“Don’t that beat all?” he said, tugging his hat back on. “Never thunk him to be a runner.”
“Yeah . . .” Molly didn’t know what to say, figuring it didn’t do any good to replace a misconception with a lie. “Do I pay now, or at the end of the day?” She clenched her fists, waiting for the reply.
“Each night up front, usually.” He turned his cap the correct way and pressed the bill up with a single, blackened finger. “But we’ll settle up when you get ready to go, how’s that?”
“Thank you so much,” Molly said, sighing. She smiled at him and relaxed her fist. Pretend Pete pulled out a slip of paper and shoved it across the counter, leaving a trail of purplish slime behind.
“The codes for the heads are on the back. TP’s for sale in the ship store. If you need power for any reason, we have one thousand and two thousand amp hook-ups. No partyin’ after three, and welcome to Pete’s.” He smiled at Molly. “I’m Pete, by the way. Pete the fourth. And that’s my boy in the picture.” He pointed a filthy digit at a curling print of film taped to the register. “That’s the newest Pete. Pete the fifth.”
He beamed with pride. Molly wasn’t sure if it was for siring another Pete or being able to count that high—or maybe both.
“Nice to meet you,” Molly said. “And good looking kid.”
He rubbed one hand on his coveralls, the direction of the grease transfer questionable, and held it out to Molly. “Nice to meet you too, Molly Fyde.”
She moved her hand into his nasty clutches as gently as possible. Penultimate Pete shook it, his grip firm and slick. She could feel her hand sliding around inside his palm and half expected it to pop out like a freshly caught fish.
Pete’s lips pulled back in a smile so wide she could see his gums. A bright trace of purple gunk ran along the edges of his teeth.
“Molly Fyde,” he said again, pumping her trapped hand.
“Walter?” Molly poked her head into his room and then looked back through the cargo bay toward the cockpit.
“He left almost as soon as you did,” her mother said through the intercom. “I almost said something—”
Molly glanced at the camera in the corner of the bay; it had begun to feel as natural as looking someone in the eye. “No, that’s okay. I’m glad you didn’t.” Molly went to the sink and started washing her hands. “I guess this is what being a parent is like, right?” She shook her hands over the basin and reached for a towel.
“I wouldn’t know,” her mother said.
“Yeah . . . sorry, I wasn’t trying to—”
“No, I’m sorry. I was just thinking out loud. And I want to remind you to be careful looking for Cat today. If she’s still politically active, there’s no telling what she’s getting herself into.”
“I’ll be fine.” Molly folded the towel, left it on the counter, and walked toward the cockpit. “I’m probably better off hunting her down without Walter, anyway. Oh, by the way, the guy who runs the stables knew Dad. Pete the fourth.”
“Hmmm. Never heard of him. Must’ve been during the years I was out of action—after my body went to Dakura but before your father smuggled a copy of me off.”
“Do you think I could ask him about the fusion fuel? He seems shady enough. Like, literally.”
“Maybe. Could be dangerous. If Cat doesn’t turn up, we’ll give it a shot. Check in with me if you don’t find anything.”
“Okay. Is there anything else you want to tell me about her—?”
“Head’s up,” her mother said tersely. The speaker popped, the inter-com falling silent as Parsona killed the connection.
Molly heard footsteps on the boarding ramp and turned to lecture Walter on what “stay put” means.
But it couldn’t have been Walter stomping up the ramp.
He doesn’t have six legs.
7
Cole came to and made the mistake of opening his eyes. A stinging whiteness—more of that harsh light—invaded his retina like an infection just waiting for an open wound. Between the blows to the back of his helmet and the lance of photons, it felt as if his skull had been split wide open. He kept his eyes squeezed tight and tried to concentrate on his surroundings with his other senses.
Whatever he lay on seemed to be swaying with a gentle motion. He could hear a group of men talking and laughing in the distance. Over that, he heard the sound of runners plowing through snow, coupled with the rhythmic crunch of heavy weight on wet pack.
