Living in Freefall (Living on the Run Book 1) Read online

  Living in Freefall

  by Ben Patterson

  Copyright 2013 Ben Patterson

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  Summery

  Orphaned at fourteen, Ericca Archer and Tyson, her eleven-year-old brother, found the universe a hostile place. Sold into slavery, never in one place long, they learned to survive. But Errica’s dream of a peaceful world and a free life drives her to escape captivity. Now, she and he are freelance security agents for a team of scientists who need them to protect their plans and equipment. With part of that technology—plans to what may be the most dangerous weapon ever created—in the wrong hands, she must infiltrate the weapon itself and sabotage key components. To get the job done, Ericca must elude ship’s security and escape detection, even as the forces of several governments align against her. Coming out of this alive will require the help of her brother’s guns, and every bit of luck she’s never had. But there’s no choice. If she’s ever going to have a peaceful place to call home, she first has to keep the universe from blowing up.

  Chapter One

  They had set out three months ago, the seven of them, and seventeen-year-old Riley Archer had grown dog weary of the lack of action. He was eager for adventure but they had found none. For a science vessel, cloak and dagger jobs like these were few and far between, but they paid well, and had the potential to be quite fun . . .

  . . . if not for their captain, Jordon Kori. The science ship’s captain always made these jobs more complex than they had to be. Riley usually took in stride whatever came his way; his older sister Ericca, however, did not. Captain Kori’s imaginative ways of doing things tended to push her every button.

  On the bridge of the privately owned exploration vessel, Freefall, Riley quietly reclined in the co-pilot’s seat to read a book. The holograph star chart projected above Ericca’s nav-computer’s panel went largely ignored. It served only as a prop should someone happen in. No one ever did.

  Freefall’s A.I. brain –a fist-sized cube– made piloting the ship from the bridge obsolete. Voice activated, the ship could be commanded from anywhere aboard her. This room served only as a prop for the Federal inspectors who sometimes stopped them. The bridge was small and cramped and, except for Ericca and Riley, none of the crew bothered coming up here anymore. Brother and sister found it the perfect place to get away from the others.

  A slow plodding metal on metal thunk . . . thunk . . . thunk drew Riley’s eyes up from his book. His sister, Ericca, sat reclined in the pilot’s seat with her leg cocked up on it. With one arm relaxed on her knee, and the other resting on the window ledge, she held her knife loosely as she tapped out her irritation. She stared out the window at the stars perhaps, perhaps at the Grenadier Nebula, or perhaps—lost in thought—at nothing at all. She raised the knife by bending nothing more than her wrist, and tapped its blade tip on the ledge slowly again and again. Suddenly, she gripped tightly and drove it hard into the steel shelf; the tyrillium blade penetrated the metal nearly an inch.

  Riley watched her with mild amusement. Capt. Jordon Kori’s tyrillium steal, an alloy he had contrived not five years ago, had yet to find its way to the marketplace. The knife, a birthday gift from Captain Kori, had been given to replace the blade Ericca had snapped in two. Kori guaranteed this one would last her a lifetime.

  Ericca gripped the knife, and tried to pull it free. It didn’t budge.

  “Bored?” Riley asked, startling his sister who spun her head to him. Her face flushed red.

  Ericca looked embarrassed and angry, both at once. “What?!” she snapped.

  Riley offered her a small grin before dropping his eyes and raising his book to block her out, yet he was careful enough to not completely cover his view of her.

  Ericca returned to the unmoving blade and gripped it with both hands. If she wasn’t careful, she’d snap that blade tip right off.

  No, she wouldn’t, Riley remembered. Kori’s alloy was virtually unbreakable. Oh, this should be fun, he thought as he peered across the book at her. Though Ericca strained against the unyielding blade’s leather-bound grip, she was careful not to grown or grunt out loud.

  Riley wanted to laugh at her—the knife certainly was—but he kept it to himself.

  Ericca released the handle and for an instant the knife vibrated like spring steal. Intrigued, she pulled the handle sideways and released. The knife made a low warbling sound. She did it again and got the same result. Then, with effort, she leaned the grip over nearly to the window severely bending the blade. All this time Riley surreptitiously watched her. It was then, when she released the knife that the windowsill chose to let go. Before he could react, the blade flew end over end right at him. In the next moment the knife’s blade sliced into and through his book, stopped only by the hilt. The blade’s tip was just inches from his face.

  Wide-eyed, he rolled the book onto its back, and lowered it to show his sister.

  Dumbstruck, Ericca, herself startled by the mishap, peered at him over her hand covering her gaping mouth. She stared at him for a long moment, and then suddenly broke out in laughter.

  Not amused, Riley pulled the knife from his book, looked at it, looked at her, and then tossed it haphazardly toward the exit. It skidded across the floor and stopped when it hit the far wall. Lucky for him his book was thick.

  “I’m sorry, Archer,” she said, doing a poor job of keeping the laughter out of her voice. Ericca never called Riley by his first name unless, of course, she was scolding him. Some folks felt that her doing so was odd, but she didn’t care. To her he looked more like an Archer than a Riley, so that’s what she called him.

