by Martha Carr
Nu’ek folded her arms and scowled at him. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Yeah, looks like it.”
Cheyenne turned slightly away from him and slipped the coil behind her ear. The thing pinched her skin and sent a vibrating burst of energy crackling through her head. She clenched her eyes shut tight and bowed her head, gritting her teeth through the discomfort.
“You know what?” Persh’al spread his arms and crossed the room again to the metal door sealing them off. “Get this damn thing open and take us up to the lower levels. If I have to rewire someone’s skiff, fine. It’s breaking about five laws and two different promises, but what the hell? It’s better than getting my head ripped off.”
“Hold on a minute.” Cheyenne took a deep breath and slowly opened her eyes. She staggered sideways at the barrage of information flooding through not just her vision but her entire mind.
“Cheyenne.” Persh’al stomped toward her. “You good?”
“Oh, yeah.” She blinked, and the second she thought about tuning out all the extra data, the new activator responded. Turning slowly, she met the blue troll’s concerned gaze and grinned. “I’m excellent.”
“You look stoned. Are you…shit.” His shoulders slumped as he looked her up and down. “Did you put that coil behind your ear?”
“Yes, I did.”
Nu’ek chuckled. “Now we’re even.”
Persh’al whirled to face the golra and spread his arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We might have forgotten to run a systems check on the stations.” The winged magical chuckled. “But you forgot about the activators.”
“I didn’t forget.” The troll’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly, then he turned and pointed at Cheyenne as she approached the shuttle’s door. “All right, fine. Just be careful with that thing, kid. You hear me? Better yet, take it off and hand it over. That thing could just as easily fry your brain if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Persh’al.” The halfling stopped with her face inches away from the metal door, passing her hand over the surface and watching the streams of data flow around it.
He sighed. “What?”
“Shut up.”
Nu’ek’s rumbling laughter echoed in the transport station’s single room. The troll scratched the back of his head, growling wordlessly as he paced in front of the shuttle.
Unable to wipe away the crazed grin, Cheyenne studied the scrolling data that was translated almost instantly for her convenience. What am I looking for? An on-switch? A command for…oh.
She pressed the blinking dot on the door and lines of information splayed out in different directions, telling her exactly what to do and in which order. By the time she finished following the activator’s command, she’d drawn a four-pointed star on the shuttle’s outer door. With a quick laugh of disbelief, she stepped back and watched the illuminated blue light fade from the rusty metal surface.
As soon as it did, a low hum rose from the other side of the door, followed by pale blue light glowing through the round window from the inside. Some kind of engine powered up and a high whine filled the station.
“Well, shit.” Persh’al snorted and glanced quickly at Nu’ek before staring at the activated shuttle again. “You guys send someone down here to revamp security or what?”
The golra slowly shook her head. “I’m not the one with the long memory.”
“Yeah, throw that one right back in my face, why doncha?”
“This is so cool.” Cheyenne leaned away from the shuttle and scanned the full length of the craft pressed up against the edge of the station’s apparent platform. “You weren’t kidding when you said that first one was basic. That’s like DSL versus wi-fi.”
“Uh-huh. And you’re riding high-speed internet now, kid. Okay. Turn it down a second so we can bid this giant bat on two legs adieu.”
Nu’ek frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Cheyenne turned down the scrolling data with a ghost of a thought and faced the golra, still grinning. “It means goodbye.”
Persh’al scoffed. “I swear, we need some kind of Earthside translator for you guys. If we’re gonna be fighting this war from both sides of the Border, we all need to be on the same page.”
“That’ll never happen.” Nu’ek stepped forward and thumped her chest with a huge, clawed fist. “But you can try.”
“Sure, I’ll get right on it in my spare time. No problem.” With a snort, the troll returned the gesture and nodded curtly at the golra. “I’m glad you found us. Saved me some time trying to remember where the hell you built all those tunnels.”
