Vendetta on Venus (Stark Raven Voyages Book 4) Page 9

  "Agreed," Chan said. "We just have one more stop to make before we hit the figurative road, though." He leaned back in his seat. "Can you take us back to where we found the Gull?"

  "The cops towed her away."

  "Yes, I know. But they left something behind."

  Liz raised an eyebrow.

  "Geoff," he explained. "I think he's still alive."

  "Really?" She thought for a moment. "And you want to pick him up? He did rob us, after all." She glanced at the docking ring in the ceiling, marred by a thick clamp and a wrinkled mess of plastic patches. "It caused us quite a bit of hassle."

  Chan, who still felt a twinge of pain every single time he inhaled, didn't need reminding. "Yes, but he took a knife wound saving my life."

  "All right." She leaned over her console and tapped away, and the stars tilted. "Won't be long now. I can't find the exact spot, mind you. I can get us within a couple of hundred kilometers."

  That was an awfully big sphere in which to find one small man in a space suit. Chan scratched his jaw, thinking, then tapped his console to life. "I'll do a scan for suit transponders."

  "I thought his transponder wasn't working?"

  "I think he turned it off. By now he might have turned it back on."

  He picked up the transponder signal fifteen minutes later. Liz guided the ship closer and closer until they spotted the safety light on top of Geoff's helmet, glowing in the void ahead.

  "Geoff," said Chan into the microphone on his console. "Can you hear me?"

  "Captain Chan, is that you?"

  Chan felt relief flood through him. "Yes, Geoff. Your insanely irresponsible plan actually worked."

  "Oh, thank God. I'll admit it wasn't the brightest scheme I ever dreamed up."

  "Have you got a way to navigate?"

  "Nope." Geoff's chuckle crackled over the radio. "I've got about ten minutes of air. That's what I've got."

  "All right. I'm coming out to bring you in."

  "I'll wait right here. And Chan?"

  "Yes, Geoff?"

  "Don't drag your feet, okay?"

  Fifteen minutes later Geoff sat at an unused bridge console, a mug of cocoa in his hands. He was shivering. His air had outlasted the batteries in the suit, and he was cold. He sipped the cocoa and said, "Oh, that's good. I really appreciate this. You guys must have been tempted to just leave me out there."

  "Never crossed our minds," Liz said, poker-faced.

  "What now?" said Joss. "We can't take you back to Venus."

  "Or Aphrodite," Liz added.

  "Would McRae Station be too far out of your way?" Geoff asked. "I know a girl there."

  Chan checked his console. McRae Station was half the size of Aphrodite, orbiting between Earth and Venus and serving as a way station for travellers. The station wasn't as close as it could be, but it was at least on the right side of the sun. "We could do that. It's as good a place as any to look for cargo and passengers." He brought up a station data sheet. "It looks like they have some pretty good electronic repair facilities. We can see if our payday from Inner Planet Express is enough to get Rhett repaired."

  "McRae Station it is," Liz said. She tapped her console and the ship started to turn. "And after that?"

  "After that, we see where fortune takes us," Chan said. He leaned back in his seat as the ship hummed around him, carrying him toward McRae Station, and then into the unknown.

  Author Notes

  Thanks for reading. I'd love to hear your comments. Go to http://jakeelwoodwriter.com to leave me a note or to learn about other stories, or sign up for my newsletter to hear about new releases. I can be reached by email at author@jakeelwoodwriter.com.

  Voyage Five, Mutiny on Mercury, is coming in January of 2016.

  I'm also the author of Star Raider, a serial now collected into one volume, available from Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W0E1KOO. Cassandra Marx is a thief, and a good one. This time she got greedy, though. She swiped a priceless artifact from Carmody, the most powerful man on Hesperus. He's been beating his daughter, Lark, so Cassie took the kid too.

  Now Carmody is tearing the galaxy apart hunting Cassie down. The artifact isn't just a priceless relic of a lost civilization. It's the key to a galaxy-wide conspiracy. Cassie needs to figure out the significance of the ancient egg, but with bounty hunters and mercenaries hounding her from one end of the galaxy to the other, she and Lark have another puzzle to solve -- how to stay alive.