Approaching it, I held the original pilot’s throat while he requested permission to dock and then choked him unconscious while I touched down smoothly in an expansive hangar mostly occupied by surplus drones and other production equipment. Having learned from the Niflin pilot that the only people left on board the vessel were civilian crew and members of the traveling production retinue, it didn’t take Ixy and me very long to subdue everyone on board and lay claim to the ship as any good space pirate would.

  Apparently, the lowest deck was reserved for the ship’s operational crew. It contained a galley, a head, berthing, and even a rec room, so we ferried fifteen of the sixteen souls we found on the ship plus the unconscious Niflin gunship pilot down there. The only person we kept with us was the ship’s engineer, a much older man named Grizz, who had been surprisingly sympathetic to my plight. He helped me lock out anything that would have allowed the captured crew off the bottom deck.

  He also helped me move the blind passengers from the gunship to individual staterooms on the top deck of the starship, all of which made even Head Case’s captain’s quarters look plain by comparison. Not that any of them could enjoy the visual side of the opulence, but they would at least be comfortable in the plush beds. It was during the transfer that I learned Grizz had been born on Caprum and still had family there. When he said he believed everything had been better before Sedaya took over the duchy and how awful the loss of Jacinda Dryka had been, I seized the opportunity to inform him that she was still alive and helping me in my aim to end Sedaya’s tyranny.

  New friend, made.

  “Emerald, you’re up,” I said, stepping into the gunship and circling the gear rack to reach her. I leaned in to undo her harness and take her hand, helping her to her feet.

  “Am I the last one here?” she asked, staring straight ahead.

  “Yes,” I replied. “I need you to come to the flight deck with me so you can feed me the coordinates for the rendezvous point.”

  “What coordinates?”

  “Haha. Very funny.”

  “I’m not joking,” she said, stone-faced. “What coordinates, Ben?”

  “The ones Keep gave you, that you memorized and recited back to him. Do you remember?”

  She shook her head. “I remember you and I in the bathroom, and then I went blind.”

  “You seriously don’t remember the whole conversation with Keep?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  I stared at her in dumbstruck silence. Even with the collator, I couldn’t contact Keep while he was in hyperspace to ask him again for the coordinates. We would have to wait until he had reached the rendezvous point before following after them, costing us more time.

  Time we already didn’t have.

  “We should probably head to Windfall Station,” Emerald continued. “They have a lot of good modders there.”

  “I bet they do,” I replied, shaking my head and sighing. I took her hand and put it on my shoulder. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “I told you, the flight deck.”

  “You should be able to get the coordinates to Windfall from the hypernet. It’s not a big secret.”

  “We’re not going to Windfall. We’re not visiting a modder until I reconnect with Keep and the others. So the longer it takes to meet up with them, the longer you’ll be blind.”

  “What? How is that fair? We need to wait anyway, we might as well make the most of the time we have. Efficiency, you know?”

  “I know efficiency. I also know priority. I’m sorry you can’t see right now. I know it’s not very comfortable. But some things are more important.”

  “My eyes are more important!” she snapped. “Damn it, Ben. I can’t see.”

  “Neither can Matt. For days already. Or Quasar. Or Druck. Or Shaq. That’s everyone I came to Merton to rescue. They’re all blind. And they all went to their quarters without complaint. I saved your life back there. Can’t you at least stop thinking about yourself for a minute and just give me the coordinates.”

  “I told you, I don’t—”

  “Except you do…remember.. You’re lying to me to get me to take you to a modder first.”

  “How dare you accuse me of lying,” she snapped back. “I’m horribly offended.” She pouted for a second before smiling. “But I can think of one way you can make it up to me.”

  “Emerald,” I said patronizingly.

  “Come on, Ben. You have a healing sigil, don’t you? Why won’t you heal me?”

  “It doesn’t work like that. Restore is passive. It can only heal me.”

  “Prove it.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Prove it. Try to heal me with it.”

  “There’s nothing to try. I can’t intentionally access the sigil like I can with the others.”

  “Well, let me touch it then.”

  “I’m not just going to let you touch it.”

  “Why not? Come on, I saved your life.”

  “When?”

  “When Coil came out with his gang after you spent the night outside the bunker.”

  “You didn’t save my life. Coil gave us an hour to get a headstart. As I remember it, I saved Coil’s life from you, so you couldn’t prevent him from telling me his plan.”

  “I took out nine of his gang members. They would have killed you.”

  “You can’t make that claim.”

  She sighed, exasperated. “Come on, Ben. Who else took them out? Just let me touch the sigel and I’ll give you the coordinates.”

  “You mean the coordinates you couldn’t remember five minutes ago?”

  She laughed. “It’s possible that I was lying about that.”

  “Oh, really? I never would have guessed.”

  “I memorized all of those numbers in one go. That has to be worth something. Please, just let me touch the sigil and I’ll be good from now on. Promise.”

  “Fine,” I said, reaching for the clasps of my combat armor. “Give me a minute.”

  “Yippee!” Emerald cried, clapping her hands together and bouncing up and down. “Thank you, thank you!”

  I pulled the top part of the armor off, then the rubbery underlayer, and finally my t-shirt, leaving my chest bare.

  “Sir Ben, is everything okay in there?” Grizz asked, leaning his head into the ship. Fortunately, he couldn’t see me from the other side of the equipment rack. He could see the glow of the construct, though, which was probably why he asked.

