The Emerald Elephant (Kip Keene Book 1) by Nicholas Erik

Author:Nicholas Erik [Erik, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Watchfire Press
Published: 2014-11-15T16:00:00+00:00

15 | One Day or Another

That day in the white sands proved routine. Rob a remote Coalition outpost. Haul the gear back to Jack on another planet. Jobs like this, Keene found soon enough, were what it took to keep The Blue Maybelle in the air, her crew fed.

Being under Jack’s boot was better than living beneath the Coalition’s. Most of the time. Still, Keene waited eagerly for one day or another, when it would be him, and him alone, leading the charge through the darkness of space.

One day or another proved to come after four long years, numerous smuggling missions, and a great many wanted posters for Keene and his ragtag crew. Since the beginning of his adventures, he’d picked up Johnny, a computer wizard liberated from lock and key on a Coalition scout ship, and Catarina, a genius and keen study of explosives and swordplay.

The former skillset had landed her in cuffs on the planet Quippu following an ill-fated bank robbery. It just so happened, however, that on this particular day Jack the Diamond needed a certain piece of equipment from security box 564.

Keene and the gang walked in right as she was being led out.

He decided to take her along with him. Stunning the guards, running from the slow local puddle jumpers, that wasn’t hard.

After that, Catarina and Keene got on well.

But running missions for Jack was growing tiresome, the demands bordering on indentured servitude. So when the news came across the ship’s intercom that a certain Corporal Adams was being honored on the frosty planet of Thori in a ceremony—his first public appearance in four years—Keene dropped everything.

He was going to nab this bastard who got Jack’s eye, all those years ago. The first mission would come full circle. Deliver him, and then be free.

The Blue Maybelle set down on an abandoned part of Thori. The darkened husks of long-empty buildings—from before the First War—quaked as the craft’s thrusters hovered over the surface. The auto-landing mechanism refused to engage.

Keene flipped a series of buttons and turned to the ship’s menu. Nothing. He mashed buttons, and the thrusters shut off. For a moment, the ship hung in the air, then the planet’s gravity took over and the craft hurtled the rest of the ten feet into the cracked street, sending up a plume of dust.

The force of the impact sent multiple buildings down, their rusted supports and ancient construction unable to bear the brunt of the shockwaves. A thick black cloud of dirt settled across the windshield, darkening the dim light of the planet’s moon. The Blue Maybelle groaned, and its emergency lights, a fluorescent pink, sprung on, casting a strange glow about the interior.

“Damn,” Lorelei said, her voice echoing around corners, all the way to the cockpit. “You think you would be decent at this by now.”

The lights made everything feel like a bad gentleman’s club. Keene twisted his multi-tool in the ship’s ignition, but it didn’t spring back to life.

A diagnostic hologram sprung from the

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