At the end of the tunnel, Shy entered the code on the keypad and pushed the giant, steel door open. The built-in light on the outside of the bunker illuminated the darkness. No guards by the fuel tanks this time. Tayel stepped out into the fresh morning air.
She noted the wreckage she had missed the day before. The ten foot high pile of skewed metal rested beside the main path. It was difficult to see in the dark, but the hull matched the color of Shy’s ship, and the bright red of the raider insignia stuck out even against the scorch marks.
Shy and Fehn walked to the fuel tanks and began filling a barrel. Tayel hadn’t said much to either of them after their first heist. She didn’t know if there was anything to say. Shy was a raider. Raiders invaded Delta; whether or not some weird alien race told them to wasn’t consequential. And Fehn… well he wasn’t who he said he was either. Tayel’s only real friend was Jace, and she’d betrayed his trust by signing up with this plan.
After hiking the fuel to the top of the mountain, she sat while Fehn and Shy rolled the barrel to the ship. Animals Tayel didn’t have names for squeaked, buzzed, and chirped around the small clearing. Above, the sky was unhindered by any trees. It stood open and vast, with hundreds of white pinprick dots still clinging to the fading night. Tayel smiled. They were beautiful — the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. A memory came to mind. Only a few weeks before the invasion, she and Jace made a rare trip to Top Sector to see if they could spot any stars.
“See anything?” Jace asked.
“Just smog.”
He laughed.
Tayel sighed. “I don’t want to go home.”
“Oh?”
“Mom’s going to ask me about the stupid test.”
“Mm. She’s definitely going to make me tutor you.”
“Tutored by someone a year younger than me,” she said. “How embarrassing.”
“Hey. I may be a year younger, but at least I’m passing my exams.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, sorry.” He crossed his wings. “Why don’t you just try studying? It wouldn’t be so hard if you did.”
She shrugged. “Boredom?”
“Tayel.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of taking tests all the time? Study. Take a test. Study. Take a test. Maybe throw some homework in there. It’s the same thing every day.”
“That’s kinda what life is. The routine is a little dull, sure, but you have to make the most of it. What’s this about anyway? Is it only the test you’re stressed about?”
“I just don’t want to be stuck here forever.”
Tayel’s smile morphed into a frown. A rock formed in her throat. In a million years, she never would have guessed she’d miss Delta. She missed her school, her friends, and Otto’s crummy pawn shop. She missed magball, watching old movies, and the little stuffed maul bear she slept with every night. Most of all she missed Mom. Her vision blurred as tears stung her eyes.
She’d abandoned Mom, and now she’d abandoned Jace, too. It might take too long to know if going along with Shy’s plan was worth it. The woman could be lying as a means to an end. Even if she wasn’t lying — even if she was simply wrong with her accusations — Tayel might end up somewhere a lot worse than a refugee camp.
Maybe it didn’t matter. She didn’t care who the invaders were — if they were raiders or Rokkir or flying maul bears. She wouldn’t rot in that refugee camp forever, doing nothing. Whoever the enemy was, they needed to disappear. Stealing fuel might not have been the best way to go about it. It didn’t match the dream life she always imagined for herself in space, but it was better than doing nothing. Anything felt better in comparison to waiting in her tent for more bad news every day.
Shy walked up carrying a metal briefcase. “You okay?”
Tayel rushed to wipe her eyes. “Just tired.”
The other woman studied her. Tayel ducked her head and focused on wiping muddy grass off the bottom of her shoe.
“If you say so. Here, I have something to show you.” Shy thumbed the lock on the case, clicking it open.
The cover toppled backward, revealing a dark gray mag baton with geometric patterns etched along the surface of everything except for the leather handle. Tayel blinked. Shy grabbed it, and the etchings glowed to life, starting at the edge of the handle and bleeding out to cover the whole three foot shaft and crevice in only a few seconds. The metal sphere nestled in the crook of the crevice began to spin, building up into a soft whir.
“That’s incredible,” Tayel whispered. “It’s aether-tech, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
Tayel accepted the baton out of Shy’s outstretched hand. Its weight felt right in her grip. The etchings were cool to the touch, as though she were running her hand over thin rivers of ice. “So, what? Are we going to play mag?”
“No. I’d mentioned I would teach you how to defend yourself. This is a weapon.”
“Pretty sure it’s a mag baton.”
“Batons were originally weapons.”
“Sure, but that was thousands of years ago. They obviously aren’t that great if people stopped using them.”
Shy winced. “This is aether-tech. Trust me. It’s suitable.”
Fehn approached them. “The fuel’s all in, but uh, aether-tech? Where did you get your hands on that? I thought the stuff was illegal in this system or something.”
“I’m a raider,” Shy said. “We manufacture aether-tech. When everything was going to xite with my father and brother, I took some from the armory. And it’s plenty legal. It’s just this system is more traditional — rural, even — and so you don’t see it a lot. The only thing illegal regarding aether-tech is modifying the organic body with it. You know, cyonics.”
Fehn’s jaw stiffened.
“Raiders do a lot of that, too, though,” Tayel said.
“Yeah,” Shy said. “They’re raiders.”
Fehn huffed. “Right. I gotta go take a leak.”
He walked until he vanished into the trees.
“Is he always so charming?” Shy asked.
“You’d know better than me,” Tayel said. “I thought he was an Imperial merchant. Probably fabricated all sorts of things.”
“I… hm.” Shy clicked her tongue. “I need to see you use the baton. You have an affinity for the sport, so it’s a fit, and you’re going to need to learn to fight with something. Your friend was right about that: Modnik will be a warzone.”
Tayel didn’t enjoy the reminder. “Fine.” She stood up. The ball fell out of the baton, despite her positioning.
“The tightness of your grip alters the magnetism between the ball and its resting point,” Shy said, walking backward toward her ship. “I’ll be right back.”
Tayel stared at the ball in the grass. She squeezed the handle, and the ball glowed. She crunched the leather under her fingers and the sphere shot up into the crevice with a snap! This was more or less how real, professional mag batons worked. The ball was attracted to the crevice until another player’s baton with a reverse polarity hit the carrier’s. This baton could probably play real magball — not the poor man’s ball she’d been playing in camp. Though, it could probably also kill somebody.