Galaxy Under Siege Read online

  But it wasn’t like she was worried. Ever since the loss of her and Jegra’s child, Danica had been extremely cold and distant. And it wasn’t only their son she’d lost. She had lost Jegra, too, in a manner of speaking.

  The Empress had fallen into a deep coma after the incident and, like the hallmark sleeping princess of the fairy stories that Jegra had shared, lending Raphine her personal favorite books to read whenever she liked, she knew that it would take more than true love’s kiss to awaken the sleeping empress.

  In the meantime, she watched Danica cope the best she could. And she coped rather well, Raphine thought, by turning her anger into something productive and becoming a full-time bounty hunter. Not only did it give her an outlet to unleash her never-ending rage, but Danica had proved to be a rather talented manhunter, bringing in a constant stream of illegals and other criminals.

  What Raphine hadn’t anticipated in all this, though, was that Danica would start using again. And this time it seemed that she didn’t care what the Nividium 3 would do to her. She just wanted that momentary high, that few seconds of mindless bliss.

  And then there was one drunken night when they reminisced about the good old days, drank way too much wine and Dragonian brandy, and fell into bed together. It was a one-time thing. They both needed the other to act as a soothing balm for their pain. In that moment, in that desperate time of need, they were there for each other, and it had all just seemed right somehow.

  Besides, the raw attraction between them made perfect sense. They trained together; fought together. And in the evenings, they consoled one another, a physical necessity now, seeing as ghosts haunted the empty corridors of the once thriving palace they lived in. They both knew it was bound to happen at some point on their road. So often did they feel compromised and in need of each other’s comfort.

  Raphine didn’t regret that it had happened, but she did try her best to put it in the past. In spite of everything they shared, it wasn’t a relationship that was realistic, let alone sustainable. It was what it was. Simple, brief, and bittersweet.

  Raphine flipped on the comm. “Hey, you. How’s it going down there? I see you’re tearing up the terrain rather nicely.”

  “No time to chat,” Danica’s voice came back through the comm. She spoke loudly as the noise of what sounded like jet turbines droned in the background. “I have this son of a bitch in my crosshairs, and I’m not letting him get away. Not this time.”

  THE ELECTRIC POWERED turbines on the dune buggy roared over Danica’s shouting. She raced at high speeds, somewhat recklessly, across a scorched desert terrain in pursuit of her bounty.

  After a year of collecting bounties, she’d worked her way up the ladder of petty criminals to the kingpin himself, the drug lord and seemingly untouchable Gerard Van Zallek. What’s more, Zallek had proven to be as slippery as a Brilaxian eel, so to speak. But her resolve was unfailing.

  This was the man who’d gotten her addicted to an experimental drug from which she overdosed and nearly died, and she was out to make him pay. The fact that he’d taken advantage of her, using her to hurt those she cared most about, well, she’d punish him painfully. If he was very lucky, she wouldn’t beat him to death with her bare hands but would toss him in the top max prison and let him rot away in a private cell for the rest of his miserable life.

  “I have you now, you spineless, knuckle-dragging tosser,” she roared above the screaming of her turbines. Kicking her head back in her seat, her purple-turquoise ombre hair falling across her shoulder, she floored it. The buggy’s giant, paddle-tread tires kicked up a spray of sand nearly two stories high.

  The jet engines she’d affixed to the dune buggy did their part, and she jammed the throttle up to full. Shooting over a medium-sized sand dune the vehicle soared momentarily in the air with an impressive hang time before crashing back down into the sand with a padded thump followed by another sky-high wake of sand jutting out behind it.

  It had taken her eight months and sixteen days to track down Gerard Van Zallek’s secret manufacturing facility and shut it down—by dropping a tungsten rod on it from orbit. Sadly, he wasn’t there when she’d destroyed the place.

  With the manhunt in full swing, it took her another four months before she finally got wind of his whereabouts. Each time she caught up, however, he’d always find a way to evade her. As it turned out, the man was like a snake, slithering out of every trap she set for him.

