Salvage Conquest by Chris Kennedy & Kevin Steverson et al

Author:Chris Kennedy & Kevin Steverson et al. [Kennedy, Chris & Steverson, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Theogony Books
Published: 2019-10-15T06:00:00+00:00

* * *

Elma’s fingers blurred over the console’s pad as she scanned for the key information the captain would want to see before they reached the Githan system. They’d have plenty of time in transit, but she’d learned years ago that Selithra would have questions. Better to put information in front of the captain now, let her turn it over, and still give Elma time to download anything else of interest before they hit the gate out of the Hssarthi system.

Her mind apportioned attention in three different, and unequal, areas—scanning news and articles, considering the outcomes of the card games they’d played that night, and picking over old conversations to determine if any of the crew had any history in the Githan system.

The first two, easy routines, took little of her actual brainpower. Something had tugged at her in the earlier conversation with the crew, and so the most active of her attention was allocated to uncovering it.

Deciphering others’ emotional responses didn’t top Elma’s list of skills—other beings, even her beloved crewmates, moved so slowly compared to her Pikith peers, and they didn’t always make sense to her on first viewing.

She couldn’t even pinpoint who had had the reaction, or if it had been something visible at all. Perhaps a memory, trying to surface, something connecting one of them with the Githans?

The crew in its current combination had been together for over five years. In that time, they’d had two temporary crewmembers move on to new lives, and one killed ramming her fighter into a fleeing pirate ship.

Elma ran her free hand through her brilliantly white hair and scowled at the scrolling information in front of her. Triple loss, that. They’d thought Tenna would last as part of the crew, but she’d been so reckless—so in love with violence—that they’d lost her, one of their three fighter ships, and the prize money off a fast little pirate ship.

At least the pirate crew had died, either in the explosion or the total failure of life support that resulted, so there was the slimmest of bright linings.

Still, the scowl the memory brought lingered as she quickly cycled through what she knew of each of her crewmates’ histories.

Selithra had been on board first, before their ship had even been the Venatrix. An engineer on a team of engineers—Elma always had to remind herself their captain hadn’t always been in charge—Selithra knew the ship literally inside and out. Which worked in her favor when it was overtaken and boarded by eight-foot-tall Gritloths. The captain rarely dropped details, but Elma knew it had been weeks before Selithra had successfully picked off each of the pirates, taking what was now her ship by stealth, general engineering cleverness, and extreme violence.

She’d picked up the Smilps immediately after that, knowing she needed help to keep the ship running. Sinan next, at a broken-down station halfway across the universe. Sinan could develop and execute a firing solution better than anyone, faster even than Elma. The Caldivar had also managed

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