by Ruby Dixon
And then the wave of hot, moist air hits my face, and it feels safe again.
And I lose my cool.
A hysterical, noisy sob breaks out of my throat, and I drop to the cave floor.
WARREK
Suh-mer is weeping so hard that I worry she will make herself sick.
I know how she feels. My spirit feels lower than it ever has, perhaps even lower than when the cavern collapsed and my elderly father did not make it out alive. Somewhere out there, our tribesmates have been stolen and we are the only ones left…
Except for the village. Croatoan. If the slavers go there… I swallow hard at the thought. I do not like to think about that.
I feel helpless. Like Suh-mer, I want nothing more than to rush out there with my spear and demand that our tribesmates be freed. But I know that my job is to keep Suh-mer safe here at my side. That is what my chief would want. It does not sit well with me, but I cannot risk her. She is a life-bearer, and our tribe is still too small to risk one such as her.
The human’s frantic sobbing slows to a few hiccups, and I look over to where she is crumpled on the floor, a huddled ball of misery. I want to wrap my arms around her and hold her close, but I remember her angry slaps and know I would not be welcomed. She blames me for taking her away when she would go to their side. Brave but unwise.
I feel hollow inside at the thought, but I know we must hide away and not be seen. I sit at the edge of one of the ledges and stare down at the lush greenery
Suh-mer sits up and flings her shiny hair back. She wipes her fingers under her eyes and takes a deep breath. “Okay. Okay. Okay.” She hiccups and then nods and gets to her feet.
“Where are you going?”
“It’s been at least an hour,” she says in a tear-scratched voice. She heads for the entrance to the fruit cave. “I want to make sure that ship is still here.”
I follow her, because I feel as if I must protect her, at all costs. We…might be the only ones left at some point.
I push the thought out of my mind. I am not going to think like that.
Suh-mer nods and heads back into the cave before I can make it to her side. “Still there.” She scrubs a hand under her nose and sniffs. “I got my freakout out of my system. Now we need a plan to figure out how to save the others.”
I watch her, amazed. Her voice is calm, and she takes deep, steadying breaths. “Rescue?” She is very brave—brave but foolish. “I am but one hunter, and you have never carried a spear. How will we rescue them against an Elders’ Cave full of light-spears?”
“Don’t you want to save them?” She moves to sit down on the slick floor of the cave, across from me.
“More than anything.” My tribe is all I have after the death of my father. I feel responsible that they were taken while I was in the cave with Suh-mer, admiring her hair and the golden cast of her skin.
“All right, then, we need to think strategy.” She blinks a few times and then grabs a small, chalky rock and begins to draw a grid on the stone floor. “I’m going to think of this like a chessboard. We’re one player, and they’re the opponent.” She draws a circle outside of the grid. “That’s them.” She draws two small circles on the far end of the grid. “This is us. Now, we just need to think of this like chess. In chess, whoever’s in control is the winner.”
“Chess?” I echo. “What is this?”
“It’s a game humans play,” she says, coloring in some of the squares in her grid. There’s an intent, focused look on her face. “You use strategy to outsmart your opponent. You’re only allowed to make one move at a time, but if you do things wisely, you can control the game before your enemy even gets started. That’s what we need to do here. We need to outthink them.”
“In…this chess, you use light-spears?”
She shakes her head and starts to place berries on the grid she has created. “You have playing pieces and you move them. It’s not a physical game. It’s a game played with the mind. I’m pretty good at it.” She gives me a small smile. “Chess club, you know? Didn’t exactly make me popular, but I liked it anyhow. Now, these pink berries are going to be our pieces, and these darker, yucky-looking berries are going to be the others. Not that we really need berries or we need to map out our moves, but visualizing it helps me think things through. And talking. Talking helps.”
“Then talk,” I say to her. I like to hear her thoughts, anyhow.
