Born of Sand (Tales of a Dying Star Book 5) (5 page)

BOOK: Born of Sand (Tales of a Dying Star Book 5)
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Mira had nothing to say to that. The woman shook her head and left the room.

She tries to confuse me with puzzles,
Mira thought.
I would never harm an innocent for my own gain
. But she knew others would, and the thought left her trembling in the humid room.

She tried picturing her daughters, crammed into their tiny metal crate on the freighter. The journey should have lasted only a few days. Had they already arrived at the Oasis station? Green plants and glass walls and
light
, so much light, the station always illuminated as it rotated around their star. She imagined her girls playing stealth and seek, Ami hiding under a bed--a real bed, with blankets and pillows--while Kaela searched all around. Laughing and play-wrestling with the carefree feeling of true safety.

Crying stung her wounded eye, so Mira let her thoughts wander elsewhere.

Although the woman hadn't directly answered her question, her response did imply that the spaceship was real. That Mira hadn't imagined it.
If there are other ways off the planet...

Her hope returned, a feeling she hadn't truly possessed since arriving at the Station with her pocket full of glass credits, ready to depart. That had been the only way off the planet, at least to her knowledge.

No longer.
I can leave
, she allowed herself to think.
There could be a way. I could see my girls again, keep my promise to meet them after all.

And as the hope filled her, a memory of her desperation returned, how close she had been to death there in the desert. She had given up, laying down on the sand to accept her death. The realization that she nearly ended everything, a true abandonment of her daughters, filled her with anguish and shame. She wept again, accepting the string from her cut, the blood mixing with her tears as they ran down her face.

Her body eventually ceased shaking.
I need to focus. I can grieve later.
Right then she needed to figure out a way to prove her innocence. To show she was telling the truth.

She thought about the questions they had asked. What Farrow had said in the desert. Whatever this place was, they thought she had been seeking it out. Searching for it, for the Empire. They thought she was a spy, a
shade
.

Obviously that was not true, but how to prove it? She went through the series of events that led her there. She'd visited Bruno at the Station, purchasing transportation for her daughters on a freighter along with dozens of other desperate Praetari. It wasn't the first time she'd been to the Station, either--she visited the doctor there when Ami had one of her coughing spells. Leo, that was his name.
Would Leo remember me?
she wondered.
Or Bruno?
The Lord of the Station had known that she worked at one of the electroid factories, so it was possible. He could tell them who she was. Just another helpless Praetari struggling to eat.

But more importantly, would he vouch for her? The cruelty in his smile had chilled her. If asked, he might declare that she was a spy for the Empire simply to watch her squirm.
He made a joke about bolting Ami to the outside of the freighter.
Did her fate truly reside in the word of such a man?

Yet it was a chance, and a better plan than continuing to insist her innocence to Spider.
I had more hope back in the desert
.

As if the thought had summoned him, the hinges creaked and Spider stood in the doorway. A new woman, young and dark, stood next to him.

Mira stood and took a deep breath to bolster her courage. "I have a way to prove my innocence. Someone who knows me, and what I am. Bruno, the Lord of the Station. He is a terrible man, and cruel, but he knows the truth."

The woman said, "Bruno is dead."

All hope drained out of Mira's feet and into the floor. "No. I was just there. With my daughters, and people all around, and..."

"Believe me or not," the woman shrugged, "I know what is true."

"Shut up," Spider said. He seemed angrier than before. He turned to the woman and said, "Kari, is it her or not?"

Kari entered the room. Her head was completely bald, and she squinted at Mira with suspicion. "Yep. Definitely her."

Spider's face grew dark. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," Kari said as she turned away. "Positive. She's the one alright." She strode out of the room and into the unseen hallway.

Spider gritted his teeth in a snarl. He stepped toward Mira.

"No..." Mira said. "No! She's lying. It's not me, I swear it..."

Spider pulled the laser prod from his belt, the beam crackling to life.

"Please, I'll tell you anything I can. I despise the Empire, I swear it." She backed away until her hands touched the wall. "I worked in the electroid factories. I can tell you their process. How many are produced per day. When the officers visit. They come every third day to inspect the robots. They only bring two guards, armed with..."

"
Shut the fuck up
," Spider said, spittle flying. Eyes full of fire.

Something rubbed against her back, between her shoulder blades and the wall. Of course. A new thought flashed in her mind. "The pocket! I have proof that I've stolen from the Empire. I sewed a pocket into my shirt, on the inside, just beneath my neck. That's where I stored the credits when I stole them from the factory foreman."

He twisted her by the arm until she faced the wall. Her cheek pressed against the warm metal.

"Please!" she cried. "Just look. All you have to do is look!"

On the wall she saw the shadow of his arm bring the prod above his head. With a blur he brought it down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 4

 

 

The laser made a soft hiss as it cut through something.

Mira clenched her eyes shut, waiting. For the fire of pain, for the brutality that Spider was sure to unleash, for the cries she knew were just a breath away. She waited, forehead pressed against the metal of the wall, frozen in time like a grain of sand.

Nothing happened.

