“Why,” Jelena asked, “did they want to put such a valuable cargo of weapons on a battered ship that looks like…”
“Like what?” the owner snarled.
“Well, it’s old, isn’t it? And shouldn’t it have more than a crew of one?”
“It’s not that old. There are lots of older freighters. And it’s not just one. There’s Woofus.”
“Woofus?" Erick asked.
Was that the dog?
“What is this? Blackout Trivia? Who are you people, anyway? And why is there a big stick jammed into my back? You sound like a girl, but I’m having my doubts.”
“That’s my staff, sorry.” Jelena shifted, bumping Erick again. He was lucky he didn’t have a staff in his back.
“Not sure that alleviates my doubts,” the owner said.
“It’s a Starseer staff,” Erick said. “We have some unique talents. We may be able to help you if you finish telling us why these people are after you.” Speaking of doubts, Erick wondered if they had made a mistake. The man had admitted to being a smuggler. Should they even be helping him?
At least it had grown quiet outside. Maybe the imperials had given up on the search and were worrying about off-loading the cargo. Erick’s brain hurt too much to check.
“I might believe you if we weren’t locked in a closet together,” Yun said, sighing. “They’re just after the weapons. I think they want me dead so I can’t identify them later and let the Alliance know a large and well-armed band of old imperials are alive and plotting against them after all these years. I don’t think I was supposed to survive the crash.”
His head clunked back against the wall, and Erick grimaced. Just because it had grown quiet in the corridor didn’t mean they should be making noise in here.
“As to why the Alliance wanted to use my freighter and me and Woofus,” Yun continued, keeping his voice to a whisper, “I only know what I was told by some spit-polished fleet kid with more freckles than chin hair, but I gathered they’ve got a few spies in their military. Some of their heavily armored transport ships have been hit and successfully raided lately. They thought if they slipped a shipment through on my freighter, nobody would be expecting that. And since I’m a lowlife smuggler in their eyes, they didn’t care that much if I got killed. Though I gather they’ll be disappointed about the loss of the weapons. There’s some prototype stuff in there. Hells, I’m going to have to retire in another galaxy at this point. You think humans can survive in Andromeda at all? Maybe I can get on a—”
“No witnesses,” someone yelled from the corridor outside. “Find them, now.”
“…got the detector, Sarge.”
Boots hammered against the deck.
“They’re back there.”
Yun sighed, a defeated sigh.
Can you make a distraction in engineering, Erick? Jelena asked. She sounded distracted herself, her voice distant in his head. Something that will convince these people to run outside?
Erick grimaced at the idea of doing anything with his head aching so much. Why don’t you just put up your barrier, and we’ll walk out of here and back to town? They may shoot at us all the way, but I doubt they’ll follow us into the city.
As soon as he made the suggestion, he questioned it. Could Jelena hold her barrier and keep them safe all the way back to town? On foot? Erick imagined the bombers taking to the air and firing down at them from above as they ran across the sand. There was no way she could repel that kind of fire, even if some of his energy returned and he could help her.
I’m working on another idea, something that might let this man keep some of his cargo.
I don’t care two ore-less asteroids about his cargo, Erick said. I just want to survive the day.
I promised Woofus that I’d try to protect his steaks.
Jelena!
Just do something in the engine room, Erick. Please. That’s all I need.
The dog had settled in her arms, and even if it was afraid—or disgruntled about the potential steak theft—it had stopped barking. Which was good, because the soldiers were shoving open cabin doors, trying to find the secret panel. Erick wouldn’t be surprised if someone brought in whatever weapon had been used on his barrier and simply tried to blow a hole in the bulkhead.
A jolt rocked the deck, pitching him sideways into Jelena.
Yun gasped in pain, grabbing his wounded leg.
“What was that?” he whispered hoarsely.
“Some assistants have arrived,” Jelena said.
The deck shuddered, and a thump reverberated from under the ship.
“Erick?” Jelena asked expectantly.
