As entertaining as his bemusement was, he’d made one fatal error: he’d wasted precious time on me, when he should’ve been watching the others. Navan, Bashrik, Angie, and Ronad lunged for him before he could say another word, knocking him to the ground and pressing his face to the floor. He flailed, struggling against Navan’s firm grip.
“Bash, get those bars off her!” Navan instructed. His brother leapt to his feet and ran around to the far side of the control panel, his hands working deftly at the buttons.
Mort and Angie had sprinted toward a storage cupboard at the opposite side of the ship’s main bay. I couldn’t see what they were doing, as they were somewhere behind me, but I heard things clattering and falling. Mort swore after something particularly loud clanged against the floor.
They emerged a moment later, carrying a long coil of thick electrical cable, and hurried over to Navan’s side. I guessed they wanted to tie Xiphio up with it. The only problem was, Navan was in an awkward position on Xiphio’s back, trying to hold his arms and press down on his face at the same time, making it tricky to get the cable in to tie the agent’s hands together.
As Navan shifted to one side, Xiphio managed to lift his head for a moment. “Computer, call for backup!” he yelled.
Ronad tried to muffle Xiphio’s mouth with his hand, only to recoil as Xiphio bit down hard. Unlike his straight white ones, these teeth were jagged and triangular, emerging from his gums the way a shark’s would.
“Son of a frostfang!” Ronad yelped, clutching his hand to his chest.
I realized the agent could’ve bitten down much harder if he’d wanted to, likely severing Ronad’s hand clean off, but Xiphio was an oddly gentlemanly creature, and I guessed that wasn’t in his moral code. It was a warning bite, nothing more, leaving a crescent of deep tooth-marks in Ronad’s hand.
“We’re not going to hurt you. We just can’t have you arresting any of us right now,” Navan muttered, shifting again so Angie and Mort could get in with the cable. “I’m sure you understand, right?”
As Xiphio lifted his head to answer, Mort seized his opportunity, ramming a clump of fabric into the agent’s mouth and wrapping a coil of cable around to hold it in place. After Mort handed her the rest of the cable, Angie set to work on the agent’s hands. I felt even sorrier for the poor guy as they bound and gagged him. One against five was terrible odds for anyone.
“Got it!” Bashrik said triumphantly. The bars collapsed around me, freeing me from my temporary prison.
I ran to help, kneeling to hold Xiphio’s shoulders as Angie finished the last of her loops. I smiled at her, knowing how many hours we’d spent at Girl Scouts as kids, perfecting the art of knot-tying. I doubted either of us could have predicted using those skills to tie up an agent from a universal peacekeeping federation, but I was sure our scout leaders would have been proud, regardless.
“I’m really sorry about this, Agent Xiphio,” I murmured, as Angie checked the integrity of the knots. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m normally a law-abiding citizen. Today has just been a bad day. Please don’t add assault of a Fed agent to my rap sheet.”
He couldn’t answer, but it made me feel slightly better to tell him how sorry we were. There was something kindly about Xiphio, though I understood that even the friendliest of Fed agents probably couldn’t ignore being tied up and gagged. By doing this, we were heading into more trouble, but what else could we do? Lauren was out there, waiting for us to rescue her—there was no time to lose.
As soon as Angie was satisfied that he was properly bound, we all sprinted down the gangway. I could hear muffled protestations behind us, but I was sure he wouldn’t starve or anything. Even if Xiphio couldn’t untie himself, some other Fed agent would probably find him soon enough, especially when he didn’t report back to his superiors by the end of his shift.
“We can’t take the Coeptis,” Bashrik said grimly, as we paused in front of our vessel. “She’s a wanted ship now, and Xiphio won’t stay tied up forever. He’ll get an alert out on her as soon as he gets out of those bonds.”
I knew he was right. Even if the Coeptis hadn’t been on the Fed’s radar, our ship was broken and almost out of fuel; we wouldn’t get far before we’d have to stop again.
“Why can’t we just take the Fed ship?” I countered.
“Same reason we can’t take the Coeptis. The Fed keep tabs on all their ships. They’d start to notice if Agent Xiphio didn’t check in. It’s too risky.”
Navan grimaced. “Let’s get everything valuable from inside the Coeptis and get out of this garbage pile. We can decide where to go from there.”
Nodding in agreement, we all hurried inside the Coeptis and retrieved as much as we could, though that wasn’t a lot. I just had my useless compass, a knife I’d found, and the spear I’d stolen from the pawnshop. The others came away with similarly meager collections. Everyone but Mort carried one of the guns that Navan had tried to sell at the pawnshop, while Ronad tugged a bag containing Naya’s journal and a few other bits and pieces over his shoulder.
With that, we took off across the shipyard, running past the derelict shells of grounded vessels. I wondered how they all came to end up here, in this ship graveyard, and who their crews might have been, once upon a time. They were silly thoughts, but they kept me from darker concerns, like how the hell we were supposed to get away from Wander without a ship.
“So, what’s the big plan now that we’re ship-less?” Angie asked, voicing my thoughts as we ducked down a passageway between two huge freighters.
