His mind floated in darkness and nothingness. It felt like he was partway through a warp, when all sensation had faded and he was left sitting in darkness. The space wasn’t empty, though. He could feel something large and warm surrounding him. Concentrating on that sensation, he could feel a pulse thrumming through the space nearby. He could feel crackles and shifting in the dark around him. Somehow, he knew there was a source of energy, of life ahead. He reached out to grab it.

Kik woke to his name being called. Opening his eyes, he was lying on one of the fold-out beds in their room. The ceiling above him was spiderwebbed with cracks in the paint, and the lights were on. Pel was sitting next to his bed. When she noticed his eyes were open, she pulled away a cloth from his forehead.

“So you’re awake? You were out for a while. Feel any different?”

Kik reached out to touch his forehead, and realised it felt really hot. “I’m burning up…” His voice was barely a croak.

“Are you? It doesn’t feel like it to me. Rather, it’s rather cool.” She put her hand on it. Certainly, her hand felt warm, and he could feel all the little whorls and faint callouses. Did that mean his body temperature had lowered, if his head was cooler than her hand?

Trying to sit up slightly, he could feel his clothes shifting and rustling against his skin. His skin was sensitive for some reason, and he could even feel the breezes shifting against his neck once he had lifted it off the pillow. He could also feel something slightly cold sitting behind his ears.

“I’ll go get Vist,” Pel said, and stood up from the bed. She walked out of Kik’s view.

Sitting fully up, the light blanket fell of Kik and he realised the garments on his upper body were gone. Looking around the room, he could see them lain out on the couch. Pulling on the shirt he had received from Erstine’s men, he realised it caught at something just below his neck. Pulling it over, he ran his hand over the spot and felt something smooth and hard, similar to a scab or callus. He couldn’t see a mirror or reflective surface in the room, and he couldn’t turn his head far enough to see it.

Vist walked in with Pel before he could put on any other clothing. His breath smelled vaguely of beer. “You’re up? Looks like you’re more lively than I expected. It seems like you’ve taken well to your new best friend.”

“Who’s that?”

“So you haven’t caught on yet? Remember what I said before you were out? You’ve got a little symbiotic alien now.”

Thinking back to the last thing he remembered, Kik felt a little queasy. “So there’s a baby burrower somewhere inside my body?”

“Well, part of one, anyway. Most of it fell off when it burrowed in.” He opened a pouch on his belt and pulled out a few carapace segments attached to a quad-bladed tail. “The good news is, it’s only the useful parts that stayed. It should be messing with your spine right about now, adjusting your nervous system and motor control. You were jerking around like crazy in your sleep while it figured out what everything is supposed to do.”

“It’s taken over my spine? It’s not going to do anything bad to my body?” Kik’s eyes widened.

“It’s hardly intelligent enough for that. It’s just an instinctual little beast, but it’s somehow quite good at boosting the signals in your nerves. Essentially, it’ll increase your sense of touch. But there are also a few downsides. Hold out your hand.”

Kik stretched out his arm towards Vist, who grabbed it and pulled it forward. His hand was heavily textured and scarred, and Kik could feel a few tiny cuts in his skin. Suddenly, an agonising pain shot up Kik’s arm from his hand and he collapsed, twitching and screaming silently.

Vist let go of the arm, pulling his bloody fingernail from the cut. “It amplifies pain too,” he said as Kik gasped on the floor, the sensation in his arm slowly returning. “If I were you, I’d be careful of what you do for a while. Eventually, it’ll get better at managing sudden sensations, and pain won’t be as big a problem as it is now. But until then, you’ll want to stay out of trouble.”

Kik nodded and struggled to his feet. His arm was throbbing, but the painful sensation was fading. “I’ll remember that. Will it do anything other than affect my sense of touch?”

“Well, it will help speed up your natural healing to an incredible level, but…”

Kik looked down at his hand. Indeed, the tiny bloody mark that Vist had made was already disappearing. “I can already see it working.”

“But it shouldn’t do that for a month at least. Wait, really?”

Kik nodded and showed his hand to Vist, who looked at it and nodded. “I guess yours has already grown a fair bit. Maybe it has something to do with how advanced it grew in its burrow.”

“That’s a pretty amazing ability, though. Why don’t more people have them?”

“Because they don’t know about it. Information is powerful, little worm. There’s not many of those creatures around, too. Besides this colony here, we only know of about thirty other nests across all the worlds we’ve been to, and most of those are ones we’ve created.”

“So they can travel between planets? How?”

“Rather than them travelling, it’s more likely that they were placed there. Or perhaps they’re all different species which are too close for us to tell apart. Stranger things happen.” He thought for a second. “Wait, don’t distract me. What I really need to tell you now is that you are still human. If you get shot in the wrong place, you die, same as usual. Healing quickly won’t help you if your brain is missing. Nor will it help you get blood back, although it can help close off the source of the bleeding. And it won’t help with a couple other things, like poison or most diseases. Basically, you’re not invincible.”

Kik nodded.

“Now that you’re up, I’ll give you a quick check-over, and we’ll get on the road again. We’ve spent too long in this town, given the attention we’ll be getting.”

It was dark outside. Apparently, night had already set in as Kik had slept. Dragging all their gear outside, Vist spoke to the innkeeper, who relaxed when he realised Vist didn’t want a refund. He even went so far as to wave to them as they left, happy to have a few less mouths to feed.

