Page 71 of The Last Hunt
Aethon shakes his head. “Nothing.” He leans down and captures her lips, flicking his tongue out to taste her. Maeve responds, but then pulls back a little.
“Aethon,” she says. “What were you going to say?”
Her insistence surprises him. “I just -” he shakes his head. “I know that after we get through this jump point - things might go really fast. And I need to know if this is the last chance we’re going to have to be together.”
Maeve blinks, her eyes widening. “Is that - is that what you want?”
“Fuck - no, Bladesy,” Aethon says. He grips her tightly - his hands spanning her sides - and breathes in, inhaling her sweet, lavender scent. She just waits, and when she slides her hand around the nape of his neck, her fingers threading into the shorter hair there, Aethon knows he has to take the chance. “There are a few things I have to tell you. I want you to know -”
“We’re exiting the hyper-jump point!” TAI interrupts. “Approaching the Tri-Centauri system!”
“What?” Aethon turns toward the viewscreen just in time to see the swirl of colors pop into the blackness of normal space.
“I thought this was supposed to take an hour!” Maeve says. Her voice is sharp and she disentangles herself from Aethon and sits down, pulling up readings of nearby space and planets on the viewscreen.
“I tried to tell you!” TAI says. “Hyper-jumps don’t take any longer than normal jumps! I don’t know where you got that idea, bless your hearts.”
Aethon sits down and immediately starts to scan the area as well. “The ship will need to rest and build up power again after that jump,” he says, eyeing the Archer’s system readings.
“Fuck - look -” Maeve says. She flings up some readings onto the viewscreen and Aethon’s heart sinks into his gut.
The hyper-jump point had released them into orbit around the largest of the four planets in the Tri-Centauri system - Premier. The Dreadnought-run world is overwhelmingly covered in oceans, and the land is clearly human made - or, Aethon thinks - corp made. It’s as if someone dropped grids of land into the ocean. The area is swarming with traffic and Dreadnought advertisements. Billboards and flashing signs and mini-space ports orbit the planet, creating a clogged and chaotic view. Aside from the tons of extraneous space traffic popping up on the Archer’s scanners, Aethon sees what Maeve is referring to. They are far from the only bounty hunter ship in the area. Maeve has programmed the Archer’s system with scans of every ship belonging to a Two Roses hunter, and many ships belonging to hunters of other guilds. They pop up, one after another in a list on the side of the viewscreen.
The Manasa - Danton Adder’s Bracken-class ship - is within scanner range. Adder hasn’t been a member of Two Roses for as long as Aethon and Maeve, but he’s experienced and a good hunter. The Pillbox - Graceling Empire’s tiny, Needle-class ship is near the Manasa too. Empire is newer to the guild, but apprenticed under Adder. There are several other Bracken and Needle-class ships nearby and Aethon recognizes one of them as belonging to a member of the Black Dagger Guild. He points it out to Maeve and her lip rises in annoyance.
“Yeah, that’s Red Freeman’s ship,” she says. “They call him Machet.” She rolls her eyes. “Apparently it means ‘the mask’ in the language of his home planet. He never takes his helmet off.”
Aethon growls when he spies the Jurassic belonging to Andromeda Trapp. “Trapp told me she wasn’t hunting Daik,” he says, gesturing toward her ship on the viewscreen.
“And you believed her?” Maeve replies. “What the hell is everyone doing here?”
Aethon leans back and runs his hands back through his hair. “They must have drawn similar conclusions to us about Daik’s whereabouts.”
Aethon feels like an idiot now for not assuming they’d have company here toward the end of the hunt for Daik. Of course he and Maeve haven’t been the only ones chasing the smuggler. His bounty is attractive - and apparently it’s enough credits for most people to be willing to brave the wrath of the mining corps. None of the hunter ships are within visual range - all of them are spread out in the system. Aethon is sure there are probably more hunters orbiting the planets in the system outside their scanner range. What are the odds they can outsmart, outrace, and outgun twenty other hunters? He turns toward Maeve.
“Where does your tracker say Daik is right now?”
Maeve glances down at the control pad on her armrest and taps out a few commands before throwing up the tracker on the viewscreen. “He hasn’t made it here yet - but he’s close.”
Aethon looks at the map. Daik is very close to the Tri-Centauri system, but he looks to be heading for a starbase right outside the system.
He points this out to Maeve. “What’s that starbase?”
Maeve zooms in on the map. “Scimitar Starbase,” she reads. Then her eyes widen as she reads the small blurb of information the map provides about the starbase. “Oh, shit - Aethon - that starbase has a Lightway.”
Aethon’s pulse quickens. Lightways always go to a planet in the nearest star system, making it a simple alternative for small, family ships to use instead of a jump point. Public transport ships use them too. This is the closest star system to Scimitar. The Lightway probably goes to a planet right here. Daik could avoid this whole mess of bounty hunters by taking it.
“Where does the Lightway go?” he asks. He watches as Maeve pulls up a research bar and types in the name of the starbase, pulling up the additional information as fast as she can. Aethon scans the text about the new Lightway at Scimitar Starbase and slams his hands on the dash. “It goes straight to Premier’s lower atmosphere,” he says. “Fuck!”
“We’ll never catch him if he makes it to Premier!” Maeve growls, flinging her hand toward the planet out the viewscreen.
“We’ll never catch him if he makes it to the Lightway on Scimitar,” Aethon says. He stands, pacing across the front of the ship. “How much longer until the Archer has recovered from the hyper-jump?”
“Approximately fifteen minutes,” TAI says immediately.
“And how far is Daik from Scimitar Starbase?” he asks.
Maeve does a few quick calculations. “At his current speed, he’ll be there in two hours.” She snarls as she calculates the distance between where they are now, and Scimitar Starbase. “I don’t think we can beat him there - I don’t know - it would be so close -”