Page 5 of Crash Landed: The Daranthiki

Still... he didn’t want to be aggravated by it either.

Zil crushed the weapon in his hand, smiling grimly at the sound of collapsing metal before he opened his hand and let the crumpled remains of the puny device hit the floor. Without another word, he stepped around the human and headed toward the corridor. The engine would require considerably more time due to the care he would need to take with it. The sooner he got started, the sooner he could be on his way.

Chapter 4

Daisy stared after the droid angrily. It had not only destroyed her only weapon, but it had also refused to help her. The fact that she was far from joint space territory gave her a moment’s pause. It was a small setback, but it seemed that it didn’t change the fact that a Daranthiki droid had found her and should have been programmed for immediate assistance.

“Hey!” she barked as she trotted into the corridor after it. “What the hell are you doing? You can’t just leave me here! What is your designation? I’m going to make a note of it and report you as soon as we arrive at the nearest station.”

The hard line of its lips quirked, and she mis-stepped in surprise before catching her balance once again.

That was strange. Were the droids now being programmed with emotional responses? If it was meant to set people at ease, it was failing miserably. It creeped her out.

That, however, wasn’t the most immediate problem. No, it was the fact that it was ignoring her as it plodded along through the corridors deeper into the starship rather than heading to the docking port and getting them the fuck out of there. There was no one navigating the ship, and unless the captain brought the ship to a full halt before everyone was slaughtered, it was drifting through space to gods knew where. These were issues that were more than mildly alarming, so what the hell was its problem?

She groaned inwardly.

Please don’t be fucking malfunctioning!

That was the last thing she needed, but given that it was ignoring her presence and all the programming that should have made certain that it would whisk her to safety, she had the sinking feeling that was exactly what was wrong.

If only she had her wrench, she would use the McGillin method of “fixing” droids that malfunctioned on the premises. The way it was working her last nerve, she had no problem with the idea of bashing it over the head a few times to see if there was any chance of a connection realigning.

Hissing between her teeth with frustration, Daisy picked up her pace, staying just far enough back to keep clear of its swinging tail and the floating rubbish bin that was trailing after it. She nearly careened into the droid when it suddenly stopped by an open port at the rear of the ship.

Unable to see above its massive shoulders, Daisy leaned in close so that she could peer around its side. A dull metal ladder descended into the belly of the ship. There only thing that could be down there would be the cargo hold and engineering. It stared down at it for a moment before tapping a couple of keys on the bin. It immediately went stationary as the droid returned its attention to the ladder. One hand went to hold it steady as it put its foot on it. The ladder surprisingly held in place rather than even so much as groaning under what had to be hundreds of pounds of metal. She hadn’t realized that the quality of United Earth’s government starship construction had improved so much.

They usually were such cheap bastards.

“What are you doing? This ship is probably drifting straight into a sun with the way my luck runs. We need to get out of here.”

It grunted at her—the miserable thing’s communication skills were as shoddy as all her relatives combined—and stepped fully onto the ladder. She blew out a breath of frustration as it began to descend rapidly. Because, of course, it would. Only she would have to be rescued by a piece of shit droid.

Hustling after it, she peered down into the port, her eyes narrowing at the top of its head.

“Hey, you!” she snapped down at it.

The head tilted up, its white hair falling back from its face as its red cybernetic eyes looked eerily even brighter in the dark of the passage. Framed by the red markings that fell at its temples, it honestly looked rather demonic, like a creature from one of the old vids she’d seen when she had dated a non-gratas boy for a time in her rebellious youth. Back then, when she had been idealistic and had protested against the barriers that kept the non-gratas subservient to the citizens of United Earth Government, she had never imagined anything as scary as those vids. Reality had somehow finally trumped it for her.

Its eyes narrowed dangerously at her as it adopted an air of waiting.

Creepy as all fuck.

“While I admire your interest in searching for... uh... other survivors, I’m guessing, I would kind of like to get out of here. According to the systems I’m the only live person on board.”

“I am not looking for survivors,” it ground out before dropping the last few rungs and disappearing from sight.

“What?” she shouted after it.

Her voice echoed up at her, but there was no other sound except for the heavy stride of its boots as it walked away.

Groaning, she set her hands on her hips and glanced helplessly around the hallway. She supposed that she could just make her way to its ship. No doubt it had a programmed return flight that would take it back to its base. She would merely send someone back after it... and if the starship drifted into the sun..., well, it was only a droid, right?

She grimaced, unable to entertain the idea. Even if it was a hunk of metal, she just couldn’t stomach the thought of abandoning it. A heavy sigh escaped her, and Daisy gripped the ladder resolutely as she began to descend. The moment her feet hit the metal flooring, she turned and trotted down the corridor, her bare feet slapping lightly. She barely glanced into the cargo bay, slowing just enough to peek inside as she passed it. As she’d expected, it was completely cleaned out. That left little doubt as to where the droid was heading then.

A scowl formed between her eyebrows as she continued to jog down the corridor. What could the engine room hold of interest to the droid? She didn’t know how much crap it had already pulled out of the starship so far. For all she knew, Darvel paid bounties for standard parts retrieval rather than dragging the entire ship home if it was too damaged. Perhaps there were also parts that had to be acquired from engineering.

The idea of the starship being on the edge of critical systems failure terrified her. She hastily ran through the damage that she had noticed. Aside from the massacre and the significant damage from blaster fire and obvious malfunctions, she didn’t think the ship was in bad shape. But she wasn’t a fucking engineer either. She barely knew the basics of combustion engine mechanics, and that was only because Jaren had a penchant for dragging home twentieth-century automobiles when he was still alive. That there was a possibility that the ship had sustained far greater damage than she thought... The notion was horrifying!