MY HERO

  STARSHIP FOR SALE

  BOOK 8

  M.R. FORBES

  Published by Quirky Algorithms

  Seattle, Washington

  This novel is a work of fiction and a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2023 by Quirky Algorithms

  All rights reserved.

  Cover illustration by Tom Edwards

  Edited by Merrylee Lanehart

  CHAPTER 1

  “Jump complete,” I said as the hyperspace field collapsed and the sensors began painting the view of space around those of us on the Sanguine mothership. The forward surround on the former luxury yacht’s flight deck displayed space directly ahead as the primary video feed, while subfeeds in the corners showed port, starboard, aft, and underneath our disc-shaped starship. Sweeping my eyes across the feeds, I searched for Head Case and Radiance among the pinpoints of starlight and the reddish-hued moon hanging some distance away.

  When my eyes couldn’t spot the telltale signs of light reflecting off the hulls of either ship—or any ship for that matter—I turned my attention to the sensor display projected between my seat and the surround.

  “Did we beat them here?” Matt asked from his place in the co-pilot seat, a little forward of me on the left. Ever since his eyesight had been restored, he had taken a much deeper interest in learning to pilot spacecraft. “They left before us, didn’t they?”

  “They could be hiding out behind that moon,” Quasar said from the navigator station on my right. “We can’t see them if they are.”

  “And they can’t see us,” I agreed, reaching into my coat pocket.

  “Should we send out a wide band hail?”

  I retrieved the Relyeh collator from my pocket and let the dark, stonelike object rest in the palm of my hand. “We don’t need traditional tech to communicate.”

  I visualized the collator on Head Case, reaching out to it through mine. Almost immediately, an ethereal form of Head Case’s lounge faded into view.

  “Whoa,” Matt said in response. This was the first time he had seen it activated. “That’s so cool.”

  His reaction brought a smile to my face. Thanks to Emerald’s insistence that I let her touch the restore sigil on my chest, we had learned that even though the sigil was part of me and working passively to keep me healthy, it could be used by others to heal their wounds and ailments as well. With it, I had been able to do more than restore the lost vision of my friends and crew members. I had removed the surgically attached cameras from their eyes and then reversed all of the cumulative damage, bringing their eyes back to the condition they were in before Kill Spree ever happened. Since I had healed Emerald first, removing the cameras had meant blinding her a second time. Being Emerald, she accepted the assignment with enthusiasm because it gave her an excuse to touch my chest again. Or so she had said. After spending the last week with her, I was pretty sure even she didn’t always know what she was saying. While she did have rare moments of pure lucidity where her true intellect shined through, the way her mind had been scrambled was more sad than amusing. It had left me feeling more than a little protective of her.

  “It is pretty cool,” I agreed.

  “But, what the hell is that?” he asked, pointing to the dazzling multicolored sparkle of Starbright fused to Head Case’s chin.

  “I told you what happened on Windfall Station,” I answered.

  “Yeah. You said you stole a hop racer from some dude named Katana to escape, not Rainbow Brite.”

  “What can I say; he likes to stand out." I turned my attention from Matt to Keep. He was stretched out on the sofa. Pork pie hat pulled down over his face, he was snoring softly. “Hey, Keep.” He didn’t hear me the first time. “Keep.” I repeated, raising my voice a little more. “Keep!”

  The third time was the charm. He slowly brought his hand up to his hat and lifted it from his face. “Bennie?” he said, sounding groggy. “That you, kid?”

  “Who else would it be?” I replied as he opened his eyes and sat up. “What are you doing?”

  He centered his hat on his head and turned to face me. Apparently, the collator was on top of the piano. “What does it look like? Taking a nap.”

  “We just reached the coordinates you gave us. Where are you?”

  “Laying low while we waited for you to show up. Hold on a sec.” He tapped his comm badge. “Leo, you there?”

  “I’m here Mister Keep,” Leo replied. “What do you need?”

  “Bennie’s here. Scale her up.”

  “On it.”

  I looked to the forward surround again, smiling when Head Case grew from a speck too small for the sensors to register to normal size. Nearly a few thousand kilometers away, she still appeared as nothing more than a mote through the camera feed, but at least we could see her now on the grid.

  “What the hell?” Quasar said, casting a confused and amused look over her shoulder at me.

  “I didn’t just see that,” Matt added, equally disturbed. I’d told them both about the functionality, but it was something else to witness it firsthand.

  “You should have been there when a bird was chasing us,” I said.

  “Here we are, kid. But why didn’t you just use the comms?” Keep asked.

  “I figured the collator is more reliable.”

  “Hey,” Ki said from somewhere beyond the range of the collator’s view. “Is that Ben?” She faded into the scene like a ghost, her eyes landing on me. “This is weird.” She pawed at the air, her hand passing through Matt. “Nice beard, by the way.” she told me.

  I rubbed at the week’s worth of growth, which was filling out quite nicely though I didn't plan to let it get too long. “Thank you,” I said, my smile fighting against the pang of sadness nestling again in the center of my chest. I still had to tell everyone on Head Case about Kat. I wanted to do it in person. “Does it make me look more mature?”