Back at the ship, just as Vist had said, nobody had bothered to touch it. Its patchwork hull was the same as ever, and there were no signs of the storage spaces being tampered with, empty or full.

Vist also loaded back in the four blades and the carapace segments they had taken. Apparently he hadn’t managed to sell the rest of the burrower parts after some had been stolen from Kik.

After loading all their gear, they set off again into the night. With sails set, a stiff breeze from behind them pushed them out of town. Kik was losing his sense of direction, which way they had come from, but he could still see the orbital elevator on the horizon showing him the way to the city. The top of its upper reaches still reflected sunlight from around the other side of the planet.

After sailing for four hours, Vist slowed down the pace a little bit before suggesting a new activity to pass the time. Kik’s first warning was another staff dropping on his shoulder. It was barely a tap, yet it felt like a blow to his shoulder. Picking it up, he groaned, expecting a new set of bruises.

“Wear your glasses this time,” Vist said. “I’ll wear my headset too. We can have a study session.”

Pulling out the screen-displaying glasses, Kik wondered what he was intending to do. “These, you mean? The ones you can read information from?”

“Yeah. We’ll each read something during our duel. Afterwards, I’ll quiz you about what you learnt. Wrong answers will mean running.” He gestured meaningfully to the pack lying behind Kik. “Your lesson today will be on… let’s see… we’ll go with something easy. Pass me your glasses.”

Receiving the glasses from Kik, he put them on, barely managing to fit the arms around the sides of his head. They twisted alarmingly. He put a data chip in a socket and his eyes moved rapidly, commanding the glasses to move the data around. “Hey, you have some interesting stuff on here. Mind if I copy some of it? I’ve been meaning to do some light reading.”

Kik nodded assent and his eyes twitched and rapidly blinked again before he took the glasses off and handed it back to Kik. “The file is with your manuals. It should be labelled DIS3.5. Once it’s open, read the title aloud and we’ll start our fight.” He walked over to the edge and reached out to grab his own pair. His were large and bulky, sitting across his face like a visor. The construct was rectangular and reinforced, with thick safety glass for the lenses. It looked like it could take more damage than its wearer’s skull.

Meanwhile, Kik opened the file Kik had given him. It came up with a sixty-page document on something called a “disruptor staff”. It was the same weapon Vist had used against the burrowing rodent-like creatures that had attacked them the other day. Before he could read any more, though, Vist struck at him with the staff. “Here I come!”

He blocked desperately, but was knocked a step backwards. Luckily, Vist didn’t press his advantage. His hands hurt from the slight grazes to them, and his view was chaotic as his head shook while the glasses stayed still. There was no way he was going to be able to read anything like this. He did notice that Vist didn’t press his advantage. He was being given a handicap, perhaps because of his newly increased sense of pain.

This, however, gave him an idea. Trying to ignore the distracting text before his face, he dove forward, making his own swing. Vist blocked and stepped back, and Kik stepped back as well, taking the chance to read a line of text.

“The disruptor staff is a weapon which uses noise to…”

Kik jumped backward as Vist brought his staff down again, having spotted the motion out of the corner of his eyes. Striking back quickly, he bought himself another moment of time, which he used to keep reading. “cause vibrations in the targets it strike. Depending on the surface struck, the effect can vary from light shaking to a devast...”

Ducking away from another of Vist’s blows, he backed away slowly while he kept reading. “devastating impact. The weapon is effective to some degree against both soft and armoured targets. However, there are a number of disadvantages, such as only being usable at close quarters and…”

This time it wasn’t Vist that stopped him, but his own feet. Not paying attention to his surroundings, Kik’s foot caught on one of his bag’s buckles and he fell backwards on his bum. Crying out in pain, he clutched it until the feeling subsided slightly. Vist took the chance to read from his own glasses.

Kik grabbed his staff and got back to his feet. “creating a large sound when used, alerting nearby foes.”

Twenty minutes into the spar, Kik had barely read the first three pages of the manual. He learned how to activate and deactivate the weapon and how to extend or collapse it. He hadn’t learned much else, however, like how it was powered, how it produced the sound. or how to disassemble it. Even more worrying, almost a half hour of fighting, regardless of how much he was trying to avoid blows or how easy his opponent was going, was tiring him out.

Meanwhile, Vist had stepped up his assault in the last few minutes, landing a few blows. Each of those had put Kik to the ground, thinking he had broken a bone. He was slowly adjusting to understanding to the meaning of the level of pain, so he was beginning to able to differentiate between a bruise and a fracture. Even so, it overcame his pain threshold every time. He was also getting queasy from the contrast between the text filling his screen and the view beyond it, as well as switching his attention between the two.

Finally, Vist knocked the staff from his tired hands. “Alright, that’s enough for now. Time to find out what you learned.”

Kik fell to the ground and crawled to the side of the ship before retching, his head spinning from motion sickness. Acidic liquid stuck to his throat and came out through his nose, leaving an acrid smell and taste. He pulled out his water bottle and rinsed out his mouth, blowing what he could out of his nose.

“Ah, that’s a shame,” Vist said, looking at the retreating patch of vomit-covered sand. “We could have extracted the water from that before throwing it away. Besides, acid is always useful. If you’re ever stuck in prison, remember to throw up on the bars. It’ll burn through them. At least, as long as they’re not plastic.”

Once again, Kik couldn’t tell whether he was being serious or not. There was often a fair bit of nonsense mixed into Vist’s sound teaching advice. Compared to many of his suggestions, this one sounded plausible, but that was often misleading.

