Seducing The Reluctant Heiress

KS Augustin

Sujets

• Science fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Challis Tower
• Date de parution: 20 février 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780987317445
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A Republic “future historical”
Gilthen Ahn is captain of the Darck Banks cartel, a pirate band working deep in Republic space. He has six ships under his command and, unless he finds money to pay off his substantial debts, he’ll lose everything.
Tera d’Olzon is a privileged member of Republic high society, trying to make a difference by thumbing her nose at everything her family stands for. Unfortunately, things haven’t quite turned out the way she anticipated and, while running from the Security Force, she is “rescued” by Gil’s cartel.
The reasonable thing for the cartel to do is to ransom her. But that won’t bring in enough money. So Gil hatches a plan…



2016 update: This book, previously titled THE PIRATE’S GRAND PLAN, has been re-edited for this edition. A compact of list of people, places and things is also included.

People
Tera Meta-Wing Ortasnay d’Olzon / Gilthen Ahn / San / Kotase / Wonn Ahn / Cerian Nintral / Sern Carven / Fikora Carven / Delvew d’Olzon / Smolich / Lendar / Jaksen / Gilthen Diffahn d’Olzon Rivera / Aura Fordsnix / Niloh Carven / Vane Carven / Vosra

Places
Tor Delta B / Bank Ora / Bank Tam / Umfir / Tackon sector / Tor Phi / Fodox Stellar Barrens / Ralvez 3 Consortium / Muit sector / Esru system / Apse Drift / Mawar / Bank Teh / Tor Prime

Things
8-rings / Darck Banks cartel / chrystilium powder / haute / nouveau waltz / Boll crystals / cryptogam-wear / antarian glob-beast / Bridgian fish / densa-foam / scrumpils / entrée sans pareille / jumrah / Vabinian tea
Chapter One
“S hit.”
The heavy jolt catapulting her from the pilot’s chair told Tera that a tractor beam had locked onto her ship. Her small, fast, yet admittedly stolen, scout ship.
“Shitdamnbollocks.”
She righted herself and, bracing her stance with widespread legs, hunched over the controls, skimming the readouts with disbelief. She was well and truly caught, her clear chance to thumb her nose at the Republic evaporating with each second of the beam’s grip. It was only a strike destroyer that held her in its grasp-one of the smaller ships in the Republic’s arsenal-but her getaway ship was even tinier without any mass she could leverage to break free. She didn’t even have weapons of any note, shitdamnbollocks!
Consoles blinked red as various systems started overloading. In a few seconds, she would have to start shutting down or risk complete engine failure. Slowly, she started thumping the nearest console.
“So close.” She blinked away sudden tears. “I was so close….”
A second sudden jolt almost sent her tumbling to the floor again and this time she didn’t waste a moment. She knew the feel of a tractor shear when she felt one. Not hesitating to ask what had suddenly terminated the destroyer’s tractor beam, she quickly seated herself, her fingers flying over the console, mumbling as she married words to the commands she had to execute on an unfamiliar board. Rotate. Dive. Accelerate. Turn. Again.
Despite the scout’s anti-grav system, acceleration pushed Tera further back into the thick upholstery, sliding her from one side of the seat to the other. She used the relative stability of a brief respite in gyrations to lock herself into the chair’s harness then, with a savage grin, started a series of manoeuvres that would take her to the edge of blacking out. But it would also, if she was as good a pilot as she thought she was, speed her out of the destroyer’s-and the government’s-grasp.
With a few moments at her disposal, she wondered at the luck of her sudden escape. Maybe her pursuer had burnt out one of its tractor units. Maybe it had suffered a cascade failure. Whatever the reason, Tera d’Olzon wasn’t hanging around to find out. She spared a glance at the sensor display and smirked against the changing g-forces at what she saw. The Republic ship was falling behind, already it was a little over two light-seconds away from her, and the gap was slowly increasing, although it was trying valiantly to catch up.
They wouldn’t. Tera knew exactly what kind of craft she’d stolen when she’d jacked the scout from Tor Delta’s B Cluster shipyards, and its engines didn’t fail her as she lengthened the distance from her enemy.
It was all her fault and she knew it. If she hadn’t been so complacent after her last crease-jump, she would have detected the flicker of screen-noise that indicated a camouflaged Republic craft out on patrol. And, instead of staying sharp and punching in an avoidance plan, she had sailed straight into the ambush and bought herself trouble. Even now, she knew she couldn’t divert any of the ship’s precious memory to planning a possible hyperspace crease entry. Not yet. She wasn’t far enough away to ensure that the destroyer wouldn’t also tag her along the same exit path, and didn’t want to lose her hard-won edge in post-crease disorientation.
The distance from the destroyer lengthened to ten light-seconds-almost enough for her to chance an initial crease calculation-when her ship got hit by another tractor beam.
Damn! Where had that come from?
Sensor maps showed nothing, except for one minuscule blip on the edge of a screen, big enough only to indicate a small comet or meteor. But whatever whacked into her ship held more punch than a large rock and, judging by its tenacity as she again threw her little craft into another series of extreme movements, more power than the destroyer she had left behind. The only piece of good news was that, despite her ship’s antics and the pull of whatever-monster-it-was that had tractored her, the Republic destroyer was falling farther and farther behind. Whatever held her in its grasp, she conceded ruefully, was at least as fast as her, as well as being a damned sight more powerful.
After ten more minutes of fruitless struggling, Tera gave up. Whatever had her in its grip was not about to let her go. As if reading her intentions, her captor unbelievably increased power, pulling her along like a recalcitrant toddler. With that much energy at its disposal, Tera knew she’d well and truly lost the fight. Her engines had redlined two minutes ago and the temperature in the small cockpit was rising as the life-support systems tried to compensate for a battery of overheated equipment.
With a sigh, she powered down the engines, and jolted sharply once more before the tractor adjusted to her sudden lack of resistance. Whatever had nabbed her wasn’t Republic-they valued their privacy for one, still masquerading as an inanimate piece of rock as they dragged her through the sector at a phenomenal velocity-but, at the moment, any other player of such power might be equally as dangerous as the galaxy’s renowned bully. She would need to be on her guard.

