Heaven's Queen Read Online Free Page B

armor. I waved to him when he got close, hopping out of the pod just in time to get swept into a bear hug.
    “Devi!” Hicks shouted, picking my armored body up and swinging me around without missing a beat. But then, of course, Count armor like his could lift a tank. “By the king, woman, call ahead next time. I almost hit the guns when I saw your lizard can.”
    “Just working with what I had,” I said, wiggling free. “Thanks for guiding us down, and for not shooting. Always a pleasure not to be shot.”
    “Must be a change of pace for you, certainly,” Hicks said, stepping back to look up at Rupert, who was pulling my armor case out of the cockpit. “Who’s your friend? Another merc?”
    I bit my lip. I didn’t actually know how to explain Rupert. Considering he spoke perfect King’s Tongue, I could try passing him off as an official from the Royal Office, which wouldn’t be too far from the truth. Before I could get a word out, though, Rupert answered for himself in his usual softly accented Universal.
    “I am not a mercenary,” he said, handing me my case before grabbing his own bag and dropping down seven feet to land neatly beside me on the blinding white cement. “I am Devi’s escort.”
    That stopped Hicks cold. I still couldn’t see through his blacked helmet, but I could feel his questioning stare just as a private channel opened to my com. “Is this idiot for real?”
    “It’s a long story,” I said, but before I could explain further, Rupert reached into his bag and pulled out a badge. It wasn’t a Royal Warrant, but it must have been serious business, because the moment he opened it, Hicks shut up.
    Rupert’s smile was polite as always, but I knew him well enough now to catch the smug turn at the edge of his mouth as he closed the badge and tucked it into his jacket pocket. “Mr. Hicks, correct?”
    “Captain Hicks,” Hicks replied in Universal. At Rupert’s raised eyebrow, he added a grudging, “Sir.”
    Rupert nodded. “I need immediate access to your communications drones. I’m also going to need your fastest hyperdrive-capable ship ready to launch as soon as possible. The Atlas Corporation will be compensated in full for the loss, of course.”
    “You want a ship?” Hicks said, though from the tone of his voice, you’d have thought Rupert had asked for a unicorn. “Um, sir, this here is a cash colony. We don’t have hyperdrive-capable ships.”
    “Are you kidding?” I asked before Rupert could.
    Hicks threw out his arms. “Look around. This entire place is an automated farm. There’s like, thirty of us on the whole planet. My job is to run the security drones. Hell, I only put my armor on because I thought you’d need help.”
    “So you don’t have a ship?” Rupert clarified. “Nothing with a hyperdrive?”
    Hicks shook his head.
    “But,” I said, “how do you get off-world?”
    “On the freighter,” Hicks replied, pointing at the wall of shipping containers behind us. “See those crates? Corporate sends a continent freighter around to pick them up every month.”
    I blinked. “Continent freighter?”
    “An industrial ship too large to enter orbit,” Rupert said. “Usually loaded by space elevator. The corps use them for planetary scale transport.”
    “Basically a giant moving space station,” Hicks finished. “Only it holds cargo instead of people. The automated harvesters pick the soypen and load it onto the trains, which ship the beans here from all over the planet. Every month, the freighter comes and picks up the harvest. At that point, if you want to get off-planet, you just go up with the produce. The freighter makes a few more stops after us, and then it uses its internal gate to jump back to the Atlas distribution facility in the core worlds. Once you’re there, you can get a flight anywhere you want.”
    “Hold on,” I said. “So this freighter has a gate
inside
itself?”
    Hicks nodded. “Told you it was big.”
    “How long until the