“I am awake,” Saketa said, though she kept her eyes closed. “If you want to talk.”
“Do you read minds too?” Zamm asked her. “Is that in your bag of tricks as well?”
“No. Just a feeling.”
Zamm was silent for a bit, as he had been for a while, and she still didn’t give him a look. The copilot’s chair was rather comfortable, especially once it was tilted and had its footrest out, and the hum of the cockpit’s systems was a pleasant enough background noise.
“Have you been meditating?” he finally asked.
“Not as I define it,” she replied. “Not a true, deep one. But I have been examining myself, guarding myself. Peering within. I am just… being casual about it.”
“By Kaleran standards, I take it?” he asked, sounding a little bit amused.
“Most Kalerans aren’t Wardens,” she told him. “The Fringe would be a very different place if they were.”
“But are most Wardens like this? All this… spiritual stuff?”
“The spiritual stuff,” she replied, with just a touch of dryness, “is the source of our power. And how we manage it. Yes, we are supposed to be our own most dedicated guardian.”
“And is something bothering you right now? In particular?”
She sensed the bit of concern in his voice, and felt the old instinctual reflex to deflect. But she fought back against it, and gave him an honest answer.
“I am fighting the urge to consider all of this a failure. If I had disabled the freighter’s bridge crew a bit more quickly, we would not be in this desperate chase, and those two thousand human beings would be safe. And then there is Zintu Rock… I felt that something big would happen, or was expected to happen, and it did. We do not know what exactly it was about, but from your account we know that a great deal of people were murdered.”
“You were guarding the ship,” Zamm told her. “And from your account, I probably wouldn’t have been able to push that mob back, if we’d traded tasks. It took me an hour to travel back to the ship, and that was on that stupid little scooter. You couldn’t have shown up in time to make a difference. And if you’d stayed to try to… I don’t know… fix things somehow, then that would have been it for those two thousand.”
“All well reasoned, and all points I have told myself already,” Saketa replied. “But deep feelings are a bit more complicated than reason.”
“Sure, sure. You feel you should be able to fix everything, right?”
“You speak with familiarity on the subject.”
Saketa heard a little sound she interpreted as the man shrugging.
“I may not operate on your level, but yes. Akkian children look up to Rangers as we grow up. We hear the stories, and hear about the bygone old heroes. And then when you somehow become one… once the rush passes and you’re actually on the job, failing at something doesn’t feel like an option. You’re just letting everyone down then, including your own child-self.”
“And it can become a poison,” Saketa said. “A weight around one’s ankles. Expecting too much, harbouring guilt for having limits.”
“Yeah,” he said. There was something like surprise in his voice, and Saketa wondered if he was discussing this with another human being for the first time. Talking had a way of bringing things up to the surface.
Zamm inhaled deeply.
“But you are amazing, Saketa,” he assured her. “You are certainly the most amazing person I have ever met. The things you did in that village… I never imagined I would witness such things. And around one thousand people are currently safe because of you.”
“Thank you,” she said, and gave the sword a light touch. “I am in some ways an excellent Warden, but I lack in other ways. It is a relatively recent discovery of mine, and I think it is simply built into my personality. My struggle is about not letting it all bother me.”
He went silent, and Saketa felt his gaze upon her. She finally cracked one eye open.
“What is it?” she asked.
The look he gave her was soft. Sympathetic, perhaps.
“You are human,” he said again, but with a different inflection. “You know it. But from what little I’ve seen, many others don’t. People seem scared of you. Those villagers you saved, the folks of Zintu Rock…”
He nodded his head in the direction of the cockpit door.
“Those girls. Lesi doesn’t let much scare her, but she is busy. And I think maybe that’s why you’re in here, talking to this doofus.”
Saketa crossed her arms.
“Yes,” she told him after a moment’s thought.
“So you’re saying that I AM a doofus?”
She smiled, then continued.
“It is all a very typical reaction.” Saketa said. “Until people get to know me, but often they do not want to. It is fear of the unknown, of my power, of my nature as a warrior. And I usually do not stay in place long enough to break down those barriers with people. I walk the path. I do my duty. And I travel.”
“It sounds lonely.”
“It can be, yes. Mental discipline does help, but as we keep bringing up, I am human.”
“You are indeed human,” Zamm said. “And humans… well, we need each other, don’t we?”
Saketa touched the old bite-spot on her neck.
“Yes. A good friend made me face that fact not that long ago. And if you are fishing for gratitude, then here it is: Thank you for this conversation.”
“Wasn’t fishing,” he replied in a joking mumble. “But I’m glad I’m pleasant to talk to.”
“You are,” she told him.
Then, after a short break, she added:
“You are not afraid?”
“No.”
