He frowned. The man was definitely hunting for what he assumed was a small crew, and he kept touching the knife sheathed on his belt even though he also carried a massive blazer rifle capable of blowing holes in walls. He looked forward to finding the crew and killing them to keep them from complaining to Alliance authorities.
Were Alliance authorities even on Dustor? This was on the fringe of the core worlds, and neither the empire nor the Alliance had ever had much interest in the planet, due to its utter lack of resources. Food and water had to be shipped in, and it was more of a meeting place for illegal activities than a homesteading world. But maybe the Alliance had a ship or station in orbit to keep an eye on things. Or maybe an Alliance representative had been sent to meet the freighter here and pick up the cargo?
The man Erick had been checking on halted and looked down at something. He had a handheld instrument that detected signs of life, and he was using it as a guide. With his Starseer senses, Erick could tell he was getting close to the man and the dog.
Canine barks floated out of the ship, and Jelena winced. The bulkheads muted the sound, but not enough. The man on the hunt jerked his head up and faced what appeared to be a blank wall to him. There had to be a secret panel there—Erick sensed the man and dog right behind it.
“We have to go in now,” Jelena whispered. “They’re in trouble.”
“I know.” Erick turned his senses toward the bomber with the open hatch.
Numerous crates were already stacked inside. He skimmed through them, looking for something with explosive potential. Ah, there was a box of battery packs. Even with all the safeguards that went into battery manufacturing, all it usually took to blow them up was for them to get charged too quickly. He could make that happen.
Erick closed his eyes and poured his own energy into them. It wasn’t quite the same as electricity, but he could sense the ions zipping back and forth, moving too rapidly from the cathodes to the anodes.
Jelena gripped his arm. “Erick?”
“Second.”
He rushed the job, but he was rewarded with an explosive boom from that bomber. It caused a chain reaction, with other explosions following the first. The ship hopped up and down like spittle on a hot burner, and shouts arose from several directions.
“Now,” Jelena whispered, slipping out from under the ramp.
Erick, his legs wobbly after exerting so much energy, had to use the side of the ramp for support as he pulled himself out after her. She was already charging into the freighter, her staff in hand. He sensed her alarm as she almost crashed into someone. The man from the cargo hold. He had been running out to check on the explosion.
Cursing, Erick forced his legs to work. He hopped onto the ramp just as the man pointed a pistol at Jelena.
4
Erick charged up the ramp to help Jelena, barely conscious of the fact that his back was to the explosions still going off—and the imperials running to deal with it. He prepared to hurl a wave of power at the man facing Jelena, but she stepped forward and attacked first. She whipped her staff across, knocking his rifle away as he fired.
A blazer beam streaked wildly away, almost bisecting Erick’s scalp.
He ducked as Jelena struck again. She smashed her staff against the man’s fingers, and his rifle tumbled to the deck.
The man roared and launched himself at her.
She stepped back, but only so she could brace herself. Using her staff both for defense and as a focus tool, she created a shield in front of her. He smacked against it and bounced back. He twisted in the air, managing to get his feet under him, but she jumped after him and caught him before he landed. She rammed the tip of her staff into his chest, and energy crackled around it, white lightning flaring and wrapping around it, and also around the man.
He screamed, his back arching. Jelena jerked her staff back, her eyes wide in alarm.
“Don’t stop,” Erick encouraged, afraid the soldier would take advantage if she let up.
He stepped forward to help, but a man charged out of the corridor on the forward side of the cargo hold. It was the bloodthirsty man who’d been hunting the freighter owner. He fired as soon as he saw the fray. Erick threw a barrier up to protect Jelena as he ran toward the man to further distract him. The imperial pivoted, firing at him.
Erick flung himself to the deck as blazer fire scorched a hole in his sleeve. He’d been more worried about protecting Jelena than himself.
The imperial lowered his aim to fire again. By then, Erick had adjusted his barrier. His foe scowled in irritation and confusion as his blazer bolts bounced off, some shooting out the hatch and others up to the ceiling, none striking his target.
Erick rolled to his knees. The imperial paused and looked at the end of his barrel, as if the weapon were responsible for the erratic fire. That gave Erick a second to take advantage. He dropped his barrier so he could concentrate on a mental attack. He hurled a wave of power, and the man tumbled back into the corridor, smashing against a bulkhead.
Erick glanced at Jelena to make sure she wasn’t in trouble—she had her attacker flat on his back and was disarming him—then ran toward the corridor to subdue his man. On the way, he glimpsed five thrust bikes in a dark corner of the hold and snorted. He supposed the rental robot would notice if Erick and Jelena somehow acquired different bikes and turned those in.
In the corridor, the soldier had gotten to his knees, and he still gripped his rifle. He shot again as Erick came into his sight. But Erick charged into the corridor with his barrier wrapped around him.
One of the blazer blasts hit it and bounced back. It slammed into the man’s shocked eye, burrowing straight into his brain.
He pitched backward, the rifle falling from his fingers. Smoke wafted from his destroyed eyeball.
Erick gaped at him, stunned. All he had wanted to do was disarm the man, to get by him and find the freighter owner. Even if these were ex-imperial soldiers, thieves, and potentially murderers, who was he to kill them?
