Galaxy Run: Ibilia Read online

  GALAXY RUN:

  IBILIA

  by

  Sam Renner

  +++++

  PUBLISHED BY:

  SIX to ONE Books & Media

  Copyright © 2020

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  01

  Nixon is arms deep into his ship, and he has no idea what he’s doing. The access panels on the sides of these engines are fine if you’re trained as a mechanic, but he’s not. His training is in running schemes and picking pockets, and while the dextrous fingers of a small-time crook could come in handy while dealing with small wires and tiny connections, they aren’t much good when trying to do it all essentially blind.

  His arms fill nearly all of the space these access panels give him. The openings on most ships are so small that only Geicans can get their skinny yellow arms in there and still have any kind of room to work. It’s why so many of them make a fortune opening little repair shops all around the galaxy. If he had the credits, Nixon would have hired a whole crew of them to repair EHL. He doesn’t though, so he’s stuck fumbling with pieces and parts that he doesn’t really know what to do with.

  He drops one of the small wires for the third time, and shouts in frustration. He yanks his arms from the access panel and punches a fresh dent into the ship’s side.

  “Sounds like you could use a hand.”

  Nixon turns and sees the woman with the highly modified ship that’s settled down across the field from him.

  He’s admired her ship for a while. At its core, it’s a small jump ship, not good for much more than bouncing around a planet’s surface. But she’s done so much work to it that you have to look extra hard to see the original craft. Nixon has had plenty of time to do that kind of looking.

  She sits outside of it most of the time, talking on her datapad or staring into it reading. But she’s clearly taken the time to make the ship home. She’s added larger cargo space. There’s what look like extra crew cabins on the top. That big engine sticking off the back isn’t standard as far as Nixon knows. He’s certain that the two smaller ones bolted to the sides didn’t come from the factory.

  “I’m struggling,” Nixon says. “Fat fingers and tiny spaces.”

  “What are you trying to do?”

  Nixon makes up a story about buying this ship second hand and cheap figuring he could do what it took to fix it and get it flying efficiently again. The woman steps closer. She runs her fingers across seams that Nixon has already closed.

  “Those aren’t bad,” she says. She turns to Nixon. “They aren’t great, but they’ll fly.”

  She looks closely at the blaster holes that Nixon has patched. "Rough."

  Nixon shrugs.

  "Show me what's got you so upset."

  Nixon steps back to the open panel and points inside.

  "That nest of wires in there. Can't see it when I've got my hands inside. Couldn't figure it out even if I could."

  She kneels down and looks up at the ship.

  "An Allain 1112. Cheap ship, but they never sold too many. Fine if you're wanting something to get around a planet. Looking for something to planet hop then you probably want something else."

  "Sometimes you don't get a choice."

  She shoves her arms into the panel and they disappear below the elbows. "Even no ship is a choice."

  Clearly you've never made a decision with real consequences. "When I say this was my only decision it's what I mean."

  She's concentrating, looking off into the suns and focusing on what she can feel in her fingers.

  She pulls her arms out of the ship and wipes them off on her pants. "That whole panel is shot," she says, "but I think I have something back at my ship that can work as a fix."

  She jogs off and Nixon watches her. She pulls a bin from the stack she’s built next to her ship. She rummages through the contents, a tangle of wires and connectors. She settles on a small panel, looks it over, then runs it back across the field.

  “This ought to do it,” she says as she passes Nixon. She pushes her arms back inside the ship and begins to work. A couple minutes of small talk and she pulls her arms out and stands.

  “There.”

  “I really appreciate …” Nixon doesn’t finish his sentence.

  Blaster fire cracks the air, and a bolt of energy hits the ground in front of Nixon and the woman. It splatters mud onto the side of the ship. They both look up and see a man running toward them and firing. Two more shots hit the ground right at their feet.

  The woman, panicked: “Who are you? What are you into?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know.”

  She sprints back to her ship, and Nixon runs back toward the ramp of his. He runs inside and grabs the blaster he’d laid on the navigator’s seat. He runs back down the ramp and a blaster bolt just misses him, crashing into the ship above his head.

  He whips around and fires a blind shot in the direction of the last blast. An Uzek ducks the blast, and Nixon fires two more shots. He’s not looking to hit the thing, although he’d take it if it happened. He’s looking to buy time to find cover.

  He moves quickly behind a stabilizing fin, and another blaster shot hits the ground and creates a shower of mud and sand. Behind him, the man is still coming. Still firing.

  He pushes himself tight to the ship and aims. Two quick shots. Both miss, but they stop the man from running. It’s a brief pause, but even Nixon can hit a still target. He fires twice again, and a second later he hears the man scream out.The shooting from that direction stops.