She smiled again, and with that the talk was over for now. There was just the darkness of her eyelids, the hum of the cockpit, and her mind. She continued her casual exploration for a while, before setting it loose to roam free, and it went hither and thither as was its nature.
She thought of home, of old battles and successes. Her parents made a brief appearance, before being replaced by friends and her fellow Wardens. She thought of Vanaka, and the other people who had helped her deal with Avanon. She thought of food and beautiful vistas and music, and somewhere along the way it all ceased to be memories and thoughts and became dreams.
And then a dark spike of danger pulled her back. Her eyes opened and she sat up straight, hands on the sword.
Silent alarms were blinking on the consoles, and Zamm had the dark look of a professional doing dangerous work.
“Pirates, I think,” he said. “Coming in cold, out of background radiation.”
Saketa stood up, and worked to shake off the nap and focus her power.
“Three ships, and they are spreading out,” he went on. “Lesi! We have a problem!”
He released the intercom button, and the woman came through the door moments later.
“I see,” she said, after looking things over for a second.
“What is it?!” one of the girls asked over in the main room, but was ignored.
Saketa saw the ships come in at increasing velocity. Turning the ship fully around would eat up time that would let them close the distance into firing range. There was no up or down in space, of course, but there were also only two lanes to choose from, and so only two realistic directions.
“We’re going through, right?” Lesi.
“Yeah, we’re going through,” her brother answered grimly.
“There is no mistake,” Saketa said, just to rule out all doubt. “I sense danger. Intent to harm.”
“Well, there we have it,” Lesi replied.
“Saketa, are you a gunner?” Zamm asked, and indicated the folded gunnery controls in the copilot’s chair.
“I am not. I will be the most useful by Shifting into one of the ships.”
“Tell me which one, so I don’t shoot that one,” Zamm told her.
“I’ll start with the one in the middle,” Saketa decided. “The battle will decide whether I Shift further. But don’t worry about me. Shoot as you must. Wait…”
Something happened on the readouts, and within her awareness. More dangers. More foes. Except smaller, and without actual malice.
“Drones,” Zamm said. “They are releasing drones. Five of them.”
“I cannot Shift into those,” Saketa said with a grimace. “And if I am to destroy them with the Push, I would need to don a spacesuit.
Drones and auto-ships were among the biggest problems for Wardens, when it came to space engagements, for just those reasons.
“We’ll handle the drones,” Zamm said. “Just go on board. I can handle the frontal guns. Lesi, you’ll have to handle the main guns. We-”
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“I can help!” Emma, the curly one, said over Lesi’s shoulder. “I… I’ve played simulations! Realistic ones! I’ve been doing it for months!”
“I can reach them right now,” Saketa said, as the computers counted down the last few seconds before everyone was in effective range.
She drew the sword, and leaned into its balancing effects.
“I go.”
She left them to figure out the gunnery and the flying, and all the things that weren’t her forte, and just focused on being a Warden.
The sensors had drawn up images of the ships, and she recognised the chassis. It was a fairly common one, the result of long-ago mass production, as pirate vessels often were. Thanks to studying those, a Warden knew where to go. And with a clear goal in mind, Saketa could Shift.
Even so, with the movement of both ships, she almost missed. She was very nearly thrown back exactly where she’d come from. But she did emerge, only not into the bridge as planned. Before her was a sturdy door, and at her back was a rather grotty hallway.
She twisted the handle and shoved the door aside on rusty sliders. It announced her entry rather loudly, but the high emotion of battle kept anyone from turning their heads for a moment.
The bridge was more cramped than she’d expected, a result of modifications that relocated consoles and routers. The lighting was also low, but the consoles themselves shone enough to illuminate five people. A woman in a command chair gave the order to fire, as a main screen showed a feed of the Ranger ship,
They did notice her when Saketa brushed past the leader and pushed her sword into the main gunner’s shoulder. The man screamed, as did a couple of other people on the bridge. Saketa yanked the blade out, focused power through it, and slashed across the gunnery station. The sword cut through metals and rubbers and plastics to a modest shower of sparks.
Saketa then turned, rushed three steps, and sent one of her long legs up into a kick. The leader took a brutal hit to the midsections and was flung back into her chair. Saketa kept moving. One of the other three was shouting into a comm, one was frozen in fear, and the last drew a pistol. The tight quarters made crossing the distance rather awkward, and so she silenced the gun with her will as she went on her way.
The pirate went through a very quick process of growing panic as he uselessly pulled the trigger as fast as he could. He didn’t have room to retreat, and the clickclickclick of the trigger came to an end as Saketa kicked him in the shin. It shocked the leg, and she then smashed the sword’s pommel into his skull.
