Because of course what mattered right now was the cargo, the client, the job. “Yes, thankfully that was all over before the Glorious Shitface showed up. Got paid, less the busted container. I’ll eat that one, don’t worry.” Eva swallowed, blinking rapidly to fight off tears. She sounded like her fucking father.
“Oh, I’m gonna worry,” Pink said. “My head is a hive all buzzing with worries right now, my little Eva-Bee.”
Pink stepped out of the corner to lean against the counter next to her. Where Eva was short and stocky, Pink was tall and lean, with the body of a swimmer. They both knew Eva could kick Pink’s ass if it came to a fight, but they also both knew Eva wouldn’t dream of doing something that stupid.
“Let me give you a taste of this worry honey, straight from the honeycomb,” Pink continued. “I’m worried about Leroy, for obvious reasons. I’m worried about Vakar for different reasons. And I’m worried about you for one big, sticky reason.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re lying again.”
On the side of the bed, a tube snaked out from under the covers, depositing urine into a container near the floor. Drip. Drip. Eva waited for Pink to say more, but the woman was silent. Patient. Expectant. She knew Eva would crack first.
She wasn’t wrong. “The nondisclosure clause was—”
“Horseshit. Nobody is that paranoid. They’d just have all of us sign it.” Pink paused. “Unless there’s naughty shit going on. Which I know you would not be a party to, because you’re not a skeezy prick like Tito and your dad are. Right?”
“Hell no.” That was true enough, or so she thought. So far nothing had been illegal or unethical, just dangerous—or, in the case of Miles Erck, incredibly annoying. But she needed to smooth this over with Pink, or she might as well tell everyone to walk now. Hell, that’s probably what she should do, if she didn’t want anyone else to end up like Leroy.
She thought of what Pholise had said. Cynical and selfish. Every time she tried to find the strength to leave, her own feeble desire to stay with these people, her people, overpowered her.
Every damn time.
Oh, Mari, they’d better not do anything to you, she thought. Because if I fuck over my entire life and theirs to save yours, and it ends up being all for nothing . . . She couldn’t bring herself to imagine that outcome, because it felt like a black hole waiting to suck her in.
“One job went wrong, that’s all,” Eva said. “They thought the parasites were an urban legend, too. It was nobody’s fault.”
“Yeah, well, tell that to Leroy. You keep secrets, people get hurt.”
Eva watched the big man’s chest rise and fall slowly, rhythmically, remembering how he felt about commanders who withheld information and straight-up lied. How he almost killed a comemierda paleotechnologist for that very reason, because he’d watched enough of his fellow soldiers end up exactly as he was now. Lying on some slab, machines breathing for them if they were lucky; the unlucky ones had their organs systematically removed for donation, because they didn’t need them anymore.
If she kept thinking about it, she’d lose her damn mind. As it was, she was on the verge of locking herself in her cabin and screaming until her voice was gone.
Something else Pink had said tugged at her attention.
“You’re worried about Vakar?” she asked.
Pink chuckled with her mouth closed, a low, deep sound like a handful of plucked bass notes. “You need to do something about him, girl.”
“Really.”
“He’s a good engineer. Better than our last one, even.”
“Connor, or Irann?”
“Irann. Connor was a worthless thief; of course he’s better than Connor.” She sighed. “Anyway, I’d hate to lose him. But . . .”
“But?”
Pink leaned her elbow on the counter, her expression softening. “These things never work out.”
“These things?”
“You repeat one more word I say, I’m going to slap you. You know what I’m talking about.”
Eva scrutinized her boots, cheeks coloring.
You learned the rules when you first started flying: Don’t fuck people who aren’t on your level. Above or below, it doesn’t matter. Because at some point, one of you will have to give an order, and the other will have to take it.
Once that wedge is hammered in, the crack will only get bigger, not smaller. And then, no matter how much fucking you’ve done, you’re both well and truly fucked.
“It’s not like that,” Eva said. “You’re imagining things.”
