Fenturi Fate (Spacestalker Saga Book 1) (2 page)

4042, 20 years later, Planet Vembi

“If I never have to step foot on that dustbowl of a planet again, it will be too soon,” Shea complained and wiped at her red-sooted trousers.
Dare watched the theatrics with a grin. Times like these with the crew made their work worth it.

“Watch where you slap that toxic soot, damn it.”
Roc frowned up at her and uttered another sharp curse as his eyes watered.

“Sorry, Roc.
I
didn’t realize you were down there fiddling with the boosters.”

“Well where the hell else would I be?” he barked.

Shea gave an innocent shrug. “Sorry.” Then she stomped another dust covered foot over the grate under which he worked.

Jace rolled his eyes and turned back to his panel, no doubt watching their approach to the Nearworld planet of Vembi,
the
pleasure world of the Legion System.

Dare chuckled as she removed her boots and oversuit in the containment area behind a glass panel. She pushed the intercom and said,
 
“You know that girl can hold a grudge. Come on, Roc.”

She heard more swearing she could do without and quickly shoved her feet into clean boots. A glance around showed everything running as normal.

Shea had done something to irritate Roc. Roc, as usual, was tinkering with some malfunctioning portion of their grand lady, the
SpaceStalker
, and Jace sat ignoring it all by the visual monitor near the control panel.

Dare glanced over her shoulder at the large crate they’d recovered and rubbed her hands at thoughts of the cascading beks soon to be running through her fingers.

“Well, if the little Lynaran she-devil would stop aggravating the five hels out of me, I wouldn’t have made that crack about her cooking,” Roc grumbled in a deep bass as he tightened another screw, no doubt jarred loose by Shea’s boot stomping.
“It’s been nigh on a week, already. When is she going to get over it?”

Jace sighed though he kept his eyes on the monitor.
“Just tell her you’re sorry.”

“Fine. Stubborn little…”
Roc extricated himself from the booster panel and left the room.

“Suns and stars, those two irritate the piss out of me.” Jace punched a key on the control panel, cleaning up the excess Yanvi dust.

“That stuff really does burn, you know.” Dare shared a grin with him.

“I know, but it’s the same old thing every time they have an argument. Ah, there we are. Looking good.”

Her second in command stood and stretched his tall frame.
Talk about handsome. Too bad they’d never had more in common than friendship, because every female from here to the Nebby system wanted to try Jace on for size. Then again, sexual tension between crew members could be a problem.

Roc and Shea immediately came to mind.

They’d all been on this current assignment for the past standard month. Dare knew the crew needed a break.
For that reason only, she’d agreed to meet with their buyer on Vembi to transact the final payout.

Vembi, one of the Nearworld’s claims to fame, had more currency surging through it than most any other planet in the Legion System.
But then, who could resist a stop at the hedonistic center of the System?
Females and males of every race and species tantalized interested patrons.
Gambling, drinking, fighting, any and all types of vices were made readily available on Vembi. For the right price.

“I still don’t like this.” Jace frowned. His dark black eyes contrasted sharply with his white blond brows and hair, drawing her into a yawning well of concern.
She worried and wondered if she was doing the right thing.
His gaze seemed fathomless, and she felt herself falling…

Dare shook her head and scowled at him.
“Stop that. I’ve told you not to mess with my mind, Jace, and I mean it.”

The pirate held up his hands in surrender. “Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Something’s not quite right down there.”
He sat back down to view the monitor and mumbled under his breath.

“Nothing ever feels right on Vembi. People who live for nothing but pleasure are all a little odd and unstable.”
She stared at the back of his head and felt him smile at her.
A talented Psi, Jace could not only project feelings and thoughts at will but could receive them as well.

“You’d know all about odd, wouldn’t you?”

“Considering this crew? You have a point.” Dare loved them like family, but she couldn’t have gathered five more different creatures together on one ship. A fugitive, a member of the secret Psi race, a gray-skinned Rovi with the power to crush a man’s skull with his bare fist, a petite thief who could steal hearts as easily as she stole beks, and a smug feline who communicated telepathically only with Dare.

And I’m calling others odd? Yeah, right.

She walked back to her cabin to clean up, knowing Jace would signal as they approached.
As she passed the galley, she heard Roc rumbling apologies to Shea for insulting her cooking.
Finally, they might have some peace at the next meal.

She grinned at the image of the gigantic Roc towering over tiny Shea while groveling for her forgiveness.
Now that was an odd pair.

Dare had picked them up five years ago after she’d unceremoniously launched her then less-than-honest shipmates off her ship.
Crewless and annoyed at life in general, she and Jace had ventured to a seedy spaceport to take a break from life. Then they’d
watched Roc and Shea try to con Shry’tal Nybal—only
the
biggest crime lord on the fourth moon of Meklen—out of a large bin full of beks.

Jace’s Psi abilities allowed him to see through Shea’s illusion, that the currency she and Roc intended to pay the crime lord was actually a pile of gnarn nuts used in making dye.

Dare had been amazed at Shea’s masterful illusion talent, in awe really, as the ability was so rare in the System.
Dare had been doubly impressed to see the petite, yellow-eyed Shea standing under the protection of a large, gray-skinned Rovi.
The Lynaran’s diminutive frame and adorable looks made her seem harmless.

Her partner, Roc SteelFist, hailed from Rovi, a Motherworld planet.
Dare would later come to learn that he had a
human mother and a Rovi father, so though he could be rough and warlike, his mother’s sensibilities made him easy to get along with. Roc stood heads taller than Dare and Jace.
He had a masculine beauty that his deep gray skin only emphasized, huge six-fingered hands that could fix just about anything, and bright white eyes, no pupil to speak of, that enhanced his exoticness.

