Smuggler Ship Page 6

  “No, but one that flies would be ideal.”

  “I’ve heard you say a thousand times that you can fix anything. And this ship looks like a turtle.” She waved grandly toward the craft. “You could really tell when we looked down from above. A turtle is even better than a pterodactyl.”

  “How do you figure?” Erick scratched his head, having a hard time following her reasoning. Pterodactyls had been fierce predators. Turtles were… good in soup.

  “Turtles are wise. And harmless.”

  “Don’t you think a ship that looks fierce would be better than a ship that looks harmless?”

  “Nobody would shoot at a wise, harmless ship,” Jelena said.

  “Are you going to be flying it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then someone will shoot at it.”

  She scowled at him.

  “Often, I’ll wager.”

  Yun was looking back and forth, watching this exchange intently. His leg ought to be driving him to sickbay to search for bandages and drugs, but he wore a hopeful expression as Jelena and Erick spoke. He must truly want to retire and get rid of the ship—and get some money for it. The latter was likely the crux of it. If he had to stay and wait for it to be towed back to town or for someone to come out here to repair it, the Alliance could catch up with him and want to collect the cargo. And the Alliance might not be pleased to find its cargo damaged. Erick could see why Yun wanted to foist this mess off on someone else. And make some money.

  Erick rubbed the back of his neck. Maybe this could work in their favor, assuming he could get the near-wreck for a good price.

  “We’ll give you forty thousand tindarks for it,” Erick said, thinking of the amount they had to work with in Jelena’s parents’ account, and also thinking of the tens of thousands of tindarks that would go into repairs. Would they even be able to find replacement parts? This ship was almost as old as the Star Nomad. And Dustor wasn’t exactly overflowing with manufacturing plants.

  “Forty? Adding the turret and the star cannon up above cost me more than that.”

  “The turret that’s now smoking?” Erick asked mildly. “Along with the rest of the ship?”

  Yun scowled.

  Woofus barked.

  “Your dog thinks forty thousand would buy a lot of steaks,” Jelena said.

  “Woofus isn’t on the title and registration,” Yun growled.

  “Are you?” Erick asked curiously.

  Did smugglers worry about their ships being legally registered?

  “One of my names is. Look, kid. I’ll let you have the ship for seventy-five thousand, no less.”

  “Fifty-thousand.”

  “Fifty-thousand is a lot less.”

  Erick leaned farther out on the cargo ramp and peered toward the sky. “Hm, looks like a ship is flying by up there. Could the Alliance have tracked you down already?”

  “Sixty-five thousand,” Yun growled.

  “Sixty thousand, and you throw in those five thrust bikes,” Erick said.

  “Four thrust bikes. Me and my damned leg need a way back to town. I’m not walking, not with all those snakes out there, and neither is Woofus.”

  “Four works for me.”

  “Me too.” Jelena smiled.

  Erick would have to do more bargaining later to get the rental robot to take these bikes instead of the original two that had been blown up, but with luck, they could turn two in and keep two for themselves. For their new ship.

  Their?

  He laughed at himself. This was for Jelena and not for him, right? He was going to leave as soon as he got it fixed up, and take that fancy job on Arkadius. Wasn’t he? Granted, it would take quite some time to fix up the turtle.

  “Deal.” The owner spat on his palm and stuck out his hand.

  Speaking of worm suck… Who knew what kind of viruses were lurking in that dirty saliva?

  “Shake hands with the man, Jelena,” Erick said. “It’s your family’s business and their account that’ll be paying for the ship.”

  Jelena stuck her tongue out at him, but she clasped hands with Yun.

  “Here’re the digits of one of my accounts,” Yun said, flicking open a holodisplay on a netdisc and tossing it to her. “I’m going to fix my leg, and I’ll find the papers.” He glanced at the sky. “Quickly.”

  “This isn’t the name you gave us,” Jelena observed.

  “Nope, and it’s not the name on the title and registration, either.” He winked as he hobbled away, still leaning on Erick’s staff. “Come on, Woofus.”

  “That went well,” Jelena said when she and Erick were alone.

  He looked around at the torn-up, crate-littered ground outside, and the smoke still wafting out of engineering. “Well?”

  “You got to look at an engine. And you didn’t get eaten by a snake. Weren’t those the two goals for the day that you mentioned?”

  “I don’t think those were my exact words.”

  “I’m broadening your range, that’s all.” She waved airily, then lay down on the ramp, stretching out her arms as if to claim it all for herself.