  Nixon stands. Back to the Uzek. No. Uzeks. There are two of them.

  One has a big blaster shouldered. He fires. Nixon drops to the ground, and the bolt passes over his head. He watches it disappear into the distance. He stands and turns. The Uzeks are coming now, in an awkward half-coordintaed run. The big blaster is slung over the shoulder of the one Uzek. They are each aiming blasters that are swallowed by their massive hands..

  Nixon fires. One shot goes well wide. The other splits the two of them and both duck away.

  It’s his chance. Nixon breaks for the ramp and up into the ship. He starts the ramp to closing and hears the Uzeks shouting something in their groaning and grunting language. He can’t tell if they are talking to each other or to him.

  While the ramp begins to close, Nixon starts the launch processes, hoping that whatever the woman across the field did has worked.

  He gets to the end of the key sequence, pushes the last of the buttons and waits. But there’s nothing. He goes through it again and nothing,

  Someone is shouting from outside the ship, and blaster fire bangs hard against the ship’s side. He can hear the whine of the big blaster charging. A shot form that gun will come clear through the ramp door. He only has a few seconds.

  He goes through the sequence one more time. He hears the sounds of the ship coming to life. Systems are setting themselves. Fuel begins moving to the engines. A moment later he feels the shake he felt back on Exte. The ship leaps from the ground. He’s punched back into his captain’s seat as the sky quickly goes to black.

  02

  Nixon is pinned to his seat. The ship is still roaring at full power even though he's well away from Umel.

  The ship tried to slow once, but he overrode the auto pilot's instincts with the push of a couple buttons.

  Nothing but black is in front of him, but it still feels unsafe. Feels too close. All of this feels wrong.

  He looks to the navigator’s seat next to him. The case. Shaine’s little box is there, also pinned in place by the shear speed at which the ship is travelling. He stares at the box, tries to force all his mental energy on it. Hoping that somehow that will do something. But what? Heat up the box? Cause it to glow red, melt the plastic seat it’s sitting in and fall to the ground? Eventually exploding?

  Yes. That’s what he wants. It’s a trick he saw a street magician pull off ages ago on a dusty corner in an older part of Exte. Three boxes about the size and shape of Shaine’s sat on a wooden platform. The small crowd gathered around watched the magician stare at the boxes. Watched him rub his mustache and concentrate intently on the boxes. Then they applauded as the middle one started to glow.

  It glowed from the bottom up, color pushing its way slowly up the sides of the box, the whole thing eventually turning a bright and shimmering red. The magician concentrated harder. You could almost see the focus from his eyes baring down on the case. The box began to shake.

  He squinted harder and the box shook more. Then, as if from out of nowhere, the box exploded. It broke into a dozen pieces that launched out into the crowd.

  Nixon knew it was some kind of trick. This guy was just a street hustler, same as him. Something was rigged up between the box and the table it was sitting on that caused the whole thing to glow and shake and pop.

  But what if it wasn’t a trick?

  So Nixon stares at his case, squints his eyes and focuses his gaze. Shoots whatever mental energy he can muster like a blaster beam into this case so it will glow and explode. Because if that’s what happens, then this is over. He’s no longer getting shot at, no longer getting chased off planets by unseen thugs. At least when the Uzeks were chasing him around Exte he knew what he did to draw their ire. But these others, he doesn’t. And it’s the not knowing that makes this all unsustainable. He needs an enemy, because that’s the game. Each side makes themselves known. Rules are established and may the best one win.

  He concentrates hard on the case, pushing all
of his mental energy at it and waits for it to go red. To start shining and shaking and then pop like a little firecracker in the seat. He stares and wishes, but nothing happens.

  His concentration is broken by another alarm. Nixon hadn’t noticed that the ship was shaking, working loose all the work he’d done back on Umel, but it is. The alarm is a deep chime that’s followed by the ship’s voice.

  “Sir?” It asks.

  Nixon looks up from the case to the ship’s dashboard and sees half a dozen red lights blinking for his attention. He begins shutting them off.

  “Sir?” The ship says again.

  “Go ahead,” Nixon says as he turns off the last warning light.

  “We are flying at an unsustainable speed. I’m afraid that a systems failure may be imminent.”

  “Which system?”

  “Most of them, sir. All of them.”

  “Then get us to the maximum sustainable speed.”

  Nixon blinks his eyes quickly. They hurt now. Even if it’s all fake, that kind of concentration can be draining.

  “Sir, may I ask where we are going? I can plot us the quickest route.”

  “Depends on how long you can hold out,” he says. He looks down to the control panel and takes in the numbers there. “Is this our sustainable speed?”

  “For now, yes.”