“Saved him from making a total fake-drunk ass of himself too,” Cheyenne added. She pressed her fist against her chest too and nodded at Nu’ek. The golra’s glowing red eyes widened, but she kept her fist just below her breastbone over the weird-looking vest. Yeah, okay. Maybe I did it wrong, but at least I’m trying.
“I look forward to seeing you again, Aranél. Preferably after you’ve claimed what’s yours and before the rest of us step into battle behind you.”
Persh’al shot Cheyenne a quick glance, then cleared his throat and headed for the shuttle door.
“When I toss a drow coin on the Crown’s altar, yeah.” Cheyenne shrugged. “I get it. I’m kinda hoping that changes the whole imminent-battle thing, but we’ll see.”
“Yes.” Nu’ek glanced at the shuttle when Persh’al finally managed to activate the sliding door. “We shall see.”
“Come on, kid.” Persh’al waved the halfling toward the open doorway. “We gotta get moving. L’zar’s pretty attached to us making this timeline, and I’m pretty attached to my head.”
With a last nod at the golra, Cheyenne turned and stepped into the shuttle. The door slid closed behind her with a hiss, and the blue lights flickered overhead.
“Okay.” Persh’al tossed his much lighter pack on the second row of seats behind him and rubbed his hands together. “The rest of this needs a manual boost. Take a seat, and I’ll get us moving.”
“No way.” Cheyenne chuckled and waved him away from the controls in front of the door. “If I have to say goodbye to this thing when we make the crossing again, I’m gonna use it as much as possible first.”
“Great.” Persh’al eyed her warily, then gave in and slumped down in the first row of decidedly uncomfortable metal seats. “Try not to break anything, huh? Including yourself.”
“You need to relax, man. I got this.”
“You know who else said that? Every idiot who got their hands on high-level spells and tried to cast them alone without any training. I had a friend like that once. Blew up his entire house and the top half of his body.”
Cheyenne stared at the data scrolling across the control panels, reading it with eager awareness as quickly as it showed up. “We’ve already established that I suck at spells. But this, I’m good at this.”
“How do you know?”
Her fingers moved in a blur across the controls as she activated the commands she wanted. The high whine of the shuttle’s power source stopped, and the vessel shuddered in place before slowly moving forward.
Cheyenne looked over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “You were saying?”
Persh’al laughed and shook his head. “Nothing, kid. I’m keepin’ my mouth shut from here on out.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
“Okay, but seriously. I remember these things being a lot faster.”
Cheyenne glanced down at the controls and shrugged. “It’s only been ten minutes. Whatever kind of engine this thing has needs to fully power up.”
Persh’al cocked his head. “Did a fancy activator tell you that, or you making an educated guess?”
She stepped away from the control panel without buttons, levers, or instructional symbols of any kind and leaned against the wall of the shuttle’s cabin. “Do you even know what this thing can do?”
“Yeah. It can take us from A to B really fast.” He
snorted. “When it hasn’t been docked for who knows how long without powering up. I knew we made the crossing Earthside without covering all our bases. Should’ve drawn out a plan for keeping everything in top shape.”
“Oh, this thing’s still in top shape.” Cheyenne pointed at the control panel. “We’ve got about thirty seconds left ‘til it is warmed up. After that, this can do a lot more than just moving really fast.”
“Quit screwing around, kid.” Persh’al folded his arms and sat back in the chair. “I’ve dismantled and rebuilt machines a hell of a lot more complicated than this tunnel train. I know what it’s capable of just by looking at it.”
She grinned. “Wanna bet?”
“Ha. Sure. Why not? You’ll lose.”
Cheyenne looked back at the timer displayed on the control panel through her upgraded activator and waited for the countdown to reach zero. When it did, she pulled up the drive for kicking the generator into gear, and with quick swipes on the panel lighting up with a blue glow beneath her finger, the shuttle lurched and doubled its speed.
