The Elarri Heist (Plundering the Stars Book 1) Read online

  Fair enough.

  I took the data-pad and started back for Gedon’s office without another word. The others were quick to follow me.

  “Uh, Yan? You wanna fill me in?” Rago asked.

  “In a moment.”

  Jinx was right—hope was a good thing to have. Hope gave me this plan that could save my mother while we worked to save my father and sister.

  We came in front of the guards. “Me again. I have some information that Gedon might find very valuable.”

  This time, seeing us with Rago, they didn’t hesitate. “Go on in.”

  We went on in. Gedon was at his desk, reading something, his legs kicked up, a new glass of wine in hand. It smelled like hunra now, though. Couldn’t say that given the circumstances I approved, but it was his operation, his office, his rules. He looked up with a start at the sudden crowd in his office.

  “What is it now, Yan?”

  “How much would you give me for all of this?”

  I handed him the data without any ceremony. He looked me over once more, as well as raised an eyebrow at Rago and my crew. Then he finally noticed the data-pad. He took it with interest and scrolled through it. As he did, his eyes went wide.

  “This is… This is incredible! Where did you obtain this?”

  I snatched the data-pad back from him. “Ah-ah, you know I don’t kiss and tell.”

  He chuckled and took a sip of his wine. “Trade secrets. Of course, of course. I’m all too familiar.”

  I nodded and crossed my arms. “What can you give me for it?”

  “Hmm.” He stroked his chin. “This is very sensitive information. I take a risk putting this out there. If the Elexaes were to catch me…”

  I scoffed. “Don’t pull that business on me, Gedon. I know the type of people you deal with. You’ve sold dirt on royals and officials from every governing body in the galaxy. The heat doesn’t scare you. I know you’d make a killing with that information at auction. So please, from one professional to another, give me a fair price. Or I walk and find another buyer.”

  Gedon gave me a long, stoic stare that ran the length of me. Finally, he smirked. “From one professional to another, I respect your brazen confidence. And being a friend of Rago’s, I shall help you out.”

  “Good. How much?”

  “I can offer you a hundred thousand digits.”

  The gasps behind me made me smile. “You got yourself a deal.” He smiled wickedly, but not in a menacing way. We shook hands again, as we had earlier.

  “A pleasure, Mister Yan. Now, let me transfer your funds to a credit chit.” Gedon went back behind his desk and started to type away on his console. A few moments later, it produced a small black card with dark blue glowing edges. He swiped it from the machine and handed it to me. I handed him the data-pad.

  “Thank you, Mister Gedon. I sincerely hope you sell that info to someone who will give the Elexaes and their dealings all sorts of hell.”

  He snickered. “I will most certainly try.”

  And so our second meeting of the day was done, and now I was a lot richer. Once we were all out of his office and in the foyer again, Rago whistled and leaned against the railing.

  “That was something else. Gedon doesn’t usually negotiate on equal terms so often.”

  “Well, I have my ways.” I handed him the credit chit. “Get this to my mom. It should cover all the medicine she needs, whether I make it or not. Hopefully, there will be a little left over to help Dad.”

  Rago took it gingerly, like it was a precious thing, like a tiny infant that he was afraid to break. “I will, brother. I’ll keep an eye on your mom too until you all succeed. You have my word.”

  I inclined my head. “Thanks, Raggy.” I put out my hand. He consumed my whole hand and wrist in his.

  “You take care now, all of you. Those Elexaes mean business.”

  “We know.”

  He gave us a curt nod, his mouth set in a line. “Good luck.” He turned and left us.

  Silence engulfed us for several seconds. I sighed. Not worrying about my mom was a huge weight off my shoulders. Now I just had to worry about Dad and Yara. And Xarren and his vault. The joys of my life.

  “You sure you can trust him with that?” Amara asked. It was a fair question. She didn’t know Rago after all, but I did.

  “He’s one of my oldest and closest friends. I trust him with my life. And I trust him with my mother’s.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  So did I.

