There went Eva’s plans for later. She sat down at the head of the room’s big communal table and let Pink prop her leg up with a stool, then accepted her taza of coffee from Vakar gratefully.
“I’m here, Cap!” Min said cheerfully through the ship’s speakers. Eva had assumed as much, since Min pretty much was La Sirena Negra as long as she was jacked in, which was always. Still, it was good to be sure. The pilot’s human body had been in the bridge last time Eva checked, with one of the resident psychic cats asleep in her lap. Probably Mala, the unofficial leader of the pack.
That left one more crew member still unaccounted for.
((Mess, now,)) Eva pinged at Sue.
((Coming,)) the engineer pinged back. A few moments later Sue ran in, her black hair spiked at odd angles like she’d accidentally run a greasy hand through it. Her pink shirt was smudged and streaked with brown, and two of her tiny yellow robots clung to her tool belt, making shrill noises.
“Sorry, Captain,” Sue said breathlessly. “I had to replace a resistor for the aft shields. Min said they were drawing too much power.”
“Your bots couldn’t handle it?” Pink asked.
Sue’s cheeks flushed and she stared at her boots. “I sent Eleven and Nineteen to do it, but they started arguing and I had to separate them.”
The bots’ shrill noises increased in volume, and Sue grabbed one in each hand and brought them up to her face. “Leaky buckets, knock it off already,” she said. “Don’t make me put you in time-out!”
Eva didn’t know what “time-out” meant, but the bots shut up, so it had to be a serious threat. For tiny robots, anyway.
Sue settled into her chair as Eva’s mind wandered. Sometimes it seemed like the last six months had been one firefight after another, between sparse cargo delivery and passenger transport jobs. Fucking with whatever was left of The Fridge had been her crew’s top priority, and thankfully Vakar’s bosses were all too happy to subsidize their endeavors. She also got to keep or sell portions of any ill-gotten goods they recovered from their raids, or in situations like the one on Kehma, they returned stolen items for a hefty bounty from the original owner.
It wasn’t an easy life, but more and more often, Eva was starting to feel like it was a pretty good one. Even the food was better than it used to be. She took a sip of her espresso, savoring the sweet bitterness; Vakar had used her stash of real beans instead of the replicator.
“So we got what we came for, and now we drop it off and get paid,” Eva said. Min gave a little cheer of “Jackpot!” while Vakar’s smell gained a brief almond spike of delight.
“Also, we pissed off the Blue Hounders and The Fridge,” Pink added. “It’s like asshole Christmas up in here.”
“Feliz Navidad,” Eva said. “Min, how long until we reach Atrion?”
“About a quarter cycle,” Min replied. “Unless you want to refuel somewhere first.”
Eva shrugged. “Anyone have a layover request?”
Sue shook her head, Pink twirled her finger in a circle and Vakar’s palps twitched, but he said nothing.
“If we can make it to Atrion, and their fuel prices aren’t ridiculous, let’s just get this job done.” Eva knocked back the last of her coffee. “Nice work, amigos. Take a break.”
Sue wandered back toward the cargo bay, holding one bot in each hand and scolding them quietly. Eva stood and hobbled over to put her taza in the sanitizer, wondering whether she should grab a snack or head straight to her cabin. Vakar appeared at her side, laying a claw gently on her arm.
“Would you like assistance returning to your room?” he asked, smelling like vanilla and lavender under all the licorice.
Eva grinned, raising an eyebrow. “I’m sure Fuácata wouldn’t mind the help.” The snack could definitely wait.
“I said rest, woman,” Pink called from the doorway. “Don’t make me confine you to the med bay. I have a bunch of remote patients in my virtual queue, and I don’t want to waste my very expensive time patching your sorry ass twice.”
Vakar wagged his head in the quennian equivalent of a shrug, while Eva snorted. But as soon as Pink was gone, they shared a look and Eva burst into laughter.
“Come on,” she told him. “There’s more than one way to rest. I can think of at least three and I’m not even trying.”
Eva woke up four hours later with a throbbing pain in her leg, to the sound of Min pretending to be an alarm through the speakers.
“Qué pinga,” Eva said sleepily, raising her head off Vakar’s chest.
“Sorry to bother you, Cap,” Min said, “but you’ve got a call on the new emergency frequency.”
Mierda, Eva thought. That could only be one of three people, and she wasn’t in the mood to talk to any of them.
“Should I go?” Vakar rumbled.
“Nah, I don’t wanna move,” Eva said. “Min, audio only, please.”