When confusion outpaced fear she turned. Spider was gone. He had cut the ropes binding her hands, she realized. Each half still dangled from her wrists, but at least she could now move. She stretched and bent her arms, sighing with the release of tension and wincing at the stiffness. She was alone in the room, the door wide open.

"Hello?"

Her voice echoed more than before. Light from the hallway beckoned her, brighter than her tiny cell. She approached and tilted her head out the door.

The hall felt cramped, with a low ceiling that met the walls at diagonal angles, like the top half of an octagon. A row of pipes ran along one of those diagonal faces, each as thick as her thigh, connected at junction boxes every ten feet. Wires ran out of the junction boxes in all directions, including to the lights hanging in the center of the ceiling. The lights appeared like an afterthought, hastily screwed into the metal and connected. To the right were two more cell doors like hers, both open, unoccupied. Fifty feet in the other direction the hallway ended at a T-intersection.

"Hello?" her voice echoed.

She followed the corridor away from the cells. Sand particles scraped between her bare feet and the warm metal floor. The air contained the ever-present hum of machinery, like some sort of turbine or engine just on the other side of the wall.

She chose a direction at random, wandering down two more corridors before coming to what looked like a blast door. It stood open. Voices spoke softly somewhere beyond. She stepped through the doorway into a cleaner hallway, with higher ceilings and fewer exposed pipes and wires. The hum of machinery slowly disappeared. She followed the sound of the voices on silent feet until reaching what appeared to be a large common room.

"But how did they know..." someone said.

Mira stopped outside of the doorway, staying mostly out of sight behind the frame. The room held a metal table with various stools, around which four people stood. Mira cocked her ears to listen.

"It started a few days ago," said Kari, the dangerous-looking woman who had identified Mira in her cell. "One of Bruno's suppliers, a foreman at a factory in the city, was removed from his position."

"He was implicated for working with Bruno?" asked Farrow.

Kari shook her head. "An unrelated offense. Stealing, I think. A strange coincidence. But he was removed, replaced by someone less... cooperative. Bruno visited the factory, gave the new foreman his normal pitch, part threat and part bribe."

Spider cackled. "That fat loaf left his chair? I'd strangle myself with my own braids to see the sight."

Kari shot him annoyed look before continuing. "The new foreman was less receptive than the old, and Bruno grew impatient for the electroid parts. He hired me to remove the new foreman, hoping
his
replacement would be more malleable." A knife appeared in her hand, and she flourished it in the air.

A tall man at the end of the table suddenly spoke. "So this recent instability in our plan is a result of your action?" he asked quietly, with an accent Mira did not recognize. He seemed as implacable as a judge.

"I never had the chance," Kari said, putting a hand on her hip while twirling the knife with the other. "The foreman must have gone to the Melisao. Two dozen peacekeepers raided the Station."

There was a long, pregnant silence.

The tall man asked, "And the electroids?"

"Bruno activated them to defend himself. Marched out of the storage bay and started killing everything in sight--peacekeepers, Station brutes, civilians. One of his shuttles was about to launch, so maybe a hundred women and children were there. Whole thing was a mess. Lotta bodies."

"And the electroids?" he repeated with a voice like ice.

"I got out of there quick as I could," Kari said, "but I heard all of the electroids were destroyed. Those that weren't activated were probably seized."

The others slumped at that piece of information.

"
Fuck
," Spider cursed, slamming his palm on the table and turning away, hands gripping the back of his head. Farrow leaned forward on the table, hanging his head. Even Kari closed her eyes, as if disheartened to speak the news.

The tall man stood very still, impassive.

"A lot of peacekeepers died in the process," Kari said. "So that's something. Just a few thousand left, now."

"Tell me how that fat shit died," Spider said. "Gutted by one of his own robots? Killed by peacekeepers?"

"Jumped on the shuttle and launched it himself." Kari stabbed upward with her knife. "One of the Melisao stations confirmed it was shot down by a Sentinel in low orbit."

Spider looked surprised. "Why'd he do that? He knew that all ships..."

Mira didn't know what a Sentinel was, but she pictured the Lord of the Station floating in space, his body bloated more in death than in life. Pleasure washed over her at the thought of Bruno's cruel smile frozen on his face. Then she felt sick for enjoying it, like a greasy film over a soup.

"Too quick of a death for him," Farrow declared. "A foul shit of man to work with, who cared nothing for our cause."

"The electroids were a vital part of the plan," Kari said. "Correct? How delayed are we without that shipment?"

"I don't know," Farrow said. "We only have twenty now, the ones we've scraped together from spare parts. Not shitting enough. And only ten are outfitted with weapons. We need to find new sources. Maybe we can go to the factories directly. Work with the distributors, or maintenance workers. Somebody."

Spider said, "They'll just backstab us like they did Bruno. You see what happens when you trust them. I say we take what we need. Raid a factory, grab a whole damned shipment ourselves."

Farrow shook his head. "Too risky. We can't risk the Melisao finding us here."

"Why? You get spare parts delivered here often."

"Parts delivered by junker craft," Farrow pointed out, "that were already passing through the area. Nobody notices when they fly low over the sand and dump a few crates for us. Raiding a factory would draw so much attention that we'd never get back here with stealth."

BOOK: Born of Sand (Tales of a Dying Star Book 5)
2.01Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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