Sitting up, he took off the glasses which had disoriented him. “So, what do you want to ask me?”

“How far did you get?” Vist asked, completely ignoring his question. “What page?”

“Three…”

“Three. A bird can count further than that on one foot. That’s just embarrassing.”

“So how far did you get?”

“I read an analysis of the average imports/exports for an agricultural planet and the designs for a warp drive. I always wanted to know how one of those worked, but I never got the chance to find out.”

Kik stood there in silence. “No way…”

“Nah, I lied. I didn’t read the first document, it was too boring. I only got through the warp drive schematics.”

“That hardly makes me feel better.”

Vist laughed. “Well, now it’s time to test your knowledge. Here, turn this on. And if you break it, you’re going to need that fast healing, because not much else is going to save you.”

He dropped his disruptor staff in front of Kik, who picked it up nervously. “Just turn it on?”

“Yes. And try not to kill yourself, I have to bring you back in a few weeks.”

Kik nodded and extended the staff before reaching for the on switch. He pressed it, and nothing happened. Looking around for something to hit, he pulled a rock from his bag and struck it with the butt of the staff. No sound, no vibrations.

“What’s the problem here? Are you turning it on yet?”

“Is the power source in it?”

“Well, here’s a spare I have. Try that if you think that’s the problem.”

Kik grabbed the power source and took a look at it. It was long and cylindrical, fully sealed. It had a contact at either end, perhaps for power output. One side had two parallel raised bars, while the other had a single raised bar down the centre. Looking along the length of the staff, he saw a rectangular section with a hairline crack running around the outside. Getting his fingernails under the edge, he eventually cracked it open, revealing another identical cylinder inside. Taking it out, he noted which way the raised sections on that one were aligned, and placed the new one in instead.

Pressing the button once again did nothing, nor did striking the rock.

“So what’s the problem now?”

“Um… maybe… it’s broken?”

“You’d better run if it is! Pass it here! I’ll take a look.” Kik handed the staff over to Vist, who stuck the cover back over the power source, then tapped a few places before turning it on. A low humming filled the air. “Hah, I still have the magic touch! Look and learn, boy!”

Kik’s jaw dropped. “How’d you do that?”

Vist turned off the staff and handed it back. “The battery was probably misaligned. Try it now.”

“Oh, so that’s the problem. What kind of battery is that, though?” He pressed the button on the staff. Nothing happened. “What…”

Vist laughed. “Ah, that expression was great! The buttons on this one are fingerprint-coded, by the way, so only I can turn it on. It was working from the beginning.”

“So how was I supposed to…”

“Well, if you had actually read the rest of the manual, you would have known to question me. But you didn’t, so I got my joke.” He glanced meaningfully at the backpack which Kik had left open. “I’ll make you take that stroll later tonight. You can rest for a little bit for the moment. Grab a pair of binoculars and relieve Pel on watch.”

Looking around, Pel was indeed looking out at the dunes surrounding them. Taking the binoculars from his pack, he tapped Pel on the shoulder and pointed back to Vist, before scanning the horizon with his own binoculars.

Twenty minutes later, he was getting bored. His mouth still tasted of gastric acid, no matter how many times he washed it out. His bruises from the fight hadn’t disappeared either, but they no longer hurt at all. “Why do I have to keep lookout anyway?” He called to Vist. “Even if anything’s out there, I’m never going to see it among all that sand.”

“Just keep looking,” Vist called back. “It’s a monotonous task, but if you don’t do it properly we all suffer, yourself included. And there’s more to see out there than you think, you’re just not looking in the right places at the right time.”

Grumbling, Kik returned to his watching. Another ten minutes had passed, and he was almost ready to get off the ship and run just to avoid sitting there doing nothing for any longer. Suddenly, he spied a dust cloud on the horizon. “Wait, I think I see something…”

“What and how far?”

“A cloud of dust. I can’t see what’s causing it, it’s beneath the dunes at the moment. It seems like it’s about two kilometres away. It’s directly behind us.”

Vist grabbed the binoculars from Kik and looked himself. “Hmmm. It’s probably seen us, no use in hiding. No doubt they’ve come across your vomit, boy. You must have given us away.” He glared accusingly over.

“So what is it? A burrower?”

“I can’t say for sure now. I’ll wait until it’s closer. But no doubt we’ve been followed from town. And there’s no way it’s a burrower. We’re way too far from their nest.”

As the thing behind them inched closer, Vist finally clicked his tongue in recognition. “Ah, so that’s what they are. No doubt they’ve come after our trade goods.”

“What are they? And are you sure it’s a they?”

“Hunters. Some are honest, but these ones should basically be pirates.”

The ships behind them were a pair of hoverspeeders. They were staying slow to keep track of the slight wake left in the sand by the ship’s passing, but once they saw the top of the sail, they accelerated, readying weapons.

Meanwhile, Vist was sitting down, relaxed, with his wooden staff and rifle, while Kik was sitting in shock. More people were coming to take away everything from him. As soon as he had tried to get back on his feet, he would…

A hand fell on his shoulder. “Calm down,” Vist told him. “I’m not a pushover. You know that.”

“But you’ll still die if you’re shot…”

“As if I’d let them hit me. Well, little worm, I guess that’s about the limits of your imagination. Just watch and learn, then, how a man can overcome superior weaponry and superior numbers.”