“Is that what your fancy smell translators tell you? The expensive ones you definitely didn’t install for the sake of one particular crew member?”
Eva started to answer, but Pink waved her silent.
“Look, even if I didn’t know him—and after two years, I know him well enough—I know you. Lying to us is one thing, but lying to yourself? Treat this before it spreads, before the cure is worse than the disease.” She smirked and slapped Eva’s shoulder. “Now buzz off, little Bee, and let me get back to work.”
Pink’s expression turned serious again as she moved to check one of the machines hooked up to Leroy. Eva left the woman to her thoughts, wishing she had a clever response in her back pocket to all the stuff Pink had laid on her, that she had a defense against the accusations.
Unfortunately, that would involve lying to herself, and she’d only be proving that Pink was completely right.
Eva found Min in the mess, the pilot staring at the food synthesizer like it was a mystery she had to solve.
“Hungry?” Eva asked.
Min nodded, her blue hair swaying gently. “I can’t decide what to eat,” she said with her human mouth.
Eva wasn’t even hungry, but her body was, so she sent the synthesizer a command for a protein patty with her commlink, and the machine’s timer started counting down. “That’s when you need someone else to make the choice for you. My mom used to do that. I’d get too hangry to do anything but yell.”
Min turned up her chin, confusion plain on her face.
“Hungry and angry.” Funny that the colloquialism hadn’t translated; it was an old one. A few words never did, though most eventually got added through use.
“I never had to feed myself until I started bot fighting,” Min said. “I had too many aunties. They were always cooking something and making me eat it, then telling me I would never get married if I didn’t lose weight.”
“Sounds like my abuela,” Eva said. “Except she always said I was too skinny, and no one wanted to marry a skinny person because that meant they couldn’t cook.”
Min giggled. “You still can’t cook.”
“Yeah, you can’t win with abuelas and aunties.” Eva picked at the scab on her neck, even as the voice of her abuela echoed in her head, reminding her that she was only making it worse. It would never heal unless she left it alone. She’d never been good at leaving things alone.
“Leroy’s going to be okay, you know,” she added.
“I know. He’s tough.” Min’s eyes lost their present look, as if she’d retreated back into her ship body. “The cargo bay is just so quiet without him. Empty. Like someone took out my liver and there’s a big hole where it used to be.”
What could Eva say? It was her fault. An apology wasn’t enough. One thing was for sure, though: she’d do the next mission herself, because if no one got off the ship, no one could quasi-legally be shot for meat.
She didn’t want to think about that now, though. Eva grabbed a meal bar from the cabinet and handed it to Min, who tore it open and started to eat it mechanically. She was the only one who didn’t mind the seaweed-and-lentil flavor.
“Did you get a chance to play your game?” Eva asked, leaning against the counter. “Before the station got, you know.”
Min swallowed and smiled. “Yes! Though I couldn’t finish because the station protocols locked everything down once the speakers were hacked.”
�
�Hope your friends weren’t too mad.”
Min gave a dismissive wave with the remnants of the bar. “They thought it was cool. All of them live on colonies doing boring stuff. They don’t get why I still play when I’m out having real adventures.”
Eva’s protein patty dinged. “Why do you still play?” she asked. She blew on it while she waited for it to cool.
“It’s a different kind of rush,” Min said. “You know you’re not really in any danger, so you can let loose more. And you get prizes!” She slid a hand across her mouth. “Not that getting paid isn’t good, but it’s not the same as getting cool armor and stuff.”
Eva laughed. “Yeah, a bunch of credits in an account are definitely boring compared to swords and flying horses.”
Her patty tasted like a sad attempt at chicken. At least it was edible when hot. Min finished her bar and tossed the wrapper in the recycler, then started making herself tea.
“Any new prospects for the cats?” Eva asked.
Min put her cup on the counter a little more forcefully than necessary. “Someone wanted to know if they were uniform in size and color, and someone else asked if they were sensitive to metal or radiation. I deleted those.”
