In the dim light, I located a door into what I thought should be the hangar proper. M-Bot bobbed up and down—no heat signatures beyond it. This door was unlocked, and I was relieved to find a vast cavernous room. Light shone through slits in the window shades, illuminating four large starships like slumbering leviathans. It was one of the most beautiful sights I’d ever encountered.
I whispered for M-Bot to watch for junk I might accidentally kick while walking—didn’t want to send a discarded lubricant can clanging across the floor. As I crept along the wall, I stopped by one of the windows to peek out through the slats.
I could clearly see Chet standing outside the other hangar, surrounded by the guard and mechanics. He spoke animatedly while carefully holding up a reality ash in one hand.
“Spensa,” M-Bot whispered. “It doesn’t seem like he’s betraying us.”
It didn’t. But, well, that was why I’d continued with the plan. If I really was just being paranoid, then I could still steal a ship, break out, and turn guns on the pirates while Chet joined me. I’d tell him I’d been spooked at the last minute and had decided to sneak into a building where everyone was asleep.
I turned from the window to survey the four fighters. Two were obviously civilian ships augmented with some makeshift destructors that marred the otherwise intentional designs. Fortunately the two others were military, with built-in weapons. I picked the interceptor—a lean, dangerous-looking variety of ship that balanced speed and offensive capabilities. It also felt the most familiar, similar to DDF ships from Detritus, with a long thin arrow shape.
I hurried over and grabbed the wing, then hauled myself up to the canopy. I was acquainted at this point with several different control schemes. I’d have to hope that I knew this one’s. If not, I’d inspect the other ships. Stars, I hoped I didn’t have to end up stealing that shuttlecraft in the corner. Piloting that would be like riding a potbellied pig into battle among a group of knights.
I peered into the cockpit of the ship and it was dark and shadowed, so I couldn’t identify the control scheme from outside. I felt along the rim and found an access port for M-Bot—most ships had external ones for diagnostics. I plugged in his drone to let him interface—which would theoretically allow him to open the cockpit and override the pilot lockouts.
“Ah…” M-Bot said. “This will be easy. Hmm. Lots of hard drive space in here. It might feel nice to be in a larger ship again. First though, let’s see… Should be through in thirty seconds or so.”
I nodded, leaning down and staring into the cockpit. That was a control sphere, wasn’t it? Yeah, the layout did seem familiar. The seat was strange and lumpy though. Like instead of being a chair, it was some other seating mechanism?
Thinking about that started me worrying about the kitsen, who had their own strange way of building starships. They’d helped me at the battle against Starsight. What would Winzik do to them? They were leaderless now that Hesho was dead, sucked out into the vacuum of space when Brade attacked their ship.
The kitsen had trusted me. Had I doomed their entire planet? What happened if Winzik actually persuaded the delvers to help him? I needed to find some way to stop them, so—
“Huh,” M-Bot said.
“What?” I hissed.
“I just got locked out of a few systems,” he said. “I can reroute, but… That’s odd. The lockout was via a manual override. How would…”
Lights went on in the cockpit, illuminating a creature that had been sleeping inside. The light reflected off a body that I had trouble sorting out—crystalline limbs and a bulky shape like a pile of glistening stone…
“Oh, scud,” I whispered.
No heat signatures. But not all life was warm. I knew that. Figments like Vapor seemed not to even have bodies. I’d made a terrible miscalculation. My sole consolation was that M-Bot had done the same.
“M-Bot!” I said. “Run!”
I leaped off the wing and hit the ground hard, stumbling as a loud alarm started blaring. I made it halfway to the door before a voice sounded over some speakers.
“Keep running, and I will vaporize you,” it said—my translator pin happily supplying the words in English. I froze, then looked back at the ship to find one of the wing-mounted destructors on a turret pointing right at me.
I raised my hands, struggling to catch my breath and fighting down my instinct to run. Looked like I was going to get another chance at being a pirate captive. And this time it was entirely my own fault.
Chapter 17
The pirates thumped me down in a seat and one of them lashed my hands behind me. A large group of them had gathered in the hangar, which was now flooded with light.
I saw only one human among them, the fellow I’d noticed earlier. Most of the rest were diones, though there were also several of those bird people and one varvax—the alien species I’d known as the Krell, small crablike creatures that moved around in large blocky exoskeleton suits built from something like sandstone.
The group parted to make way for an alien of a completely different race, with a wide face and powerful limbs. Long teeth and clawed fingers gave this one the overall appearance of something like a bear on its hind legs, except not furry. They walked with a hunched-forward gait, giving them a predatory air, beefy arms held forward and at the ready.
I took this one for the leader of the group, considering the fine jacket and impressive hat, complete with a large plume. “Words!” the creature said. “Trying to steal a starfighter, eh? You must have grown at least six muluns for trying that!”
My pin didn’t translate the word, which was odd. I sat there, my hands bound behind me, and tried to come up with a plan. The leader alien walked up and slapped me on the back in a way that felt distinctly friendly.
“But you have rotten luck,” the leader continued. “Not a single gulun for you! Picking a ship inhabited by one of our resonants? Words, girl. Words. Anyway, welcome to the Broadsiders.”
“Wait,” I said, twisting to look at the leader. “Welcome?”
“The more people we have around, the more stable our memories remain,” one of the diones explained. “So you’re lucky. No execution for you. Instead you get to be our new cleaning slave.”
Great. Well, as awful as being a slave sounded, I felt even worse for messing up the plan. Chet had been trustworthy all along, and here I’d bungled everything.
“There were some ashes on her, Captain,” the varvax noted in their language, holding up a glowing transparent bag.
The scruffy human stepped forward carrying M-Bot’s drone. “Ma’am? This is what she used to try to break into the starship.”
I felt a spike of alarm. M-Bot? The drone seemed completely lifeless. The human fiddled with it, then found the old power button—which M-Bot had disconnected. However, when the human pushed the button, the drone’s small acclivity rings powered on, turning from dull blue-black to a vibrant glowing azure. The drone began to hover on its own power. Then as the human let go, it hovered over to use its grabber arm to pick up a rag from the floor. It then began wiping a window with it.
M-Bot, you genius, I thought. He always talked about how intelligent he was, but considering how he acted a lot of the time, it was easy to forget. Right now though, he did a spot-on imitation of a cleaning drone.