by Lauren Esker
Keeping one of his hands ready for a quick stun if needed, Rei bent down and pushed up the sleeves of the leather coat to ensure that the prisoner's arms were bare of weapons. They were, though a shiny band was worn through the tawny fur of each wrist where a cuff had been until recently. The prisoner had no slave collar, nor signs of one.
The Galatean was a shaggy-haired lion type, huge even lying down. When he groaned and began to stir, Rei danced quickly back on light feet, cuffs at the ready.
"Attack me and I'll blow your head off," Rei said quietly. "Can you get up?"
After a hesitation, the Galatean pushed himself up to his hands and knees, then lurched unsteadily to his feet. Even wobbly from stasis hangover, he looked like somebody Rei didn't want to take on a fight, body-mods or not. His face was scarred with a set of parallel gouges like claw marks, scoring his cheek from just below his left eye to his jawline. They weren't fresh; the scars had faded to silvery, hairless lines in the tawny fuzz on his face.
"Who are you?" the Galatean asked, his voice raspy from the after-effects of stasis.
"Someone who'd like your help taking down the crew of this ship. Are you in?"
The Galatean smiled grimly, showing pointed canines. "I'm in. Name's Jeren."
"Rei."
Before he could say anything else, there was a clang of metal from the trap door where he'd stunned the Galatean woman. Rei grabbed Jeren's massive arm and pulled him behind a row of strapped-down barrels, where they both ducked out of sight.
"Suvi?" a male voice called.
Rei risked a glance around the barrels. A leopard-spotted male Galatean was just stepping off the ladder with his shields powered up; Rei could tell by the faint, opalescent glimmer on his skin when he moved, like the surface of a soap bubble. Even at full power, Rei wouldn't be able to penetrate those shields on his first couple of shots.
The shields were proof against energy attacks, but weren't nearly as effective versus blunt-force trauma, and trying to shield against it was a much greater power drain. Rei took a thoughtful, longer look at the barrels in front of him. According to the labels, they were filled with nutrient slurry for the ship's galley. Nothing explosive or incendiary. He was probably strong enough to pick up a full barrel, but he couldn't throw it, especially not that far.
However, right next to him, hanging on the wall, were a pair of power grippers for moving cargo.
Rei unhooked them from the wall. Each was a handle with its own small powerpack. He cut the barrels loose from the cargo restraints with a swipe of his cuffs' cutting torch and took a handle in each hand. Activated with a quick squeeze, they clamped onto the first barrel, a self-contained energy field holding them in place.
Rei hoisted it, stepped out from behind the row of barrels and reversed the grippers' charge at full power. The barrel shot from his hands as if from a catapult, slammed into the Galatean soldier, and smashed him into the wall.
Without the shields, he would have been a smear of paste on the wall. Even with the shields, he'd be reeling. Rei clamped onto another barrel and charged across the cargo bay, holding it in front of him like a shield. With the grippers buffering the barrel's weight, it felt moderately heavy and strangely unwieldy, like carrying something using a pair of forks.
The Galatean soldier rolled over and pushed the barrel off himself, just in time to be met full-force by a second barrel with Rei on the other side of it. Rei slammed the Galatean's head into the wall with the weight of another full load of nutrient slurry.
After a second blow from the now-dented barrel, the Galatean's shields flickered and vanished as he passed out. Rei stunned him on low power just to be on the safe side, then dragged him to the pods.
Jeren loomed at his shoulder. "You leaving him alive?"
"If I can, yes."
The big Galatean snorted. "Bad idea," he remarked, and reached for their prisoner's limp wrists, stripping off the soldier's cuffs to clasp them onto his own wrists.
"It's my call," Rei said, tensing. Now his maybe-ally was huge, dangerous, and armed. Who have I allied myself with? Jeren could be a rapist, a murderer, a slave-trader; there was no telling what list of crimes had gotten him locked up in that pod.
"Up to you." Jeren didn't interfere as Rei pushed the soldier into one of the empty pods and closed it. "But don't start crying if I kill a couple of 'em myself."
