“Fuck,” I mumbled as Ontari landed the shuttle on the pad the fighters had guided us to.

  “That’s an understatement,” Ontari responded.

  I took a deep breath to center myself before getting up and speaking. “So it looks like at least the station is occupied and we’ve been invited to visit the planet. We’ll see what happens, but I think it best we cooperate as much as possible, though I suspect they won’t share our language. I ran a scan as we descended and the atmosphere is breathable, so that’s one problem taken care of. Jara, if you don’t mind, you can take the lead as we exit, then I’ll follow with Ani, Isa, and Ontari. Make sure to activate a Shield before we exit in case they start firing immediately. Everyone ready?”

  Once the others confirmed, I gestured for Jara to lead us out. Like me, she had her weapon ready to draw but still holstered.

  Jara stepped out and scanned the area before indicating for me to follow. I stepped out of the cramped shuttle for the first time in weeks and onto a planet for the first time in months.

  As the scan showed, the air seemed fine as I breathed in the air in the large enclosed space now trapping us and the shuttle. There was no one waiting for us, so I gestured for the others to exit and form a line, making it harder to take us all out at once.

  A few minutes passed in silence before Ani spoke up. “Um, where are they?”

  I shrugged. “No clue. Maybe they’re making us wait as a power play. Or maybe they had to bring someone with the proper authority and said person hasn’t arrived yet.”

  “Well, I guess we wait, then,” Jara said with a calmness that seemed incongruous with the situation.

  We waited for probably an hour. After maybe ten minutes, Isa starting talking about the fighters and how the fighters seemed strange and clearly came from a slightly different technology base, though their near-spherical shape suggested that they had come to similar conclusions about effective use of technology in the void. I let her talk since I doubted anyone listening could understand us and it seemed to help her and the others remain calm.

  Eventually, though, I got tired of waiting.

  “That’s enough of this,” I grumbled. “Let’s see if we can find a way out.”

  The hangar was quite a bit larger than our smallish shuttle, clearly made to support larger vessels. It was largely empty from what I could see, but there was a set of double doors at least half again my height, if not more, and proportionate in width. I led the others over and inspected them.

  They were made of metal, though I couldn’t have told you what kind. They had handles, but when I tried them, they were locked. To the side of the doors was a keypad with strange symbols in a four by three grid, along with two separate buttons, but we obviously didn’t know the code.

  I tried activating Telekinesis to unlock the door, but not only was what I could sense of the mechanism quite complex, there were places that the extra sense the spell gave me were fuzzy.

  “Telekinesis isn’t going to work—these are way more advanced than the simple lock on the cages.”

  “Is that how you escaped?” Ontari asked before pausing and adding, “Wait, you were in antimana cuffs—how did you cast a spell?”

  I sighed, reminding myself that I had decided to trust Ontari weeks ago. “I’m not actually an elf—I’m a dragon. Specifically, I am Faye Shael Lumien Daxina Erythralia, Imperial Princess of the Erythralian Empire. Antimana cuffs don’t prevent the shapeshifting spell.”

  Ontari gasped and immediately dropped to a knee with her head bowed. “Y-your highness! I’m s-sorry!”

  I rolled my eyes and grabbed her arm lightly to pull her up. “Get up. I chose to become Dax for a reason—I don’t need the genuflection or titles. Now, does anyone have an idea how to get past these doors?”

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

  Isa raised a hand. “I could try modifying the keypad, though it might take awhile, if it’s even possible.”

  I nodded. “Go ahead and get started—the rest of us will try to think of other ways past.”

  Isa dashed off, back to the shuttle, and came out a minute later with a toolbox. She immediately got started inspecting the device, so I tuned her out.

  “Any other ideas?”

  “I think some of the other tools Isa used to modify the shields are in the shuttle—there might be a cutting torch we could use to cut a hole in the door given enough time.”

  Ani’s idea had merit. “Go see if you can find one, but hold off on that plan until we know if Isa has a chance at succeeding first.”