  That wasn’t something to worry about. For now, we had a lot bigger things to deal with. I clapped my hands together and smiled. “Alright, it’s time to rob the mob.”

  12

  With the money secured and Rago on his way to help my mother, I returned with my friends to the Diego with a renewed sense of hope, but also plenty of urgency. My sister was in a brothel and my dad was in a dark pit that he needed help getting out of. Now was the time to act.

  Once Ketellin had us in the air, he punched the coordinates for Elarra and we were soon jumping back to the imperial capital, and all the heat, death, and mobsters that would be waiting for us.

  Now that we were underway, we all piled into the center conference room and gathered around the holo-display and consoles. I handed the data-spike Gedon gave me to Pivek. He inserted it into the center console and brought up the blueprints on the holo-display. It looked like a small translucent 3-D manor, but then he zoomed in and the plans blew up around us. Not enough to engulf the room, but large enough so that we could see every last nook and cranny of the manor in exquisite detail.

  “So, let’s begin,” I said with a smile. I pointed to the big front doors. “Jinx will go in as the help and case the place as best she can, her main priority being to find out what sort of encryption Xarren has on the vault.”

  Jinx nodded, her eyes scanning the blueprints, no doubt memorizing the routes to take to get to the vault. I would have to do the same, though Jinx had an incredible memory, so this was easy for her.

  “The day before the heist,” I continued, “Rowan will apply to be a guard. They don’t like Goons, but you’re skilled enough and big enough to satisfy them. Also try to be charming and funny. That’ll help.

  “I always am.”

  “Yeah, but not as much as me.”

  He scoffed. I continued.

  “Employees of the Elexaes are searched head to toe and patted down every day upon arrival, so it will be up to me to get this little EMP device that Pivek cooked up into the mansion. It will take down everything except for security.”

  “And how will you do that?” Amara asked, brow raised. “They’re absolutely going to check you too.”

  “I’m so glad you asked that, my dear.” I smiled and lifted my shirt to reveal my hip. “You are going to surgically insert it into my hip. I will swallow one of those small surgical lasers and once I’m locked away for the night, I’ll heave it up, cut out the EMP, and activate it. Hopefully you have some bio-gel for me to use after.”

  “We do, you maniac.”

  “Good. Now, once the power goes off, Rowan needs to be in position to knock out the security system with the hack. Jinx will come and meet me at the vault.”

  “You just said that they’ll search me. How will I get the pulse-hack in? It may be tiny but they’ll definitely… Oh, no, Yan. I won’t do it.”

  “I didn’t suggest a single thing, Rowan.”

  “I’m not swallowing that thing! That stinger will cut up my throat.”

  “Well, would you rather stick it up your bum? Take it from someone who’s been to prison, that’s the usual way to go.”

  He went red. “No… I…”

  “Oh, for the love of— I’ll eat it,” Jinx said with an annoyed grunt and a glare at Rowan.

  To which we both yelled, “No!”

  She eyed us warily. “Why not?”

  I knew my reasons, but I was curious to know why Rowan was against it. “Rowan is the only one that can
get to the security center. You’ll be in enough danger. No need to risk yourself any further. Rowan will do it. Right, Rowan?”

  Rowan worked his jaw side to side as he tried to formulate a response. Clearly, he wasn’t happy with the whole arrangement. “Fine, Yan. I’ll do it, but only because I’m the only one.” He cast Jinx a glance. “But if I choke on my blood from this thing cutting me up, saints help me, I will haunt you for the rest of your life.”

  “Well, if things go wrong, that won’t be too long of an afterlife for you.”

  That got some chuckles and lightened the mood. Even K and Amara smirked. I don’t know if they thought it was funny or they just felt a need to laugh because of the outrageousness of what we were attempting.

  “What about me?” Amara asked.

  “You will be our insurance. If things go wrong, you will blow a hole in his manor walls and get the hell out of there. They’ll be distracted and we’ll slip away.” I stepped into the blueprint projection and gestured along several winding paths. “Xarren has several escape tunnels leading out of the manor. One here in the prison, one from the armory, and one from the vault itself.”

