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  STORMCROW

  by N.C. REED

  Copyright 2016 by N.C. REED

  All rights reserved

  Cover photo modified and used by license.

  Credit: Laura Roth

  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.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016932904

  ISBN: 978-0692638439

  STORMCROW

  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

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Husband, the world is growing very large in the window.”

  Meredith Trenton-Simmons was trying to maintain her calm, but it was becoming difficult.

  “Relax,” Lincoln Simmons told her from the pilot's seat. “Piece o' cake!”

  “Dear, I don't want it to seem as if I question your abilities,” Meredith said carefully, “but I am seeing the planet rush up at us very quickly. Much quicker than does seem normal.”

  “I can see it,” Linc replied. “I'm sitting right here.”

  “And yet we do not seem to be slowing,” Meredith noted, her calm tone of voice belying her increasing unease.

  “I got it under control, Mere,” Linc replied. He made some adjustments to the trim and the Celia began to level out a bit.

  Meredith and Lincoln Simmons had been married for just under three years, having dated for a year-and-a-half before marriage. Lincoln had given up his career to accompany her into business as an independent freighter Captain right after they were married, having taken piloting classes while Meredith had waded through the bureaucratic labyrinth of paperwork to get the loan to buy her ship. He had passed, barely, and received his license.

  His skill behind the controls had not increased much during their time in space together.

  As Meredith sat in the co-pilot's chair she was becoming increasingly alarmed.

  “Husband!” she added a bit of urgency to her voice as the Celia overcorrected and begin to flare, dangerously close to stalling.

  “Please don't yell at me when I'm in the middle of a delicate maneuver,” Linc asked politely, taking his eyes from the screen and instruments to look at his wife.

  “Please don't take your eyes off what you're doing when we're crashing!” Meredith shot back, her alarm now showing plainly.

  “We are not crashing!” Lincoln's voice raised slightly as he turned his attention back to his job. “We are landing. I have it under control.”

  Though now completely alarmed, Meredith forced herself to remain silent lest she distract her pilot-husband yet again from his duties.

  Then Commander Meredith Trenton had been in command of the Commonwealth Corvette Celeste during the Settlement Wars when her ship had come under attack by a Freeborn Destroyer while guarding a convoy of freighters carrying war material and replacement troops. Superior skills had allowed her to fight the larger, stronger ship to a draw, but the battle had left both her and her ship cripples. Neither would fight again in service to the Commonwealth.

  After fighting her medical discharge all the way to the CNO of the Commonwealth Navy, Meredith had been at a loss. All she knew, all she'd ever wanted, was to command a ship. And that had been taken from her forever it seemed.

  Meredith grasped the seat harness a bit tighter as Celia pitched left due to overcorrection. Another overcorrection (from trying to correct the first overcorrection) left the ship yawing dangerously to the right. Just as Meredith was about to yell at her husband again the Celia seemed to magically straighten her flight path. Two minutes later the ship settled smoothly into her assigned berth on the planet Halcyon's largest spaceport.

  “See, what'd I tell you?” Linc preened, obviously very pleased with himself. “Piece o' cake!” Meredith looked at him in silence for a full minute, composing herself before daring to answer.

  “Husband,” she said finally, her voice strained as she got to her feet. “There are times when I think that your ineptitude at the controls of this vessel are somewhat feigned, in order that you may amuse yourself at your wife's expense.” She straightened to her full height and then tugged her self-appointed uniform of black pants and gray shirt into place.

  “If I were to find this is the case,” she continued, “that would be regrettable. Firstly, because I would feel as if my trust in you had been betrayed, which would break my heart.”

  “And secondly, because I would kill you, which would also break my heart.” She said this completely straight-faced and was inordinately pleased at the brief look of concern that crossed her husband's face. It was gone in a flicker, but she knew it had been there, which was all the revenge she really needed for what she was almost certain was an exaggerated lack of skill at the controls of their ship and home.

  “Mere, honey,” Linc looked as if he were wounded. “I would never, ever, do something so crass, so completely disrespectful of my Captain and my -”

  “There should be laws against you operating anything capable of carrying humans or other live cargo!” a male voice from the passageway off the bridge cut him off. Anthony Giannini, the ship cook and medic, staggered onto the bridge obviously still suffering from the Celia's approach. Usually dapper and composed, the dark-complected young man's appearance was almost comical. His hair, which was usually styled in the fashions popular on core worlds of the Commonwealth, was askew and looked a bit wild. His silk tie was still draped over his shoulder, loose at the neck where he had obviously been caught by the restraining straps of one of the crash stations throughout the vessel.

