Page 29 of My Alien Bughead
Ignoring her question, I grab the metal plate again. This time, I don’t stop even when the pile of rubble shifts and starts to slide down on me. Hefting the edge of the plate onto my shoulder, I hold it up, then reach for Lucía.
I’m not gentle as I yank her out of the hole she’s been buried in but we are seriously running out of time. The metal plate grows heavier every second as rubble pours down onto it, but it does a good job protecting Lucía’s and most of my body. Not so much my head, though.
As soon as Lucía is out, I drop the metal sheet. The train wreckage shifts around us, metal groaning and screeching, the ominous rumble from above turns into a full-fledged cracking. “RUN!” I shout, shoving Lucía forward. Thankfully, she doesn’t hesitate.
We race through the violently shaking tunnel, with only the headlights from the train and my glowing ahni to guide us as we trip and stumble over rubble strewn across the floor. Behind us, everything collapses burying the train wreckage under tons of rock, along with the body of the unfortunate Karetelan.
Rocks of all shapes and sizes rain down upon us. One slams into my back, sending me stumbling to the floor. Less than a second later, strong arms are hauling me up. “Keep going!” Lucía shouts, her voice barely audible over the cacophony surrounding us.
We run for what feels like hours but is more than likely just a minute or two. Eventually, the rumbling dies down and thetunnel stops shaking, though it’s filled with a cloud of dust that makes it difficult to breathe. It’s also pitch black. This time, the only light is coming from the glowing tips of my ahni and that’s nowhere near enough to illuminate anything.
“Shit.” Wheezing, Lucía leans over and coughs. “Fucking hell. Are we alive?”
“I think so. For now, anyway.” Especially me.
“Good,” she growls, her voice ice cold.
I can’t see her swinging the tool at my head but my instincts, honed by years of service as a Voidstalker, warn me anyway. Raising my arm just in time, I manage to save my skull from getting bashed in by the largest spanner from Lucía’s tool belt. “What the…?”
I don’t get an answer, just another attack and a furious screech. “You fucking ASSHOLE!”
What the actual fuck?
Chapter 18
D’Aakh
Ducking to avoid Lucía’ssecond attack, I just about see the outline of her spanner swishing through the spot where my head had been a second ago. “What the fuck are you doing?!” I yell. Stepping back, my back hits the wall. “Lucía?”
“What amIdoing?!” she yells. “Me?! I’m not the asshole blowing shit up!”
Huh? I dodge another attack, then tiring of this game of try-not-to-die-from-blunt-force-trauma, I grab Lucía by the arm and pin her against the wall. “Stop! Just…stop and tell me what the fuck you’re talking about?”
She squirms in my hold but, while she might be strong for a human female, she has no chance of overpowering me. “Let me go! And stop acting all innocent. I know it was you, alright?! I know about the sabotage. I just didn’t thinkyouwere behind it until now. God! And to think I actually defended your stupid ass…”
“You defended me?” I don’t know why my brain latched onto that particular piece of information out of everything she just said, but her words make me irrationally proud. Then the rest registers. “Wait, sabotage? You think I did this?! Why the fuck would I blow up a train while I’m on it?!” Did she really think I was that stupid?
I feel more than see her shrug. “I don’t know. You fuck up all the time. It wouldn’t be that surprising.”
The way she gets on my nerves overshadows my immense relief at her being alive and unharmed. “Okay, first? If I wanted to sabotage your pathetic train, I wouldn’t have used a shaped charge, risking the structural integrity of the entire station! There are easier ways to destroy shit. And second,” I add, cutting off her protest, “why, for all the dark matter in the fucking galaxy, would I want to sabotage this station? What the fuck is going on here?”
She’s quiet for a long time. For someone like Lucía, it’s so unusual that my worry immediately surges again. “Lucía?” Clicking on my flashlight to see her better, I cup her face and cautiously slide my hands through her hair, feeling for possible cuts and lumps. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Talk to me, please. I don’t know what you think I did but I didn’t do it.”
“Oh, really?” There’s still anger in her voice but it’s a tamer, more usual amount of it. “So you didn’t cause the surge back on the ship? The one that nearly fried me?”
My ahni droop low, their glow turning a dim pink as the stupid appendages betray my embarrassment. She’s got me there. Idon’t remember working on that particular panel but no one else has touched it, so it must have been me. Then there are the concerning gaps in my memory. Still, I don’t do apologies. “That…that’s not important right now.”
Her scoff is one of absolute disgust. “Of course it’s not.” Shoving at me again, this time I let her go. “Because the great almighty D’Aakh never makes mistakes, right? Well, you fucked up this time. I can forgive messing with the machinery, but not killing innocent people just because they’re in your way! There’s a dead man back inside that train. A good man. He’s dead because of you! How much are they paying you for this?”
“What?” Maybe the stimulants have fried my brain because I’ve never been so confused in my entire life. “Lucía, you’re not making any sense. I did not set that charge!”
“Then why were you on the train, hm? Why were you at the station at all? After your ‘I’m the best and I’ll fix my fucking ship myself’ speech, I didn’t expect to see you outside of the engineering section of your stupid ship again. Why are you here if not to play your role as a pawn in some stupid war between corporations?”
My mind finally shifts into gear. “Corporate war… Of course. You’ve found something valuable here and now you think another corporation is coming to take it by force? You mine and smelt crylonite here, which is already valuable on its own. A single new vein wouldn’t be worth enough for another company to risk UGC retribution for a hostile takeover. So, you must have found more than one. Massively rich veins. So now what? You’re sitting on a veritable treasure with no way to protect it? Or yourselves?”
Lucía glares at me. “You didn’t answer my question, D’Aakh. What were you doing on that train?”
My ahni flash pink again as I hesitate, reluctant to admit the truth. I know I’m going to have to. Lucía doesn’t trust me,rightfully so, and I’ll need her trust if I’m going to get her out of here alive. My hand trembles a little as I locate her oxl wrench and hold it in front of her like a peace offering. “I…you left this behind.” I stutter, sounding pathetic even to my own ears.
