by Wayne Basta
The journey was less than ideal, but they managed to reach Kol with enough air to breathe. When they emerged from hyperspace, Zeric’s first view of the planet showed him a massive brown continent.
From orbit, it was clear that it was dominated by a desert. Saracasi explained that their destination was a small abandoned settlement in the middle of that desert. That did not appeal to Zeric after he spotted several archipelagos full of tropical islands.
He was wary when they encountered no resistance as they descended through the atmosphere. They were tagged by sensors on several occasions, but there were no communications. It appeared they were being tracked, but no intense scans or transponder queries were conducted.
That was a relief to him; without a more detailed scan, no one would be able to identify them as anything more than an object on a controlled reentry.
Once they arrived at the desert outpost, the condition of the base surprised him. It was not a squalid hovel or cave in the middle of nowhere, but real buildings. Maybe this place wouldn’t be the hell the desert suggested it would be.
When they got close enough to see the Cutty Sark parked outside the largest building, Zeric noticed Saracasi brighten. Up until now, they hadn’t known whether Maarkean and Lahkaba had managed to escape. Zeric hadn’t been worried. He knew that if they could get away in a big lumbering freighter, a pilot as good as Maarkean in a ship like the Cutty Sark could manage it.
Zeric set down as gently as he could manage, but he kept the ship powered up. The strip-mined area might not be able to hold the freighter’s weight, and he didn’t want to collapse into a sinkhole.
After they had remained stable where they were for several minutes, he began shutting down systems. The others did not wait on him; they proceeded immediately toward the elevator to the cargo bay.
While he powered the ship down, he started to consider what would happen next. He had gotten along pretty well with Maarkean during the prison break. Guilt over trying to steal the man’s ship had even crossed his mind.
But they had only been allies of convenience. Now that their mutual goals were achieved, he wasn’t sure what would happen. The only thing he felt sure of was that, had he arrived here without Saracasi, Maarkean would have killed him.
Beyond that, he couldn’t be completely confident the man wouldn’t do it anyway.
Zeric headed down to join the others. As he exited the ship, he was hit by a strong wave of heat. The desert appeared to be living up to its reputation. The air was dry and searing, but it was fresh and plentiful. Compared to the stale and chilly ship, he appreciated the difference. He knew that appreciation wouldn’t last long.
From a distance, he saw the others gathered together. He was happy to see a joyful reunion between Maarkean and Saracasi. He didn’t have any siblings of his own, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized Gu’od and Gamaly were sort of like family.
The sight of them alive back at the prison had been a great comfort to him, and he could understand how Maarkean and Saracasi must feel now.
As he approached, he overheard Saracasi making formal introductions of everyone to Maarkean. Gu’od and Gamaly expressed their sincere appreciation to Maarkean and Lahkaba for their rescue, which seemed to embarrass both of them.
Zeric realized that this was the first thanks they were getting. He and the others had been overwhelmed with it during their time traveling to Irod.
“Looks like we survived your crazy plan after all,” Zeric said in greeting.
The words drew Maarkean’s attention to him. There was a tense moment where Zeric wasn’t sure how Maarkean would respond to him. It seemed Maarkean wasn’t sure, either. For that moment, there was silence from the others as the two considered each other. Fortunately, the moment passed quickly. Maarkean smiled and extended his hand to Zeric.
“Not for lack of trying, though. I was genuinely concerned we all wouldn’t make it,” Maarkean said as they shook hands.
To his surprise, Lahkaba reached out and took him into a bear hug. The Kowwok bore a distant resemblance to a bear, which made the hug slightly terrifying. The suddenness of the hug startled him, and he must have looked surprised.
“A hug is a customary greeting among Kowwok for friends. We have been in battle together, fighting a righteous cause. We are now friends,” the Kowwok said with complete seriousness.
“With a grip like that, I’m glad we’re not enemies,” Zeric joked.
Lahkaba chuckled and then said, “We should get you all inside. This heat can be a killer.”
Given the Kowwok’s fur, Zeric could sympathize. He followed the group toward the other buildings.
Once everyone was shown around the building, they were all given a chance to shower and get cleaned up. That was one of the reasons Saracasi liked this place. The settlement had a natural oasis that provided plenty of water. In limiting their movement aboard the freighter, they had limited their chances to get clean. It was wonderful to feel the week of crud wash off her.
She emerged from the shower and found clean clothes waiting for her. Maarkean had brought some of her things from the Cutty Sark. After spending over two weeks in the same prison jumpsuit, it was like heaven to have something new to wear.
She felt sorry for Gamaly and Gu’od, who still would not have anything else. Their clothes had been confiscated, and unlike Zeric, they had not had a chance to purchase more. Lahkaba and Lohcja had each brought a bag of their own stuff. Maarkean’s stuff might fit Gu’od, but Gamaly would find Saracasi’s clothes a tight fit.
Leaving the room she had used to dress, she went in search of her brother. She found him on the roof of the main building. The sun had dropped below the horizon, and the night air had already started to cool. It proved a sharp contrast to what she had felt when she had first gone inside.