“We’ll just have to steal a new one,” I replied nonchalantly, knowing that was precisely what we needed to do. It wasn’t as though we could ask someone to give us a ride out of here, not with a bounty on our heads. Well, my head.
She shot me a worried look. “Stealing is how we got into this mess in the first place.”
“I only stole the compass because I thought it would help,” I replied, feeling defensive.
“Well, if you hadn’t, Xiphio would have let us go. We’d be flying out of here right now, without worrying about an entire police force coming after us!” Angie said.
“Don’t hold back, Ange,” I said, my voice dripping sarcasm. “No, please, continue to make me feel worse than I already do!”
Angie sighed. “Let’s just forget about it, all right? What’s done is done. I just think we need to stop taking risks without any thought of the consequences.”
I wanted to defend myself, to tell her that we’d never get any closer to finding Lauren and the notebook without taking chances, but I didn’t want to fight with her anymore. She didn’t deserve the brunt of my anger when it wasn’t even her I was mad at. Although I hated to admit it, I knew this mess was all my doing; I just didn’t like being reminded.
Feeling my frustration rising, I jogged away from Angie and ran toward Navan, who was a short distance ahead. The coldbloods had slowed to a more human pace so we could keep up.
“Everything okay?” Navan asked, as I jogged alongside him. Ronad was just ahead, with Bashrik running next to him.
I nodded. “Just stressed.”
“Everything okay with the two of you? It looked a bit heated back there,” he pressed.
“It’s fine. We’re both just exhausted and worried about Lauren,” I insisted. “Anyway, what is the plan? Where do we go from here?”
“I think there might be some docking yards on the other side of the planet. These places usually have a designated half for repairs, recycling, and refuse, and another half for rest, refreshment, and recreation. The six Rs of any good port-planet.”
Bashrik grunted in agreement as we came to a standstill. “There might be a functional ship we can steal, without raising too much of an alarm. It would definitely put more distance between us and Xiphio’s ship, when he gets free, though I think he might be occupied for a while. I mean, Rask, I knew my girl could tie some good knots, but those were something else.”
“Your girl?” I t
eased, prompting his cheeks to flush. I might have felt distant from Angie, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t on her side, ready to interrogate her boyfriend at any moment.
Navan smiled. “Yeah, Bash, I don’t think we need to know what you two get up to in the privacy of your own chambers. That’s between you and her.”
“All I’m saying is, I think you could be right about the docking yards,” he mumbled, embarrassed. “I can go and check it out, if you like.”
“Mort and I will come with you,” Navan replied, but Ronad interjected.
“No way, compadre. I’m not having you wasting your energy flying all that way, with your wing the way it is, and Pandora here is flickering in and out of being a coldblood.”
Mort skidded to a halt to catch his breath, morphing back into his natural state. “Hey, feels good to let it all hang out!”
“Yeah, and we can see all of it,” Angie retorted, catching up. The pair of them cackled together. “What are we talking about, anyway? I couldn’t hear back there.”
Bashrik looked sheepish. “We were just talking about me going to the other side of the planet, to see if there are any ships we can steal.”
She frowned. “Did nobody listen to a word I said about taking risks?”
“Sometimes there are risks that need to be taken,” he replied, shrugging.
“And we won’t get off this planet if we don’t do something fast,” Navan added. She pouted, flashing me an accusatory look, as though I’d somehow talked them into it. She didn’t protest again, though, which I took to be a positive sign.
“We can press on and see if there’s a town up ahead while Bashrik investigates the other side of the planet,” I reasoned. “There must be somewhere all these mechanics and travelers go.”
Bashrik nodded. “Sounds like a good plan to me. I shouldn’t be too long. This planet isn’t very big.”
“We won’t stray far,” Navan promised, as his brother opened out his wings and braced himself against the ground, before pushing off and taking to the skies. We watched him until he was nothing but a speck on the horizon, though Navan’s gaze lingered a moment longer than the rest of ours did, a hint of envy flickering across his slate eyes.
“How’s your wing?” I asked solemnly, slipping my hand into his.
Ever since his return from Northern Vysanthe, where I’d discovered the top half of his wing had been blown off and replaced with an artificial flap, he’d more or less kept it bound to his side with bandages. With the attachment fixed in place, it was impossible for him to tuck it under his shoulder blade, the way he’d done with his good wing. I knew he missed having his wings at full capacity, but he never seemed to want to talk about it, always shrugging off my concerns with a forced smile.
“It’s fine,” he replied, giving my hand a squeeze. “Come on, we better find this town and see if we can get ourselves something to eat.”
After half an hour of walking through an endless array of battered, rusty ships and piles of forgotten parts, with our stomachs rumbling and our patience waning, we reached the bottom of a shallow slope. Clambering up it with what little strength we had left, clumps of dirt rolling away beneath our feet, we came to the end of the shipyard. Ahead of us, sprawling across a grassy plateau, was a large waystation, with chimneys billowing smoke and the scent of cooking wafting to us on the cool breeze that swept across the plain.
I was glad this planet wasn’t nearly as hot as Pulsyde had been, but my throat was still parched and ready to guzzle water. Hopefully, there’d be supplies at the waystation, though it was hard to see anything but a bunch of buildings right now.