With one blow he could have killed anyone trying to harm Shea or himself, yet he and his thieving companion had gone for skill over brawn.
Dare had been drawn to the two thieves stealing from an even bigger one.

But even Shea had her limits, and Shry’tal had unfortunately seen through them.
Before the thieves could be shot to pieces, Dare and Jace had stepped in and saved their sorry hides.

A laughing acceptance from Shea broke Dare from memories, and she prayed Roc refrained from more comments about the woman’s cooking. One could hope.

After entering her cabin, Dare stripped and settled into a warm solar bath that quickly erased the grime from her tired body.
“Ah, Roc, what would we do without you?”
The adjustments he’d made throughout the ship had been utterly wonderful.

Once clean, Dare breathed easier and changed into a loose-fitting tunic and pant, her feet in Vembi sandals that she had to admit felt like walking on the softest Fentra sand.
She frowned at the memory of anything to do with Fentra and hastened to greet Mra.

Dare opened the panel to her right and entered a scene straight out of jungle lore. It had taken a good half a year to get the right atmosphere, but she’d finally nailed it.

Two Fen trees, one near death, the other lush and tall, from floor to ceiling, anchored the five sided room. Lush grasses carpeted the ground, bordered by clusters of Fen flora, both sweet-smelling and colorful, were kept alive and in place by a floating sheet of Nexian growth mat. The trees and bordering leafy shrubs kept the oxygen filtered, and the temperate rainfall, again, thanks to Nexian technology, kept the air fresh and clean, which Mra loved. Stepping into the room felt like stepping onto Dare’s home planet, and at times, she dearly wished to trade reality for this calm, peaceful place.

She breathed in the vibrant scent of life and felt at home.
“I’m sorry I took so long but I needed to rid myself of that hated Yanvi dust,” she said before she could be reprimanded for being late.  

Mra, a four-legged feline that stood roughly two-thirds Dare’s height and weighed twice as much, purred as she approached Dare, whom she considered her cub. The cat had adopted Dare two decades ago, on that fateful night when M’Chre had helped them both escape the planet. She and Mra had looked at each other and formed the bond only the Fenturi had ever shared with the spiritual guidecats.

That’s all right then,
the cat said, communicating telepathically.

“I missed you too, beautiful.” She held back a laugh as Mra preened. “Look, I’m just going to say it straight out. We’re going down to Vembi whether you and Jace like it or not.
The crew needs a break, and we need this currency.
With the beks we make on this deal I’ll be able to get you another Fen tree to replace the one that’s nearly dead.”

Mra sniffed, snapped her long, reddish brown tail at Dare’s legs, then leaped up the healthy tree.

And…
conversation over. Dare left Mra’s room with a promise to bring the cat some decent food from Vembi.

Yes, Mra definitely added to the eccentricity of the crew.
An alien Rovi, an illusionist from Lynaran with bright yellow eyes that fairly screamed
I’m unique
, a Fentra-Kre crossbreed guidecat and stalker, the only one Dare knew of in existence, and—she paused as she reentered the control room to stare at Jace—our very own Psi.

He hovered over the monitor like an expectant father, and Dare wondered what he hoped to find.
She’d done the preliminary scans on the planet yesterday and knew only a handful of Legion patrol units would be in the area.
The majority of units normally patrolling this sector of the Nearworlds were on standby awaiting a prison transfer to Nine and Dead, the Legion System’s prison planet.

“Jace? Everything okay?”

“We’re good. I’m fine here. Thanks.”

Dare left him for the library at the back of the ship, knowing Roc and Shea would rather poke out their eyes than read. Sad, but at least it gave her a nice space to sit and ponder things in private. Dare wondered again, as she normally did when considering her crew, what Jace hid behind those space-black eyes.

Taller than she by a good head, with a lean but strong body, he had the look and skill of a decent space pirate.
She’d seen him wield both a Bylaran rifle and Ziwi blade with ease, handle Legion patrols in hand-to-hand fighting with impressive tactics, and yet he’d never told her exactly what it was that motivated him. Not currency or conquest. She had sensed something deeper lay on the Psi’s mind. She sighed and leaned back as Jace’s puzzling personality occupied her tired mind.

She recalled the first day she’d met him.
At just fifteen years of age, she’d been living alone with Mra, devoid of human contact except for those she spied upon in the pirate colonies on the planet Kre.

She learned that cruelty and horror lived in many guises, on many worlds.
Less bloody perhaps, but no less creative than the Bylaran scum that had murdered her family, the Kre pirates made a steady profit from those they robbed and killed.

After a time, the deaths she’d witnessed numbed Dare’s senses. Like Mra, she lived to survive and hunt, to grow in strength.

But the day Dare had seen Jace led off of a vessel onto the torture grounds beyond her home in the wild, something inside her snapped.
For an odd moment, the space of a breath perhaps, his eyes had sought and held hers through the distance that separated them.

She hadn’t understood how he could see her, hiding in the trees. But something about the dark grief in his gaze had drawn her.
W
hen she’d watched the pirates begin to torture him, she’d reacted.

She didn’t recall much of it, but something devastated the pirate’s village that day.
Whether it had been her or Jace that caused it, she still didn’t know, nor did she want to know.
Revisiting the past could be a painful process.
She and Mra took Jace with them into the forest, and with Mra’s help, Dare had nursed Jace back to health.