But I’d found her, one of the few whose old family line had survived the short generations this business tended to produce. Judging by the lack of screaming and panic from the bar’s patrons, however, such instances weren’t entirely unheard of, at least not where Qole was concerned. And yet, for all I’d heard about her astounding piloting and fishing skills, no one had mentioned anything like this. It seemed the people of Gamut were keeping this bit of information rather quiet. With good reason, perhaps, other than their fear of her.
People would want to take advantage of her.
People like me, I thought with a bitter taste in my mouth. Although I didn’t actually want to take advantage of her. I wanted to help her, and so many others, if only I could convince her to let me.
“Qole,” I said as she came back toward the bar. I paused, realizing I hadn’t addressed her by her first name before, and it felt funny on my tongue. I liked it, but didn’t want her to think I was being presumptuous. “Captain. That was incredible. This could change so much.”
She drew up short and stared at me. “What do you mean?”
Someone like Qole, who had control over Shadow, whose biometric makeup could withstand its power—someone like her was key to unlocking Shadow as a safe energy source. Right now, outside Alaxak, its potential was largely untapped, a resource only for experimental or fringe usage. It was too dangerous to those around it. But it didn’t have to remain that way.
“If…if people understood what you can do, it would change everything. For you, for people here, for everyone. You could be the key.”
I was nearly positive she was. She just had to leave with me by tomorrow. Somehow, I had to make her understand this.
Her face didn’t betray any emotion. “Oh yeah? The key to our future, right?”
“Yes!” I couldn’t believe she was agreeing with me. This might be it, I thought, nearly sagging with relief. She’s going to understand what I have to say, and we can leave in time. In time to change everything. “Yes. You’re able to do things that would kill most people. If we could make Shadow safe like that for everyone, then everyone here benefits. You could use it for heat, for fuel, without it being deadly.”
Qole took a step toward me, closing the gap between us with sudden ferocity. “You really think you’re the first genius to have a drink and go on about that? It’s ‘amazing,’ they say. It’s ‘the key’…right up until they see what actually happens.” Her eyes were clear, but I could feel her anger radiating toward me with more heat than the pillar. “It’s poison, and it kills you. It’s just a question of whether it kills you faster than everything else out here.”
I held up both hands. “All I’m saying is that there’s more at play here than what meets the eye. Don’t you think that’s worth exploring a little? Wouldn’t that change the face of Alaxak?” I tried to remove all frustration from my voice, but some stubbornly clung behind. I couldn’t understand why no one I talked to here seemed interested in how the future could be a better place. Was I simply unable to communicate? What was I doing wrong?
Her eyes might not have been black, but they were blazing. “We’ve had offworlders before, trying to improve things for us, as if you knew what the blasted hell you were talking about. Not as many of you as the scum who want to see what else they can squeeze out of us, but you’re just as useless. It’s so damned arrogant of you to think you have the power to actually change anything.”
“But you haven’t even heard what—”
“Know what’s powerful enough to change the face of Alaxak?” She gestured around herself, an angry jerk that encompassed more than the bar. Her voice dropped to a hiss as she leaned even closer to me, her breath warm on my face. “Drones. Battleships. The money of kings, stolen from everyone else. That’s what. And we’re happy to go without, to be left alone, because no good has ever come of any of that.” She leaned back and nodded toward the counter, swiping hair that had come loose from her braid out of her face. “You’ve had your drink.”
I followed her glance. “But you haven’t even touched yours,” I said in one last feeble attempt to keep her from doing what she was about to do.
“I don’t drink.” She spun away from me and started for the door.
“Wait, Qole!” I caught her arm.
She looked at me over her shoulder, and her scowl was enough to make me let go of her. “It’s Captain Uvgamut, and if you really are here to fish for me,” she snarled, “be back on the Kaitan in five minutes, or I’ll find the next piece of trash that blows in on the wind and hire them in your place.” She strode away without another glance.
The heavy door slammed behind her, leaving only a gust of cold air where she’d been. I stared after her, at a loss.
