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  STORMCROW

  BOOK TWO: BIRDS OF A FEATHER

  by N.C. REED

  Copyright 2016 by N.C. REED

  All rights reserved

  Cover photo modified and used by license.

  Credit: Laura Roth/ Daniel Edwards

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

  The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual names, persons, businesses, and incidents is strictly coincidental. Locations are used only in the general sense and do not represent the real place in actuality.

  ISBN: 978-0-692-80988-4

  STORMCROW

  Book Two: Birds of a Feather

  By

  N.C. REED

  For the Ranger, The Clerk, and the Chef.

  How I miss you all.

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  Stormcrow was an idea given form through other means years ago, at a time when I did not see a future where I was a published author. I bent the character to fit somewhere else and just had fun with it because that was all it would ever be; fun.

  But a funny thing happened. Years after the Shade fell, I was suddenly a 'real' writer, with books for sale. Before I could blink it seemed like, I had a publisher, who took the raw material I had self-published and made it better. More.

  It was at that point that I realized I could finally take Stormcrow and let him fly on his own. So here is the first installment of that flight in the life of the Stormcrow.

  He's not in the Shade anymore.

  NCR/BK

  PROLOGUE

  -

  “Lucia, please. Let the guards go ahead and check things. That is what they are here for!”

  The older woman of the pair tried to keep the exasperation from her voice but it was difficult at best. At worst, in times such as this, it was nearly impossible.

  “Please,” the younger woman rolled her eyes. “We're in the mall for God's sake! Nothing's going to happen in a mall that Poppa owns, Elena. Now come on! Today is the day that Alfonso's is releasing their fall collections and I don't want to be late! If I am, then that bitch Marcia Blasconea will get the best selections and I'll never hear the end of it!”

  Grumbling under her breath, Elena Cortino struggled to keep up with her younger charge. At nineteen, Lucia Delgado was legally and physically an adult, but. . .Elena sometimes thought her maturity level was still closer to a high school student.

  It wasn't that she was dumb. Far from it in fact. Lucia was a very intelligent girl who could do pretty much anything she set her mind to. But as the only daughter of Jerome Delgado, she didn't have to do anything and so spent her days, and her father's money, chasing whatever flight of fancy happen to catch her attention. And nothing was more important to her than fashion.

  Elena had tried to encourage the girl to turn that passion into a career in the fashion industry, but Lucia had just laughed in her face at the suggestion, telling her 'governess' that she was only interested in wearing the latest, not creating it. Elena had shook her head in exasperation and looked for something else to try and aim the girl at.

  In truth, Lucia didn't have to pick a career. She'd never have to work a day in her life if she didn't want to. He father controlled a vast empire of less than legal activities that spanned the known galaxy, reaching from the inner sphere of the Commonwealth to the outer rim colonies that had so recently been crushed beneath the Commonwealth Navy and Marines.

  In addition to the under the table businesses the family owned or controlled, there was an equally impressive legitimate business conglomerate that was even more lucrative and just as wide spread. It often struck Elena as obscene that one family could possibly control so much, but she could not complain about it. Don Delgado treated Elena as if she were his own family and she wanted for nothing. She knew for a fact that no one who worked for him ever went in need, regardless of what that need might be. His people had access to the best healthcare, the best living accommodations, even an excellent retirement plan.

  Those who took care of his less than legal activities and fell in the performance of their 'family' duties, knew that their own families would be well cared for in their absence. Children would be fed, clothed and housed at the Don's expense, given an excellent education, and when the time came would be offered the opportunity to work for the Delgado family themselves. Key word being 'offered'. The benefit packages for survivors was a no-strings attached deal; if they wanted to go elsewhere, they could do so with the Don's complete blessing.

  None of which made Elena's job any easier. At forty-five, she had served the Delgado family as Lucia's governess since the day the child came into the world, entering the home of the Delgado's the very day they had welcomed the child into that same home, delivered in their own family clinic on the grounds of their estate. Since that day, Elena Cortino had been the primary care giver for Lucia Delgado outside of the girl's own mother.

  Elena had seen Lucia through everything from braces on her teeth to puberty, to the first time a boy worked up the courage to ask her out, to stammering her way through asking a boy she liked to the Sadie dance at her private school, to prom and then on to her first year in college. Wherever Lucia had gone, Elena had gone with her, treating the girl as if she were her very own.

  And so it was that early on a Monday morning she was following her charge through a family owned mall where the planet of San Lucia's (named after the girl's umpteenth great-great paternal grandmother, not her) most sought after dress shop was about to unveil their fall line. The two security guards in Lucia's detail, a hulking man and nearly as hulking woman, were trying vainly to screen the girl and her caregiver but Lucia was not in the habit of exercising patience of any kind and most especially not when she was somewhere she considered her own ground.