  “You’re an odd girl, Jelena.”

  Woofus trotted back through the cargo hold on his short legs and curled up under her armpit.

  “I don’t know what you mean, Erick.”

  He hoped a giant snake didn’t slither up to join them.

  Epilogue

  The engine was a mess. All of engineering was a mess. No, the entire ship was a mess.

  Erick didn’t know where to start. There were some tools in dented cabinets, and he would have loved to fix up the ship with nothing more than those battered hammers and screwdrivers, but he definitely needed his toolboxes from the Star Nomad. Not to mention twenty thousand tindarks in replacement parts. He didn’t particularly want to show up at the Nomad, or back in town at all, until Jelena explained this craziness. And how it had resulted in a huge amount of money being shifted out of her family’s business bank account far earlier than her parents had anticipated.

  “Erick?” Jelena called from the cargo hold, or perhaps from outside the freighter.

  She’d been helping Yun bandage his wounds, and Erick had heard the roar of a thrust bike a minute before.

  “We have visitors coming,” she added.

  Grimacing, Erick left the charred, shrapnel-filled engine room. He could imagine all manner of visitors coming to see them, including the local authorities, robots hunting for their missing thrust bikes, and Alliance representatives searching for their cargo—and their missing smuggler.

  “Oh, it’s even worse,” Erick said as he joined Jelena on the cargo ramp and saw who was coming.

  She was looking toward the nearest dune as a hovercraft sailed down the side of it. Two imposing figures stood inside the open-air craft, a man in crimson combat armor carrying a huge rifle and a man in a black Starseer robe carrying a staff with golden runes glowing on the surface. The unlikely couple appeared posed to jump into battle at any second.

  “Well,” Jelena said, glancing toward the dune in the other direction—had Yun headed off that way? “They were going to have to be told about all of this eventually.”

  “True, but I was envisioning us triumphantly returning by flying our new ship to the docks with you doing a few lazy loops over the Nomad before we landed.”

  “You know I was supposed to be back by dinner, right?” Jelena looked skeptically into the interior of the ship as the hovercraft drew closer.

  “I didn’t say my envisioning was practical.”

  The hovercraft stopped at the base of the ramp, and Leonidas leaped onto it, his crimson armor gleaming in the afternoon sun. He removed his helmet as Stanislav, Erick’s tutor and Jelena’s grandfather, floated out of the craft, as if he, too, had hover engines and fans to keep him aloft. The breeze pushed back the hood of his black robe.

  Leonidas, his short hair tousled from the time under his helmet, gazed very dryly at Jelena.

  “Hi, Dad. What
brings you out here?” She waved at him and also at her grandfather.

  “Stanislav sensed that you were in trouble.” Leonidas considered the battered hull of the freighter and the soot-stained interior, and Erick doubted anything he saw changed his assumptions about trouble.

  “In trouble?” Jelena’s brow wrinkled, and she looked to Erick. “I don’t think we were ever truly in trouble.”

  Erick disagreed, remembering all too well how much maintaining that barrier had drained him, but he said, “Making trouble might be the more correct term.”

  “Oh, I assumed that,” Leonidas said. “Especially when the robot on the docks refused to rent bikes to us for the trip out here. Apparently, we’d already opened an account at its kiosk, and two bikes had been destroyed, thus rendering us in arrears. Imagine my surprise. We’ve only been on the planet for six hours, and we’re already in arrears for something.”

  His dry expression had grown faintly exasperated, or was that irritated, and Leonidas frowned at Erick, as if he should have done something to stop Jelena from renting bikes on the family business account.

  Erick lifted his hands. It was true he was the older and supposedly more mature one, but Jelena had a mind of her own. And access to the business account. He was merely an employee. How had that robot learned about the state of those bikes so quickly, anyway?

  Jelena waved a dismissive hand. “We’ll take care of that. We acquired four other thrust bikes, so we can trade as many as needed to the robot to settle the account. And we bought a new ship.” She grinned and turned, spreading both arms wide to showcase their oh-so-impressive acquisition.

  “You bought that?” Leonidas looked like he would have fallen over if the leg stabilizers in his armor hadn’t kept him upright.

  Stanislav, who hadn’t said a word yet, though he could be communicating with Jelena telepathically, pressed a single finger to his lips. He appeared far more amused than exasperated, but it took a lot to exasperate him. He was the laid-back grandfather who spoiled Jelena and the twins. He sometimes grew stern when telling Jelena that she wasn’t studying hard enough or fulfilling her potential, but he never truly seemed irritated. Erick wondered if he knew about the sand snakes.

