by Elle Casey
“Are we going to trade it?” Jeffers asks.
I shake my head. “No. If it’s so important he’ll trade that big boom part for it, and that nutcase pilot came after us for it, I think we need to keep it and figure out what it is before we decide to hand it over to someone else.”
“But he said he wants it,” Jeffers says. “And we can’t do a short-range grab without his boom chuck.”
“He’ll just have to trade for something else.” I look to our biogrid creator. “What do you say, Lucinda? Do you have something he might want?”
She shrugs. “Maybe. You’ll have to ask him.”
I look at my crew members one at a time before speaking to them. “Are we in agreement that we don’t give him the device in trade? That we keep its existence secret for now?”
“Why are you asking us?” Lucinda says. “I thought this was a dictatorship.”
My knife hand is getting very twitchy. “It is. But that doesn’t mean I don’t value your opinions.”
She looks like she’s going to be stubborn about it, but then when she glances at Jeffers and he nods, her shoulders relax.
“I’m in agreement,” Jeffers says.
“Me too,” Baebong chimes in.
I wait for Lucinda, staring at her but not being aggressive about it. We’re on the dark side of Xylera; I can wait all day for her to stop being a pain in the ass if I have to.
“Fine. I agree.” She turns around and heads for the portal.
“Where are you going?” I ask, watching her leave.
“To do some inventory. See what we might be able to offer.”
Relief floods through me. At least for now, Lucinda is on my side. “Good.” It’s like a pendulum with her, first she despises me, then she supports me. I’m going to have to deal with her later.
Walking over to my chair, I make myself stop worrying about Lucinda’s split personalty so I can focus on what I’m going to say to Captain Beltz of the DS Mekanika. It’s generally frowned on to outright lie to another DS captain, but a small fib is easily overlooked. How much to reveal and how much to conceal? That’s always the question when you’re dealing in the Dark.
“Captain Beltz, this is Anarchy. We didn’t find anything in the incinerator. What exactly are we looking for? Chicken bodies don’t hold up well under the heat.”
There’s a long pause before he comes back to us. I’m almost ready to worry about being shot at when he does finally answer.
“Are you certain? You did not find anything quite small and perhaps dark in color?”
My ears begin to burn with the lie, but I ignore it and focus on keeping my voice even. “No, sorry. There wasn’t much in there, since we offloaded our waste at a station just a few hours ago. But we have some things we got in trade from a biogrid.” Better that he doesn’t yet know we are the actual owners of the biogrid at this point. Not until I get his measure.
“Hmmm, I don’t know. We are pretty well stocked here.”
“Anything exotic or crazy you don’t have that you might want? Some tea maybe?”
I hold my breath as I wait for his answer.
“How about … you got any nuts onboard there?”
Are you kidding? That’s all we have onboard The Anarchy.
“I’m not exactly sure. Let me check.”
Chapter Nineteen
I TAKE THE POSSIBLE TRADE inventory list from Lucinda and read the items I can stand to part with out loud over the comm to the captain of the DS Mekanika, my eyes widening as I take in all the entries.
“Okay, Captain, we have available for trade… three kilos of hazelnuts, five kilos of shelled peanuts, and a half kilo of cashew nuts.” Who knew? We are loaded with nuts on this ship, crew not included.
“Yes, you do have some nuts, don’t you? Where did you get all of those things?” He sounds way happier than I’d be about the situation. Maybe I had too many of them when I was younger. We always had bowls of them sitting out on tables for anyone to munch on when they were visiting.
“A trade the former owner of this thing made before I got her. I don’t have the details. You interested?”
“Yes, we are very interested. Please come to the trade hatch, and we will make the switch.”
“Standard protection protocol?” I ask, hoping he’ll say yes. I have no idea what equipment this ship has onboard for heightened security during a trade.
“Yes, of course. We are all friends.” He chuckles after this, which doesn’t make me feel comfortable at all.