“How?”

“Through tricks.”

It was a good day indeed, Delos thought. His crew and Galav’s had joined forces. Well, normally that would be a bad thing. He couldn’t stand Galav, that son of a bitch liked torturing his prey far too much. The good thing was, he had been paid enough to willingly join forces with Galav. Even after paying his boys enough for a usual job, more than half the load was left, with the promise of more if they returned with their target. The Raffarians really were profitable to work with.

Delos had no idea what these people had done to get on the Breath’s bad side, but now that they had, he couldn’t afford to show any mercy. Not if they were to get paid like this again.

Bato on the controls swung their craft around the strange ship’s port. Now that he looked at it, it really was made of junk. The entire hull was plated with patchwork metal, and instead of tilted maglevs, or fan propulsion like Galav’s, they had some cloth sheet to catch the wind. No wonder their two ships were able to catch up even while leaving multiple hours after their quarry.

The sheet fell from the central pole and the ship lost speed. The targets must have wanted to talk it out, or some such nonsense.

On deck were two shapes, an older man and a young boy. The man was holding the rifle, but he hadn’t fired it yet. Perhaps he was saving ammunition until they were closer. Delos had heard that there had been a young girl with them as well, but she might be hiding beneath the railing or in a storage compartment. It wouldn’t save her, though, once the two males were finished. She could at least hope that he found her before Galav.

Speaking of Galav, he was keeping pretty quiet. His craft wasn’t approaching rapidly, instead they were circling the stopped vehicle like a shark. It seemed it was up to Delos’ crew to make the first move. It was a smart decision, since Galav’s crew were the better marksmen, but that didn’t mean Delos had to like it.

Hefting his short-ranged but deadly spraygun, he checked its magazine and flipped the safety. Next to him, his men did the same thing. “Wait until we’re close. I want this over in one volley,” he whispered to them. “In the meantime act friendly. If he starts shooting that rifle, he could take out a few of us before we get him. Let’s do this efficiently.” He received a chorus of brief nods in return.

As the craft pulled alongside each other, Delos called across to the other armed party. “Put down the guns, nice and easy-like. I don’t want any bloodshed on either side, but I won’t be pushed. If you force my hand, people are going to die.”

The man nodded and pushed his gun away from him. Delos sighed out and relaxed his grip on the spraygun. The hard part was over with too. “Now if you put away the staff, we can come aboard.”

As the man acquiesced, Delos led two of his three men on board, leaving only Bato aboard to keep the hoverspeeder prepared for departure. “That’s good. If you tell us where the animal parts you’re selling are, there’s no need for unnecessary pain.”

The bearded man pointed to the prow of the ship and stepped aside, motioning for them to move towards the ship’s prow. Delos motioned one of his two men, Tymis, to follow the man’s instructions, while he stayed at the back with his final man, Rymol. Tymis stepped forward and held his spraygun in one hand, moving around things with the other.

“So where are these parts?” he asked. “Under some cloth? Or do you have some compartment beneath the floor?”

“No, they’re in compartments around the edge. Here, I’ll show you.”

As Tymis walked towards the front of the front of the ship, Delos watched the man while Rymol kept his eye on the boy. They were confident that neither would try anything while unarmed, which was why Delos was so surprised when his mark nodded to something behind them, then pulled out a small rod from his belt, flicked it out to the size of a sword and planted it in Tymis’ throat.

As Delos was turning to look behind him, the air thrummed, and Tymis’ neck popped. Little bits of red goo sprayed the two others. A vertebra struck Rymol in the forehead, knocking him back slightly and leaving a slight smear of blood across his headcloth.

Before the body collapsed, before Delos could even react, the man dropped his rod and stepped behind Tymis’ body. He grabbed the spraygun from his limp hand, pulling the strap from his shoulder at the same time. Blood pulsed from the corpse’s neck at the pace of a heartbeat, covering the deck and the fallen, severed head.

Delos got off a shot from his own weapon. A spray of flechettes shot out towards the man, but he used the corpse as a shield. Poor Tymis’ body was hit by a series of small darts. Some of them bounced off of his toughened jacket, but the rest stuck, delivering their load of poison into the corpse. The real target was completely unharmed.

He dropped the corpse, holding his own spraygun one-handedly as Delos started to pump the slide and chamber the next shot. Pointing it between the two enemies aboard the ship, he fired. The spray of darts mostly passed straight between them, but enough stuck in the exposed parts of each to deliver a fast-acting and most likely lethal dose. Both of them dropped to the ground, paralyzed.

Running over to his rifle, he dropped the spraygun, aiming his new weapon and taking a single shot at Bato, who had attempted to draw his own weapon. He dropped with a slug in his throat.

Delos thought about how badly he had screwed up, then tried to chuckle. Nothing came from between his lips except a slightly louder than normal rasp. Even if he had failed, Galav would succeed. Then this man would suffer for what he had been put through. All three of them would suffer.

A loud explosion filled the air. Kik and Vist looked around at the other hoverspeeder to the back of their ship. Its engine, a large fan at the back of the craft, had blown up, a large cloud of smoke trailing behind it. One of its blades had flown straight into the driver’s back, killing him. The other four people in the ship were knocked from their feet, smaller pieces of shrapnel mildly injuring all of them.

Vist switched his gun again to the only unfired spraygun on the ship, the one carried by the man who had been watching Kik. It had a few sprays of blood on one side, but it was still in working condition. “Cover me,” he told Kik, passing him the rifle. Kik nodded shakily and didn’t respond.