The one on the comm was doing his own version of the trigger-pulling, ever more frantic as Saketa now advanced on him. Readout screens in the ceiling left little space for her sword, and so she slashed into a couple of them, bringing them down to make room. She hadn’t even intended it as an intimidation move, but the comm operator reached a new, even higher pitch, before she stepped into range and raised the sword.
He finally darted out of his chair and dove under the console behind him. Her slash came down on the comm setup, destroying it. That only left one pirate who was both able-bodied and in sight, as Saketa grabbed the woman by the shirt collar. She unfroze enough to put her hands up.
“Which ship controls the drones?!” Saketa demanded to know.
A quick glance to the side showed her the first shots being fired. Zamm was a skilled pilot, clearly, but he was taking it from multiple directions.
She heard footsteps echoing out through the door she’d left open, and reacted by lifting the woman off the floor.
“Drones!” she repeated, then rapidly cycled through every language iteration of the word she knew.
The pirate, straining to breathe and wide-eyed with fear, pointed at a projection of one of the other ships. The one further away, trying to stay on the Ranger ship’s flank.
Saketa released the woman, who promptly scuttled away. She fixed her eyes on the holographic projection, pictured a bridge just like this one in her mind, and ignored the sounds of more pirates as they arrived outside the door. Then she switched the sword out for the companion blade and Shifted.
She immediately felt an alarm, a warning, a spike of great danger, like a bucket of cold water, and she forced another instant Shift. She emerged into the hallway outside the bridge, as a small bomb went off there. The crew had done some quick preparations, it seemed, having been warned by the woman. Her sudden appearance among them still prompted a chorus of startled yells.
There were six, and the hallway was far from roomy. Instantly shifting a second time like that was jarring and disorienting, and her opening slash was rather weak and clumsy. It caught a man on the arm. He screamed and pulled away, but had nowhere to go, save for into another pirate.
They had short, broad blades, the type favoured by many for shipside fighting. Saketa slashed in the other direction before the pirate there could properly bring his bear, and then slashed back the other way again.
It was ugly fighting; cramped, vicious and desperate. She had no time to find focus, and the pirates desperately wanted her dead. She took a cut to her upper arm, an elbow to the head, a pommel to the shoulder, meant for her head. But the pirates bled more. They were bandits, not warriors. Their fear of her quick blade put a hesitation into their attacks, which ultimately was their downfall.
The final break came as a deep cut to the leg sent the largest of their group to the floor, hurried along his way by a kick from Saketa. Two were already incapacitated, one simply started hobbling down into the bowels of the ship, trailing blood as he went, one started inching away from it all along the wall, and the man Saketa believed might be the captain dropped his blade and held his palms out. One had a nasty cut, as did his forehead.
“Stop, stop, stop!” he shouted. “You win!”
With a moment’s breathing space, Saketa drew on power and used it to grab him by the jacket collar. She twisted him around and put the companion blade against his throat.
“Walk,” she ordered, and gave him a push to the bridge. “Drop the blade!” she yelled at the one doing the inching, and the woman complied sheepishly.
The possible captain didn’t argue, or speak. Saketa just pushed him relentlessly on, through the bridge door, as the overall battle played out as sensations on the edge of her awareness.
The bridge was scuffed, as opposed to destroyed. It had been a little frag bomb, meant to maim resisting crews without damaging loot. Which was good.
“Shut the drones down,” she demanded.
“Th… that one,” the man said, speaking around a sharp edge against his windpipe, and pointed to a console.
Saketa took the blade off him, but kept her grip as she moved him to the needed buttons.
“No one enters!” she shouted out the door and down the hallway.
“There, they’re off!” the man told her, and a quick check of the projections, and the feel of the battle, confirmed his words.
“Now call the third ship. End the battle.”
It required a short trip to another console, followed by a quick stream of pained, stressed shouts in a language Saketa did not speak. She stayed alert for any treachery, but the overall energies did indeed calm further.
They both stood perfectly still for a few moments. Out in the hallway were sounds she took to be first-aid efforts. Things calmed further, to her awareness, and the man cautiously turned his head to gaze at her with one eye, and a look of ‘What now?’.
“Open a channel to the Ranger ship,” she told him.
He did.
“Zamm. It’s me.”
“Is everything alright?” the ranger asked.
“Nothing serious,” she told him. “I’ve convinced them that fighting is inadvisable. How are things on your end?”
“Things are fine, looks like. Nothing serious here either. This didn’t last long.”
“I like to think I work fast.”
“Feel free to think so. Anyway, what now?”
“We do not have time to bother with prisoners,” she said to both of the men, “so I will return. Once these three ships have detached their weapons.”
“We use those to earn a living,” the pirate complained.
She met his look with a stony one.
“It’s about survival,” he insisted.
“The fight for survival is natural. And inherent to fights is the fact that someone loses. Perhaps try something else in the future. Or this might happen again.”
