Starflight

by Melissa Landers

  But the fall never came.

  Soon realization set in, and Doran exhaled in relief. The artificial gravity drive must’ve died during the night. On a clunker like the Banshee, it probably happened all the time. This ship was a death trap. Even something as simple as a gravity drive could be dangerous if it reengaged too suddenly. Anyone who’d drifted above a hard surface might snap his spine when gravity took hold again.

  He should wake Lara.

  He pushed aside a curtain of floating blankets and saw her suspended above the bed, fast asleep with her lips slightly parted and a fringe of dark lashes resting against her cheeks. The tension that usually hardened her eyes and tightened her mouth was gone, leaving behind nothing but peace. He tipped his head and studied her, struck by how different she looked—almost angelic as a gentle beam of light illuminated her flowing waves of hair.

  She glowed. It was sort of mesmerizing.

  Because he was only human, he couldn’t help noticing that her covers had drifted away, leaving her exposed in nothing but a fitted T-shirt and cotton briefs that rode low on her hips. Her legs were fair and smooth, with gentle curves that tapered to a delicate set of ankles and tiny pink toes. She wore no holographic nail polish to trap his gaze, and yet he couldn’t look away. It must’ve been a long time since he’d seen a girl’s naked toes, because he’d nearly forgotten what they looked like.

  Doran swallowed hard.

  He shouldn’t be watching her like this. She was his employer, not some escort on display in the front window of a flesh house. But despite that, it took another minute for him to reach out and tap her on the shoulder.

  She came to the same way he had, arms flapping and legs kicking, before she realized there was no force pulling her toward the ground. Then she uttered a curse and said, “Gravity drive.”

  He snagged her pants and handed them over. “I was about to wake the crew.”

  “No, let them sleep.” She wrestled with the garment, struggling to shove both legs inside without the leverage of her weight. Soon she was floating upside down. “I’ll fix it.”

  He did a double take. “You’ll what?”

  “Fix it,” she told him while zipping up. “And you’ll help me.”

  “Sure,” he droned. “I always assist in major ship repairs before breakfast.”

  Just add this to the day’s list of surprises. Who was this girl? It occurred to him that he didn’t know anything about her, like where she’d gone to school or what program she’d studied. Not even her age.

  “Are you an engineering student?” he asked.

  “Something like that.” She pointed to a crate strapped to the floor, supplies she’d bought at the outpost. “Reach in there and grab my tool kit. Then follow me down to the engine level.”

  They swam like drunken fish through the hallways, propelling themselves with barefoot kicks against the wall. Doran engaged her in small talk and learned that she was eighteen, like him. She’d recently graduated and was on her way to the outer realm for training, though she wouldn’t specify what kind.

  She was lying, of course.

  No eighteen-year-old traveled to the fringe unaccompanied, not for training. But he didn’t bother pressing for the truth. If she wanted to risk her neck in the middle of no-man’s-land, that was her business.

  They reached the ship’s bottom level and turned on the lights, which didn’t do much to orient him. Half the room was a cargo hold with massive crates bolted to the floor, and three sliding metal doors compartmentalized the other half.

  “If this is the engine room,” he asked, “where’s the engine?”

  “There’s more than one,” Lara told him. “They’re kept quarantined, so if a fire breaks out, it won’t fry the whole system.” She pointed to the first metal door. “Hear that whirring sound?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s the emergency engine. It powers oxygen and heat: things we can’t do without. There’s usually a backup generator, too. If we run out of fuel, we can hand-crank enough air to keep us breathing until someone responds to the distress call.”

  Doran didn’t say so, but only idiots responded to distress calls. That was a good way to get yourself robbed, sold, or killed. Maybe all of the above. He’d heard about pirates sending distress beacons and then sitting back while the victims came right to them. Smart travelers kept their heads down and minded their own business.

  “That’s the main engine,” Lara said, pointing at the middle door. “It’s powered down, otherwise we’d need earplugs.” Then she indicated the final door. “There’s the room we want—secondary systems, navigation, electrical. All the ship’s bells and whistles.”

  “Bells and whistles?” he asked. “More like rubber bands and Popsicle sticks.”

  Lara frowned at a flake of rust floating past her nose. “Well. In hindsight, maybe I should’ve picked a different ship.”

  She pushed off the steps, sailing across the room, and Doran followed. It took some maneuvering, but they eventually made it to the last door and slid it into the wall.

  A warm gust of static blew over them, smelling of oil and dust. It tickled a sneeze from his nose and sent him backward an inch. When he caught hold of the doorframe, he let his gaze wander over the variety of machines mounted to the walls. They varied in size and shape, but each was dulled by layers of old grease, their tubes opaque and gummy with age.