She flashes me a quick, grateful look and then continues. “In chess, it’s a mind game as much as it is a game of moves. You need to establish your territory before your opponent can, and once you do, you can keep them guessing and keep them off-guard as you strategize around them. These four squares here,” she says, pointing at the center of her grid, “are the sweet spot. You control this, and you control the entire board. I’m going to think of this as the valley itself. Whoever controls the valley is going to end up winning this game between us and them. So…” She thinks for a moment and then continues, toying with one of the berries that threatens to roll away. “We’re going to have to assume that they’re not going to fly off in the next few hours. If they do, it doesn’t matter what we do anyhow. The others will be lost to us no matter what we strategize.” For a moment, her lower lip quivers, but she shakes it off. “It’ll do no good thinking like that, so we just won’t. I have to go with the assumption that there’s a reason they’re still here. Maybe they’re staying for the night. Maybe they’re recharging their batteries. Maybe they’re waiting for more of the tribe to show up to nab them all. Whatever it is, they’re still here, so we’re going to use that to our advantage.” She studies the board for a moment. “We need to make the first move.”
I am impressed with her clever, quick mind. “Go on.”
“In chess,” Suh-mer says, picking up one of the berries and moving it forward. “The pieces have different names and different moves they can do. Normally I’d say we open with moving a pawn to create a path for the stronger pieces. Right now, though, we only have two pieces, so I’m going to sweep all of these others off the board and assume we’re playing with a handicap.” She pushes the pink berries aside except for two.
Interesting. “I saw four of them,” I tell her, leaning forward and nudging some of the darker berries off of the “opponent” side.
She flashes me a happy smile, pleased that I’m following her strategy. “Okay, there might be more of them in the ship, but I don’t recall it being that big. Unless they’re all squished in the cargo hold, we’re going to assume there aren’t many more on there. Maybe the old crew.” She thinks for a minute and then shakes her head. “No, two things must have happened. Either the ship got taken over and the crew was disposed of, or they’re working together somehow. They took out Mardok like the others, you said?” At my nod, she continues on. “So we have to assume that they’re not his friends. Let’s go with four for now, and we can adjust them. And we’re going to add another piece because they have the ship and we don’t.” She gazes down at the modified board, and I can see the thoughts racing in her head.
“And…” I ask.
“I’m thinking,” she says, crossing her arms and tapping a finger on an elbow. “We’re in a dangerous position right now. We’ve got two pieces, you and me. I’m counting you as the king, because just like in chess, if you get captured, I’m totally lost. I need you to win this. So that leaves me as the queen. She’s the one that makes the big moves. But…I can’t approach the ship. I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I think my chess analogy is running out of steam.” She picks up one of the pink berries and gives it a frustrated, miserable look.
I take it from her fingers and place it back on the board again. “If you were at home on your planet, and you wanted to stop someone from leaving, how would you do so?”
She tilts her head back and forth, thinking. “I’d take their car keys, of course. Can’t drive the car, can’t leave. But they have a spaceship. Then again, I suppose a spaceship can be like a car. I can’t g
et the keys, though…” Her eyes brighten.
She has an idea. I gesture for her to continue. “Go on.”
A smile spreads across her face. “Well…if we don’t care about damaging the ship, we could always slash their tires.”
3
SUMMER
This is all on me.
I’m trying not to panic at the thought, but it’s difficult. We have to rescue the others, and Warrek’s letting me lead the charge. I can’t fail. The thought’s utterly terrifying, and I hope his confidence in me isn’t misplaced. But as a sa-khui hunter, Warrek is out of his league when it comes to anything technological or relating to the ship. I’m the one that has to think outside the box. I just don’t want to fail.
Warrek and I waited all afternoon long for it to grow dark outside. We took stock of our supplies. I’m surprised at how well-stocked Warrek is for a day trip. I thought we’d be screwed, but it turns out he keeps a survival bag with him at all times. He’s got a spear and two knives, extra leathers and waterskins, fishing hooks and twine, a braided rope, and soapberries. Some of it isn’t all that useful, but I’m glad we have it, just in case.