I mute the comm so I can give instructions without Beltz listening in.
“Make sure we don’t short him,” I say to her.
Baebong takes his seat at the console and Lucinda heads for the door.
“If anything, give him a little extra. I have a feeling we’re going to need a lot of parts, so he’s a good friend to have out here.”
“Yes, Captain,” she says before disappearing through the door.
This time I don’t detect any sarcasm in her tone. I’m two for two with her. I tell my brain to stop spinning over the idea that I actually might have earned some respect from her today, but it doesn’t want to listen.
“I’m going to get you a drink of water,” Jeffers says, looking at me funny.
“I’m fine,” I say, just as another wave of dizziness hits me. I sit down hoping to play it off like it’s nothing. My eye falls on the black disk sitting on Baebong’s station array. My crazy mind is blaming that stupid thing for the headache that’s starting to blaze up in the back of my head. I was fine until that thing came up on the flightdeck, wasn’t I?
“It’s easy to get dehydrated out here,” he says, ignoring my claim of good health. “Be right back.”
Baebong hits his comm button. “Gus and Tam, we’re readying for a trade, standard protocols. We all good with that?”
“All good,” one of them says. I’m too tired to suss out which one. “You have an ETA?”
“Fifteen minutes,” I mumble. I planned to say it loudly so they’d hear me over the sounds of the engines that are cranked up in the background, but my words come out slurred for some reason.
“Fifteen minutes,” Baebong says louder, glancing at me over his shoulder and frowning. “That enough time?”
“Sure. We’re just twiddling our thumbs down here. Nothing to see.” That one was Gus. I may not have known him for very long, but that tone in his voice makes my ass twitch.
“Grab the extinguisher!” yells Tam from somewhere nearby.
I sit up straighter.
“Shut up, dick!” This is said with a hand attempting to muffle the comm-out.
“Extinguisher?” Baebong asks, turning his chair slowly to look at me as we wait for the answer.
“Rollo’s got it!” comes Rollo’s voice over the speaker.
“Nah, he’s just messing around,” Gus says to us, laughing too loudly.
The distinct sounds of fire-suppression foam shooting out at high velocity come over the comm next.
“Go see what’s going on,” I say to Baebong, sighing as I lean back in my chair and stare at the ceiling.
“You need help with the trade, though.”
“Nah, I’m good. Just go. Jeffers will be back soon.”
And that’s the last thing I remember before waking up in my bunk with three faces hanging over me.
Chapter Twenty
I STARE UP AT JEFFERS, Rollo, and Lucinda, disoriented and sick to my stomach as I lie on my back in my bunk.
“What…?” I croak out, trying to sit up.
Jeffers pushes my shoulder down and my body collapses beneath the puny force. “Just rest. You shouldn’t get up yet.”
Searching the faces above me gets me nowhere. All I see is concern and worry, and not all of it’s focused on me. Lucinda keeps looking over her shoulder toward my door.
“What’s going on? What happened to me?”
“We’re about to find out,” Jeffers says mysteriously.
The comm speaker at my do
or lights up, and Tam’s voice comes out over it. “Captain Beltz is aboard. I repeat, Captain Beltz of the DS Mekanika has come aboard.”
“What?!” I sit up just fine this time, functioning under the righteous energy that comes from being boarded by a possible enemy in the middle of nowhere Xylera. How dare they let a stranger onboard my ship! That’s mutiny!
“Easy, now,” Jeffers soothes, “he’s here to help.”
“Help with what?”
“We’ll talk about it when he gets here. We’re not really sure.”
Rollo and Lucinda enter into a private conversation across the room I can’t hear.
I growl in a low voice at Jeffers. “Who in the hell authorized his access onto my ship?”
“Your second in command.” Jeffers gestures at Baebong. “You were incapacitated, and he had to make the call. But for what it’s worth, I think it was the right one.”
