Unity by Elly Bangs (free e reader txt) 📕

his voice was as smooth and cold as ice when he responded. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean to me.”

My smile turned into a wide-eyed grimace under my palm as I realized how massively Naoto’s gambit had just raised the stakes for everyone in the room. Black-market trading in reactor-grade lithium was a much higher crime than merely aiding and abetting an escaped tech servant. The Medusas would do a lot worse than kill the depot chief if they caught him making this deal.

“We didn’t come here to play games,” Naoto growled, undaunted, understanding none of this. “We don’t have time. We’re only offering you this deal because we’re in a hurry. This brick was worth ten thousand squid this morning. It’s worth fifty times that now.”

The chief shook his head. “I don’t know anything about lithium. Whatever you think you’re offering—”

“Look.” Naoto rubbed the bridge of his nose in annoyance while I gripped the edge of my chair in fear: he seemed to think the depot chief was feigning ignorance to mess with him personally, not to shield himself from lethal liability. I tapped Naoto’s shoulder and tried to shush him, but he leaned away and went on telling what the chief already knew:

“Look. Four kilos of lithium-6 makes two kilos of tritium—and unlike the ready-made tritium Epak sells you, this brick will never decay. It’s enough fusion fuel to keep this place mobile for years.” Or enough waver ammunition to equip a small army. “You can hoard. Invest. That investment will pay off nicely if, say, some infrastructure gets wrecked in the war, and fusion fuel isn’t so easy to come by anymore.”

The chief glanced at his own men, probably hoping they wouldn’t turn him in themselves. Finally he threw up his hands exasperatedly and said, “Oh, well. In that case, why don’t I just take it off your hands.”

“What?”

“Robbing a few Bloom City fishfuckers won’t exactly tarnish my reputation around here.”

Naoto was still for a moment. Then his motion was so lightning-quick that I couldn’t track it: whipping a single-shot wave pistol out of his pocket and pressing it directly into the plastic blister around the silvery metal brick. He glanced down the barrels of the guns suddenly pointed at his head, one after another, and then back at the depot chief.

Then he did the last thing I would have expected: he laughed.

“Ever seen lithium metal burn?” Naoto asked. “Beautiful, explosive, ruby-red flames, hotter than a waver strike. Sparks everywhere. Toxic smoke. And nearly impossible to put out, once it catches.”

The chief stood up slowly, the creak of his old wooden chair filling the silence. He swallowed the last of his drink and set the glass down carefully. The two men stared at each other for a long moment that my spinning head drew out into eternity.

“One-way to Phoenix?” the chief finally said.

“Nothing more,” Naoto said. “Nothing less.”

The chief shrugged and motioned for us to get up. He came around the desk. Without warning he threw an arm around Naoto’s neck and pulled him in close.

“I admit it, I’m a sucker for somebody who knows how to use the stick and the carrot at the same time,” he said. “You’ve got some sand, kid, and brains to match. Fatty, delicious, Bloom-city brains that I’d sure like to fry up and have for supper, if I ever see you again. How does that sound to you?”

Naoto didn’t move. “Fine.”

“Don’t get seen anywhere near my depot, any of you. Put your heads down, cover your soft little faces, and go out to the south watchtower. I’ll send the next outgoing truck around to pick you up. Twenty minutes.”

I stared at Naoto in shock, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. On our way out I grabbed his hand, and he gripped back tight enough to hurt. In that touch, I could feel his entire body shaking with adrenaline under the curtain of his too-big coat. I could feel how marginally he was holding himself together.

I ripped open his backpack and looked inside. There was nothing left there but our paltry stores of food and water, and I realized with a start that that brick had been the last of his earthly possessions.

“What did you just do?” I demanded. My blood was surging fast enough now to start to wash the drug out of my system; all my negative emotions paraded back into my awareness, one by one, beginning with shock. “Where the hell did you ever get your hands on four kilos of enriched lithium?”

“It’s a long story, but in short—”

Shock gave way to fear. “You were supposed to stay here in Crossroads. That was our plan.”

“But it was the only way to get you out—”

Fear gave way to anger. “You were supposed to look out for yourself. You were supposed to be okay. You could have traded that brick for a whole new life, but now you’re dead broke and the depot chief will kill you if you don’t leave town!”

“I know, damnit!” he yelled. “Tell me, really. What the fuck was the alternative? Were you planning to walk to Redhill?”

Anger finally lapsed into guilt. “You did it for me. You gave away everything you had left, because of me. I forced you to help me.”

Naoto covered his face in his hands and groaned. He looked back and forth between Standard and I and said, “Look. It’s a long, long drive to Camp Phoenix. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about everything—but for now, can we just get from one side of this awful little town to the other and catch our ride without any more terrible things happening to us?”

As if on cue, the scrape of Standard’s feet through the sand fell silent behind us. When I turned, I thought I saw him looking at his shard before quickly pocketing it. His brows furrowed under his goggles.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

He hesitated. “I’m sorry. I need to apply another treatment to the burn, and I’d prefer