Storm and Lightning began on the 13th January. Catch up here: week one, week two, week three

On a mining colony planet a long way from Earth, bandit Jedd Lightning dreams of making enough money to get off the planet for good. When a robbery at a high-class brothel goes wrong, he meets gorgeous rentboy Storm and is instantly smitten. But Storm has a few surprises up his sleeve, and when Jedd helps him escape, he realises he might have taken on more than he can handle…

JL Merrow and Lou Harper are once again my fabulous beta readers – any remaining mistakes are my own.

But now, on with the story:

“What d’you mean you didn’t get it? Shit,Jedd!”

Jedd leant back against the bulkhead and watched Marty run his hands through his hair as he paced the width of Bluebird’s galley, four strides one way, four back again.

“Calm down, Mart. It’s not the end of the world.”

“It is for us though, isn’t it? This isn’t just a bit of lost income. This is Cheerful frigging Charlie we’re talking about. You know what he does to people who cross him.” Marty stared with panicked eyes, his dark hair defying gravity and sticking up in unruly tufts.

“We haven’t crossed him, have we? We’re just a little delayed in coming up with the goods.”

“Same thing in his eyes. Oh fuck, I’m not ready to die. Me and Lena, well, we’re talking about starting a family soon. I’ve gotta be around for that, Jedd. A dead dad’s no use to a youngling.”

“Better than one who ran off with some cheap tart,” Jedd muttered, then choked the resentment back down again as he caught Marty’s glare. “Sorry, off topic. That’s… that’s great news. No, seriously. I’m stoked for you both.” They’d have beautiful kids together, with Marty’s dark skin and Lena’s stunning bone structure. “But do you think we could ease up on the melodrama a little? No one’s going to die.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Marty grumbled. “What the fuck went wrong, anyway?”

“He wouldn’t talk.”

“He’s a politician. That’s all they bloody well do.”

“Not this one. He was a tough bugger.”

“Then you should have threatened him. Showed him you meant business.”

“I did! I had a gun pointed at his precious whore and he just laughed.”

“Well then you should have cut off one of his fingers.”

“Cut off—” Jedd gaped. The idea of anyone hurting Storm made his blood boil. “You’d seriously want me to cut a naked, defenceless innocent bystander?”

“Not her, him. The Senator. He’d soon start squealing if you cut off one of his fingers. Or his toes. Maybe an eye… Are there any organs you can live without?”

Jedd’s stomach rebelled at the image his imagination conjured, pushing bitter bile up his throat. “I had no idea you were this bloodthirsty. You’d seriously be able to do that? Just start cutting an unarmed man?”

“Me? No fucking way, man. But I’m just the engineer. You’re meant to be the big bad bandit. You’re meant to be inspiring fear in your victims.”

“Yeah, well I’m not doing it that way.” Jedd shivered at the very idea. “No torture. Threats, fine, but I’m not stooping that low. I only get down low for things that are much more fun.” Jedd mimed a blowjob just to cheer them both up, but Marty refused to smile, damn him.

“Not funny right now.”

“Look, it’s not my style, okay?” Besides which, he knew he’d probably throw up before he managed to get a knife into someone, but he wasn’t going to let on about that. Kind of undermined the hard-guy reputation he’d done his best to nurture. “There’s no use arguing about it now, anyway. It’s done. What we have to figure out is another way to get the code.” Jedd pondered the ways they might go about it, and one possibility stood out. “D’you think you can crack it?”

Marty stared at him, open-mouthed.

“What? You’re always finding ways to hack ships’ computer systems. What’s so different about a datapod?”

“No one’s ever cracked a datapod without the aid of some serious kit. It can’t be done.”

“You sound so sure.”

“I am.” Marty crossed his arms, but his eyes gave him away, flicking over to the innocent looking palm-sized device on the galley counter.

“Just because it’s never been done before, doesn’t mean it’s impossible. But if you don’t think you’re up for it, we’d better start looking for someone who is.”

“Wait…” Marty picked up the datapod. “Perhaps if I just tried…”

Jedd could see the gears turning, the challenge doing its work.

“D’you think he’d be using Earthish or T’almaki?”

“He was perfectly fluent in Earthish.” Politicians had to be, if they wanted to gain the votes of the natives and the human settlers. “They say it’s a lot simpler sticking to that than dealing with the T’almaki keyboard.” Even with a simplified alphabet created to help the pre-tech race adapt to using human technology, there were still 84 different letters to deal with.

“How long have I got?” Marty said, his fingers starting to race across the datapod’s screen.

“Charlie wants to see us first thing tomorrow.”

“Shit.” Marty’s fingers sped up. Jedd guided him to the bench and encouraged him to sit down, Marty’s eyes not leaving the screen for a moment.

“I’ll get you a drink.”

Marty nodded, but it was clear his attention was elsewhere.

Jedd grabbed them each a bottle of water, watched Marty for a while, then headed back to the cockpit. There might not be much room there, but the two Ranak hide-covered seats were the most comfortable places to sit in the whole ship.

The evening sun slanted into the cockpit. Iola had already set so the light was amber-pink from tardy Rose. Jedd smiled, remembering his mother’s rhyme about the twin suns: Rise in the morning to Iola’s glare, tuck up in bed under sweet Rose’s care. It had been a ritual of his childhood, sitting down next to her in the doorway each evening, watching the dying rays of Rose as she dipped down below the horizon. Their shack was on the hillside facing West over the desert, which turned into a sea of peach and mauve dunes. They were precious, those moments. The only minutes of the day his mother, Savannah, would rest between her shift down the mine and her housework, and even then she’d always have a basket of mending on the go.

Must pay her a visit soon. Lena lived in the next village, so they were often in the area, and it made a good place for hiding out from the authorities, should they need to. It was a pity that Charlie knew about their connections to Lodetown, or they could hide out there now. But no, he’d never do that. Never put the folks there at risk if he could possibly help it.

Jedd sighed, wondering if he’d have to start looking for a new engineer anytime soon. Would Marty want to settle down as a miner, where the risks were more of a known quantity than in this life they were living? He couldn’t see it, but then again, having children seemed to do strange things to people. Either that or they ran away as fast as their traitorous legs could carry them, floozy in tow.

Still, no point playing “what if?” It wouldn’t get him anywhere right now. Better just to clear his mind and dream of the desert. Bluebird looked out over a junkyard on the edge of T’almak city. Jedd gazed over the rusting hulks of abandoned vehicles and ships, trying to catch a glimpse of the desert beyond. But when he gave up and shut his eyes instead, the image that formed wasn’t the desert sands, but a pair of green, stormy eyes.

He had to get back to see Storm again, but how the hell was he going to get into Tavkel’s a second time? Jedd turned over plans in his mind, idly rubbing at his thickening cock.

It wasn’t going to be easy.

***

Will Cheerful Charlie eat Jedd and Marty for breakfast? And just what’s going on with Storm right now? Tune in next week for another thrilling installment of Storm and Lightning!

Storm and Lightning - © Josephine Myles, 2012. No part of this serial fiction may be reproduced elsewhere without prior permission of the author. Thank you!