Smiling at her as she approached, he said, “You look more like a person and less like yourself.”
“Ha, ha,” she said. “I knew you’d be up here lazing away the evening.”
He shrugged. “You know me so well.”
As he said, that Saracasi frowned. She thought she had known her brother very well. His behavior of late, however, had gotten more and more confusing.
“I thought I did,” she said. “I thought you were incapable of seeing the injustices and hypocrisies of the Alliance. I had resigned myself to my fate. But you saved all of those people from a life of imprisonment. You saved me.”
What she had meant as a compliment appeared to have the opposite effect. The look of hurt that was on his face surprised her. She hadn’t meant her words to be hurtful, nor could she identify anything that could have been taken as offensive.
“You really have such a low opinion of me?” Maarkean said with a touch of sadness in his voice. “You thought I would just abandon you to be executed?”
Confused, Saracasi replied, “Yes. You made it very clear before, when we left Braz, that you took me away only because I hadn’t actually been arrested yet. You said what I had done was wrong and that I deserved to be in jail.”
“I never said that,” Maarkean retorted, anger starting to creep into his voice.
“No, but you made it very clear that is what you thought.”
“You had just participated in a riot. What was I supposed to think, you deserved some kind of medal?”
“We didn’t cause the riot!” Saracasi said, raising her voice. “I’ve told you that. It was a peaceful protest. The AIS stormed us, and we responded. No one was supposed to get hurt, much less killed. It was the AIS trying to disperse us by force that caused that.”
“This is an old argument,” Maarkean said, clearly trying to moderate his tone.
Saracasi took a deep breath before continuing. They had had this conversation many times before. “Yes, it is. The point I was trying to make was I thought you had changed. Your decision to free us I thought showed you had come to understand what I’ve been trying to tell you all these years.”
“W
hat you don’t understand, what you’ve never understood, is that I don’t have to agree with you in order to protect you. You’re my sister. I could never let anything bad happen to you if there was anything I could do to stop it,” Maarkean said quietly and then went on with more force.
“But that doesn’t mean I agree with you. The charge of treason was too harsh – you don’t deserve to die for what you did. But don’t tell me there weren’t those in your group who were trying to provoke the AIS into cracking down on you. Your friends were anti-government radicals.”
“Not everyone who disagrees with Alliance policy is an anti-government radical,” Saracasi said, exasperated. “Do you really think that all those people who were in prison with me deserved to be there?”
Maarkean shrugged. “I don’t know. You committed a crime. Gu’od and Gamaly were ship thieves. That makes everyone I’ve met who had been in there actual criminals.”
With a sigh, Saracasi sat down next to her brother.
“You never got to meet any of them. Had we all been able to come here, you’d have seen most of them are just people. People who were put in prison simply for disagreeing with Alliance policy, or because they aren’t Braz or Terran.
“I didn’t mean for it to come off as an insult. I just had never expected you to do anything against the Alliance. It’s not like you.”
Silence filled the void between them. Saracasi was unsure what else to say. She had not come up here to argue with Maarkean. She had come to thank him.
“Can’t it just mean I love my sister? Does what I did have to mean anything more than that?”
The tone of his voice betrayed to Saracasi that there was more going on than he was willing to talk about.
She held onto hope that it meant he was starting to see cracks in the Alliance that he believed in, although he was obviously not ready to talk about it.
“No, it doesn’t,” Saracasi agreed. “Let’s go find the others. They should be cleaned up by now.”
Maarkean nodded, and they stood up and went back inside.
Sitting down at the table in the building they were using for housing, Maarkean looked over the group. Less than a month ago, his world had consisted of himself and Saracasi. Now he was sitting down to dinner with five others. The entire experience was unusual.
Despite the conversation with Saracasi, he wasn’t completely unaware what his actions meant. His motivation may have been rescuing his sister, but it could never be seen by anyone else as something so simple. In truth, he wasn’t even sure his motivations were that simple. Had he felt about the Alliance the same way he did years ago, he didn’t think he would have been capable of the prison break.
Around the table, the conversation turned to a discussion about what to do next. Originally, he had assumed that after everyone was free, they would all go their separate ways. Saracasi and he would return to a life of smuggling. There were a few contacts on Kol he could try to find work with. The others would take their new freighter and go do whatever they did with stolen ships.
Gamaly and Saracasi appeared to have a different idea. As the group talked, the two women kept speaking as if they would all be staying together. Or at least most of them.
“The first thing we should do is to take Lahkaba and Lohcja back to their friends,” Saracasi said. “I’m sure they want to get back.”
To Maarkean’s surprise, Lahkaba spoke up against that idea. “Actually, we’ve talked and we’d both rather stay with you.”
“Really? Why?” Maarkean asked, perplexed.
“There really isn’t anything for us back on Sulas. We’re wanted criminals,” Lohcja answered.
“You do know we’re not into your political movement?” Zeric said. “We just worked with you guys to get our friends out.”
