We made it back to the Bucket without hearing an alarm, hiring a private ped cart and whizzing through the Raist’s cargo hold at a fast jog. My hands kept twitching, my neck kept crawling with invisible bugs. The cart was crudmucking exposed, presenting us like vat-meat for the frying pan. I wanted walls, but had only seats mounted on an empty, echoing cargo space.

  No one noticed. No one stopped us, nor shouted.

  The Bucket’s docking bay was abandoned, magedowser offline, the officials gone. I conjured up a thread of force, disabling my wards on the airlock and keying in my entry code.

  Less than six hours had passed since we’d docked. A quarter of a day, and we’d managed to crudmuckingly void every hope we’d had coming in.

  Now all I hoped for was to get away without the Bucket being shot to pieces. I’d warded her armor myself, and it would withstand a pounding that would have breached any other light hauler.

  Meaning that if the Raist fired on us, we’d have the time to realize what was happening before we died. Our only escape was to run before anyone realized we were fugitives.

  The airlock closed behind us, the inner door opened, the lights coming on in the Bucket’s central corridor, showing the stained and pitted ribbing.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Void, I’ve never been so happy to see these steel walls,” I said. “We need to go.”

  My legs trembled, weak and shaky. I wanted to sit down, but if I did, I’d collapse. I pushed the feeling from my mind, grinding my teeth until they hurt. I’d crudmuckingly stay upright. Once we were running through the void, away from the trade fleet, then I’d sit and sweat. Now I had work to do.

  “We’re docked,” Maia said, calmly. Only the slight paleness of her face revealed how stressed she was. “Secured to the Raist. Wanted fugitives. That’s got to be in their com, together with the competing claim to the Bucket. How do you intend to convince them to let us get away?”

  “We’ll cut the docking clamps,” I said.

  “That will take hours,” Hao said, fiddling with the com readout in the airlock. She was running through the channels, looking for alerts. “Even with the plasma cannons, it will take time.”

  “Not if I use the foil,” I said. “It will cut through the clamps in minutes.”

  “The Raist will object,” Maia said. “I cannot imagine someone letting us cut through their essential equipment without comment.”

  “I’ll get a suit and cut the Bucket’s docking holds,” I said. “They won’t notice that, and our holds are weaker than their clamps. They’ll break faster.”

  I stomped through the inner door, my steps clanging on the steel decking, the force masking my fear, mostly from myself. Hao was just as scared, and Maia was horrifyingly good at reading people while masking her own feelings.

  It took me two tries to conjure up a cold thread of force from the void to down-tune the razor wards on my gun locker. My knees had the firmness of boiled bread, my hands shook.

  “Captain,” Hao said from the airlock.

  “What?” I said, pulling the doors open. The blueish lights in the locker came on, illuminating another empty depression in the packing foam. Not likely that I’d ever see my Chimer again.

  “I can see our money,” Hao said.