Jackal and the Space Slavers: Book One in the Jackal Series by Terry R. Lacy

Author:Terry R. Lacy [Lacy, Terry R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-08-19T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 40

They had finished gunnery training more because Fancy was worried they were running out of time than Vlada getting proficient, Fancy telling the last of her story between practice runs. “So, the underground is real?” Vlada said. “I always thought it was something Brianna made up.” While she might have been a whiz at gunning from a fixed position, when they added in the ship’s movement and a different targeting system, her aim was close—but not close enough. Fancy tried switching the lasers to fixed-wing, making them aim where she pointed the ship, and put Vlada on the tri-cannon, but the gauge said the big gun was running too low on ammo for target practice. The slugs from the cannon did a lot of damage but compared to the lasers they looked as if they were crawling, which would make the timing completely different.

If Darien were sending out ships to kill them, Fancy reasoned he would want to do it as far from his planet as he could. Rumor had it he was—at least to some of the residents on Rigel Prime—a respectable businessman, and he couldn’t be linked to something as disconcerting as smuggling or killing. Rigel was petitioning to become a Secondary System so they could get members on The Council. It wouldn’t do for one of the petitioners to be caught in a scandal.

She had parked on one of the larger asteroids and now they waited. “The underground is real,” Fancy said. “And it’s pretty active for those who are into it.”

Like Fancy, Vlada preferred to sit with her bare feet on the console, something that gained her a few points in Fancy’s book. “You’re not into it? It sounds a lot safer than this,” Vlada said.

Fancy wasn’t into it now, but there was a time when she had been. There was a time when it had been everything to her, but not anymore. “The underground is all about hiding. Learning to hide who you are—what you are—learning to just hide your physical self—how to hide other Hybrids who are on the run. They talk about rising up, taking a planet for themselves and creating a government, but it’s just talk. No one is making any actual plans or doing anything. I was raised by a man who hid me away my whole life—called me his retirement plan until I got away. I guess I’d had enough hiding.”

When Jackal’s alert system went off, it wasn’t loud. Fancy checked her radar which was set to passive so no one would detect them. In the shadow of this asteroid, they were practically invisible. The downside was, they would only pick up the signals other ships were emitting, so they couldn’t get a clear idea of the size or firepower of the incoming ship.

Vlada sat up, looking anxious. “Should I shoot it?”

If Darien was smart, he would send out two ships—maybe as many as three—and have them leapfrog one another, the lead ship scanning for Mare Nectaris while the rest charged their bend drives.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.