  “It makes you look like a goat,” Matt said.

  “Greatest of all time? I’ll take it.”

  “No. Baaa. Baaaa.” Matt’s goat impression drew a laugh from everyone within earshot.

  I threw a knowing look at him. "You're just jealous because your beard looked so pathetic."

  "I just didn't want to hide this handsome face," he said, smoothing a hand over his freshly shaved cheeks. I smirked, because I'd listened to him bitch about his sparse growth since he got his eyesight back.

  “I’m glad you made it off Merton, kid,” Keep said. “Not that I ever doubted you. And I’m thankful Emerald remembered the coordinates I tossed you. I wasn’t feeling real confident about that.”

  “She didn’t let us down.”

  “You’ll need to tell me all about how you got off the planet.”

  “I will. We have a lot to talk about.” I swallowed the lump in my throat, thinking again of Kat. “Duchess Dryka isn’t here yet?”

  “Not yet, but she should be here soon.” He paused. “It’s been such a long time. Do you think she’ll remember me?”

  “I don’t know how anyone could forget you,” I replied.

  “I didn’t look like this back then. I had a uniform. Robes and a thick fabric sash.”

  “I can’t picture that at all,” Matt said.

  “That was the worst part of the job, let me tell you. It took me two hours every morning just to get dressed. Badabing badaboom.”

  “Do you have any pictures of that?”

  “I’m sure you can find them on the hypernet. But do me a favor.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t.”

  “Hey, Captain,” Leo said. “I’m glad you made it back. That’s a killer ride.”

  “It is?” I said.

  “Oh yeah. Mushari Hyperliner X50. Fifty million brand new, but I guess that one isn’t brand new. Is the interior as candy as the streams suggest?”

  “Candier,” I replied. “But don’t get too excited. We aren’t keeping it.”

  “We’re not?”

  “No. For one thing, it has no guns and just enough shielding to keep random space junk from punching holes in it. For another, we’ve got the original crew locked down on the first deck, and I’m not about to start taking hostages.”

  “We could drop them off somewhere,” Ki suggested.

  “Third, the ship doesn’t belong to us.”

  “Sanguine Studios is located within Sedaya’s territories,” Keep said. “So technically it belongs to him. Are you sure you want to give it back?”

  “What do we need a ship like this for? I’m letting the civilians on board use it to get home.”

  “You’re too nice, Bennie, but okay. It’s your call.”

  “I need to tie up some loose ends here and then we’ll cross over. Just don’t go anywhere in the meantime.”

  “You got it, kid.”

  I stopped the flow of chaos energy to the collator. Head Case’s lounge faded from view. “Matt, can you and Zar round up our people and get them loaded onto the gunship? I’ll be along shortly.”

  “So we’re keeping that one?” Quasar asked.

  “Well, it is a ship named after the fact that it has guns,” I answered. “Lots of them. And shields. It might come in handy.”

  “It might, but where are we going to stow it?”

  “Maybe I’ll jettison Starbright.”

  “Please do,” Matt quipped, removing his restraints a
nd getting to his feet. “Come on, Zar. We’ll meet you at the gunship, Ben.” They both headed off the flight deck.

  I tapped on my comm badge. “Grizz, do you copy?”

  “Yes, Sir Ben,” the old engineer replied. “I copy.”

  “Can you meet me on the flight deck?”

  “On my way, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  I brought the yacht to a full stop, keeping my distance from Head Case. I didn’t want the Niflin pilot to even think about trying to do something stupid like ram her. Grizz arrived by the time I had the bow facing away from Head Case. He stood at attention just inside the entry, waiting patiently for me to acknowledge him. I had told him at least a dozen times that he didn’t need to be so formal with me, but he insisted on it as a show of respect. I had given up trying to argue with him.

  He somehow noticed as soon as I was paying attention to him. “Chief Engineer Grizz reporting, Sir Ben.”

  “At ease, Grizz,” I said. He immediately relaxed his posture, letting his ample stomach fall out over his belt. “I need you to lock down the comms. Can you do that?”

  “Of course, sir,” he replied, approaching the console. Even from the wrong side of the curved touch surface, he navigated through the menus at lightning speed, having used them thousands of times before. He quickly entered the comms settings and changed the permissions so the Niflin would need to know the admin password to send a message back to Sedaya as to our location. The last thing we needed was for Lyke to follow us directly here.

  Then again, I wasn’t sure if she would, even if given the chance. Our last exchange remained fresh in my mind…

  “Benjamin,” Lyke said. “You really are a cockroach. We need to stop meeting like this.”

  “We need to stop meeting at all. It doesn’t matter anyway. You’re too late.”

  “Am I?” she asked. “Or am I right on time?”

  A week later and I still hadn’t decided if she had answered that way because of some ulterior motive or if she had just been trying to get under my skin. I preferred to think it was the latter, but even if it wasn’t, the effect would be the same. The closest I could come to a decently logical guess was that Succaath had brought her over to his side and told her not to mess with me anymore. If so, she might have arrived late at Merton so she wouldn’t have to shoot at me and to keep Sedaya from guessing she had switched teams.

