I felt blood oozing out of my nose before everything went dark. I’m just saying.
When I come to, everything hurts. Even my fingernails. I feel like I went nine rounds with a vilkjing.
But the pod’s stopped moving.
The window is covered with grime and spots of liquid, and I can’t make out much beyond the vague shadowy shapes of rocks. There’s a lot of wind howling around out there. Distant thunder too. I start double-checking my suit, making sure the helmet is on tight, all the seals are locked up. No leaks, no holes, oxygen charged and functioning. You do not want to be on an unknown planet with a run in your survival suit stockings.
It’s tight quarters, but I manage to wriggle my arm up so I can access the radial sensors on the reinforced wristband built into the suit. Their feedback is that it’s nasty as hell outside and that Calm won’t be making any vacation lists for the foreseeable future. But the conditions shouldn’t be a problem as long as I keep my suit on. They also pick up two other escape pods within 150 meters of me, which means that at least the homing coordinates on these things worked correctly.
I tap the communications on. “Hell Monkey, you all right?”
I wait, expecting to hear his voice come right back to me. But the silence stretches. And then it stretches some more.
“H.M.? You getting this?”
Nothing.
Panic kicks me in the chest like an adrenaline shot. I yank the door lever and boot it open, sending it flying as I rush out. The pod landed at an odd angle on a mound of broken black rock, and I tumble down it in a heap, scrambling too fast to get my feet under me. The ground shifts as I haul myself upright—centimeters and centimeters of rough dark gravel moving around under my boots—but I plow through it toward the closest pod, feeling like I’m wading ankle-deep in the worst ocean ever.
Escape Pod 002 lies flat and peaceful, like someone placed it there. I suck in a breath as I pop the door open.
JR the mediabot looks up at me, camera lenses glowing like it must’ve been recording the whole way down.
“Captain Farshot,” it says immediately. “Would you care to comment on the destruction of your ship?”
I sigh. “Cheery Coyenne should promote you.” And then I turn and slog off, running as hard as I can. I call out to Hell Monkey a few more times as I work my way over the terrain, thinking maybe he just didn’t hear me before or maybe the distance messed up his reception. But still no response.
By the time I reach Escape Pod 001, wedged between two big boulders, my heart pounds against my ribs and my breath sounds fast and ragged in my own ears. I haul myself up the pockmarked rock faces and drag the pod door open.
Hell Monkey lies inside, eyes closed inside his helmet. Very still. Very pale.
It feels like a black hole woke up and sucked away my lungs and my heart and left only my broken ribs. I reach out and put a shaking hand on Hell Monkey’s chest.
His eyes flicker open.
All my breath comes back to me in a rush. Tears flood my vision. This son of a bitch. If I wasn’t so happy to see him alive, I’d straight up murder him.
“Hey, boss.” His voice is a soft rasp. I can see the pain in the lines of his face. “You weren’t worried about me, were you?”
I laugh. My hand comes up to wipe tears from my face before I remember I have a stupid helmet on. “Damn you to every star, Hell Monkey. Are you hurt? You sound hurt.”
He ticks his chin up in a tight nod. “Right arm. Right side of my chest. Got banged up pretty good on landing.”
Yeah, it looks like it. I pull up his left arm and check the vitals on his wristband. Slightly elevated heart rate, blood pressure—kind of to be expected at the moment. I run my hand very gently along his injured arm and the side of his body, but it’s hard to tell with the suits and the gloves and all that stuff. It doesn’t feel like any bone is poking out. That’s about all I got.
“Captain Farshot?”
I stick my head back out of the pod and look down at JR, shifting nervously on the ground. “I’m not doing interviews right now!”
“There’s an incoming rainband.” The mediabot points over its shoulder. A wall of heavy clouds—underneath the already turbulent cloud cover—sweeps toward us over the rocks, liquid streaming from its belly. “Estimated to be highly acidic,” it adds. “It might be advisable to find extra cover.”
