Born of Sand (Tales of a Dying Star Book 5) (15 page)

A half hour passed while Farrow sat and waited.

Finally Dok emerged, bobbing his head in a silent sort of confirmation. When they went to the control room and activated the turbine it crackled and sputtered with electricity, slow at first before joining the other two in a uniform hum.

Farrow smiled widely and smacked Dok on the back. The engineer only grinned to himself and stared at his feet.

Dok proved an expert at everything they threw at him. They spent most of the day in the workshop, going over electroid pieces while Mira catalogued them into a book and took notes. He fixed two of their heavy anti-air lasers and the radio jammer, though most of the time was spent digging in their piles of scrap for the right parts. He began carrying additional pieces of metal and gears on his person, clipping them to the outside of his clothing so that they dangled all over him and clinked together when he moved.

At dinner he pulled a panel off the wall in the kitchen and made some adjustments inside. Farrow still wasn't sure what he did there, but Maggy said one of her broken stove burners began working again, and insisted her ovens heated more evenly. After that Dok did eat, and wolfed down his bread when Maggy gave him seconds. Even he seemed pleased at the day's work.

Farrow watched Dok eat with a mixture of fascination and hope. How quickly their capacity for war had changed, with the help of one strange little man.
And yet there is still much to do
. They needed those batteries for the electroids, needed to repair the broken Riverhawks, needed pilots to fly them. Farrow couldn't remember the last time they weren't short on a thousand things at once. Before the Melisao came, maybe.

"Excuse me, Farrow, but do you think you could open the armoury?" Mira stood behind him, arms clasped in front. "Kari said she would help me practice shooting and sparring every night, but with her gathering scrap... you don't need to help me, just let me in. If that's okay, I mean. If you don't mind."

He smiled wearily. For once her tone held the right note of subordination. "I don't mind. I appreciate you asking."

Mira pushed dust around with one of her feet. "Truthfully, I went to Binny first, but she couldn't get in." Across the room Binny watched, but quickly returned her head to her plate of food when Farrow glanced over.

The thought of Binny breaking into the armoury and trying to hold a rifle was too ridiculous for Farrow to be mad. "I'll settle for being the second most powerful person in Victory Base, behind Binny."

They walked across the base in silence. A few times Mira looked like she wanted to say something to him, but stopped herself just before. Farrow gave her a sideways glance when they reached the door, and she turned away so he could punch in the code.

She strode inside and approached one of the weapon crates. Farrow turned to leave, but lingered in the doorway as she hefted a rifle. She had to lean back to bear its weight. She carried it over to the shooting gallery, resting it on a stacked crate pointing in the direction of the targets.

"You were shooting one of the X-100s?" Farrow asked.

Mira shrugged. "I guess. It's what's Kari had me use."

"That woman will teach you to swim by drowning you in the sea," Farrow muttered as he approached and picked up the gun. "It's a waste to use something so heavy. You'd never be able to wield it in combat."

"When I'm stronger I can," Mira said. "When I rest it on a flat surface I shoot well."

Farrow returned the gun to its crate and closed the lid. He began opening other boxes, searching. "Everyone shoots well like that. But in a real fight you won't have something so convenient. You'll be shooting while standing, or crouched on one knee. Often you will need to hold your gun well away from your body while firing from around a corner."

Mira considered that. "The peacekeepers shoot like that. They place their rifles on a railing on the roof of the Governor's Palace, and inside the bunkers throughout town."

"The peacekeepers are
defending
. We will be attacking, and lack the shitting luxury." He found what he wanted in the next crate. He removed two pistols that had their energy bars full. "This shit's more your size."

She made a face. "They're puny!"

"They'll put a hole through a man's chest. And they're easier to carry." He placed it in her hand. "Besides, we only have ten of the X-100 rifles, and those are going to my best shooters. We have plenty of these."

He showed her how to activate the charge and disable the safety. "Grip it with both hands," he said when she tried using just one. "It still kicks a little bit, and you'll want both arms to absorb the recoil. Yes, good. Like that. Spread your feet more. Good."

The high-pitched screech of laserfire filled the room as she began shooting at the target thirty feet away. Her first four shots missed, but her fifth grazed the edge. "It barely makes a hole in the foam," she complained, squinting. "The rifle punches a hole the size of a fist."

"The rifle doesn't leave any hole if you miss," Farrow observed. "Hitting your target is more important. And the pistol does the job just fine against flesh. Hit someone in the gut with that and I assure you they'll drop. Until you can strike the target four times in succession I would not worry about weapon calibre."

She practiced the pistol until she fully drained the battery, then emptied the replacement Farrow gave her. Whenever her form became sloppy he pointed out her mistake. She yelped with joy when she struck the target four times in a row, shooting him an excited, gloating look. Feeling playful, he took the pistol from her hand and began walking backwards, maintaining eye contact with her the entire time. When his back touched the wall--as far away from the target as possible--he raised the pistol and fired three blasts in quick succession,
ping ping ping
. All hit the human-shaped target in the head, clustered so closely together that they nearly appeared as one complete hole.

Mira didn't celebrate her shots after that.

"Can we practice sparring for a bit?" she asked some time later. "My elbows are sore from shooting, so I want to move them around. Get the blood flowing again."

Farrow took the gun from her, disabled it, and placed it on a nearby crate. "I'm afraid I'm not as versed in hand-to-hand combat as Kari. I wouldn't be able to teach you anything useful."

"Just make some basic attacks toward me so I can defend. I'll just be blocking and deflecting."

