I don’t care two ore-less asteroids about his cargo, Erick said. I just want to survive the day.
I promised Woofus that I’d try to protect his steaks.
Jelena!
Just do something in the engine room, Erick. Please. That’s all I need.
The dog had settled in her arms, and even if it was afraid—or disgruntled about the potential steak theft—it had stopped barking. Which was good, because the soldiers were shoving open cabin doors, trying to find the secret panel. Erick wouldn’t be surprised if someone brought in whatever weapon had been used on his barrier and simply tried to blow a hole in the bulkhead.
A jolt rocked the deck, pitching him sideways into Jelena.
Yun gasped in pain, grabbing his wounded leg.
“What was that?” he whispered hoarsely.
“Some assistants have arrived,” Jelena said.
The deck shuddered, and a thump reverberated from under the ship.
“Erick?” Jelena asked expectantly.
“I’m working on it,” he grumbled. “Tyrant.”
He forced his aching brain to work, stretching out with his senses to examine engineering. Since it was on the back side of the cargo hold, he hadn’t gotten even a glimpse of it before, so he had to go over everything with his mind’s eyes. Fortunately, he had started working under a veteran engineer, Mica Coppervein, at age fourteen, and he’d tinkered with machines for years before that. He had taken a class on old ships during his university time too. That experience helped him to quickly identify the various parts.
Yun hadn’t powered anything down after crashing, and the radiative cooler was on the verge of overheating. It wouldn’t take much energy to use his telekinesis to disable the safety shutoff valves, and accelerate the build up of heat. But did he truly want to blow something up in engineering? Hadn’t this ship suffered enough? The engine room repairs might end up costing more than the value of the cargo, if the freighter was even salvageable.
The imperials need a reason to go outside, Jelena told him.
The deck rocked again as the front of the ship tilted upward, then slammed back down.
“Are there earthquakes on Dustor?” Yun wondered.
“Not exactly,” Jelena said.
The muted sounds of weapons fire drifted back from the cargo hold. The soldiers had left the corridor, and they were all standing at the top of the ramp and shooting outside. Shooting at—ah. Erick sensed the giant sand snakes out there and realized what Jelena, animal manipulator extraordinaire, had been doing.
Four of the massive snakes were diving through the sand and rearing up to lunge at the men, trying to drag them out of the ship. But the imperials were able to dive back into the cargo hold while shooting at the snakes. And the big creatures seemed reluctant to stick their heads into the dark interior of the freighter.
“One engineering explosion coming up,” Erick murmured and flicked off the safety shutoffs.
“I’m going out,” Jelena said. “To give the imperials another reason to run outside.”
“Wait.” Erick gripped her arm. “Better to stay here until—”
A boom roared from the back of the ship sooner than he expected. Metal warped and flew free with terrible squeals and screeches. The freighter lurched, and Erick sensed the alarm of the owner and the dog. Jelena hurried to comfort Woofus, soothing the animal with her mind and some pats. She either didn’t try to comfort Yun or didn’t know how. People were harder.
“Now you can go out,” Erick murmured. That explosion hadn’t taken as long to build as he’d thought it would. It might have happened soon even without his help.
The hidden panel swung open.
Smoke flooded into their corridor, stinging Erick’s eyes. He gripped his staff and squinted into the haze, checking with his eyes and his mind for soldiers. But they were doing as Jelena had wanted, fleeing the smoke and flames of the freighter to run out into the sand. Maybe she’d even given them a manipulative nudge with her mind, convincing them the entire ship would blow up and that the snakes were the lesser danger.
Jelena set the dog down, ran into the mess hall for a moment, then hurried to the intersection. Erick paused to help Yun climb out. The man could barely walk with that huge piece of shrapnel sticking out of his leg, and he had to lean heavily on the bulkhead for support.
“Here, use this,” Erick said, coughing as he mentally commanded his staff to go quiescent and allow the touch of a stranger.
Wordlessly, the owner accepted it and used it like a crutch.
Erick followed Jelena around the corner, knowing she didn’t have a weapon beyond her staff and would be reluctant to shoot at anyone even if she did. In the cargo hold, smoke poured from the engineering hatchway, and flames danced impressively inside. Erick flipped a switch with his mind, re-enabling the fire suppression system. A few clunks and weak bleeps came from engineering.
Jelena ran to the ramp—the soldiers had all left the cargo hold. Erick expected they were running toward the safety of their own ships or that they would have killed the snakes by now. As fearsome as those creatures were, they weren’t immortal.
Or so Erick thought. When he joined Jelena at the top of the cargo ramp, he gaped at the carnage unfolding in front of them.
The four giant snakes, their lower halves buried in the sand and the top halves writhing and rising more than ten feet in the air, attacked relentlessly. One snake’s head whipped down, and its jaws clamped around one of the soldiers. It hefted him into the air and hurled him thirty feet. Another snake lunged at one of the bombers that was trying to take off. As its top half wrapped around the craft, more and more of its body emerged from the sand, and Erick realized it was truly massive—closer to forty feet than twenty feet. The bomber lifted a few feet, but the powerful snake smashed it to the ground over and over
