I ran right into them, seven people, tall, lanky, so pale as to be almost white. Mostly bald, with tufts of blond hair above the ears.

  They wielded short knives and clubs. The first one swung at me, and I barreled right into him, my shoulder hitting his stomach. His breath went out from him in a huff, and I shoved him into one of his friends. The next one swung a club at my head.

  I didn't have time for this.

  My hand went to my holster, before I remembered that I'd dropped my M3. The club connected with my stockman, the brim bending, then my ward deflected it, making him strike one of his buddies beneath me.

  "Crudmunching voidmunger," I yelled. "Stop that."

  They didn't, spreading out in a circle around me.

  The whip-crack of a passing bullet interrupted us all, followed by the distant clap of gunfire. My opponents dove to the ground, their camouflaged cloaks matching the color of the sand and grass perfectly. I crouched, expecting another bullet, waiting for the ward shattering, but nothing came.

  Of course. Geir. I rose, to make sure. No bullet.

  Three steps took me to the pile of canned foods. Water bottles behind it. The box of heat packs was gone.

  So was the medkit.

  I ran back to the sand people. They'd started crawling away, surprisingly fast, leaving barely a trace behind them, just smooth sand and a few broken stalks of grass. I grabbed the closest, pulling him up by the camouflage cloak.

  It tore in my hands, woven grass, branches, strips of polymer. I grabbed an arm instead, pulled, my flameblade ready in my right hand.

  "Where's the medkit," I yelled. "Give it to me."

  A kid stared back at me, a skinny, dirty girl, twelve or so years old, eyes wide in terror, a badly healed gash on her bald head. Her mouth worked, bobbing up and down, but nothing came out.

  She wasn't staring at me, but at the bunker.

  The hunting blind. These people had been hunted for void knows how long. She was expecting us to get shot.

  "We're not getting shot," I said. "The Syndics are gone. Those are my friends up there, but one of them is wounded, badly. I need the medkit."

  Her eyes shifted, but not to me. I ducked.

  The club flew past, bouncing off my shoulder with barely any force transmitting into me, my wards protecting me. The rage boiled up in my gut, and I dropped the girl, turning on an older man.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Older, but very much alike. A father, or uncle. He raised his club, but didn't strike.

  The sand rattled beside me, and I almost glanced down. Courageous munger, buying his kid time to escape.

  "I don't want to hurt you," I said. "I'm not a Syndic. I'm here to get the Kylians out, get them off this world. But I need the medkit."

  He didn't believe me. I could see it in his stance, the way he stared at me, backing away. A mix of hostility and fear, overlaid by disbelief.

  Crud. I needed that medkit.

  One of them had to have it. I could rush them, counting on their fear of the Syndics to keep them down while I ran around. But I didn't want to hurt them. I remembered all to vividly what it felt like, that assault, the frisking, the feeling of being powerless.

  The man's gaze flicked back to my left, to where his kid was scuttling away in the sand. I stepped between them.

  "Look," I said, conjuring a thread of force and directing it into my drawn flameblade. The edge burst into blue fire, the heat radiating from it enough to hurt my sensitive, already pink skin. That incendiary grenade had penetrated my wards more than I thought.

  The man flinched, stepping away from me, face going paler. Then he looked at my feet.

  Between my feet.

  I jumped sideways. The knife almost hamstrung me, a hand-span of broken glass with a handle of woven reeds whipping by beneath my feet.

  "Will you voidmucking crudmungers stop that!" I yelled, stepping on the arm and kicking the hand. Harder than I should have, the impact traveling up my foot and jarring my leg. The knife went flying.

  I bent down and grabbed one of the sand people, a woman just as skinny as the kid. Surprisingly light. I hauled her upright with one hand.

  Thin. Starving.

  "Look," I said, holding my flameblade out to the side and down-tuning its wards until the fire extinguished. "I don't want to hurt you. I'm here to find some people from Santa Kylie, and save them from the Syndics. I just need a medkit to save my friend."

  The two of them looked at each other with such fear and longing that I almost screamed in frustration.

  "Do you even speak?" I yelled.

  "We speak," the woman said, her voice deep and strong, very much at odds with her starving frame. She sounded like an opera singer, and her accent was cultured, measured, each word clear.

  "Do you have the medkit?" I said.

  "We need it," the woman said. "We have sick people, lots of them."

  "Let her go," the man said, his voice shrill, fear evident in it.

  "I need that medkit," I said.

  "So do we," the woman said.

  "Can I trade with you?" I said. "I could buy it."

  The woman coughed. No, not coughed, laughed.

  "What need of money do we have?" she said. "What is there to buy here?" She swept out with her arm, encompassing the entire horizon.

  Empty sand dunes, short, brittle grass, naked bushes, cold wind, dust. All of it dun, pale, faded. Even the smells were pale, dry sand, salt, not much more. Crudmucking world.

  "I have a ship," I said. "A Mino Javelin. I could get you off this planet."

  The moment I said it, I knew it for truth. I couldn't leave innocents on a Syndicate world. I'd take them and their friends away. We could fit another score of people.

  I expected them to grin, to take me up on my offer. Instead, they both froze, as if I'd dropped a live grenade.

  "You lie," the man said. "Your men will shoot us."

  I ground my teeth, trying to keep from yelling. I didn't have time for this.

  "They could have shot you already," I said. "I could have stabbed you. I didn't. They didn't. Because one of them is wounded, the other dying, and all I've got keeping them alive is my mechanic."

  "You have a mechanic?" the woman said, her expression suddenly rapt.

  No, not rapt. Hungry. Like a mouse eying a crumb of bread, fearing to dart out and take it. They couldn't believe in the existence of a ship, but they could believe in a mechanic.

  "The best starship engineer in the sector," I said.

  "Can she fix a water pump?" the woman said.

  "If you've got a medkit," I countered, giving them my absolutely least frustrated, most friendly smile.

  They didn't return it.

  "We'll trade," the man said.