“I’m working on it,” he grumbled. “Tyrant.”
He forced his aching brain to work, stretching out with his senses to examine engineering. Since it was on the back side of the cargo hold, he hadn’t gotten even a glimpse of it before, so he had to go over everything with his mind’s eyes. Fortunately, he had started working under a veteran engineer, Mica Coppervein, at age fourteen, and he’d tinkered with machines for years before that. He had taken a class on old ships during his university time too. That experience helped him to quickly identify the various parts.
Yun hadn’t powered anything down after crashing, and the radiative cooler was on the verge of overheating. It wouldn’t take much energy to use his telekinesis to disable the safety shutoff valves, and accelerate the build up of heat. But did he truly want to blow something up in engineering? Hadn’t this ship suffered enough? The engine room repairs might end up costing more than the value of the cargo, if the freighter was even salvageable.
The imperials need a reason to go outside, Jelena told him.
The deck rocked again as the front of the ship tilted upward, then slammed back down.
“Are there earthquakes on Dustor?” Yun wondered.
“Not exactly,” Jelena said.
The muted sounds of weapons fire drifted back from the cargo hold. The soldiers had left the corridor, and they were all standing at the top of the ramp and shooting outside. Shooting at—ah. Erick sensed the giant sand snakes out there and realized what Jelena, animal manipulator extraordinaire, had been doing.
Four of the massive snakes were diving through the sand and rearing up to lunge at the men, trying to drag them out of the ship. But the imperials were able to dive back into the cargo hold while shooting at the snakes. And the big creatures seemed reluctant to stick their heads into the dark interior of the freighter.
“One engineering explosion coming up,” Erick murmured and flicked off the safety shutoffs.
“I’m going out,” Jelena said. “To give the imperials another reason to run outside.”
“Wait.” Erick gripped her arm. “Better to stay here until—”
A boom roared from the back of the ship sooner than he expected. Metal warped and flew free with terrible squeals and screeches. The freighter lurched, and Erick sensed the alarm of the owner and the dog. Jelena hurried to comfort Woofus, soothing the animal with her mind and some pats. She either didn’t try to comfort Yun or didn’t know how. People were harder.
“Now you can go out,” Erick murmured. That explosion hadn’t taken as long to build as he’d thought it would. It might have happened soon even without his help.
The hidden panel swung open.
Smoke flooded into their corridor, stinging Erick’s eyes. He gripped his staff and squinted into the haze, checking with his eyes and his mind for soldiers. But they were doing as Jelena had wanted, fleeing the smoke and flames of the freighter to run out into the sand. Maybe she’d even given them a manipulative nudge with her mind, convincing them the entire ship would blow up and that the snakes were the lesser danger.
Jelena set the dog down, ran into the mess hall for a moment, then hurried to the intersection. Erick paused to help Yun climb out. The man could barely walk with that huge piece of shrapnel sticking out of his leg, and he had to lean heavily on the bulkhead for support.
“Here, use
this,” Erick said, coughing as he mentally commanded his staff to go quiescent and allow the touch of a stranger.
Wordlessly, the owner accepted it and used it like a crutch.
Erick followed Jelena around the corner, knowing she didn’t have a weapon beyond her staff and would be reluctant to shoot at anyone even if she did. In the cargo hold, smoke poured from the engineering hatchway, and flames danced impressively inside. Erick flipped a switch with his mind, re-enabling the fire suppression system. A few clunks and weak bleeps came from engineering.
Jelena ran to the ramp—the soldiers had all left the cargo hold. Erick expected they were running toward the safety of their own ships or that they would have killed the snakes by now. As fearsome as those creatures were, they weren’t immortal.
Or so Erick thought. When he joined Jelena at the top of the cargo ramp, he gaped at the carnage unfolding in front of them.
