Shadow Run

by Michael Miller

  “All right. I’ll give you fifteen percent,” she said.

  Basra sighed and held out his hand, palm up. “Agreed, but you pick it up from our landing pad.”

  Mother Orr slapped his open hand. “It’s a deal. If the Shadow market weren’t on the rise right now, I’d have just kicked you out on the street.”

  He smiled. “I know. A pleasure, as always.”

  “Mmm-hmm. You can bring in arm candy anytime you like, Basra. Oh, and the person you purchased this from—were they from that ice planet? Alaxak?”

  “They were,” he said. “Why?”

  “There’s a bounty for any of the crazies from that planet, if they’ve got Shadow poisoning. Any of them, but especially this particular one.” She held up her infopad.

  My heart went still in my chest, and I fought to keep any expression from my face. Fortunately, she was focused on Basra, who of course displayed nothing whatsoever.

  If only the infopad had been as blank. It glowed with a computationally generated image of Qole.

  “So, that’s bad,” I muttered as we exited the building. “The ransom isn’t through any official channels, nor is it likely traceable to Treznor-Nirmana, but still, I thought they would have kept quieter about their interest in her in order to avoid revealing their hand too soon. This is escalating much more quickly than I’d anticipated.”

  “It seems to be getting worse,” Basra responded in a low voice. “Keep walking down the street and point out something interesting to me, bearing twenty-two five.”

  I scanned the street to my northeast and pretended to point to a sign advertising a house of ill repute. What could I say, it was all that was available. As I did, I noticed the blond buzz cut from the corner of my eye, bobbing along slightly behind us on the opposite street.

  I was roasting in the humidity of the streets, but I still shivered. For him to follow us like that, in this crowd, meant he was probably a bounty hunter, and a good one. And he’d managed to identify our ship as a possible match. There was a reason we’d slipped in among hundreds and docked at the highest point on the most distant, congested tower.

  Basra pretended to laugh. “When that vehicle passes,” he said with exaggerated amusement, “follow me down the alley to the right.”

  He must have been thinking what I was. If we could lose the fellow, then perhaps we could make it back to the ship and escape before any other bounty hunters knew to swarm. A large cargo vessel, rusting and paint peeling, rumbled down the street toward us. I was glad of the size and racket, which would obscure us from our follower.

  The second it began to pass us, Basra sprinted for the end of the alley, with me right behind him. He took a series of turns I never could have remembered, and then stopped in the middle of an intersection, scanning up and down the street. I couldn’t see anything other than garbage and a passed-out vagrant, but they seemed to serve as sufficient markers, as we took off pell-mell again. The next thing I knew, we were climbing a rickety ladder up the side of a deserted and crumbling building. Some rungs had rusted out altogether, but we made it to the top.

  “Oh boy, now what?” I wheezed. At least he was breathing somewhat heavily as well.

  He pointed toward the docking bays in the distance. “We can head over the rooftops back to the ship.” His other hand activated the comm on his ear, which, now that I noticed, was far nicer than anything the rest of the crew sported. “Kaitan, Basra.”

  “Basra, Qole. Find a buyer?”

  “Yes, but we’ve attracted attention. We’re taking a different route back, and might be delayed. Tell Eton to be on the lookout for company.”

  There was a pause on the other end, but then Qole’s voice came back, calm and steady. “Affirmative. Stay safe, and let us know if you need any assistance. We’ll be ready for takeoff when you get here.”

  Basra turned to me. “Follow me, and do exactly as I do.”

  I tried my best, while Basra scrambled across boards, climbed old ladders, jumped between adjacent shacks, and scaled walls with cleverly chiseled footholds. He either had supreme faith in my abilities or didn’t care what happened to me.

  It took a while, but it finally began to dawn on me, as we picked our way through the sunset-drenched rooftops, that I was viewing yet a third ecosystem of the city. Here, things were quieter, and anyone we met left us to ourselves, as we did to them. These were the pathways of the people who had to stay out of sight and out of mind, people with no power. Basra was ignored, but anytime someone caught sight of me they shrank out of sight as quickly as possible. I had known my traveling clothes were a bit too sharp for rustic communities, but here I apparently reeked of wealth. It was a level of disparity I was not used to.

