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“Fine.” He stepped aside and waved toward the exit of the building where Maxwell could make out the ship they’d brought down to Tava and, behind that, a much larger ship bristling with guns. “Go bring them to their coffin ship. Groups of three only, though!”
“Good enough.” Garrett seized upon the deal as though to take it before Devin changed his mind. He pointed to the three nearest civilians, a man, woman, and child holding each other in a corner. “You three with me. Now.”
Maxwell stepped out from behind the klah’eel and locked eyes with Garrett. He could see now the fear that Garrett hadn’t let into his voice. Garrett jerked his head to another group of civilians, and Maxwell nodded. Then Garrett started ferrying the family he’d grabbed through the warehouse as quickly as possible.
“Come on.” Maxwell took the hand of a woman, who quickly grabbed two others and took them to the gate once Garrett had made it halfway to the exit.
“I said groups of the three,” Devin snapped once Maxwell stepped out of the elevator.
“This is a group of three,” Maxwell snapped back, and without waiting for the pirate to agree, he urged the three women onwards.
They hurried through the huge room, past clusters of armed pirates and piles of rubble and twisted metal from the stockpile door. It still looked impressively impervious, but bits of casings and fastening and hinges had been chipped away. Judging by the broken pieces of machinery strewn about that hadn’t been there when Maxwell and Garrett had arrived, the door had been fighting back.
Garrett was returning just as Maxwell was bringing the three women through the huge entryway, and Garrett touched Maxwell’s shoulder as he passed and paused. “Patrick?”
Maxwell shook his head minutely. “Storm will get here before he can. But he’ll try to guard the ship.”
“Good.” Garrett squeezed Maxwell’s shoulder, then dropped his hand and moved on.
In groups of three, two at a time, it would take them maybe four trips to get every civilian onto the ship. What happened after that with the guards—bristling with righteous anger and fingers itching on their triggers—Maxwell couldn’t say. After sending the three women running up the gangway, Maxwell glanced out to the horizon. The dark clouds were large and ominous enough that Maxwell had a feeling he wouldn’t have to find out.
He rushed back into the warehouse and to the elevator.
“The Klah’Eel will never let you get away with this,” Captain Urs growled to Devin as Maxwell coaxed a young child from his father so that he could get him, the mother, and the oldest child to the ship first.
“I think you and I both know the Klah’Eel aren’t what they used to be.” Devin sighed as though bored with the conversation and with Urs in general. He yelled back at the qesh without taking his eyes off the elevator and Garrett and Maxwell shuttling his hostages away from him. “How much more time?”
The qesh replied without turning around. “It’d be a lot less if you’d stop asking me that!”
With a dozen civilians safely aboard the ship and about a dozen left, Maxwell saw Devin start to finger the holster that hung at his hip. They just needed the qesh to take a little longer, a little longer. The children and teenagers were all safe; only adults left, but that didn’t make Maxwell feel much better.
Maxwell was halfway back to the elevator after his third run—only a handful of civilians left and with Garrett already helping the old man to stand off the floor—when the qesh let out a whoop and banged his fist against the door. “Done!”
Then he pulled a gun from his waistband and shot Captain Urs in the chest.
The warehouse descended into mayhem in an instant.
The guards began shooting before Urs’s body hit the floor. The pirates—more shocked by their colleague’s actions than anyone else—stood still for the precious few moments the guards needed to turn the tide in their favor. They flooded out of the cramped confines of the elevator as the pirates fell before them, retreating and diving into cover.
“Garrett!” Maxwell raced through the gunfire toward the elevator, slipping in-between two klah’eel with their gatlungs out and into the gate.
“Here, take them!” Garrett yanked two wide-eyed young men—too young to be in this sort of fight, but so many of them had been—and an older woman and shoved them at Maxwell. “Run, now!”
Maxwell hesitated for just a moment as he watched Garrett pull the arm of the old man with the hurt leg over his shoulder. Garrett would be slowed down. He might—
Maxwell shook the thoughts from his head and grabbed the wrists of the two young men Garrett had shoved at him. They’d come here for a job, and they had people to save, and he couldn’t compromise everything with feelings and foolishness.
“Come on, let’s go, just run.” Maxwell planted a hand in the center of one of the men’s backs as he tried to bend over to crouch and hide. But bullets flew in every which way, and people screamed and shouted and tackled each other. There was no creeping through this chaos; there was only running.
As Maxwell raced toward the exit with the last of the civilians that could still run, dodging gatlungs and guns, he finally smelled that telltale sweetness he’d been sniffing for.
No, please, no. Not yet.
The young man beside him stumbled to stop as they hit the warehouse exit, and the wind whipped against them.
“We’re almost there!” Maxwell grabbed his forearm and pulled, but the man dug his heels in.
“No!” The man twisted in Maxwell’s grip, and Maxwell grabbed him with his other hand. “No, you can’t make me.”
