moving faster than any person had a right to, and drove her fist into his stomach. Klous doubled over, air and spittle bursting from his mouth. His face met her raised knee, snapping his head back and crunching his nose.
Klous lay gasping on the ground, though he couldn’t remember exactly how he’d gotten there. He felt himself yanked to the side and onto his back. A bloodstained knee slammed into his chest and pinned him to the ground, then a sharp and cold edge pressed against his throat.
“ Kira!”
Klous heard her being called off but it took a moment for the words to register. It wasn’t until he saw hands pulling her free of him that he realized he might live to see the next day. He reached up gingerly to his nose, feeling the blood that flowed from it. He spat, noting his teeth felt numb and his lips were bleeding as well, but nothing was missing.
“ Told you she was something,” Tarn said through a grin. He grabbed Klous’s hand and pulled him up.
Klous teetered on his feet for a moment, dizzy from the trauma to his head and still winded. When he looked up he realized that Kira, Sharp, and Eric were having an intense moment of barely hushed conversation only a few feet away.
“ It was you, wasn’t it?” Klous said loud enough so he could hear himself over the ringing in his head. “I figured it was a man, but you can make the displays show just about anything.”
Kira started forward but Sharp grabbed her arm and held her back. “What’s this?”
“ I heard tell of a rich bounty on your ship, Captain,” Klous said, turning to look Sharp in the eyes. “Deal was I got whatever salvage I wanted and half the bounty. There’d be an inside man on the ship making sure it went smooth. You’re the inside man. What happened, you didn’t figure on falling for him?”
Klous saw Sharp’s hand clamp down hard on Kira’s arm, expecting her reaction. Instead of her pulling away Kira stared at him with murder in her eyes for a long moment, then she nodded. She turned away and yanked her arm free of Sharp’s grip. She looked at Eric for a moment then stormed past him towards the Black Hole.
Klous saw Eric turn from staring at Kira to look at him. Klous held up his hand. “I’ve been hit enough by you people today, do it tomorrow.”
Eric shook his head and turned away to walk after Kira. Sharp looked at him, studying him carefully much as he’d done earlier in Treetown. “You really know how to make friends,” He said finally, then turned and headed after the others.
Tarn chuckled again, then clapped him on the back. “Don’t worry, nose’ll heal fast here. Just watch your back around Kira.”
“ She was going to kill you all!” Sasha blurted out. “Why isn’t anyone pissed at her?”
“ Kira ain’t what you think she is,” Tarn said with a shrug. “Ain’t my story to tell, but she’s a special girl. I didn’t give her credit for a while neither, but she showed me up plenty of times. Don’t underestimate her. She was a lot happier and nicer before you guys showed up. I’d appreciate it if you got along with her and made her happy again.”
Klous released the pinch grip on his nose. He sniffed a few times to make sure the bleeding had stopped before saying, “What, you don’t want her going off on you?”
“ Hell no I don’t!” Tarn chuckled. He shook his head and turned towards the crashed pirate ship. He turned back, a grin on his face. “Hey! How bad did my plasma cannons fuck your ship up? I almost forgot about that, you guys hit our sensors.”
“ Fucked up a bank of attitude thrusters and overloaded our weapons system,” Klous spat out more blood before he started walking after the others. He was grateful for the distracting conversation Tarn provided. Dealing with the confusing dynamic between the crew of the Rented Mule promised to make the ringing in his head worse than ever.
They fell silent as they closed on the broken ship. Klous could see damage to the hull that would take weeks in a shipyard to fix. Just lifting it back off the beach to repair the ruined strut alone was an impossible task without an army of machinery and people. He swallowed the bitterness in his throat, tasting blood as much as bile.
Tarn barked out a laugh as they walked around the edge of the ruined spaceship, one of the legs of the chickasaurus was sticking out from beneath the hull. Klous stared at it then he, too, felt something slip loose inside of him. He chuckled and said, “Wait till I get another starship, I’ll come back for the rest of your family!”
Chapter 10
“ Where’s Cooper?” Klous said after they’d fought through what was turning into a monsoon to return to Treetown. He’d forced himself to move on after seeing the damages to the Black Hole. Aran and Ling’s plan to fire the reaction thrusters to make the ship hover while a new strut was put in place had been a neat idea, but impractical. The back-blast from the thrusters would roast anyone standing under the ship even if they did have time to repair the ship enough to try it. Already the waves were breaking and lapping at the edge of the ship. Eric had mentioned something about high tide coming in as well, whatever a tide was.
All that remained for Klous was finding out how his younger brother was doing. Or whether or not Cooper had managed the impossible yet again and turned the tables on his captor. Brand was still an unknown factor, but as more time passed the certainty that he’d met an untimely end grew greater as well.
“ Come on, let’s get this over with,” Sharp sat the large bag full of miscellaneous plunder from the Black Hole down in the hollow of a tree. Klous saw him catch Tarn’s eye and glance at the others. Tarn nodded.
“ We’re stuck here too,” Klous said. “We’re not going to do anything stupid.”
“ You’ve got a history of stupid,” Sharp pointed out. “First attacking us then coming here. You try being less stupid for a while and maybe I’ll start believing you.”
Klous fought the urge to lash out. He wasn’t in charge anymore and it bugged him. He nodded shortly and turned to the four remaining members of his crew. “Stay together and don’t do anything-”
“ Stupid?” Sasha rolled her eyes at him. Klous fought the bitter urge to chuckle. Lizzie tried, and failed, to smile. Aran and Ling grunted and nodded, respectively, and started going through the equipment they’d returned with.
Klous followed Sharp across the slippery wooden bridge. Rainwater fell almost as heavily as though they weren’t sheltered by a thick jungle canopy overhead. Even breezes whipped through the trees, a testimony to the ferocity of the storm that had come upon them as they were leaving the Black Hole behind. He glanced back at one point and saw Kira following them, her pace determined and quicker than their own.
“ You going to break my nose again?” Klous had to almost shout to be heard over the loud cadence of wind and water.
“ I’m going to make sure you don’t try anything,” She answered.
Klous watched her for a moment, then felt his heart lurch as his foot slipped on the wooden planks. The treacherous foot scraped against the edge of the board, stinging as the skin on his ankle was torn, then hung suspended in space while his other foot shot out the other direction. Expecting to hit the boards and then fall to the jungle floor below, Klous found his breath jerked from him as he stopped abruptly. He scrambled to get his feet back under him and his arms on the rope handrails so he could stand up again. Once he was standing Kira let go of him and shook her head.
“ Pay attention!” She snapped. “Everything will kill you here, even the rain. Everything!”
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. His ankle stung but he could walk on it. He glanced ahead and saw Sharp looking back at him, an annoyed crease to his eyebrows. Klous hurried after him, or at least it felt like he hurried now that he was taking each step much more carefully.
Two trees and one platform later, Klous marveled at how the survivors of the Rented Mule had managed to do so much with so little. He’d seen shelters and hammocks in the trees as well as tables and even signs of firepots for cooking. Now they were headed towards a tree with a shelf or platform built around it as well as a hollow within it. Above the platform a matching roof had been made of wood, bark, and even long grasses woven together.
Sharp pulled up sharply as a figure emerged from the tree. Another person was behind him, directly. The man in front lurched forward and fell to the decking, a knife protruding him his back. Klous cursed, recognizing his brother. Cooper knelt down and pulled it free, then looked up when Sharp and Klous both shouted.
“ Cooper, damn it, drop the knife!” Klous screamed. His words were jumbled by the storm and Sharp’s own
