Shadow Run (Kaitan Chronicles #1)
Michael Miller
To Eirin Arthur Strickland (1988–2014): brother-in-law, true friend, occasional foe, and lifelong inspiration. My aliens can only hope to be as good as yours. See You, Space Cowboy…
—AdriAnne
Dedicated to Cord Kruse, who taught me how to write with another person. VLR, my friend.
—Michael
The first time I heard the captain’s voice was over the ship’s comm: “Hold on, it’s going to be a rough run.”
She wasn’t wrong. The young man across from me, Arjan, grinned as I took a wide stance and braced myself against the g-forces of the good ship Kaitan Heritage hurtling out of orbit.
“I see you’ve flown before,” he said.
He knew I was a stranger to this business, so his acknowledgment was of the condescending sort. I hoped Arjan wouldn’t get in my way. Well, he was already in my way, literally blocking the stairs. He was around my age, nineteen, or maybe twenty-one at most, tall with black hair that fell to shoulders that were broader than even my own. In spite of his size, I would have happily tried to brush by him if I could have succeeded with minimal fuss.
We were alone in the cargo hold, a large space dominated by pallets of canisters and an industrial panel with a maglock that I guessed connected to the containment hold on the other side. High on one wall was a display showing a feed from outside the ship. Clouds streaked by, while the walls themselves were caked with old space scum built up over time from condensation and dirt.
I nodded in response. I was definitely no stranger to space travel, which was how I could tell that we were leaving Alaxak in a hurry. Even if a ship was too utilitarian to be equipped with the best gravitational dampeners, most pilots attempted to escape the pull of a planetary body with a little less violence than what we were currently undergoing. The captain had either a great deal of faith in the Kaitan or a completely different way of assessing risk. The entire ship was shaking with the strain, and the thrusters roared loudly enough that I felt compelled to raise my voice to speak.
“I’ve been around, thanks. Where are we headed?”
“You really haven’t done this before?” Arjan gave me a sympathetic shake of his head.
I did my best to hide my annoyance at the gesture, biting back a retort. Being uppity as the new hire wasn’t likely to endear myself to anybody, and my agenda was worth sacrificing my ego. More than that, Arjan was the captain’s brother. I hadn’t met her yet, but she was the reason I was here.
I had traveled what felt like the length and breadth of the frozen planet of Alaxak to find someone specific: a captain with phenomenal abilities. Rumors, speculation, and a great many purchased drinks had led me to the village of Gamut, and then to here, a ship called the Kaitan Heritage, and to Captain Qole Uvgamut. “Of Gamut,” in their dialect. She and Arjan belonged to one of the old native families that had originally settled the planet. One of the families, perhaps, whose long exposure to the unstable energy source known as Shadow yielded more than just sickness and death.
And yet, even though she’d technically hired me onto her crew, I hadn’t been able to get close enough to even say hello, let alone place a biometric sensor on her.
I wasn’t sure how I would even manage an introduction like that. Hi, my name is Nev, and no, I can’t tell you my last name or quite what I want with you, but would you please come with me?
But rumor also had it that Arjan was nearly the caliber of pilot she was. So when I’d shaken his hand, I’d placed a biometric sensor on his forearm. And based on the miniature readout displayed on my wrist feed at the touch of a button, the data was now uploading to Uncle Rubion through their Quantum Intersystem Network, thanks to the hack I had infiltrating it. Normal comm links didn’t work at such distance, but the QUIN did.
I didn’t know how long it would take my uncle to interpret the data, but whatever his conclusion, my time on the Kaitan was limited. My pickup was coming in two days’ time, and I had to be on it with at least one of the Uvgamuts.
I already hoped it would be Qole, and not just because of the incredible rumors regarding her Shadow affinity.
“I’m afraid I’m new to this particular venture,” I said, “but I’m a quick study. Can you give me a brief overview of my duties?”
Arjan gave me a teasing smirk. “Your duties? Well, my good sir,” he said, mimicking my accent, “here’s the abbreviated explanation: once we start the run, Qole and I net the Shadow and get it into the containment hold”—he pointed at the maglock—“you load it into these canisters as quickly as possible”—he pointed at the stacks and stacks filling the cargo hold around us—“and then you try not to die.”
Shadow. The thought of getting so close to it made me nervous. Speculation that it had caused the Great Collapse aside, I’d only seen it used as fuel in cutting-edge industrial facilities before now. In spite of that, it was the reason most of us were here. Well, everyone else was here to “fish,” as the locals called it, for the volatile substance, while I was here to see what someone with the right biological makeup could do with it. Not that Arjan knew that, and in the meantime, I apparently had a job to do in order to keep up the pretense.
I had to resist grimacing at him. “What happens if I’m less than quick?”
“Shadow will eat through the lining of the containment hold, and then we’ll all die.”
Nice. “Shouldn’t the lining be resistant to such degradation? Unless it’s old, that is.”
Arjan’s face hardened. “Why bother paying an astronomical amount for new lining when you have a fast loader to get the Shadow into these safer, cheaper containers?” He patted a canister, and the noise rang out metallically. “It’s how everyone does it out here.”
I wanted to quote a proverb my mother used to repeat about not standing under a landing ship just because my friends did, but I refrained. I liked to think I wasn’t new to danger, but the longer I spent in these cold fringes, the more I learned that the term acceptable risk meant something quite different from what I was used to.
“And about how long will I be at it?”
Arjan simply laughed in my face this time. “Oh boy, you really haven’t done this. You stop when she stops.” He pointed at the ceiling, presumably toward the bridge and Captain Qole. “If you’re not a dead man walking by then.”
Blasted hell, I thought. But I smiled. “I’m sure I’ll manage.”
He only grinned back at me.
“What about the rest of the crew?” I asked, to give him something better to do. “What are their jobs?”