  And Basra must have come from it, to know it and fit in so well. Maybe his parents had indentured him to the Big Two because they couldn’t afford the extra mouth to feed. Or maybe Basra didn’t have parents, and he’d indentured himself.

  In any case, Basra, in spite of his unique appearance, knew how to blend in and lay low. Though perhaps he now stayed for other reasons, this was no doubt why he had chosen Alaxak and the Kaitan at the start, especially if he was secretly working for someone powerful. It was the last place somebody would think to look for anyone or anything of significance.

  Well, until now.

  Basra bribed the turbolift operators for our final ascent, something I was grateful for. Speed was more important than stealth at this point. We arrived at the landing pad without incident—outside of my general anxiety and profuse sweating. Eton met us, face grim, with a snub-nosed and very polished photon gun cradled in one hand. It wasn’t anything like the XR-25 Molten-Force, but it was well taken care of and would still do the job of punching a sizzling hole through someone’s chest.

  “It took you long enough,” he said. “Come on, get yourselves onboard.”

  “Shadow?” Basra asked.

  “Payment received and cargo unloaded,” Qole informed us, walking down the ramp. “Just waiting on you. It’s been quiet up here, no chatter or snoopers, so let’s leave while the leaving is good.”

  Eton swore, spying over the side of the landing pad with a set of vision-amps. “There’s a fellow in a suit leading six goons into the turbolift on ground level. Are those your friends?”

  I peered down. It was too far down to see anything but indistinct shapes, but I was sure I spotted a tiny blond head disappearing into the building beneath us. “If there’s a blond crew cut, yes.”

  Eton nodded and raised an arm to usher Basra and me up the Kaitan’s ramp, but I ducked under, turning away.

  Eton swore. “What are you doing? We’ve got a minute tops before they’re up here. Get on the damn ship!” He barked at me again when he saw me run for the turbolift doors. “The controls up here don’t even work!”

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I reached into my bag and felt the familiar shape of the sheath that contained my blade. My thumb easily found the release point, and the case popped open, feeding the sword into my hand.

  Disruption Blades weren’t just called that because they cut through energy shields. Any sword would be one, otherwise. They were Disruption Blades, because when you activated a switch in the hilt, they would output an energy field that could destroy shields, communication waves, or anything electronic in close contact with the weapon.

  A flip of my thumb, and blue light shot up the middle of my blade as I ran toward the turbolift door. The light blinked more rapidly as the lift drew nearer, and I drove the point of the sword into the turbolift controls. Sparks arced in a miniature lightning storm, scoring the metal around it and leaving the smell of burned ozone. The lights above the door dimmed, brightened, and then went out.

  I yanked out my blade and ran back to the ship, past a stunned Eton, snagging my bag as I went. It felt good to be useful again.

  I was too focused on taking off and too deafened by the roar of the engines as we left the planet’s atmosphere to notice him coming up behind me. But
then I felt the pressure of a hand on the back of my captain’s chair. I wasn’t sure if I knew it was him, or hoped it was, or dreaded it. A quick glance through the floor’s metal grating to the level below told me it wasn’t Telu or Basra—they were both at their stations. And Arjan and Eton were still too shamefaced to approach me with anything less than an emergency.

  I missed the days of my uncomplicated crew family. Nev was something else. He was too complicated. I felt good around him, and I hated myself around him. It burned, practically, the two pulls. Like liftoff, the tug-of-war between gravity and the thrusters, with me squashed in between, with his stupid smile and his damned eyes.

  And then, when I’d let myself get too close to him, my eyes had made everything worse.

  Without giving him the chance to speak first, I said, “Please go inform Telu of how we should approach Luvos so she can set our precise coordinates once I activate the Belarius Drive.”