  “Lucia, I know you're in a hurry, but at least let them make sure there's no threat!” Elena tried again. “You know that your father has told you time and again to allow them to do their jobs!”

  “He's not here and I don't want to be late!” Lucia shot back. “It's not like this is a bad neighborhood, El! Come on! They open in like five minutes. I bet there's already a line!”

  “You know as well as I do that they won't make you stand in line or wait your turn, even though it might do you good,” Elena shot back.

  “That's mean!” Lucia threw over her shoulder. “If Marcia gets there before I do, she'll grab the dress I want just for spite! I can't let her get away with th-”

  Whatever else she was going to say was cut short by a burst of gunfire. Elena watched in shocked fascination as Lucia's two guards crumpled to the floor, bleeding from numerous wounds.

  Before she could react, three masked gunmen came streaming from the store to their left, while two more came from the right.

  “Stay where you are!” one of the masked figures ordered. Elena had grabbed Lucia's hand and was turning to run with her when she felt a hammer blow between her shoulders. Her legs refused to answer her as she tried to make them carry her away from the danger while dragging Lucia with her.

  “El!” she heard Lucia
scream as if far away, even as her legs finally crumpled beneath her and she fell to her knees.

  “EL! Ohmygod, EL!” Lucia cried over and over. Elena felt her ward's arms wrap around her but then leave. She didn't see Lucia being pulled forcibly away from her as she fell the rest of the way to the floor in a heap.

  A foot beneath her slight frame unceremoniously kicked her over onto her back. Her eyes open, she looked up into the eyes of one of the masked attackers, able to see bright green eyes under the black neoprene mask.

  “Do. . .n't hur. . .hurt h. . .her,” Elena begged.

  “Should be more worried about yourself,” a woman's voice said calmly. “I know you're just a pawn, but you're a Delgado pawn, so. . . .”

  Elena didn't feel the bullet that struck her on the bridge of the nose. She had seen the flame from the barrel, but by the time the sound traveled the three or so feet between her ears and the pistol, she was already dead.

  And the young woman she had protected and nurtured and cared for, had nursed when she was sick and held when she cried, had loved as if she were her own daughter, was being dragged away by two of the five kidnappers while the other three sprayed random fire across the mall, forcing everyone to keep their heads down as the group made their way to the side entrance of the mall, a sobbing Lucia Delgado hanging in their grip.

  A windowless ground delivery van with was waiting for them there and once their package was bundled into the vehicle the rest clambered in behind, the last one in pausing to toss a small object back toward the entrance of the mall.

  The grenade exploded as the car pulled away, thwarting the mall's security team as they tried to retrieve the Don's daughter, they not knowing yet who it was that had been taken.

  But soon everyone would know exactly who it was that had been a victim of poor security at the most exclusive shopping venue on the planet.

  CHAPTER ONE

  -

  “Porto San Lucia,” Tony Giannini smiled as he looked at his home world through the screen of the freighter Celia. Of course, no one on the ship knew it was his home.

  “Been here before, Tony?” Lincoln 'Linc' Simmons, the ship pilot and husband of the Captain and owner asked him.

  “Oh yeah,” Tony smiled. “Best food and wine anywhere in the Sphere, right here buddy!” he said eagerly.

  “I can't believe we took this job,” Meredith sighed, shaking her head. “This place is home to the biggest crime organization in the known galaxy,” she complained.

  “Which makes it much easier for me to get our wayward waif her new identity papers,” Tony nodded, ignoring his Captain's less than stellar description of his home. “I have also made arrangements for her to take the pilot's exam while we are here, by the way. With no waiting. Should she pass, she will leave this wonderland of food and drink as the officially licensed pilot Jessica Trenton of Idlewild.”

  “I'm not a waif,” said waif complained from the pilot's chair as she prepared to take them into orbit, and from there to the ground.

  “The main thing though is that I've arranged for Linc to see one of the best ophthalmologists anywhere in the Sphere while we're here,” Tony continued as if he had not been interrupted. “That was the reason for taking this job, remember,” he pointed out to Meredith Simmons, Captain and Owner of the Celia, and Lincoln's husband.

  A few weeks earlier while on Hartley Space Station, Meredith, Lincoln, and the Celia's crew chief had been abducted by a hijacking crew. During that time Lincoln had taken a severe beating leaving him with vision problems that threatened to end his career as a pilot, such as it was. Tony hoped that the surgeon he'd arranged for them to meet would be able to correct Linc's vision problems and return him to battery.

  This visit would also give him the chance to get their newest crew member some 'official' identification. Jessica 'Jess' Travers had come aboard the Celia on Halcyon, bound for her home on Gateway after five years away at school on Berea. After an adventurous three-month trip that had seen a great deal of mystery surround the young woman, they had gotten her home only to find that Jessica Travers had disappeared some twenty-five years before after heading Sphere-ward for school. Her parents were buried in the founder’s garden of her small home town, having died some twenty years before their arrival.