  “All three of those are in the deepest parts of the manor,” piped in Ketellin. “In the event that you trigger the alarms, those areas will be the first to be searched.”

  “Well, that’s why we need to be very careful to do this whole thing quietly. Jinx and I will raid the vault and escape through the tunnels beneath it.”

  “There are a lot of variables that could wrong in this, Yan,” Amara warned. She’d lost her belligerently argumentative tone about this heist since learning about my family, but she was still set on being the voice of reason. That was fine with me. We needed someone sane and rational, because I was not that.

  “I know, Amara, but there will always be risks. And we have time to go over them and prepare.”

  She didn’t look completely convinced, but then again, she never did. A plan could go exactly as planned and she still would find something to nitpick. But it was that cautious approach that had kept us alive so many times in the past.

  Jinx, who’d been silent for most of the conversation as she memorized the routes and contemplated the responsibilities, spoke up. “So, I go in, get the lay of the land, learn what type of encryption Xarren has. Come back. Pivek comes up with a solution. Then Rowan joins me at the manor, and the next day, Yan gives himself up, probably gets beaten, does impromptu surgery on himself while Rowan takes down the security, and I meet you at the vault where we rob it and escape without being noticed? That’s the plan?”

  I looked at her. Ran the plan through my head. “Yep, that’s about it.”

  She stared hard at me for a long moment before smiling and looking away. “Okay, sounds good.”

  “We’re all going to die,” Amara muttered and covered her eyes.

  “Can’t live until you die a little,” I retorted.

  “Spoken like a man with a death wish.”

  I beamed at that while Rowan and Jinx chuckled. And with that, the initial planning was done. We could plan out the minute details later. I went to the little fridge in the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of wine. The bottle of yalen beside it beckoned to me, but that could be saved for when we were victorious and rich.

  Until then, we passed around the wine and told stories and laughed and had a good time, because after tonight, it was unknown when we’d be able to do this again. There was so much that could go wrong, so much that could go right, so many ways that this heist would change our lives, one way or another.

  So for tonight, we drank. We lived.

  It took several hours before we arrived back in the Elarri system, home to the seat of power of the entire Elarri Empire. By then, we’d had time to sleep off the worst of the alcohol. I’ll admit, it hit me pretty hard, though it certainly didn’t help that I’d had way too many glasses.

  I felt the ship slip out of the jump and my stomach drop at the feeling of being in orbit. The ship was eerily silent as I came out of my room and into the hall. My crewmates were probably still asleep. K was probably being silent in the cockpit as usual. Though I was a boisterous person by nature, it was the sheer silence of space that I truly appreciated in our travels. When everything else in this universe had a sound, there was the cold reaches of space with its vast and oppressive silence. It was almost serene in a way.

  I tiptoed next door to Jinx’s room. I rapped my knuckles against the door and quickly heard a muffled come in from the other side.

  The door slid open and I entered. Jinx sat on the edge of her bed, fully dressed in the uniform of Xarren’s servants. Her hair was pulled back, shirt buttoned to the neck, boots laced, bag packed at her feet. She was ready to go, and the thought of her walking into the nest made my heart seize.

  In her hands, she held the metal collar that had once been branded onto her skin. Her eyes were distant as she stared at it, the memories of that time clearly swimming in her thoughts. My eyes found the mess of scarred skin around her neck that would never heal fully. A constant reminder.

  “Hey,” I whispered.

  “Hey,” she whispered back.

  I sat next to her, though I wasn’t sure how to proceed. Did I leave her to her memories or would she rather me pull her out of that pain? It was always hard to tell. She took strength from her trauma, but at the same time it still haunted her. It was a hard line to walk, between pain and strength.

  “What are you thinking about?” I asked, a question so idiotic that I knew it would illicit a smile.