Jumping out of their ship, he quickly approached the adrift hoverspeeder. Its maglev plates were still working, but with no propulsion, it was simply drifting along by its momentum. One person popped his head over the railing and tried to bring his gun to bear on Vist, but a gunshot back from Vist’s ship made him think twice about exposing himself.

“Good boy,” Vist muttered to himself. “So he doesn’t freeze up when it counts.”

Easily making it to the slowly drifting speeder thanks to his fire support, Vist popped his gun over the side and fired a shot blindly. Repeating this three more times from various points around the hull. Finally looking over the side, he put one more shot for good measure into the only person who was moving. His movement stopped. Now everything was taken care of.

When Vist got back to the ship, Kik stared at him. Everything around them was completely covered in blood. The rolled-up sails, their backpacks, the deck plating, even the sand around their ship was bloody. Kik looked around with a shocked expression. “What… what…”

Vist patted him on the back. “Don’t worry, just let it out. Nobody’s going to call you squeamish for being shocked by dead people.”

Kik vomited again. It was a wonder he still had anything left in his stomach. This time it mostly landed on Vist’s knee.

“OK, let’s get this straight. I said I wouldn’t call you squeamish. I never said I wouldn’t call you disgusting.”

Kik calmed down a number of hours later, once most of the blood had been cleaned up and they had left the scene of the killings far behind. Vist had taken what he needed from the bodies and vehicles, including extra maglev plates and whatever money they had on them. The bodies were left for scavengers.

Looking around at the other two people in the ship, both of them had seemed awfully calm. Now that he thought about it, he was a bit embarrassed to be so scared when they barely showed any fear. Even Pel, once she had come out from under the ship, was a little shocked at first, but had accepted it within minutes. It left Kik wondering which reaction was more normal of the two of theirs.

They went to sleep that morning, not speaking much to each other.

The next evening, Kik awoke on the sand to find the other two gone. His pack was lying there, next to his wooden staff and a note to him. “We’ve gone on ahead. I still haven’t forgotten about that march you promised me. Don’t worry, we won’t get too far away. We’ll probably see you around morning. Keep your GPS in a pocket and the orbital ladder to your left. Oh, and we may grow tired of moving slowly by nightfall, so you may want to jog a bit if you want to catch up by then.”

Grinding his teeth as he imagined Vist’s voice saying those words, Kik found three instant meal kits and two water bottles in his bag. Rolling up his bedroll, he poured some water into one of the meals and started eating it as he walked off, carrying his backpack.

The solitude of his march gave him some time to think, at first at least. He thought about what he had achieved yesterday. While he hadn’t frozen completely, he was completely unable to keep a cool head. The idea of fighting people wasn’t what he was scared of. If that was it, he would have frozen up the first time he had faced Vist. It was the idea that people were going to die in the fight.

He had known from shortly after he could talk that he would see death at some point. But it always seemed to come far too suddenly. Twice it had happened, and each time he had been taken unprepared, both physically and mentally.

He wasn’t sure he could really change anything anytime soon, but eventually, he thought that he would be able to face the possibility of death if it ever came for him or those around him.

Over the course of his march, Kik didn’t run into a single wild animal. It was surprising, really, considering that he was covered in dried blood. Perhaps they were taught to fear people with staves after seeing Vist. Or perhaps the blood on him was the reason why none of them wanted to get close, because they recognised him as a creature who bathes in the blood of his own kind, as true or false as that assumption may be.

Finally, Kik made it back to the pair of his companions. They were sitting on the boat on the peak of a dune. He could see the mast of the ship for kilometres in any direction.

As he approached, gasping for breath and almost finished with his water bottle, Vist waved at him. “You made it before dawn. Maybe we can cover another hour or so of travel before sunup.”

“Just give me… some time to catch my breath,” Kik managed. “It’s not easy running with a... heavy pack, in sand, on a high gravity world. This is some… harsh training. And I had to… pee in a hole!”

“All the more fun then! You got the authentic hiking experience!” Vist beamed. “Just sweat it out, little worm. It only gets better from here. Maybe next time I’ll make you run all day as well as all night. You can probably try that at least once.”

Kik groaned. He almost certainly wasn’t joking, this time.

***Over a month later***

“So that’s Erstine’s estate. We’re finally back here. It looks a little smaller than I remember. It’s been...” He checked both his watches. “Forty-five galactic days, and twenty-eight local. About a month and a half.”

It was a few hours before sunrise, close to the edge of the desert. A month and a half later, and everything was back where it had begun. The place where he had spent a month lying on a metal bed. The place where even now, his mother was sleeping. A vague hope that she had woken up by now flashed across Kik’s mind, but he quelled it. False hope would only lead to disappointment.

The three of them were still on the same ship as the last time they had been here. A few extra patches had been added to the hull, the cargo holds were carrying slightly different equipment, and there were a few extra scrapes in the paint than when they had left, but largely it was the same.

Pel sat on the railing towards the middle of the ship and Vist steered and adjusted the sail at the back. Kik stood near the prow, having learnt multiple times that wandering around near the boom is a bad idea.

After Vist had taken down the sail and they had drifted into the lee of the hill, the three of them got out and pushed. Slowly sliding closer, they eventually reached the rows of pillars that marked the boundary of the building. Thenfor was waiting for them.

