Broken Episode One

by Odette C. Bell

  Chapter 18

  It happened too quickly. He went from teasing her to feeling the ground below give way. He tried to reach her, tried to grab her, but in the tumble of sand and metal, she fell from his grasp.

  He felt his body fall, felt the sand wash around him, like dry water, striking his body, covering his face, cascading down his back.

  There was a crash, the sound of metal buckling, and finally the thump as his body struck something.

  Instinctively, he rolled, absorbing the force of the fall. The sand helped to soften the blow, too.

  He rolled to his feet. “Mimi? Mimi?” He called into the darkness. Bringing a hand up and covering his mouth, he coughed through the sand, batting a hand at it as he waited for it to disburse.

  His heart was in his throat, pounding, thrumming, threatening to shake through his jaw and shatter his teeth.

  Realizing he couldn’t wait for the great clouds of sand to disburse, he got down on his knees and proceeded to methodically feel around with his fingers.

  Soon enough he struck a leg.

  It had to be her.

  She wasn’t moving.

  “Mimi,” he screamed her name, his voice echoing off some distant wall.

  He had no idea where he was, but as his mind caught up to the situation, he realized it was likely some kind of downed spaceship. One that had lain undisturbed in this great desert for countless years.

  It would be a scavenger’s dream. The old Josh would have been over the moon.

  The new Josh didn’t care. The new Josh quickly found Mimi’s face and pressed a hand over her mouth to check her breathing. “Mimi,” he shouted once more.

  The dust and sand started to settle, and finally he saw her.

  Her head was at an odd angle. Just before fear could shoot through him, she started to rouse.

  He fell back on his haunches, relief pumping through him with every beat of his heart.

  “What… happened?” She managed.

  He resisted the urge to crumple over her and hug her. For one, he hated her. For another, goddamn it, he hated her. But the urge, nonetheless, had to be controlled.

  “Josh?” She tried to turn toward him. Suddenly, she twitched in pain. That’s when he noticed a pool of blood trickling out from behind her head. It was staining the sand as it marched toward him.

  “Hold still,” he said quickly, weighing a hand into her shoulder. “We fell through the sand into some kind of ship,” he explained in a soft voice, “You’ve hit your head.”

  “I feel okay.”

  “Mimi, don’t argue with me. Just hold still.” As fear caught him, and his brow slicked with sweat, a memory surged up to meet it.

  The spray-on skin was still in his pocket. He’d wisely kept it after changing his clothes. At the time, he mused it could likely come in handy.

  It was about to.

  Still, while the spray-on skin would immediately stop the bleeding and cancel out any pain, he needed a scanner to ensure there was no brain damage. He also needed drugs to fight her concussion, and to fight any damage, should it be there.

  “I want you to keep talking to me,” he said as he pushed to his knees.

  “What, why?”

  “Mimi, just talk to me.” He turned from her and started to search through the sand. If he was lucky, one of the sliders might have fallen down into the ship with them. The sliders would be equipped with standard med packs.

  “I don’t get it, you keep telling me to shut up.”

  “Now I’m changing my mind. I do that a lot.”

  “I’ve kind of noticed that.”

  His lips kinked into a smile as he searched through the mounds of sand and broken metal. He soon reached the point where they’d fallen, and he stared up.

  He couldn’t believe his eyes. It felt like he’d tumbled quite a distance, to be sure, but as he stared at the roof high above, he realized they’d dropped a good 15 meters. How they’d both survived, he didn’t know. Though it was likely a combination of the sand offering them a cushion and the falling chunks of ceiling forming a kind of ramp as they rolled down into the belly of the ship.

  The point was, he wouldn’t be able to make it back up into the desert; there was nothing to climb.

  He swore softly under his breath.

  “What is it?” Mimi asked.

  “Just keep talking,” he encouraged her. “Tell me about… the interstellar baking championship.”

  “I thought you said that was pathetic.”

  “It is pathetic. Just tell me about it.”

  “I… I’m kind of tired. I just want to…” she trailed off.

  He turned sharply on his foot. “Mimi,” he said in a booming voice, “You are not going to sleep. Now talk to me about the interstellar baking championship.”

  “There’s no need to be so mean. Why are you so mean, anyway? I mean, I’ve met people who’ve come from difficult backgrounds before, and they’re not like you,” she began.

