He flings himself back into his command seat, hooking one leg over the arm and his tail unfurling in a riot of scales and spines through a hole in the rear.
If I’ve got Dalox on my side, the chances of something, or in fact everyone, dying has drastically increased.
And any plan I had has disappeared over the horizon, to be buried in the dust of the nevving planetoid beneath us.
MAGGIE
“Do you live here?” I ask as Kes leads me past the waterfalls and into another area which looks for all the universe like an empty swimming pool.
“Here?” Kes queries. “No. Why do you ask?”
“It would be a very weird place to live.”
“It’s full of water.” Kes looks at me, head slightly on one side, as if I’m a bit stupid. “Why would anything live here except water breathers? We use it for storage as it hides our weapons from the Ulep’s roving scanners.”
“The Ulep who have my Sarkarnii?”
“Probably have your Sarkarnii.”
“And they knew he was here due to the roving scanners?”
“No, they knew he was here because they got some intelligence he would be arriving soon.”
I growl under my breath. The traitor who gave us up on Szorn has somehow followed us here. It has to be the baron.
“Your Sarkarnii has made an enemy of the Ulep,” Kes says.
“And you’re not?”
Kes splutters out a snort of pure anger.
“Any creature who likes its insides to stay on its insides, providing that’s where they were in the first place, is an enemy of the Ulep, if they know what’s good for them!”
“So why does this planetoid shield them?” I respond. We pass the empty pool, duck under a large pipe which curls around another, looking for all the world like a flume, but it simply can’t be, and then head out through a small airlock so that we’re in a long passage.
“There is no governing body here. All you see is out of necessity. Nothing stays long enough for it to be an issue.”
“You mean no one is making any credits?” I say, dryly.
“What money is there to be made out of dust?”
“Given the number of life forms here, there are credits to be made. This place is useful for plenty.”
“This place is where you go when all else has failed. What would be the point of governing it?” Kes presses his little paw on the wall, and an airlock opens up jerkily.
He gestures for me to go inside. I still have my pulsar pistol, although in a confined space, I’m not sure how much use it will be, and given we came purely to look and then leave, I already know I’m not in any position to resist should there be any fighting.
Still, just knowing I have the thing gives me a confidence. One I didn’t have the first time I was taken by aliens, or the second. I won’t count Driok as a third occasion, nor Kes as a fourth. If only for my own mental arithmetic…and sanity.
In my pocket, my comm vibrates. I look briefly at my surroundings, which are a jumble of weird furniture and so many surfaces covered in what looks like rubbish.
So far, so raccoon. I dig out my comm. On it there are messages…messages from my friends. New ones.
For a moment I stare at it, my mouth open.
Kerra
Darax says Dalox is closer to finding Maggie and Driok