Damn it, how had this day gone so wrong so quickly?
A dog howled, the sound muted. Maybe he was wondering the same thing.
Noise came from behind Erick, and he stirred, remembering he was in the middle of a battle. He turned, but it was only Jelena, her staff in hand, her cheeks flushed from exertion. She stared past him to the dead soldier on the deck.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” Erick said. “He shot himself. I mean, he tried to shoot me, and it deflected, and…” He trailed off, the words sounding inane to his ears. He was making an excuse, and he knew it.
He looked back to the man Jelena had been fighting, wondering how she’d dealt with him. Just knocked him unconscious?
Yes, there he was, his eyes rolled back in his head, his belt tied around his wrists, which she’d pulled behind his back. When he woke up, he would be able to run away, but the belt would slow him down. And he wasn’t dead. Erick stared bleakly.
“There are more coming.” Jelena tilted her head toward the open cargo hatch. Thick smoke outside billowed from the hatch of that bomber, but the imperials wouldn’t be distracted indefinitely.
Even as Erick looked that way, he glimpsed movement. The soldiers must have heard the fight. They were charging up the cargo ramp through the smoke.
Erick pulled Jelena fully into the corridor with him. She jumped over the dead man and ran a few feet to an intersection, then turned left as if she knew where to go. Erick followed as she raced past hatch doors that looked to lead to crew cabins.
“They’re in here,” the man on the ramp yelled.
Erick reached out with his mind and manipulated the wind between the dunes. He caused it to blow the smoke into the freighter’s cargo hold, hoping it would obscure the imperials’ vision and make them pause before charging in.
They’re behind here, Jelena whispered into his mind from what appeared to be a dead end in the corridor. I don’t know how to get in.
Erick sensed the soldiers gathering around
the top of the ramp in the cargo hold. Six of them. Smoke filled the hold, but it wouldn’t make them pause for long. As soon as they were ready, they would race inside, guns blazing. And there weren’t many places to hide on this ship.
The corridor Erick and Jelena were in held some cabins, a tiny mess hall, and an equally diminutive sickbay. The other short corridor at the single intersection led into a small Navigation and Communications area. That was it. His senses showed him that the engine room was on the other side of the cargo hold and that they couldn’t get to it without passing in front of the imperials.
Jelena knocked on the bulkhead at the dead end, as if the person hiding inside would open a door for them. A dog barked in response. Erick thought he heard the muffled sound of someone trying to hush it.
Footsteps thundered as the soldiers ran into the interior of the ship. A couple went toward engineering, but the rest headed straight toward the corridor Erick and Jelena had gone up.
Erick concentrated and formed his barrier farther away from his body than usual, stretching it across the corridor to keep the men from reaching the intersection and seeing them. The lead soldier smacked into it and bounced back into his comrades, almost knocking one man over. Erick might have felt amused or relieved, but all he could think about was how similar that was to the way that blazer bolt had bounced back into the now dead man’s face.
You’re going to have to talk to the freighter owner, Erick said, concentrating on keeping his barrier in place.
The soldiers recovered from their surprise quickly. They backed up and fired at it. They were far enough away from the barrier that when the bolts ricocheted back in their direction, they were not hit. But as soon as they saw that happening, they took cover behind crates in the cargo hold and continued to fire.
Convince him to come out, Erick added, and then we’ll have to figure out a way out of here. Maybe he knows a back door off the ship.
Actually, I’m talking to the dog.
I’m sure that will be effective.
He showed me where the secret switch is. Jelena crouched and felt along a seam between the deck and the bulkhead. He also expressed concern that the invaders might take the steaks out of the refrigerator.
Is that what he was complaining about earlier?
Erick grimaced as six blazer rifles joined forces, all streaming power into his barrier. He had already drained himself by causing the batteries to blow up, and he could feel his mental energy being further sapped. He wouldn’t be able to hold that barrier up indefinitely. Why couldn’t those asteroid kissers just go unload their stolen cargo and leave them alone?
His owner is hurt, and he’s angry, Jelena told him. He wants to tear up the people who did it.
Erick glanced back, imagining Jelena opening the secret door, and a huge dog leaping out to maul them with giant fangs. He knows that’s not us, right?
We’re working on that. Ah, there.
A panel that looked exactly like the rest of the panels along the bulkheads swung outward. Jelena stepped back as a grizzled bald, bronze-skinned man inside a dark cubby pointed an old revolver at her chest.
Erick cursed and almost dropped his barrier to erect one between Jelena and the gunman, but sensed that she already had one up. Good. He could concentrate on his own.
He leaned a hand against a hatch for support, his legs growing weak with the effort required. Those soldiers were relentless.
A short, sausage-bodied dog that couldn’t have weighed more than ten pounds climbed out of the secret opening, slender short legs churning as he ran toward Jelena. Somehow, he made it through her barrier—ah, she’d adjusted it to let him in while keeping bullets out. He jumped up, resting his forelegs against her knee.
“That’s the dog that wants to tear up the people who hurt its master?” Erick asked.
“Small dogs don’t know they’re small,” Jelena informed him. “Uhm, can we come in?”