"Self-defense is fine. They'll be trying to kill us too."
Jeren didn't answer. He pointed at the open hatch, spilling light down from the ship's living area above them. "Your takedown wasn't quiet. They'll know we're here."
"I know." They had mere moments before the Galateans remaining on the ship worked out some kind of plan for dealing with the intruders they now knew were below them.
"Are we in space or on a planet?"
"Planet," Rei said. "Breathable atmosphere."
"Then we rig the engine core to blow and take a skimmer. Get 'em all that way."
Rei shook his head. "I want the ship intact." Right now there was exactly one ship on this entire planet capable of interstellar flight, and he wasn't giving it up. "You can take a skimmer if you want. You don't have to stay."
Now it was Jeren's turn to shake his shaggy head. "I owe you an honor-debt for getting me out of that pod. Anyway ..." The sharp-toothed, feline grin flashed again. "I owe them for putting me in it in the first place. Let's go collect on it."
***
Sarah dropped out of the hole in the side of the spaceship—a real SPACESHIP! a part of her brain shrieked at her, not for the first time—and hit wet pasture grass in her impractical, pretty shoes. One of them immediately jinked sideways. Sarah wobbled and caught herself, clutching at sharp metal edges that scored the edge of her palm, and managed not to twist an ankle. Barely. She touched her tongue to the cut flesh at the side of her hand, decided it wasn't too bad, and clenched her hand into a fist to stop it from bleeding.
"Screw you, pretty shoes," she muttered, kicking them off. Rei had the right idea.
On quiet bare feet, she ran through the night toward the house.
Either the Galateans didn't detect her, or they considered her no threat, because there were no lights or shouts or laser beams spearing the night. She crouched next to the raspberry bushes beside the back porch to think about her next move.
It was quiet enough out here that she could hear faint voices inside the house, though she couldn't make out what they were saying or whether one of them was her dad's. The spaceship sitting in the pasture made no noise at all—though, she thought, a parked car wouldn't either. It was little more than a greater area of darkness against the dark pasture. Sarah wished she could see it by daylight.
She crept around the side of the house, crabwalking to stay under the level of the windows, and paused again at the base of the maple tree outside her second-floor bedroom window. As a kid she used to come and go that way all the time, not so much to sneak out—Sarah hadn't been a sneaking-out kind of kid—but just because climbing the tree was more fun than using the door.
She was no longer the agile little monkey that she'd been at age eight. Also, the tree had lost the big branch that used to extend toward the porch, the one that she always used to hop onto so she could reach the branch just below the one outside her window. Without that first stair-step, the trunk loomed above her like a cliff.
But she was also taller and stronger than she had been at eight.
Sarah stood up slowly with the tree between her and the house. The bark was rough and corrugated, with all the old limb scars and knots that aging trees accumulate. It shouldn't be impossible to climb, though doing it quietly was the trick. She regretfully laid the tire iron among the old tree roots. Stretching, she dug her fingers into the bark as high as she could reach and wedged her bare toes into an old knothole.
As she cautiously trusted her weight to her fingers and toes, her dad's old tree-climbing lessons came back to her. You got two hands and two legs, Sarah, so make sure you've alw
ays got your weight on three of 'em before you let go with the fourth one.
Three points of contact at all times, she translated into the lingo of adult, college-educated Sarah. That wasn't so hard. Set both feet, make sure she had a good handhold, then move her other hand up. Repeat with one of her feet. Next hand. Next foot.
Like the little monkey she'd once been, she crept up the tree, one handhold and toehold at a time.
Getting onto the branch outside the window was harder and took a bit of scrambling. She froze as bits of bark showered under her, clinging desperately by her fingertips and all too aware of gravity dragging her, inch by inch, into the void.
But there were no shouts from below, and she gave it a last desperate scramble and draped herself over the branch. Her bedroom window was closed, but this part had never been hard. The lock had been broken ever since she could remember, and the window fit badly in its painted sash, warped from winters past. She reached out to pry it open—
"Awww, what are you doing up a tree, poor little thing?"