  He smiled. Not because she was putting him down, but because Mimi was about to have a rant. He’d heard enough of them to know she was only getting started.

  As she continued to berate him, he searched the ship, hoping like hope to come across one of the sliders. Soon, he realized there simply wasn’t one down here.

  Just as desperation struck him, he looked up and saw something small and dark zip into view. Putting his hand over his eyes to cut out the sunshine streaming in from the massive hole in the roof, he quickly realized it was Klutzo.

  Klutzo.

  The ball appeared to be… reticent. Scared, even. Rather than zip into the ship and check on Mimi, it flew back and forth like a worried dog.

  “What are you doing?” Josh chided it. “Get down here. You need to scan Mimi. No, wait, go to one of the sliders and bring the med kit.”

  “… Dangerous.”

  “What?” Josh spat.

  “It’s dangerous down there.”

  “Go and get me that med kit and get down here now,” Josh shouted, using the exact tone he would on a recruit.

  Klutzo zoomed away, and within less than a minute was back. He dragged a med kit in a small holding beam behind him. As he flew into the belly of the ship, however, the little recording ball appeared to hesitate. It was honestly as if the damn thing was scared. Maybe it had been wiped so many times that it had forgotten it was a machine.

  As Klutzo flew toward him, Josh snapped forward, grabbed the med kit from the holding beam, before it was even turned off, then turned and ran toward Mimi. He plunged down to his knees, skidded slightly, and started to rip into the kit. He grabbed up the medical scanner, set it to work with several practiced moves, and only then took a breath.

  ….

  Mimi Chester had a nasty concussion, a deep gash in the back of her skull, but no brain damage. Or at least nothing the contents of the medical kit wouldn’t fix.

  Josh sighed. Maybe a little too loudly, as Mimi crumpled her brow. Fortunately, she didn’t say anything, and he quickly set to work selecting the correct drugs.

  “Okay, I just need you to sit up,” he said gently as he helped her into a seated position.

  Again she didn’t say anything. But she watched him. And those two piercing blue eyes were quite the distraction.

  He swallowed, then swallowed again. In fact, he swallowed entirely too much as he went about the delicate and quite tactile job of fixing her injuries.

  Once he’d administered the drugs, he set about seeing to the gash on the back of her head. Carefully he separated her hair then sprayed on the skin.

  Once he was done, he checked her again with the medical scanner.

  When it confirmed that no more medical intervention was necessary, he let out another massive sigh of relief.

  “Thank you,” she said softly. She could have taken the time to point out that Josh was being a massive hypocrite once again. He knew very well he spent most of his time putting her down. So surely he had no right to pretend to care abou
t her safety.

  The problem was, it wasn’t a pretense.

  He did care. Kind of. Because he still hated her. Kind of.

  He shifted back and set about packing up the med kit. Knowing Mimi, they would need it again. Probably pretty soon.

  She was still watching him. It didn’t take long for her attention to become too uncomfortable to ignore. He set the med kit down and looked up at her. “What?”

  “I’m waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “For you to change again.”

  His brow crumpled. “What exactly does that mean?”

  “I’ve noticed a pattern with you, Josh Cook. Whenever you go into this protective mode, whenever you save me, it doesn’t take too long for you to turn back into the other Josh.”

  He pressed his lips together and tried to control the flare of anger that ignited at her words.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Still waiting. It is about to happen, isn’t it? Any minute now, you’re going to snap at me again. You’re going to tell me I’m the most useless person in the universe and that I killed Lilly Williams,” her voice broke with tension.

  “… What? I wouldn’t say that.”

  “You did say that. Don’t you remember? That’s why I walked away from you. I didn’t kill her….” She started to choke up.

  Josh blinked back his surprise.

  He’d been ready to shout at her. Of course he had. What an ungrateful brat. He’d busted a gut to save her, and the second thing she’d said was she was waiting for him to turn back into a monster again.

  Now, he couldn’t do anything but stare as tears tumbled down her cheeks.

  “Look, Mimi, I’m sorry,” he said, his voice choking for some reason.

  She didn’t look at him. Instead, she stared at her hands.

  This was a Mimi he’d never met. Up until this point, he’d convinced himself she had completely gotten over the death of Lilly Williams. Up until this point, he’d assumed she was arrogant enough to push away whatever responsibility she’d had in the so-called accident.

