Stealing Jia (Coletti Warlords #12) - Gail Koger Page 0,13
rest of his pirate buddies were fighting with Loki and another guy. I air swam over to the control panel, placed my hand on it and fried the system. The energy field vanished.
Heavy magnetic boots thudded down the corridor.
Hmm. Hopefully, his gravity boots would fit me. Air swimming was hard work. I let myself float to the ceiling and pulled my laser pistol.
A warrior with a bubble gum pink goatee and troll hair stormed into the room. He was short, kinda skinny and wearing badly dented body armor. His weird milky green eyes surveyed the room. Huh? His eyelids were tattooed with a symbol of some kind. He checked his scanner and looked up.
I tucked my pistol behind me and waved at him all friendly like.
Pepe wagged his tail.
Pretty in Pink babbled something.
I shrugged. “No speaky alien.”
More babbling and he pointed to the floor.
“Sorry, no comprende.”
The warrior walked up the wall and reached for me. I stunned him. His teeth chattered like castanets and violent muscle spasms had him literally vibrating in his armor.
If looks could kill, I’d be dead. I reached out psychically and did some mental snooping. His name was Yoopew. I grinned. The name fit. He smelled like rotted cheese. Trayon was right. Mister Stinky was from Nal Rishi and he wanted to bag himself a human female to sell. I smirked. Bad decision.
My internal alarm went on alert. Another ship was rapidly approaching. Hopefully, it was Trayon’s, not another pirate coming in for the kill.
Loki ran into the room, grabbed my leg, and towed me away. His boots clunked loudly on the metal floor.
“What’s going on?”
“The Askole have found us.”
It was Trayon’s ship and once he got his claws on me, I would be an alien bride. “How do you plan on outrunning the Askole?”
Loki pulled me into a landing bay. “We cannot outrun them, but we can slow them down.”
“How?”
“When they drop out of warp speed, we blow up our ship.” Loki hauled me into a battered shuttle.
“But… We need a spaceship to find Adam.”
“We will steal another.” Loki belted me into a seat. “Go.”
My eyes widened. The Bjarke warrior in the pilot’s seat was even bigger than Loki. “Who’s that?”
“My brother Ivan.”
With a tremendous roar the shuttle catapulted out of the landing bay, slamming me back against the seat. I stared out at the strange constellation filling the viewscreen. How far from Earth was I? Would I ever see Sister Sarah again? The cold emptiness of being utterly alone suddenly spread like acid inside me.
“No alone. You have me, Momma,” Pepe said, licking my chin. “We find Adam.”
The knot in my stomach loosened. I kissed his head. “Yes, we will.”
A heavily armed Askole battle cruiser appeared suddenly on another viewscreen.
Brilliant billows of orange and yellow flames erupted from Loki’s disintegrating spacecraft. Shock waves buffeted our shuttle.
I frowned. “I don’t see any damage to the Askole ship.”
“There is minimal damage, but Yoopew has no choice but to fight,” Loki replied.
Giving us time to make a run for it. Loki wasn’t as dumb as he appeared. “I think pretty in pink is outgunned.”
Loki’s eyebrows rose. “You find Yoopew attractive?”
“Hell, no. I was being sarcastic.”
The blackness of space was filled with ribbons of dazzling red energy beams as the Nal Rishi pirates and the Askole battled it out. It was like the American’s Fourth of July.
“The Askole have boarded the Nal Rishi ship,” Ivan announced.
“That was quick.”
His mouth a grim line, Loki said, “The Askole are very efficient hunters. Only fools attack them.”
Or steal from them, I added silently. “Where are you going to find another ship?”
“Threll,” Ivan answered.
“What’s Threll?”
“It is the armpit of the galaxy. Where the worst of the worst gather.”
Oh, kinda sounded like the Moroccan black-market Mateo had dragged me to. I was still surprised we had made it out alive.
“Won’t the Askole figure out that’s where we’re headed?”
A grim smile formed on Loki’s mouth. “Even the Coletti and Askole avoid Threll.”
“That bad, huh?”
“The last time the Coletti raided Threll they needed over a thousand warriors and they sustained heavy casualties,” Ivan replied.
“And you’re just going to waltz right in there and steal a ship?”
“Yes.”
All that testosterone had damaged his itty-bitty brain. “There has to be another place you can steal a ship.”
Loki shook his head. “There is not. The Askole are now pursuing us.”
One look at the main viewscreen and dread clenched my gut. They were rapidly gaining on us. “Can this shuttle go any faster?”
“No.” Loki pointed at a viewscreen. “See that