“Two tunnels,” said Hao. “Perpendicular, but converging in the front end of the complex. Each has an engine mounted in the wall toward the end. I don’t know where Da Baylen stored the remaining two engines.”

  I was driving Tomlin’s trike up the main mine run, at a much slower pace than Tomlin drove, carefully making our way past rockfalls and potholes so deep I couldn’t see their bottoms.

  “He had four engines?” I said. That was a big ship.

  “Two-stone Rexards,” Hao said. “He came in on a decommissioned Sierra-class frigate.”

  That silenced me, but only for a moment.

  “So he’s got four hundred men with him,” I said. If I could gather them in a single room, somehow, trigger both my death wards at the same time, somehow survive the flashback, then, maybe—

  “Only fifty,” Hao said. “Most of them are tech and toadies. No idea where he got a frigate.”

  I drove around a cracked boulder the size of the Bucket.

  “We’ll still need to bypass the riot cannons,” I said. “Any ideas?”

  Hao didn’t reply. I glanced at her, saw her bushy eyebrows all scrunched up.

  “It depends,” she said. “How much do you trust me?”

  “Meaning?” I said.

  “I could take you in at gunpoint,” she said. “As my prisoner.”

  My gut made a somersault. It was a good idea. I hated it.

  I ignored the wisdom of my bowels, turning the idea over in my mind. My gut objected, getting my heart to join in by beating like a drummer strung out on bluegrubs. I tried to beat them into submission with a focused breath, then another. The trike smelled of dry dust and sweat, and a tinge of blood, too, from my hands. Not great for calmness. No better idea presented itself.

  I needed to get inside and find the hatchling before Baylen got the idea of using him as a bargaining chip.

  We stopped some two hundred meters shy of the branch run to the Baylen complex and exited the trike, our boots crunching in the sandy run. I had my com running an interference routine, a simple denial of service attack against the local towers. With any luck, it would lock out any surveillance in the main mine run. If the Baylen’s security detail had half a brain, they’d raise the alarm the moment they lost contact with their scanners.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Then again, they might not, depending on what they thought was a bigger threat: some off-world trader, or disturbing Baylen and having him bash their heads in. I was betting on the latter.

  “What can we expect?” I asked Hao.

  “A long tunnel, with a security checkpoint. It’s usually unmanned, just two steel slabs with firing ports, but sometimes there are guards.”

  “And after that?”

  “The big room,” Hao said. “A large excavation, not as large as the Tomlin’s, but close. They keep vehicles there, mostly trikes and some crawlers. Used to be mining equipment, but they moved that deeper into the shafts. Now there’s a dispensary, a couple of freezers and heaters, and some tables. On a slow morning, you’ll find maybe ten people there. More if there’s something going on. And a guard detail, of course. Da Baylen is big on security.”

  “He’ll have them all deployed,” I said. “He just took on all the Jackson families.”

  “Young Baylen did,” Hao corrected me. “Da Baylen might not have been in on it.”

  “If he’s smart, he’ll still turn out the guards,” I said. “Is he?”

  “Smart?” Hao said. “More cunning. Not much of an engineer, but good with people.”

  “And no other way in?”

  She shrugged. “The other access tunnel, but it ends up in the same place. It’s got a warpstone engine in it, too.”

  “But once past that, all they’ve got are guns?” I said. The warpgun was the biggest danger. Warpstone is magic, so it would disrupt my wards. And turn my bones into jelly.

  “Guns and explosives and knives,” Hao said. “And Maurice.”

  Which was a point. But as long as I had my wards, I could take down some untrained dirt mage, no matter how powerful. Magic is about fulcrum and force. Wards are about preparation, and I’d been preparing every day in space. It’s what I do: fly, train, and imbue wards.

  “So we walk in,” I said, “with me your prisoner. Hope to take down as many guards as possible before they concentrate their fire and overwhelm us. Keep behind me as we go in – my mageshield will block it.”

  “Once we get in there, there’s no turning back,” Hao said. “Da Baylen will hunt us ‘til the end of the world and beyond. So will Young Baylen.”

  “And their troops?” I said.

  “Will fight, unless the Baylens die.”

  “Then that’s our goal,” I said, in my most reasonable voice. “Kill the Baylens, shatter the rest.”

  That’s what Ma Tomlin wanted. What I had wanted since I’d run into Baylen in the Tomlin’s inn. Ma Tomlin had figured it out and had her henchmen steal the hatchling to get me to act. It didn’t change the fact that I despised Baylen. I hate bullies.

  “You could still run,” Hao said. “We could scrape together enough warpstone to lift off.”

  I shook my head, giving her a twisted half-smile.

  “Gave my word,” I said. “The hatchling is my charge.”

  A moment of silence passed between us, long enough for my heart to thump twice. I couldn’t leave the hatchling. I’d given my word. Besides, I liked the sleeping lug. The hatchling was special.

  “Is your mageshield really that good?” Hao said.

  “Yes,” I replied, without hesitation or false modesty.

  “How could you afford something like that?”

  “Warded it myself,” I said.

  She was silent a while, thinking.

  “It took a long time,” I added, and she nodded, like she’d decided on something.

  “Ready?” she said.

  I turned my back on her, removing my hat.

  “Make it good,” I said, and pointed at her gun. “Give me a whack with the butt.”

  With that, I conjured a thread of force and down-tuned my wards.