Forced Compliance (The Galactic Outlaws Book 1) Read online

  Forced Compliance

  Bradford Bates

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Bradford Bates

  Copyright © 2016 by Bradford Bates

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Any inquiries may be addressed via email to [email protected]

  This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this work are used fictitiously or are entirely fictional.

  Cover designed by Rebecca Frank http://bookcovers.rebeccafrank.design

  Editing by Laura Kingsley https://laurakingsley.wordpress.com/

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  This book is dedicated to the love of my life. Without her unwavering support, their never would have been words on the page.

  Chapter 1

  Captain Drake, A.E. 3124

  I hated this damn moon, almost as much as I hated waiting for our wayward contact to show up. It didn’t help that the whiskey in this dump was watered down, and cost twice as much as anywhere else in the damn verse. That and I’m pretty sure the half a burger I managed to squeeze down wasn’t made out of beef. I didn’t want to hazard a guess as to what it was made out of. I just hoped it wasn’t one of the big rats I’d seen crawling around the alley outside. The plate clattered against the bar as I pushed it away in disgust. I fucking hated this moon.

  This run down hole in the wall was the last place I wanted to be. You know the kind of place where they turn down the lights and have tables packed to the door. It always seemed like you had a fifty-fifty shot at finding a good place when you entered a dive bar. The Star Shine wasn’t one of them. The back left corner was surrounded by booths and a few holo tables flickered weakly to the right of the bar. Your guess was as good as mine if the tables would even be able to make it through a game of pool. Three hours stuck in this run down shithole, and my nerves were starting to jangle. “Any sign of him?” I frowned as I spoke into my comm. If Christof was actually going to show, I was pretty sure he would have done it by now.

  “Negative, Captain,” Gabe said.

  I heard the tension in his voice. All of us were feeling the strain. We needed to find out where our missing girl was and this meeting with Christof was the only chance we had at catching a solid lead. It didn’t bode well that Gabe hadn’t picked up any sign of him. I’d grown tired of playing the part of the out of town yokel. Time was slipping through our fingers faster than it should have been. If anything happened to Kyra because Christof didn’t show up, I’d shoot the bastard myself.

  I downed the rest of my drink and cursed silently, eyes pointed towards the heavens. He had to show up, no one dangled a nugget like that in front of you and didn’t show up for their payday. He knew where Kyra was and he was the only one that did. If Christof thought I was going to let anyone screw with my crew and get away with it, he was going to have a lot of collateral damage to clean up.

  Gabe was my defacto public relations manager. You know the person you put in charge of breaking arms to smooth out any intense situation. He also hunted bounties and enforced a little justice out on the rim, making him a skilled tracker that could handle himself in a fight. Gabe was the kind of guy you glance over in a crowd. Sure he was in shape but not overly so, and his looks were fair to middling. It helped him blend in, and that was where he did most of his damage. He was good man to have on your side in a pinch and he could also read a crowd faster than any digital program I’d been able to track down. If Gabe hadn’t seen him, Christof wasn’t outside.

  When I’d first heard the name Star Shine, I should have realized that the place was going to push my buttons, but I’d go damned near anywhere to get Kyra back. If I was being honest with myself, I wasn’t a stranger to making money in shady places. Maybe the idea of bar called Star Shine when you couldn’t see a single star from inside of the city just rubbed me the wrong way. It reminded me of my one trip to old earth. We had stayed at a hotel call the Sea Breeze. The only way you would have smelled the ocean from that hotel was if they moved it a thousand miles to the west.

  The answer hit me like a bottle over the head, and I was surprised I hadn’t admitted it to myself sooner. Christof wasn’t coming so we had to change our approach. If Christof wasn’t going to come to us, we were going to have to go to him. I was done wasting time, Kyra’s life was on the line.

  The only chance we had left of this panning out was if Maze had picked up on something from her sniper’s position three blocks down the road. Maze was like my own guardian angel, one that rained holy fire down from above. She saved my ass more times than I could count and I was sure she wasn’t done yet. Maze just happened to be a former special forces sniper, and part of a failed military cybernetics program. How she ended up on my crew was pure luck, and I’ve been thanking the stars ever since.

  I opened a comm line. “How about it, Maze? Any sight of the target?”

  “I’ve got nothing. The back entrance is still clear.” She paused. “Damn it, Drake. We need to get her back.”

  Her report just fed into my already sour mood. Maze had a view of six city blocks from her vantage point on the roof three blocks away. She’d been scanning the crowd through the scope of her sniper rifle. If anything had moved or seemed out of place, she would have clocked it and reported in.