  Considering that Jessica herself was not a day over twenty-five, this presented a mystery of staggering proportions. Complicating that mystery were things discovered during transit that the crew had no way of explaining. Things like Jessica being able to fly the Celia like an expert despite the fact that she had no memory of ever having learned how to do so. Things like her having memories of watching a cartoon that had been banned and erased from existence by an over reaching Commonwealth long before Jessica Travers should have ever been born.

  Things like her very nearly kicking the head off of their engineer, and then having absolutely no memory of doing so. And such as giving her name as “Jess T, three-one-one-five-seven” after a fainting spell had left her disoriented. Which incidentally had happened right after she had basically commandeered the Celia and took off from Hartley Station one step ahead of the crew being detained after having escaped from their kidnappers by the expediency of killing them all.

  Little things like that.

  In the end, Meredith Simmons had decided and decreed that Jessica would come with them. The girl had nowhere to go and couldn't use her real name and identification since she'd been missing for twenty-five years. If she showed up not having aged a day in that time, there was no way she wouldn't be going to jail at the very least for identity theft. It was obvious to the all that Jessica truly believed she was who she claimed, and she had been visibly heartbroken to discover that her parents had been gone for twenty years. Whatever the mystery turned out to be, Jessica really believed she was Jessica.

  Since Jess could fly like a pro and Lincoln was out of action until and unless the damage to his eyesight could be repaired, this was an arrangement that worked well for all parties. And Tony Giannini, making use of less than scrupulous contacts of his own, had arranged to get Jessica a new identification that would pass even the most stringent exam and identify her as Meredith's younger sister, Jessica Trenton.

  “At least we know the cargo is legitimate,” Meredith sighed.

  “You know, it's not like the entire planet is corrupt, Captain,” Tony rolled his eyes. “I grant you there are some less than desirable individuals running around down there, but there are also a lot of good people there, too. Including the doctor we're going to see,” he added.

  “And these good people just happen to live on a planet that's home to a crime syndicate that spans the Commonwealth,” Meredith raised an eyebrow at him.

  “So they're automatically criminals because of where they were born or what family they were born into, then,” Tony's attitude began to shift slightly. “How very judgmental of you, Captain.”

  “You can change where you live and work when you're old enough,” Meredith replied.

  “Well, by your standards then since you were once an officer in the Commonwealth Navy that would automatically make you guilty of certain war crimes, wouldn't it?” Tony's voice was calm. Conversational. But it hit his Captain just like a slap in the face.

  It had recently been revealed that their engineer, Sean Galen, had been the victim of a Commonwealth Marines raid that had left his entire village murdered, save for him and a handful of others who had been gone at the time. He had gradually tracked down all of those responsible for the act itself and killed them in varying horrible ways, leaving him one of the most wanted men in Commonwealth history. The fact that he did not hold Meredith or her crew chief, (a former Marine who at one time had been a member of the special forces unit that had killed his family), responsible for the actions of others was a good comparison for what the Captain was doing now.

  She nodded silently, acknowledging then hit.

  “Okay you two,” Linc said into the silence. “Take that somewhere else
now. We're getting ready to set down and the last thing we need up here is an argument over who's dad can beat up who.”

  “As you wish,” Tony sniffed. “I'll be in my quarters, preparing to go and sample the wonderful cuisine and wineries of this fair jewel of a world.” With that he turned and left the bridge with a fake flair that left Linc and Jess laughing.

  “All right then,” Meredith was calmer. “Try and get us on the ground in one piece. And no. Commentary.” She directed this at Jessica.

  “Aw, now,” the girl whined. “I always thought my cheerful little tourist information was a good distraction from the possibility that we could crash! Or explode. Or hit another ship that wasn't registered on lidar. Or maybe hit a pocket of roiled air and tip-”

  “And that right there is why I don't want any commentary,” Meredith cut her off before she could go any further. “We're all aware of the dangers without having them pointed out to us while we're in back, unable to affect the outcome any.”

  “Mere, honey,” Linc looked pained. “It sounds like you don't trust us up here.”

  “It does?” she raised an eyebrow but didn't dispute his accusation. “I have every confidence in you two and your abilities. If you need me I'll be in my crash position, praying,” she added calmly before heading off the bridge herself.

  “I think she's starting to loosen up a bit,” Linc told Jessica.

  “Really?” the girl looked shocked. “Wow.”

  “What wow?” Lincoln looked at her. “Why are you wowing?”

  “I'm wondering how you two ever got together if this is her 'loosening up a bit',” she grinned.

  “Hey, I'm a very charming individual when I make the effort,” Linc objected.

  “Now that, for once, I can see,” Jess smiled at him. “You are a very cool old man, Lincoln.”

  “Old man!” Lincoln looked outraged. “Why you little-”