“Are you done with your little temper tantrum now? You do realize that I would normally be asleep at this time don’t you? You’ve ruined all the careful consideration I’ve given you by repeatedly running away. It’s quite rude.”
Oh.
He went there.
I pulled the loose portion of pipe that some welder had been about to finish connecting from the wall and used every particle of energy I had in my body to close the distance between Rathal and I with speed I’d never have gained if not for Patty’s penchant for breaking the rules. I must have been fast because Rathal didn’t have enough time to raise an arm to defend himself. The pipe connected with the side of his head with a bone jarring impact that sent a jolt up my arms. Satisfaction spread through me when Rathal hit the floor like a sack of bricks.
I stood over him, pipe in hand, breaths heavy, and waited to see if he’d get back up again. He didn’t. After a good two minutes the regret started creeping in. I hated myself for the concern that weaseled its way through the haze of anger and made me crouch to check if he was dead or not. Parts of me warred betweenhoping he fucking wasand praying he wasn’t. The conflicting emotions twisted and knotted inside me until my stomach cramped. I retracted my gauntlet to press two shaking fingers to the pulse point under his jaw and breathed a weary sigh of relief to find his strong heartbeat.
Alright, now what?
Looking around, I couldn’t see where the snake people had hidden themselves during the fight, but I didn’t want to be here when they decided to come out again. If Horak tried to recapture me, I’d have to kill him and right now, the thought of it exhausted me. It was like all the fight and energy had drained out of me like water out of the bathtub. My limbs were heavy and my throat felt stuffed full of cotton balls. There was a persistent throb behind my eyes and my ears were still freaking ringing.
I couldn’t just wander the streets down here. If the upper portion of this station was a maze, I shuddered to think of how lost I’d get in the Undercity. I swept my eyes upwards, casting my gaze along the ceiling as far as I could see until I spotted it. A square tube of grated metal with platforms that came down loaded with supplies and then went back up empty. The lift. There were several actually, running up and down in various locations, but there was one that seemed close. I stumbled with my first step and had to stop again to regather myself before I started walking down the empty road towards my avenue of escape.
It was eerie, the silence, when before it had been so loud down here. It felt like I was walking through a ghost town and I looked back to make sure Rathal hadn’t moved. He was still sprawled onthe ground where I’d left him. I wouldn’t be able to see him once I moved further down the inclining ‘city’ and that sent a chill up my spine and a kick in the ass to get myself moving. I didn’t think this good of an opportunity would ever come again.
Picking up the pace, I jogged through a maze of streets of metal and concrete, avoiding billowing steam from pressure let off in the piping that ran along every section of city I passed through. I kept my bearings by looking up at the lift every few minutes, anxiety spiking any time I lost sight of it behind a building. I didn’t see a single soul the thirty minutes it took to make it to the lift.
It was utilitarian, with a simple grate cage around the lift platform. There were stacked metal cargo boxes in mixed sizes still loaded since there were no handy snake people around to do the work and the gate lifted at my approach. I stepped onto the platform, touched the glass screen of the control panel to the left of the gate, thanked my lucky stars that the control for the lift wasn’t locked or complicated. There were only two options on the screen. Up or down. It was in an alien language that wasn’t translating, but one button was on top of the other, so I had a pretty good chance of being right.
I was.
With a touch of a button the gate closed and the lift started smoothly upwards. I sat down on a metal box, laid my trusty pipe I’d dubbed Bitchhammer across my lap, and closed my eyes with a long sigh.
Hell of a day.
thirteen
Callie
I’dcrouchedbehindthebox I’d been sitting on right before the lift had reached the top and stopped, a cheerful chime announcing that the ride was over. The hangar bay I’d arrived at was busy. The crew were unloading shuttles, placing cargo onto hover carts and bustling them back and forth across my field of vision. The burn off from the thrusters of incoming shuttles landing on the docking platforms blew heated air over the entire bay and caused sweat to drip down my spine under my armor. The acrid fumes of burning fuel reached inside to burn my nostrils even from the safety of my helmet.
I loved it.
It didn’t smell like jet fuel, but damn, it was close enough. My hands itched for the stick and the pressure of G-force pressing me into my seat.
Fuck.
I wanted one of those shuttles.
But there was no way I’d go unnoticed even if I retracted my armor and strode out there in my civilian clothes. I’d stick out like a sore thumb. All the crew working in the hangar bays were wearing the same uniform. A sickly yellow colored jumpsuit with alien script scrawled across their shoulders. Any passengers or flight crews were escorted to a cordoned off walkway on the far side of the bay and herded out of there to processing. Those coming in to board a shuttle were also escorted through an incoming walkway that ran parallel to the outgoing one. There were security personnel with real big guns standing guard at every entry and exit point, their hard, scowling faces and watchful eyes a clear warning. Not to mention the obvious security cameras glaring down from the ceilings and I was sure those were just to let it be known that you were being watched, there were probably even more that I couldn’t see.
So how the fuck was I going to get past all the personnel and get into a shuttle so I could steal the damn thing? I tapped my metal fingers along the lid of the box and ran through a dozen scenarios before the thought came to me and I nearly slapped myself in the face for not thinking of it immediately. The boxes. Boxes for cargo. The boxes chosen specifically for cargo.
Alright. Cut that out.
“Fucking Jack and Patty making me dumb as hell,” I muttered under my breath as I felt along the seam until I found the latch that opened it. It was a biometric scanner but this wasn’t one of the more heavy duty cargo containers I’d run into on theSolus, and it popped open with enough pressure on the lid. Inside were piles of folded rough white cloth. I shifted it around until there was enough space for me to squeeze inside if I retracted my armor and curled up into a ball. I climbed inside, closed the lid, and waited.
It took longer than I thought, which was long enough I worried about running out of air and dying inside this stupid fucking hotass box that smelled of old people clothes and desperation, but eventually I heard the telltale sound of footsteps and the low buzz of a hover cart coming my way. I clutched Bitchhammer to my chest and prayed.
A male voice shouted just outside my box, his voice annoyed. “Hey, Roz, come help me load this into the Freeza’s shuttle.”
I could hear a faint put out subordinate grumbling that started to get louder as whoever it was moved closer to me.
“Yeah, yeah, don’t get your wires crossed, Cortek. What the hell does Freeza need with all this junk anyways? It says here in the manifest it's all cloth.”
A few seconds of shifting and rustling and then the sudden jolt of my box being lifted.
