I was off and sprinting across the sand, my Chimer in my hand and my armor jacket sealed, before Hao had even stopped the loader. The airlock had burn marks all over, the kind Baylen’s pet mage had left on the cave ceiling. The door itself was warped, bent inward from great pressure. There was a hole big enough to walk through.

  I reached the Bucket and pressed myself against the hull, next to the airlock. No motion. No smells. My wards were untouched.

  Bypassed. I upped my estimate of Maurice-the-dirt-mage’s skill level. My wards are good.

  My com connected to the ship, and got an all clear. No one on board. I didn’t trust the scanners. Anyone skilled enough to bypass my wards could have bypassed or hacked the scanners as well.

  I drew my flameblade. Bright blue fire danced over the edge, barely visible even in the dark. With a gesture and a word, I activated the wards on my armor. Flameblade in my left, Chimer in my right, I swept into the airlock.

  Nothing.

  Emergency medpack still on its hooks. Benches still attached. Breaching charge that I kept in case I needed to leave fast, still hidden beneath the bench.

  Inner door open.

  I slid into the airlock, my feet barely pressing on the metal in the low gravity, expecting to be shot at any moment.

  Still nothing. Inner door still open. Scanners still saying all clear.

  Beyond the airlock was the central corridor. Left to the cockpit and my cabin. Right to the unused passenger cabins and cargo bay. I’d have to turn my back on one of them.

  I pulled a slim piece of polished steel from my pocket, a low-tech solution to looking around corners. Holding it with two fingers, I pushed it out into the Bucket’s main corridor. The feeling that my fingertips were about to be blown off was strong. I wanted to trigger a shock ward but didn’t. I only had two.

  No one in the corridor. No movement, no shots.

  Right or left? What should I turn my back on?

  I turned right. More places to hide there. I moved out into the corridor, my back to the cockpit.

  No one shot me. The corridor smelled of burned plastic and something more – a sharp smell I couldn’t place. Beneath that, vanilla.

  A shattered jar lay in the corridor, the glass crushed, the lid bent. Someone had stepped on the jar, someone heavy even in the light gravity.

  I moved forward, my heart pounding.

  The door to the cargo bay was open, the lights off, the bay a dark hole. I’d be outlined against the glow of the emergency lights in the corridor.

  I stopped by the last bulkhead before the bay door and coaxed the ward in my steel mirror into life. The mirror started to glow with a greenish sheen, stronger and stronger. Squinting, I flicked it as far into the cargo bay as I could.

  The mirror slid through the air, deceptively slow, illuminating the empty cargo bay.

  Nothing. No gunshots, no intruders.

  No vanilla.

  I’d stored four crates containing the spice by the inner door, secured by load-bearing hooks set in the floor. The red load-webbing remained, cut through and black in the greenish light. The crates were gone.

  My mirror clattered against the steel of the bay, making the fastening hooks cast long shadows. I slid into the bay, darting to one side and sweeping my gun across the empty space. I checked the top gantries, the side hatches, and the main loading ramp. Clear, closed, and raised. All empty. Then I turned around, making my way back up the ship.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  My gun locker was untouched, as was my safe. Both were warded and hidden, but still. Either the intruders hadn’t looked for hidden valuables, or they were incompetent. Even my fake and obvious safe hadn't been breached.

  The hatchling was gone.

  His acceleration couch was empty, the kibble scattered across my cabin, the red, plaid blanket he slept on missing.

  They’d probably lifted him up in it and carried him. The hatchling slept like the dead.

  I kicked at the couch, clenching my teeth and lowering my Chimer. They’d taken the hatchling.

  My charge, my friend, was gone.

  Something scraped along the metal grating in the corridor.

  Without thinking, I dodged out the door, flameblade already stabbing, trailing a wall of blue blaze, the point a white-hot tornado of fire.

  Hao threw up her hands, recoiling, the big crowbar she wielded flying away to clang against the bulkhead.

  My blade pierced the side of her thick mechanic’s coat, but I managed to twist it aside enough not to skewer her. I extinguished the flames, the blue fire drawing back into the titanium, but her coat was already burning, regular orange flames spewing forth from where the biopolymers had caught.

  I reversed the blade, resting it along my arm, and sprayed her with the closest fire extinguisher, filling the air with foam and suds.