Persh’al sucked in a breath, pressed back against his chair. Cheyenne leaned forward against the acceleration and drummed her fingers on the control panel.
“Jeeze, kid. Okay. You proved your point.”
“Not yet. I’m just getting started.”
He peeled himself off the back of the metal chair, adjusting to the newest speed, and shook his head. “You think this old wreck of a machine can go faster than this?”
Cheyenne chuckled and folded her arms. “You haven’t spent a lot of time on this thing.”
“This one specifically? You know, I can’t say that I have. They all look and act the same. How fast are we going?”
“About eighty miles an hour. And that’s at fifty-percent, it looks like.”
Persh’al scratched his head. “For real?”
“Just wait ‘til we get out of the city.”
“How does that even matter? We’re underground.”
“Yeah, and then we won’t be.”
The blue troll sat forward in the metal chair, braced his hands on his knees, and stared at the control panel. “We won’t be? This is the shuttle out to Charibor, right?”
Cheyenne glanced at the scrolling control panel. “No. Grimmer.”
“What? Oh, that giant bat with horns is gonna get it.”
“Sounds like you’re not a fan of Grimmer.”
“Not a fan?” Persh’al lurched from the chair and spread his arms. “Last time I saw Grimmer, it made the Oronti Valley look like a paradise.”
“So it was dead with this blight or whatever since before you went Earthside. I thought all that happened after you guys followed L’zar across the Border. The last time, anyway.”
“No, Grimmer isn’t blighted, kid. Might as well be, though. It’s a den of thieves if you will.”
Cheyenne cocked her head with a smile playing on her lips. “Really?”
“Kinda, yeah. L’zar has a creepy fondness for the place, but they don’t like me over there.”
“Let me guess. It’s ‘cause you keep tricking them with your foolproof lying skills.”
Persh’al glared at her. “Funny. I’m laughing on the inside.”
“Then what happened?” She couldn’t hold back a wry laugh at the thought. “I’m guessing any place L’zar ‘has a fondness for’ isn’t number one on most people’s sightseeing list. You must’ve really screwed something up.”
The blue troll stared at the control panel, his nose twitching. “First of all, Grimmer is a territory, not a city. Like, an entire country.”
“Oh, even better.”
“They have no problem with thieves and fire-starters. L’zar spent a lot of time there, blending in. Until he didn’t anymore.”
Cheyenne glanced at the next speed level powering up on the control panel. “Nice deflection, but we’re not talking about L’zar. What did you do?”
“Fine. L’zar steals physical things. Sometimes living things. And I steal information.”
“Oh, so you hacked into the territory’s system and did some damage.” She wrinkled her nose. “That’s a disappointing reveal.”
“Uh-huh. They were really disappointed when I sold their security codes to the highest bidder. And the second- and third-highest. Then Grimmer contracted L’zar before they found out that we—you know what? I don’t need to tell you this.”
“Don’t stop now.” Cheyenne grinned. “It was just getting interesting.”
Persh’al stared at her with widening eyes, then he wagged a finger in her direction and went back to his metal seat. “You’re dangerously like your father, you know that?”
The amusement drained from the halfling’s face, and she turned to face the control panel. “No, I’m not.”
“You don’t like that. I get it. If you did, I’d say there’s something seriously wrong with your moral compass. And your brain, probably.”
She snorted.
“But it’s true. I’ve seen that look before, kid, and it wasn’t on your face.”
“There wasn’t a look.”
“There was a look, Cheyenne. It’s the same look L’zar gets when he’s put together some complicated little puzzle in his head and can’t wait to move the rest of the pawns into position.”
Cheyenne’s fist clenched at her side while her other hand hovered over the scrolling data glowing above the controls. “I don’t use people like he does.”
“Not yet, maybe. Not on purpose!”
The shuttle sped up again, pressing the troll back against his seat with a metallic thump. Cheyenne’s shoes squeaked across the floor at the burst of momentum, and she steadied herself with a hand against the wall. Then she looked over her shoulder to raise an eyebrow at the startled troll. “You were saying?”