Dammit. I don’t want to move Hell Monkey without knowing how badly he’s injured, but I don’t know how caustic the acid rain is on this planet. Survival suits can take a lot, but you don’t just want to assume they’ll hold up fine when the other option is “skywater slowly dissolves you into a pile of viscera.”
“Scout us a decent spot,” I tell JR, and then turn back to Hell Monkey. “We’ve gotta move.”
“Awesome, great. Here I go.” He closes his eyes, jaw tight. “Am I moving yet?”
“Very funny. Put your good arm around me. We’ll just take this one step at a time.”
It’s slow and painful—mostly for Hell Monkey—and I keep checking over my shoulder to see that rainband getting closer and closer. But I manage to get him out of the pod and down to the ground with minimal jostling. Most of his weight is draped over my shoulders, and with the ground basically a mire, it takes everything I’ve got to haul both of us away from the boulders and in the direction of our forever-friend, the mediabot. JR found an overhang in a nearby cliff face. It’s not far, really, but by the time I manage to get both of us there, I’m pouring sweat and sucking air like I’m brand-new to this exploring stuff. Hell Monkey’s face looks a little green inside his helmet, and he lets out a pained groan as I lower him gently onto the ground, situating him as close to the cliff as possible.
I straighten, trying to catch my breath, getting a look at the half-ass cave. It’s not so much that I’d want to spend an extended period of time here, but it should be enough shelter for a bit while I send up some emergency subspace beacons. See if I can get ahold of someone out there with a working ship who wants to take on passengers.
Hell Monkey coughs, and I turn to see him trying to pull himself up into a sitting position. I drop down to my knees beside him to help.
“Is this absolutely necessary right this second?” I ask as I get a shoulder underneath his arm and scoot him up.
He leans back against the rock. His breath comes too tight and too short. “I forgot to tell you something,” he says. “Before we left.”
I play back the last moments on the Vagabond, trying to think what it might be, but I’ve got nothing. “What is it?”
He rolls his head to the side to look straight at me. His hazel eyes are darker than usual, and the twist of his mouth is a little bit wry and a little bit sad. “I only had time to fully charge the air supply on one suit. So I charged yours. I only have about ten minutes of oxygen left.”
Forty-Six
I STARE AT HELL MONKEY, ABSOLUTELY FROZEN, for probably five or six seconds. My brain plows through every possible response and every option I have to fix this because I’m gonna have to do something. As far as I can remember, there were no other ships around Calm, and Setter and Faye are headed to Viola on injured cruisers (and, in Faye’s case, with an injured captain). They could pick up a subspace beacon. So could the people on Viola. But I don’t think any of them can make it down here in ten minutes.
Probably closer to nine and a half minutes now.
I blink, refocusing on Hell Monkey’s face, his skin tinged grayish, sweat beading along his forehead. But his eyes are still locked on me, solid and steady. There’s this solar flare of bright, sharp energy inside of me. Like fear, maybe. And anger. And love.
I set my jaw against it and glare at Hell Monkey. “Welp, now instead of getting to cuddle while I whisper sweet nothings in your ear, you’re gonna have to sit over there all cold and lonely while I try to figure out how to redistribute my oxygen supply to supplement yours.”
I roll to my feet and head to the edge of the overhang. The band
s of acid rain are almost on us. I grab the short tube off the belt of my survival suit and set it up with a clear shot up at the sky, driving it into the loose ground to give it decent purchase. It shoots one, two, three bright red bolts and they go up and up and disappear beyond the clouds.
I’m not the praying type. But I kind of wish I had someone to pray to right now.
I retreat deeper under the overhang. Rain follows soon after, pattering and hissing across the rocks and gravel. Hell Monkey leans against the cliff, watching it come down, and I crouch next to him, trying to get an angle on the oxygen storage tank on his back. I don’t want to jostle him too much. I’m not sure dragging him over here like dead weight did him much good.
“You can’t get mad at me, Alyssa,” he says. “You would’ve done the exact same thing.”
I hate how ragged his voice sounds. It makes my lungs feel too tight. “That’s obviously not true. I would’ve kept all the air to myself and left you to twist.”
