Born of Sand (Tales of a Dying Star Book 5) Read online

  Logically, she knew that if she had to choose between the two, she'd choose her daughters. But she didn't think she'd have to make such a choice. I can help these Freemen repel the Melisao, and then escape to find my daughters.

  If Farrow didn't throw her in a cell.

  She ate dinner by herself at the end of the table, because a scout returned with a broken leg that required Binny's meager medical skill, and although the engineers looked like they wanted to sit with Mira, in the end they decided it was safer to give her a wide berth. Occasionally someone in the room glanced in her direction before quickly returning their gaze to their food. There was no sign of Farrow or Akonai. Spider remained absent.

  When Mira returned to her room she found Kari leaning against the doorframe, idly picking at a fingernail with her knife. She straightened when she saw Mira. "Come with me."

  Farrow must have sent her, was Mira's first thought. She was there to escort her back to a cell. "Akonai said I could continue working," Mira said, stopping a few feet away. "I have skill and experience with the electroids. He doesn't want that wasted."

  Kari strode forward and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her along.

  "Please," Mira begged. "Go ask him yourself, if he's still here. He and Farrow..."

  "Shut up."

  She dragged her down two halls and into an unfamiliar corridor. At first Mira thought it was a shortcut back to the cells, but the hum of the power plant began to fade. "Where are you taking me?"

  Kari said nothing. Her grip on Mira's forearm remained tight, and she refused to look at her prisoner.

  The color of the walls became more faded as they entered what must have been an older, less used part of the base. Red emergency beacons glowed in the floor every ten steps. Kari stopped at a nondescript door and punched a code into a keypad--the first real security Mira had seen in the entire base. For some reason that terrified her most of all.

  They entered the room, Kari shoving Mira ahead of her. She stumbled but kept her footing. Faded machinery crates covered in dust filled half the room, stacked three high in the corners. She whirled to face Kari, who remained by the door, and flicked a switch on the wall to activate a single, yellow lamp in the ceiling. It seemed hardly brighter than a candle, giving the room a twinge of dirty light.

  "What is this?" Mira asked. Was that room to be her new cell?

  Kari faced her, shoulders rounded and hands at her side. The meager light glinted off something there.

  A knife.

  Kari's knife was in her hand.

  A low moan escaped Mira's lips. "No..."

  Face covered in shadow, Kari stepped forward.

  She's an assassin. She's going to kill me.

  Mira backed away and raised her hands. The door was on the other side of the room; she would never get past Kari. Behind her were only crates and the dirty, rusted wall. "I'll obey orders," she said, mumbling. "I'll clean and scrub and anything else that needs doing. I didn't understand."

  Kari moved forward slowly, lazily. As if it were a task she'd been putting off but finally needed to complete.

  The wall bumped into Mira's back, stopping her retreat. She pressed herself flatly against it, as if that might protect her. Kaela and Ami. What will they do without me? She pictured them alone in that moment, sitting on the space station, staring out the window as they waited. "I only wanted to help them." Tears welled in Mira's eyes at her failure, at the thought of her girls waiting for a mother who would never come.

  Kari stopped in front of her, face still cloaked in darkness. She raised the knife.

  Will they forget me?

  The knife hung in the air, an excruciating precipice. Mira closed her eyes and waited to die.

  Instead of stabbing her, Kari said, "If someone comes at you with a knife, how do you respond?"

  "What?" Mira asked dumbly.

  Kari grabbed Mira's hand and placed the knife inside, wrapping her fingers around it for her. Kari positioned the knife so that Mira pointed it at her chest. "Come on. Hold it like you know how to use it. You don't, but at least try."

  Mira stiffened her arm, unsure of what to do. What is this?

  Kari stared at Mira until she returned her terrified gaze. "If someone comes at you with a blade straight-on, this is how you disarm them." She put her right hand on the inside of Mira's wrist. With her left hand, Kari made a smacking motion and struck Mira's fist from the other side. She demonstrated slowly. It had the effect of wedging Mira's wrist between her two hands, rolling the fist inward until the knife slipped from her fingers.