The four giant snakes, their lower halves buried in the sand and the top halves writhing and rising more than ten feet in the air, attacked relentlessly. One snake’s head whipped down, and its jaws clamped around one of the soldiers. It hefted him into the air and hurled him thirty feet. Another snake lunged at one of the bombers that was trying to take off. As its top half wrapped around the craft, more and more of its body emerged from the sand, and Erick realized it was truly massive—closer to forty feet than twenty feet. The bomber lifted a few feet, but the powerful snake smashed it to the ground over and over again.
“Why can’t we hit them?” someone yelled.
A trio of soldiers knelt in front of another of the bombers, blazer rifles flashing orange as they spat fire. Countless bolts streaked toward the snakes, but they bounced off, as if the creatures were armored.
And they were, Erick realized, looking at the concentration stamped on Jelena’s face. She was protecting the creatures, letting them wreak havoc with impunity.
Another soldier flew through the air, landing way up on top of the dune. He didn’t rise.
“Are you going to make the snakes kill them?” Erick asked, concerned.
“I’m trying to tell them not to,” Jelena said, her voice tense. “But they’re experiencing a lot of enthusiasm and… glee.”
“Gleeful snakes, wonderful.”
Yun caught up with them, leaning heavily on Erick’s staff. He gawked at the scene, three snakes waving their top halves in the air, hurling soldiers around, and the one still bashing the bomber into the ground repeatedly.
“Retreat,” one of the trio of men yelled. “We can’t win against them. They’re invincible.” He shot an incredulous look toward Jelena. Had he figured out she was responsible for that invincibility?
Erick fought his splitting headache to raise a shield around all three of them in case the imperials tried to shoot in this direction. But the speaker’s gaze caught on Jelena’s staff and the way the silver runes were glowing, the effect noticeable here in the shadow of the ship. He waved to his men, and they fled into a bomber that wasn’t being attacked.
The remaining soldiers followed, still firing at the snakes as they went, covering their comrades’ retreat. It hardly mattered. Another was plucked up from the ground and hurled atop the dune.
One of the bombers rose, flying in that direction to pick up the injured men lying up there. A second one lifted off and hovered in the area, firing at the snake clutching the third bomber. The ship’s weapons were far more powerful than rifles, and Jelena gasped and dropped to one knee.
Erick sensed the protective armor she’d created around the snakes failing. Maybe the snakes sensed it too. The giant one tormenting the bomber released it. The ship fell down on an edge, almost tipping onto its side, but the pilot got the thrusters going in time, and it roared into the sky. The big snake disappeared into the sand, avoiding being hit by further fire.
Erick worried the imperials would realize the snakes wouldn’t be a further threat, or at least not such a significant threat, and return. But they’d had enough. All three bombers took off, shooting straight toward the sky and the stars beyond. They were far more dented than they had been before, but they flew well and soon sailed out of sight.
Using her staff for support, Jelena pushed herself to her feet. Erick eyed the snakes as they slithered around just below the ramp. They drew their bodies out of the sand and coiled up, their flat heads all coming to stare at the freighter. No, at Jelena.
Had they realized she had manipulated them into fighting? And did they now want revenge for the wounds they’d received? Even with the protection she’d given them, they were all still bleeding. Numerous scorch marks cut into the side of one of them.
Erick shivered, remembering the way their minds had felt when he’d brushed against one earlier. The alienness, the desire to eat humans.
The fourth snake reappeared, the giant one. It burst out of the sand and rose three stories in the air, its shadow falling across the freighter’s ramp.
“Uh,” Erick said.
Yun stumbled back several steps.
Jelena gazed out at the snakes, then smiled like a loon. She stuck her hand into the big pocket on the front of her hooded shirt and withdrew hunks of meat. Erick blinked. Jelena, who favored vegetables and faux meat grown in vats, wasn’t the type of person to carry around raw steaks.
Woofus whined pitifully from behind Yun.
“Sorry, boy,” Jelena said. “We’ll get you something else later.”
She tossed the four steaks away from the hold, flinging them like disc toys for dogs. The massive snake heads whipped down to catch them in the air. The big one tried to take his and snatch one of the steaks meant for another. They snapped their jaws, fangs gashing each other.
