Jerk. Liar. Selfish idiot.
When Eva was finished insulting herself, she sighed and waved him over.
Eva made sure everyone was as comfortable as possible, given the limited space, and the one called Lumus was being treated by Pink. They’d reach the Gate in a few hours, and from there it would be another few to meet up with Patient Destiny, the quennian vessel from which the scientists hailed.
Pollea had been surprisingly stiff and shy with Vakar, Eva thought, but her own family was such an arroz con mango that anything else seemed strange by comparison. And being a Wraith carried its own baggage, though of a less shit-covered variety than Mari being in The Fridge. Eva had left them talking quietly in the galley, Vakar still wearing his shiny-ass armor suit.
Eva got her own visit from Pink, including painkillers and a high-dose injection of a secret stash of healing nanites and accompanying body-building batter. And, of course, a lecture about necessary rest and taking foolish risks. Afterward, she locked herself in her cabin and lay on her bed, staring out her viewport at the light-speckled blackness. Eventually, the ache in her broken ribs had receded to a dull internal itch, and she took a seat at the secondary control panel and rested her forehead on it with a sigh. She then slowly, gently, banged her head on the metal surface repeatedly.
Behind her, Vakar coughed politely.
She started, wincing at the pain of the sudden movement. “Did you forget how to knock?” she asked.
“I did knock,” he replied.
She leaned back in her chair, staring at a point past his left shoulder. “What do you need?”
“What are your intentions after divesting yourself of your passengers?”
Eva wished she could smell him. “I want my ship back. La Sirena Negra, I mean. Pete has more guns than I do, so I want you to come help me persuade him to relocate.”
“You want me to abandon my mission to help you intimidate your father in the hopes that the situation will not devolve into violence?”
“You’re right, it’s a stupid plan,” she said. “Not sure what I was thinking.” Liar, she thought. Lying again. Just tell him.
He stood there like a statue, all silent and looming, as if waiting for her to say something else. Her gut churned.
“I’m sure you have stuff to do. Important Wraith stuff.” She waved a hand dismissively. “I’ll figure something else out, don’t worry.”
“And once you have La Sirena Negra back?”
“I’m—” She stopped. She had told Pink she wanted to kill The Fridge with pinches, but was that enough? Was it even wise, given how they were likely to swat her like a mosquito? But what else, then? Go back to delivering cargo for whatever random asshole paid half up front?
Sometimes you ended up right where you started only to find that everything had changed and there was no place there for you anymore. Like how she’d gone to visit her mom once, after leaving to live with Pete, and her bedroom had been repainted and turned into a sewing room. She’d managed one night of restless sleep on a leaky air mattress before leaving it behind for good.
“Cap, transmission for you,” Min said over the intercom.
“Patch it through.” Only one person it could be, anyway.
Mari’s face popped up in the holo display. “Eva, what have you done?”
“Something incredible, I’m sure,” Eva said.
“The Fridge has obtained an astonishing Proarkhe artifact my team had been desperately trying to recover first, and imagine my surprise when I checked your flight history and saw a very interesting correlation.”
“No yeah, I’m fine, thanks for asking. Definitely did not get eaten by giant lizards or darkscreamers.” You can eat me, though, she added silently.
Mari’s forehead wrinkled. “We were looking everywhere for that artifact. It’s believed to be extremely valuable and extremely dangerous. And now they have it.”
“So you want me to help you get it back?”
“No, comemierda, I want you to crawl into a hole for at least the next cycle while I try to fix this problem. If our mission fails, it could mean disaster for the entire galaxy. And don’t ask me why, because I’m not going to tell you, because clearly you have the self-control of an infant.”
Eva resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Her sister was dead serious, but also still an asshole. “All I wanted was my ship back. You’re the one who didn’t feel like helping me get Dad to—”
“He’s with me,” Mari interjected. “His team is running a secondary mission to grab as much data and tech as they can get their hands on, in case we can’t take control of the facility.”
“You’re taking Dad? With my ship?” Eva’s mouth hung open. She couldn’t even put words together. After everything they had both been through—
“Dad may be a lot of things, but he’s reliable when it counts.” Mari leaned forward, staring down at Eva. “His team is experienced, loyal, and ready to die for this mission. Can you say the same about your crew?”
“My crew is the best goddamn crew in the galaxy, you self-centered sinvergüenza. They have something you and Dad will never have.”
“Really? And what’s that?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. Adios, Marisleysis.” Eva cut the call, leaning back in her chair and steepling her fingers. She had to find them before her ship got blown to pieces in some crazy suicide mission. The next cycle, Mari had said? That meshed with what Eva already knew. Eva’s injuries wouldn’t be fully healed in time, which would make Pink angry, but it couldn’t be helped. No, Pink was co-captain now; Eva couldn’t unilaterally decide what they would do. But if they couldn’t agree on a plan . . .
Eva was so lost in thought, she forgot Vakar was standing right next to her until he spoke.
“What is it?” Vakar asked.
“Hmm?”
“What does your crew have that she and Pete do not?”