  “Yeah, thanks for checking on me, Grizz. We’ll be right there.”

  “Okay, Sir Ben.”

  “Why does he call you Sir Ben?”

  “I don’t know. It’s his thing, I guess.” I reached down and took her hand. “This isn’t going to do anything.”

  “We’ll see. Either way, you get what you want.”

  I guided her hand to the construct, using my other hand to lift her palm and place it against the restore sigil.

  “It’s so warm,” she cooed, pressing her hand a little harder on the scarred skin and metal.

  “Anything?” I asked impatiently.

  “I don’t think it’s instantaneous, is it?”

  “No.”

  “You aren’t enjoying this?”

  “It’s okay,” I replied noncommittally. In truth, it wasn't her touch that excited me so much as the tingle I was starting to feel along the sigil.

  “Something’s happening,” she said, obviously able to feel it too.

  “Yeah, it is,” I agreed. The warm tingling intensified, sending tiny shockwaves through my body. Emerald’s mouth hung open as she gasped in reaction to the sensation.

  “I think it’s working,” she said. “It feels good.”

  “It might be,” I admitted. “I never would have thought it could.”

  I kept tracking her eyes, watching as the pupils seemed to kick into gear, suddenly contracting and expanding slightly as a big smile spread across her face.

  “Ben. I can see you,” she purred.

  I smiled back at her, nodding excitedly. “This is amazing. I can’t wait to tell the others.” I gently pulled her hand away, the warmth fading in an instant. “First, I gave you what you wanted. It’s your turn. We need to get to the flight deck and get out of here.”

  “What’s the rush?” she asked, trying to put her hand back on my chest.

  Something in the ship started beeping. I broke away from her and ran off the gunship. “Grizz?”

  “Proximity alert,” he answered. Built like a bulldog, his eyes narrowed as he stared at the sigils on my bare chest, then shifted to Emerald when she came out. “I thought your passengers were all blind?”

  “I was. Ben fixed me.”

  “We’re out of time,” I growled. “Hurry. Grizz, lead the way."

  “I’m not fast, Sir Ben.”

  “Then we’ll meet you there. Emerald, come on.”

  I grabbed her hand, practically dragging her behind me as we raced out of the hangar. Fortunately, I already knew the layout of the ship from my first pass through. The flight deck was on the middle deck, located in the exact center of the starship and easily accessible from a stairwell just off the hangar. We reached it in no time, the doors parting on my approach.

  The pilot station sat on the left side of the room, raised up from the deck by two steps and flanked by a pair of co-pilot seats. A large optical surround showing the forward view filled the right side of the room, with additional angles occupying smaller overlays along the top and bottom. I wasn’t shocked to see Dominator loitering just off the port side of the mothership, the visual still alarming enough to send a chill down my spine. Lyke’s voice through the comms was more of a surprise.

  “Captain Choi, do you copy?” she said, her voice only slightly agitated.

  “She reminds me of my third grade math teacher,” Emerald said as I dropped into the pilot’s seat and pulled her down into the co-pilot's seat to my right. I laid my finger on the touchscreen console just in front of her to navigate to the jump computer. “Miss Gritch was her name. You can guess what we all called her.”

  “Coordinates?” I said, glancing at her. Since Dominator had just arrived, Lyke had yet to realize Sanguine was no longer in control of their ship. She would figure out something was amiss soon enough.

  “What are you talking about?” Emerald said.

  “The coordinates, Emerald. Come on.”

  “I decided you can call me Emmy if you want to. Or Emma. Or Ma. But that’s weird, isn’t it? I’m not your mother.” She giggled.

  “Emerald!” I snapped. “The coordinates. Now’s not the time to play games.”

  “Captain Choi, are you there?” Lyke repeated.

  “Blah blah blah,” Emerald said, leaning over the pilot station. “Let’s turn her off.”

  “Coordinates,” I said, taking a deep calming breath. “Please?”

  She smiled. “You did it. You said the magic word.” She recited the coordinates to me. I quickly punched them in, setting the computer to do its calculations. The ship was fancy but old, its jump computer not the quickest.

  “Captain Choi, you have ten seconds to respond,” Lyke said. “Otherwise I’ll assume you’re compromised and scuttle your ship.”

  Ten seconds? I glanced at the calculation ETA. Fourteen seconds. Shit.

  “Nine…eight…seven,” Emerald counted down, jumping out of her seat and skipping around the small open area between the console and the surround. “I can watch myself die.”

  “It’s too bad restore didn’t fix your crazy,” I said.

  “Too bad for you,” she answered. “Four..three…two.”

  I tapped on the comms controls. “Lyke, wait.”

  “One…zer-oh. We’re still alive,” Emerald said. “Weird.”

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

  “We need to stop meeting at all.” The calculation finished. I moved my finger to the launch control, ready to execute. “It doesn’t matter anyway. You’re too late.”

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

  I didn’t know what she meant, and I didn’t care. I opened the throttle and triggered the jump, pulling away from Dominator as the field began forming around the ship.

  “I’ll see you around, Benjamin,” Lyke said.

  “I hope not,” I replied as the hyperspace field completed.

  And then we were gone.

  Thank you so much for reading Kill Spree! For more information about the next book in the series, please visit mrforbes.com/starshipforsale8.

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