  Kari bent to pick up the knife. She pointed it at Mira. "Now you try. Do it slow a few times to get the motion right."

  Mira's mind finally processed what was happening. "You're teaching me to defend myself."

  Kari frowned. "What the fuck did you think I was doing?"

  I thought you were going to kill me.

  "Hurry up," Kari said. "I don't want to waste more time than necessary."

  Mira focused on the knife still pointed at her chest. Slowly, she attempted to mimic the defensive motion: grabbing Kari's wrist with her right hand, and smacking the fingers from the other side. Each time Mira moved a little faster, until finally her smack had enough force to knock the knife from Kari's hand.

  "Why are you helping me?" Mira blurted as Kari picked up the blade.

  "Because you're pathetic and cannot defend yourself, and Farrow wants to change that."

  "Does this mean I'm not going to be held as a prisoner?"

  Kari smirked. "We'll see. Now try it as I move. Don't hold back."

  Kari pulled the knife back and began an exaggeratedly-slow thrust. Mira repeated her defense. The assassin began lunging faster, and directing the blade to different targets: chest, belly, head. Mira found that it wasn't easy when you didn't know where the strike would come. The simple task became surprisingly difficult in the darkness.

  "I can't see," Mira protested. "It's too dark, and you're blocking the light."

  "How convenient," Kari purred, "for that's when most attacks occur."

  Mira rubbed her wrist. "Give me a moment to regain my strength."

  "Very rarely will you have your full strength." She punctuated the words with another jab.

  They practiced for what felt like hours. Occasionally Kari scolded her with, "Don't be lazy, do it like it's real," or "I thought mothers were supposed to be strong." Sometimes she gave information: "The wrist is the weakest part of the arm. That is what you should always aim to expose." Eventually Kari's attacks seemed quite real, enough that Mira wondered if she would be stabbed if she failed. Her palm began to tingle from the slapping, and her forearms ached from exertion.

  When Kari was satisfied with that motion--or sick of teaching it--she showed her how to defend against slashes. It mostly involved moving aside and using the attacker's momentum against them, again crippling them at the wrist. "Use the back of your hand to block, to keep the blade away from the inside of your wrist. If you're cut there, you will die."

  After slashes she began mixing up her attacks, lunges and slashes together, forcing Mira to alternate from one defense to another. She never had the impression that she could defend against the assassin if she really wanted to kill her, but Mira was surprised with how natural the motions soon became. Kari's annoyance shifted to patience, her instructions firm but insistent.

  They practiced until Mira's arms went numb and her hair and clothes clung to her skin. Kari never even came close to sweating. Soon the motions became instinctual, automatic. Mira responded to the random attacks without using her mind at all. Her arms knew what to do.

  When they had practiced for an hour Kari put the knife away and drank from a metal canteen of water. She handed it to Mira, who drank deep. She didn't even care that the water was warm.

  "How long until I can defend myself?" Mira asked. "Truly defend, not just in practice."

  "Weeks," Kari said. "Probably months. You're malnourished and thin. It will take ti
me to build up real strength. You will need to eat." She strode across the room to a crate that had less dust covering it than the rest.

  Mira's stomach grumbled at the words. "Are we done for today?"

  Kari opened the top of the crate and pulled out something long and dark. "Only if you want to give up." She returned to Mira and shoved the object at her chest.

  A rifle, long and metallic, with a glowing red indicator on the side. Mira took it reverently.

  "Do you want to give up, Mira?"

  She held the rifle with trembling hands. It seemed impossibly heavy. It's no heavier than Ami, and I carried her just fine. The thought gave her strength, a spreading warmth in her chest that reminded her of her purpose.

  "No."

