Desert World Rebirth (21 page)

Chapter 18

SHAN clenched his teeth as he looked around the crowded loading bay. Every piece of equipment and glass was loaded and there wasn’t another reason to delay. Glancing over, he saw Temar had that same flat expression on his face that he’d had at Ben’s farm. That made his stomach knot even more.

“I’ve done my best with the glass, but some of those pieces are so delicate that I’m not sure the foam will have the right density to protect them. Are you sure you don’t want to leave some of the pieces here, Ambassador Polli?” Corporal Kester asked for about the third time.

“If it breaks, it breaks. However, try to avoid doing anything that would make it more likely to break,” Shan said, dismissing the concern. Most of the pieces had been made for this trip, and Dee’eta Sun wouldn’t have sent anything too valuable to replace. Temar moved to one of the metal crates and ran his long fingers along the edge. Shan wanted to grab Temar and run for the distant dunes and never come back. It would be a romantic image, except for the part where they’d die of thirst and get eaten by sandrats.

“Yes, sir,” Corporal Kester answered, even though he sounded very unhappy about the answer.

Naite stuck his head into the cargo hold. “We have a report of a sandcat pack attack out by Hope Valley. I was going to head over there, if it’s okay with you,” he said, raising his gun. It was a staged performance, but Corporal Kester’s eyes went large exactly as planned.

Shan nodded. “Take off. Ride safe, okay?” He hated leaving Naite behind. Now that he faced going into space, he had to admit that he wished his brother would be close enough to ride to the rescue if they needed it. Instead, they were on their own.

“You too, Shan,” Naite said, that roughness dropping away, and for one second, Shan could see the worry and love on his brother’s face. Oh, he always knew it was there, but Naite rarely let it show. After that flash of honest emotion, Naite turned and left the ship. He and a dozen other armed hunters would take a sand hunter and head for Hope Valley at full speed, showing their guests that the people of Livre knew how to take care of business.

“Sandcats?” Corporal Kester asked in an unsteady voice. He looked ready to slam the door closed and run for it.

Shan grunted and gave a short nod. “Local predators. Usually they’re more solitary, but they can take down a man easily. A pack can take down three or four full-grown and armed men in minutes.” It was true, but a pack almost never formed. Sandcats turned on each other the second food was scarce. The only reports of sandcat packs came from the early days of colonization when the settlers and their animals had been easy prey. But that worked to their advantage too. These people probably had those early reports, when Livre managed to kill at least half the people who landed on her. These days, few people died from predator attacks, and the ones who did were like Ben—exiled—or like Shan’s father—drunk and stupid enough to lie on the sand to watch sunrise instead of the rock he normally chose for his naps.

“Oh geez,” the corporal whispered. Shan looked over to find Temar watching with that blank expression.

“Are we taking off now?” Shan asked, snapping more than he needed to. He hated the wall that had come down around Temar, hiding the emotions that normally flitted across his expressive face.

“Yes, sir.” Corporal Kester snapped into a stiff pose for a moment before he went to the ramp and hit the close button to lift the ramp. Shan watched the sequence of buttons carefully. “I have your luggage in the front passenger area, and I’ll show you and Ambassador Gazer to your seats.”

Corporal Kester headed toward a narrow door that led into a narrow passage that led up to the front pilot area. Temar stood to one side, waiting for Shan to follow the corporal before he did. Two hours ago, Shan had thought he understood Temar, but now he looked at the blank expression and Shan could feel the bile rise in his throat. Temar was closed down so tightly Shan couldn’t even judge whether he was panicking. He should be staying home, and Shan tried to find one good excuse to leave Temar behind, where he’d be safe. The problem was that Shan wasn’t sure that Livre was all that safe right now. If Lilian was right, they were all in danger, and as much as Shan hated Lilian right now, he trusted the woman to understand politics.

“Ambassador Polli,” the corporal said, offering a seat in a huge chair with deep cushions, with electronics going up either side. “Pull the net restraint down over you with this bar when we’re ready to take off.” He demonstrated with a handle at the top of the chair, showing how to lock it in near the seat. Shan could see that it would keep him locked in firmly. He fisted his hands, not wanting Temar to have that sort of restraint on him. “Release it with this button,” Corporal Kester said, showing a recessed button.

“Temar, did you see that?” Shan asked. He wouldn’t have Temar feeling trapped for even one second.

“Ambassador Gazer?” Temar asked in an utterly neutral voice.

“Show him the controls,” Shan ordered. Corporal Kester nodded and backed up some to show Temar the controls on the chair next to Shan. There were six chairs behind the two pilot seats, and Shan and Temar had the two right behind the pilot. They wouldn’t have a lot of privacy.

“Thank you, Corporal,” Temar said before he sat in the seat and tested the bar by pulling it down so that the net caught him across the chest and pushed him into the padded seat, and then he released it, letting the net retract back into the top of the chair.

“Yes, sir.”

“How long until we lift off and how long until the skip shuttle picks us up?” Shan asked as the corporal settled into the pilot’s chair.

“Preflight check is about ten minutes, but we should wait until people get clear of the area.”

“Why?” Temar asked, worry flashing across his face before that same neutral mask slipped back in place.

The corporal turned around, his whole seat swiveling, to look at them. “This puppy is going to throw up a lot of sand. People could get caught in that.”

“My people are used to sandstorms that could bury this ship under fifty feet of Livre dune,” Shan pointed out. “They’ll be fine. Take off as soon as you’re ready.”