  “From the looks of it, you should have been paid to take it off the owner’s hands,” Leonidas added. “Is the owner here?”

  His eyes brightened at this thought, and Erick sensed him imagining a renegotiation, or even better, he would use his big cyborg muscles to convince the owner that Jelena did not, after all, have the right to negotiate on behalf of the family business, thus making the deal null and void.

  “I can fix it, sir,” Erick said, though it pained him to hear the words coming out of his mouth.

  He believed they were true, but how long would it take to make the freighter space-worthy again? He would surely miss out on his opportunity to take that job. Even after the overhaul, Jelena would need someone to fly along with her the first six months or more to make sure the ship was working reliably. Still, Erick didn’t like the idea of Jelena’s parents being disappointed in her. Given the funds they’d been allotted, Erick truly believed they had gotten a good deal. Even if the repairs cost a fortune, they would still end up paying far less than they would have for the brick in the used-ship lot. Making this freighter space-worthy again would just require an investment of time. His time.

  Though he realized what he’d just gotten himself into, Erick lifted his chin and met Leonidas’s gaze squarely when it landed on him.

  “You do?” Leonidas asked, sounding surprised.

  “Yes, sir. We’ll have to buy a lot of parts, but it’ll still be more affordable than the other ships we priced.” Since Leonidas looked skeptical, Erick added, “It’s actually a newer ship than the Star Nomad. You and Captain Marchenko must have paid something for that back in the day.”

  “We got the Star Nomad out of a junkyard. For free.”

  “Er, oh.”

  “Technically, Oksana paid for it once,” Stanislav said mildly. And a little wistfully. “Not much, as I recall,” he added with a smile.

  Leonidas lowered his head and shook it slowly from side to side. “Why do I feel defeated?”

  “Because you flew out here expecting a battle and didn’t get to pummel anyone?” Stanislav suggested, then turned his gaze in the direction of the city.

  “No, that’s why I feel disappointed.” Leonidas lifted his head and looked back and forth from Erick and Jelena.

  Erick kept his chin up and tried to appear earnest and trustworthy. He could get the ship working. And he would get it working. He stood by that. There would be another job offer one day. He could wait. Besides, if he didn’t help Jelena get her new ship flying—and make sure she stayed out of trouble once it was in the air—he would be a lousy surrogate brother.

  “Would a hug help?” Jelena offered.

  Leonidas snorted. “It might.”

  “Oh good.” She trotted down the ramp and wrapped her arms around Leonidas’s armored shoulders.

  He bent down to return the hug, and she kissed him on the cheek.

  Erick shook his head. The things that girls got away with just because they were cute…

  “Two shuttlecraft are on the way,” Stanislav said, his gaze still toward the dunes—or maybe he was seeing through the dunes. “I believe they are Alliance shuttles rather than representatives of the local authorities. They came down from orbit.”

  “Oh?” Leonidas said. “Maybe I will get to pummel someone.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be a loyal Alliance citizen now?” Erick asked.

  “I pay them taxes. How loyally I do it is debatable.”

  “I’ll talk to them,” Jelena said. “I’m sure they’re just here to collect their cargo, which we bravely protected from dodgy ex-imperial soldiers. They’ll be grateful.”

  Leonidas raised dubious eyebrows.

  Stanislav smiled again and said, “I’ll make sure they are.”

  He waved for Jelena to join him, and they left the ramp, walking out to the spot where the shuttles would likely land.

  Erick, left alone with Leonidas, eyed him with concern.

  “You really think you can get this rust bucket in the air again?” Leonidas asked.

  “I do.”

  “And you’ll stick around long enough to make sure it’ll stay in the air?”

  Erick squirmed a little under his knowing gaze. Maybe Leonidas had learned about the job offer. Or maybe he just figured that now that Erick had graduated from the university, he would want to go off and pursue a career of his own, a real career.

  “I will,” Erick said firmly. “I can wait another year before checking out other endeavors.”

  “Good, because if we’re going to let Jelena fly a ship, she’ll need a voice of reason—and an engineer with magician’s skills—along on her team.”

  Leonidas thought he was the voice of reason? And that he was a good engineer? One with magician’s skills, even? Erick felt warm at this acknowledgment of his abilities. Then a tendril of doubt wormed its way in. “You are talking about me, right, sir?”

  Leonidas’s eyes crinkled at the corners, and he walked off toward the landing shuttlecraft.

  * * *

  THE END