  Now he realized he was wrong.

  Her tears attested to that.

  “Do you have any idea what it feels like to try to overcome something like that, but to constantly be reminded by everyone you know that you are not allowed to move on? I tried to come to terms with my role in Lilly’s death. I tried to get on with the rest of my life. But people won’t let me. They keep reminding me, over and over again. They won’t move on themselves. You know what that feels like?”

  “Yes,” the word was out before he could stop himself. Rational Josh knew that at a time like this he should just shut up. Problem was, Josh hardly ever listened to his rational side.

  She looked up at him from under her crinkled brow. “What?”

  “You asked me if I know how it feels to have people constantly remind me of my past. To stop me from moving on. I know exactly how that feels. You had a partial role in an accident, Mimi, I was a pirate and a scavenger and a criminal for years. If you think it’s hard to turn your back on your past and continue with your life, it’s impossible for me. Somewhere along the line, no matter how far you distance yourself from what you did, someone will remind you.”

  She thumbed the tears from her cheeks and pressed her lips together. “Sorry. I… I guess I didn’t make the connection.”

  He laughed. It was half frustrated, half relieved.

  In his head, Mimi Chester wasn’t the kind of girl to apologize like this. In his head, he expected her to use the opportunity to pry further into his history.

  She didn’t. She continued to thumb her cheeks dry. “I’m sorry,” she said once more.

  He opened his mouth to tell her she should be. The words didn’t come out. “You didn’t kill Lilly Williams,” he said instead. Though he was surprised by his words, he didn’t stop speaking them. “I read your file. I know what happened. It was an accident. They happen.”

  She let her hands fall into her lap as she saved all her attention for him. “What?”

  “So here’s a word of advice, Mimi, ignore everyone else and move on anyway. In fact, you seem to have already done that. Maybe I’m the one who needs that advice,” he realized as he sighed. He let his knees fall out from underneath him, and he sighed again.

  She watched him attentively. “It would be tougher for you,” she acknowledged.

  He massaged his brow but looked at her from underneath his hand. “I guess you’re right. You had a hand in an accident, whereas me,” he shrugged his shoulders, “I was a criminal. I quite enjoyed smuggling. There’s a certain kind of skill involved in picking the right kind of transport. It’s a bit like cat and mouse. Kind of exhilarating, I guess.” He let his hands fall into his lap too. “It took me a long time to realize… I was hurting people. No, scratch that, I knew that from the beginning. It just took me a long time to care. All I saw was a universe that had given me nothing and taken everything. I’d lost my family, I’d lost my friends, and there was no one to look after me. So I grew up in a world where looking after yourself meant taking from other people. I can sit here and try to justify that to you, but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is I’m a different person now. I got an opportunity, I took it. I want to say that I never looked back, but I look back every single damned day. Not because I want to be a smuggler again, because I worry I haven’t really changed. No, I worry I’m not allowed to.”

  “Josh, it’s okay. I understand,” she said in a soft voice. “I know what it feels like to be constantly beset by the fear that you are not permitted to move on. That if you get over what you’ve done, you’re somehow pretending it wasn’t significant. I waited around for a long time for people to give me permission to forgive myself. But they were never going to do it,” she bit her lip, “It was my father who told me I couldn’t wait for permission. My guilt is not their responsibility; it’s mine.”

  “Yeah, but Mimi, you said yourself, and I read it in your file, it was an accident. You have no reason for guilt.” In many ways, he couldn’t believe what he was saying. He’d held onto the fact Mimi was responsible for Lilly William’s death ever since he’d learned about it. Why? Because he’d used it as a weapon against Mimi. He’d ignored the truth of the Academy’s report because it was easier. Because he wanted to. Because it gave him ammunition.

  Now he realized how cruel that had been.

  His stomach kicked with something suspiciously close to empathy, empathy wrapped up in guilt.

  “I could have done more,” she suddenly conceded as she hunched her shoulders together, “When I realized it was a bad idea to go ahead with the simulation, I could have fought harder to prevent it. I could have gone to a superior, could have pulled the plug on it. I didn’t.”

  “Maybe,” he conceded.

  She looked crestfallen.

