Lady Luck

by K. C. Cross

  “Because there’s some kind of disruption field around them. Since I’ve been following you two I now know their general locations. And by general I mean one moment I see you guys, then next moment I don’t. You enter into these fields and disappear, then reappear when you exit out of them. And I have asked a few bots—OK, like dozens of bots—to follow you guys for me, but the minute you enter the disruption field your tracking device shows you to be some place on the other side of the station. Do you and Luck have some kind of secret tunnel system?”

  OK. That was a test. I knew all this because Luck already told me. There is a weird disruption field around the gardens. And she’s right about the tracking because one time I was on my way to our tryst and I wanted to see if Luck was already there. He wasn’t. But he was almost there and then… poof. He was suddenly in his quarters. And when I tried to retrace his tracking it had all been erased. He was simply… in his quarters. Even though he wasn’t. He was in the garden.

  It’s kinda weird how secretive it is. I mean, it’s just plants, for fuck’s sake.

  But when Booty Hunter comes to you promising the world, but in the same breath admits she doesn’t know something, suspicion is warranted.

  Still, I’m not a hundred percent convinced. “You could just send Lyra. Or Serpint.”

  “I could. But Serpint would get suspicious if I told him about this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this is not his part to play. It belongs to you and Luck.”

  “Whoa,” I say, holding up a hand. “Back up there, Booty Hunter. What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about, Nyleena. We’re all here for a reason. We’re all part of a bigger plan.”

  “What is it?” I ask, so anxious to get her secrets.

  “No, I don’t think so, princess. You play your part, I play mine. And mine is to get you to do me this favor because once you do, there’s gonna be a solution.”

  “That’s a whole bunch of stupid double-talk, Booty. I’m not falling for it.”

  “Just… do me this favor and I’ll tell you everything I know about Earth. That’s where you’re stuck, right? You need info about Earth?”

  She’s right. I am stuck. There’s no good way to get this unless I get help.

  So I say, “Fine.”

  “Great!”

  But then I add… “Except for the part where you hack Baby ALCOR. I’m only half interested in delivering on the deal Crux and I made. I’m not sure I need a ship anymore. But you know what I do need?”

  “Tell me,” she purrs.

  “I not only want answers about Earth, I want to know why Valor is hanging out with Tray and… I want to know what they’re up to inside the Pleasure Prison. Because I know you know. You were in there for a long time.”

  “So you can tell Luck?”

  “Yes. So I can tell Luck. Why? You got a problem with that?”

  She pauses here. Three whole seconds. Which tells me she does have a problem with that. “You’re going off mission, Nyleena.”

  “So no deal?” I say. “Because I think I could get your space orchids. That’s what you need, right?”

  “Sorta.”

  “Well, make a decision. Because if you’re not gonna tell me what I want I’m moving on to Plan B.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  In the end she does agree. But I move on to Plan B anyway. Because it turns out that Booty’s plan and my Plan B were pretty much the same.

  Who knew?

  I don’t understand it yet, but as soon as I get what I need, she’s gonna tell me everything.

  So I head back to the Baby’s office and I look that assistant of his in her one racing red eye slit and I say, “Look. I demand a meeting with the Baby ALCOR or I’m gonna tell everyone on this station just who and what Corla and I are. And then I’m gonna tell them about Delphi.”

  Her eye races a little faster at my threat.

  “You have three seconds to decide. One—”

  “Very well,” Baby ALCOR says. “Send her in.”

  And now… yup.

  My smile is vindictive and narcissistic.

  Because I am the SILVER PRINCESS NYLEENA.

  All caps, motherfuckers.

  Because once I commit to solving a problem I will not be stopped.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - LUCK

  I wander for a while, thinking about how life has changed over the past few days.

  And the spin node.

  I really want to go back there and walk through that portal. I haven’t been there in a year and didn’t think about it once. But now… it’s like an old addiction rearing its ugly head.

  I think about what Crux said back in his office too.

  What did I tell ALCOR when we landed? I’d forgotten all about that. We did give him a message. I clearly remember Corla whispering something in my ear before we left Wayward Station. And I do remember repeating her message out loud once we arrived here.

  But I don’t know what it was.

  What was it?

  Dunno.

  I stand on a lift bot, just kind of aimlessly floating through the station. That’s kind of a cool thing about living inside a ring. You could theoretically go around in circles forever. It’s a long trip around the whole perimeter. Draden and Serpint used to do it all the time back when they were small and they’d be missing for most of the day.

  So I don’t even know how long I’ve been riding the lift bot around the perimeter when I suddenly realize it’s past time for my tryst with Nyleena.

  I open my air screen and check our little private calendar. We’re supposed to meet on level three hundred forty-two today in the third quadrant.

  It’s a long way from where I’m at right now, but still. The idea of standing her up doesn’t sit right with me. Even if I’m late I should make an effort.

  I’m not surprised when I find the secret garden and she’s not there, but I am surprised to pull up my air screen, enter her location, and find her in the Baby ALCOR’s offices.

  Hmmm.

  Should I go see what she’s up to? Check on her? Make sure she’s OK?

