridge, an obvious counterpoint to Deepak’s assertion. Sai’s low sigh showed he noticed the bastard too. “What are you both going to do? And where is Aurora?”

Sai seemed to be at a loss. Man wasn’t ever much of an innovator if the problem didn’t involve slinging two wires together to make something go boom.

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