  If any of that were true it would change the overall equation quite a bit. But I wasn’t ready to jump far enough to reach that conclusion.

  “There you are, Sir Ben,” Grizz said. “Comms are locked out. By the time they can report your position here, you’ll be long gone.”

  “Don’t you mean we’ll be long gone?” I asked.

  He smiled as he pulled the Head Case shaped comm badge from his jacket and held it out to me. “I’d be honored to travel with you, sir. But I’m an old man, and I don’t have the agility or stamina you need to help you where you’re headed.”

  “Grizz, the other Sanguine employees know you were helping me. They’ll have your head. Maybe literally.”

  “I appreciate your concern, sir. But I wouldn’t worry too much about that. From what you’ve told me, Duke Sedaya already has enough on his plate than to notice an old man like me. Most likely, I’ll be reprimanded and released from service. Which is just fine with me. Besides, my staying behind will make your leaving easier. I won’t let the others out until you’re back where you belong.”

  I shook my head. “I appreciate that, but I’m sorry, Grizz. You know the password for the locked out systems. I can’t risk that they’ll torture you to get them. Like it or not, you’re coming with me. At least until our next stop. And I don’t need you to be Chief Engineer on my ship, I’ve already got a pair of top mechanics.”

  “I’d really like to go home, Sir Ben.” He looked at me with tired, sad eyes. “To see my wife and children. I can’t give up the password for the comms because I don’t know it. I set access to the root user. Nobody on this ship has those credentials.”

  I finally reached out and accepted the comm badge. “In that case, I want to thank you for your help. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me since I came on board. I honestly couldn’t have gotten here without you.”

  “It was an honor to serve an ally of the true ruler of the Draconian duchy,” Grizz replied. “When you see Her Grace again, please tell her that Chief Engineer Griswold Gunderson sends his regards, and anxiously awaits her return to her rightful place on the Caprum throne.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  He came to attention and saluted me by thumping his fist over his heart. I copied the gesture before leaving the command station to give him a hug.

  “And kick Sedaya’s ass for me,” he said.

  “I’ll do that too,” I replied as I broke the embrace. “I promise.”

  The door to the flight deck slid open and I stepped out.

  CHAPTER 2

  I reached the hangar ten minutes after leaving the flight deck. Emerald and Matt were still outside the gunship, but I could hear Druck’s big mouth inside, complaining to Quasar about Leo beating him at poker after just learning the game. Ixy’s large abdomen hung out from the hatch, blocking the entrance.

  “There you are!” Emerald said excitedly when she saw me coming. She rushed over, throwing her arms around me in a big hug. “I missed you.”

  “You saw me thirty minutes ago,” I said, laying my hands flat on her back, a half smile on my face.

  “So? I still missed you.” She backed away. “Where’s Grizzy?”

  “He’s not coming,” I replied, loudly enough for Matt to hear. “He wants to go home. He’ll keep the rest of the crew locked down on the lower deck until we’re on board Head Case.”

  “That’s nice of him. We should make him a cake.”

  “We should get on the gunship,” I said, turning her around and steering her toward it.

  “We could if someone would get their big fat rear out of the way,” Matt said. “Ixy, find a seat.”

  She responded by shaking her hind end at him before pulling it all the way inside. It still made me smile every time I remembered the look on Matt’s face the first time he saw her. Having grown up with a fear of spiders, he had literally started shaking during their introduction, and had admitted to me later that he had been close to losing control of his bladder. Exposure therapy had done wonders for his discomfort, and now he treated her like any other member of our crew.

  Matt and Emerald entered the gunship ahead of me. Once I was on board, I scanned the rows of seats on each side of the fuselage to make sure we had everybody. Shaq sat with Quasar and Ixy on the starboard side, while Matt, Emerald, and Druck evened things out on the port. Two were missing.

  “Where are Coil and Eubric?” I asked.

  “Who?” Emerald replied before breaking into a fit of laughter.

  “Druck, you were in charge of getting Coil down here.”

  “He didn’t want to come,” Druck replied.

  “It wasn’t optional.”

  “What do you want me to do, Boss? He locked himself in his quarters.”

  “This is getting ridiculous,” I groaned. “First he won’t let me heal his eyes, now he’s refusing to come with us? He’s a blind convicted felon. They’ll Hang him when they get back to Kirillia.”

  “Maybe he prefers that to spending any more time with Emil,” Emerald suggested. “I actually considered it myself.”

  “You just can’t handle my machismo,” Druck said.

  “I’d like to cut—“

  “Don’t start,” I warned them both. “What about Eubric?”

  “He said he was on his way,” Matt said.

  “Probably got lost,” Druck added. “I don’t know how that kid managed to kill anyone. He doesn’t even know which end of a knife is the pointy one.”

  I sighed heavily. “Wait here. I’ll go get them.”

  Eubric definitely wasn’t the brightest of bulbs. He had nearly shot me on Merton after being blinded, and hadn’t done much to prove his worth since. That he survived Kill Spree was either a miracle for him or a curse on us. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to leave him behind.

  Would I ever stop being so nice?