  “Or maybe that wouldn’t have done a thing. That’s the problem with hindsight, Mimi, it tricks you into believing you know how things could have turned out differently. If you fought the E Club, if you pulled the plug on the simulation, they might have done it without you. It could have been a bigger accident, for all you know. You did all you could at the time. Maybe you could have shouted louder, maybe you could have fought harder, but it doesn’t matter. You learn, and you move on.”

  “But Lilly Williams is dead. I could have—”

  “Died in her place? Would that have made it okay?”

  “What? I….”

  “You’re trying to figure out how much penance you should pay. You’re trying to logically figure out just how responsible you were, so you can calculate how long you should feel guilty, right? The problem is, the goalposts keep shifting. Every time you think you’ve figured out just how responsible you were, another thought crops up. You could have done this, you could have done that. Suddenly, the guilt comes flooding back in. Well, in my years as a bona fide brigand, I’ve learned a lot about guilt. Even more about pushing it away. It’s the least logical emotion there is
. Reasoning with it only feeds it.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “I don’t know. When you get the answer, tell me; I’ll be real interested.”

  She pressed her lips together, let her head drop, and slowly pulled it up as she met his gaze. “I was kind of hoping you’d tell me exactly how to get over it.”

  He chuckled. “Ha, that’s funny; I was hoping you would tell me the same.” He pushed to his feet. He took two steps toward her and reached a hand out. “I might be the world’s least competent psychologist, considering I have all the compassion of a desert, but I wonder if the key is moving on. You obsess about the past, you miss the future. Guilt has its place, but if you let it, it will only force you to make more mistakes. And if we sit here yammering about our problems too long, we’re not going to get out of here.”

  She considered his hand. For a moment, he suspected she would reject it. Then she gently placed her palm into his and let him pull her to her feet.

  “How’s your head feeling?” He asked through a cough, trying to distract himself from the feeling of her hand in his.

  “Actually, you may not be the universe’s worst psychologist; I’m feeling a lot better.”

  “I meant your actual head; your skull. Any pain?”

  She shook her head and offered him an embarrassed smile.

  It made him chuckle. “Right, it’s now time to a) find out where we are, then b) get the hell out of here.”

  He shifted forward, angling his head up as he checked the ceiling. It took another five seconds to realize he was still holding her hand. He dropped it, as if it were covered in spikes, then coughed casually.

  Fortunately, she didn’t say anything.

  It took a while for his embarrassment to dissipate, but not as long as it usually would. Because when the lingering touch of her hand in his started to fade, his attention snapped back to the situation.

  Where exactly were they?

  What was this ship?

  Josh may have referred to this as a scavenger’s dream, but as he took several echoing steps through it, he realized it could also be a nightmare.

  Scavenging was a dangerous job. Not only did you have to put up with a whole host of unsavory characters, including yourself, but sometimes you came across space junk too dangerous to handle.

  He couldn’t count the number of people he knew of who’d died trying to rip the hull plating from an unstable vessel, or who’d been foolish and greedy enough to ransack a ship before it spiraled into a sun.

  Those were the usual dangers, though.

  Occasionally you were unlucky enough to come across the unusual ones.

  Space was a vast place. And in that vastness were countless races, some who’d been engaged in interstellar travel for millennia rather than the few pitiful centuries humans had been exploring the stars. All of that meant a lot of junk. A lot of old spaceships. A lot of satellites, a lot of probes.

  And most importantly, a lot of damn surprises.

  If you wanted to stay alive as a scavenger, the number one most important rule was to pick your targets wisely. Never enter a mysterious, shielded ship stuck in the desert, not before doing your homework to ensure it wasn’t a) filled with space zombies, b) booby-trapped and wired to explode, c) a barbarian trap, or d) all of the above.

  Josh had a problem, though. He was already in this damn ship. Now, if he didn’t find a way to quickly get out of here, he had no idea what he would face.

  Okay, there could be nothing down here but sand and metal, but somehow he doubted that. Though he wasn’t a superstitious man, there was something about the dark, creepy, unsettling feel to this ship that made him want to blast a hole in the side and get the hell out of here before Hell itself reared its ugly head.

  Rather than share any of these thoughts with Mimi, he kept his worries to himself. He did, however, reach for his gun.

  That’s when he realized it wasn’t there. The rifle that was meant to be locked into the magnetic holster on his back must have fallen free as he tumbled into the ship. With a nervous twitch of his hands, he checked his hips, but soon enough realized that those guns were gone too.