“Too much, apparently. Crown be damned, kid. How fast are we going now?”
“One-twenty.” She shrugged. “Might be a good idea to keep it here. We don’t wanna have another mode of transportation break down on us or anything.”
“Hey, I paid for a working skiff. Never trust an outernóre junker handing over a machine with a smile on his face. I learned my lesson on that one, okay? Again.”
Cheyenne’s lips twitched into a smile, and she pushed herself toward the front of the shuttle again. “Whatever.”
“What are you doing now?” Persh’al glanced down at his hands, which were still gripping the edges of the metal chair, and forced himself to let go.
“Just checking things.”
“Well, don’t check too much, huh? Some of this stuff, even I don’t know what every command does. You were joking about a breakdown, but that’s still a possibility.”
“Okay, Persh’al.” She scanned the controls and the scrolling data commands, biting back a laugh.
“Don’t, ‘Okay, Persh’al,’ me. What’s that even mean, huh?”
“It means I’m starting to figure you out.”
He swallowed.
“Hey, this is cool.” Cheyenne’s finger swiped across the smooth metal panel, and a series of blue lights illuminated in strips on either side of the shuttle’s ceiling. They pulsed twice, then a slow, steady beat rose inside the cabin. “Eh, the music in that club was better.”
“That music sucked.”
“Yes, it did. But this works for now.”
Persh’al squinted at her. “I’m not sure I like the way that sounds, kid.”
“Why? You still afraid I’m gonna break something?”
“Kinda.”
“You need a distraction.” With a low chuckle, she swiped at the four different commands that had nothing to do with each other, then glanced up at the metal ceiling. Just like writing programs, only this works physically. I think.
“What did you do?” Persh’al glanced nervously around the shuttle, shifting in his seat.
“Seriously, man. Chill out.” Cheyenne added more commands and nodded. “This should do it.”
“Hey, I�
�m not taking orders or advice from a…whoa!”
The metal walls around them disappeared, rendered transparent by Cheyenne’s newly constructed command. The ceiling and floor disappeared next, leaving only the three rows of metal chairs and the control panel up front. Now, the drow halfling and the blue troll sailed through the darkening light of dusk, across an open field of brown grass dotted with glowing purple wildflowers, at a hundred and twenty miles per hour.
“What the hell!” Persh’al gripped the sides of his chair even tighter and pulled his feet up from the ground hurtling beneath them. “This is…you can’t just… Shit!”
Cheyenne laughed and gazed at the sprawling field and the thick forest coming up quickly on their left. “Ready to chill out now?”
“Not when I’m in a flying chair!”
“We’re still in the shuttle.”
“I know that!” His voice broke, and he swung his legs up to set his boots down on the chair beside him. “I’m still about to piss myself.”
“Hmm.” Cheyenne activated another panel on the wall in front of Persh’al’s seat, and a metal drawer unfolded from what looked like thin air before shooting out in front of him. A soft yellow light blinked as a tray lifted from the hovering drawer to present the troll with two tin bottles. “Refreshments. You think that’ll help?”
Persh’al peered at the bottles, frowned, and glanced at Cheyenne. Watching the landscape whir past them behind her head made him dizzy, and he clenched his eyes shut. “You didn’t program this shuttle to make us a drink. I know you didn’t just do that.”
“No. This thing is fully stocked, or at least it’s supposed to be. I don’t know if that stuff’s still any good.”
Eyeing the tin bottles like one of them might bite him, the troll reached out and snatched one from the tray to inspect the thin label. He cracked the lid, took a tentative sniff, and barked a laugh. “Mudshine.”
“Hey, our favorite swill.”
“I’ll tell ya, this stuff never goes bad.” He took a small sip and wrinkled his nose at the sharp sting of bubbles climbing up his face. “Okay. Okay, yeah. I’m chill.”