“So, how’d it go? Oh, you look more muscular. I guess the old man’s training will do that to you, huh?” He ignored Vist’s glare at the ‘old man’ and continued. “Well, your ship is about done being patched up. I’ve got your next job for the moment, so you can say your goodbyes to these two and then follow me. I’ll see you around, Vist.” He turned and walked back inside.

Kik turned to Vist, but before he could say anything, he was greeted with another glare. “Don’t you dare get yourself killed before I see you again.”

Kik grinned. “I didn’t know you cared.”

“Care? You called my ship a piece of junk, threw up on my leg and almost broke my staff in training on three occasions. Of course I care. Nobody else is going to steal my revenge.”

Kik laughed. “Well, at the moment, you’re first in line for a fight against me. If I ever see you again, I’ll be sure to settle things.”

“Glad we’re clear.” Vist walked back to the ship and pulled off Kik’s bags.

Kik turned to Pel. “Well, if I’m meeting Vist later, I suppose I’ll see you later too.”

“Yeah. My helper will hatch soon too, so I’ll have to deal with that. I’m sure I’ll see you sometime after everything is sorted out.”

Kik nodded back to her. “Well, goodbye for now.”

Receiving his backpack from Vist, he looked inside and saw that his wooden staff was missing, but there was a small box there instead. “What’s this?”

“Open it later. It should be useful. Consider it a present.”

Kik smiled and nodded. “Alright. See you later!” He followed Thenfor inside the building, leaving the sand behind. The two people he left behind waved as he went out of sight.

Thenfor watched Kik as he walked inside. He had changed since he had last been in this estate.

He was far more muscular than before, due to his frequent training as well as growth surgery. His skin wasn’t much more tanned, swathed in its coverings as it was, but he habitually squinted his eyes a little more than before, protection against windblown sand. It gave him a slightly tired or sceptical appearance, depending on the circumstances.

In front of his eyes, though, he wore the glasses. He was now fully used to wearing them while moving around for extended periods of time. On his palms beneath their wrappings were two now healed burn scars. He gave off a more determined and prepared air than before he had departed.

The only thing that looked a bit less impressive may have been his height. Perhaps because he was suddenly exposed to such strong gravity, it seemed like he may have shrunk by as much as three centimetres.

“Follow me,” he told Kik. “There’s no need to wear glasses in here. Actually, you can take off most of that excess clothing. It makes you look a bit too uncouth.”

Kik nodded and deftly unwrapped the cloth from over his clothes. Beneath he was wearing the same dusty and stained clothes he had been wearing a month ago.

“Have you washed those since you left?”

“Washed them with what? I was in the desert, remember? And the seas here are nitric acid. They’d melt my clothes faster than wash them. Well, I did clean the blood off them at one point, but that was using…”

“I don’t even want to know. I’ll get you a bath and have your things washed before you meet anyone else.” Thenfor tried very hard not to smell anything.

After Kik was slightly cleaner, Thenfor led him into another room elsewhere in the estate. After a few twists and turns, Kik was lost, and they still kept going. Eventually, they came to a single door which he was shown through. Inside was a small room with a table, four chairs, a light hanging from the ceiling and a door at either end. Inside was an average-height man dressed in a dark coat over a casual shirt and pants. He had blonde hair and brown eyes, and his skin was slightly dirt-stained.

“So this is him?” the man asked Thenfor, then turned to Kik. “Good, me and the rest of my group need your help with a…”

“The rest of my group and I,” Thenfor said.

The man grunted, rubbing his hands together . “Whatever. We’ll need your help getting to another planet and making a quick exit. Ever done something like that?”

Kik nodded slowly. “I’ve been involved in similar operations, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Good. The planet’s security will be pretty tight, so if you or our benefactor could arrange a cover story for us?” he asked Thenfor, then turned back to Kik. “My name’s Edmon Forge. If you let me know where your ship is, we can all can meet there.”

“Sure. Uh, Thenfor, where’s my ship now after it was fixed?”

“It should be on Low Orbit Three still, just out of the shipyards.”

“Alright,” Edmon said. “What’s the ship’s name?”

“Benefactor,” Kik told him. “It’s a nebula traveller. Its size is corvette class. You should be able to find it knowing that, right?”

“Sure,” Edmon replied. “I’ll be off now. I need to let the rest of my team know. We’ll see you at the top.”

He went out through the other door, leaving Kik and Thenfor.

“So, am I meeting Erstine before I leave?” Kik asked.

“No, he’s far too busy to meet you. He’s got other things to worry about.”

“Alright. Any hints on what’s going to happen?”

“I can’t tell you too much. Just watch yourself. Life around here is always dangerous.”

Kik was taken to the spaceport-like cave where he had first arrived on the ship. Another suited driver, this time not Walston, showed him into a similar vehicle and then drove them off above the estate. This time he made sure that there was no talking robot in his cabin.

“We’ll arrive in just around an hour,” the driver’s voice came over the internal speakers. “The tailwind you had on your previous trip is now a headwind, so it might be a little bumpier than last

time. Make sure you’re buckled up.”

Kik sighed and strapped himself in. His pack was on the seat next to him, and he sorted through it to see what he’d need.