Larvut gave me the first gap-toothed smile of his that I’d seen. “Need another drink, hey?”
What I needed was the impossible. A miracle. I needed Qole.
Before I could even consider my next move, the hidden comm in my wrist feed pulsed. My hack to the QUIN had finished transmitting, and my uncle was sending me a message back through it, and not the first one, apparently. I hadn’t had much time to check while nearly getting worked and shouted to death.
Her brother is a strong candidate, but not necessary. I hope you can get data on the girl. And then: She is the one. No matter what, bring her. Immediately. There’s the usual deadline, but you may well have company if you linger. And finally: Why aren’t you responding? Nevarian? If you don’t move now, the damage could be irreparable.
My stomach dropped. I was out of time. Company. Failing was the worst possible outcome for me and mine, but it would be bad for everyone, including Qole, if anyone caught up to me. How Rubion could guess this possibility from across the system was beyond me. Of course there were others who would be interested in my whereabouts, but I’d been careful to shake anyone following me.
I’d have to ask him when I saw him again. For now, I was left with a few unsavory options and a bad taste in my mouth. Because, however I managed it, Qole still had to come with me…as soon as possible, and whether she wanted to or not.
Telu’s voice jolted me awake, piped in over the comm speaker positioned right over my bunk. “Cap, you’re going to want to be here for this.”
Decontamination had taken no time at all, because the containers weren’t actually leaking, only malfunctioning. Since the Kaitan had lifted off again—with Nev on board, surprisingly enough—we’d all been napping on the border of the Alaxak Asteroid Sea, waiting for drone traffic to clear. It felt like I’d barely closed my eyes, but a glance at my infopad resting on its charger proved several hours had slunk by.
Someone else had been doing some slinking, I found, after I flew out of bed and ran to the bridge in my fur slippers, a robe hastily thrown over my tank top and leather leggings. I wished I’d at least put my boots on, because as soon as I arrived and saw what was going on, I wanted to kick something.
Telu was seated in my captain’s chair, typing both at control screens and on a couple of her own infopads, hastily relocated from her station. She was wearing only an undershirt and thermal bottoms, even though I could see her breath in the glow of the console. Basra leaned against the wall, looking more feminine than usual in his own fur-lined robe, sharp eyes surveying the situation. Arjan hovered above Eton, ready to assist him, both of them in equal states of speed-fueled undress.
Only Nev was fully clothed in his too-fine garb. Eton had him pinned against the ground, the muscles in his huge arms and bare shoulders bunched like massive dock ropes. Nev’s cheek was mashed into the metal grating. The long bag he’d brought with him lay near my chair at Telu’s feet, packed and seemingly ready to go.
Nev didn’t so much smile up at me as grimace.
Telu confirmed my guess at what had happened—and worse. “He hacked the system, the bastard,” she snarled, still bent over the control panel and her infopads. “A damned good hack, too. He got around the security cameras and alarms—all except
one that I’d hidden extra deep in code—and tried to induce stasis oxygen levels.”
“To put us to sleep,” Eton grunted unnecessarily, grinding his elbow deeper between Nev’s shoulder blades. Oddly, Nev didn’t wince at that. Only when I looked at him again.
“If you’ll let me explain—” he began.
“Oh, I see,” I interrupted. “You want to explain. Like you tried to explain in the bar with lies. Like you were going to explain later, after we were unconscious and you’d robbed us blind.” My words were deceptively calm. A run-up to something far worse.
“No, I don’t want your Shadow, or your money—”
“So you want the ship, is it? I saw you admiring it on the dock.” I crouched near his head and grabbed a handful of his hair, dragging his eyes up to meet mine. “This is my family’s ship. You’ll have to pry the controls out of my cold, dead fingers.”
He met my stare with a level one of his own.
“Um,” Telu said. “Actually, I don’t think he wanted the ship. He’d engaged the autopilot, but on a course to intercept a passenger cruiser that took off from Alaxak ten minutes ago. It looks like he was planning on boarding the ship from the Kaitan. He used an encrypted channel to arrange for the pickup.” She turned to look at me for the first time. “He also reserved two spots.”