“Oh.” Eva shrugged. “I don’t know, but she was pissing me off. Super condescending, talking about you guys like that. Pink is the best field doctor I’ve ever met and she can shoot a flea from a hundred meters, Min can literally fly this ship in her sleep, Sue has her crazy robot army, and you—” His mask was still inscrutable. “Well, you’re a damn Wraith. They don’t hand that shit out on crackers.”
“That is why I left home, you know,” Vakar said, leaning against the console. “I never wanted to be a Wraith. I wanted to be an engineer.”
“Well. You never told me. I figured it was a family thing.”
“It was. My mother was so proud when she heard of my acceptance into the program. Except I had not applied. There was an incident during my mandatory military service, and I distinguished myself. The commanding officer recommended me without asking my opinion on the matter.”
“You couldn’t just say no?” Eva had certainly said no to her own mother plenty of times, most firmly when she left to work for her dad. Her neck started to cramp from the angle she was looking up at him from, so she pushed her chair farther away.
“I did, but my mother is very opinionated. I wanted to please her. I left after my first field mission.”
“And they let you?”
“My commanding officers were not pleased, but they were also not interested in wasting time on an unwilling recruit.”
“So what happened to you on the cruise ship?” she asked. “Someone was there to get you. Who?”
“The Wraith who trained me. I was tracked after I left the service, and as your activities became more erratic—”
“They sent him to spy on you?”
“She was curious. Perhaps somewhat personally concerned.”
Ah. Personally concerned. So that’s how it was. Eva could pick up what he was putting down. It was heavy, though, and she hated how it felt.
“I’m surprised you left the Wraiths in the first place,” she said.
Vakar fell silent. “Their goals were not aligned with mine,” he finally said.
“Yeah, you seem
really keen on goals right now,” Eva muttered. “Guess they’re really goal-oriented in the Wraith squad.”
Vakar slammed a hand down on the console next to her, making her jump. “Where have you been for the past year, Eva? Nuvesta? A station in the fringe, far from a Gate?”
She pushed his hand away and scrambled to her feet, jabbing a finger at his chest. “You know where I’ve been, while you’ve been playing secret soldiers? In cryo. Meat popsicle. I woke up in the middle of a shit show, found out my own sister is the one who sold me out to The Fridge—”
“That person was your sister?”
“Found out a whole fucking year had passed and my life was gone, poof, like blowing out a candle. I try to find you, nobody knows where you are, and you, you . . . Fuck! Fucking, shove your attitude right up your cloaca, mister high-and-mighty tool of the state. My life is shit-flavored ice cream and I’m all out of spoons.”
Turning her back on him, she stared out at the stars again, her stomach gnarled and knotted. “You won’t even let me look at you,” she muttered. “Or smell you. Vakar. Memitim. Whatever they call you now. Get back to your important mission already and leave me alone.”
Everyone had missions except her. She just had pieces of a broken life and nowhere near enough glue.
A few seconds later, the door opened and closed.
Eva stepped toward the viewport and rested her forehead against it, looking down, down into the black, willing it to fill her mind as if it could push out all the memories and feelings cluttering up the place like so much space debris.
Fuck La Sirena Negra. Fuck everything. She’d told Pink she would go after The Fridge? Fuck that, too. Pink and Min and Sue could have this ship, and Eva would go to the farthest port she could find and take whatever job someone wanted to give her. She’d live a long and boring life, a quiet life, with only the ghosts of the dead to keep her company.
No, you won’t, that voice in her head told her. That nagging voice she knew was her own, her second thoughts, the part of her that couldn’t lie even if it wanted to.
You’re not a quitter, that voice said. You’re a captain and you’re going to act like one.
Okay, she thought. In a minute, though. In a minute.
Eva wasn’t sure how long she watched the stars go by, but the door opened and closed again and a hand touched her shoulder.
“What?” she muttered. Vakar held an injector. “What is—”
His helmet retracted into the collar of his suit, and his smell hit her like a sack of bricks. If bricks were made of licorice.
“I spent the last year looking for you,” he said. “The Wraiths had resources and a grudge against The Fridge, so they gave me some flexibility with my assignments. But every time I thought I had found you, it was a dead end.”
“Mari kept moving me,” she murmured.
“Perhaps you can tell me about it later.”
“Later, huh.” Her lips curled into a grin. “You have more important priorities?”
He offered her the injector. “Pink said it will take about ten minutes to begin blocking your allergy. And to be cautious because you are recovering from serious injuries.”
“Did they teach you to be this forward in your Wraith training?”
“No.” His palps twitched. “But as you said, they did teach me to be goal-oriented.”
She stared at the injector, doing a quick mental inventory of the parts of her that still ached. “I’m still pissed at you for playing me back there.”
“I am sorry. I will not do it again.” His smell was laced with contrition and regret.
“Yeah, well, it’s not like I’m an angel, either.” She took the injector and rammed it into her thigh, wincing at the pain. “There. In ten minutes you can make it up to me.”
His smell turned a delightful kind of toasty. “I have had an entire year to consider how to proceed in this situation. I hope you’ll allow me to demonstrate.”