A holo image projected from Eva’s closet door into the dim room. At first it crackled with static, but it quickly resolved into the face and upper body of her sister, Mari. Her brown hair was tied back in a ponytail, and unlike the last time Eva had seen her, she wore a dark red spacesuit with extra armored plating over the chest. Her expression was neutral, controlled, like she’d done a bunch of deep-breathing exercises before making the call. Which she probably had, given how good Eva was at getting on her nerves.
“Eva?” Mari asked, her neutral expression immediately slipping as a crease appeared between her brows. “Are you there? I can’t see you.”
“I’m here,” Eva replied, slapping Vakar’s claw as he ran it up her bare thigh. “It’s been a while. What do you need?”
The furrow smoothed out. “What’s the passcode?” Mari asked.
Eva sighed and consulted her commlink. The key generator Mari had made her install spat out a long string of letters and numbers, which she dutifully repeated.
“And what’s your favorite . . .” Now Mari pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at Eva. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“What?”
“Favorite food.”
Eva hmmed wistfully. “Paella. So good.”
“You’re allergic to shrimp, boba.”
Vakar’s palps tickled her face and she stifled a giggle. “Pink has been giving me a lot of allergy meds,” she said. “Really strong ones.”
Mari closed her eyes. Eva could almost hear her silently counting to ten.
“My turn,” Eva said. “What’s your favorite, uh, Mesozoic species?”
Mari smirked. “Ah, see, someone who didn’t know me well might assume it was equisetites, because of the ribbed stems, but actually it’s baculites because they—”
“Ya, basta, I know it’s you because no one else is this boring.” Eva reluctantly sat up and swung her legs over the side of her bed, wincing as her injured thigh protested. “What do you want, Mari?”
Her sister’s face grew serious again. “My superiors need to speak with you. In person.”
Now Vakar sat up, too, smelling as curious as Eva felt. She knew nothing about Mari’s bosses, except that they thought it was totally fine to throw Eva to the proverbial wolves if it meant taking down The Fridge. And now they wanted to talk?
“I thought you didn’t want me anywhere near your business?” Eva asked, barely concealing the salt in her tone.
“I don’t, but I’m not in charge.”
Eva’s smirk died quickly. “What do they want from me?”
“That’s not for me to say,” Mari replied, smoothing a stray hair against her head. “But if you’ll agree to meet with them and discuss their offer, I’ll send you the coordinates.”
Secrets, as usual. Great. “I assume I’d get paid for whatever this is?” Eva asked.
“Absolutely. A fair rate, possibly including fuel subsidies.”
Eva wrinkled her nose at Vakar, who blinked his inner eyelids pensively. He smelled minty, but otherwise noncommittal. No help there.
“I have to discuss it wi
th my crew,” Eva said slowly. “I’m not the only captain anymore, and either we’re all in or we’re out.”
“How egalitarian of you,” Mari said. Her features had settled into a mask again, and her gaze flicked up like she was looking at something Eva couldn’t see. “I have to go, but please let me know within the next cycle. We’re running out of time, and options.”
“Right, I’m never the first pick for the spaceball team,” Eva muttered. “Call me back in an hour; I’ll have an answer for you then.”
“Bueno. Cuídate.”
The holo image vanished, plunging the room back into darkness except for the dim light from the fish tank above her bed. Vakar’s sister, Pollea, had taken care of Eva’s fish while Eva was indisposed—okay, no need to be euphemistic, it was while Eva was in cryo after being kidnapped because of shit that was basically Mari’s fault. But Eva had gotten her ship back, and her fish, and added a few new creatures to the tank for good measure, including the orange-shelled snail currently stuck to the glass, and the hermit crab digging through the substrate. She hadn’t worked up the nerve to add live coral or anemones, but she figured she would get there someday.
That, of course, depended on whether she lived long enough to see “someday” for herself. Her leg throbbed as a reminder that nothing was certain, that every fight she walked into was a roll of the Cubilete dice, and the other side might get a Carabina first.
For the second time that cycle, Eva pinged everyone to meet her in the mess, then sighed. Her thigh bandages were intact, but definitely in rougher shape than they should have been for someone supposedly resting an injury.
“Pink is gonna be mad at us,” she told Vakar.
“It is probable,” he agreed, tickling her shoulder with his palps.
“Eh, worth it.” She grabbed her nearest article of clothing off the floor. “Help me put on my pants so she doesn’t see it yet, and let’s get this party started.”
Min’s human body joined them in the mess, since it was time for a meal anyway. She was using the hot plate to make gyeranjjim for herself and Sue, so Eva settled for reconstituting a vague approximation of picadillo along with the last of the instant rice. Pink shoveled her own rice and fake red bean concoction into her mouth quickly enough to give Eva a stomachache from watching. Vakar wasn’t hungry, and he already knew what the meeting was about, so he sat at the table and waited with a patience Eva found admirable, if baffling.