  But not this time. This time she had him right where she wanted him. In her sights, on the run, with nowhere to go.

  Zallek adjusted his sunglasses, then rose up from the passenger seat, blaster in one hand, the other firmly gripping the lip of the windshield, as his driver gunned it to try to lose the overzealous hag chasing them.

  Of course, running wouldn’t be enough. She’d caught scent of him, and Zallek knew that she would doggedly pursue him to the end of a thousand worlds. That was the type of crazy he was dealing with here.

  He leaned over to his driver amid the roar of the engine and yelled something that was lost on the rush of wind and the sound of revving engines. The ATV pulled a hard right and plowed into a drift, and Zallek, swinging wide, took careful aim of his pursuer. He’d only get one shot at this.

  Danica, of course, followed suit, and the two vehicles became locked in a tight donut, circling one another like two alpha sharks about to settle a territorial dispute.

  A halo of sand plumed high from the speeding pirouette as Zallek trained his blaster, resting his forearm across the roll bar of his ATV to help steady his hand and get off a clean shot. Peering over the rims of his dark tinted shades he fired once sending a green plasma bolt zipping between the two vehicles.

  Danica yelped when the blast hit her left arm—a lucky shot. Cringing she looked down at her singed and smoldering clothes doing her best to ignore the pain. She slammed her foot down on the brakes and throttled down the turbines bringing the buggy skidding to a halt in the sand.

  In the distance between them, Zallek could be heard laughing above the rumble of his engine as they tore away from Danica’s location. She looked up in time to see him shoot her a smug look, knowing he’d bested her again, and give her a two-finger salute as a taunting goodbye.

  “Fuck!” Danica growled frustrated that he was getting away. She smashed her right fist down on the leather-wrapped steering wheel and screamed.

  Still feeling the sting of the blast, she reached over and tore off the singed sleeve of her jacket and tossed it out the side of the buggy where the wind took it. It fluttered spastically away in the backdraft of the idling turbines.

  She inspected the wound on her metal arm; the area that had been shot melted briefly into a metallic liquid; in the very next instant, the wound quickly filled itself in and a fresh layer of metallic skin congealed into place rendering her arm as good as new.

  Wholly mended, Danica raised her clenched fist, opening and closing it repeatedly, flexing her metallic muscles out of sheer amazement that everything had been perfectly restored just as it had been before she’d been shot. “Amazing,” she murmured to herself, admiring her high-tech arm.

  Although it had cost her some major credits, Danica was happy with splurging on the self-healing memory metal upgrades. As far as prosthetic limbs went, it sure beat having to tinker with a clunky mechanical arm all the time trying to keep it in working order.

  “Nice try, asshole,” she said, gripping the steering wheel tightly with both hands—one lavender and one silver—and wrenching it in her fists so that the leather wrap whined and squeaked under duress. “But you’ll have to do better than that if you’re going to shake me this time.”

  With renewed determination, Danica spun the car back around, carving out a figure eight and kicking up another wall of sand in her wake.

  Once she had gotten the nose of the buggy in-line with Zallek’s tracks, she jammed the throttle up to full and the thrust of the turbines slammed her back into her seat.

  Her purpl
e-turquoise hair whipping along in the open space behind the headrest, she pulled down her goggles and aimed for the large dune off to the left of Zallek’s tracks. He was circling around the dune in an attempt to lose her, but she had other plans.

  The souped-up dune buggy hit the sandbank at two-hundred twenty-five kilometers per hour. Reaching for the dash she flipped up a red tab safety cover revealing a large red button. As she approached the cusp of the dune, she mashed the button and the throat of the jet nozzle opened wide as the afterburners ignited to full.

  Triple shock diamonds formed in the tail of the afterburn as the custom buggy flew off the apex of the dune and out into the open air. Of all the jumps she’d ever attempted, this was the most insane, reckless—and thrilling!

  Zallek looked up in time to see Danica’s entire vehicle flying through the air like a flaming boulder launched from an ancient catapult—the kind barbarian warlords on primitive worlds often used to fend off Dagon landing parties. And in that moment he knew she was completely out of her mind.