  It was time to finally put this fiasco of a meet behind us. All we were doing now was wasting time. We had to find another way to solve this problem. I hated knowing that another one of our contacts had been burned. After something like this, I wouldn’t be able to call on Christof again. That was how life worked out in the black, you were only as good as your word. Christof had either set us up, or been silenced by someone that didn’t want us monkeying around in their business. Just because we had conquered universes didn’t mean we had grown as a species. In fact, I’d say out on the rim, we had devolved a few levels.

  If I knew Ice, she was already doing her hacker thing. Besides having a penchant for cybercrimes, she was the best damn pilot in the verse. I’m not sure what I would even do without her. Since she had joined the crew, she had proved to be invaluable more than once. We were a small group of highly skilled, and well regarded operators. Well, at least as well regarded as a group of roguish outlaws could be.

  It wouldn’t be too much longer before Ice found our man. That was if she hadn’t already. It was time to kick the fusion converter and see if it sparked. When I finally got my hands on Christof, our conversation wasn’t goi
ng to be pleasant. He wasted three hours of time, time that we could have been out there searching for Kyra. I also wasn’t too fond of being introduced to the joys of eating my first rat burger.

  This search was eating into the time table for our next job. I blamed myself for letting Kyra get nabbed but that didn’t mean our prospective employer was going to give us a pass for being late. The people we worked for didn’t accept excuses. If we weren’t ready to get the job done then someone else was and that meant we didn’t get paid.

  We needed the credits to keep our ship in the air. I couldn’t imagine life without the Star Talon. I never wanted to be grounded again. Our reputation was all that was keeping us alive out here, and it was about to take a hit. I’d been careless, and Kyra was paying the price. Now I had to decide what was more important, the ship and our livelihood, or getting Kyra back. The choice was easy.

  “Ice, you’re up. Find out everything you can about Christof and have it ready for me by the time I get back to the ship.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, Captain.”

  I heard her finger moving before she even closed the channel. I had a feeling she would have already been scouring the Dnet for anything she could find about Kyra and our wayward contact. Kyra and Ice had developed something of a bond as of late, and no one on the crew was feeling her loss more than Ice was now.

  “Don’t hold back on me if you have it now. I know there is a good chance you pulled Christof’s data as soon as we left the ship.” I paused, knowing that I needed to say more. Kyra was like family to all of us. “Trust me when I say we will get her back, no matter what it takes,” I said it with confidence I didn’t feel, but that I wanted to be true. The fact was if you got snatched from a backwater berth like this you could have shuttled off to anywhere in the verse. This was just one of three major galaxies. The world had gotten a whole lot bigger, and with it came just as many new places to hide.

  “Actually, I’ve been playing Blitz since you left,” she said with a sarcastic tone.

  I decided to let the tone slide. All of us were feeling the strain of today’s events. “Tell me I didn’t spend a hundred thousand credits upgrading your system so you could play online games?”

  “Technically that upgrade to our Dnet connection benefits everybody.”

  There was no way in hell that she wasn’t just screwing with me. All of us handled stress differently and Ice’s default was to get just a shade more sarcastic than usual. At least she didn’t have to live with the guilt of letting Kyra visit the market without protection. I’d sent Kyra out there alone and now she was missing. This was on me, I had to fix this.

  I’d made the choice to upgrade Ice’s connection over a few minor repairs, and then a part fell off the goddamned ship. That just happened to have landed us in our current situation. So excuse me if her referencing playing games rubbed me the wrong fucking way. It wasn’t really fair to her, but unless I found someone to shoot it was going to be hard for me to rein in my anger. God, I fucking hated this fucking planet. A low growl escaped my lips, before I could stop it.

  “No need to get all growly, Captain.” Ice laughed over the comm. “You know how I get when I’m stressed and there’s no chocolate. I just can’t help myself.” I heard the pounding of keys again. “Christof’s last known address has been sent to your system.”

  “Jesus, Ice. Was it too hard to just send the fucking file without all the…” It took me a second to realize that I had stopped talking and was just waving my hands around in the air angrily. Fat lot of good it did me when Ice was back on the ship and couldn’t see a damn thing I was doing. “talking?” I finished lamely.

  “I could have, but then I wouldn’t have gotten to listen to that sexy growl.”

  The snark never stopped, and it didn’t help I could hear Maze laughing on the line. The last thing I needed was for Ice to feel encouraged. At least the laughter broke the tension. That was something we sorely needed. After I got Kyra back, it might be time for a little chat with Ice about who paid her bills. Not that it would do any good, Ice had been on my ship for years and if anything, I had less control over her now than when she started.

  Really, I didn’t want her to change, but being jerked around by our contact had left me feeling like I had let everyone down. I hated being reminded that even the great Captain Drake could fail.

  “Maze, Gabe. New plan, meet me outside in ten, we’re going hunting.”

  They didn’t respond, but they didn’t need to. I knew both of them were already making their way to the front of the bar. All I had to do now was settle up my tab and hope I never had cause to come back to this shithole again.