  “Is there any way to get the roof open again, your—I mean, ma’am?”

  I managed to stop myself from rolling my eyes at Ontari’s slip, but it was difficult. “The three of us investigate the rest of the hangar—maybe there’s something else we’re missing.”

  We split up to look over the hangar, but after a half hour of searching, we found nothing. By that point, Ani had joined us, so the four of us returned to the doors, and I checked in with Isa.

  “Any progress?” I asked.

  She wobbled her head side to side. “Maybe. This technology is strange—it’s taking me a while to figure out how they’re doing things. You see, these traces are—”

  I interrupted her. “Normally I enjoy listening to you explain things, but now is not the time. Just do your best and let us know if you think we should get to work with the cutting torch.”

  She agreed, and the four of us sat down on the cement to wait.

  “You know, we could get started with the torch while we wait, then whichever finishes first solves the problem,” Ani suggested.

  I shook my head. “No, we might damage something that would prevent Isa’s solution from working. It’s better that we wait.”

  So we waited. After an hour, Isa sat back with a grunt of frustration. “I don’t think I can figure it out. Either I’m grossly misunderstanding the way this thing works, or they did a really good job protecting it from people like me.”

  “Cutting torch, then?” Ani asked, excitement in her eyes.

  “Fine, go get your toy.”

  She bounced up and dragged Jara and Ontari with her to carry it. A few minutes later, they returned with the device and got to work.

  It seemed like cutting through the door was an exceptionally slow process, made worse by the fact that they could only use it for about fifteen minutes each hour before waiting for it to charge. After a few hours of that with no response from our captors, though, they finally cut an arch in the door big enough for a gnome or the rest of us if we squatted.

  “Good job, Ani,” I said before instructing everyone to draw their weapons and reactivate their shields. Once we were ready, I shoved the cut-through part of the door, causing it to fall over and reveal what was beyond.

  It seemed like an office, but something felt wrong. As I looked more closely, I realized that while some of the more durable objects looked in good condition, there was dust everywhere and the more fragile objects seemed to be worn and damaged.

  “It looks old,” Ontari whispered.

  “It does,” I agreed. “Let’s be careful, though. Spread out.”

  We made our way through the room that was fairly large but still much smaller than the hangar. It really did seem like an office space, complete with what looked like offices and conference rooms along the walls. I had us check each of the other rooms, but they were all in a similar state to the main room.

  Eventually, we made it to what appeared to be an exit. I gave Jara a nod, and she opened the doors, these ones easily unlocked from inside.

  Outside was much like inside. I had been a bit distracted during our descent and didn’t have enough time to look closely, but outside was filled with overgrown plant life bursting through concrete. Jara led us out into the grounds of the clearly abandoned facility, and we inspected everything around us.

  Nothing remained intact. There were scraps of what might have been vehicles scattered throughout the greenery, but that was the most we encountered. Eventually, we found our way to what appeared to have been a road leading away from the facility.

  I turned to my companions. “I think we need to explore. We could try to figure out how to open the roof of the hangar and leave with the shuttle, but even if we succeed, I suspect whoever sent us down here would just do it again—if they didn’t decide just to blow us out of the sky instead. And even if they let us leave for some reason, we’d still end up dying before we could find our way back home.”

  “I agree,” Jara said. “We need to learn more about this planet and this location. Maybe we can find an intact shuttle, figure out how to fly it, and take it to the station in hopes of getting a starship that can take us home, though that seems unlikely. More likely, we’re going to be stuck living here for the rest of our lives. Either way, we need to explore.”

  Jara’s matter-of-fact summation of our situation brought the mood down, but it was accurate and needed to be said.

  “She’s right, but before that, we need to gather supplies. We can’t risk getting stuck out there without at least some food and water, since we don’t know how long it will take.”

  Seeing everyone in agreement, we returned to the shuttle and fetched food, water, and what little survival supplies we had found on the pirate’s ship, placing them into backpacks. Once everyone was loaded up with enough supplies for a couple days, we left, following the remains of the road leading away from the facility.