“What?” My eyes went wide as I looked down at Nev again. “Who were you planning on taking with you?” I glanced at the crew; they were all faces I trusted. None of them were about to betray me. Only him. “If you thought you could buy one of my crew, think again.”
His lips pressed together in a firm line.
“Yeah, you really want to explain,” I hissed.
“I’m not in the most advantageous position to do so,” he said, flicking his eyes up at Eton. The brown of his irises once again seemed to flash brighter than most eyes did. “Anything I say with his elbow in my spine won’t have the requisite care put into the telling. Not to mention I won’t be able to finish explaining once he snaps my spine.”
As if proving him right, Eton leaned into him, extracting a short, muffled groan.
“Maybe we don’t want to hear what he has to say then, if it’s that bad,” Arjan said in a low voice.
“Or perhaps you let me up,” Nev gasped. Even flattened on the ground and in obvious pain, he still had the nerve to sound like he had a say in the matter. It was a miracle Eton hadn’t yet broken his jaw, because it took all my self-restraint not to rub his smug little face against the floor’s serrated grating.
I didn’t need to tell Eton not to let him up. “Someone else is in on this,” I said, the thought dawning on me. “Is the second ticket on that passenger cruiser for them, hey, Nev?” Something about him being out here had seemed suspicious. He was probably the type to have henchmen with him. “You’re trying to rob us with some help?”
Nev tried to shake his head, but he couldn’t move with my fist still in his hair. “Trust me, I’m not working with lowlifes like that.”
“Trust you,” I said with disgust. “You’re the lowlife, however you’re trying to fool us. Telu, does it say if the second passenger would already be aboard the cruiser?”
Telu narrowed her eyes as she scanned the screens. “In this case, the bastard seems to be telling the truth. He cited a medical emergency as the reason for the unusual pickup, which would require appropriate transportation for someone inert.” She snarled the word.
Inert. Unmoving. Unconscious. Stasis oxygen levels had that effect on a human body.
I yanked Nev’s head up again, craning his neck at what had to be an excruciating angle, and nearly spat in his face. “You were going to kidnap one of us?”
Robbery was one thing. Messing with the last of my family, my crew, was another. Arjan seemed to be thinking the same thing. His eyes were dangerous in a way I rarely saw them, one hand clenched at his side, the other around the handle of one of the knives he always wore. I hoped nothing else appeared in his or Telu’s eyes. Her stare was already as ferocious as a blast from a mass driver. I couldn’t see Eton’s face, since he was bent over Nev, but Nev groaned again, longer this time. I couldn’t blame Eton. The thought of Nev hurting Arjan, or any of my crew, made my fist tighten in his hair and panic and fury flare in my chest.
Only Basra was still silent, still observing, still unfeeling. Until he glanced at Arjan and back at Nev, and then his gaze seemed to calculate how much he could get for Nev’s internal organs.
“You’re off this ship,” I breathed, trying to steady myself. The first hints of blackness were surfacing in the corners of my eyes. “I’m handing you over first thing. Telu, comm what’s-his-name, the latest enforcement officer. Make him actually earn his paycheck for once.”
“No—!” Nev tried to say, until Eton’s elbow cut him off. Besides, it was too late. I could already hear Telu speaking into the comm, reporting an attempted hijacking by one of our crew.
But then Eton surprised me by leaning farther over and snarling in Nev’s ear, “I agree with you…no law but ours. How about I just kill you?”
Eton’s expression still wasn’t visible, but I could hear it in his voice: murderous rage. He meant it.
Nev’s strained words hitched out of his throat before I could say anything. “I really didn’t want to have to do this.”
And then he rammed his head back into Eton’s face. It was enough to free his arms, which he used to shove his body off the ground. Torso and legs twisting, Nev then threw the much bigger man off him—and into Arjan, who lost his balance and crashed into Basra, both of them going down in a heap. Nev leapt to his feet.