The temptation to crack an eye and look around was fierce. Even stronger, though, was his desire to avoid pain, which he knew would come with any more of the light. He tried to move his arms, but he could feel that they were tied in front of him. His elbows were also seized to his body and his wrists had been bound tight. They’d left him on his side, on a metal deck of some sort, and taken away his helmet and gloves.
Cole wiggled his elbows back as far as they would go and brought his hands up. Something kept them from coming all the way: a line that tugged between his hands and his feet. He bent over, curling into a ball, and was able to reach his mouth with his fingers, but couldn’t get his wrists high enough to probe the knot with his teeth. He relaxed his body, giving up. They’d tied him up good. Almost as if they’d had plenty of practice.
Cole patted his chest and felt the mound in one pocket created by his red band. The knife was gone. If he remembered correctly, Riggs had it last. Thinking of his old friend—and not knowing what they’d done with him—very nearly caused him to open his eyes and look around. Cole cursed to himself. He curled his cold fingers around each other to warm them, and then he felt something hard across his chest.
The other welding plate.
The voices were coming from somewhere ahead of him, so Cole went into a tight fetal position and slipped the plate out of his pocket. Holding it by the edge, vertically, he brought his hand up to his chin and adjusted the plate until the other side pressed tight against one eye socket. His head was still woozy from the crash and the blows to his back, so he concentrated hard on which eye he was about to open before cracking it.
Light reflected around the edge of the plate, creating a halo of the brightest white that rimmed Cole’s vision, but he could still squint and see. To either side of him stood bundles of gear—sacks and crates—all tied to a metal deck with line made out of some natural-looking fiber. Beyond, he could see half a dozen figures, all covered in fur. They looked like wild game teetering on hind legs, smoke trailing out of their mouths as they yelled and laughed. A few of the men worked handles on a tall mast in the center of the deck, but the thing had no sail. It was just a flat, vertical bar with slits running up and down the length of it. The men kept working on something at its base. They would look up the pole, glance ahead, and then repeat the procedure.
Cole shut his eye to rest his retina from the halo of leaking light; he wiggled back against a pile of goods. One entire side of his body was almost completely numb from the cold metal, but he didn’t want to attract attention by sitting up. He worked the edge of the plate tight to his face again and cracked his eye to look for Riggs.
There was no sign of him, but he couldn’t see the entire deck. He craned his neck as much as possible, but the uncomfortable position and the constraints of his bound hands didn’t give him much of a vista. One thing he did notice was the absence of snow on the deck. Looking past the fur-clad men, he could see it was still driving sideways in heavy sheets, but none of it was in the air around the little craft. He couldn’t quite make out the bow of the ship, but something up ahead must’ve been splitting the flurries, sending the flakes to either side.
He raised his head to investigate, and one of the furry figures tapped another and pointed in his direction.
Cole froze. The alerted figure marched back in his direction, descend-ing the few steps from the platform around the mast. At the base of the steps, the man stopped by a wooden barrel crisscrossed with ropes and pulled something from the lid—a mug of some sort. Stooping down in front of the barrel, he came up with a trail of steam rising from the mug, which wafted back in Cole’s direction.
The smell got to him before the man did: chocolate with a hint of rum. Or more like rum with a hint of chocolate. Cole felt paralyzed with indecision, wondering whether it was better to hide the plate and await his fate in darkness, or stay alert and have it stolen from him. Before he could decide, the figure was before him, crouching down close.
“I’ll have that,” the man said, snapping the plate out of Cole’s hand.
Cole squeezed his eyes shut and held them tight. The man’s accent was a bit different from the others, but there was still a hint of something foreign in it, or perhaps something archaic.
“Who are you guys?” Cole asked, his own voice shaky from the cold and fear.
The response was a loud sip from the mug, then the figure smacking his lips. Cole heard him put the mug down, followed by the sound of fluid being swished inside a vessel, like someone shaking a thermos back and forth.
“Who are we? We’re the same as you lads,” the man replied. “We’re the tainted.”