  Nixon unbuckles and stands. He bends over and picks up the case and turns it over in his fingers. “What do you mean ‘For now?’ ”

  “We can run this fast for a while, but I’ll slow us down if I detect any anomalies. Also to preserve fuel once that becomes an issue.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “I’ll sound an alarm.”

  “Of course you will.”

  Nixon runs his thumbs across the seams on the outside of Shaine’s case. He tries to pull it open for the millionth time, forgetting the combination and just brute forcing his way in. For the millionth time nothing happens.

  He tosses the case back up unto the dash and looks out at the front of the ship. It’s all black and indistinguishable from any other time since they left Umel.

  He asks the ship to bring up a galactic map on the display in front of him. A moment later it’s there, pinpoints of light indicating moons and planets. He taps one of the planets that looks to be an impossible distance from where he is now.

  “There,” he says. “Get us there. Plot a course.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Planet Azken is at the coordinates that Shaine gave Nixon just before he was killed. Nixon plotted it before, and the little indicator light didn’t seem this far away. He sinks into his seat. Disappointed.

  “Course plotted, sir. Permission to revert to a sustainable speed.”

  “Sure,” Nixon says. He can feel the speed drain away. Everything inside the ship gets more comfortable, the pressure of high speeds not pushing him down into every surface.

  Nixon stands again.

  “I’m going to the crew quarters,” he announces. “Signal if you need me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  03

  Nixon is back on his bunk. The thin mattress is doing little to separate him from the molded plastic he’s laying on, and he rolls to his side to try and keep the seam off his back.

  His mind has calmed somewhat. He’s still questioning this whole endeavour, questioning this feeling of loyalty that he’s for some reason a slave to.

  He doubts that Shaine ever felt this. He always put Nixon in the tougher spot. Sure, Nixon was the smaller of the two men, so that meant that there were just some things that Shaine couldn’t do. When they were committing petty little break-ins, Nixon got the job of climbing into raised windows when they were the only way in. Shaine would wait off somewhere else, buried unseen in the shadows until everything was clear.

  Shaine had a way of explaining it all away that made sense to Nixon at the time. Now, he can’t see it for anything other than the excuse that it really was. Shaine looking out for Shaine. Something happens, it’s Nixon who gets pinched; Shaine skates free.

  Running pick-pocket schemes in the streets, it was never Shaine that was the pick. He was always the distraction. Fat fingers, he tried to explain. Made sense then, bullshit now. Something goes wrong—a mark moves funny, a money pouch snags on a seam, anything not according to plan—and it’s Nixon getting picked up, punched out. Whatever the consequences, they are his.

  Damnit, Shaine. You can go to ...

  Then enter Mira and everything changes. Decades of friendship unravel. Not completely and not quickly, but still different than it used to be. No sense of loyalty. No sense of responsibility. A girl coming between two friends who’d been inseparable. Shaine off living out the dream each of them had talked about: a house, a family, normalcy. Nixon left to work the streets alone, left to scramble together a life, seeing his friend-—his brother—only sporadically.

  He thinks hard about the case again, concentrating on the little square shape sitting on the main dash. Waiting, hoping—expecting?—to hear a muffled pop come from the main deck. Waiting to spring from the bed and go see little bits of metal scattered across the floor and whatever is so important inside sitting on the dash where the case had been.

  But there is no pop. There’s nothing but a headache caused by intense concentration.

  He laughs through the pain, and remembers times—too many times—when he and Shaine would try something stupid like this, something that both of them knew wouldn’t work. Neither would be angry when it didn’t. They’d sit in some alley, breathing heavy after being chased by some security team, and recount their just-had misadventure.

  Nixon smiles and rolls over to his other side. He grabs his datapad from the side table next to him and pulls up some show, a dumb thing that requires no extra thought. It’s a game show where contestants are given some humiliating physical task to complete. Complete it, win an inconsequential prize. Fail and get covered in some kind of green goo that falls from the ceiling.

  Nixon laughs his way through one episode and then a second. The third, though, is interrupted by a ringing alarm and the ship coming over its audio system.

  “Sir, we have an issue.”

  04

  Nixon walks double-time down the skinny hall back to the ship’s main cabin. The alarm continues to whalp. It’s a warning he’s not heard yet, and he thought this ship had given up all its tricks already.

  “What’s happening?” he asks as he steps into the main cabin and comes up behind the captain’s chair.

  “That’s a proximity alarm. There’s another ship nearby.”

  Nixon steps around the seat and sits. He looks at the displays in front of him. He doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary. He turns off the alarm and the whole place goes silent.

  “An alarm for something else being close seems excessive. Is this other ship aggressive?”