I spun to face him, but Eton had already rolled up into a ready crouch, blood pouring from his nose. He grinned, teeth red, and launched himself like a plasma rocket at the younger man.
The fight was brutal and ferocious, moving too fast for anyone else to step in, though both Arjan and I hovered, looking for an opening—until Telu, who’d slipped around from the captain’s chair, seized my arm and hauled me back against the wall next to Basra. Basra already seemed to know this was a fight in which he could have no impact, since he hadn’t even tried to get involved.
Which probably meant Arjan shouldn’t try, either. Fear caught in my chest as he moved closer. “Careful,” I warned him.
Although, really, there wasn’t much he could do. Like most kids growing up on Alaxak, Arjan had learned to fight, even though he had no formal training. But this…this was more than a fight. This was something else entirely.
A violent dance. A bloody ceremony, practiced to perfection.
Telu had wisely taken Nev’s bag with her when she’d come around from the console, in case he decided to go for some sort of weapon hidden in it. But Nev hadn’t even glanced at the bag once. He didn’t need a weapon.
He was one.
He and Eton circled each other, stepping around the obstacles on the bridge without even glancing at them, until they met in an explosion. Their bodies collided off one another with eerie grace, like objects in zero gravity, only to return to orbit around each other. The lone debris they left behind was spatters of blood.
It was so breathtaking I even shot a glance at the glowing readout on one of the control panels—the gravity drive was definitely still functioning, though they didn’t seem to be bound by it.
Nev moved his body like Arjan maneuvered the skiff. Like I piloted the Kaitan. It occurred to me numbly that he more than knew how to fight in the way of one who’d been trained to do something since birth. He knew how to fight like he knew how to breathe. He fought better than anyone I’d ever seen.
Maybe even better than Eton.
He ducked and dove around Eton, and as fast as Eton was, it was clear Nev was faster. One of his elbows connected with the bigger man’s cheek. Eton only paused to spit out a mouthful of blood—and maybe a tooth—before driving a knee into Nev’s side. But it only glanced off him, because Nev was already twisting, sweeping out his leg as he did, and nearly wiping Et
on’s out from under him. That stumble cost Eton, because he couldn’t turn in time to fend off the fists that slammed in rapid succession into the small of his back, in the soft spot just beneath the ribs—where he’d been trying to knee Nev a moment before. By the time he turned, Nev was already gone, his fists, elbows, knees, and feet all flying from a different direction.
Nev had a bleeding gash in his brow from a blow that had narrowly missed his eye, but Eton’s nose and cheek were a wreck. Bruises bloomed across his bare chest and back. I couldn’t see the bruises under Nev’s jacket, and there were no doubt a few, but…
They were both going for maximum pain, for incapacitation, and while I could barely believe it, it soon became obvious that Nev was going to be the one to bring Eton down.
I had to be ready for him when he did. The darkness encroached farther into my vision.
“Eton,” I said, my voice too calm for true calm, “stop while you still can.”
He glanced at me, saw my eyes, and only went in for another swing.
“Eton!” I shouted, but he wasn’t stopping.
And then I saw what he was doing. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew he was losing, and quickly. His twists and pivots began to take the fight farther away from me. At first I thought, in a burst of anger, that he was still trying to protect me…until I saw where he was headed.
He was protecting all of us.
The inevitable moment came: one of Nev’s fists dropped him. Nev, because he was a fair fighter in spite of everything, didn’t kick him when he was down. He instead let Eton haul himself away. Watching Eton crawl, like a broken thing, leaving drops of blood along the bridge floor, nearly made me throw myself at Nev in fury.
Instead, as soon as Eton was clear, I smashed the button for the airlock. A set of doors slid out from opposite walls and closed Nev into what was now a separate room. An antechamber. A red light above a second door—a docking hatch in the hull of the ship—began to flash. Nev looked up at the flashing light, and then at me through the windows in the barrier now separating us.
Shadow Run Page 5