Tisker looked to Talis for help, but she only cracked a smile in amusement. “Hey, if it doesn’t bother her, it doesn’t bother me.”
Tisker shook his head, coming up short with his usual supply of sly comments, and shrugged back into his jacket.
The lift came to a halt and the door opened on a group of aliens, armed and waiting for them. The lead alien held a circlet of shining metal, hinged on one side, open toward Meran. Xe edged forward into the lift, raising the device toward the simula’s forehead.
She seemed to go rigid, eyes locked on the device. Red lights blinked around its curved inner circumference. Apparently Meran was not going to defend herself, or even move out of the way.
Talis thumbed back the hammer on her revolver. The noise echoed in the quiet of the lift and kicked everyone into motion.
Tisker moved around Meran, both of his switchblades at the ready, and stabbed the alien holding the circlet through the base of xist throat.
An alien rifle fired as Tisker pushed his victim into the crowded corridor.
The circlet fell to the floor, landing on its hinge so that it closed with a click. Meran blinked, free from her trance, and leaped out of the lift.
Talis panned for a clear shot, found it, and hit one alien squarely above the brow ridge. Xist forehead shattered like porcelain.
Tisker’s knife found home beneath another alien’s collarbone. As the alien fell, xe brought xist rifle up to fire. A searing light, and the switchblade in Tisker’s left hand dropped to the floor.
His jacket sleeve burned and smoked.
In the confusion, the aliens failed to give way to Meran, and she got her hands on them. Two aliens were reduced to blue puddles. Their cries of alarm echoed in Talis’s ears after they were gone. Abandoned rifles hit the deck and splashed in the puddles their former owners left behind.
Talis scooped up the rifles nearest her, tossing one to Tisker. She supported hers against her hip and motioned at the aliens in front of her, hoping she was even holding their weapon properly. She kept her revolver up and leveled, just in case.
There were only two aliens left. They retreated around a bend in the corridor.
Tisker scooped up his blade, wincing as his muscles flexed under the wound in his arm.
The soft hum of the ship increased in pitch and intensity.
“You might find it of interest that the crew intends to leave this port,” Meran said.
With them on board. Talis frowned. “Which way to the engine?”
Meran walked calmly, though thankfully with due haste, down the corridor in the opposite direction the aliens had run.
Onaya Bone owes me a kingdom, Talis thought, as she and Tisker padded after.
“Lindent curse my eyes,” Tisker swore, once Meran came to a stop and turned to face them. “That’s the engine?”
Before them was a massive crystal, emerging out of the flooring eight decks below and rising another six above their heads. A giant, translucent orchid-shaped thing, it was narrower at top and bottom, unfolding with crystalline petals in the middle. It hummed with purpose. The vibrations they’d felt in the deck pulsed in sync with the flashing polychromatic hues that moved along its flat surface like blood through veins. It seemed to breathe, like a living thing. Open decks surrounded it at each level. Where they stood was just about midway up, with consoles lining the half-walls. Yu’Nyun characters flashed across the screens, a repeating series of readouts. To their right, a catwalk led out to a scaffolding that circled the pulsing crystal.
Again, Meran answered Tisker’s question as though Talis had asked it. “It stores power used by the ship’s various functions, but is not the system that propels the ship.”
Talis shrugged. “Looks important, and that’s good enough for me.”
From moving through the ship, Talis had almost gotten used to watching Meran carry out her will before she had a chance to say anything. Now the woman crossed the catwalk and leaned over the interior railing to place her hands on the crystal.
Shouts sounded from above and below as aliens spotted Meran, but Tisker and Talis kept them back against the outer bulkhead with clumsy shots from their alien rifles.
An electric horn sounded, shrill and staccato, as cracks began to cleave up and down the length of the crystal, shooting from where Meran’s hands pressed flat against its sparkling surface.
Lights flickered. The alarm’s whine sputtered and then changed its tone.
The deck began to tremble.
“That’ll do, Meran!” Talis shouted.
She grabbed Tisker by his shoulder, ignoring his grimace as she hit his wound, and propelled him back toward the lift.
Three decks up, they ran back through the corridor to their exit.
Which was sealed.
“Gods rot it!”
“What are the chances we’re still on the ground?” Tisker asked.
Talis closed her eyes, scrunched her face. “They wouldn’t fly off until they can contain this chaos, right?”
Meran crossed to a control panel along the bulkhead, flipped down an entry pad, and tapped glowing marks to reach the readout she wanted.
“The ship is attempting to reroute power from storage cells so that it may engage its propulsion,” she said.
But not moving yet. Talis took a deep, steadying breath and jutted her chin toward the sealed exterior hatch.
“Get it open.”
At a touch on the panel, the hatch spun open. The entry chamber was washed in the green light of Nexus.
The gangway had been retracted, and the horizon wobbled as the ship attempted to lift away from the ground.
“Jump?” asked Tisker.
Talis nodded, stress locking her jaw against reply. It was a five-meter drop. But Wind Sabre was waiting outside, and Talis had never seen anything more beautiful.
“Not so bad,” said Tisker, putting no effort into the bravado. But at her look, amended, “Well, it could be worse.”
The ground below them dropped away as the ship started to lift. Readouts pulsed on the displays near the ramp, complaining of something. More angry tones,
