“Don’t stop,” Erick encouraged, afraid the soldier would take advantage if she let up.
He stepped forward to help, but a man charged out of the corridor on the forward side of the cargo hold. It was the bloodthirsty man who’d been hunting the freighter owner. He fired as soon as he saw the fray. Erick threw a barrier up to protect Jelena as he ran toward the man to further distract him. The imperial pivoted, firing at him.
Erick flung himself to the deck as blazer fire scorched a hole in his sleeve. He’d been more worried about protecting Jelena than himself.
The imperial lowered his aim to fire again. By then, Erick had adjusted his barrier. His foe scowled in irritation and confusion as his blazer bolts bounced off, some shooting out the hatch and others up to the ceiling, none striking his target.
Erick rolled to his knees. The imperial paused and looked at the end of his barrel, as if the weapon were responsible for the erratic fire. That gave Erick a second to take advantage. He dropped his barrier so he could concentrate on a mental attack. He hurled a wave of power, and the man tumbled back into the corridor, smashing against a bulkhead.
Erick glanced at Jelena to make sure she wasn’t in trouble—she had her attacker flat on his back and was disarming him—then ran toward the corridor to subdue his man. On the way, he glimpsed five thrust bikes in a dark corner of the hold and snorted. He supposed the rental robot would notice if Erick and Jelena somehow acquired different bikes and turned those in.
In the corridor, the soldier had gotten to his knees, and he still gripped his rifle. He shot again as Erick came into his sight. But Erick charged into the corridor with his barrier wrapped around him.
One of the blazer blasts hit it and bounced back. It slammed into the man’s shocked eye, burrowing straight into his brain.
He pitched backward, the rifle falling from his fingers. Smoke wafted from his destroyed eyeball.
Erick gaped at him, stunned. All he had wanted to do was disarm the man, to get by him and find the freighter owner. Even if these were ex-imperial soldiers, thieves, and potentially murderers, who was he to kill them?
Damn it, how had this day gone so wrong so quickly?
A dog howled, the sound muted. Maybe he was wondering the same thing.
Noise came from behind Erick, and he stirred, remembering he was in the middle of a battle. He turned, but it was only Jelena, her staff in hand, her cheeks flushed from exertion. She stared past him to the dead soldier on the deck.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” Erick said. “He shot himself. I mean, he tried to shoot me, and it deflected, and…” He trailed off, the words sounding inane to his ears. He was making an excuse, and he knew it.
He looked back to the man Jelena had been fighting, wondering how she’d dealt with him. Just knocked him unconscious?
Yes, there he was, his eyes rolled back in his head, his belt tied around his wrists, which she’d pulled behind his back. When he woke up, he would be able to run away, but the belt would slow him down. And he wasn’t dead. Erick stared bleakly.
“There are more coming.” Jelena tilted her head toward the open cargo hatch. Thick smoke outside billowed from the hatch of that bomber, but the imperials wouldn’t be distracted indefinitely.
Even as Erick looked that way, he glimpsed movement. The soldiers must have heard the fight. They were charging up the cargo ramp through the smoke.
Erick pulled Jelena fully into the corridor with him. She jumped over the dead man and ran a few feet to an intersection, then turned left as if she knew where to go. Erick followed as she raced past hatch doors that looked to lead to crew cabins.
“They’re in here,” the man on the ramp yelled.
Erick reached out with his mind and manipulated the wind between the dunes. He caused it to blow the smoke into the freighter’s cargo hold, hoping it would obscure the imperials’ vision and make them pause before charging in.
They’re behind here, Jelena whispered into his mind from what appeared to be a dead end in the corridor. I don’t know how to get in.
Erick sensed the soldiers gathering around the top of the ramp in the cargo hold. Six of them. Smoke filled the hold, but it wouldn’t make them pause for long. As soon as they were ready, they would race inside, guns blazing. And there weren’t many places to hide on this ship.
The corridor Erick and Jelena were in held some cabins, a tiny mess hall, and an equally diminutive sickbay. The other short corridor at the single intersection led into a small Navigation and Communications area. That was it. His senses showed him that the engine room was on the other side of the cargo hold and that they couldn’t get to it without passing in front of the imperials.
Jelena knocked on the bulkhead at the dead end, as if the person hiding inside would open a door for them. A dog barked in response. Erick thought he heard the muffled sound of someone trying to hush it.
Footsteps thundered as the soldiers ran into the interior of the ship. A couple went toward engineering, but the rest headed straight toward the corridor Erick and Jelena had gone up.
Erick concentrated and formed his barrier farther away from his body than usual, stretching it across the corridor to keep the men from reaching the intersection and seeing them. The lead soldier smacked into it and bounced back into his comrades, almost knocking one man over. Erick might have felt amused or relieved, but all he could think about was how similar that was to the way that blazer bolt had bounced back into the now dead man’s
