ARC: Under Nameless Stars Read Free Page A

grab her hand when the seda-field dish emitted a loud crackle, spat another burst of sparks and puffed out a large cloud of white smoke – followed by silence.
    “The dish – it’s dead,” she whispered. “Liam, get out. Grab my hand.”
    “I’m trying.”
    Beneath her, Zenn felt the crate shift as the hog started to regain consciousness and move.
    “Hurry!”
    With his next jump, Liam’s hands took hers. He was too heavy to lift off the floor, but by pulling with all her strength as he jumped, he reached high enough to grab the edge of the hatch opening with one hand. Zenn stood, repositioned her grip, and began to pull on his arm with both hands. But as she struggled to lift him up through the hatch, the sandhog gave a savage bellow, followed by the sight of a huge digging claw swiping across her field of vision, hooking Liam’s body, breaking her grip and throwing the boy out of sight. She heard him hit somewhere on the far side of the cage. She dropped to the opening again, leaned down into it, but couldn’t see him.
    “Liam!”
    A loud thud of metal hitting flesh came from the dark, then Liam’s face was beneath her, his hands reaching up.
    “Now would be good,” he gasped.
    Zenn extended her arms as far as she could and he took her hands again.
    Pulling with all her strength, she was able to help him regain a grip on the edge of the hatchway.
    The creature’s furious roar just underneath him prompted Liam to fling himself up in a frantic effort to get away. He’d just cleared the edge of the hatch and rolled away onto the roof of the crate when the hog threw himself upward, the impact shaking the container beneath them.
    “It’s OK,” Liam said, breathing hard as he got to his feet. “He came at me and I nailed him with the knock-out dish. Kinda pissed him off, I think.”
    “Sounds that way.”
    Zenn quickly began to reel in the rope connected to the dish, but, a moment later, she was jerked violently to her knees, the rope cutting into the flesh of her wrist.
    “I’m caught,” she said. “The hog – tangled in the line.”
    Another tug from the sandhog and she was sliding across the roof of the crate, toward the open hatch.
    “He’s pulling me in!”
     

 
    TWO
     
    She felt Liam’s hands around her ankles, felt him straining, lifting both her legs into the air as he leaned back. Zenn clawed at the knotted rope with her free hand, but it was no use. A powerful jerk from the animal and they were both hauled forward. Another tug, and Zenn was over the opening, the snorting, growling hog beneath her in the dark, his acrid scent sharp in her nostrils. Then she was tugged backwards, just a bit. She saw Liam had braced his feet against the raised metal lip that framed the hatchway.
    “I can’t hold him, Scarlett,” Liam said. “What do I do?”
    “My backpack. Can you reach it?”
    He let go with one of his hands, grunting with exertion.
    “Too far. Can’t get to it,” he said. “Unless I let go of you.”
    The hog pulled on the rope. She and Liam held out against the force. Barely.
    “You have to get the maze-caut cutter,” she told him. “When I say so, go get it. Ready?”
    “Scarlett, I don’t–”
    “Liam. Ready?”
    “OK, OK.”
    One more pull from the hog, the rope peeling flesh from her wrist, then a bit of slack.
    “Go!”
    As soon as Liam loosed his grip, Zenn’s legs fell. She spun around, jammed both feet against the far side of the hatch opening and braced herself.
    “Scarlett?” Liam shouted, panicky. “The cutter thing – looks like a…?”
    “Like a… It’s like…” What did a maser cauterizer look like to someone who’d never seen one? “A cylinder… a tube… A flashlight. Like a flashlight.”
    “This?”
    She twisted enough to see him holding up a large-gauge dermal infuser.
    “No! It’s metal! With… a pointy tip. And buttons.”
    The hog’s next jerk on the line snapped her forward at the waist, the force strong enough to bang her