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Captain Urs eyed Garrett as he came from the elevator console. “You’ve been here before.”
Garrett just glanced at him and then turned back to the elevator gate and the stone wall that slid past the grating. “Grew up here.”
Urs seemed to find that mildly interesting, but no one else looked to have the wherewithal to care. The anxiety and fear crammed onto that platform ratcheted up with each air lock they passed until Maxwell himself felt like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. Some civilians huddled together, and some sank into the corners as far away from others as they could manage. The klah’eel guards shifted from foot to foot. A few fingered their triggers, and one young man even slung his gatlung off his back.
More than a few times, Maxwell sniffed the air to see if he could catch a whiff of the sweet smell that everyone who had experienced it said foretold the gas, but each time he smelled only the sweat and musk of unwashed people and the tang of metal in the mine’s air.
This wasn’t the gas, only the memory of it.
“Alright, everyone, the next stop will be the surface.” Garrett closed the gate behind him as the elevator lifted off again and spoke loudly enough for his voice to echo in the shaft and cut through the palpable nerves in the room. “Our ship is dead center from the elevator’s entrance. I want you all to leave the elevator, move through the warehouse, out of the building, and then straight up the gangway and into the ship. It’ll be a tight squeeze, but everyone will fit, I promise.”
Every pair of eyes stared at Garrett—some hopeful, some nervous, some still suspicious—and Garrett surveyed them all. If he was nervous at all, even Maxwell couldn’t see it.
Garrett crossed his arms and lifted his chin. “Does everyone understand?”
There were some murmurs of agreement and much more decisive nods from Kira and Urs. Garrett seemed to find that acceptable because he turned back to the gate and then lifted his head to look up at the shaft toward the bit of daylight that had finally become visible.
But as they got closer to the light, a low-pitched drone filtered down to them. Maxwell and Garrett exchanged glances, and then everyone in the elevator started as sharp, percussive sounds punctuated the rumbling.
“Did you bring anyone with you?” Captain Urs readied his gun as they approached the top floor.
“No.” Garrett pulled his own gun, and the repetitive, mechanical noises grew louder. Maxwell winced as a sudden metallic screech peeled out and drew his weapon moments before they crested the top of the shaft and arrived at the ground floor. “Fuck.”
“Don’t move!”
“Or you all die!”
The civilians screamed and huddled back, and every guard in the elevator raised their weapons until Captain Urs yelled for them to stand down.
“Hold your fire!”
Arrayed in a semi-circle around the exposed front cage of the elevator stood a motley crew of armed individuals: men, women, qesh, klah’eel, human, but all with flinty eyes and guns in their hands and no insignia on their clothes. Behind them, other people with laser cutters and small jackhammers and other bits of heavy machinery, now—mercifully—silent, lined up along the hulking metal door of the uranium stockpile. At the very center of the door, Maxwell had to blink to be sure, stood a qesh with both hands pressed to each side of the door and a long wire extending from the base of his skull into a slot on the door from which a metal panel had clearly been freshly sheared off.
A human man, lanky with a wide mouth spread into a cruel, self-satisfied smile, stepped forward. “You got back faster than expected.”
Urs swung his gun at Garrett. “You said you didn’t bring anyone.”
“I didn’t.” Garrett scowled and knocked Urs’s barrel away from him. “They followed us.”
“Hello, Resistance.” The man—the pirate—grinned and waved. “We figured you must have had some way of knowing when it was safe from the storms. Looks like we were right.”
“You were.” Garrett surveyed the group in front of them, then lifted his chin and holstered his gun. “But it’s not going to be safe for much longer. Another storm will be here in a matter of minutes. Thirty at the most.”
That got the other pirates shifting and glancing at each other and then their leader.
Their leader just waved a hand. “He’s lying.”
“I’m not.” Garrett pinned the nearest pirate, and the most nervous-looking, with a serious expression. “You said we got back faster than you expected. Why do you think we were in such a rush?”
As Garrett spoke to their newly discovered adversaries, Maxwell faded back until he was hidden from view behind the particularly broad shoulders of a klah’eel guard. He pulled the radio out of his bag and turned its volume down to the lowest setting. They’d never have been able to contact anyone on such a weak device while back in the mine, but up here on the surface with Patrick potentially only a few miles above them in the atmosphere, they might.
The nervous-looking pirate, a younger klah’eel man, looked back at his leader. “Maybe we should just come back later, boss. We got the casing off. We can—”
“We can what? Give them a chance to spirit it all away to safety?” The leader snapped at the young man and lifted his lip. “It’ll be gone by the time we get back, you idiot.”
A woman with shorn hair and facial scars jutted her chin and chimed in. “And do you want to be the one to tell this buyer we lost their goods?”
“Fuck no.” The klah’eel shivered and shut his mouth.