“We couldn’t have known there was a Warden on board,” he griped.
She very nearly moved on to the next step in all this: Demanding the ships disarm. But something about the way he said it, some subtle note in his voice, caught her attention. And she decided to pull that thread.
“This is a low-traffic area, and yet three of you were lying in wait. Was this a coincidence? Or was this a targeted attack?”
“We were told there was a Ranger ship around, far from home, with a big payday on board,” he replied bitterly.
“Hm. And who told you this?”
“I’m not giving up the networks,” he told her, as a little ghost of defiance rose from his bloody defeat. “And I don’t think you’re going to kill me over it.”
“I do not need the network,” she told him. “But you can give me the source. Because think about it: The source delivered you to me.”
She let her words sink in for a moment before continuing.
“All I did was fight back. But your source knowingly manipulated you.”
It had the intended effect: His face darkened with hate.
“A Captain Qwern,” he bit out. “He leads a big freighther. A… slave operation,” the man added, with some distaste.
“I suspected as much,” Saketa said. “I am after him, and it seemed he wanted to make things a little more difficult for me. To your cost. Now tell me this: Do you know where he originally sent this out from?””
# # #
Lesi let out a startled shriek as Saketa reappeared on the Ranger ship.
“Is everything well?” Saketa asked, but allowed herself a small smile at the woman’s expense. Lesi took a steadying breath, and managed an irritated smile back.
“We’re fine!” the engineer said. “Aren’t we, girls?”
Shmia and the blond sat together in their favourite seat, hand in hand for emotional support. Emma was just emerging from the cockpit, having been given the honour of firing the shots that destroyed the pirates’s discarded guns and disabled drones.
“You said you were fine!” Zamm said, as he followed on Emma’s heels.
“I said it was nothing serious,” Saketa told him.
“You’re bleeding, and I see you’ve been bonked on the head.”
“I’ve bled more and been bonked harder. Just let me use your medical supplies, and I will explain what they told me as I patch myself up.”
Lesi insisted on doing the actual patching, with that commanding energy of hers, and Saketa relented.
“That guy has a talent for letting others die in his place,” Zamm commented as Saketa finished her story.
“He does,” Saketa agreed.
“My faaavourite kind of person,” Lesi drawled.
“I’ll see about introducing you two,” Zamm said, and earned a withering glare from his sister.
For a moment he grinned back at her, but then he got to work. He used an emitter in the main room to bring up a lane map.
“So, we know where they were, something like three days ago. It’s further along the way to Undu-Plas than we had assumed.”
“Our biggest blind spot is not knowing the state of their ship, or what kind of engine they are running on,” Lesi said.
“Yes,” Saketa said. “But if we assume averages for a ship of that type… what do you two think of our chances of intercepting them?”
“They’re low, Saketa,” Zamm replied darkly, his finger on the potential intercept point. “With the heat on our engine, the delay on Zintu Rock, and now all this… it’s not great.”
“But we should be able to catch up,” Lesi said. “If we avoid any more complications. It’ll end up being a slim thing, but we can manage it. I never guarantee anything, but this comes close. Of course… this is assuming averages for the freighter.”
“And no side-stops at all,” Zamm said, as he turned to the three girls. “This, ah, means we can’t drop you three off yet. Unless you want it, I mean. But we won’t be passing through any place I recommend you girls step off by yourselves.”
Saketa frowned a little. This was a very imperfect situation. They were going into battle, after all. But yes, there really were no halfway safe stops for three unhardened girls with no backing, almost no money, and a single pistol.
“If we do catch up with the freighter, then the engagement will simply consist of me Shifting onto it and wreaking havoc until the slavers surrender,” Saketa assured them. “There will be no reason for this ship to ever be in firing range.”
“You are assuming you know all the facts in play, and every complication that comes up,” Shmia pointed out.
The girls had gathered into their customary, protective little bubble, all pressed tight together behind the dining table. Saketa imagined it was a habit they’d formed while being held captive.
“Yes,” she admitted. “There are no true guarantees. But I believe you will be safer if you stay on the Ranger ship. It is up to you whether you choose to believe in my belief.”
“Our only real stop will be Yunncha,” Zamm said. “We will have to stop there for a quick recharge, if we are to actually make it back from attacking the freighter. And it’s just about the last place you three should stay at. There is no functioning government whatsoever. It’s all syndicates. Nasty ones.”
“I say we decide when the time comes,” Shmia said, both to him and to the other girls.
“Y… yeah,” Emma said. “You need to save those people. Two thousand of them, right? I can… I can wait. A little.”
Shmia looked away, at nothing, as if she didn’t want more of the conversation. Saketa wasn’t sure what to make of it. But she was glad there wouldn’t be any drama on board. And they still had a chance to catch that wretched freighter.