  These are all excuses, of course. If there’s one girl on this station who really does not need to be checked up on, it’s Nyleena.

  Not because we don’t need to check up on her. We absolutely do. But she doesn’t need to be checked on.

  She’s a fighter. And even though pretty much everyone who knows her thinks she could tame that fight down a little, it’s grown on me.

  And that scar.

  God, that still bothers me.

  Maybe that’s why she’s so aloof and self-sufficient?

  She had to be. Whatever they did to her back in Cygnian System before she got out with Lyra, it was bad. But somehow she survived.

  I pull up the lift-bot app on my air screen and check Lyra’s location.

  She’s at home.

  I program the lift bot to take me there and when I finally get off and press the door chime, I realize the urge to go through the spin node is gone.

  Maybe not completely gone, but definitely way in the back of my mind.

  Princesses, I muse. Universally good for one thing, no matter who you are.

  They command attention.

  Lyra opens the door. “Hey, Luck. What’s up?”

  “Is Serpint here?” I ask, peeking over her shoulder to get a look.

  “No, he’s down visiting Booty.”

  “Oh. Well, I didn’t actually come to see him. I came to see you.”

  “OK,” she says, smiling. So different than her silver sister. “Come on in.”

  I haven’t been to Serpint’s quarters in ages. It doesn’t look anything like how I remember it. Almost everything is still gray, like my place. It’s the standard decor color here. But now there’s pink everywhere.

  “So how’ve you guys been?” I ask.

  “Pretty good,” Lyra says.
<
br />   “Still”—I glance down at her stomach—“you know, trying?”

  “Still trying,” she says. “But we’re ready. We just finished decorating the nursery. Wanna see it?”

  “Sure,” I say, then follow her down the hallway. “Hey, did Serpint always have two bedrooms?”

  “No,” Lyra says. “We put a wall and split the master in half.”

  “Damn,” I say. “You guys are really serious about this baby stuff.”

  Lyra just smiles at me over her shoulder and walks into the new second bedroom. “Ta da!” she says, panning her arms out wide.

  And I don’t really know what nurseries are supposed to look like. I swear to the Sun, I have not even looked at a picture of a nursery ever, in my life. But this one seems… over the top.

  There’s a crib. But it’s not just any crib. It’s round for one. And huge. And has a canopy over the top so it sorta looks like a tent a nomad might use on some flat planet covered in frost. But it’s all in shades of pink and violet.

  There’s two of those auto-mold gliding loungers that have that simulated perpetual motion thing going. Two changing tables for the little shitters. Two closets, open and filled with tiny clothes hanging on tiny hangers.

  There’s even two toy boxes.

  “We’re not going to separate our twins,” Lyra explains as I take in the room.

  “Good,” I say. “That’s great.” And even though I know this whole thing is a very bad idea, I can’t help hoping that Lyra and Serpint get their babies.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to make you talk baby with me.”

  “No,” I say. “I’ll be an uncle.” I smile. And the smile is real.

  “So what’s up?”

  “You know that scar Nyleena has on her stomach?”

  Lyra shakes her head. “No. Does she have a scar?”

  “It’s…” I want to say huge. But instead I say, “Tragic.”

  “Tragic how?” Lyra says, narrowing her eyes.

  I picture it in my head again, then hold my hands out in front of me, palms facing each other. “Like this long, Lyra. It’s… I don’t know what it is. But it’s bad. It’s a very bad thing. And I want to know how she got it.”

  “I don’t know,” Lyra says. “We didn’t spend much time together as kids. Not until about a year before we left on our mission. She wasn’t part of my routine. Though we are super-close genetically,” she adds. Like this is important. “She is my closest kin.”

  “Did you ask her about her life back then? Like… what they did to her? Because she won’t talk about it with me.”

  Lyra takes a deep breath and then says, “Sometimes… things are better left unsaid, Luck. Maybe you should just leave it alone?”

  “Do you know why she wants this ship?” I ask.

  Lyra shrugs. “Because she’s got the wanderlust? Maybe?” Then she smiles. “She’s always been that way. Always a little too loud. Always a little too strong. Always a little too ambitious.”

  “No, Lyra. I mean, yeah. She’s those things for sure. But she wants this ship to go kill people. Who does she want to kill?”

  I expect Lyra to hand me an immediate, I don’t know. Because how could she know? It’s not like Nyleena’s broadcasting her plans. She keeps her secrets close, that one.

  But that’s not what Lyra hands me at all.

  She says, “Everyone, probably.”

  I spend a few more minutes pushing Lyra for some real answers, but she’s noncommittal and finally I just say goodbye and leave. I pull up my air screen to check Nyleena’s location and find that she’s still in Baby ALCOR’s office.

  So I head that way.

  Because I don’t know what’s going on in there, but whatever it is… it’s not good.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - NYLEENA

  Being inside Baby ALCOR’s office isn’t any different than being outside Baby ALCOR’s office. Because he’s not physically here. Just a disembodied voice coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

  “What do you want?” he asks.

