Zombie Road | Book 8 | Crossroads of Chaos Simpson, A. (new books to read .txt) 📖

Embarrassment.

Shame.

She’d programmed them in, knew what they meant, had seen it in others but now felt it for the first time. She felt small and useless. Rejected. How did humans deal with this? How did they not go mad from all of the emotions running through them all of the time? She jumped up and ran to the storage area, locked the door behind her. She had to be alone, she didn’t want to see him or remember the look on his face. She almost reprogrammed herself, almost made herself delete these emotions and memories but forced herself to embrace them.

Live through them.

Deal with them.

Be human.

28

The Space Pirates

It took them months to make the jumps to the long-abandoned mining system on the far side of the galaxy. She didn’t try to kiss him again and after a mumbled apology at breakfast, they tried to forget. The closer to the Hub they got, the more jump gates became available and it became quicker to cover the billions of miles. The outer colonies only had one way in or out. As they neared the center of the galaxy where the Federation’s influence grew stronger, there were more gates available to travel to different solar systems. There were hundreds floating serenely beyond the fourth planet in the central system. There had once been many more before the war, most systems could be accessed with a single jump. Two or three at most for the far flung mining or agricultural systems. Now it took many jumps and creative mapping to cross the galaxy.

They stopped at other ports, landed planet side a few times and Jessie became skilled with the ship and learned its strengths and limitations. Maddy bought drones and launched them and they took turns piloting and gunning and it didn’t take long to determine who was better suited for the positions. Maddy became the gunner. She was faster at target acquisition, determining trajectories, calculating the speed of her shots, distance to target and likely evasive maneuvers the other craft would take. Jessie got good at avoiding incoming fire and she got good at blowing them out of the sky.

The shaded man from the bazaar said the jump to her system was protected by an Armada and if you didn’t have the Queen’s protection, you would have to run a gauntlet and fight your way through.

“Many old ships.” He’d said. “The pirates steal them, bring them there to strip down for salvage.”

“That’s not the worst of it.” He’d continued. “The Queen has moved her end of the jump gate into low orbit of a volcanic planet. If you get past the outer guard and race through the portal, you’ll be within the gravity well. You must have a nimble craft and be ready to maneuver so you aren’t sucked down to the molten surface or struck by erupting volcanoes.”

At other ports they learned more but it was all conjecture, rumor and second-hand stories.

“She moved the gate so she didn’t have to be concerned with a strong Federation force coming after her.” a slender man at a bar claimed. “Battleships were too big to get into her system without being destroyed.”

A smuggler they met on a decrepit space port said it didn’t matter if you made it through the gauntlet, you might appear in the middle of a molten eruption; the gate was never in the same place because it orbited the planet at a different speed.

People disagreed on how difficult it was to get in, what she would do to uninvited’s that broke through or what she looked like but they all agreed it was a bad idea to try. The Queen of the Outer Reaches and her band of cut throats, pirates, misfits, runaway slaves and people who didn’t want to be found were safe in her system and only a fool would attempt to go uninvited. That is, if you could even find it. Nobody really knew which one of the tens of billions of solar systems in the galaxy she called home.

As they neared the final gate orbiting a distant moon, they could see debris floating around it. Maddy strapped herself into the gunner’s seat and Jessie pulled his belts tight. They hadn’t known what they would run into or how many of the stories were true. They had no way of knowing if the coordinates she bought from the Shaded man were accurate of if he’d sent them on a wild goose chase. They were at the last jump gate in an abandoned system, the one the maps had listed as inoperable because its exit point had been destroyed. The scanners weren’t working, they were being jammed, so he increased the magnification on the screens. As they got closer, they could make out what they were looking at. Hundreds of old ships floated lazily near the gate. Some were dead, drifting aimlessly and were another obstacle to maneuver around. Some fired thrusters and moved to cut them off.

“Wow.” Jessie said as they watched the colossal junkyard grow closer.

“It’s the graveyard of lost ships.” Maddy said. “So that part is true. This must be the right place. We can run, we can make a dash for the gate or we can fight. The prudent choice would be to leave and try at another time when they may not be here.”

“I suggest you flip off the safeties and get ready to rumble.” Jessie said and pulled his own harness half a notch tighter. “And I’ll divert as much energy as I can into the forward shields.”

He shoved the thrusters all the way to their full stops and they rocketed forward to meet the oncoming ships. He knew a thing or two about space battles from hundreds of hours of video games and he knew a thing or two about actual space ships from the hundreds of hours he’d sat in the cockpit learning the new controls they’d designed. They approached the attackers fast and