Chapter 13
“This is insane,” Mimi said for the hundredth time.
“You are in no immediate danger,” Klutzo assured her.
“Apart from falling off this rust bucket, or being eaten by night wolves, or the shields failing and being cut to death by the wind. Yeah, sure, this is entirely safe!”
“I have ascertained that this rust bucket will continue to operate with minimal maintenance for the next two days. We are shielded from the sand, the wind, and the wolves. You are safe.”
Mimi didn’t reply. Instead, she held onto the rails with white knuckles and sweaty palms.
A sand slider was a mad contraption.
As far as she could ascertain, it was a flat oblong disk with a couple of reconfigured cruiser engines strapped to the back and a layer of inertia-free – one of the slipperiest compounds in the galaxy – whacked on the bottom.
It was unruly, it was fast, and it made her want to hurl.
It was shielded, thankfully. If you traveled this fast in a desert without any kind of barrier between you and the razor-sharp sand, you’d end up as dust yourself in all of about five seconds.
There was barely any suspension, however, and she felt every bump, rattle, and jolt right in her bones. It reminded her of the transport’s crash landing. Except this time if she fell, there’d be no Special Commander Cook to catch her.
Which was a good thing, right?
Even though she kept trying to convince herself she’d done the right thing by leaving him behind, she had a niggling suspicion she should have stuck with him. He, presumably, wouldn’t have taken her into the desert on a sand slider. Then again, he’d have taken every opportunity to put her down, and she didn’t need that.
“I’m better off without him,” she concluded suddenly.
“I assume you’re talking about Special Commander Joshua Cook,” Klutzo said.
He sure was a lot sharper when he was in security mode. Ordinary Klutzo wouldn’t have understood what she was talking about, because ordinary Klutzo would have been too busy banging into walls.
She pressed her lips together and felt her cheeks warm for some reason.
“I am incapable of agreeing or disagreeing; Joshua Cook is hard to predict. He is easily one of the strangest Coalition officers this security unit has come across,” Klutzo announced.
He always referred to himself as “this security unit” when he was in protection mode.
“Strange? What do you mean strange? He’s mean, rude, and cruel.”
“By strange I mean out of the ordinary. There is only one other Coalition officer this unit has come across like Special Commander Cook.”
“Who’s that?”
“Galactic Hero Captain Bob,” Klutzo announced.
Mimi snorted, then she shot Klutzo a worried glance. “Ah, Klutzo, he’s a fictional character. He’s not real.”
“This unit understands that. However, this unit can still draw parallels between Galactic Hero Bob’s history and mannerisms and that of Joshua Cook.”
“What?”
“They are both bad boys with checkered pasts who have had to assume responsibilities.”
“… Did you just refer to Josh as a bad boy?”
“It is the correct vernacular. It also fits him, wouldn’t you agree?”
Mimi pressed the back of her hand into her mouth and laughed. It started off a little like a giggle, but she quickly turned it into a snort. “Um, no, I don’t agree. He’s not a bad boy – he’s nasty, and he’s an idiot.” Though Mimi usually didn’t like referring to people as smart or dumb, she had no such compunction when it came to Mr. Cook.
“Perhaps you do not agree with his behaviors, but I have no evidence to suggest he has compromised intelligence. On the contrary, to receive a position like special commander, he must have extreme competence when it comes to field missions and all the intricacies they entail.”
“… Let’s just talk about something else,” Mimi interrupted. “How long until we reach that outpost you were talking about?”
Before Mimi agreed to come into the desert, Klutzo had told her about an outpost, one he was certain would have transport off the planet.
“7 hours and 35 minutes.”
“That long? I thought we’d made good time so far. I mean, this thing feels like it’s traveling faster than the speed of light.”
“It isn’t. And – due to the size of this planet – it will take a long time to reach our destination at our current speed.”
“… Ah, I wish I’d never crash-landed here. No, scratch that, I wish I’d never met Josh Cook. This is all his fault.”
“How?”
“Trust me, it is.” With that, Mimi turned around to concentrate on holding the rails.
With nothing to distract her, her thoughts ran wild. Initially, they all centered on a certain Mr. Cook and how cruel he was. Eventually, however, she started to ponder what she’d overheard in the bar. Before she’d bought her sand slider for a pretty good price, she’d listened to some story about a Black Mass out in the desert.
On principle, Mimi didn’t believe in stories, but she sure as heck believed in their power over people. That was one of the very first lessons her father had taught her: if you want to run a successful business, you need to control people’s narratives. More than perceptions, it’s the way people speak about your products that dictates the fate of a company.
Though Mimi wasn’t running a business here, the principle stood: to those pirates and other assembled brigands, the Black Mass was clearly an object of power, even if it was probably fictional. It would inform their beliefs and behaviors, and she could leverage that to her advantage, if she was smart enough.
She also might find a story, if she was lucky. If the Black Mass was real, she very much doubted it was a relic from the First Age. It could still be interesting, though. It could be a crashed research vessel, or a Barbarian probe, or some experimental weapon gone wrong the Coalition tried to hide in the sand.
In other words, it might be something she could report on. If she could leave this planet with a quality news piece, maybe she could secure the job with GNS after all.
Planning and fantasizing, Mimi passed the next several hours in relative peace.
The peace wouldn’t last.
The night on this planet was long, dark, and cold. The winds were worse in the wee hours of the morning. So bad, in fact, at times they changed the whole desert, blowing at the dunes and shifting them about like pieces on a chessboard. Though Klutzo was doing his best, there were certain factors even he couldn’t account for.
Mimi was about to walk into a legend. One that would change her life forever.