  Worse still, she was on a direct collision course for him.

  At the last minute, he panicked and reached across the chest of his driver, grabbed the wheel, and jerked it as hard as he could to the right. Before his car could even respond to the abrupt direction change, however, Danica’s front bumper plowed into his rear fender at a forty-five-degree angle and an impossible to escape downward momentum.

  Metal grinding against metal, Zallek’s ATV violently spun out of control, flipped up onto its side and tumbled three times before landing upside down where it scraped to a halt in the soft sand.

  Simultaneously, the front bumper of Danica’s car bit into sand at an extreme pitch, overturned, and was flung into the air from the excess momentum, spiraling violently as it became airborne. Her buggy went up and over Zallek’s landing on the opposite side of his with a harsh thud, rolling twice, then settling onto the roll cage.

  In the collision, one of the turbines tore off and launched itself into the sky. Untethered, it zipped away in a zig-zag fashion like a balloon darting aimlessly about until, finally, it crashed back down several meters away in a fiery explosion.

  Wreckage lay strewn about, some of it still on fire, as a ghastly silence fell across the scene.

  A GLOVED HAND SHOT out of the sand, followed closely by Danica’s violet face. Gasping for breath, she simultaneously coughed and spat up sand as she clawed her way out from underneath her overturned vehicle.

  Luckily for her the roll bar had protected her from any serious injury, minus a minor case of whiplash. Seeing as the buggy had sunk fairly deep into the sand at a slightly skewed angle, she needed to squeeze out between the bottom part of the upturned ATV and the ground.

  The loose sand didn’t make pushing her way out any easier, either, as every time she made any headway she’d merely slide back down into the cavity of the buggy’s cockpit.

  Black smoke trailed into the sky over the various scorch marks left in the wake of the wreckage of both vehicles, along with a field of scrap metal that glinted in the mid-afternoon sun.

  Somewhere a faint voice emitted from a buried radio smothered in sand. “Danica, are you all right? Dani, do you copy?”

  “Gah!” Zallek emerged from the sand and gasped for air.

  After catching his breath, he began pawing at the sand to get out from under his overturned ATV. His driver came up beside him and together they dug their way out from under the crushing weight of the vehicle.

  At the same time, Danica was still digging herself out from under her own dune buggy. She looked over at them scrambling to try and beat her to the punch; she knew, just like the fights in the arena, the first person back on their feet usually prevailed.

  It didn’t help matters that Zallek’s blaster lay in the sand an equal distance away from both their locations. Spotting the gun lying there, as if offering itself up to the victor, they turned to face one another, their eyes meeting with a familiar recognition.

  Their dire expressions made it clear to them both that they shared the same thought. First one to get the gun wins. Not wasting another glance, both parties began to double-time their efforts, digging more frantically and kicking up sand everywhere.

  Zallek was the first to free himself, but in his zeal to get to his feet he tripped over himself and bit the dirt. His sunglasses fell off and bounced to a stop an arm’s reach in front of him. He swiftly retrieved his shades and placed them back on his face before scrambling back to his feet.

  When he stood up, he saw that his hired man was closer to the gun than he was and thrust his chin desperately towards it, urging his man to hurry up and get it before Danica did.

  Of course, Danica had two things they didn’t—resolve, and a mother-fucking-bionic arm. Adrenaline surged throughout her entire body as she quickly sprang to her feet and marched toward Zallek and his henchman. Her fists tightened into compact wrecking balls which she planned to use to make him regret the day he’d ever crossed paths with the likes of her.

  She knew the thrashing wouldn’t fix all the wrongs he’d dealt her, but it sure as Helios would feel good.

  Zallek’s hired man made it to the blaster first and quickly drew it up. Aiming the weapon with unsteady hands, he sneered as he fired it at Danica.