Sarah jerked so violently that she nearly lost her balance and plunged off the branch headfirst. Clinging to the bark with bruised fingers, she looked down. A male Galatean with leopard-spotted fur stood at the base of the tree, arms crossed, looking up at her. He could have easily looked up her skirt from his vantage point—her legs were spread-eagled to grip the branch with her toes—but he seemed to be very carefully not doing that.
Gold glinted on his wrists. He was, she reminded herself, armed and dangerous.
And she couldn't say a word to him without giving away that she could understand him. It was his tone that reminded her, that sweetly crooning tone, exactly like she would have used for a cat up a tree.
He didn't know she had an implant.
This was a complication she suspected Rei hadn't considered; they'd both gotten so used to being able to talk to each other that it was easy to forget most humans couldn't.
Well, he is down there, and I'm up here. It's not like he can make me—
The Galatean reached up and casually closed one of his hands around her ankle. She had forgotten how goddamn huge they were. This dude was almost eight feet tall. She had to be at least ten feet off the ground, but all he had to do was stretch a little to reach her.
She stifled a yelp and tried to kick him with her bare feet. All he did was clamp his other hand on her other ankle and pull her out of the tree. There was a terrible minute of falling—she let out a wordless cry—and then he caught her as if she weighed nothing and lowered her to the ground.
Sarah swallowed a couple of times and brushed her hair out of her face. She crossed her arms and stared up at him, trying to pretend he didn't have a couple feet of height and about two hundred pounds of muscle on her. It was all she could do to keep her mouth shut.
"Well, you're a little charmer," he said mildly. His voice was lighter than she would've expected for someone so huge. One big hand settled on her shoulder; she tried to shrug it off, but it felt like his fingers were made of steel. "C'mon, my baby tree bird. Let's go put you in a pretty birdcage."
Sarah twisted away—and managed to do it, this time, startling him enough that he didn't clamp down in time. She lunged for the tire iron. He might be huge, but even a leopard-bear-bodybuilder couldn't shrug off an iron bar to the face. She swung it with all her might—
—only to have him catch it in midair, stopping it with a grunt of effort.
"So birds on your world have claws." His tone was amused. He gave the tire iron a sharp wrench, ripping it out of her hands, and flung it away into the pasture.
The cuts on her palm tore open again. Sarah wrapped her other hand around the injured one and clamped her jaw shut on the urge to speak, complain, ask him questions—or even protest as he gripped her arm, not hard enough to be painful, but with a cage-bar strength that she didn't think she could break this time.
He stopped suddenly, head going up like he was listening to something. "Yeah, really?" he said. "I just caught me one, too."
Sarah stiffened, and hoped it would be taken for alarm at his behavior rather than understanding his words. Does that mean they've caught Rei?
"No, mine's a native. Caught her trying to climb through a window of the house. No weapons. She's probably part of the old guy's clan. Want me to come back to the ship?" A pause, then: "Yes, sir," the Galatean said.
Sarah wished desperately that the translator let her hear the other half of the conversation. Instead she put up with having him steer her toward the door of her own house. At least he didn't seem to be trying to hurt her. He wasn't even restraining her. He seemed to consider her no threat at all.
Oh, Rei, I hope you're okay.
***
Rei could tell Jeren wasn't a team player when the scar-faced Galatean took off for the other ladder to the deck above them without saying a word.
There were only three ways out of the cargo hold: two ladders and the freight elevator. The trap door the Galatean soldiers had come through was still open, and Rei guessed that one would be guarded. The ladder Jeren had selected was the one most likely to lead to an empty part of the ship.
Unless they'd had the sense to guard all the exits leading out of the hold, but they might not have the manpower to do that.
There was a sudden clatter as something came through the trap door and bounced on the deck plates beneath. It was already hissing and spewing smoke. "Gas grenade!" Rei called to Jeren, who was working on getting the other trap door open; it looked like they'd sealed it, which probably meant the elevator wouldn't be working either.
