“Fuck! We have to find her.” He wanted the timepiece back.
“She’ll be long gone.” Nik stared out the side window that stretched all the way to the floor. It gave a dizzying view ofthe planet below and the ground that now looked like a molten orange ocean. “If she made it off the planet.”
“She made it.” Dathan didn’t doubt it. The treasure hunter was too cunning and too quick.
Nik’s blue gaze swung back to him, held for a second, then he nodded. “You’re bleeding.”
Dathan swiped a hand at his side. “Yeah, Darc’s pretty handy with a shuriken.”
Niklas mumbled something under his breath then held a hand out. “And you have some solarburn. I think you need a date with the medscope.”
“It’ll keep until we get home. I want you to find her buyer.” Nik was a genius on the comp. “I want that timepiece back.”
Nik raised a brow. “And if she’s sold it to someone we shouldn’t mess with?” He gripped Dathan’s shoulder. Squeezed. “There are other treasures, Dath.”
“I want this one.” He had to have this one. He shoved his hands on his hips. “You content to let her get away with it?”
A pause. “No.”
“That’s what I thought. Us Phoenix brothers, when we want something, we go after it until we get it.”
That was a lesson they’d learned themselves. Their father certainly hadn’t taught it to them.
Turning, Dathan stared out the window at the receding sphere of Lumina. What he wanted now was a bottle of Beduan ale and a plan for re-acquiring the timepiece.
As long as he had another adventure, another treasure on the horizon, he had everything he needed.
CHAPTER TWO
Dr. Eos Rai gripped the edge of her seat and gritted her teeth. The pilot of her hired mini-shuttle executed a dizzying spiral descent toward the moon below.
The free fall was exactly what her life was like at the moment. Her fingers clenched on the seat. How much longer until she hit the bottom?
She focused on the irregular, pockmarked surface below. Her first look at Khan.
The moon was a captured asteroid that now orbited the market planet of Souk. If she craned her neck, she could just make out the large planet with its urban areas interspaced with farms and forests.
Here at the edge of the known galaxy, Souk was the stopping-off point for explorers, colonists, and daredevils heading off into unknown space to make their fortunes. And its small moon of Khan was home to the most notorious treasure hunters in the galaxy—the Phoenix brothers.
Another sharp turn had her almost head-butting the synth-glass windshield. She shot a narrow look at the pilot, but the weathered old man peered straight ahead through his thick glasses—who still wore glasses when you could visit a medboothand get your vision fixed for a few e-creds?—and didn’t even glance at her. In fact, he looked bored.
As long as she landed in one piece…
She had to make the Phoenix brothers help her.
She pulled in a deep breath and rubbed the fingers of her left hand together. She felt the slight bump at the end of her index finger and thought of the precious cargo it carried.
It challenged all her beliefs to put this into the hands of treasure hunters, but she was out of options.
She’d worked with Niklas years ago at the Galactic Institute of Historical Preservation. He was steady and smart. She trusted him. His brothers, though, were wild cards.
Why the hell had Niklas thrown away a promising career in astro-archeology for this? She stared at the scratched and dented hulls of the various starships that littered the moon’s surface. A spaceship graveyard.
But she knew salvage wasn’t the brothers’ main business. No, they went after items far more lucrative than scrap metal.
Dathan Phoenix had a reputation for sniffing out the choicest ancient relics.
Right or wrong, it was a skill she needed. If she could convince him to chase a myth.