Gil was still half-amused when he led his small team down to the cargo bay. The first thing he wanted to do, after taking the scout’s pilot into “custody”, was congratulate him on a series of hare-brained churns that had his own usually laconic navigator pulling his hair out. It wasn’t often he saw San swearing the air around him blue, and he put his mind to remembering some of the man’s more colourful phrases.
His small cockpit crew had worked hard to match their tractor’s output and trajectory against the gyrations that pulled against it and, if it wasn’t for their combined experience, Gil was sure they would have lost the small ship on several occasions. That the scout had been stolen was obvious. Only criminals ran from Republic destroyers. The true believers nestled trustingly in their deceptive, destructive arms, most of them never realising the trap they had sprung for themselves and their descendants. The law-abiding members of the Republic listened to the brainwashing, accepted it, internalised it, and lived their lives according to it.
Cynicism pulled down one edge of Gil’s lips as he waited for the atmosphere in the bay to equalise.
“ What if it’s a shapeshifter?” Kotase asked. He looked relaxed, his hands hanging loosely by his sides, but Gil saw the glitter in his faded blue eyes. His first mate was an older man-his silver hair shorn close to his scalp-but he still had the strength of three and the mental agility of a mathematics genius.
“ Then I’ll be depending on you to watch our backs,” Gil said with a lift of his eyebrow.
Kotase snorted, saying nothing, but Gil knew he was pleased. Men his age, and with his background, were supposed to be retired and living the good life with several nubile sycophants by now, safe in a luxurious villa on a planet on the outskirts of Republic space. Instead, the first mate was still helping to manage an active, and dangerous, concern. Maybe it was pity that kept him at Gil’s side. At any other time, the thought would have rankled but, under present circumstances, Gil was grateful for the extra help. There would be time to pay Kotase back for his loyalty later.
“ I hope this kidnapping was worth it,” Gil said, muttering.
He had given up a prime ambush position, along a less commonly-used but still lucrative transport route, in order to capture the fleeing scout, and hoped he hadn’t traded a potential golden opportunity for a handful of space dust. Noticing the atmosphere light blinking green, he tightened his lips and nodded curtly to one of his men to open the cargo bay doors.
The criminal-whoever he was-didn’t wait for Gil to enter with his team of men. The door of the scout was already open, somebody had taken position just out of clear line of sight, and shots began firing even before the bay doors had fully dilated. With a curse, Gil and his team scurried behind stacks of surplus equipment. Those that hadn’t yet made it through the door flattened themselves against the wall of the corridor outside.
“ I want him alive.” Gil raised his voice to carry above the sizzle and bangs of exploding supplies, anger powering his voice.
The Republic had obviously wanted the ship and its occupant in one piece, which was why it had attempted a tractoring over