After a moment of hesitation, he nodded. He stepped up to a waiting Mira and began making half-hearted strikes, punches and slashes as if he held a knife. Mira bent her knees and nimbly knocked aside his fists. She defended herself with clumsy motions, but Farrow supposed that would improve with time.

"When you brought me here I didn't think I was brave," she said while they sparred.

"How do you mean?"

She jammed her wrist down, knocking his punch away from her body. "With Kaela and Ami, I always felt brave. I never had to think around them, I just
did
. In some instinctual way I always knew what to do, knew what was best for them. Working, stealing. Once a gang of boys accosted me and I struck one of them in the face so hard his nose bled and he crumpled to the ground."

The mention of her daughters made Farrow purse his lips.
A cruelty
, he heard Akonai's voice.
A kind man would tell her.

She mistook his expression. "The boy was trying to steal my credits!" she said defensively. "I'd saved them for months, and Ami had a coughing fit in the middle of the night."

"I'm sure it was justified." He knew well of the gangs of young men that roamed the city.

"When I was with my daughters," she continued, "my actions always came easily. Whatever I had to do to protect them, I did. The dangers never came to mind because they did not matter at all. But once they were gone, once I was alone wandering the hot desert by myself, I felt as if I'd lost my bravery. I began second-guessing every decision I'd made. I felt unsure of myself. I was listless. When you captured me, threw me in a cell to be questioned by Spider, I was
terrified
."

As her reflexes became more automatic, Farrow increased the speed of his attacks.

"I didn't think I could be brave anymore, not without my girls. There was no reason to live at all without them. I was a mother and nothing else, and losing them meant losing myself."

You've lost them more than you know
, Farrow thought sadly.

"But now I see that's not true," she said, gritting her teeth as she swiped away a kick. "There's more to just holding onto Kaela and Ami, hoping they will be safe for a day or week or month. Your Freemen here... you have a purpose. A goal that binds you all together, and may keep you safe for years, if you're successful. I see the importance of that, now. I've only been here a few days but I feel as if the sand has been rubbed clean from my eyes."

Farrow smiled at the little woman, suddenly so energetic and full of life. "I am glad."

"I want to be part of it," she said. "However I can help, I will. More than just a means to eventually reach my girls. I just wanted you to know that."

He smiled curtly. He knew the feeling, the excitement of newness, of discovering a fresh motivation, latching onto it like a safety tether in space.
We're all that enthusiastic, at first
.
When it's easy
. Would she feel the same in two months, when they struck the Melisao and bled greatly for the cause? When the bodies dotted the dunes and the sand drank their blood?

My paranoia comes from Akonai
. He had been the one to instill distrust in the Freemen, told them to cower and hide. Made them cease their hit-and-run attacks on the peacekeepers, and stop trusting everyone. Yet here was a woman Akonai had made him trust, which went against all previous instruction, and she was quickly growing more trustworthy. Maybe some more trust was a good thing.

She swiped away his hand and lunged forward, stabbing his side with her palm. Farrow grunted and took a step back.

"You look too worried," she said.

"I'm the correct amount of worried. The more you have, the more you fear to lose." He'd never felt that way when his band was three men, stealing peacekeeper ammunition and lighting fires randomly in the city. Things were simpler, then.

"Akonai said you would not disobey an order," Mira commented. "He said it in such a way that it was a joke. What did he mean?"

"Nothing. An old story."

She stopped fighting to give a rare smile. "I like stories."

"You won't like this shitting one."

She shrugged and they continued sparring. Farrow relaxed while completing the smooth, methodical motions.

"You're improving," he said after a while.

"Do you think so? Maybe with enough time I'll be so dangerous people will believe I'm a
shade
."

Farrow stopped mid-strike. "
No
," he snapped. "Don't ever shitting say that. Not in joking, not even in passing. Half the men in this base would demand to have your skin lanced for saying such a thing."

"I was only--"

"I don't care what you were doing. Never say that again. Do you understand?
Do you
?"

He realized he had grabbed her sleeve and clutched her menacingly. Mira held her fists close to her chest, shocked by his outburst. He let go.

"It's important," he added, as if it excused his behavior. "Especially around Kari."

Mira bobbed her head in agreement, then said, "What's special about Kari?"

I'd give all the sand on Praetar to know that
. "I'm not sure. She's prickly whenever a shade is mentioned. She changes: her temperament, her body language. She gets a look in her eye..."

"What look?"

"Fear." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "It's the only time you'll ever see her afraid, even at just the mention of them. Take care of your words." Still feeling guilty for his outburst--and for a handful of other reasons--he said, "Let's get back to shooting pistols."

The next day they visited the hangar bays that held their fleet of aircraft, each bay arranged around the outside of the central workshop area. Seven Riverhawks and two Goshawks, though only four of the former and one of the later were fully functional. The other ships stood in various states of disrepair, however they had been found and salvaged from the sands.

Farrow led Dok to one of the broken Riverhawks, the one they suspected was nearest becoming functional. The engine compartment hung open underneath the ship like a hatch, with a fibre ladder hanging down. "See what you can do," Farrow said. "Or at least, give me an idea of what's needed to get her flying again."

"Okay." The various pieces of machinery and metal pinned to Dok's coat clinked together as he disappeared inside the craft.

Mira sat in the middle of the floor of the workshop, tinkering with some electroid parts while watching them. She lowered her head when Farrow glanced in her direction.

Dok reappeared some time later, his hands and face covered in black grease. "Problems," he said. "Oil leak on the left burner. Power line corroded..." He listed several other things that meant nothing to Farrow.