A booming at my door interrupts the rest of what Jeffers might have wanted to say. Someone who doesn’t know how to use the very simple ringer on the keypad is here, and my guess is he has a massive fist. It sounds like we’re being blasted by a particle ray when he pounds on the door a second time.
A deep voice comes through the steeloid like the thing is made of celluloid paper. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” This is followed by a maniacal giggle that makes the little hairs on my butt stand up.
“What have you done?” I growl at my crew members and the stowaway.
“Rollo didn’t do anything,” Rollo says, holding up his hands in surrender. “He’s just here for the show.”
“Shut up, idiot,” hisses Lucinda. “You’re the one who suggested we get him involved.”
“Involved?” I look at Jeffers. “Involved in what?” They wouldn’t really have invited him on the ship without my say so, would they have? As soon as I was down they took on a new captain? My heart hurts just thinking about it. I’m being such a chick right now, but it’s impossible to ignore the fact that I feel cheated on. And if he tries to take my seat on the flightdeck, I’m going to have to stab him. This is not a good day at all.
Jeffers ignores my question. “Go let him in.”
Rollo walks away to do as he’s told, and the room falls silent. I glare at Jeffers and then Baebong.
“There’s going to be hell to pay for this later,” I say to both of them.
“Please reserve judgment until it plays out.” Jeffers remains calm in the face of my threat, which only serves to piss me off more. He should fear me more than he does. I’m going to have to rectify that shortcoming in his personality very soon.
The door is open suddenly, to a hulking man of about two meters. I guess him to be in his early thirties, maybe a little older. He squeezes through the doorframe of my room and enters the small space, commanding it with his mere presence.
“So, what do we have here?” he says in his funny accent. “A little girl by the look of it. OSG offspring, maybe?”
My heart freezes in my chest. No more beats come to circulate my blood through my veins. Damn, that hurts.
“What do you mean?” Lucinda asks, glaring at me with suspicion again. So much for earning her trust. The pendulum has swung to the other side and now she hates me again. Fickle bitch. Oh well. Shit happens.
His focus shifts to Jeffers. “Did you put the disk back inside the chicken like I instructed?”
“No, we don’t have a chicken.”
“But you have the disk, yes?”
No one says a word, but the guilt on their faces tells him everything he needs to know.
“Well, I can see you put it somewhere far from this girl, at least. That is why she is awake.” He comes over and goes down on one knee to rest at my side. His face looms large just centimeters from mine. “How are you feeling? A little woozy maybe?” He has a huge grin on his face that I’d love nothing more than to slap right off. Unfortunately, my arm feels like it’s made of steeloid; I can’t lift it from the bed.
“Why does that make you so happy?” I ask, pissed about the whole thing. Somehow I got whammied, but I have a very hard time believing it has anything to do with that chicken disk.
He cocks his head first one way and then the other. “Well, I am happy because it means two things: one, that my cousin’s invention is working, and two, that we found a little OSG spy right here in our middle.” He reaches out and pokes me in the nose. “And a very cute one, too. I will enjoy watching you float.”
“Float?” I swing my way-too-heavy legs over the side of the bed. “You’re insane.” At least my arms seem to be back to their normal weight. I flex my hand, wrist, and then elbow just to be sure.
He reaches out to push me back, but I grab his hand and pull his arm toward me. With my other hand, I take my knife out and hold it at the artery that runs up the base of his thumb.
Lucinda gasps and Jeffers steps back.
“Whoa, dude,” Rollo says. “She’s fast with that knife. Did you see that? Rollo didn’t see it ’til it was right there on his wrist.”
I stare Beltz down so he knows I’m not playing around. “Never touch me without getting my permission first.”
Rollo whispers to Lucinda, “Not the touchy feely type, I guess.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that?!” I yell. “I can be very touchy feely! Sometimes!”
Beltz tries to pull away, but I press the knife into his skin, drawing a very fine line of blood from it. The teeth on the back side of my blade will rip his skin off if he tries to yank his hand from my grip, and he knows it, so he stays put. He nods and smiles again.