Eva hadn’t realized ten minutes could feel like forever, but all things considered, Vakar made good use of the time.
Eva lay on her side, staring out the window. Sex was nice while it lasted, but sometimes you were delaying the inevitable. The harder Eva tried to push away all the nasty realistic thoughts crowding into her brain, the more of them showed up like uninvited relatives at a family party.
She had a ship, but it wasn’t her baby. She had a criminal record, so she couldn’t travel in BOFA space without risking arrest. She had gotten Vakar back, but he was going to have to leave again, probably sooner rather than later.
He had the gall to be asleep. Presumably another thing he’d learned in his time as a Wraith: how to pass out at the slightest opportunity. She remembered what it was like to be on a big ship, with multiple crews working in shifts, where only an emergency would interrupt your free time. On little rigs, everyone was always half-alert por si las moscas. And if you ran with Tito, well, sleep was something that happened to other people, and as with most things, if you wanted any you had to steal it.
Eva wasn’t feeling particularly larcenous at the moment.
Her mind furiously turned over the problem of how to find her ship, or Mari, or both. Even a lead on the system would get her close enough to conceivably sniff out La Sirena Negra’s energy signature in the dark matter.
But then she found herself thinking about Mari, and how she was bringing Pete, of all people, on some grand expedition to take down the main Fridge base.
Más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo, Eva thought bitterly. She’d been through a lot, but Pete had more experience. Still. After everything she’d been through, everything Mari had put her through, knowing full well how much Eva wanted to stomp some Fridge faces—to deliberately exclude her, well.
Why would Mari even call to tell her that? The smart thing would have been to leave Eva alone until everything was over, which was apparently going to be within the next cycle. The odds of Eva finding her were slim to none, so it would be pretty hard for her to mess up the super-secret master plans. Or she could have lied and sent Eva on some wild goose chase to another corner of the galaxy. Even worse, Mari admitted she had been tracking them the whole damn—wait.
Mari was tracking them. She’d put a tracer on the ship.
Eva sat up in bed. If she’d had a heartbeat, it would have been racing.
“What?” Vakar asked, zero to alert in no seconds flat. He rested his claw on the small of her back.
“Tell me you know how to trace a tracer signal,” she said.
“Doing so has a high probability of unintended consequences.”
“And?”
“Yes. I can do it.”
She sighed happily and snuggled up against him. After a few seconds, she scooted to the edge of the bed and grabbed her clothes. She always had been impatient.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get this party started.”
Eva stood in front of the door to her cabin and frowned at the assembled crew.
“But, like, maybe I should explain it again more clearly,” she said.
“We understand, Captain,” said First Scientist Orana. “We wish to be involved in any potential recovery of Proarkhe technology.”
The team of scientists stood, or sat, on the floor or seats of the crew deck. Vakar sat on a bar stool in the galley area, back in his armor. Pink leaned against the doorway of the med bay. Sue sat on the floor, elbows on her knees, cupping her chin in her hands. Min was, as usual, omnipresent.
“I don’t want any of their tech,” Eva said. “I want my ship back, and I want to bust some heads.”
“The goals are not mutually exclusive.”
“Maybe not, but they certainly aren’t equally feasible.” She paused and rolled her eyes. That sounded like something her sister would say. “To get La Sirena Negra back, I have to land near her—possibly in the middle of a firefight, depending on our timing—incapacitate anyone guarding her, get my whole crew aboard safely, disable any additional securi
ty precautions and then take off, still possibly in the middle of a firefight. That doesn’t leave a ton of time for also sneaking into a facility that may be under attack by multiple forces on multiple fronts and trying to steal stuff from under their noses. And that all assumes we don’t get there too early or too late.”
“Do you not wish to assist your family, at least?” Pollea asked. “You cannot mean to leave them to their fate.”
Eva glared at Vakar. “Who said anything about my family?”
He wagged his head.
“I’m sorry.” Pollea smelled so embarrassed that Eva immediately regretted her tone.
“Yes, fine, my family is doing the attacking. But they’re also the ones who got me into this mess and stole my ship in the first place.”
“They’re still your family,” Sue said solemnly. “My brothers aren’t perfect, but I’d never let them do something so dangerous alone.”
A retort died in her throat. Mari and Pete were her family, it was true, but so was this crew. Pink, and Min, and Vakar, and even Sue now.
Suddenly, she wondered why she was still so keen on getting her ship back at all. This one was fine, and here they all were, ready to fly into danger because she couldn’t let go of that piece of herself. Well, that wasn’t the only reason; revenge was definitely still a priority, and removing the cancer that was The Fridge would leave the universe that much healthier. Kind of a stupid goal if it ended up getting everyone she cared about killed, though. And the quennians and their precious artifact were hardly her concern.
Her hand snaked up to her neck, the old reflex to pick at the scab she’d had there for what seemed like ages. Except it was gone. Probably thanks to Pink’s supernanites stitching her back together at top speed. Nothing left there for her to worry at, to scratch until it bled, only for it to scab over again. Just smooth skin and the memory of a bad habit in her fingertips.
“You know,” she said. “On second thought. Maybe let’s call the whole thing off.”
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