“Does it work for you?” Driok asks.
“It does, or you’d be leaving me behind.”
“Good,” Driok replies. “Szorn is an appalling place, but it is the place we need to be.”
“In my experience, that’s how things always go,” I grumble as I follow Driok out of the airlock and onto the ash-grey surface.
We appear to be a long way from anywhere, but past a heat haze, I see buildings in the distance.
“What now?”
“For now, we are keeping our Sarkarnii sides to ourselves,” Driok says. “So, we get to travel a different way.”
I can’t deny I’m slightly disappointed at not being able to fly with him again. Driok presses his thumb on his comm, and there’s a soft metallic whooshing sound. I look around to see two sleek craft skimming the ground towards us. They look like a motorcycle and a blimp had a baby and then dipped it in chrome.
“You expect me to ride one of these?”
“I don’t just expect you, I’m sure you will.” Driok gives me a knicker melting grin. “You are my little spitfire and you can do anything.”
His words catch me off guard. I wasn’t expecting a compliment. For a moment, my lungs stop working.
And then life rushes to catch up with me. The grey planet, the ground underneath which looks like it’s desiccated bone, the stench I fortunately cannot smell anymore. The Sarkarnii warlord who isn’t treating me like a china doll, easily broken.
“Okay.” I smile back. “Let’s go!”
I jump astride the nearest machine, and I’m faced with a range of controls which are completely alien. Driok leans over me, and I find I’m missing the spicy, smoky scent which usually accompanies him because I’m wearing the mask.
“This makes it go.” He presses a huge digit tipped with a claw on the screen, which lights up. “This controls the speed.” He points at the lefthand panel. “Just put your hand on it and drag it up or down.”
“Seems pretty easy,” I reply. “How do I steer?”
Driok opens a hidden chamber at the front of the craft and extracts something which looks like a head band, which he wraps around my forehead.
“Just think where you want to go, and it will follow.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Driok strides over to his space bike and puts on his head band. Somehow he makes it look cool. I probably look like a leftover from the seventies. He slings his bag of weapons behind the seat and climbs on.
“Watch me, little mate. Then you try.”
The craft hums to life, and Driok shoots off, moving from left to right before coming to a halt.
“How hard can this be?” I press on the screen to start it up and then move my hand to increase the speed.
Looking ahead, I start to move, and as I think about going left, I go left. I think about going right, and I go right. I laugh out loud.
“Are you ready?” Driok asks. I nod, far too excited to say anything. “Then follow me,” he says. “To victory.”
MAGGIE
The more I drive the space bike, the more I’m enjoying it and the easier it gets, not that I’m going to admit it to Driok.
Although I do race him for a while, until I decide he’s probably letting me keep up with him, rather than the fact I’m actually winning, so instead I pay more attention to how the craft moves, or rather I concentrate on how it moves, how I can move it, how it becomes almost part of me.
Like I’m flying too.
