Chapter 13: Explanations
The hidden door to the Shane Gang’s hideout sealed behind them with a soft, pressurized hiss, cutting off the dense, humid air of the cavern and replacing it with the cool, recycled atmosphere of home. The familiar hum of the ventilation system was a quiet symphony after the screech of blaster fire.
Kord immediately lumbered toward the kitchen nook, his broad shoulders relaxing. “Alright, nobody move. You’re all skin and bone and adrenaline. Kord’s famous fungal stew fixes everything.” He began pulling containers from the cooling unit, the banging of pots a comforting, domestic counterpoint to the day’s violence.
Pronto, meanwhile, launched himself into his suspended hammock with a theatrical groan. It swung violently. “Ah, sanctuary! Pronto has returned, victorious once more! You should have seen the terror in their eyes when I unleashed the Great Gaseous Cloud of Doom! They fled before the majesty of my—urk!” The hammock twisted, depositing him in a heap on the floor. He popped back up, undeterred. “A tactical dismount!”
Trixie stopped in the middle of the main room, her gear-heavy vest seeming to deflate as the mission-high bled away. She let out a long, shaky breath Fred hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her eyes found his across the room. Without a word, she walked over, wrapped her arms around his waist, and rested her head against his chest plate. She didn’t say anything. She just held on, her grip tight. After a moment, she tilted her head up, kissed him softly on the grimy stubble of his cheek, and then pulled away, a faint, tired smile on her lips. “You reek of sulfur and bad decisions,” she murmured, before turning and heading for the spiral staircase. “I’m hitting the shower before I combust.”
Eli watched her go, then gave Fred a small, knowing nod. He stroked Burpy, who chirped wearily on his shoulder, and turned toward the main airlock. “Gonna get some air,” he said quietly, and stepped out onto the external platform.
Fred stood still for a minute, listening to Kord’s enthusiastic chopping and Pronto’s increasingly outrageous narration of his own “heroics.” Voltage buzzed a quiet question against his neck. “Yeah, buddy,” Fred whispered. “Me too.”
He gave it a few more minutes, letting the quiet settle into his bones. Then he followed Eli outside.
The cavern’s false sunset was in full, breathtaking effect. The great lichen on the ceiling glowed with a deep, ember-orange light, casting long, distorted shadows across the miles of mushroom forest below. The air was cooler here, smelling of damp earth and sweet pollen. Eli stood at the very edge of the platform, Burpy tucked in the crook of his neck, his silhouette outlined in fiery gold.
Fred walked up and stood beside him, not too close. He didn’t speak. He just breathed in the vast, silent beauty of it, let the tension in his shoulders begin to unknot.
“Why didn’t you?” Eli asked after a long while. His voice was quiet, stripped of its usual optimistic sheen. It was just tired. “You had the shot. After everything he’s done. After what he said about the slugs… about Burpy. You could’ve ended it.”
Fred watched a flock of crystal-winged spore-flitters drift on a thermal far below. “Code of the Slugslinger,” he said, the words familiar and solid on his tongue. “My pop drilled it into me, but… it was your dad who made it stick. He was passin’ through Quiet Lawn, must be… five years back now. I was just a kid with a head full of dreams and a busted old training blaster.”
He glanced at Eli. The younger slinger was staring straight ahead, utterly still.
“I told him I wanted to be the best. Wanted my name to mean something. He listened. Didn’t laugh. Just nodded, like it was the most serious thing he’d ever heard.” Fred kicked a small pebble off the ledge, listening to it disappear into the foliage. “He said, ‘Any fool can be great with a blaster in his hand, son. The trick is bein’ great when it’s holstered.’ Told me the code. ‘Always act with a kind heart, a strong mind, and always’—he looked me right in the eye when he said this—‘always show mercy when it can be given.’ Not if. When.”
Eli finally turned his head, his expression unreadable in the dying light. “He told you that?”
“Yeah.” Fred reached to his hip, his fingers finding the familiar, worn grip. He unholstered his blaster, holding it out in the open space between them. The metal, usually oil-dark, caught the sunset in crimson and gold streaks. “Inspired me so much, I built this to match his. Studied every schematic I could find. Took me two years of after-shop work to forge the parts.”
Eli’s eyes widened. He slowly drew his own blaster, holding it beside Fred’s.
They were identical.
The same elegant, efficient chassis. The same reinforced barrel housing. The same placement of the safety catch, the same contour of the grip. The only differences were the colors. Fred’s was a symphony of deep engine red and burnished gold, the colors of a forge-fire. Eli’s was the vibrant orange and deep ocean blue of the Shane legacy.
And there, engraved just above the trigger guard on both weapons, was the same symbol: the angular, stylized ‘S’ of the Shane family.
“My dad gave this to Redhook,” Eli said, his voice barely above a whisper. He was tracing the symbol on his own blaster with his thumb. “Right before he… before he disappeared. He told Redhook to look after it. To give it to me when I was ready.”
Fred nodded. “I remember. I was sweatin’ over an engine block when Redhook brought you into the shop that first day. He pulled that case out from under the counter. I knew what was in it. Saw the look on your face when you opened it.” He gave a short, soft laugh. “Almost blew a gasket I was so jealous.”