I’m nervous all afternoon, stealing out of the entrance to the cave to watch the ship in the distance. Part of me is terrified it’s going to take off at any moment and Harlow, Farli and the others will be gone forever. But it doesn’t. It just sits there on the horizon like a malignant tumor on the smooth surface of the snow. So at least there’s that. It means that our plan for tonight can go ahead as we hoped.
Plan. Hah.
I have no plan, other than “somehow stall the ship.” I’ve been racking my brain all afternoon, thinking up all the ways we could possibly prevent the ship from taking off. Tying down one of the “feet”—the landing gear—doesn’t seem like it would work, since the ship can hover and land vertically with no need for a ramp-up. There aren’t tires, so my metaphor for “slashing them” remains just wishful thinking. I can’t see a tailpipe, so I don’t know if we can stuff it and cause the engine to stall. If we were at home, I’d unscrew the gas cap or put sugar in the tank or any number of things I’ve heard will stall a car. Or heck, just pop the hood and unhook the battery.
But this is a spaceship, built by people with technology leagues and leagues ahead of ours. There might be zero vulnerabilities to us, in which case, my grand plans will fail. God, I really hope we don’t fail.
Right now, we have a two-part plan.
Step one: stall the ship and prevent it from taking off.
Step two: flush out the slavers inside the ship and pick them off one by one. To do so, Warrek’s going to dig pit traps and cover them stealthily, and we’re going to take it from there.
I’m in charge of step one.
I have no idea what to do for step one. But I’m not going to let that stop me. We need a plan, and even a terrible one is still better than no plan.
As we head across the crunching snow into the night, though, I’m starting to get really, really nervous. What if we can’t figure out how to stop the ship from flying off? What if I let everyone down? And because I get nervous, I start to babble. “I feel like we should set expectations before we get to the bad guys. Because I know what I’m capable of, but I’m not sure if you’re aware of what I am and am not capable of, and I feel like if you think I’m capable of something and I’m not, then you’ll be disappointed in my lack of capability, and then you’ll feel like you’re doing this alone. Not that you’re doing it alone, of course. Or that I even want you to! I want to help as much as the next person. Oh man, I really wish there was a next person that could help.” I mentally cringe. “Not that you aren’t great, of course. I’m glad you’re here and I’m not alone, it’s just that—”
“I know,” Warrek says quietly, and puts a hand on my shoulder as we walk. “You worry. I do, too. We will do what we can.”
Not the most comforting of words, and yet it’s exactly what I needed to hear. I suck in a deep breath. “Right. We’ve got this.”
“You are clever, Suh-mer. You will know what to do.” He gives me an intense look of confidence that makes my skin prickle. No one has ever looked at me like that.
“Okay.”
“Just remember to be careful. We must not be seen.”
I won’t forget. The thought of being noticed by the slavers has me utterly terrified. I nod repeatedly, as if nodding more than once can somehow convince me, too.
And then we’ve crossed most of the valley and the ship looms a short distance away, so close that I can hear the gentle hum of the engines. Oh god, I’m so not ready. I swallow hard and look over at Warrek.
He pulls one of his bone knives from his belt and hands it to me. “I will begin digging the pit traps. Be careful.”
Right. He’s going to do the hard stuff and I’m going to scout things out. We can do this. I just need to stay cool and calm. “Okay.” When he turns away, I reach out and grab his hand. It’s startlingly warm, but not half as warm as the gaze he levels at me. “You—you won’t leave me behind, will you?”
“Never.”
Maybe he’s just being polite, but that one soft word makes me think of all kinds of wholly inappropriate things. I feel my cheeks heating, and I start to nod again like a dummy, then catch myself.
Time to get things rolling.