Rei activated his shields. In a pinch, the personal shields could be used as a makeshift spacesuit, which meant they should be proof against poison gas as well.
Green light flashed, and sparks showered down into the hold. Jeren had given up on finesse and just blasted through the trap door. He was up and through in an instant. After a pause to listen for sounds of fighting above, Rei followed.
He emerged in a small galley, little more than an alcove with machines for heating food and cleaning dishes. Beyond it was a pocket-sized lounge with a few tables and chairs crowded together. There was no sign of Jeren, but Rei heard a sudden yell and the sizzle of laser weapons from somewhere nearby. Sounded like Jeren was keeping the Galateans occupied. Rei hoped his mysterious ally managed not to make holes in the ship while he was at it.
It was disconcerting to notice how lightweight and flimsy the spaceship's interior seemed to him now, compared to the solidity of planetside houses and furniture. Flimsy didn't necessarily mean fragile; most of the ship's furnishings and interior dividing walls were made of various tough, light alloys. But there was a permanence to planetary construction, a sense of weight and heft.
Maybe Sarah's iron bar wasn't such a useless weapon after all.
He didn't have an iron bar, but he did have a spare set of cuffs. Rei crouched behind a table, detached one of his silver cuffs from its coupling to the gold one, and snapped it open. He'd been shown during his training how to turn them into makeshift bombs—or suicide devices. It was a moment's work to rewire it to overload and explode.
With the bomb armed but not set, he left the lounge and went into a short hallway lined with doors. The ship was like a maze, subdivided into many little compartments. Rei knew that all the dividing walls were meant to provide an illusion of privacy and make the ship's limited space feel less oppressive on long deep-space missions, but it just made him feel like he was trapped in a jungle, with limited visibility and the possibility of enemies approaching from any direction.
There was a sudden loud thump and the door at the end of the hallway burst open. A Galatean soldier tumbled through, with Jeren on top of him. Both were shielded; their blows had little effect except to knock the other one down.
"Jeren!" Rei shouted. "Get back!"
He knelt and hurled the cuff along the floor, bringing back a sudden intense memory of playing some kind of similar game on the ice of a froze
n pond near his village as a child. It was just the same move, the way they would set the flat stones against the ice and give them a little spin as they went flying—
But this stone was about to explode. Rei palmed open the door to the nearest crew compartment—he didn't expect it to be locked; on a ship like this, doors rarely were—and hurled himself into someone's living space just as the cuff-bomb went off with a deep whump.
The thought occurred to him that maybe he should stop worrying about Jeren ripping holes in the ship, if he was setting off bombs inside it.
He peeked out. The hallway was filled with smoke and the reek of burning plastic. The hull and floor were both intact, but the explosion had buckled the flimsy interior walls, opening up a gap into the ship's tiny gym. Jeren was just straightening up from the body of the soldier who had been caught in the blast.
Rei didn't bother asking if he was already dead or if Jeren had finished him off; it didn't matter now. "How many are left?" he asked.
"I took out another one on the bridge. There's at least one more on the ship." Jeren nudged the twisted, blackened remains of the cuff with his toe. "How'd you do that?"
"Something they teach slave soldiers. Show you later. Where'd the other one go?"
"Don't know. It's their captain, Kyaroi."
Wonderful. The person who knew the ship best and had the access codes to everything.
The door behind Jeren, nearly torn out of the wall, led to the bridge. A quick visual check showed that the bridge was unoccupied. Scorch marks on the walls and a charred section of console suggested this was where the bulk of the fighting between Jeren and the Galateans had taken place.
"He locked us out," Rei said, checking the main console, "but I think I can get us back into the ship's main systems, at least."
"You seem to know Galatean tech pretty well, for not being one."
"I'm a slave soldier and a pilot," Rei said shortly. "I was trained in it."
Jeren raised a hand. "No offense, pal. You know these ships well enough to guess where the captain might've gone?"
