Chapter One
“Don’t get rude with me, smart mouth. It ain’t my fault we’re stuck out here in the ass end of the gutter.”
“So what—you’re saying it’s my fault? I’ve been trying to tell you for five damned weeks that—”
“Now who’s being rude? Watch your tone before you wind up with a mouthful of broken teeth.”
Eli let his aching eyelids sink shut and rubbed the knots out of his brow. “All of you shut the hell up before I blast every one of you into next Tuesday.”
“I’m only saying,” River added, “we wouldn’t be here if—”
“Let it go.”
Someone drew breath to say something, but when Eli turned around and scanned the room, whoever it was thought better of it.
Eli measured the four people in the room. Jood stood ramrod erect to one side, with no trace of a fidget anywhere. He didn’t even blink, and his face registered no expression at all.
Yasha sat on the unused radiator, propping her arms on either side of her knees. She observed the argument between River and Waylon with her usual bright eyes and steady, unruffled demeanor.
River’s enormous bulk slouched in a chair by the door. She swiveled the seat back and forth, pretending to relax, but her face gave her away. She bared her teeth and her narrow eyes glinted at Waylon, who clenched his fists and swelled out his shoulders.
At least Waylon kept his distance. He might be in the habit of throwing his weight around and leaving a tide of bodies in his wake, but he knew better than to antagonize River beyond a certain reasonable level.
Eli made sure they all kept quiet, but he was way too tired to straighten out their latest squabble. He rotated back to the window and gazed out at the Niren Outpost. How the hell did he wind up here, of all places? He didn’t have to ask.
The Oviesk sun was going down over the Bruma glacier, while the Satkia sun rose behind the Mazaap Ice Sheet. The two screens of light shining over the Outpost at different angles sparkled through swirling ice storms. Flecks of snow and ice pelted the Outpost from all sides.
Why anyone would want to look at the window in this godforsaken place, Eli couldn’t fathom. The view depressed him beyond endurance, but he didn’t seem to be able to look away.
After a week of hiding in this hellhole, Eli couldn’t make up his mind whether staying or leaving would be worse. Inside or outside, here or somewhere else—what difference did it make in the end? None.
In front of his eyes, a massive steel-grey ship broke the atmosphere and descended on the Outpost. Eli stiffened as the craft heaved into view. He didn’t relax until he caught a glimpse of the identity code stamped on its hull. It wasn’t a Squadrons ship. He didn’t know or care what it was, as long as it wasn’t that.
He didn’t realize he was standing there, lost in silent thought, until River broke the stillness. “Sarge? What do you want to do?”
He found it nearly impossible to turn around and face his people. As hopeless and forlorn as the frozen landscape outside appeared, the situation inside this room made him feel even worse.
Too slowly, he swiveled. There they all were, exactly where he’d left them, and they were all looking back at him. They waited to hear him come out with some brilliant solution to their insoluble problem.
“We can’t stay here,” Waylon chimed in. “Declan Tanner has teams all over town searching for us. We can hardly leave this room without risking exposure.”
“Whose fault is that?” River fired back. “We wouldn’t be in this fix in the first place if Tanner wasn’t looking for you.”
Waylon rolled his eyes. “Can we not go through all that again? I offered about a thousand times to leave the ship, but you all said no. No one made you do that.”
“A thousand times?” Jood interjected. “I heard you do it once. I cannot remember hearing you do it since we arrived here at Niren.”
Waylon rounded on him, spitting tacks. “So now you jump in on her side! I should have known. Don’t ever spin me any of your shit about staying neutral. You’re a snake in the grass.”
“I never claimed to be neutral about anything,” Jood said. “I have as much interest in staying alive as the rest of you. I cannot imagine how you came to believe otherwise.”
“Waylon is right about one thing,” Yasha said. “We can’t stay here.”
“Then we have to leave,” River said. “We don’t have to take him with us. That would be suicide.”
“That’s enough of that,” Eli barked. “We’re not leaving anyone behind.”
“But Sarge,” River said.
“It wouldn’t do any good, anyway,” Eli told her. “Tanner is after all of us now, not just Waylon. It wouldn’t throw Tanner off our trail.”
“It doesn’t seem that much will,” Jood said. “When that man sets out to eliminate someone, he has a reputation for finishing the job.”
“Whose side are you on?” River snapped. “You make it sound like taking Waylon with us would be the best thing that ever happened to us, when in fact—”
“I already told you,” Jood replied, his alien face betraying little emotion. “I am on my own side, as I have always been. Our best chance of surviving Tanner involves taking Waylon with us. It seems obvious.”
“Excuse me,” Waylon spat, “but I’m not a goddamned breamer you can pack up in your storage hold and transport around the stinkin’ galaxy to trade for your lives. I’m a person, and I’ll be one to decide where I go and what I do.”