  I waved down the waitress, and she turned in my direction. Her hips swayed like the Himalayas. Meaning they were as big as mountains, but she shook them with a certain kind of confidence. A little bit of extra heft didn’t bother me. Especially when it was in a few key places, but one look at her face washed away any of the thoughts I might have had a few seconds before. Too much makeup and a lot of hard years stood out there. Life in the black wasn’t easy for anyone, but it had taken its toll on her more than most.

  “Can I get you another, honey?”

  “Nope, just the bill.”

  She set her empty tray down and pulled out her datapad. She flicked through the screens a few times and then settled on one. She typed in a few things and then flipped it around for me to view and accept the charges. My mouth almost dropped when I saw the tab. It was too fucking much for rat burgers and watered down whiskey, that was for goddamned sure. I wasn’t some rube that got dropped off by the last shuttle, and I wasn’t going to be scammed over a few watered down drinks.

  “Problem, sugar?” Her voice oozed with a sickly sweetness.

  I pulled out a hundred credit chip and tossed it on the bartop. Standing, I grabbed my coat and shrugged it on before sliding my hat on. I felt better having my coat and the protection it offered in place. Something told me that things might be turning slightly more violent in a moment.

  The jacket wasn’t just a great looking duster, it had pretty decent armor value. It would be able to turn a few blaster bolts and even a few of the more traditional rounds. A knife wouldn’t be able to pierce it, but that didn’t stop the strikes from hurting like hell. The jacket was a gift, and I’d hate to scratch it in this backwater shithole, but things were about to get ugly. I wasn’t falling for their scam and they weren’t going to like it. I set the datapad down without accepting the charges and turned away from the bar.

  The waitress reached out grabbing my arm. The force of her grip turned me back towards the bar. She sized me up for a second before sweeping up the credit chip and her datapad. She placed one hand on her hip and hit me with her best indignant stare. “What are you some kind of deadbeat?”

  “I think we both know those credits are more than you deserve.”

  “What credits?” She gave me a smile that was all venom. “Kenny, this guy’s refusing to pay.”

  A man slid out of a booth at the back of the bar. His booth must have been custom built because there was no way he would have fit that much girth into any of the regular booths. He had a bat in his hand. Damned thing looked like a fucking kid’s toy in his giant mitts. Kenny took a few lumbering steps forward before the waitress spoke to me again.

  “You better just scan your print, pal. Kenny doesn’t like freeloaders.” She moved around the bar, holding up the datapad again. “It scans just as easy when you’re unconscious. Trust me when I tell you to take the easy way out.”

  That wasn’t going to happen. “Well, Kenny shouldn’t serve watered down piss and have the ugliest barkeep in the rim pocketing his credits.” Not my best line but it would do.

  She tried to slap me but I ducked under the blow and as she stumbled into the bar, I snatched my hundred credit chip back out of the top of her bra. I wasn’t above hitting a woman that posed a real threat to me, anyone that thought otherwise was probably too stupid to live. Plasma bol
ts didn’t need to come from big, burly men to kill you. However, I didn't think this waitress posed a threat, so when she turned her back towards me, I backed away slowly. She smirked at me, reading the situation all wrong. I was going to have to let her have that one if I had any chance of getting out of here without a fight. “I’d prefer not to get into this right now, I’ve got places to be.”

  “Too late for that, honey,” she said, her voice dripping with sweetness.

  If she came at me now, I’d be forced to take her out quickly. The brute with the bat was going to be a problem. That and I had a feeling there were a few people in here that already had guns pointed in my direction. More than one of them was probably a woman. Once you were out on the rim, things like man or woman didn’t matter so much, it normally came down to who had the skills and the firepower. Anyone that believed different had probably gotten themselves spaced.

  The waitress turned her fiercest glare on me. She’d have to do better than that. I’d been glared at by some of the scariest mugs on the rim. I wiggled the hundred credit chip between my fingers and let a smile flicker across my face. She reached into her bra, and the look of shock and hatred on her face almost made me laugh. Probably would have too if the four hundred pound giant with the bat wasn’t still making his way towards me.

  I turned just in time to miss the first swing of his bat. Damned if the mountain hipped waitress wasn’t right, Kenny must have really hated freeloaders. That swing hadn’t been meant just to knock me out. If that bat connected, I would have been lucky not to have the police picking bits of my skull off the ground. The bat bounced off the bar, splintering the wood where it hit. Kenny only grunted and turned back towards me.

  The waitress screamed as she moved to cheer the giant on from behind. “Get him Kenny!”

  Kenny turned back towards me and smiled. His teeth were different colors. It took a moment or two to sink in that they had all been replaced with different kinds of metal. Damn, on this moon, they certainly had different ideas about what passed for good looks. Couldn’t he just get a bunch of tattoos and shave his head? That tended to be a universal sign of badassery.