The two of them stood there, on the edge of the world, holding mirrors of the same idea. One inherited. One earned. Both bearing the same mark.
Eli looked from the blasters to Fred’s face, and something hard in his expression melted away. It wasn’t just gratitude, or respect. It was a recognition, deep and fundamental. They weren't just allies. They were branches from the same, buried root.
“He told you the code,” Eli repeated, holstering his blaster with a new, quiet finality.
“He did.” Fred slid his own weapon back home, the click of it seating a period on the sentence. “And today, Blakk was beat, broken, and on the ground. Mercy could be given. So I gave it.” He met Eli’s gaze. “Don’t mean I’ll give it twice.”
A slow smile spread across Eli’s face, the old light returning to his eyes. He looked out over the darkening cavern, where the first bioluminescent glows were starting to pulse in the depths. “He’s out there right now. Licking his wounds. Plotting.”
“Yep,” Fred said, folding his arms. “He’s scared. And cornered animals always come out swingin’ harder.”
“So we swing harder back,” Eli said, and it wasn’t a question.
From inside, Kord’s voice boomed, rattling the circular window. “Soup’s on! Get it while it’s hot, or Pronto’s gonna try to bottle it as ‘victory elixir’!”
Eli chuckled, the sound genuine. He nudged Fred’s shoulder with his own—a simple, solid gesture. “C’mon. We should eat.” He turned, Burpy chirping in agreement.
Fred took one last look at the endless, glowing dark. Somewhere in it, a monster was nursing its wounds and its pride. The monster would be back. But for tonight, the code held. The hideout was warm. The food was hot. And for the first time, standing next to Eli Shane, Fred didn’t feel like a hired gun or a temporary ally.
He felt like he was exactly where he was meant to be.
He felt like he was exactly where he was meant to be. The feeling stayed with him as they stepped back inside, the aromatic steam from Kord’s stew washing over them like a physical comfort. It was thick, rich with roasted tubers and savory moss-meat, a taste that anchored him firmly in the present, in this room.
“Took you two long enough,” Kord rumbled, handing them both overflowing bowls. “Was startin’ to think you’d jumped.”
“Contemplating the majestic void, dear Kord!” Pronto announced from his reclaimed hammock, waving a spoon. “A hero’s mind is never at rest!”
The soup was delicious, as always. Fred was leaning back on the couch, Trixie lying down with her head on his thigh, as he ran a hand through her soft orange pigtails. She’d changed into soft, worn sweats, her hair damp and smelling of clean herbs. Kord and Pronto had the armchairs, with Eli lying on the carpeted floor with the slugs.
Voltage and Burpy were playing an interesting game of chicken, with one shocking or burning the other if they held hands for too long. Fred and Eli chuckled as Burpy’s body twitched and jerked for a moment as Voltage gave him a light shock. The little Infernus retaliated with a puff of smoke that made Voltage sneeze a tiny spark.
All five of them were exhausted after the day’s events, and no one wanted to do anything but relax. Pronto was entertaining them all with his usual embellished stories as Kord rolled his eyes in amusement. “And then,” Pronto declared, “I delivered a roundhouse kick of such divine precision that three henchmen were instantly entangled in their own net!”
“You tripped over a rock and fell into their legs,” Trixie murmured sleepily into Fred’s jeans.
“A tactical stumble!”
This was the closest thing Fred had to a family. He had lived in Redhook’s shop for most of his adolescent life, after his parents had been killed in a raid by Blakk’s thugs ten years prior. The memory was a cold, smooth stone in his pocket, always there. Eli wanted to kill Blakk to avenge his father, and Fred wanted to do the same for his own. The shared desire was a silent current in the room, flowing beneath Pronto’s nonsense and the warm, savory air.
Before he got too lost in his thoughts, Trixie pushed herself up and leaned her head against Fred’s shoulder, yawning. Her entire body went slack against him, a total surrender to fatigue. A minute later, she was asleep, her breathing deep and even.
Fred rolled his eyes theatrically at the others before carefully sliding out from under her. He hooked one arm under her knees and the other behind her shoulders, lifting her with ease. She murmured something unintelligible but didn’t wake.
“Don’t wait up,” he whispered to the room.
Eli gave him a tired smile and a nod. Kord was already collecting bowls, his movements deliberately quiet.
Fred carried Trixie down the short hallway to the room they unofficially shared. He laid her gently on her top bunk, pulling the blanket up to her chin. In the soft glow from the hallway, her freckles seemed to fade into the pale skin of her cheeks. He watched her for a second, the day’s sharp edges finally dulling completely.
Then he climbed into the bunk below, the canvas creaking under his weight. The day replayed behind his eyelids—the flash of Blakk’s rage, the feel of his own blaster in his hand, the weight of Eli’s identical weapon in his, the solid warmth of Trixie against him on the couch. The chaos resolved into a strange, quiet peace.
He drifted into a deep sleep, filled with dreams of himself and Trixie walking through a forest of giant, silent gears, the air smelling of ozone and wild berries, with no shadows chasing them at all.