  As sisters went, Riley couldn’t have asked for a better. She had a good heart, which she just kept hidden beneath leathers that had seen heavy use. She preferred these durable duds because they made her look older than her twenty years. Ericca was pretty—something she couldn’t help if she tried—and most men took her for naïve because of it. Fact was she was anything but innocent or foolish. She and he had had their share of tough times and now neither could afford to be seen as vulnerable.

  The irony was, two years ago she wore dresses, bright summer frills, and fluffs befitting a royal, and lived in a mansion. In fact, she came close to becoming an actual Queen. But that was once upon a time in a kingdom far far away. A prince had eyes for her, and he was handsome, confident, and approachable. To Riley, she and the prince seemed a good match for each other.

  The king was getting on in years. Some felt the old man would die soon, but that was a lot to hope for. Now, she sat on the bridge of an aging research vessel, a starship older than the king, and these days she dressed mostly in black well-weathered leathers. Riley supposed the faraway look that was often in her eyes was understandable. She missed their folks. She missed their having a home to call their own. He felt bad for her, but what could he do?

  In the tight bridge, a little less than two feet separated his seat from hers. Except for the bright instrument panels, the consoles were, like everything else in this shi
p, well-aged grey metal. Momma Kori, the captain’s mother, kept every inch of this vessel diner-plate clean, but you couldn’t tell it at a glance. Try as she might, there was simply no way to hide the ancient look or feel of this past-its-prime space boat.

  Today, like every day for the last two months, they had spent hours searching for their captain’s quarry and Riley had grown as tired as his sister looked. She climbed from her seat, patted his shoulder. “Sorry,” she said, and went back to retrieve her knife. Returning, she plopped unceremoniously back into her seat.

  “Bored?” he repeated after a moment.

  “Huh? What?” She tilted her head back and rolled it to stretch stiffening neck muscles. Her jet-black hair fell below her shoulders and swayed behind her as if it weighed nothing. “No, actually, I’m not.” With one hand she pulled her long hair over a shoulder and started to twist it into a ponytail.

  “So what’s on your mind?” Riley said, watching his sister with a mix of bewildered amusement.

  She met his gaze with unflustered eyes. “Several things, actually.”

  “Give me one.”

  “Okay. Something about our captain bothers me, Archer . . .

  . . . In the back of my mind,” she continued, “I have this sense that we’ve met him before.”

  “You mean before Los Dabaron.”

  She thought for a moment. “I guess it’d have to have been. But that can’t be right.”

  Though that battle was eight years ago, thinking about it still made Riley shudder. He was just nine at the time. His sister was twelve, and like her, he didn’t like thinking about those years. His cousin’s death still stung. It seemed senseless back then—it seemed senseless even now. Nearly freezing to death, he and Ericca had somehow survived, but Cousin Clayton never woke up from that terrible sleep. Riley took Clay’s death hard—Ericca did too, and those memories were never easy to go back to. If they had met Jordon Kori before then, he’d have been a boy himself.

  Ericca rubbed her temple. “Ever since Captain Kori signed us on, his behavior has been weird.”

  “Weird? How so?”

  “Like he knows us. Couple that with this. His face seems familiar, but I just can’t place it. Ugh!” She brushed the thought off with a flick of the wrist. “Oh well, never mind. I think being on this ship is dulling my senses. Now I’m starting to imagine things that never were.”

  “Stay sharp, sis. Things’ll pick up soon.”

  “Why on Earth did the captain name this old scow Freefall anyway?” An image jumped right to the front of Ericca’s mind. “When I first saw that emblazoned on her prow, I thought, ‘Now there’s a spaceship I could sign on to.’ It had such a nice ring to it.”

  Riley remembered that. They had just escaped their enslavement. Stealing away from the pirate king in the middle of the night, he and Ericca had made a run for it in their little planet jumper. Miles from nowhere—well between worlds—their little two-man shuttle up and quit on them. Inexplicably power reserves quickly fell to zero. Adrift, they worked for hours to reignite the engines. But without power to life-support, time eventually ran out. Nearly frozen, an old spaceship happened across them. That anyone had found them at all . . .

  Through their frosty canopy, Riley looked up to see ‘Freefall’ written in well-worn big block letters. Moments after, Captain Kori tractored them into his cargo bay, popped their hatch, and wrapped them in warm blankets. That was the second time in Riley’s short life that he and his sister had escaped becoming popsicles. He remembered shivering fiercely and looking up at the captain—Kori’s mother and sister beside him—and seeing that look of recognition in his face even then. Pressed, Kori would admit to nothing.

  “So now, sis, you’re having second thoughts?”

  Ericca shot an irritated look back at the door. “What was I thinking? I hate freefall! I want to feel solid ground under my feet. I want danger, excitement. Not this.”

  Riley chuckled. “You don’t think riding in this old bucket is dangerous? Think about it. Any minute now rust could breach the hull. That’s dangerous.”

  She turned to face him and leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees. With her head turned slightly down and her eyes raised to meet his, she looked evil. “I want to kill something, Archer.” Her tone was blunt and matter-of-fact.