  He let out a bitter, sharp swearword.

  Mimi was a step behind him, and he heard her stop, sand scattering at her feet. “What is it?” Maybe she was trying to hide the fear from her voice, but he heard it. That light waver.

  He half turned to her, gritting his teeth as he did. “Nothing. I just remembered I left the oven on,” he lied.

  “Oven? What’s an oven?”

  “Never mind, it’s an old human saying. Now hurry up.”

  He heard her sigh heavily behind him, and despite the situation, he smiled. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was smiling. Maybe it was because she hadn’t been kidnapped after all. Maybe it was that she was standing after such a nasty head injury. Or maybe his lips were just twitching, and it didn’t mean anything at all.

  “Why are we walking along this corridor?” She suddenly asked. “Shouldn’t we concentrate on getting out of here?”

  He turned to her fully this time. Furrowing his brow and hoping she could see it even in the dim light he shook his head. “I know you just had a head injury, so I’ll say this slowly: we are looking for a way out.”

  “Why don’t we just blast our way out?” She gestured behind her with her thumb, indicating the massive hole in the ceiling back the way they’d come.

  Josh clenched his teeth. This time it wasn’t in feigned frustration or sarcasm. He didn’t want to tell her he’d lost his guns. There was no way to blast a ramp up to that hole. “Just leave the thinking to me, Princess.”

  “Why? I told you not to touch that spike.”

  “We don’t even know if touching the spike caused the cave in. In fact, I doubt it did. It was probably your considerable weight impacting on an already fragile roof,” he snarled. His heart wasn’t in it. In fact, his insult was a judicious move, not an emotional one; he wanted to distract her, and he knew from experience riling her up was the only way to go.

  She slammed her hands on her hips. “Why do you always have to be so rude?”

  “Because it sure as hell beats being polite. Do you think I want to have a sweet little conversation with you, Mimi? I’d rather stab myself in the eye. Now hurry up already.” He turned and waved over his shoulder.

  Mimi didn’t move.

  He let out an exasperated breath that echoed through the corridor. For a spaceship, it had an unusually wide hallway. Most ship designs ensured thoroughfares were small, saving space for the systems that would need it like engineering and life support.

  “Stop trying to fob me off. Seriously, why don’t we just blast our way out of here?”

  He opened his mouth to insult her. Maybe he would point out he was the Coalition officer while she was nothing more than a reject. Or perhaps he’d default to the fact she was a spoiled brat. Instead, he said, “Because I dropped my guns.” He hadn’t meant to say it; it had tumbled out.

  She didn’t recede away in fear. Instead, she shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t even know you were carrying them. But that doesn’t matter, we can still blast our way out of here.”

  He looked at her askance. “Maybe I should check your head again.”

  “Klutzo,” she called, ignoring him as she turned around.

  The orb was still following them, though at a considerable distance. It also needed constant encouragement. For an electronic device, somehow it was showing all the signs of fear.

  “Klutzo, let’s get out of here. Can you blast a hole in the roof back there? Can you calculate how to make us a ramp back up into the desert?”

  Josh snorted. Maybe he honestly ought to scan her head again, because she was being crazy. Klutzo was nothing more than a recording device. Granted, Josh had used him to pick up the med pack and fly it into the ship, but that pack was about the heaviest thing Klutzo would be able to carry.

  Short of continually flying into the sand dune and causi
ng an avalanche, there was no way it would be able to blast them a ramp.

  “Ah, Mim,” he said distractedly as he rummaged around and grabbed the medical scanner, “Just come here for a second.”

  “What did you just call me?”

  He blinked. “… Mim?”

  “That’s not my name.”

  “It’s pretty darn close, plus, it’s easier to say. Now come here.” He waved her forward as he prepared the scanner.

  “Are you serious? You find Mimi hard to say? Did you actually have to pass a test to get into the Academy?”

  He shot her a stony look. Then he marched up to her. As he did, it was impossible to ignore how her expression changed. Though it was subtle, her eyes widened. Her cheeks didn’t pale, though, and there was no other indication she was frightened.

  She simply looked extra attentive as he approached.

  “Once you are done insulting me, I think I need to check your head again,” he mumbled as he brought the scanner close to the side of her face.