  “I already did,” he said. “Qole—”

  “I don’t have time for any—”

  “I know. And by all means, lay on the speed until we reach a safe range to engage the drive. But we’ve got some time yet. You need to see this, and I wanted it to be me who showed you.”

  Nev leaned over my shoulder before I could object, coming uncomfortably close to touching me as he tapped at an infopad plugged into its stand on the dash. He was no longer wearing his jacket, just a fitted black undershirt. That wouldn’t last once the chill of space set in. Good thing, too. I tried to lean back, tried to quiet my pulse, tried hard to hate the muscles in his forearms. Instead, I found myself noticing that he smelled of sweat from Ranta’s heat, and something else, something indefinably him.

  I did hate knowing how he smelled. Probably because I liked how he smelled.

  All my anger and embarrassment was replaced by shock, though, when my face appeared on the infopad screen. “Why…?” I swallowed. “Why is there a very large sum of money listed under my picture?” It wasn’t a picture, but a three-dimensional composite, likely from the video footage they’d recorded of me on the destroyer.

  …A destroyer belonging to the Treznor-Nirmana family, who were, according to Basra, now richer than the Dracortes. The family that wanted to surpass the Dracortes in every way. The family whose planet we’d just left.

  I knew the answer to my own question before I’d finished asking it.

  The sum listed under my picture wasn’t enough to buy a moon or anything, but several ships at least. Gamut’s villagers—hell, my own kin—would probably turn me over for that much money. Not Arjan, so maybe it was good he was the only kin I had left.

  Nev seemed to understand this, because he said, in his softer tone, “I’m sorry.” That was why he was apologetic—not for something as stupid as recoiling at the sight of my Shadow-clouded eyes, like I’d been hoping. “I just want you to know that my family isn’t behind this. They only wish to protect you—”

  “And their interests,” I added, but my voice was empty of any anger. I was too stunned to even remind him that the Dracortes were the reason I was in this situation in the first place. Their attention was what had drawn everyone else’s.

  “And those,” he conceded. “Which is why they wouldn’t want to broadcast your unique importance to every last system like this. As unfortunate as it may be, my family citadel in Dracorva is truly the only place in the galaxy you’ll be safe now. I wouldn’t even trust your safety to anywhere else on Luvos.”

  His words wrapped around me like his arms couldn’t. I’d been captain of the Kaitan since I was fourteen. Taking care of our little crew for so long. And every single one of them had my back, but this was the first time I’d been powerless to protect them myself. Even if he only wanted our safety for his family’s sake, I held still in that embrace for a moment, until he spoke again.

  “I just wanted to emphasize this,” he continued, “in case this caused any second thou—”

  The rest of what he’d been about to say was drowned out by the now-familiar whoop of the weapons lock alarm.

  “Blast it all,” Nev finished.

  I’d already launched bolt upright, scanning the feeds. “One ship locked on…not a destroyer, at least, but a trade vessel of some kind—”

  “A weaponized Orbit freighter, retrofitted for privateering,” he said, peering over my shoulder. “Obvious bounty hunters.”

  “And two more following.”

  “Posting a ransom through discreet channels is one thing, but at least Treznor-Nirmana isn’t moving more openly, yet.” He was trying to sound reassuring.

  “A Treznor destroyer is taking off from the planet now, too,” Basra added from below, several comms held to his ears at once. “How’s that for open?”

  Nev and I exchanged grim glances. Unlike the smaller ships, the destroyer would be able to employ its tractor beam to keep us from escaping.

  Arjan burst onto the bridge. This constituted enough of an emergency, I supposed, to risk my presence. “Eton’s already headed for the turret,” he said.

  “It won’t be enough,” I muttered. “They’re better equipped than we are, and gaining on us. We might be able to reach a safe distance to engage the Belarius Drive ahead of the destroyer, but not these three. They’ll catch us and disable us.”

  It seemed inevitable. We couldn’t outrun them, and we couldn’t activate the drive right now; we were too close to a planetary body, and we’d risk tearing holes in space-time where they shouldn’t be torn. Or, as far as I understood it, we’d die, and maybe take a lot of people with us.