“And what happened to your little revolutionary buddy?” Eva took another bite of not-chicken.
Min swiveled her head, brows furrowing.
“The cat.” She swallowed. “Little bastard is a troublemaker.”
“It’s a girl cat. Almost all calicos are girls.”
Eva took another bite. “You gonna name her?”
“Maybe. I mostly call her Manjiji Mala.”
Eva choked on her food, coughing it up into her mouth. “Come again?”
“Manjiji Mala,” Min repeated. But this time Eva heard it in her head as “don’t touch.” She wondered if the pilot knew what the word “mala” meant in Spanish. The translator might pick it up, or it might not. Names could be weird.
“Mala it is,” she said, taking another bite as she walked toward her room. “See you later, mija.”
The food turned to mush in her mouth as she considered how she would deal with Vakar. Maybe Pink was wrong. Sure, he’d gotten her a present, saved her ass a couple of times, but some people were just nice. It didn’t have to mean anything.
But you want it to, the voice in her head whispered.
Shut the fuck up, she thought back.
Eva gulped down the rest of her food, then flopped onto her bed without bothering to take off her spacesuit. She’d decontaminated enough to kill a small ecosystem, so she wasn’t as worried about showering as she might normally be. And if Vakar could smell anything weird on her, well, that was his problem.
I’ll figure it out after Futis, she told herself. Whatever other thoughts tried to plague her were quickly silenced by bone-deep exhaustion. She didn’t even have the energy to dream.
Chapter 8
The Race Card
From space, Futis looked like a blasted desert hellscape with occasional shiny metal domes. But on the surface, it looked like a junkyard overgrown with plants the color of sand. The metal domes were the spaceports, where local and off-world merchants mingled to make deals and trade wares and double-cross each other in traditional fringe-world style. Futis wasn’t a part of any planetary federation, and that suited the native kartians and other nonindigenous species just fine; for all the lack of protection that came with being independent, they could also make up their own laws and compel strangers to follow them at their own risk.
The place was oxygen- and nitrogen-rich, which gave Eva a little giddy oomph until the nanites in her blood started compensating. As she left her ship, she was approached by a harried-looking kartian with a small metallic box hanging from a strap slung across his body. His eyestalks faced in different directions, only one of them at Eva.
“Name?” he asked in a singsongy whistle.
“Captain Eva Innocente.”
He wrapped his hairy proboscis around the box and pointed it at her. A light flashed, momentarily blinding her. By the time she had blinked away the hazy spot, he was holding out a small metallic card.
“This is your identification card,” he said. “If you lose it, you may obtain a replacement card at any spaceport on the planet for a small fee.”
Huh. Maybe things had changed since Pholise got their intelligence about the place. Still, Eva didn’t want to find out the hard way.
“Will any of your other crewmates need a card?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“Yes. Vakar Tremonis san Jaigodaris.”
Eva scowled at Vakar. How had he snuck up on her like that? Normally she could smell him coming. “You’re staying on the ship.”
“I would prefer not to. Also, Pink told me to come, and then we engaged in the ritual handshake she created to reinforce our friendship.” He paused. “She indicated that she was concerned for your well-being.”
Or she’s suspicious, or she wants to give me time and privacy to talk to Vakar about . . . things, Eva thought. “I’m ordering you to stay on the ship.”
“After what happened last time? Captain, I cannot in good conscience allow you to venture out alone, especially not in a place like this. Do not compel me to do so. Please.”
They stared at each other. Vakar didn’t blink any of his eyelids, and he had the unmitigated gall to smell like licorice and worry. She should say no. Tell Pink to stop trying to start shit.
Selfishness won again.
“Me cago en ti,” Eva said. “Fine. Stay behind me.”
Vakar accepted his card from the kartian and tucked it away.
“Thank you for your visit. Please enjoy our many exciting tourist attractions with an approved guide.” But before Eva could ask for directions, the kartian was gone.