“I’ll stay down in the shipyard. We don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves,” Ronad said, eyeing the town suspiciously. “Just pick me up some blood, and I’ll be a happy man. Mort, you should probably stay with me, too.”
“Poor baby. You think you’d be lonely without me?” he said.
Ronad scowled at him. “No, there’s just no way you’re being let loose in a waystation. I need to keep an eye on you.”
“Well, color me flattered,” Mort murmured. “I could probably do with drying out my flaps, to be honest. The sweat really collects in pools when it gets going!”
I made a face at Mort and shook my head. “So, is it just the three of us heading into the waystation?”
Angie shrugged. “You know what, I think I’ll stay down in the shipyard and wait for Bash. It looks crowded over there, anyway.”
I glanced over at the waystation. A steady stream of travelers headed into the cluster of ramshackle buildings, but there weren’t swarms of them by any means. Feeling my heart clench, I realized I was probably the one who was crowding her.
“Looks like it’s just you and me, then,” I said, turning to Navan, refusing to let Angie hear the hurt in my voice.
“I’ll always be up for that.” He lifted my hand to his lips, kissing it gently. There was reassurance in his eyes, his expression comforting me in a way no one else could. As long as I was with him, I could pretend that everything else was okay, and nothing could get to me.
Chapter Five
Navan and I headed for the waystation, while the other three walked back down the slope toward the edge of the shipyard. I didn’t look back as we pressed on, my gaze fixed on the corrugated iron and sporadic brickwork of the waystation, where all the other travelers were flocking.
We walked around to the far side of the compound, following the crowds toward a set of gates made from two sheets of patchworked metal, which had been strung up to a chain-link fence. They were wide open, leading through to a dusty courtyard, where several stalls had been arranged. Sellers shouted above the murmur of the crowd, offering their wares. Farther on, larger structures with cavernous archways led into echoing halls, where more traders were selling their goods to needy travelers.
To my surprise, the majority of our fellow travelers looked close to poverty, their clothes torn and faded, their faces showing the strain of a hard life. They bartered for scraps to repair their ships, though some of them spoke in a language I couldn’t understand, and nor could the traders, by the sounds of things. I figured, whoever they were, they weren’t from somewhere wealthy enough to have the language technology that Navan had.
“Twenty years I’ve been on this planet, slaving away to buy enough of these damned parts to get back home in my ship—and you tell me you don’t have a converter valve for a Brimenian Dreamrider! You told me last week you had one!” one hunched old woman cried. She had dark blue skin and prickles sticking out of her back, the spines bristling with anger.
The trader, a lizardy creature with orange skin and beady black eyes, simply shrugged. “What can I say, someone got here before you. If you want one, you come back next week, though the price is fifty credits.”
“It was twenty-five last week!” she howled.
“That’s inflation for you.”
Her spines shook. “You can shove your inflation up your scaly little—”
Navan put his arm around me and steered me away from the stalls before the old woman could finish. “I think that’s enough of this hall,” he said, as we moved through a corridor into another part of the compound.
Seeing the old woman made me nervous. She said she’d been here for twenty years, trying to fix her ship. What if we got stuck like that? I supposed, with the Fed threat looming over us, we were more likely to get arrested and taken away in a Fed ship than be left to rot here. In that, perhaps, there was a small mercy.
“So, what’s really up with you and Angie?” Navan asked, as we entered another hall, which seemed to be arranged like a supermarket. Everything was divided up into sections: fresh produce, dried goods, pharmacy, blood banks—something to suit every taste in the universe.
“Nothing. I told you.”
“I know when something’s bothering you, Riley. You can talk to me, you know,” he pressed. “I’m here for you.”
“I know, but I really don’t want to
talk about it. Honestly, it’ll all be fine,” I assured him. “Anyway, we’ve got other things to think about right now. First things first, what are we going to eat, and what can we afford?”
He smiled. “I say we start at dried goods.”
“Dried goods it is!” I chirped, slipping my arm around his waist as we headed for the stalls.
There were rows and rows of tiny packets on the shelves in the dried goods section, each one no bigger than a sticky note, with pictures on the front of what each one contained. They seemed to be miniature meals, way too small to satisfy human hunger, but Navan assured me that, once water was added, they expanded to the size of a full meal. Intrigued, I flicked through to see which ones looked interesting and picked a load of them up while Navan counted how many we could afford. Here, at least, it turned out we had a decent number of credits to play with. We could make what we had stretch.
Moving on to the blood banks, Navan picked up several sachets of freeze-dried blood, which were cheaper than the vials. There were large bottles, too, though I couldn’t read what was in them. They were tucked away on the top shelf, presumably to keep thieves from stealing them. Although, considering the security in this place, it would have taken a ballsy thief to go after them. There were security cameras everywhere, keeping a close eye on the compound and everyone who passed through it.
“What’s in the sachets?” I asked, curious.
“It’s a mix of blood from all over the place. They don’t taste too good, but they’ll keep us alive,” he explained, picking up some bottles of water, before moving over to the trader to pay for the goods.
Allies Page 4