“You won’t go with us if we decide not to fly with you,” River cut in. “No one is saddling me with a glowing neon sign saying, ‘Hey, Tanner, the man you’re looking to kill is right here on our ship’. Jesus, asshole, use your brain if you have one.”
Waylon lunged for her. “You foul-mouthed, filthy, washed-out piece of—”
“You reeking pile of space trash!” River bellowed back. “You put all of us at risk with your back-stabbing, underhanded, traitorous—” She rocketed off her chair.
Eli saw the two rushing to close with each other. “Cool it, both of you. The Boomerang is my ship. I say who flies in her, and that’s the last word.”
River and Waylon completely ignored him. “I’ll cut your fat ass in half as soon as look at you!” Waylon roared. “You can thank me for putting up with your poison as long as I have.”
“Take a look in the mirror, you freakish piece of broken—”
The two of them caught each other and started throwing punches, slapping, yanking. The whole thing escalated so fast Eli barely had time to move in before they locked in a flying cloud of knuckles and teeth.
Yasha got off the radiator and approached. Jood didn’t budge. He spectated from the other side of the room, without a shred of concern for the outcome.
Eli ducked a punch from Waylon. It connected with River’s shoulder and bounced off her fleshy bicep. She wound back to return the blow. Eli straightened up to block it, and the inside edge of her elbow looped around his back.
Eli dove between the combatants. He jammed his hands against both their chests to pry them apart. He yelled at Waylon to back down, but their howls and curses drowned him out. Waylon didn’t seem to be aware of Eli’s existence. He glared at River, thundering obscenities that she returned to him in equal measure.
Yasha angled around their other side, but when she laid hold of River’s other arm, Waylon took advantage of the moment to dive in. He darted his head forward to butt River, and hit Eli’s temple instead.
Eli rounded on him, bellowing in pain and rage, but now that he made his move to get between them, he found he couldn’t extricate himself at all. His arms were trapped between them.
Fury exploded out of him. He whipped his own head around. With all his power, he smashed his forehead into Waylon’s jaw. Waylon’s skull flipped sideways and River pelted her knee into Waylon’s groin.
Waylon’s knees buckled, but he recovered just as fast. He spiraled one beefy arm away, slapped it down to his thigh, and yanked out his laser pistol. Eli saw him bringing it up to level it at River’s eye.
Eli gaped in horror at the scene devolving into his worst nightmare. Every instinct told him to stop this before he saw his pilot’s brains spattered all over the room, but at that exact moment, the door slammed open.
It slapped back with such force that the knob punched a hole in the cheap fiber wall. Before the four crewmates could disentangle themselves from each other, dozens of armed men streamed into the room.
Eli had never dreamed the situation could get any worse than it already was. He almost lost all hope in life when the attackers barreled into the room by the dozen. They rushed into a semi-circle formation, with their hand cannons bristling outward like porcupine quills.
Chapter Two
Eli, Waylon, and Yasha gawked at the gunmen in stunned shock. The invaders would have mowed them down in seconds if Jood hadn’t reacted. Without seeming to move, he streaked across the room in a blue and orange blur.
He zoomed in front of the gunmen and snatched two rifles. With one swift twist of his wrist, he snapped them upward and bent their barrels at a strange angle. At the same instant, the whole mob opened fire. Quick as thought, Jood swiped both his arms up and down again. He knocked the remaining guns downward, and they all blasted into the floor.
The four combatants sprang apart, but no one could move as fast as Jood. He dropped into a crouch and lashed his leg across the floor. He tripped the gunmen over, and they flopped into a heap of guns and flailing limbs.
“Go!” Eli roared, and shoved Waylon and River toward the window.
Waylon spun around to aim his pistol at the enemy, but Eli batted him away, too. He gave Waylon and River one last shove behind him, and they bolted for the window.
Eli checked the assailants. A few managed to wrest themselves out of the morass and point their weapons up at Jood. Down on the floor, a single man pinned under dozens of bodies wrestled a pistol out of somewhere and aimed it at Eli.
Yasha wheeled and grabbed the rifle slung over her shoulder. She swung it into position. The movement attracted Jood’s attention. He glanced that way and spotted the guy taking aim at Eli.
Jood pounced into the air and smashed his foot down on the man’s wrist. His weight crushed the bone, and the flesh squished into a pancake. The gun flopped out of the man’s hand, but the distraction gave the other attackers enough time to threaten the party one more time. They shouldered their weapons, and Yasha opened fire.
She sprayed lead all over the room. It exploded in Eli’s ear. He cringed away and charged for the window as Waylon dove through the glass into the snow. Eli rushed the window so fast he wedged River against the frame in his haste to get through it.
