She trusted me not to harm her.
I could do whatever I wanted with her and she could do the same with me.
It was the kind of connection my people dreamed about.
I had let her leave in the arms of a monster, a creature that was likely touching her the same way I was touching this ship.
The sour truth was, I had to let her go.
There was no choice.
If I didn’t, they were only going to kill me or else send up a flare and call the guards and their drones down on us.
This shop of theirs would drill into the ground and the hole it produced would be covered over by the sand, disappearing as if it had never existed.
The reward they would get for me wouldn’t be a lot but a little was more than nothing.
I had studied Draw carefully as he left with my girl on his arm, and looked for any sign or signal he secretly passed to his men.
There wasn’t one, so far as I could ascertain.
They didn’t need to honor their deal.
In fact, I expected they wouldn’t.
They could quietly slay me and Draw could have his way with Agatha and, in all likelihood, enslave her.
It would be clean and efficient and the prison would never have to learn the truth.
They would dump me in the desert and cover me with sand.
No one would ever know the truth about what happened to us.
I had no intention of letting that happen.
Any of it.
Least of all the idea of Agatha being used by that sick bastard.
I only hoped I could get free of these guys before creeping up to Draw’s room and saving her.
Intense anger bubbled inside me and threatened to spill over.
If I lost control, I would lay this grinning buffoon out and then tear the weapons from the second guard, whose blaster pistols were aimed at my back.
I had to be more careful than that, more diplomatic.
“I want to see her,” I said to Piggy.
“You’ve seen her already,” Piggy said. “Get a move on.”
“I want to see inside her. She looks fine out here but if I can’t see inside, there’s no way to know if you’ve stripped her out and left me with nothing more than an empty tin can.”
“She’s complete. Now, move—”
I slapped his pointing finger aside and twisted his arm behind his back.
I spun him around so he faced his buddy, who raised their rifles at me.
With Piggy in the way, they lowered their weapons.
I released my grip on Piggy, who checked his arm to ensure I hadn’t done any lasting damage.
“Put some ice on it and it’ll be fine,” I said.
Piggy glared at me and sneered, wiggling his nose back and forth in a gesture that betrayed his fear.
I turned to face the shuttlecraft and marched over to its hatch door.
“Take him inside,” Piggy said.
“But sir—” one of the armed guards said.
Piggy turned on him and slapped him across the face.
“I said take him inside! Don’t make me repeat myself, fool!”
He lashed out at the guard because he couldn’t lash out at me.
I was too big, too strong, and too fast for him to do much with.
Piggy took off, probably to follow my advice and put some ice on his injury.
I tapped my foot impatiently as the guards approached the back hatch door and unlocked it for me.
One guard stood back, his rifle glaring at me, and the underside plasma glowing brightly the way it did when it was being warmed up in preparation of being released.
He was making a mistake holding it ready like that.
It would explode if he wasn’t careful.
That was the problem with plasma.
It was powerful but unstable.
If you charged it up for too long it could explode and backfire.
That was why I insisted my crew use phasers rather than the more powerful plasma rifles inside the ship.
When you were in the depths of space, a weapon of such power was a bad idea, especially if your crew suffered from itchy trigger fingers.
Blast a hole in the hull and suddenly you could be sucked into space and die from both intense ice and fire in the same moment.
The second guard pressed a button on a set of controls on the wall and the shuttlecraft’s hatch door whirred open.
It thunked into place, making a loud clunk noise as it set down on the metal grating.
I was disappointed to see the locks attached to the shuttlecraft’s underside were still in place.
“I need to fly her around,” I said. “Check to make sure she’s space-worthy.”
“No flying,” the guard with the itchy trigger finger said.
He glared at me, the light from the plasma container shimmered and cast ugly lines over his face.
He looked like something from a terrible nightmare.
“I need to fly her,” I said stubbornly. “Otherwise I’m going to have to check her engine systems. And do you know how long that’s going to take me?”
Not long, in truth, but they didn’t need to know that.
“You can’t fly her,” the guard at the controls said. “We don’t have the keys to unlock the most valuable items.”
It wasn’t difficult to guess who did have the required authority.
Draw.
But there was also a chance he had a second who might have access.
Better to be safe than sorry.
“Only Draw has the authority?” I said.
“Yes. Now are you going to check the ship or aren’t you?” the guard at the controls said as he joined his buddy with the quivering forefinger.
If I just waited a few more minutes, that rifle would explode and destroy the two guards.
Then I could scoop up the second rifle and disappear through a door in the back that would take me upstairs to Draw’s quarters.
A simple, but effective, plan.
“Ease down on the plasma rifle,” the second guard said, dashing my hopes. “You know you always overdo it.”
The guard eased up on the controls and let the rifle power down.
Ion steam issued from the tip of the rifle.
Damn! It was so close to blowing too!
I stomped inside the shuttlecraft and pressed at the