  She watched him tersely, her cheeks reddening in something that looked suspiciously like a blush and not anger. “There is nothing wrong with my head. I just think this is a dumb plan. We can get Klutzo to shoot us a ramp out of here. I really don’t… want to continue any further.” She rubbed her arms as she stared past him into the darkened hallway.

  “It’s a recording device, Mim, it can’t shoot us a ramp,” he muttered as he continued to check the scanner.

  “It’s a security drone.”

  One of his eyebrows arched up as he brought the scanner closer to her head, his thumb accidentally brushing against her soft cheek. She blinked quickly, her eyelashes gently tickling his hand.

  In fact, it was a collection of pretty distracting sensations, so distracting it took him a moment to realize what she’d said. “Security drone? Oh man, you really must have hit your head too hard.”

  She rolled her eyes and took a terse breath. “It’s a security drone as well as being a recording device. I’m the daughter of Theodore Chester, I do have to take precautions about my safety.”

  He looked at her suspiciously as he finally shifted back. The medical scanner wasn’t picking up any sign of injury. It was too rudimentary to be able to tell whether she was crazy, though.

  “Don’t look at me like that; it’s true. Klutzo, show Josh what you can do.” A small smile spread across Mimi’s face.

  For a split second, he felt anticipation. Because, seriously, she was right; she was the daughter of Theodore Chester, and it was not beyond the realm of possibility that he’d souped up her recording orb.

  When Klutzo did nothing but float there, Josh shook his head. “Stop wasting my time, Mim, we need to find a way out of here.”

  “Klutzo.” She turned to the device, waving him forward with a quick flick of her wrist. “Come on, it’s okay. Show the Special Commander here what you can do.” She turned back to Josh and lifted her chin triumphantly.

  Klutzo still didn’t move.

  Mimi darted her eyes to the left. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Danger. Danger,” Klutzo said as he shifted back, appearing to shiver in the air.

  A laugh had been on Josh’s lips, but now he stifled it. As much as he wanted to dismiss the recording orb, since it had been wiped more times than a window, there was something about its fear he couldn’t dismiss.

  “Must retreat. Must retreat.”

  “Klutzo, we want to get out of here. Just make us a ramp,” she tried.

  “Can’t make noise. It will hear.”

  The hair along the back of Josh’s neck stood on end. A lightning bolt of nerves shot down his back. “Sorry? What will hear us?” Though he was determined to ignore Klutzo, it didn’t stop Josh from turning his head to the left and right as he checked the hallway carefully.

  “Klutzo?” Mimi asked in a small voice that barely carried, yet nonetheless felt like it was a foghorn.

  Josh took an automatic step closer to her. “Come on,” he tried, knowing it was now more important than ever to continue. If, by some extraordinary stroke of bad luck, Klutzo was right, and they were not alone down here, staying in the same place was suicide. “Come on, Mim,” he said again as he latched a hand on her arm, quickly realizing she was all too good at ignoring him.

  Thankfully she didn’t resist, and Josh managed to pull her several steps down the hallway. Every beat of their footfall sounded like a drum, one that advertised their position more effectively than a holographic arrow pointing in their direction.

  “What do you mean we’re not alone?” Mimi turned her head to ask Klutzo.

  “Be quiet,” Josh warned her in a whisper, “And keep moving.”

  “No, we just need to convince Klutzo to help us. He can blast us a ramp,” she began.

  Josh stopped, turned on his foot so suddenly his boot squeaked against the floor, and collapsed his hands over both her shoulders. It was a dramatic move, and had the desired effect; her eyes shot open, and her lips closed in surprise.

  “Mim, trust me,” he said simply.

  There were a lot of things he could tell her in that moment. He could remind her he was the special commander and the only one trained enough to take the lead. He could point out he had extensive experience dealing with creepy abandoned spaceships. He could emphasize he had already saved her numerous times before.

  But the words trust me bubbled up, and when they were out, they had a curious effect.

  Her expression softened. Digging her teeth into her lips, she nodded. “But he really is a security drone,” she added.

  “Of course he is,” Josh said dismissively as he let go of her shoulders and grabbed up one of her hands instead.

  Before he could pull her forward, something curious happened. Klutzo darted backward. With a move like a full-bodied shudder, he turned around and shot off.

  “Klutzo,” Mimi began to shout his name.

