Pixie Hazard by Archibald Bradford (top young adult novels .txt) 📕

what happened to us.” She looked to the FCO; “When he tries to connect again, take the feed and garble it up, then bounce it back.”

“To fake a damaged communications system, I’ll get on it.” Eniella nodded in understanding.

“How about that decryption? Any luck yet?”

The Hispanic woman’s enthusiasm dampened and she activated the table to bring up a display of the numerous algorithms she had working on the binary code from Bryan’s DNA.

“Not so far. All I can do is run the programs and read whatever they spit out, which as you can see is bupkis.”

“Ooh, is that Spanish for something?” Bunny asked, still only following half of what was being said in the room.

Eniella wrapped her into a hug and kissed her on the cheek.

“No gatita, it’s gibberish for nothing.”

Donnie pinched the bridge of her nose at the turn in the conversation.

“Let me know if you come up with... anything. We’re in the dark about way too much right now.” She said.

Having no desire to get into a linguistics seminar with the pair of them, the captain took her leave.

Chapter 31:Make the Call

Less than ten minutes after leaving it the last time an annoyed Donnie was back in tac-ops, most of the rest of the crew with her as she tapped her foot impatiently while Eniella explained what was what.

“I’ve run every piece of software we have, but whoever encrypted this used something dirty. Black market dirty. All I got was one line of code.”

“And?”

“They’re jump coordinates Skip.”

“You’re shitting me!”

“Nope.”

“Where?”

Eniella activated the holographic display table, a map of the Milky Way now floating above it as she uploaded the mysterious coordinates.

The map rapidly expanded outwards as it zoomed in to an empty location in the Outer Arm.

“According to my lovely lady’s math, nowhere.”

They all took in the mostly blank image, tiny points of light indicating the galactic plane just about the only indicator that the holographic table was even on.

“How far out?” Billy finally asked.

“Twenty six light-years.”

Donnie sucked air through her teeth: it wasn’t a small jump.

“And you’re sure there isn’t a fucking star waiting there for us?”

“None of the Pixie’s scopes are picking up anything. If there is one then it’s only twenty-five years old.”

The captain snorted and weighed the pros and cons for a good while before she looked to the grim faces of her crew.

“Alright. Decision time. Way I see it we got two choices. We bail on the Outer Arm entirely, meaning a series of jumps that will leave us well past broke and mostly out of fuel. Not to mention we’ll have to abandon the transport.”

By the continued dour mood in the room, she knew that wasn’t a popular choice, so she pointed her finger at the tiny dot indicating the mystery coordinates.

“Or we risk the Pixie Hazard and our lives to check out whatever the fuck that is. All in hopes that finding out will give us a way to get the Iowa Clan off our ass.”

She sighed as she leaned against the table.

“So speak your minds people.”

“We’re not abandoning the payday.” Eva said immediately; “I don’t care who is after the kid, I’ll take the transport there myself if I have to if you sissies wanna bail.”

Kyle scowled, disagreeing with her logic.

“It’s a lot of money, but we can’t spend it if we’re dead. We can still run. Do a drive by to Lewanna as planned, send Bryan on his way, and maybe find a buyer there.”

“With a bounty on our heads? Not fucking likely.” Eva snapped.

“Yeah, we might as well put a bullet in him now.” Billy cut in to the conversation before the two of them could settle into another argument; “I’m with Eva, we can’t afford to lose this payday.”

“That’s two votes for going and one against, how about the rest of you?”

Clinging to Kyle’s side, Bunny whispered something into his ear.

“Share with the class Bunny.” Donnie resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

The K’or-Macka looked truly torn, while Kyle now looked sulky.

“Bryan doesn’t deserve any of the bad that has happened to him. If some good can come his way from us going to the empty spot on Eniella’s star-map, I think we should at least try.”

“Damn, overruled by the missus, that’s gotta sting.” Eva remarked with a smirk.

“I think that about settles it Captain.” Davie said right on top of her sister’s barb at Kyle; “We all know how Maria would vote.”

“Yeah, I can see which way the solar winds are blowing.” Eniella agreed; “And I am so fucking curious it hurts.”

Donnie nodded her agreement.

“Let’s get this done then, you two get back to the cockpit and get ready to make the jump.”

__________

In the airlock aboard the Howling Dragon, Commodore Fairchild was presiding over the funeral for his first mate and the other men that Donnie and Maria had killed.

After every member of the crew took a pull from a bottle of Old Mash, the commodore upended what remained of the booze on the faces of the four corpses.

With the ritual complete, he stepped back and sealed the door, then opened the outer hatch and watched as the four bodies were sucked into vacuum.

“Preee-zent… ahms!” His new first mate ordered in a gruff drawl while glaring at the crew.

They snapped clumsy salutes, several of them looking to either side to make sure they were doing it right.

They weren’t.

Fortunately for their health, Rufus was too busy watching the corpses float away through the circular window in the airlock to notice.

He wiped at his nose with a large hanky, sniffing noisily as he did.

“My baby boys…” He whispered hoarsely; “Ya’ll can go and dance among the stars, we’ll handle the