  Kari instructed her on how to use the rifle, practicing on a target recessed into the wall. She couldn't even hold the gun levelly; Kari had to stack crates to allow her to rest the gun flat. But practice she did, the steady ping, ping, ping of the rifle echoing in the room, vibrating against her shoulder and down her spine.

  "You're flinching right before each shot," Kari observed. "It's causing you to tense, move the gun a hair-length. You must pull the trigger smoothly, an even pull, so that the shot comes as a surprise."

  Mira practiced that for a bit.

  "Don't hesitate, either. If you hesitate in a battle you'll be killed. Once an enemy is identified you must aim and shoot quickly."

  They were the smallest of gestures, and it was clear Kari hated teaching someone so raw and unskilled. But the practice filled Mira with a growing sense of self-worth. Repairing electroids with the engineers. Shooting a gun and practicing defense against a knife. Even cleaning the turbines with Binny. Back home she had been alone with her daughters, all the responsibility for their care and survival bearing down on her shoulders. But here, in that random base in the middle of the desert, Mira no longer felt alone.

  And for the first time since she could remember, Mira cared about something besides her daughters. They still occupied the majority of her emotion, a pulsing beacon in the back of her mind reminding her that she needed to get to Oasis as soon as possible. But now she felt like part of a community, part of something bigger than herself. Something more than just a mother.

  "Another few months and maybe you'll be passably dangerous," Kari muttered as she took the rifle from her hands. The power indicator showed that it was spent. "If we all last that long. Go on, you can sleep now. We'll do this every night until you're no longer pathetic."

  Mira smiled, taking the insult as a compliment. "I'm not tired yet," she said, though every muscle in her body felt numb and drained. "Can we keep practicing?"

  Kari eyed her with something close to approval. "Yes." She replaced the rifle's battery pack with a click. "Yes, we can. Want to try smaller targets?"

  Mira took the rifle and smiled.

  Part II: The Freeman

  Chapter 7

  Farrow stood in front of a computer screen in the control room, watching the scene in the armoury. Mira stood with the rifle resting on a crate, firing at a target. Kari watched with arms crossed, occasionally repositioning Mira's elbow, or fingers, or any number of other points.

  "See?" Akonai said next to Farrow. "She seems quite determined, to me."

  "Maybe." Determination was valuable, but Mira was hardly impressive. Given enough time she might master a weapon, or at the very least command enough accuracy to be valuable when they attacked the city, but for now all Farrow saw was a desperate mother shooting wildly at a foam target.

  Still... an hour ago she'd been crying against the wall. Now she was shooting a rifle. Shit, it was something.

  "I don't like trusting someone who won't follow an order," Farrow said.

  "You do not need to trust her," Akonai said. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back. "You just have to use her. She is valuable. Your strength here is too meager to distrust everyone you come across. My order is logical, you will see."

  "And what," Farrow asked, "is to stop me from throwing her in a cell the moment you leave?"

  "You would not disobey an order. Not again."

  He said it with such correct confidence that Farrow cringed. I disobeyed an order, once. An impossible order. And because of that...

  "And you certainly won't kill her," Akonai continued. "We all know that."

  The comment sent Spider, sitting at the table in the middle of the control room, into a fit of laughter. He immediately winced at the pain, putting a hand to his mouth. Binny had cauterized what was left of his tongue, but Farrow doubted she did a thorough job on the cruel man.

  He turned to Spider. "Thank you for that. I had wondered if a man without a tongue could laugh. You've answered the shitting puzzle for me. It was more of a crone-like cackle, though."

  Spider stood, knocking back his small stool, fury in his eyes.

  "I'd like to throw her in a cell," Akonai said, pointing at Kari on the screen. "Cutting off tongues, threatening greater mutilation. That woman needs her strength metered."

  It was Farrow's turn to laugh. "Shit, go ahead and try. Though the armoury is a poor place to assail her. I would arm yourselves well."