  Josh slammed a hand over her mouth. Pressing his fingers into her soft lips and feeling the warmth of her cheeks under his palm, he whispered to “keep quiet,” as he finally removed his hand.

  From fingertip to palm, his skin tingled. That didn’t stop him from shaking his head and mouthing, “Stay quiet.”

  “But Klutzo—”

  “Is clearly malfunctioning,” Josh said in the softest voice he could manage.

  “But—”

  “Just trust me, Mim.”

  Before Josh could lead her forward, Klutzo’s voice echoed back through the hallway. “Must leave. Must leave. Attracted to technology.”

  It was the recording orb’s last three words that struck Josh like a bullet. Maybe he had misheard, or maybe Klutzo really was malfunctioning, or just possibly, just maybe the device was right.

  Could there be something out there? Could it be attracted to technology?

  Josh may have learned a lot as a scavenger about the evils that can lurk in abandoned spacecraft. But he’d learned a thing or two as a special commander about the extraordinary dangers that littered the Milky Way. From experimental weapons to Barbarian traps, he could list 10 things off the top of his head that were attracted to technology, and none of them were nice.

  He didn’t have a gun, he had the daughter of the richest man in the galaxy one step behind him, and he had no one to rely on for backup.

  He tried to swallow, but the move was so gruff it stuck in his throat.

  “Josh, what’s going on? What was Klutzo talking about?” Mimi whispered.

  “He’s malfunctioning. We just need to keep moving. But keep quiet,” Josh added quickly. He needed to play a careful game here; while he didn’t want to alert Mimi to just how dangerous things were, he couldn’t allow her to act normally either.

  As they continued along the darkened hallway, Josh felt the med pack bang softly into his leg. He’d secured it against his belt. Though it was light and designed to be of minimum inconvenience, it felt like he was lugging around a stone. Not because it was parti
cularly heavy, but because of the scanner inside.

  If something out there really was attracted to technology, then the medical device inside the med pack was surely sophisticated enough to warrant its attention.

  Josh should leave it behind or crush it under his boot. But he wasn’t going to do that; 10 to 1 Mimi would hurt herself again.

  Not for the first time and not for the last, he cursed this stupid situation. If he had never met Mimi, presumably he wouldn’t be in this current predicament.

  As for Mimi, however, he couldn’t say the same for her. She appeared to be accident-prone, and he was certain that if she hadn’t met him, she’d be dead by now. Or kidnapped. Or worse.

  When things calmed down, if they ever did, he would have to solicit a genuine apology from her for all the times she’d acted like a brat.

  If they ever got out of here.

  They continued to walk along in silence, but the silence was incomplete. Sure, they’d stopped speaking, but every breath, every step, every movement sounded like a trumpet. Even the soft scattering of sand as their boots dislodged the grit trapped in their treads sounded like an avalanche.

  Josh expected the hallway to open out into rooms, but as the minutes ticked by, he realized it was incredibly long. Either he was wrong, and he was in some kind of building rather than a downed ship, or this had to be one of the biggest spacecraft he’d ever seen.

  Something wasn’t right here. From the design to the colors, even to the material, he’d never seen a ship like this.

  Unbidden, from the back of his mind, a memory rose. The Black Mass. The outlandish tale of First Age technology the alien had told him before sending him into the desert after Mimi.

  It couldn’t be true, right? It was just a myth, right?

  Josh had seen a few First Age devices in his time; the Coalition made it its business to acquire and study all archaeological artifacts from that period. The problem was, they didn’t all look the same. Multiple races engaged in space travel during the First Age, so when you came across one of their devices, you weren’t guaranteed it would have a particular appearance. Indeed, the archaeological records were incomplete, and there were influential theories that there was still undiscovered races from that era.

  So it was a real but unpleasant possibility that the very ship they were currently walking through could be from the First Age. As wild as it sounded, it just might be the Black Mass. Then again, it could be a Barbarian trap. Space travel was like that; it always stuck a gun in your face every time you thought you knew what you were doing.

  They walked for a good half hour before the endless corridor changed. Suddenly, with little warning, it opened out. Josh was expecting a large room, maybe engineering or the crew deck. What he got, was something else.

  Something impossible.

  “What the hell?” He asked in a voice that shook uncontrollably.

  Mimi took a step closer to him, banging into his arm. She took a sharp breath that shuddered in surprise.

  This… was impossible.