Eva explained the situation briefly as everyone ate. The first to respond when she finished was Pink, who pushed her empty plate away with a look like she’d bitten a lemon.
“Mari is a liar and an asshole,” Pink said coldly. “And her bosses were good with her busted-ass plan that fucked all of us over. That’s two strikes already and we don’t even know what they want.”
“We cannot trust them,” Vakar agreed. “However, some of our goals are in alignment overall.”
“We all hate The Fridge,” Sue said, blowing on her food to cool it. “And it seems like they have, um, you know . . .”
“Money?” Eva supplied. “Resources? Information?”
“Yeah, all of that, pretty much.”
“Food?” Min asked, poking what was left of her fluffy egg substitute. She’d gotten way more interested in eating once their options had improved.
Eva gestured at Min with her fork. “That, I don’t know.”
Pink leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “If this were any other client, you’d tell them to go piss up a rope. Is the risk worth what we might get out of it?”
“Mari did say they’d pay us well,” Eva said. “Maybe even a fuel allowance.”
“Ooh, a fuel allowance, says the liar.” Pink nodded sarcastically, her eye wide.
“We do need fuel,” Min said. “I mean, I do. The ship me.”
Vakar smelled like ozone with a hint of incense—uncertain, concerned—but there was also an undercurrent that reminded Eva of night-blooming jasmine. Thoughtful, which meant he wasn’t entirely opposed to the idea. She considered his angle, and what he might stand to gain from it.
“You want to know more about them,” Eva told him. “Mari’s people, I mean, whoever they are.”
Vakar shrugged in the quennian equivalent of a nod. “As a Wraith,” he said, “I have been tasked with documenting the activities of the entity known as The Fridge, and disrupting them. Your sister is employed by yet another organization whose identity and motives are unknown, but whose reach appears extensive. Under the right circumstances, they could be a valuable asset.”
They certainly seemed to have reached right into The Fridge itself, if Mari was any indication. How many more spies did they have, and how much information might they be willing to trade?
Pink shook her head, her dreads swaying slightly. “So assuming we agree to meet with them, then what?”
“We see what they want.” Eva shrugged. “Worst case, we turn them down and walk away.”
“Worst case, they blow us up and melt down the scraps,” Pink muttered.
Sue spoke up then, in a quiet voice. “Sometimes good people do bad things,” she said, staring down at her empty plate. “They think the reasons are good and important, and it will all work out in the end. It’s not smart, maybe, but it’s . . . it happens.”
Sue was thinking of her own past, no doubt. Her brother, Josh, had been kidnapped by The Fridge, after which Sue had robbed a few banks and an asteroid mine in the hopes of paying off his ransom. But Josh was still missing, and none of their Fridge-busting fun had turned up any leads so far. Looking at the dark-haired girl, just out of her teens, Eva would never have believed she was capable of such a thing. Sue could barely curse properly, though Eva was trying to teach her.
Then again, the same things could be said about Eva, or Pink, or anyone else on the ship. Eva most of all, given some of what she’d done back when she worked for her father. She had enough regrets to fill their cargo hold, and more.
Eva didn’t seem to be the only one following that plutonium exhaust trail of thought, so she cleared her throat to bring everyone back to the table.
“Vote time?” Eva shifted her butt, wincing at the pain that shot through her leg. “I say we check it out, with another vote to decide whether we take whatever offer they make.”
“I also believe we should investigate,” Vakar said.
Min brushed her faded blue hair out of her face and smiled. “Fuel sounds good to me.”
Sue hesitated, then said, “It can’t hurt. Can it?”
“It certainly can,” Pink said. She rolled her eye. “I feel like I’m having to be paranoid enough for all y’all, but whatever. At least we’re being foolish together.”
“Look at it this way,” Eva said, “if you’re right, we can burn them for good.”
“If I’m right,” Pink said with a scowl, “we’re the ones who are gonna be hosed.”
Eva really, really hoped Pink wasn’t right this time.
About the Author
VALERIE VALDES is a Cuban-American speculative fiction writer whose work is inspired by video games, cartoons and decades of accumulated pop culture references. She enjoys crafting bespoke artisanal curses, deliciously painful puns and medium-burn romances with a main course of butt-kicking.
Valerie was raised in the suburbs of Miami on a steady diet of Spanglish and stacks of library books. She lives with her husband, two children and cats who are probably not psychic.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
chilling effect. Copyright © 2019 by Valerie Valdes. Excerpt from prime deceptions © 2020 by Valerie Valdes. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright C
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Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-287724-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-287723-9
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