  Archer snorted back a laugh. He knew her. She didn’t really want to kill anything other than time. “Wow, sis,” he said. “You really do have some pent up issues there.”

  She turned to the star-chart, tabbed in their current location, and expanded the view. Several blips, distant but within reach of their little recon ship, appeared.

  “What say we fire up Viper, ditch Freefall for a few hours, and go hunting? There’s got to be a Confederate or pirate ship within reach.” Ericca and Archer’s two-man interplanetary jet had since been modified and improved by the Kori team. She was a sturdy craft, now, and reliable. Most importantly, Viper was fast. Though it was never intended to be, the Koris armed it with small cannons of their own design, and that made her dangerous. And Riley lived to be dangerous.

  Ericca pointed to a holographic blip in the star-chart. “Looky there. This one might prove interesting. It’s moving at a pretty good clip.”

  “In the mood to harass someone, huh?”

  A sly smile flitted across her face. “Sneak up on a Confed ship, do a quick fly by? A little boom and zoom?”

  “Sure,” Riley mused. “If we do it right, sis, we could piss off a fed ship in short order.”

  “Enough to get it to chase us?”

  “Seriously, sis? Do you doubt your abilities?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Me too,” he said with hunger-filled eyes. “That would be exciting, but . . .”

  She jumped to her feet and clapped his shoulder. “A little game of cat and mouse, Archer. Come on, it’ll be fun. We’ll be back before the captain knows we’re gone.” She turned and headed for the door.

  “Hey, I’m all for tagging a government cruiser,” he said, remaining seated. “A few of them have pretty impressive juice. However . . .”

  She turned back to him and scowled.

  “Right now, Ericca, that’ll have to wait. Captain’s been plotting and planning this heist for months. If we screw around and muck up his plans, he’ll have our hides.”

  She sighed and looked back at the exit longingly. “Archer, my boy,”—she turned back to him—“I swear if we sit here much longer I’m going to go stir-crazy. Plans or no plans, I’m running out of patience.”

  “He saved our lives, sis. We owe him.”

  She sighed her irritation. “Yeah, sure, but when is that debt ever going to be paid off. I can’t take much more of this.”

  “We need our own ship,” Riley said without thinking. Before he could bide his tongue, he heard himself describe the first thing that popped into his head. “Something big enough to hold Viper, a few supplies, and can easily be made to feel homey during long runs. But at the same time, it should be small and inconspicuous, something easy to hide.”

  She stepped closer. “You mean a launch platform of our own for times like this?”

  “Sure, Ericca, why not? You don’t like taking orders anyway, do you? Having our own ship would mean you could be your own boss. I will miss Mrs. Kori’s cooking though.” Immediately a picture popped into his head of Ericca’s last attempt to cook a meal. Whatever it had been, she had turned to charcoal.

  “We could do that,” she said, smiling big. “Find a sizable yacht, I mean. Something not so big as Freefall but, yes, I like your thinking. And fast. It’s gotta be fast, right?”

  “I’ll bet Tyson Blackhart has something in his inventory that’ll suit.”

  She shot Riley an evil look. Expecting it, he met her scowl with a coy smirk.

  “Archer, don’t start.”

  “Cap isn’t going to like our cutting out on him,” he said to change the subject from the pirate prince, her one time love interest. />
  “I said leave it alone.”

  Riley hesitated. Somehow, without meaning to, he had dug deeper into what was clearly her sore spot. That was not his intent. “No, wait. Let me back up here. I wasn’t suggesting you had cut out on Blackhart.”

  “No?” She had taken off her sister face, and donned the face of Lieutenant Archer, captain-of-the-guard.

  Riley knew he was in trouble when she crossed her arms, but he felt committed to go all in. He sighed. In for a dime, in for a dollar. “No, sis.”

  “Sounds to me like that’s exactly where you were taking this conversation. You need to back off.”

  Riley straightened tall in his seat. “Well that isn’t where I was going. That’s not it at all.” He threw up his hands as if to erase his previous comment. “Forget Blackhart. Forget all that. Let’s start this conversation over. I was just saying—”

  “Man! You just won’t quit.”

  “. . . as you will recall, when we signed on to Freefall, sis, we agreed to commit ourselves to this ship. Captain Kori said he wanted at least two years’ service and two weeks’ notice if we decided to leave after that. Considering he’d saved our lives, I think we should stick to our agreement.”

  “Yes, that was before we found out this job was so . . . What’s the phrase I’m looking for?”

  “Boring as hell?”

  “Mind-numbingly stupid,” she said.

  “Stupid? Where did that come from?”

  “At best, Kori is going to get us caught. At worst, killed.”

  “I take it you don’t like his plan.”

  “No, actually, I don’t. His plan is . . . it’s . . .” She knit her brow. “You know what? There isn’t a word in the English language that means ‘stupid’ to that degree.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “You know the captain. Once he gets an idea in his head, it’s nearly impossible for him to see things differently.” Seeing Riley was actually on her side, her posture relaxed.