He took off the watch set to local time and left it at the bottom of his pack with the GPS. He wouldn’t have any need for them off-planet. Seeing the rocks still lying at the bottom of his pack, he chuckled at Vist’s nerve and tried to throw them out the window, before he realised that it didn’t open. He left them on the floor to be emptied out by the next person to use the craft. He also put the moisture condenser at the bottom of the pack. The one on his ship was better, assuming it was working again. The rest of his pack went in his pouches and backpack as usual. They were the items which would still be useful offworld.

Eventually, he was left with just the box that Vist had left for him. Opening it, he found two things inside as well as another letter. The item that he recognised was a disruptor staff. The other, which he didn’t, was a small, clear, faceted gem in a glass case. It looked valuable.

Picking up the letter from Vist, he read it.

“Enjoy your new stuff. If you can get the staff to turn on, it’s yours. Don’t sell the diamond, and don’t let it get stolen. Its value is greater than its physical worth. You’ll need some tools to use it properly, though. There should be some people who know what it is on high-tech planets. If you run out of ideas, the light will show you the way. If you can use it, you’ll grow to be much stronger than you are now.”

Placing the useless, cryptic message in his breast pocket, Kik thought of where to put the diamond. Eventually, he just put the case in a pouch as well. It wouldn’t fall out without him noticing, and he had no idea where else would be more secure.

Looking at the disruptor staff, he snapped it out to its full length. He pressed the button. Nothing happened. “Of course it wouldn’t be that easy…”

Trying to peel open the battery chamber, he almost broke his nails before it finally popped out.

“And there’s no battery. Great. Where am I supposed to get one of those batteries from?”

Shortly after, the shaking began in force, and he spent the rest of the trip wondering about his dubious gifts and trying not to throw up again from motion sickness. He couldn’t even read from his glasses in case it made him feel worse.

Arriving at the base of the orbital ladder, Kik got out, carrying his heavy backpack. In the end, he had taken the rocks too. If nothing else, they had nostalgic value, although he wasn’t sure why they should.

The driver pulled a large box from the cockpit and handed it to him. “Your spacesuit is in here. Changing rooms are over there. You should put it on before you go up, it’ll be hard to change when you’re up there. Your ship’s berthed on Dock 17, in the shipyards on the lower side of the station.”

Kik thanked him for the suit, information and the largely unnecessary warning, then walked off to put his suit on. The driver nodded to him and got back in the vehicle, driving back to the estate.

Coming out of the changing room, Kik kept his helmet off. He was carrying two backpacks at the same time, his survival pack containing most of his gear and his suit’s storage space. He had moved a few items, such as the pitons, glasses, rope, and diamond to his suit, but most were still in the backpack. The laser pistol and medkit he had first received were also in the suit’s storage. It felt good to have an artificial skin on again, and to not have to worry about when he would next be able to use the toilet.

Walking up to the crowd before the elevator’s doors, he joined the throng of vacuum-suited pilots and staff, as well as a few people daring enough to not wear safety gear, probably running quick errands or who forgot their suits. The doors opened and another crowd of similar composition disembarked, before the waiting people flocked in. He held in his hand the sheet of paper he had found in the suit pocket, detailing his ownership of the ship.

Pressed between several backpacks and pressing several others with his own, Kik was jostled the whole three-day ride up on the elevator. It was much more controlled compared to his first ride down the express elevator, even with facilities such as beds, showers and food, but he found himself wishing for the peace and quiet. At least on that elevator there were views to enjoy.

Several times during the ascent other cars passed on some of the other tethers, either express climbers racing ahead of them or other climbers descending. Each time there was no more warning than a rattle for a few seconds, rapidly building before it faded into the distance beneath.

The overcrowding didn’t get much better when the gravity slowly dropped, but at least Kik had magnetic boots and could ignore all the people floating around at the top of the quarters as they decelerated. Kik put his helmet on in the last few minutes before the doors opened.

A voice flooded the elevator as the doors opened. Its pronunciation was strange, mechanical, emphasizing the starts of words. It was as if it was just reading a bunch of words tacked together without understanding the meaning. There were awkward pauses interspersed through the speech. “Dock 1, going up. These are the, Administration layers, for those, Registering ships, Or, With complaints or queries. Disembark here for docks one through five, The, Administration layers.”

The next time the doors opened was Kik’s turn. “Dock 6, going up. These are the, Factory layers, for those, Constructing ships, Ordering, Or, Picking up an order. Disembark here for docks six through twenty, The, Factory layers.”

Kik joined the flood of people walking off the ship, mostly orange-suited and wearing tool belts and reinforced suits. The space outside the elevator was comparatively small, with no views of the outside, just two doors opposite and a few people standing outside of each. There was just about enough space for the crowd from the elevators to fit. The orange group turned to the left and moved towards a gateway in that direction, while the rest of the people moved to the right.

When he reached the front of the queue, Kik opened his visor and held out the piece of paper. “I have a repair job on the corvette Benefactor that should be completed?”

The woman at the gate read it and nodded him through. “Alright, head in and to the elevator with your floor number above it. It’ll move off once all this crowd is taken care of.”

When he finally reached floor 17, the view of space was the first thing which greeted him. The other two men in the elevator brushed past him and walked off without sparing him a backwards glance. He didn’t care, he was just entranced by the stars outside the window. He could see them from the desert at night, but it was never quite the same thing as seeing them from space. They stretched out as far as the eye could see, in every direction but straight down.

The second thing that attracted his attention was his parents’... no, his ship, docked with the station just outside. A makeshift seal had been stretched between the starboard airlock on his ship and the station’s airlock. Other than that, it looked as good as new, even with a fresh coat of dark radiation-resistant paint to cover all the burn scars from weapons and new plating.

Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen his ship from outside for a while. It kind of reminded him of a bug, some kind of fly, with its cockpit being the large, bulbous eyes at the front, the collection arms being the currently folded wings. He would call the four gun turrets the legs, but they were far too stubby. So perhaps a partially amputated fly then. He smiled to himself beneath his visor at the thought.

Going around to the airlock he could see from the window, Kik ran into an orange-suited worker. Before he could open his visor and speak, the man held up a hand and passed him a two-way audio jack, with one side in his own helmet. Plugging the other into his suit, Kik could hear the man’s voice clearly inside his helmet. It was deep and gravelly, although it was rendered slightly tinny from the microphone removing background noise.

“Sorry about this. Our radio network is a little flooded right now. There’s some incident on level 13. Are you the ship’s owner, huh?” He nodded when he was given the papers. “So. Yeah, we’re done. We finished repairs in a month and a half, testing took another month. This ship now has an official seal of approval. It was pretty beaten up, but it’s now in perfect repair.”

“Did you restore everything? The hydroponics tank? Weapons controls? And how did it perform in testing? The warp cannon worked fine?”

“No, it’s all fine. We ran as many scans over it as we could think of, put it through as many tests as we could. I understand if you want to go over it yourself, but I can assure you there are no problems.”

Disconnecting from the man’s cable after thanking him, Kik went inside to inspect the craft, deactivating his magnetic boots and drifting between the airlocks.

Inside was far cleaner and more sterile than he remembered. Many of the destroyed pieces of equipment had been completely torn out and replaced. It was honestly surprising that they had managed to find parts for such a rare craft. Perhaps it was lucky that none of the more esoteric parts had been destroyed. Missing plates exposing wiring on the corridor walls had also been replaced with fresh metal ones. Broken and dim lights had been fixed. Unmarked paint had been applied to many surfaces, leaving only faint indentations where previously there had been deep scratches.

It felt like all the character had been sucked out of the ship without him realising it. He left his land backpack strapped to the wall in the storage room and drifted onwards.

Climbing up into the ventilation shaft above the intersection behind the bridge, he found a small plastic box. Opening it, his bedroll and his personal effects were inside. “Well, at least this is still here,” he muttered to himself.

Looking around the ship, though, the repair crews had done a good job. Plates could be rescratched, paint could be scraped off again. Those were the superficial issues which would fix themselves with time. All the damage he could think about had been fixed, whether caused by the pirates or whether it had been a problem for a while. The slightly wobbly display on the gunnery controls had been fixed. The door to the port airlock which sometimes stuck had been fixed. Even if they added character, they were still problems.

His and his parents’ personal effects were still around the ship. Theirs had been packed into boxes and placed inside the storage room. The ship had also been thoroughly cleaned. Kik’s parents never really cleaned the surfaces, they just pumped some harmful gases through the atmosphere occasionally and let that clear out the microorganisms.

While he was sorting out where to put all his things, four people embarked via the port airlock that he had come through. Three were male and the last was female, judging by their silhouettes.

Coming around a corner and running into four suited people standing by the airlock, Kik was surprised for a second, before opening his visor. The people in front of him opened their visors too.

The person in the lead was a man, wearing a dark red void suit and carrying two large metal cases over his shoulders. His face was full, with slightly flushed, red cheeks, brown hair and thick eyebrows. His lips were particularly thick too. He looked like he’d be at home anywhere you could find plentiful food.

The person behind him to his right was the woman. Behind her visor lay thick, short-trimmed black hair, green eyes and delicate features. She wore a grey suit. She was carrying a pouch, with something like a toolbox or tackle box inside, and she had an extended backpack as well. She was the most heavily armed of them, with the silhouette of a pistol at her belt.

The third person, to the left of the group, was wearing a traditional white space suit. He was bald, missing both hair and eyebrows. A faint sheen of sweat glimmered on his forehead. His eyes were a deep blue, and his face was gaunt. He had a small knife strapped to his leg.

The final person, completing the diamond, was the man Kik had met before, Edmon. He had a long, skinny leather bag strapped across his back. His suit was also white.

“It’s nice to meet you, Kik,” the man at the front opened.

“It seems you know me, but I don’t know you?”

“I’m Lucas DeVell. This is Nemel Bolis and Ivan Tost,” he gestured to the woman and man in turn, “and hiding at the back there is Edmon, who you’ve already met, I believe. He’s mentioned your name.”

“Alright. So you’re my passengers for this journey. Where are we headed?”

“The sector capital, Elaris.”

Once his four passengers were settled, which involved taking out a few spare bedrolls, Kik gave them the ship’s radio frequency, which they would use to communicate in the void. His suit was already keyed into it from the last time he had worn it.

Once his pre-departure checks, which confirmed that all systems had no problems, fuel tanks were full and their route was valid, Kik received permission to leave dock from the system’s traffic control.

“It seems the trouble on level 13 or wherever has died down,” he told his passengers over the comms. “It’ll be about a three-day trip galactic time before we arrive. Settle down, enjoy yourselves, and don’t go for a swim outside without your helmet.”

He disconnected the moorings and slowly rose from orbit on his allotted path. Open space beckoned him, and he welcomed the feeling in the hour or so before they reached safe jump distance.

The sickening sensation of the jump overtook Kik as he bid the desert farewell.