“You are a crazy little girl, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told,” I growl at him. “Now back the hell up so I can get off this bed and onto my feet.”
Everyone in the room moves as far away as possible as I follow his motions in reverse, taking care to leave the knife in place at his wrist. It’s not the best bleed point, but I’d never get my dagger up to his neck without climbing up on a box or something first. This little threat of mine is the only way I know I can stay safe with this giant of a man bent on sending me out the airlock without a darksuit on. I’ve never used a wrist cut as an intimidation technique before, but hey, it’s working, and a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I say, once I’m solidly on my feet. The dizziness has almost completely passed, and thankfully my legs don’t feel ten times their normal weight anymore. “You’re going to turn around and head up to the flightdeck. Once we’re there, you’re going to submit to being restrained while we have a little conversation about that chicken thing and why you’re on my ship.”
Jeffers moves to the door and opens the portal for us. Lucinda and Rollo practically scamper out of it and disappear down the corridor. The echoes of their boots going in fast forward ring around the room, fading as they get farther away.
“I’m here because your crew invited me.” He stares down at me, from almost a half meter higher. I’m not too proud to admit he’s intimidating as hell with that crewcut blond hair, deepest blue eyes, and neck as thick as one of my thighs.
“I said we talk on the flightdeck, not here.”
His nostrils flare at my orders. Then his gaze flickers, telegraphing his intent a full second before he follows through on it. He thinks he’s going to get one over on me, but I’m ready for him, having practiced this move only about three thousand times in the past fifteen years.
His free hand shoots out to grab me by the back of the neck, and I’ve no doubt he could snap it with one squeeze of those meaty fingers. My knife hand leaves his artery and makes a quick slicing motion at his approaching arm, catching him in the bicep. My razor-sharp blade cuts through his flightsuit like it’s made of air.
“Gottverdammt!” he roars, grabbing at his flayed and bleeding skin, his plan to grab me forgotten in the wake of his pain and blood loss. Injuries suffered in the Dark are serious. Without the right medications or MI equi
pment, a person could die from something like this, and he knows it.
Taking advantage of his pain and surprise, I leap forward and press the tip of the blade into his flight suit over his heart. I let it prick his flesh a little, just in case he’s thinking about getting the stupid idea to fight me again. Out of the corner of my eye I see Jeffers holding his heart, his face a weird, almost gray color.
Standing flat on my feet, ready for anything, I glare up at Beltz, adrenaline making my pulse go crazy. I can hear it pounding in my skull. Using the calmest voice possible, I lean in toward him so he can hear me loud and clear. “Touch me without my permission again, Beltz, and I’m going to spear your fucking heart, cut it out of your chest, and eat it for dinner.”
He stares down at me for what feels like a really long time. His expression goes from mutinous, to confused, to accepting, and then amused. Finally, he relaxes his posture, his shoulders going down and his weight shifting over to one foot, and the threat vibe I felt coming from his bad attitude dissipates into nothing.
“I change my mind about what I said earlier,” he says. His eyes are practically sparkling. I’m not sure how it’s possible, but he looks happy about the fact that I just sliced him open and threatened to cannibalize his body. Other men from my past finding themselves in a similar situation were more interested in shooting me glares of pure evil at this point. It makes me want to know more about this Beltz character and what makes him tick. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. My father’s words ring uncomfortably in my ears.
“Oh yeah?” I ease back on the blade a little, my nerves making me twitchy. I’m worried I’ll cut him by accident if I’m not careful. It’s not in my nature to hold back once I get started.
“Yes. You are not a crazy little girl. You are a crazy bitch.” He grins so hard I’m nearly blinded by his big, white teeth.
I pull the knife away and put it back in its sheath, no longer worried he’s going to try anything. I’ve known guys like him for years. They have two speeds: kill and let live, and we just downshifted out of the danger zone. “Just remember that about me and we’ll be fine.”