The latter question must have been for the grizzled man with the gun. He hadn’t fired yet. Judging by the confused wrinkle to his brow, he hadn’t expected to have his hideout breached by an eighteen-year-old woman in a pink shirt proclaiming her love for horses.
Voices sounded over the weapons being fired from the cargo hold, someone giving orders. Someone else asked if there was another way around. Erick leaned his whole body against the hatch, praying they would give up and stop firing at his barrier.
“There’s no way out from in here, girl,” the freighter owner said.
He lowered his gun, and winced, one hand straying toward his leg. A huge piece of shrapnel was embedded there, and blood saturated his trouser leg. Someone else shouted in the cargo hold, and he stumbled back, grimacing deeply. He looked past Jelena and Erick toward the other end of the corridor, toward the sickbay Erick had identified earlier. He probably wanted some of the drugs in there, but hadn’t dared sneak out to get them.
Erick was on the verge of offering to get them when a whoomp came from the cargo hold, and something much more powerful than rifle fire struck his barrier.
He gasped and dropped to his knees, almost letting it drop.
“Erick,” Jelena blurted, whirling and grabbing him.
Her barrier dropped, and the freighter owner could have shot her in her unprotected back. But his gun remained at his side, his eyes laced with pain. He looked like a man on the verge of surrendering.
But the imperials didn’t want captives. Erick had seen into that one man’s mind and knew they planned to kill the freighter owner.
They struck my barrier with something huge, Erick told Jelena. I don’t know what.
His brain ached, and he couldn’t use his senses and keep his barrier up at the same time. As it was, he was on the verge of dropping everything, his body included.
Jelena leaned her staff against the bulkhead and hauled him to his feet. She pulled him back toward the hidden cubby. Was it large enough for all three of them? Erick let himself be pulled, but he doubted it. He also doubted the wisdom of climbing inside of it.
We’ll be trapped, he said.
I’ve got breaking news for you. We’re already trapped.
She pulled him into the cubby, and the freighter owner blurted a protest.
“What are you doing?”
“Joining you,” Jelena said. “Scoot over, please.”
She smiled, and this time, Erick sensed her attempting to manipulate the man.
He glowered at her, but looked toward the intersection, where the soldiers were promising, “We’re almost through, boy.”
He scooted over.
Jelena stepped inside with Erick. He almost pitched over when the dog darted between his legs to return to his master. Jelena glanced at the panel, and the secret door swung shut, plunging them into darkness.
Another muted whoomp sounded, and intense energy struck Erick’s barrier. It crumpled, and so did his legs. He blacked out and fell against Jelena.
5
Erick woke up, his head hurting, the worst headache he could remember stabbing at the inside of his skull. He felt like he should be lying or at least sitting down, but he was upright, pressed between Jelena and a bulkhead. There wouldn’t have been room to collapse to the deck even if he wanted to.
The smell of smoke and someone’s aftershave, presumably not Jelena’s, tickled his nose. In the corridor outside, thumps and terse orders sounded.
Erick started to reach out with his senses, to check on the locations of the soldiers, but the stabbing pain in his head increased so much that he almost passed out again. He groped for support, clunking the panel softly.
“Ssh,” the freighter owner growled.
“Sorry,” Erick whispered. “I may have overexerted myself.”
“Who in the hells are you people?”
“I’m Jelena, and that’s Erick. We came to rescue you.”
“Well, shit, that’s working well, isn’t it?”
“Stage One hasn’t gone exactly according to plan, but we’re hopi
ng Stage Two will be inspiring. Right, Erick?”
Erick groaned. It was all he could manage when it felt like someone was hosting an axe-throwing competition inside his skull. His stomach growled, letting him know his brain had been using more than its fair share of his body’s reserves.
“Erick agrees,” Jelena said. “What’s your name?”
It was too dark to see if the freighter owner sent her an incredulous look, but Erick could almost feel it in the air.
“Yun,” the man finally said.
Clunks and clanks came from outside as people searched for them. It wouldn’t be long before someone thought to grab that life-form detector from the dead man.
“What are they after?” Jelena asked.
“That cargo hold full of high-tech Alliance weapons,” Yun growled. “Never should’ve gotten in bed with the Alliance. Not that they gave me any choice.”
“What happened?” Jelena bumped Erick with her elbow.
What was she doing? Oh, she’d picked up the dog and was stroking it. That figured. Erick was ninety-nine percent certain this so-called rescue mission wouldn’t have happened if not for the canine presence trapped on the freighter.
Yun snorted. “Got caught smuggling in their territory one too many times. They said I could spend the next twenty years in jail or help them out with a little problem they were having. I’d been fixing to retire in a few years, not die being felt up by horny imperial sympathizers in some all-boys mining camp.”
Erick had seen the grizzled owner in the light before they’d been shut in this closet, and he thought the odds were slim of anyone willingly feeling anything of his. He kept the thought to himself since the man was talking. Assuming he was telling the truth. Given the way he grunted and groaned in pain after every sentence, lying probably wasn’t on his mind. He had the sound of a man who was sure death was imminent, and maybe he would even welcome it.
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