  “Damn,” I say. Because his voice is deep now. And commanding. I don’t remember him being this… self-assured the last time I talked to him. “You seem to have grown into your station body, Baby.”

  “You can call me ALCOR,” he says.

  I glance at the empty desk. Not even a chair on the other side. No papers. No tablets. No chairs in front of it for guests, either.

  It’s kinda creepy.

  Cygnians do not have AI’s like this. I’m not sure anyone has AI’s like this.

  Maybe Mighty Minions. But I’ve never been there, so can’t really say.

  “You’re here because you threatened me. What do you want, Nyleena?”

  “I want answers.”

  He laughs. An honest-to-God laugh. I’ve heard others talk about Real ALCOR laughing but I’ve never heard it myself.

  A chill runs up my spine.

  “I would like some answers as well,” he says, still laughing.

  “About what?” I ask, spinning in place trying to find a focal point to address him. You’d think he’d have a hologram or something. A screen with a face. Anything to help you feel like you were talking to a real person and not some ghost.

  “Everything,” he says.

  And even though it comes out kinda innocuous, I have a flash of Little Luck telling me about that wall of ice back in the museum.

  Everything, he said. It’s everything.

  “Well, I can’t really help you with everything,” I say, playing it off. “But I can help you with one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Draden,” I say.

  And I swear to the Sun and all things holy in this universe. I can feel him narrow his nonexistent eyes. “What about Draden?”

  “You don’t have any real memories of him, do you? I mean, sure. You can go into the museum and hang out with him. But that wasn’t you he loved, was it? In fact, you don’t really have a relationship with any of the boys, do you?”

  “Nyleena, if I have to ask you to state your purpose one more time I’m going to lose my patience. What do you want?”

  “I want to help you,” I say, spinning around to focus on a screen that shows a view outside the station. A fake, virtual window, I realize. “I want to help you build a relationship with your Akeelian partners. And I think I can do that by giving you memories about Draden so you can share them with the guys.”

  “I have memories of Draden.”

  “You have recordings of Draden. But Crux, and Jimmy, and Luck, and Valor, and Tray, and Serpint, they don’t need recordings. Because it’s all up here in their heads.” I tap my head.

  “So what is your offer? And what do you want?”

  “I want to know where the secret gardens are. I need a flower, you see. A very special flower. And if you tell me that I’ll get Luck to spill his memories of Draden. Then I’ll tell you about them so you can all bond and become family again, and you’ll give me the location of the space orchids.”

  I wait now.

  Because there’s a real high probability that he knows I’m lying. There’s a really good chance that he’s been tracking Luck and me on our afternoon trysts.

  But I’m waiting to see if he’s lying too.

  Because he doesn’t know where these gardens are.

  And he doesn’t know I know that. Because he can’t hear or see anything inside of Booty Hunter and she’s the one who told me he doesn’t know.

  “Very well,” he says. “It’s a deal. But what about your threat?”

  “Oh, that,” I say, waving a hand over my shoulder as I walk towards the door. “I was just trying to get your attention.”

  But as soon as I open the door and leave, I bump right into the rock-hard chest of Luck.

  “Shit!” I laugh. “You scared me.”

  “Oh.” He frowns. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “You didn’t really scare me, Luck. It’s just something you say when
you’re suddenly surprised.”

  He nods his head but doesn’t say anything.

  “So… what are you doing here?” I ask.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I asked you first,” I say.

  “Looking for you.”

  “Well, I’m not here for you… but…” I grab his t-shirt in my fist and pull him towards me. “I kinda miss you.”

  “You just saw me like an hour ago.”

  “You wanna go to your place?” I ask. “We haven’t…” I glance at Baby’s cyborg assistant. “You know. I bet you’re dying.”

  “Not really dying. I’m fine. But yes, I would like to take you to my place.”

  “Great!”

  That’s what I say. But he’s got a weird look on his face. And I really wanted to make a dramatic exit out of the Baby’s office. And then seconds ago there was a chance that Baby wasn’t gonna track me, but that chance is gone. Because now he’s gonna listen on our conversation for sure. And then he’s gonna figure he’s got all the information about Draden he needs.

  So that sucks.

  But…

  “Well,” Luck says. “You wanna go? Or do you just want to stand there and look blankly past my face as the wheels inside your brain turn?”

  “Sorry.” I smile up at him. “Yeah, let’s go.”

  But it doesn’t matter if Luck tells me about Draden in private or the Baby hears it while spying. The fact remains I will deliver. And I will do it very quickly.

  Things are about to get a lot more interesting around here.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - LUCK

  “What were you doing in there?” I ask her once we’re in the elevator that goes to my quarters.

  “Just… getting to know the Baby.”

  “Nyleena.” I chuckle. “I know you’re up to something. Everyone knows you’re up to something.”

  “Luck,” she says. “Everyone is up to something.”

  “Truth,” I say. “But really. What were you talking about with the Baby?”

  “Just commiserating on being newbies around here, that’s all.”

  The elevator doors open and we enter my quarters. I’ve been on the station for a while now. In fact, these past several months might be my longest continuous stay on Harem since Valor and I first went out into the galaxy to look for ALCOR parts.