  “The crud was that?” she said, once she had recovered.

  I’d already stuck the flameblade into my hidden scabbard. Now I withdrew it, showing the wards crawling along the flat of the titanium blade and onto its nano-structured boron-carbide edge.

  She blinked those incredibly blue eyes of hers.

  “That a mageblade?” she said.

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I owed her an explanation, having almost killed her, but the rage boiling in my gut made it hard to focus. My hatchling was gone.

  “You a mage?” she said.

  Again, I nodded.

  “Not a trader?”

  “I trade when I can,” I said. “But I’ve just run out of stock.”

  The hot rage was leaving me, replaced by a cold, clear ice. It was as if my mind was freezing over, becoming sharp and hard and clear. A killing mind, one of my tutors had called it. Useful, but very, very dangerous at the wrong moment. Ice shatters.

  Someone had taken my hatchling. I was going to find them, and kill them.

  Some of the ice must have made it to my face, because Hao began to back away, putting distance between us. Not wanting to stand too close to a mad warder holding a blade. Smart.

  I shoved the flameblade back into its scabbard and pushed past her to my gun locker, tossing away the wall plates that kept my weapons safely hidden and keying the locks open.

  Then I lifted my wards. I wasn’t crazed enough to forget about them, or what they could do. The wards were inside the locker, invisible to anyone searching the Bucket, and potent enough to turn the entire corridor into a storm of flame and razors.

  I’m peculiar about my blades. My guns, too, but mostly my blades. I pressed on the side panel, lifting the doors.

  “Whoa,” said Hao.

  “Void,” breathed Tomlin, who’d just made his way onto my ship without even a by-your-leave. “Is that real?”

  “Very real,” I said, with a touch of pride.

  My gun locker isn’t big, but it’s good. Rifles, pistols, blades, munitions, all secured in form-cut packing and warded against fire, electricity, water, ice, and scanners.

  That was in the wall locker. The floor plates we stood on hid a five-meter-long coffin, half as wide as the corridor itself and waist-deep. A thin walkway in the middle of the coffin, barely wide enough to stand on without pitching over. The rest is gear. Namely a pair of portable anti-ship plasma cannons.

  I rarely opened the floor locker. If I’d ever found myself in need of something that could shoot down a spaceship, I was in too much trouble already. I could, and occasionally had, mounted the plasma cannons in my top and bottom loading hatches, turning the Bucket into a poor man’s gunship. The upper gun locker held the usable items.

  I considered my rifle, but grabbed a Hurmer sand-gun and two power packs. Packing a thousand ionized micro-pellets, fairly short, and effective at single shot up to fifty meters and full auto at up to a hundred, the Hurmer was a perfect CQB weapon against unarmored opponents. Baylen’s mage would have to wear cast-iron underwear to survive that.

  Then I picked up my foil.

  I’m not much of a fencer. I don’t go in for long foils. Neither am I a show-off. My foil is simple.

  Just shy of a meter long, it doesn’t flame or sparkle. It doesn’t leave light trails or whistle or do any of the other idiotic things foils do in popular fiction.

  It’s simply a way of keeping a tiny piece of ripstone as far away from my body as possible while still making it usable.

  I picked up the scabbard and belted it on, hung the Hurmer over my shoulder, stepped out of my gun locker, and slapped the close button. With a tiny, harmonious hum, the doors started closing. I glanced down and grabbed a pair of flat, magnesium flame-fragment grenades, withdrawing my hand before I suffered an involuntary amputation. When it comes to weapons storage, close means close.

  “My da would have arrested you,” Tomlin said.

  “Your da the rat farmer?” I said, a bit of an angry jeer slipping into my voice.

  Tomlin’s face grew all lemony, and I closed my eyes in exasperation. Hadn’t I just berated Hao for playing the kid for laughs?

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m having a bad day.”

  When I opened my eyes, Tomlin’s look had mellowed from lemon to merely sour.

  “He would have,” the kid said.

  “I believe you,” I said, because agreement is the cheapest and fastest way to make people dismiss your crud comments when you don't want to argue and are in no mood to apologize.

  On my way out, I bent down and swept up the spilled vanilla, disposing of spice, lid, and crushed glass in the Bucket’s recycler.