Warrek jabs the end of his spear into the snow, looking for a slushy spot, and then drops to his knees and begins to dig with both hands, scooping snow with an inhuman amount of speed. I watch his bare blue forearms flex in the moonlight, then shake myself. No time to gawk. There’s rescuing to be done. I clutch the knife close and head as silently as I can toward the big spaceship.
The goal is to get them out of the ship, I remind myself. While the enemy’s inside the ship, they have defense systems I can’t even imagine. Right now, they have control of the board. I need to get them into my territory and then slowly retake the spaces that they’ve claimed as theirs. It’s doable in chess, with some smart maneuvering. It’s going to have to be doable here, too.
I move closer to the ship and then hunker down in the snow near a boulder when I get closer, wondering if something is going to trigger a proximity alarm of some kind. I’m trying to think of every possible scenario, but when nothing happens, I have to keep getting closer. I wish I’d listened to Mardok when he’d told us about the ship, but I have to admit, I was more interested in watching the dreamy looks that Farli was giving her mate than what he was actually saying. He said something about it being a shipping cruiser. I remember that much. Okay, so if it’s not a war vessel, it would stand to reason that it wouldn’t make me explode into dust if I touched it, right?
Here’s hoping.
I creep forward, then place one of my mittens on the hull. Nothing happens. I can feel the ship humming with energy, and the low sonic drone is much louder here. I look up, to the undersides of the wings, but everything is out of reach of someone my height. Right now I’m looking for a tailpipe of some kind. If I find one of those, I’m pretty confident I can find a way to jam it, and that always causes problems with a vehicle, I think.
I glance up at the wings again. I sure hope a tailpipe of some kind isn’t under there. If it is, that’s not going to happen unless I pull Warrek away. I glance back at him, but I can’t see him in the dark. I picture him digging frantically because he’s got at least two traps to create. I can’t let him down.
I circle toward what looks like the back of the ship, and then I feel like smacking myself in the head. Near the end of the ship, tucked behind the wings and along the back of the body, there are a few pipes letting out a constant stream of exhaust. It’s clear that they’re hot, because they’ve melted all the snow in a wide circle on this side of the ship. “Summer, you doofus,” I whisper to myself. “Look for the obvious clues first.”
I approach, and as I do, I’m hit by a blast of hot air. I immediately take a few cautious steps backward and hunch low, trying to figure this out. Okay, I ca
n’t even get close to the tailpipes without turning into a charcoal briquette. I’ll roast alive if I even try. I didn’t consider that. I guess it’s a lot easier on Earth to put a potato in someone’s tailpipe when the car’s not on. This car’s on and it’s not turning off.
Well, shit.
I slowly circle the ship again, giving it a wide berth so as not to set off any sensor alarms, and don’t come up with any other ideas. Crap. If we’re going to save the others, it’s going to have to be with the tailpipe, unless I want to somehow go into the ship Rambo-style, armed with nothing but my knife, and try to do a takedown.
So…yeah. Tailpipe it is.
I circle around again to the back of the ship, noticing that I must have spent more time than I realized studying things. Warrek’s smoothing out the small mountain of snow he’s dug up from the one pit, trying to make it seem like a natural part of the environment. I know the plan is to grab a few rocks and weights to hold one of the furs entirely over the pit and cover it with a fine layer of snow so it looks completely disguised when you walk up to it. He says he’s done it plenty of times before, so I’m going to assume he’s got it covered. He sure doesn’t look worried.
Me, I’m starting to worry I won’t be able to handle my end of things. I return to the tailpipe and get as close as I can to the blasting heat, thinking. I’m about six feet away from the platter-sized hole that the exhaust is pouring out of. I need something sturdy to plug it. Of course, once I plug it, I need to make sure that whatever I shove in there won’t immediately catch on fire, won’t shoot right back out, and won’t melt.
“Oh sure, Summer, no problem there,” I tell myself sarcastically. “Maybe you can stuff it with the unicorn that’s about to trot up, or ask a leprechaun to shove his pot of gold there. Both seem about as likely as you finding a solution.”