Born of Sand (Tales of a Dying Star Book 5) (6 page)

"We can go at night," Spider insisted. "Kari'll help us. Ain't that right, honey?"

She ignored him and continued playing with her knife.

"You're still forgetting the most important part," Farrow said. "Even if we somehow acquired a hundred new electroids, we have shit-all for weapons to outfit them. Nor do we have someone skilled enough to reprogram them all for combat. We utilized Bruno because he did both of those things."

Bruno did what?
To Mira the Station was merely a place for drugs and sin and contraband medical supplies. And freighter trips into the sky. What did he do with electroids?

"All I'm hearing from you are excuses," Spider said.

"And all I'm hearing from you are shitting fantasies."

Spider snarled. "Maybe you should--"

The tall man at the end of the table raised a hand, instantly cutting off the argument like a blade. "Nothing has changed. Continue as planned for now. When the dump arrives tomorrow begin diverting as much toward new electroids as you can."

"Akonai, I was planning on using those parts for the refurbished Riverhawks," Farrow protested.

"Then send more scavenge teams into the desert. There's plenty more to salvage there."

"After what happened with the last scavenge team," Farrow learning forward, "it's hardly worth the effort. The craft are decades old. The work is slow."

Akonai spread his hands. "Then do nothing, and when our attack begins your force won't have the necessary strength. The choice is yours." He turned to the others. "I'm traveling into the city. I will return in three days, after which I'll be leaving this miserable sand-ridden planet."

He turned away from the table, and Mira leaned back behind cover. His footsteps drew closer. Coming in her direction.

"You can come in now, Mira," Farrow called. "It's fine. Don't be afraid."

After considering bolting, Mira hesitantly stepped into the doorway. Akonai glanced at her with distaste as she jumped out of his way. The others stared at her. Spider seemed unhappy as she approached the table.

"Shit in the sand, Spider," Farrow cursed. "You could've removed the ropes, too."

"You said to cut her loose, so I cut her loose."

Farrow's lips pulled into a tight line as he pulled out his own knife and removed the two ends of rope still tied to her wrists. She muttered a grateful thanks.

"Is it true?" she asked. "Bruno is dead?"

"Couldn't have happened to a better guy," Kari said, tossing her bald head. "It's a good thing you didn't stay at the Station. Fleeing into the desert was probably the safest thing you could have done."

She hadn't exactly planned it that way, but Mira nodded.

Spider's braids swung as he shook his head. "The safest thing she could have done was go back to her own home and wait for the peacekeepers to take her head."

Farrow took her arm and said, "Come on. Let me show you around." He led her away from the table and down another corridor.

"I don't understand. Am I not a prisoner anymore?"

"You put us in an awkward position," Farrow confided. "You were wandering around up there for all the Empire to see, dangerously close to our base. At first you seemed like an obvious spy--they've sent them before, or at least tried--but then you seemed too obvious for it to be true. But I couldn't just leave you up there to wander the desert and die. Their scout cruisers would see your body from the air. Maybe stop and look around. So I had to bring you down. And now that you're here..." He shrugged. "We can't very well let you go, not before we... well. Shit. Consider yourself a sort of guest. It's better than what Spider wanted. You can thank Kari for that; she was there at the Station when you begged passage for you and your girls."

So we are in the middle of the desert
, Mira thought. At least that explained the thick, ever-present heat. "What are you doing out here?" she asked. "Are you rebels? Fighting the Melisao?"

"Something like that."

Farrow paused in a tall doorway and gestured with his hand. "This here's the engineer bay." The cavernous room held piles of metal and electronics taller than Mira, like some sort of garbage dump. The ceiling was split down the middle as if it could open horizontally, and small piles of sand littered the floor. A variety of hangars lined one wall, each filled with an aircraft.

"All our parts come in here and we pick through them, sort them, repair them. We do the best with what we have, because what we have is shit."

They returned to the hall. "I want to leave," Mira blurted out.

Farrow ducked low to pass through a metal bulwark before saying, "And I want a cruiser made of gold. Can't allow that. Sorry, but it's for the best, because--"

She put a hand on his arm. "No. I want to get off Praetar. That man, Akonai, is leaving in three days. I want to go with him."

"You do
not
want to go with Akonai. You have my full sincerity on that." They turned down a corridor crammed tight with electronic screens and buttons and dials. A low vibration filled the air. "This here's the control room for the power plant. Not a lot of room. More of a control
hallway
, I guess. Anyways, it's the old method used for power before the Melisao came. Deep under the surface the sand moves horizontally like a river, pushed and pulled by all the weight above. That turns three turbines. One's broken, but two still gets the job done. We don't need a lot of power down here, just enough to run the lights and equipment."

That explained the noisy vibration. Mira still had her mind elsewhere, though. "You don't understand," she said. "I need to get to my daughters. They went on to the Oasis station without me. They're by themselves, they have no one. They've already been gone too long!"

Farrow glanced sideways at her as they walked. "And they went on one of Bruno's freighters?"

Mira kicked a pile of sand on the floor. "Yes. Ami is brave, but Kaela won't be used to being in charge. She won't know what to do. You need to let me go."