  The first shot went wild, pinging off the sand, making a scorching sound as it did. Realizing that the sights were off, his sneer melted into worry as the woman with a metal arm relentlessly closed in on him. Worse still, her eyes burned with a fury hotter than any flame and, in that raging fire, he could see an unconcealed desire to pummel him into meat jelly.

  The gap between them closing, he hastily fired off another blast. This time his aim was on target, but Danica threw up her metal arm and deflected the shot. The plasma bolt bounced back toward him and, impacting directly in front of his feet, sent up a spray of sand—some of it getting into his eyes.

  “Argh, I can’t see!” he yelped. He staggered back and tried to open his eyes, but the sting of the sand blast forced him to close them again. Taking a wild guess as to where Danica was, he fired off a random shot. And then another.

  Determined not to let her get to him, he drew backward and continued firing off a consecutive series of rapid shots.

  Finally, he managed to crack open one eye just enough to find that she was nearly upon him, a stone’s throw away. He screamed as he unloaded everything he had into her.

  This time, however, she was ready for it. Throwing up a blue energy shield, her Dygra crystal glowing in her chest, the plasma bolts ricocheted off the forcefield and deflected back toward the idiot who kept firing at her.

  Off to the sidelines Zallek scurried out of range of the blaster fire and dove to the ground to bury his head in the sand.

  One of the bolts bounced back and hit him squarely. He stopped firing. A stunned look on his face, he looked down to see that the plasma bolt had burrowed inside his chest. Suddenly, a searing pain tore throughout every nerve fiber in his body and he let out a most wretched scream.

  As the shock set in, his organs boiling from the inside out, he dropped his weapon and then, clutching his chest, sank to his knees.

  Unable to comprehend that like a fool he’d inadvertently killed himself, he looked up at Danica, astonished. The look of astonishment faded into a blank expression as the life drained from his eyes and then, teetering ever so slightly to the left, he fell sideways and crumpled to the ground.

  Not slowing her stride for a nanosecond, Danica stepped up to Zallek with the intent to mangle him. Alarmed, he threw up his arms defensively and began to back away from her, taking one additional step back for every step forward she took.

  “Let’s talk about this, Dani. You and I have history. We go way back, you and I. You owe me at least that much.”

  “I owe you squat, Zallek. You used me,” she snarled. “And, now, it’s my turn to use you. As my personal punching bag.”

  A metal fist came arching around in a vicious righ
t hook and planted itself squarely across his left cheekbone. A resounding thwack and Zallek collapsed to one knee.

  Stunned from the harsh blow he reached up to touch his jaw which felt rather numb. Something rattled around in his mouth and he spat up some blood-laced saliva and along with it a tooth. “You bitch,” he mumbled.

  “What did you call me?” she asked, her metal hand tightening into a fist, her arm flexing with the raw power of mechanical strength.

  Zallek slowly turned his gaze toward Danica, staring up at her from behind half-shattered lenses. Before he could react, however, a second, even more unforgiving blow, met the side of his blue temple.

  His mouth full of sand, Zallek pushed himself up to his hands and knees and spat out a muddy wad of dirt. The completely shattered sunglasses were left disregarded on the sand next to him.

  When he saw Danica’s foot take another step toward him, he scurried back, scuttling on all fours like a hermit crab in reverse. Falling onto his ass, he threw up a defensive hand and pleaded with her to have mercy.

  “Wait! After everything we’ve been through. Somewhere...deep down inside...I know you still have feelings for me.”

  Although it was certainly news to her, she pretended to mull it over for a moment. Then, with a shrug, she replied, “Actually, I do have one overwhelming feeling for you. The urge to punch you in your stupid fucking mouth so hard that you’ll have to shove a toothbrush up your ass just to brush your teeth.”

  “If you spare me,” he said, changing tact, considering he wasn’t getting anywhere with his previous line of impetration, “I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll make you an equal partner. Yeah, that’s right! I’ll split the revenue right down the middle.” Thinking her brief pause was meant to hear him out, he quickly continued, “Just think about it, Danica. I can make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. Don’t be a fool and throw it all away simply for something as childish as revenge.”