He chuckles, but it’s kind of halfway a cough. “Sure, sure . . .”
I frown at the tank configuration on his back. There’s not an obvious, easy way to give him some of the oxygen from mine. Usually, you charge them in an environment with fully breathable air all around, and there doesn’t seem to be a sealed input device. I can’t even take off my own tank to try to get a better look at this whole mess. Not without, y’know, instantly starting to suffocate.
I check my wristband. My breathable air is sitting at eighty-three percent. Gives me a few hours easily, maybe more if I keep it chill and relax instead of doing laps around the planet.
I kneel down in front of him so I can keep one eye on how he’s doing and start laying everything I have out in front of me. Emptying every single pocket and compartment and clip on my belt. There’s gotta be something that I can use.
And what if you can’t, Farshot? What if this is how the you-and–Hell Monkey adventure ends?
Godsdammit, I do not want to have that thought. It’s making tears flood the backs of my eyes, and I need my vision clear.
I clear my throat hard. “You know what sucks?”
He drags his gaze away from the rain streaming in sizzling ropes across the overhang. His eyebrows raise sky-high. “Just the one thing?”
“We’re going to cork it on this terrible fucking planet, and I don’t even know your real name. Two years flying together—I’ve never known your name.”
The words come out in a tumble, and I can’t bring myself to look at him. (The great and powerful Alyssa Farshot, folks. She’s so brave she can’t look at a boy.) But it feels like it might be too much, to ask this. Like I’m trying to dig up something buried. Which I kind of am. I should take it back. I should tell him to forget it and—
“Eliot,” he says just as I’m about to open my mouth. “I was named Eliot, after my grandfather.”
“Eliot.” I try out the name, see how it feels on my tongue, and a smile stretches across his face. Not wry or joking, but an all-the-way, soul-deep kind of smile.
“That sounds good. You saying my name. I could get used to that.”
The way he’s looking at me—I think I could tell him right then. That he’s light-years more than just my buddy or my engineer or my copilot. That I think I might love him and I’ve maybe loved him for a while now. But the words get stuck in my throat.
“My mom called me Hell Monkey,” he says, his gaze going a little distant. “As a nickname. Because I was always running around, getting into trouble. Not, like, bad trouble. Just kid stuff.” He shrugs and then winces when it pulls at his injury. “When I left home, after the fire, I didn’t want to hand people my real name, so I started telling people to call me Hell Monkey. It’s weird, but it felt like a way I could have her with me.”
I understand and I also kind of don’t. Because I walked away from my family and shed my name, and I didn’t hold on to it. I don’t always feel very good about that.
I think about that last message Uncle Atar recorded for me, asking me to come back sometimes, to keep one foot on Apex with him and Charlie. I didn’t. I didn’t realize—not until he was gone.
I shift so I’m sitting next to Hell Monkey and I put my gloved hand over his, trying to squeeze his fingers through the thick material. “My uncle always called me Birdie.”
He nods and says, totally deadpan, “That makes sense. You do have a really big nose.”
A bark of laughter bursts out of me and I nudge him in the leg. “Shut up. We should really stop talking. Save your oxygen charge.”
He shakes his head. “Nah. What’s the point in that? I don’t want to go quietly.”
I wrap my hand tighter around his. “I don’t want you to go at all,” I whisper, but I say it to the rain.
The minutes tick by, and I can’t sit still and watch them count down. I need to move or do something. I go through the survival suit items again. I call JR over and see what it can offer. I manage to jury-rig a piece that plugs between my tank and his tank and pulls maybe five extra minutes of breathable air over to him before it breaks because it was shoddy even under the best conditions. I try but I can’t put it back together.
I scream with frustration, and all I can see is a blur because the tears won’t stay down anymore.
Hell Monkey’s stopped talking. His eyes are closed and his breathing is getting shallow. And I can’t do anything.
I. Can’t. Do. Anything. Except cry.
JR hovers nearby, its camera lenses constantly glowing. “Captain Farshot—”
I put a hand up in its face. “Not a good time, buddy. Seriously. Read the room.”