  And it did. “I’m thinking of the time when all us slaves were given some time off because of a terrible storm. We huddled together for warmth, cause the winds and rain leaked into our quarters, but we had a fire and a large pot of moq’eno that we passed around. We sang and danced and despite everything, we experienced some happiness.”

  Her lips curled into a smile as a lone tear ran down her cheek. Jinx dropped the collar onto her lap. I reached over and took her hand, and she squeezed mine back.

  “I’m glad it’s not all bad memories.”

  She nodded. “Yeah.” Her hand fell away from mine. She grabbed the collar and walked around the room. “Did I tell you what I want to do once we have this money?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so.” And I felt bad for that, because I’d spoken to her about what I wanted—to help my family, to get my dad out of debt and my mother her medicine and now to rescue my sister from a horrible life. I’d been so consumed by that drive that I hadn’t spared Jinx a thought. I was her only family, so I’d always assumed her plans would involve me.

  She stopped her pacing, her back to me. “If we survive this and make out like royalty, I’m gonna buy a cruiser, amass a loyal squadron and fleet, and hunt down slavers throughout the galaxy.”

  Woah.

  My jaw dropped.

  “I— I didn’t know you felt that way.” Truthfully, we never spoke of dreams and goals in the future. For as long as we’d known each other, our lives had been about survival, and mine had been about stealing and saving enough money to help my family. Jinx had been with me the entire time, supporting me, hellbent on helping me achieve that goal.

  “I’ve given it a lot of thought,” she said after a moment of silence, still turned away from me. “The pain, the suffering, the cruelty that is endured by slaves. The families torn apart, the culture and joy that is extinguished… I don’t want anyone to go through that. I want to help them.”

  I nodded and stood, though I didn’t move toward her. “I understand. That’s a worthy dream to have.”

  Though I couldn’t see it, I was sure she smiled. “It is.”

  “Where does that leave me? Or the crew?” I asked.

  Jinx whirled around to face me, her eyes glistening. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…” I scratched my head. “If and when we survive this heist and get our money, will you just leave? Will I see you again?”

  I wasn’t
going to ask her to stay or to abandon this dream. I was selfish plenty, but I would never ask her to do that when she’d given so much of herself to me, for my own goals. If this was what she wanted, then when the time came, it would be my turn to support her.

  Jinx wiped her eyes and walked up to me. With collar still in hand, she grabbed my shoulders, her grip firm. “I couldn’t imagine doing this without you, Yan. I want you to come with me when I get this chance, all of you. Amara, Rowan, K, Pivek. We’re a team, and I want you all with me. If you want.”

  I had no plans past this heist, past saving my family. Once it was done, where did that leave me? I couldn’t let Jinx just go into the unknown dangers of space. So I would go with her, and that was what I wanted.

  “I’ll come with you, Jinx. Always.” I smiled and placed my forehead against hers.

  She grinned and laughed and cried. “Good. Because if you said no, I don’t know what I would have done.”

  I laughed and hugged her tight. “Don’t worry. I won’t go anywhere.”

  Her arms wrapped around me and squeezed me tight. She buried her face against my neck. “Thank you, Yan.”

  We stayed like that for several minutes. Content, happy, safe in each other’s arms, knowing that we may not get this opportunity again. I hoped that this heist would end well, truly believed that it would, but there were risks—there were so many things that could go wrong—so we made the most of it.

  Jinx finally pulled away. Her eyes were wet from the tears, but she was smiling. She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I guess we should wake up the others.”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  I roused the others, though for once, I wasn’t annoying about it. K put us down in a small spaceport not too far from the Koreth District, where Xarren’s manor was. It was not in the wastes where we usually hid, since our ship wasn’t easily recognizable. Once we landed, we piled onto the loading ramp and said our good-byes to Jinx. Everyone hugged her and wished her luck. Jinx did the same in turn. She was trying not to cry, knowing that this was a different mission than ones we’d gone on before. This was everything. Though we expected to see each other again, it was possible that Xarren might find her out, and if that happened…