Eva examined her card. Thin, metal, with relevant information—name, species composition, protein quantity, macro- and micronutrient proportions, allergen warnings, even a “best by” date—imprinted on the top along with a terrible picture that must have been taken when the light flashed. She looked like she was saying something, squinting with her lip curled up. Worse than her manual piloting license; at least in that one she just looked surprised.
She flipped it over to check out the back. A bunch of disclaimers about the government of Futis not being held responsible if she lost the damn thing, and also making no representations as to the accuracy of the card’s contents.
Oh, this was rich: Do not give your identification card to any third party. Retain control of your identification card at all times. How many idiots had handed them over to hunters before they added these friendly reminders? And why bother at all, if they didn’t actually care? Plausible deniability, maybe.
Eva slid the card into an inner pocket of her suit and sealed it, then pulled up her commlink. Her map said their contact should be about ten kilometers west of the port, at one of the many junkyards catering to both locals and off-planet folks like her trying to source spaceship parts on the cheap.
She led Vakar through the bustle of the station, where other boxes of cargo were being loaded onto pallets and floaters for local delivery ships as small as a shuttle or huge cargo transports that took up five docks in width, their lengths sprawling back into the dusty vegetation, which grew fast even though it was constantly trampled and burned by thrusters. A lot of people seemed to be hanging out with nothing to do, watching the traders and merchants with more than one set of eyes as if waiting for something to happen. Mercs, maybe. Or—
Someone came running into the station, a human by the looks of him, blood trailing from a wound on his thigh. A shot took apart his knee, and he collapsed to the ground, but still tried to crawl his way toward one of the kartians with the metal card-making box.
“Please,” he gasped. “A card.”
The official looked down at him impassively. “Name?”
Before the man could answer, another shot took him on the side of the head. The shooter was a kartian with a
missing eyestalk, which had been replaced by the lens of an optical laser weapon of some kind. She was also missing a leg, which had been swapped out for a metal one with perhaps more joints than it was meant to have. She moved quickly despite the prosthesis, or because of it, and she had to shoo off a few of those layabouts who had inched closer to the body while its blood pooled on the ground.
“My kill, slackers,” she sang-whistled. “Go hunt your own meat.”
“Aw, Grissy,” someone whistled.
“Stick it in your snout,” she replied.
Grissy’s commlink was an older model, strapped to her wrist instead of implanted, so she ran her hairy arms together and wiggled them in the appropriate gestures to do whatever she was doing. Which seemed to be giving a bribe to the official, who maybe had been a shade slower than absolutely necessary. They touched proboscises lightly and the official moved away to let her stuff the dead guy into a bag with an antigrav ring around the mouth.
“That was abominable,” Vakar said, smelling disgusted. “Did he not know the consequences of losing his card?”
Eva shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t his fault. Or maybe he thought no sapient species would be so gross about, you know.” She gestured at the kartian hunter as they passed her, whistling softly to herself. “Some humans used to hunt dolphins before they took out a subduction power plant in Chile.”
“Dolphins?”
“Aquatic Terran mammals, bigger than me and twice as charming.”
“You have your charms. And penchant for destruction.”
“Flatterer.”
Eva resisted the urge to pat her pocket to be sure the ID card was still there. She had a feeling some of these kartians had a lot of practice at pickpocketing.
“Have you been here before?” Eva asked.
“Twice,” Vakar said. “Once on a resupply mission, once to find a missing freighter.”
“Did you find it?”
“Most of it. Not the crew.”
She started to ask more, but his morose smell put her off. Vakar hated to talk about his past. Eva knew he was clean because she’d run a background check on him when he first joined up, and since then he’d never given her cause to worry. He did his job, grew scented crystals in delicate glass containers as a hobby, was social when he felt like it and scarce when he didn’t. Maybe it was a little weird how good a sparring partner he was for an engineer, but she wasn’t one to pry.
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