With a last nod at the golra, Cheyenne turned and stepped into the shuttle. The door slid closed behind her with a hiss, and the blue lights flickered overhead.
“Okay.” Persh’al tossed his much lighter pack on the second row of seats behind him and rubbed his hands together. “The rest of this needs a manual boost. Take a seat, and I’ll get us moving.”
“No way.” Cheyenne chuckled and waved him away from the controls in front of the door. “If I have to say goodbye to this thing when we make the crossing again, I’m gonna use it as much as possible first.”
“Great.” Persh’al eyed her warily, then gave in and slumped down in the first row of decidedly uncomfortable metal seats. “Try not to break anything, huh? Including yourself.”
“You need to relax, man. I got this.”
“You know who else said that? Every idiot who got their hands on high-level spells and tried to cast them alone without any training. I had a friend like that once. Blew up his entire house and the top half of his body.”
Cheyenne stared at the data scrolling across the control panels, reading it with eager awareness as quickly as it showed up. “We’ve already established that I suck at spells. But this, I’m good at this.”
“How do you know?”
Her fingers moved in a blur across the controls as she activated the commands she wanted. The high whine of the shuttle’s power source stopped, and the vessel shuddered in place before slowly moving forward.
Cheyenne looked over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “You were saying?”
Persh’al laughed and shook his head. “Nothing, kid. I’m keepin’ my mouth shut from here on out.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
“Okay, but seriously. I remember these things being a lot faster.”
Cheyenne glanced down at the controls and shrugged. “It’s only been ten minutes. Whatever kind of engine this thing has needs to fully power up.”
Persh’al cocked his head. “Did a fancy activator tell you that, or you making an educated guess?”
She stepped away from the control panel without buttons, levers, or instructional symbols of any kind and leaned against the wall of the shuttle’s cabin. “Do you even know what this thing can do?”
“Yeah. It can take us from A to B really fast.” He snorted. “When it hasn’t been docked for who knows how long without powering up. I knewwemade the crossing Earthside without covering all our bases. Should’ve drawn out a plan for keeping everything in top shape.”
“Oh, this thing’s still in top shape.” Cheyenne pointed at the control panel. “We’ve got about thirty seconds left ‘til it is warmed up. After that, this can do a lot more than just moving really fast.”
“Quit screwing around, kid.” Persh’al folded his arms and sat back in the chair. “I’ve dismantled and rebuilt machines a hell of a lot more complicated than this tunnel train. I know what it’s capable of just by looking at it.”
She grinned. “Wanna bet?”
“Ha. Sure. Why not? You’ll lose.”
Cheyenne looked back at the timer displayed on the control panel through her upgraded activator and waited for the countdown to reach zero. When it did, she pulled up the drive for kicking the generator into gear, and with quick swipes on the panel lighting up with a blue glow beneath her finger, the shuttle lurched and doubled its speed.
Persh’al sucked in a breath, pressed back against his chair. Cheyenne leaned forward against the acceleration and drummed her fingers on the control panel.
“Jeeze, kid. Okay. You proved your point.”
“Not yet. I’m just getting started.”
He peeled himself off the back of the metal chair, adjusting to the newest speed, and shook his head. “You think this old wreck of a machine can go faster than this?”
Cheyenne chuckled and folded her arms. “You haven’t spent a lot of time on this thing.”
“This one specifically? You know, I can’t say that I have. They all look and act the same. How fast are we going?”
“About eighty miles an hour. And that’s at fifty-percent, it looks like.”
Persh’al scratched his head. “For real?”
“Just wait ‘til we get out of the city.”
“How does that even matter? We’re underground.”
“Yeah, and then we won’t be.”
The blue troll sat forward in the metal chair, braced his hands on his knees, and stared at the control panel. “We won’t be? This is the shuttle out to Charibor, right?”
Cheyenne glanced at the scrolling control panel. “No. Grimmer.”
“What? Oh, that giant bat with horns is gonna get it.”
“Sounds like you’re not a fan of Grimmer.”
“Not a fan?” Persh’al lurched from the chair and spread his arms. “Last time I saw Grimmer, it made the Oronti Valley look like a paradise.”
“So it was dead with this blight or whatever since before you went Earthside. I thought all that happened after you guys followed L’zar across the Border. The last time, anyway.”
“No, Grimmer isn’t blighted, kid. Might as well be, though. It’s a den of thieves if you will.”
Cheyenne cocked her head with a smile playing on her lips. “Really?”
“Kinda, yeah. L’zar has a creepy fondness for the place, but they don’t like me over there.”
“Let me guess. It’s ‘cause you keep tricking them with your foolproof lying skills.”
Persh’al glared at her. “Funny. I’m laughing on the inside.”
“Then what happened?” She couldn’t hold back a wry laugh at the thought. “I’m guessing any place L’zar ‘has a fondness for’ isn’t number one on most people’s sightseeing list. You must’ve really screwed something up.”
The blue troll stared at the control panel, his nose twitching. “First of all, Grimmer is a territory, not a city. Like, an entire country.”
“Oh, even better.”
“They have no problem with thieves and fire-starters. L’zar spent a lot of time there, blending in. Until he didn’t anymore.”
Cheyenne glanced at the next speed level powering up on the control panel. “Nice deflection, but we’re not talking about L’zar. What did you do?”
“Fine. L’zar steals physical things.