  “Now, Doc, everything is fine and we're safely on the ground so there's no need to be-”

  “How much of that was accident and how much was the grace of God?!” Giannini demanded, almost crossing himself before he realized it. Giannini had come to them as they searched for crew members, having posted job offerings with several listings that catered to spacers.

  Polished, prim, obviously well-educated, the Simmons' had often wondered what had led Giannini to space at all, let alone to them. He was all but a doctor, he had told them, having left school just three weeks before receiving his diploma over what he had called a 'misunderstanding'. He was also a fantastic cook, something that had p
leased and surprised the Simmons to no end. Since the first meal he'd prepared Giannini had been the ship's permanent cook and many of the duties he would have had as a crewman were instead shared among the remainder of the crew.

  “Well I prefer to think of it as skill,” Linc shrugged, completing his shut-down sequence and finally standing. Lincoln was a tall man with sandy hair and quite possibly the bluest eyes Meredith had ever seen. His height made him appear skinny but Lincoln was wiry and lean beneath the coverall he normally chose to wear when working. Meredith had asked more than once why he insisted on wearing such clothing even just to sit on the bridge, to which Lincoln had replied that it made him feel like a pilot.

  “Skill,” Giannini snorted, pausing to compose himself and his clothing, finally realizing how he looked. “A completely disgraceful use of the word,” he added as he jerked his tie back into position.

  “All right Doc,” Meredith interjected, though she agreed in part. “You've had your say. We go through this every time so it shouldn't come as a surprise anymore.”

  “No, the surprise is that every time we somehow manage to escape alive!” Giannini snorted again. Before Linc could defend himself Tony Giannini whirled on his heel and stomped off the bridge.

  “Well, another satisfied customer,” Linc said at last, grinning. Meredith gawked at her husband for a second before bursting into laughter. His sense of humor was one of the things she loved most about Linc.

  “I don't know that satisfied is a good word, Linc,” she managed to get out at last.

  “Ah, he'll be fine,” Linc waved the comment away. “Trust me!”

  

  Halcyon was one of those planets that Meredith thought of as 'mid-terior'. Lying too far outside the Sphere to be considered an Interior World, yet not close enough to the outer rings to be called a Frontier World either, Halcyon was a predicable mix of both. Business and industry that one would find on an inner planet sitting right alongside the type of ramshackle, hard-scrabble living that one would expect on any Frontier World.

  Planets like Halcyon served as a way station between the Sphere, the collection of first settled planets after mankind had made it to the starts, and the Frontier planets that were often months of travel from the Sphere. As a result, brokerages and shipping firms maintained offices and warehouses on most planets in that ring, using them as transit points for both cargo and passengers. The brokers bartered with independent shippers like Meredith to ship goods on to Frontier worlds as well as carry cargo and passengers Inward. With ships constantly moving, matching freights and passengers with ships going their way was a thriving business.

  People who started as brokers often managed to work their way into a position where they had their own warehouses and pads. Meredith routinely took work from one such broker, Mitchell Cauldoon. Cauldoon maintained a series of pads on Halcyon and it was one of those pads that Celia had not-so-gracefully settled on.

  Meredith made her way down to the cargo hold where her deck hand, Carolyn Faulks, was already lowering the ship's ramp.

  A now retired Gunnery Sergeant of the Commonwealth Marines, Faulks was an extremely imposing figure. Six-two, two hundred pounds of pure, ornery meanness was how Linc had often described her and Meredith, at least in private, agreed. Faulks was abrasive, foul-tempered, difficult to work with and prone to bullying those around her.

  She was also completely loyal to Meredith, perhaps partly owing to the fact that then Commander Meredith Trenton had defied both logic and protocol to reach into a compartment that was being vented into space to drag a struggling, suffocating Faulks onto the bridge of the badly damaged corvette Celeste after a torpedo strike. When Meredith had started looking for people to crew her ship, Faulks had been the first person to sign aboard the Celia.

  Keeping her hair cut in a style that was only just longer than regulations had allowed when she was a Marine, Faulks dressed in a civilian version of her Marine combat togs and acted as if she were still the senior security officer of a ship. Which, Meredith mused, was technically accurate. While the Interior had little to no trouble with pirates, the same could not be said for the outer fringes of the Commonwealth. Nor was it uncommon for gangs to target ships and crews while on the ground, even in the Interior. Having Faulks around helped to dissuade all but the most determined. Or foolhardy.

  Meredith had seen Faulks in action, both with boarding actions and in training. She had never seen Faulks bested physically, and only rarely with firearms. She had routinely beat the men under her command in hand-to-hand training, being certified to teach two different disciplines. All things being even, Faulks was definitely someone you wanted on your side and not opposite you.

  “Cap'n,” Faulks nodded to Meredith.

  “Gunny,” Meredith nodded back. “I see the cargo managed to escape damage,” she said lightly.