  Akonai frowned. "If I requested five of your men to come--"

  "...then that is an order I would disobey," Farrow finished. "Kari is well-liked, and valuable. I ought to use what is valuable, I believe you said."

  Akonai stared down his beak-like nose at the screen. "No doubt you are correct. Kari would likely cut through your five best men without issue, such is the state of their skill."

  I don't have time for this. "Are you going to stay and berate me all day, or are you going to leave?"

  "Soon. Our goods are nearly loaded, then we will be gone."

  "I had your freighter loaded yesterday in anticipation of your return from the city." Farrow had been an anxious mess of nerves waiting for the two Melisao men to leave. Farrow's rebellious Freemen had been independent for years. They'd resided in Praetar City then, striking at the occupying forces wherever they identified an easy target: bombing a factory, disabling a transport ship, setting fire to the grain houses. They were never more than a handful of rebels, such was their turnover, such was the danger. It wasn't much of a fight, but it was the only way they knew how to resist.

  Until the Melisao came. Not the same as the others: the Children of Saria, anti-Emperor fighters who somehow hated their Melisao brethren more than the Praetari did. Akonai pooled Farrow and the others together--other pockets of independent resistance had existed, they learned--and refurbished an ancient base buried beneath the sand. He made promises to the fighters. Organization, cooperation. Weapons and food and all the other supplies they desperately lacked. It had seemed too good to be true.

  And so it had been. The Children departed and gave little further assistance. Half the time they hardly seemed to exist at all, leaving Farrow's group to their own decisions. And the rest of the time they arrived unannounced and began giving orders, demanding information, complaining that the Praetari weren't doing enough. "We need food, weapons, engineers," Farrow would insist every time Akonai arrived. To which he would reply, "We have helped you plenty. You must help yourselves."

  Yet aside from their desert base, the only thing the Children had given them was another layer of bureaucracy. Akonai was like a vulture, stooped on Farrow's shoulder and pecking at whatever he happened to find.

  Farrow was happy to be rid of him again. "With the freighter ready, you may depart at your leisure," he said with as much politeness as he could fake.

  Akonai seemed bored, still watching the women training on the computer screen. "My requirements have changed. Spider and I have different destinations, so we will be taking separate ships. Spider will take the freighter back to Melis when its loading is complete. I will need a Goshawk."

  Farrow rounded on him. "I can barely part with one ship, but you want two? Shit on that! You'd leave us with only a single Goshawk and four Riverhawks. And no transport
s."

  "I counted seven Riverhawks in the aircraft bay. And three Goshawks."

  Farrow bit back a snarl. "The others aren't yet functional. And probably never shitting will be, unless we can find more shitting parts, which seems unlikely given that we've already picked the shitting desert clean."

  "Send more scavenging parties," Akonai suggested. "I am sure there is more scrap if you look closely."

  "The more I send, the fewer return. If I grow any bolder our base itself will soon be discovered."

  "I am sorry," Akonai said, sounding the opposite of sorry.

  Three dozen men and women, thirty electroids--in various states of armament--and five aircraft. When the time came they would be hard-pressed to fight the occupying peacekeepers with that. "When will we receive the signal to attack?" he asked. If they had more time, and could recruit more to their cause...

  "It will be soon, yet," Akonai said. "With the transfer window optimal, it will take me ten days to reach the Ouranos system in a Goshawk. Once there I can set into motion the final piece of the plan. The attack on Melis will begin in two months, at most. The peacekeepers will be weakened then, and you will be in prime position to attack."

  Two shitting months? "That won't be enough time for us to gather our strength." Farrow began counting weeks in his head. Two to try capturing a freighter, another three to arm the rest of the electroids... "If you could delay your attack to three months, or maybe four, our preparations would be significantly greater."

  Akonai's blue eyes sparkled with humor. "My plans do not hinge on yours! Praetar is an entertaining facet of the war, but certainly not the prize. If you cannot rise up and take back your planet for yourselves, then why should I change my carefully molded plans?"