Runners: Escape Prison World or Die (Empire of Time Series) by John Argo

Page 29.

Piri gave a sidelong look, reveling in reprieve. "Lunch? I'm starving."

Kion checked the galley and rounded up some flash-frozen meals. Soon, the cabin filled with the smells of fresh cafir, as well as a turbolecular oven heating up pre-cooked meals of Manaul fish, vegetables, and carbotubers.

"That salty gravy smell takes me back to mom's kitchen," Piri said wistfully.

Kion continued cooking. "Five minutes, and we'll be eating like kings."

"Sand kings maybe." Piri referred to a nasty type of Hultu jungle crustacean notorious for ripping people's feet off as they trudged by on deep-forest paths on that distant world. Sand king was an epithet the galaxy across, to call someone a double-crosser or a thief.

"Can you ever have a positive moment?"

"I wouldn't be human," Piri said. "I sometimes wonder about you, academy boy. Did they build any shit into you, like you know, circuits, long patriotic speeches, pack of lies about how great the OHD is while we get our tails kicked from planet to planet?"

"I am an epic poem of reason and sanity," Kion said as he finished laying out their fish lunches. "You are a series of brief and annoying commercial breaks for ridiculous products involving despair and misery. I smell the sweat."

"Whatever you say, boss," Piri said. He swung down from the pilot's seat, crossed the small flight deck in two strides, and hopped down on the cargo deck. "That sure smells good. I'm sorry I give you such a hard time."

"Keeps me on my toes," Kion said cheerfully. Actually, he'd like to throw Piri out into the sky at 1,000 heads, but he supposed the feeling was mutual. The unsaid thing between them was that they could not wait to split up, the minute that became feasible. Their dislike for one another was becoming more palpable by the 'hura. Theirs was an allegiance of dire necessity, nothing more.

"Eat hearty," Kion said.

"Good job, boss. As a mess sergeant, I say there may be hope for you yet."

They dug in, mouthing huge bits of this and that, and washing that down with hot cafir. For a short time, there was silence and peace.

Guided by the unseen femnav, the skimmer kept streaking south, so that the reddish dunes and mountain crags, the salty-white washes and shadowy canyons below, seemed to turn to liquid and stream by underneath them. A bank of high, billowing white cumulus clouds on the horizon told Kion that the ocean was near.

"Wonder why those merks dropped back," Piri said. He belched and reached for his cafir mug.

"Didn't someone say there were cannibals and head hunters down along the equator?"

Piri nodded as he gulped cafir. "Oh yeah. The Filth."

"Fith," Kion remembered more precisely. "I think someone told me they do merk jobs for Sekurita." He'd overheard random chatter among trusties and guards over the months. Anything about the seas or jungles had made Kion perk up, noting stray bits of information that could help him achieve freedom and make a run for home.

"So you think letting us go from one jurisdiction to another."

"What else can it be?"

"And you urge me to find something positive to think about."

"You know, Piri, I'm glad we don't come from enemy nations."

"Then we'd have to kill each other," Piri said matter of factly while breaking appil dessert bread that had come in a ceramic film marked with Humansh calligraphy—elegant black cuneiform and loops on glossy gray background. "But we're all united in our hatred of the Swarm, not to mention collectively getting our asses trimmed and too busy running to do the usual intra-human bickering and bloodshed.

"You are capable of long-winded speeches when your stomach is full and farts fill your sails."

Piri rose. "That was delicious. I will repair my dignity to the pilot's command seat. I look forward to setting down. We shall parade on the beach, and your mellifluous voice will remain downwind where I can neither hear it nor smell your breath."

That said, he marched back to the flight deck, farting for emphasis, and Kion took a fresh cafir to nurse in a steaming mug on a bay porthole seat. The old craft's frame rattled around him as he stared out over the passing vistas of virgin planet. Another generation, and oceans would have started filling these deathly deserts. Forests would have coated the ranges with dark-green canopy. Rivers would have gleamed among the tree crowns. Life imported from select worlds would be teeming everywhere. The terraformers' larger task was not so much in creating a viable balance of water-based ecology, but to blend a carefully balanced formula of life forms what would form a natural, infinitely complex chain of production and consumption—or, in another view, the necessary and universal order of predation. If OHD ever managed to recapture this sector of the galaxy, perhaps they could restart Manaul's process toward becoming a first-class world. Though probably not in my lifetime, Kion thought.

Thank you for reading. If you love it, tell your friends. Please post a favorable review at Amazon, Good Reads, and other online resources. If you want to thank the author, you may also buy a copy for the low price of a cup of coffee. It's called Read-a-Latte: similar (or lower) price as a latte at your favorite coffeeshop, but the book lasts forever while the beverage is quickly gone. Thank you (JTC).

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