“I apologize, Captain Farshot, but you’re getting an incoming communication.”
It points down at my wristband, where a little blue light is blinking. My breath catches in my throat, and I fumble to hit the button.
The voice of Nathalia Coyenne comes blasting across the frequency: “Alyssa Charlemagne Farshot, if you somehow managed to get yourself killed on this planet, I’m absolutely never speaking to you again.”
Forty-Seven
IT’S THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING I’VE EVER SEEN. The Gilded Gun descending onto this godsforsaken planet in the middle of acid fricking rain.
I can’t believe she’s here and . . . relatively intact. Her starboard engine looks in bad shape and there are swaths of scorch marks on her hull. But she’s flying. And certainly more functional than my poor Vagabond.
The bay doors open, and a tall, lithe figure, fully suited up, comes running down the ramp. I practically tackle Coy in a hug as she reaches the overhang, squeezing her tight. My rib cage feels like it’s so full it’s gonna burst in every direction, and I keep laughing.
I’m definitely going to need to get off this emotional roller coaster soon. I don’t think I can take too much more. I’m built way more for liquid intake than for all this teary output.
I pull back after only a hot second and grab her by the arm, dragging her over to Hell Monkey. “His oxygen tanks are low and he’s hurt. We need to get him inside quick.”
She sweeps down without a word and gets a shoulder under him. I lift him on the other side. I thought it was hard hauling him around before, but he’s so much more limp and heavy now that it’s a struggle even with two of us. I start to panic again, throat closing up as my boots slip in the thick gravel.
And then Drinn sweeps down the ramp, says, “Sorry. Helmet got stuck,” and he takes up Hell Monkey like he’s not much bigger than a child and runs him into the ship. I stand there for a moment, suddenly unsure what to do with my empty arms, rain hissing as it hits my survival suit. Coy rushes by me with JR wrapped in a protective covering, ushering it up and out of the rainstorm, and I follow on their heels, closing the aft bay doors behind us.
As soon as the bay seals up, I pop my helmet off and race after Drinn and Hell Monkey. The Gilded Gun’s layout isn’t quite the same as the Vagabond’s, but I manage to find the med bay with only minimal scrambling. And that’s probab
ly because I’ve only got half my head on straight and a survival suit hanging off my hips.
By the time I catch up to them, Drinn has Hell Monkey out of his suit and propped up on an inclined bed. The vilkjing is fitting diagnostic-treatment cuffs around his arm and torso, and he’s still passed out, his skin looking gray under the harsh artificial lights.
Drinn must hear me shuffling around because he says without looking over at me, “He’s alive. Gave him a sedative.” He motions at the equipment wrapped around him. “This is probably gonna hurt. Better if he’s out.”
Makes sense. It does. My guess is that he’s got broken bones in his arm and ribs, and that’s the best-case scenario. It’s gonna be painful once the “treatment” aspect of the diagnostic-treatment cuffs starts to kick in and knit cells back together. But I still wish I could see him move, open his eyes, something.
Drinn straightens and stretches an arm out, nudging me toward the door. “Get your suit off. Go find Coy. There’s still work to do.”
I go. Dragging my feet a little on the way out. And it’s only really the fact that there is a lot of explaining I need to hear from Coy that I put any hustle in my steps on the way down the corridor. I drop the slightly acid-scarred pieces of my survival suit off in an alcove and head to the bridge. Coy is already there, perched in the captain’s chair. The Gilded Gun rumbles to life under my boots as she lifts back up through the turbulent air and above the storm clouds. I watch Coy check a three-dimensional planetary map, locate a specific spot, and then kick up the speed, zooming us off to some location. I can’t really make out where or how far away it is because I don’t even know where our escape pods landed.
I take a second to look at her—she’s got ashy smudges in a few places on metal-gray skin, a bandage wrapped around her upper right arm, but otherwise . . . she’s Coy. Alive and well and not blown up.
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