Before Cole could ask what that meant, he felt a wet rag laden with the smell of something chemical pressed to his face. He held his breath as long as he could, but he finally had to gasp for air.
As soon as he did—he was out again.
8
The Bern ship brought up from impound was far larger than Anlyn had expected. It was a warship, twice the size of the Ambassadorial craft she’d lost. She nearly balked and asked for another, wondering if she and Edison could operate such a craft for long periods of time.
The airlock hissed open, and a frazzled-looking pilot exited with his arms held high. Anlyn and Edison moved aside as the large Drenard squeezed past the duo to get to the control room. Bishar waved him through the door and thanked him, ushering him to the others who had stopped what they were doing to watch the bizarre confrontation.
“You aren’t thinking clearly,” Bishar said to Anlyn.
For a brief moment, she wondered if he was right. Perhaps setting off to aid Molly was just another way of running from home, from the looming war, from all her royal responsibilities. Maybe her real duty was back in Drenard’s Pinnacle, sitting around the Circle where she could fight with words.
She shook the doubts away and backed toward the door, keeping the lance between her and Bishar. “Check the ship,” she told Edison in English.
She stayed near the airlock, the weight of the lance and the bluff it represented already exhausting her. Edison disappeared inside.
“There’ll be no foul play,” Bishar assured her. “My actions will not be questioned when I write this up.”
“I’m not in the most trusting of moods, Cousin. I’ve half a mind to take you with us to make sure nothing happens. I hope you can appreciate my honor for not doing so.”
Bishar laughed nervously. “I do. More than you know. When you get to the rift, I’ll have a barrier tug remove a few canisters. We’ll replace some of the interior ones, but I won’t have them out for long. If you hesitate to go through, I’ll assume you came to your senses, and you can dock up back here. I’ll gladly forgive these transgressions and have you as a guest for dinner. We’ll prepare the finest Drenardian cuisine and eat in honor of the dead. Then we’ll see about working toward justice come morrow.”
“If you’re sincere, I appreciate the offer. You’ve been more than fair.”
After a few minutes, Edison stomped back through the airlock, his chest puffing as if after a great run. He spoke to Anlyn in English: “Vacated, by rough inspection. Single deck with a looped perimeter passageway. Adequate nourishment and spares, but absolute dearth of armaments.”
“You had the weapons systems removed?” Anlyn asked Bishar.
“Of course, but not just now. We do that for every ship we capture and impound.” He glanced back and forth between the two of them. “Are you really planning on waging war with those who rule the rest of the universe?”
“I’m hoping I don’t need to defend myself from friends and family before I get there,” Anlyn replied.
A sudden sadness washed over Bishar’s face, erasing the tension and anger. “I’m sorry we met like this,” he said.
“As am I.” Anlyn handed Edison his lance and bowed to her cousin, keeping her eyes on him all the while. He gave her a nod and a frown as she backed through the collar adapter and into the starship.
Edison followed. She left him behind to close the ship’s door and secure the hatch while she rushed off alone toward the bow. As her bare feet padded along the steel decking, she tried to prepare herself for what must come next. She was about attempt something she had promised herself she’d never do again. Something she’d hoped to avoid for the rest of her days:
Fly.
Anlyn had learned to pilot in the Royal Academy—just the rudiment-ary basics needed to qualify licensure and uphold ancient traditions for Drenardian royalty. She likened it to the Pheno people’s habit of teaching their important females to ride Theryls, even if there was no chance of them ever taking one into battle.
Her real mastery of the art of space warfare came at Darrin, during the tumultuous civil war between the two planets and her time spent as an arm-dealer’s slave afterward. She had spent more than a Hori cycle there chained to a cockpit, learning to kill and speak English while daily tortured by a vile human named Albert.
Since her flight into freedom just over a month ago, Anlyn had pledged to stay away from cockpits for the rest of time. She could imagine herself sinking back into a depression if she had to work in one—could see herself losing her sanity again. Now, she didn’t know she had a choice. She couldn’t ask Edison to take over for her while she cowered in a bunk; that was just a different sort of slavery, one self-imposed.