“Yes, sir,” Corporal Kester agreed, swiveling his seat to face front. “The skip shuttle will take about two or three hours for maneuvering before it enters subspace and we can move ships. Our final destination is the cruiser
Brazica
. We should reach it in about sixteen hours.”

Sixteen hours. Shan frowned as he realized that the rest of the universe was closer than he had ever thought. Why wouldn’t someone come and investigate Livre?

Shan looked over at Temar, reaching out to brush his fingers across the back of his hand. Temar pulled his hand away, but then he glanced over and gave Shan a small smile. Respecting the fact that Temar needed a little space, Shan turned to the front and watched as much of the pilot’s actions as he could. Shan could tell one panel was fuel consumption, but most of the controls had nothing familiar that Shan could use to start trying to decipher them. That made sense, since the schematics in the relay computer had been for rockets. This was different technology, but Shan noticed that the AFP hadn’t sent them any technical specifications on flying one of these—just the cargo capacity. Then again, Shan hadn’t asked.

Corporal Kester turned a switch. “Shuttle Beta-Two-Beta, this is Airship Two-Beta-Nine preparing for pre-flight sequence. I have two guests, Ambassadors Polli and Gazer, and am massing at 72 percent cargo mass. Confirm.” He turned a number of other switches, and Shan could hear machines start to whine under them.

“Confirm for preflight, Airship Two-Beta-Nine,” a voice from space said over the radio. Minutes sped by as the pilot’s hands moved across more controls than Shan could track. He’d identified the communications systems and what might be internal sensors, as well as fuel, but that still left a lot of mystery switches.

The pilot reached over his head and pulled down his own net restraint. “We’re getting ready for lift. You need to strap in, sirs.”

Shan looked over to see if Temar was okay. Given Temar’s history with restraints, this made Shan uncomfortable, but Temar pulled the net down and locked it into place without showing any emotion. That would have reassured Shan more if Temar hadn’t been pretty much emotionless since they’d walked up to the corporal.

Corporal Kester touched a communication switch again. “Three minutes to burn. Shuttle Beta-Two-Beta, be advised, I have priceless artwork on board. We would all appreciate a soft skip here.”

Shan frowned at the description of priceless artwork, and when he looked over, Temar looked equally confused.

“Come again, Airship?” the man on the other end of the radio asked.

“Artwork. Priceless glass artwork. A hard skip is going to destroy millions of credits here, so a little patience would be appreciated,” Corporal Kester repeated.

Shan blew out a breath when he realized they were talking about Dee’eta’s work. He certainly appreciated her work. She’d made the complex knot of blue and clear glass that Temar was wearing like a pendant, and Shan couldn’t imagine how she could get glass to bend in such fantastic ways. However, if he was flying a ship into space, he would be far more concerned about people than glass. It wasn’t as if glass itself were rare. It wasn’t. Only the exceptionally high-quality glass required to encase computer chips without interfering with optical properties had a lot of value. The optic-quality glass was made in neat rods to show off the utter clarity, but Temar had told him that optic-quality glass didn’t have the right properties for the sort of manipulation and artistry Dee’eta was famous for.

“They’re bringing artwork?” the shuttle asked. Clearly they were doubting someone’s sanity.

“Yes, sir, they are. A lot of artwork. I was sweating with fear as I packed it, so please give us the softest skip in history.”

There was a long pause where the radio was unnaturally silent. “Understood, Airship. We will be coming in at 6.95 miles per second. Command advises you to increase to 4.5 miles per second before contact.”

Kester touched a number of controls, and numbers flashed by the screens on the fuel unit. “Understood. 4.5 miles per second confirmed, Shuttle,” he finally agreed. “I just hope you grab us on the first skip because at that rate of burn I have two minutes of fuel on board.”

“Two minutes, confirmed,” the shuttle promised.

The pilot reached over and turned off a switch. “And hopefully we won’t shake ourselves to death.” Angling his chair so he could look back at them, Kester gave them a wry look. “Next time they have a diplomatic mission, make sure they’re sending a diplomatic airship and not a ground-pounder bus before you bring the good glass, okay?”

Shan didn’t answer since he didn’t really know what to say, and Temar had gone frighteningly silent. After a second, Kester turned his seat back around and tended his controls. The computer started making a loud ticking sound that reminded Shan of a cooling engine, and then they started rolling.

“We’re going to roll clear of the crowd before full burn,” Kester offered.

Shan watched the sand of his home roll past the window. The gathered crowds were on the far side of the shuttle, but Shan silently said his good-byes and sent a prayer up to God as the ground started rushing by faster.

“Brace for full burn. Lean all the way back in the seats to avoid sore necks, sirs. In five, four, three, two, one….”

Shan felt like someone had punched him in the stomach as the ship lurched forward, slamming him back into the seat, and then the white sand vanished as they climbed up into the sky. They were leaving Livre.

Chapter 19

AFTER the airship, where they’d been trapped in the chairs, and the shuttle, where they’d had a small room with couches facing each other and a tiny window the size of a man’s hand, the
Brazica
looked enormous, even though he hadn’t seen anything other than the landing hangar so far. Straight metal beams rose several stories above them, making this a tall, narrow space, and Shan felt like he was buried alive inside metal walls with no windows and no sunlight. Instead, strips of light glowed from the walls and bright lights high overhead created a yellow glow that was giving him a headache.