He glanced back. Yasha backed in his direction, unloading her rifle as fast as she could squeeze the trigger. Jood whizzed back and forth, jamming weapons, twisting them into different shapes, and snapping bone here and there. Eli didn’t bother to check what he was doing. He only cared about getting his people out of the building before they all got shot.
He pushed River toward the window, but getting her bulky form through the broken pane took longer than it should have. She snarled and cursed. “Leave me alone! You aren’t helping.”
He didn’t seem to be able to stop shoving, and her giant body didn’t seem to be making much progress. He looked back one more time. His guts seized when one of the gunmen yanked a Milkweed from his belt, pulled the ripcord, and lobbed it toward Yasha.
Jood ducked out of the way. The Milkweed bumped across the floorboards and rolled straight into Yasha’s ankles. She paused her fire and stared down at the floor. Eli reacted without thinking. He dove for her and grabbed her arm. He jerked her off her feet, and she slammed into him. They toppled. Eli closed his arms around her and heaved her to one side.
Their combined weight slammed into the wall, and a colossal crash hit Eli in the side of the head. He tasted blood, but adrenaline alone rocketed him to his feet. He towed Yasha with him and almost fell headfirst into a massive hole blown in the floor.
Across the gap, all the gunmen hopped up and shouldered their weapons. River screamed, falling through the window into the howling snow outside. Eli’s mind revolved around getting Yasha and Jood and himself through the same exit, but Jood was caught on the other side of that yawning chasm. He stood less than a foot from the nearest attacker.
Their eyes met, but as usual, Eli couldn’t read the Xynnar’s expression. As he watched, Jood shot straight up in the air. His enemies swiveled to blow him to kingdom come, but he was already a dozen feet above their heads. He dropped and streaked through the hole, out of sight.
Eli tried to push Yasha toward the window, but when she turned, she lost her balance and teetered. A broken plank under her foot gave way. She pinwheeled her arms, trying to right herself, and Eli floundered to catch her in time.
Her wide, staring eyes hovered before his gaze, and behind her back, all those guns unloaded straight into Eli’s face. He hunched his shoulders for any protection, and Yasha slipped from his grasp. She pivoted into thin air and fell.
He should have dived for safety, but instead, he launched toward the hole and landed flat on his stomach. He caught Yasha by the wrist. Her feet twirled above the room below. Voices yelled and shouted out of sight. His enemies advanced around the pit to finish him off.
Eli stared down into Yasha’s eyes. She gazed back up at him with a curious sparkling shine to her irises. She seemed to be trying to tell him something. He wouldn’t let her go—not ever. He could have taken the chance to get away, but that belonged to another reality. He only hoped River and Waylon could put their differences aside to get to safety in the Boomerang.
At that moment, someone dodged into his line of sight down on the lower story. Jood looked up at him. He scanned the rim, looking at all those gunmen pointing their cannon at Eli’s back.
Jood hopped up and grabbed Yasha’s ankle. With a mighty jerk, he tore her down, but Eli was holding on too tight to let go in time. Jood’s pull tugged both of them off the ledge, and Eli somersaulted over the side.
He crashed down next to Yasha. For a fraction of a second, Eli stared up at his assailants, clustered around the shattered remains of the ceiling. Their guns pivoted into position, but before they could fire, Jood seized Eli by the collar and hauled him away. The next second, Eli was staring up at solid fiber blocking him from his doom.
Jood shook Eli out of his stupor. “Come, Eli. The Boomerang is parked in the hangar.”
Eli didn’t have time to argue that they’d have to make a break through sub-zero temperatures to reach the ship. He cast a momentary glimpse around the room in which he found himself. Whores, roughnecks, freighters, and guns for hire stared back at him from the bar. Debris and rubble scattered across the floor, and a few broken tables and chairs separated the friends from the exit.
Eli’s heart sank. He could add the Niren Outpost to one of dozens of worlds where he and his crew would never be welcome again. The number where they were allowed dwindled with every passing year.
Jood tapped his elbow and gestured toward the exit. He, Eli, and Yasha skirted the debris under the shocked inspection of the patrons. The gunmen upstairs blasted their weapons through the hole, trying to shoot the friends, but they didn’t hit anything except more furniture.
Jood checked through the glass partition between the bar and the frigid conditions outside. Eli didn’t want to go out there without the appropriate environmental wear, but what choice did he have?
Yasha blew out a quick breath, slinging her rifle across her shoulder, but Jood showed no sign of hesitation. He punched the release mechanism and the partition hissed aside. A blast of pelting ice hammered through the opening.
Eli didn’t give himself an instant to think twice. He plunged into the howling tempest. The partition made an unmistakable answering whisper when it closed behind Yasha.
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