For a moment, there was a huge, writhing snake brawl, and then, with a flurry of hisses, all four disappeared into the sand. Erick couldn’t tell if they’d each gotten a steak or not.
“You really are Starseers,” Yun said, hobbling forward and squinting at them.
“Really tired Starseers,” Jelena said, plopping down into a seated position on top of the ramp. She rubbed her temples, and Erick suspected she’d developed a splitting headache too. The punishment for trying to do too much. “The ship’s not going to blow up back there, is it?”
She looked at Erick and nodded toward engineering.
“No, the chemical sprinklers went on to stop the fire.” Erick sat down next to her. He wasn’t sure how safe it was to dawdle out here—maybe the bombers would return and try again—but he needed a short rest.
Jelena slapped his chest. “We make a good team.”
“I suppose so. You’ll never find an engineer with my talents to work on your new ship. Whenever you find your new ship.”
“You won’t be coming to fly it with me?”
“Well… I’m the engineer for the Nomad now. And…”
Yun limped out onto the ramp, distracting Jelena and saving Erick from having to complete his sentence.
“That’s amazing,” he said, scanning the valley in all directions. “They left most of the cargo.”
“I’m not sure they left it,” Jelena said, “so much as it fell out when the snake started bouncing that ship around with the hatch still open.” She waved to the crates, none of them currently obeying the THIS SIDE UP markings stamped on the tops.
“At least the Alliance shouldn’t be too pissed,” Yun grumbled, looking around. “They’ll still probably want to jail me. Or hang me up by my fingernails on some Old Earth torture rack. If I were smart, I’d get out of here right now, but this ship won’t fly again without a lot of work.” He turned toward the smoke wafting out of engineering. “If it ever flies again.”
“Maybe this should be the first day of your retirement,” Erick said.
He’d mostly meant the words as a joke, but the man grew speculative, stroking the stubble on his scarred jaw.
“Some people died here,” Yun said after a contemplative moment.
“Just one,” Erick said, his hackles ris
ing in defense. “And it was his fault.”
He did not look toward the corridor and the corpse they’d had to jump over on the way back to the hold. Even if that man had been trying to kill him, he regretted being the cause of his death.
“Who’s to say that more weren’t incinerated in the engine room when that explosion happened?”
“Nobody was incinerated,” Jelena said, frowning up at Yun.
Erick started to add his voice to the protest, but he let his senses brush the man’s mind and got the gist of his thoughts.
“You want us to imply that you were incinerated?” he asked, studying Yun’s weathered face.
“Would you mind?” He regarded them curiously. “If the Alliance thought I was dead, they wouldn’t have any reason to look for me. And if they get most of their cargo back here, they shouldn’t feel their balls are too covered with worm suck.”
Erick grimaced at the unpleasantly vivid imagery, having no trouble imagining Demeter’s giant slobbery worms after their recent encounter with the sand snakes. At least the snakes didn’t leave snot-like drool all over a man before they swallowed him whole.
“I got a couple of accounts they don’t know about that I can survive on,” Yun continued, looking around, his eyes speculative. “Was planning on taking my ship with me when I retired, though. Or selling it. Hard to stay off the radar when you’ve got a big old ship that’s easily identified when you’re visiting ports. I was figuring to retire in some paradise core-world spot, too, not die on a mud pit out on the rim. Be easier without a ship, but I don’t suppose I can even get this one over to the lot here on Dustor to sell it.”
“We’re looking to buy a ship,” Jelena said brightly, the weary expression leaving her face.
“Oh?”
“But not this ship,” Erick said, horrified at the idea of having to repair the mess he’d made. Repairs aside, it would take forever to clean the soot off the bulkheads in the engine room. Could the craft even fly again?
“You’re not still angling for that ugly brick full of rapists, are you?” Jelena asked, proving she’d gotten the gist of what those heathens had been thinking.
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