The Fringe Wars

1.7

The Trouble with Pirates

Reyne woke the following morning with a hard reminder that with whiskey came hangovers. He still had all the memories he'd attempted to drown, except now he had a hell of a pounding headache to go along with them.

He gently lifted the arm draped across his chest and climbed out of bed. Doc mumbled something incoherent before rolling onto her other side. He didn't need to dress since he hadn't bothered to undress the night before. He buckled his pants and stumbled from his quarters and to the commons. There, he went straight for a juice bag and chugged the entire contents.

"Rough night?"

Reyne turned to find Sixx eating breakfast, realizing the other man had been sitting there the entire time. Reyne tossed the empty bag and grabbed a second juice bag before pulling out a chair and plopping down.

"Throttle told me about our upgrades." Sixx whistled. "That's some serious armament. Any theories?"

"Working on it."

"Hopefully, we don't run into a CUF cruiser. They'll be in for one hell of a surprise when they scan us. We'll spend the rest of our about-to-become incredibly short lives munching on vigs and cockroaches in the Citadel."

Reyne shook his head slowly, wincing at the movement. "The Gryphon might be a hauler now, but she's got the heart of a gunship. Her hull's been reinforced with rilon, with a couple extra layers covering the gun bays. No ramp scan would pick them up, and Vym knows this."

"Well, aren't we lucky?"

Reyne grunted. "Now, if the CUF did a manual search of the gun bays—"

"We'd be screwed," Sixx finished for him.

"Yeah, we'd be screwed."

With a sigh, he pushed to his feet. Now that he could string together semi-rational thoughts through the sledge hammer pounding a staccato rhythm in his brain, he headed toward the bridge. It was empty—Throttle would still be in bed after they spent most of the night hailing Ice Port. To no surprise, Vym hadn't responded to any of his pings.

The old woman wasn't dumb. She had to have known that they would discover the armaments. Why hadn't she said something back on Ice Port? More importantly, what the hell was she planning?

He had a sinking feeling he'd been set up to deliver a gunship to a torrent crew of Vym's choosing at Nova Colony, and Critch would be there to clean up loose ends—namely, Reyne and his crew. If that was the case, Vym would quickly learn that Reyne wouldn't give up his ship without a fight. He'd have no problem using his new phase cannon to protect his ship and his crew.

A bell chimed, and Reyne checked the notification. He pinged Throttle's comm. "You'd better get up here if you want to fly through an asteroid belt."

After a delay, she grumbled, "Coming."

Moments later, Throttle wheeled onto the bridge—her eyes still half-closed—and locked in at her panel.

He watched her. "You sure you're up to this?"

She yawned and stretched. "Oh, yeah. Definitely." She pulled her mussed-up hair into a ponytail before turning her focus to the instruments. She cracked her knuckles. And, just like that, she was all business. "All right. Switching to manual controls. Maintaining speed until we hit the edge of the Coast. Then, we'll drop down to half-speed to avoid any big, ugly rocks."

"And pirates," Reyne added, but she didn't acknowledge him, already deep into her own world.

He grabbed the comm and announced to the ship, "We're coming up on the Space Coast in ten minutes. Lock down anything that can be locked down and strap in. Get ready for a bumpy ride."