“We know,” Lahkaba said simply. “You made that clear from the beginning. But, in my opinion, you’ve actually done more for the cause without trying than we ever did. So given the choice between sitting in some more pointless meetings or being smugglers and snubbing Alliance authority that way, we’ll be smugglers.”
The Kowwok’s honest answer surprised Maarkean. During their time together, they had talked a lot about how Lahkaba felt about the Alliance. Maarkean had always assumed that fringe groups hated the Alliance and everything it stood for. Unexpectedly, he had learned that Lahkaba did not hate the Alliance; he simply had a strong desire to be out from under their control and have the chance to choose his own destiny.
“All right,” Maarkean said hesitantly. Finding work to satisfy the needs of two people had been hard enough. If all of them really did stick together, he didn’t know what they would do. “Well, I’ll be honest. We have little fuel and supplies. No work and no money. It’s not a very glamorous life.”
“We’ve got a great big freighter,” Zeric said. “I bet we could find someone who would buy it from us. That’d be some easy money.”
“I thought the life support system was shot?” Maarkean asked, scratching one of his cranial horns.
“Not completely,” Saracasi answered. “It’s on the verge of complete failure, but it will work for a short time. I wouldn’t travel a long distance in it, though.”
“Plus, the types of people who will buy a stolen ship are used to them coming in less-than-pristine condition. We won’t get as much as we could, but we’ll get more than we have,” Zeric answered.
Maarkean considered it. Selling stolen merchandise had never been something he had wanted to become involved in. Smuggling had been like shipping legal cargo, just without paying custom fees – or that’s what he’d told himself. In his mind, everything he had shipped had legally belonged to the seller. In truth, much of it probably hadn’t. But he had never actually known for sure, nor been the one to steal it. He knew he was just rationalizing, but it made him feel better about it.
“Do you think you can find someone willing to buy an old mining freighter?” he asked.
Zeric gave him a broad smile. “On a planet that is primarily populated by mining companies? In a heartbeat.”
“It’s your wife’s fault,” Zeric said as he and Gu’od walked the dark street.
“What is?” Gu’od asked, confused.
“If she hadn’t insisted on us staying with Maarkean, we’d be able to keep the profits from this sale to ourselves. It might even be enough to retire for a while on one of this planet’s tropical islands.”
“They did help us steal it. And we did attempt to steal their ship. It’s only fair they should share in the profits,” Gu’od admonished.
“No, I stole it, and then they helped me use it to get you out of prison. By every right, it’s my ship,” Zeric replied stubbornly.
The loss of half the money they would have made on the sale was a hard thing to take. They had survived by stealing smaller ships before. Small ships had small crews, which made for easier hijacking. Zeric had never considered stealing from an impound lot. It had been surprisingly simple. For their next heist, he might try that again.
“We have to find a buyer first,” Gu’od said as they reached their destination. “Let’s not worry about who gets how much just yet.”
Zeric nodded and followed Gu’od into the club.
They had been in the city of Mynhold for two days now, just long enough to pick up new clothing for Gu’od and Gamaly and scout out the local black market. Despite his declaration earlier, he had been surprised that Gamaly had managed to find a lead on a buyer so quickly. Normally, it took a while to place yourself in a new location so that people would trust you enough to talk about buying illegal goods. Perhaps the limited Alliance presence made people less cautious.
The club was only moderately crowded. Zeric scanned the crowd and located the rest of their group seated in various places around the room. There was one benefit to their situation that he appreciated: with a greater number of allies, they could place some covert assistance into the club before the meeting. Before, the three of them had been forced to go into
meetings like this with only one person playing the role of backup.
After getting a drink from the bar, Zeric and Gu’od took a lazy stroll through the club. They soon found the table with the men they had been told to meet. Sitting down at the table as coolly as he could manage, Zeric eyed the three Terrans dispassionately. He wished he could give off the impression of a silent threat like Gu’od could.
“Mr. Black?” Gu’od asked. Zeric knew that was not the man’s real name. The less each of them knew about the other, the better it was for everyone.
“Mr. Gee,” the Terran sitting in the middle said, “I understand you have a freighter you are looking to sell.”
“Indeed. It’s a fine ship, could use a few minor repairs, but what ship couldn’t,” Gu’od said. He was far better at the negotiations than Zeric was.
While Gu’od and Mr. Black haggled, Zeric scanned the room. He knew these men probably had others situated around the room just like he did. But, for a change, he actually felt fairly confident about their chances of being able to shoot their way out, should it come to that.
Zeric knew the negotiations would go on for some time. The man would demand some incredibly low price, and Gu’od would insist on an unreasonably high price. Eventually, they would meet in the middle. Then they would have to show him the ship, and he would insist the price be lowered.
A commotion near the bar caught Zeric’s attention. He turned his head and saw one of the patrons talking excitedly to Maarkean. Maarkean was doing his best to look small and avoid the other man’s questions. Suddenly, the man began shouting to the whole club.
“Hey, everyone, look who it is,” he said happily, pointing to Maarkean. “It’s that guy who broke those people out of that prison on Sulas.”