  Nev grimaced. “They’ll want to secure their bounty before anyone working for the Treznor-Nirmanas gets here. You’re going full speed,” he said, with only the hint of a question. At least he didn’t take me for a total idiot. “How long until we’re at the distance we can engage?”

  “Five minutes.”

  “We won’t make it,” Arjan said. It had only taken him the barest glimpse at the screens over my other shoulder to come to such an accurate conclusion—proof that it was by his choice alone that I sat in this chair instead of him.

  For half a second, I almost wished he were in my place. Then I realized how cruel that was as the terror filled me like freezing water, seizing up my lungs. There was no way Arjan could take this, not when I barely could.

  Or so I thought until he straightened, glanced through the floor at Basra, and said, “Qole, I need to do something, and you have to let me.” It wasn’t a request, more a statement of fact.

  “Do what?” I asked.

  He faced Nev and his jaw flexed with tension. “You promise that you will cover any damages to this ship?”

  “Presuming we survive capture, torture, and possible explosive dismemberment, then yes,” Nev said, summoning his dry humor from somewhere, even at a time like this. I had to hold in a hysterical laugh.

  “Good. I have an idea…but I’m going to need our net.” Before I could ask what in the systems he was going to do with it, he clapped Nev on the shoulder. “If I don’t make it back for whatever reason, I just…Please, take care of my sister.”

  And then he was off the bridge before I could argue. Nev looked oddly winded, as if Arjan had punched him in the stomach instead.

  Basra called after Arjan without getting a response, and there was something in his voice I’d never heard before, though I’d heard it in all of ours at one time or another.

  It sounded a little like fear.

  The glinting triangle of the skiff jetted out of its small docking bay in the upper midships of the Kaitan a minute later. The cables of the mag-field net whipped out behind it, unspooling along the boom. I wasn’t entirely sure what Arjan was planning, but I had a hunch.

  I commed him. “Arjan, don’t tell me you’re going to do what I think—”

  “Be ready to cut loose on your end of the net as soon as I say.”

  “Those ships aren’t Shadow, Arjan! They’re a lot more solid—”

  “And therefore w
ay easier to catch,” he said with a hint of a smirk in his voice.

  “It’s too dangerous!”

  “Less dangerous than a Shadow run, probably.” He paused. “And far less dangerous than doing nothing.”

  “Shadow doesn’t shoot plasma rockets,” Nev said behind me.

  As if triggered by his ominous words, a flare went up from the closest ship, leaving a bright arc of white across the blackness.

  Telu’s voice hissed both from below me and through the comm speaker. “Sorry, Cap, I was trying to get their weapons offline, but they’re locked down tight, and they have hackers of their own. They’re trying to get on the comm channel we have open to Arjan, and it’s all I can do to keep them out and it open.”

  Eton’s voice piped through the comm at nearly a shout. “Should I respond? The mass driver won’t be much against their energy weapons, but I have another little something I could always go get…”

  He had a “little something” on board that would be more effective against ships than the mass driver? What the hell was Eton hoarding on the Kaitan? I almost didn’t want to know.

  Before I could ask, Arjan said, “Hold.” The skiff flew in a glinting streak straight for the three ships, their plasma rocket heading out to meet him. “I’ll draw their fire.”

  “Arjan, are you kidding me? If they don’t blow you up first, that destroyer will be right behind them!”

  “Just trust me.”

  I didn’t have many other options, especially now that Arjan was out in the skiff and I couldn’t activate the drive and leave him behind. Not that we would make it far enough to engage it in the first place with the other two ships entering firing range.

  Just before the first plasma rocket hit Arjan head-on, the skiff barrel-rolled in an insane blur. The rocket missed, glanced off the twisted cables behind him, and exploded harmlessly off to one side. Arjan leveled out, but only for a half second. He dove under the ships, already rolling back the other way, both to dodge the lightning storm of fire now raining down on him and to straighten out the cables. He managed to keep track of all his turns and soar up and around the ships in a dizzying arc.