Farrow walked in silence for a while. She must have made a convincing argument, because occasionally he glanced at her with a look on his face that said he was trying to make a big decision. "The block--" he began, then shook his head. "There are services on Oasis to help children," he said carefully. "They would be fine there without you for a time. But look. You cannot go now. There's just no way. Akonai isn't even going toward Oasis--I heard Spider say he's heading to the outer system. The gas giant Ouranos, I think."

"What about the ship I saw when I arrived?" Mira insisted. "The one that rose out of the sand. Or the ships you have in the engineering bay."

"Those are small ships we salvaged from the desert," Farrow said. "They're mostly two-person fighter craft, made for short distance travel and quick battles. And truth be told, they're not very good at that. We need a better engineer."

"There has to be..." Mira said.

Farrow stopped and gripped her by the shoulders. "Shit, Mira. I'm not lying to you. There's no way. At least, not yet. There might be in a few weeks, when we've finished what we're planning. But not before, no matter how much you plead and beg. So stop trying." He gestured to the door they'd stopped at. "Here's your room. No lock on the door this time, I swear it."

Mira looked through the doorway. Although in a different part of the base, the room was nearly identical to her other cell: rusted metal walls, a small cot in the corner with faded blankets, barely wide enough to extend both arms out. "You should have just kept me in the other cell," she muttered.

"Oh, you'll be much happier here. Those other rooms are adjacent to the power plant, and made to house small animals attached to computers." He took on a grim look. "If there's ever a toxic coolant leak the animals provide a cheap early warning system."

"Oh." Suddenly her new room seemed like the Governor's crystal palace.

"No bucket, either. The cleanliness room is down there. The kitchen is the other way. Two meals a day, nothing fancy, but it'll fill your belly. Anyways, recruiting is difficult out here because we don't know who we can trust. So we'll make the best of your accidental discovery of the base. There's always work around here that needs doing. If you want to earn your keep, you can start by helping Binny clean. I'll have her show you where the buckets and rags are."

Cleaning?
Remembering what she'd overheard between Akonai and Farrow, she said, "I can do more than that. I worked in a factory, assembling electroids piece by piece. I can help in the engineering bay."

Farrow's face grew dark. "You ought to be careful what you overhear, and keep it to yourself. If you said something like that around Spider it'd convince him you're a spy after all."

"We're not around Spider," she pointed out, "and you're wasting my skill. I'm not a maid. Let me help."

"Putting pristine parts together on a conveyor belt," he said, "isn't the same as building them from spare junk. You need knowledge, not repetition."

Mira began to protest, to say she'd worked at every station on the factory floor and knew the build order by heart, but Farrow added, "Shit, besides, if Spider saw you working on the electroids he'd probably kill you where you stood."

Binny appeared from the adjacent room carrying two buckets sloshing with liquid. They were nearly as large as she was. "Ready to get started? It'll go easier with two!"

Farrow must have seen the despair on Mira's face. "We can talk about leaving Praetar at a later time. But for now, if you want to help, you need to start here. You need to prove that we truly can trust you. Binny will show you the ropes."

Mira bit her lip. She hadn't wandered into the desert to become a servant for some rebel group. She'd fled there to be
free
, to control her destiny, even if only in death. And her daughters were out there somewhere, waiting. Why couldn't they understand that? She crossed her arms and said, "I want to speak with Akonai, or whoever is in charge here."

"Technically that's supposed to be me." He turned and walked away, saying, "Keep her in line, Binny," over his shoulder before disappearing around a corner.

Chapter 5

Mira watched Farrow go with a mixture of annoyance and despair. She was back where she started, toiling for some masters who cared little for what she wanted. Except this time she was in an underground compound, in the middle of nowhere, with almost no hope of escape.

Binny smiled up at her. "You can use this bucket. It's the good one. The other's bent, and sometimes spills. It'll be easier for you while you learn."

The girl spoke so cheerfully that Mira couldn't help but smile back. "I thought you were the doctor," she said.

"That too. I'm really helpful. Come on, then. The sooner we finish the sooner we can eat."

Binny led her through the facility while chattering away. Three dozen occupants lived in the base, though that was just the current number. It fluctuated almost daily as they recruited more from the city or lost some to the Melisao. Mira pictured the line of shadows she'd seen crossing the dunes. Maybe it hadn't been a mirage after all.

She stuck her head in the kitchen as they passed. Ten people, men and women, occupied two tables inside. They laughed and joked, passing around a bottle of what looked like sweetwater. The large woman who had fed Mira while she was in her cell stood in the cooking area, bent over a pot of something steamy. "That's Maggy, the cook," Binny explained. "I like her."

They passed the holding cells and entered the power plant. There wasn't much to it: a small room whose only light came from the array of computer screens. A glass window gave a view of a larger room with three turbines, round like sugar cakes. The sound of machinery filled Mira's ears, vibrated against her skin.

Binny set down the buckets and turned to Mira. "The inside of the turbines get awful rusty, on account of all the moisture put out by the humidifiers. Normally, we would shut down one turbine at a time to clean the inside, leaving the other two operational, but since this one's broken we can't really do that. The base can't get by on just one turbine, not even for an hour."

"Are they going to fix it?" Mira asked.