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Maxwell didn’t reply, and he didn’t move. He’d stopped twisting around in the footwell of the ship a few minutes after Kurt had kicked him in the face for it. Before that, he’d only just been freed from the mask that had knocked him out for long-distance travel, but he couldn’t be sure that they actually had traveled anywhere far away or if Kurt had merely wanted to disorient him. When he’d awoken, Kurt had already zip-tied his hands behind his back tight enough for his fingers to go numb.
“No clinic, though.” Kurt wrinkled his nose. “You’re done working.”
Maxwell just sniffed up a drop of blood still leaking from his nose and tucked his chin to his chest. He knew he had to fight. He knew he had to get away. But Kurt was painting the picture of a future for him that Maxwell had never really been able to escape. On some level, he’d always known that one day he’d end up in Kurt’s grasp again.
“You better not be napping down there.” Kurt poked the toe of his boot into Maxwell’s ribs. “I need you alert for this.”
The ship began to shake, and Maxwell realized they were descending into an atmosphere. After a few minutes, he saw a familiar blue sky and familiarly oriented sun through the scrap of windshield he could make out from his position curled at Kurt’s feet.
Tava.
“Hold on,” Kurt said without any apparent irony and pressed the bottom of his boot against Maxwell’s chest to hold him against the side of the ship as they swooped down.
The jar of their wheels hitting the ground shuddered through Maxwell’s body, and his teeth clacked together. The side of his head bounced off the ship’s floor, and he was still wincing when the ship came to a full stop.
“Alright, you be good for me now, sweetheart.” Kurt hooked his big hand through the loop of Maxwell’s bound arms and hauled him out of the footwell. With his arms trapped behind his back and his legs cramped from being squished up against his chest for hours, only Kurt’s strength got him out of the small ship and down onto the ground on his feet rather than his face. He still stumbled and nearly fell, trying to twist to fall on his shoulder instead of his nose, but Kurt yanked him upright again.
What Maxwell saw when he found his footing made him shrink back into Kurt’s broad chest.
In front of their ship loomed another like Maxwell had never seen. Black and shiny, full of odd angles and blocky compartments, without a single visible window. But more disturbing than the ship’s black carapace were the organic bits. The curious part of his horror winning out over his fear, Maxwell leaned closer as he stared at the glue between the octagonal compartments that seemed too flexible and uneven to be completely artificial and at the lines of softly swaying bristles along each exposed edge.
“Well, isn’t that something,” Kurt murmured behind him.
“What is it?” Maxwell tilted his head to see again how the light glinted off the shiny black parts and to confirm again that the tiny hairs lining the ship were, in fact, moving.
“Fuck if I know.” Kurt tugged Maxwell’s elbow to turn him around and steer him away from the ship.
Finally dragging his eyes away from the strange sight, Maxwell took in the rest of his surroundings in an instant and instinctively dug his heels into the ground. “No.”
The pirate ship—the one that had seemed so large before and now looked so small next to the new monster beside it.
The gaping warehouse door that Maxwell had fled through in a haze of confusion.
The huge spire of Thule staring down over it all.
Maxwell twisted in Kurt’s grasp. He had only just escaped this place. He was still covered in the dirt and blood from the last time he’d been here.
“Yes.” Kurt dug his fingers into the fragile joint of Maxwell’s elbows and leaned down to growl in his ear. “I told you to be good.”
Maxwell winced at the pain and forced his feet forward again, and Kurt eased his grip. “What are we doing here?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions, Maxwell, it’s not attractive,” Kurt groaned with exasperation and disgust, and Maxwell snapped his mouth shut with a sting he wished he didn’t still feel.
They quickly skirted the pirate ship and made for the open door, Maxwell averting his eyes from the few bodies that still littered the ground in front of it.
As soon as they stepped out of the hot Tava sun and into the cool shade of the huge building, a jovial voice boomed out. “Kurt Buck, you bastard, you’re like a fucking cockroach.” Devin, now sporting a blood-encrusted gash over his forehead and a limp he certainly hadn’t had earlier in the day, hobbled over with his arms spread. “You never die. You enjoy your time playing hero with the Resistance?”
“It’s good to see your ugly mug, Devin.” Kurt kept a solid grip on Maxwell with one hand but embraced the pirate with the other arm. “You know I had to stay while I could. They’re my people.”
“Yeah, yeah, but you didn’t take long to see the light. What was it, three days?” Then the pirate turned to Maxwell and fixed him with a serious, evaluating look. He ran his tongue along the edges of his teeth thoughtfully, then jutted his chin at him. “The old guy still in there?”
After waiting a moment for Kurt to speak for him, Maxwell realized he was being addressed directly and quickly shook his head. “No—” Maxwell had to bite his tongue to keep from adding “sir,” and he wanted to throw up.
He hated this—he hated himself. He hated the meek, submissive little man he became when Kurt got his hands on him. But Kurt still had his knife in his holster, and Maxwell’s dried blood still pulled at the soft hairs on the back of his neck. And the pirate in front of him had a gun, and so did each of the pirates behind him. As much as Maxwell hated himself, he didn’t want to die either.
“Well, I guess that’s alright.” Devin sucked his teeth and then shrugged. “No one here’s gonna shed a tear for the arrogant asshole.”
A series of clicks suddenly echoed out of a corner that sent a shiver down Maxwell’s spine, and then a hissing, seething voice spoke. “We are not interested in witnessing a reunion. You promised a delivery, and we are still waiting.”