  “That man is a threat to everyone he encounters,” Faulks all but snarled. “You should space his ass, ma'am, and find someone who can actually fly.”

  “That is my husband you are speaking of, Gunny,” Meredith replied in an amused tone. It was well known that Faulks didn't care for Linc and that the feeling was mutual.

  'Mere, that woman has the hots for you', Linc had warned her more than once. Meredith scoffed at that notion, reminding Linc that she had saved Faulks life. 'She merely feels obligated. Something I try not to encourage.' Linc would shake his head and walk away muttering after each 'discussion'.

  “Yes, Cap'n,” Faulks schooled her features into the mask she normally wore when off the ship. Meredith had noted that reaction before and assumed it was because she took up for Linc. She also ignored it. Faulks would just have to cope with Linc's flying skills, or lack thereof, along with the rest of them.

  “I'm surprised the handlers aren't already out here,” Meredith observed, looking down the gangway toward the distant warehouses.

  “Probably waiting to see if we crashed and burned before bothering to bring the load out of the warehouse,” Faulks muttered, but went silent at a glare from Meredith.

  “Mere, call for you,” Lincoln's voice cracked across the IC. “Cauldoon.” Sighing, Meredith made the trip back to the bridge, her back protesting more than once on the steps. She was missing two discs in her back along with a good bit of extra cartilage and a small chunk of one vertebrae thanks to a razor sharp piece of the Celeste's hull that had been driven deep into her back during the same battle where she had saved Faulks. Meredith had felt the injury but had thought it was just a strain and had ignored it, continuing to fight her ship. Once the battle had ended she had sat down for a brief rest and woke up five days later on a medical ship headed Inward for months of treatment and therapy.

  And a pink slip from the Navy.

  She arrived on the bridge with carefully schooled features so that Linc wouldn't see her grimace in pain. It was unlikely she could hide it from him but she did try. He worried over her much more than she was sometimes comfortable with. Not that she didn't appreciate it, because it was another of those things that made her cling to him desperately. But she wasn't an invalid despite what the Navy might think. She didn't need coddling.

  “What's up?” she asked. Linc pointed to the screen where Mitchell Cauldoon was waiting. She turned to the pickup and smiled.

  “Hello Mitchell.”

  “Meredith,” Cauldoon nodded abruptly. Always in a hurry, Cauldoon had no time for pleasantries on most days and this was one of those days. “I wanted to give you a call and let you know the cargo is on its way to you. Should be there by now, almost,” he checked his watch.

  “Where I was waiting to receive it,” Meredith pointed out, cursing mentally at having put the added strain on her already aching back to return to the bridge.

  “Yeah, sorry about that, but, thing is. . .” Cauldoon looked away for a minute and then back to the screen. “I've got three people looking for passage outward. I know you don't always do passengers, but . . . one of them is. . .look, she's just a kid, and
she's headed for Gateway. She's been away to school or something like that for years and now she's trying to get home. She spent most of her money just getting here, and, well, since you were going that way anyway…” He trailed off, having run out of steam.

  “Not like you to do charity cases, Mitch,” Meredith said. “What's the real story?”

  “That is the real story,” Cauldoon took no offense at the question. He wasn't known for charity work. “It's just. . .aw, hell, Mere she's about five foot nothing at best and looks like she's about sixteen years old. She wouldn't last long on most of the ships that would take her that way and you know it. I got a daughter about her age,” he added, looking down at the floor. “I'll pay half her fare,” he tacked on a minute later.

  “What?” Meredith leaned forward, sure she'd heard that wrong.

  “I said I'll pay half of her fare!” Cauldoon repeated, snapping it out this time. “That should at least cover her food and what have you. I know it'll take two, maybe three months for you to get out that way, but that's better than her getting on one of these rattletraps around here and ending up as a slave or a victim.”

  Meredith considered that. The Commonwealth had strict laws against slavery and enforced them as hard as possible, but space was vast. It was hard to be everywhere at once. And sweet young women were very popular targets. Not all slaves were for manual labor.

  “Send her down and I'll take a look at her,” Meredith said finally. When Cauldoon's expression turned happy she held up a hand.

  “I'm not promising anything,” she told him firmly. “But. . .we'll see.”

  “Thanks, Meredith,” he nodded. “Look, I may have a couple jobs that way, too, coming back this way. One's a rush job, but there's two more that are low priority. Be a good way to pay your fuel back this way. Interested?” Meredith knew this was Cauldoon trying to show appreciation. Extra jobs, especially on a return run, were a shippers' milk and honey and most jobs going Frontier in toward the Sphere were shopped around for the best possible rate. By giving her the job he was also cutting his own profit margin down.