  The ship’s innards matched its hull—ridden hard and put away wet.

  “At least no moths fluttered out,” Lara said. She gripped her way around the room until she settled in front of a boxy device that resembled a climate console.

  The tiny space made Doran’s airway squeeze, so he stayed put. “I’ll wait here until you need me.”

  Nodding, she snapped the grav drive casing from the wall, then began prodding at its wires. It didn’t take long for her to find the problem. “The couplers need replacing.”

  “Easy fix?”

  “Five minutes, tops,” she said. “But I’ll keep it powered off until the crew’s awake. I don’t want bodies crashing to the floor. That’s no way to say good morning.”

  Doran laughed. The sensation felt foreign, and he wondered how long it’d been since something had struck him as funny.

  “Hand me the smallest wrench,” she said. After he delivered the tool, she held it between her teeth and delved inside the grav drive. But loose strands of hair kept drifting into her face, tangling among the wires. She growled and mumbled around the wrench, “Help me out, will you?”

  Doran didn’t want to go in there, but he stuffed down his fear and moved behind Lara to gather her wayward locks. He smoothed the hair back from her head and twisted it into a ponytail, then rubbed the ends between his thumb and index finger. Her hair was freakishly soft, like liquid velvet. Lara shivered when his thumb accidentally brushed her skin, and he noticed chill bumps break out along the back of her neck.

  She spat out her wrench. “That tickles.”

  “Sorry.”

  He tried coiling the twist into a knot, but the strands were too satiny to hold. Faintly, he recalled that he’d done this before—run his hands through a girl’s hair—and liked it. But he’d never felt anything as silky as this. Probably because his girlfriend had damaged her hair by dying it so many glaring shades of pink.

  He blinked and saw the girl’s face, so stunningly gorgeous that she barely passed for a mortal. A sheet of sleek bubble-gum tresses fell just above the swell of her flawless breasts, and the rest of her was pretty impressive, too. He recalled that she’d even made elevator rides enjoyable, no easy task for a claustrophobic like himself.

  “I think I have a girlfriend,” he said, grinning. “She has pink hair.”

  Lara snorted a laugh. “Yeah, I met her. Pink hair and a black soul. You really know how to pick ’em.”

  “Oh, that’s rich,” he told her, “coming from a felon.”

  As soon as the words left his mouth, several things happened at once.
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br />   Lara whipped around to face him, jerking her hair from his grasp.

  Their eyes widened and locked.

  And Doran remembered everything.

  It was like he’d yanked a veil from his face, and now free, he saw his past with perfect clarity. He was Doran Michael Spaulding, from Houston, Texas—the original Texas, not the terraformed knockoff in Sector Two. He’d had a brother once, a twin who shared his face. But that boy had died in a ball of flames, and Doran still had nightmares about it. His parents were Richard Spaulding and Elizabeth Kress-Spaulding, record holders for the world’s most bitter divorce. His dad owned Spaulding Fuel, and his mom had moved off world when she’d decided that her second-favorite child wasn’t worth raising. Doran still hated her for that, but not half as much as he missed her. He recalled that chocolate made him break out in hives, and his favorite food was fried green beans.

  Most important, he was not anyone’s servant.

  He grabbed the wall and used it to propel himself backward, away from Solara—her real name—until he was outside the tiny compartment. The distance was more for her protection than his. Rage boiled his blood, and there wasn’t a word vile enough to describe what he wanted to do to her.

  “Doran,” she whispered. “Hear me out.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.” Before she could advance on him, he slammed the door shut and trapped her inside. “Ever again.”

  She slapped her palms on the door, piercing his ears with the clank of metal. “I had no choice,” she shouted, loud enough for him to hear on the other side. “You were going to leave me stranded in the middle of nowhere!”

  “What did you do to me?” he demanded. “Hit me on the head? Drug my food?”

  She waited a few beats before admitting, “It was a handheld stunner.”

  Neuro-inhibitors. That explained a lot.

  He shook his head in disgust, recalling the way she’d offered her hand to him after their argument on the Zenith. He’d actually felt too guilty to accept it, and now look. She’d trussed him up in workmen’s coveralls and plundered his credit account. His first instincts had been right. Once a felon, always a felon.

  “Kidnapping is low,” he yelled. “Even for you.”

  Her fists pounded twice against the door. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Save your breath.” He glanced around the room for a way to wedge the door shut. “I know who I am, and soon the captain will, too.”

  “Wait, no!”

  If he could just find a crowbar to shove through the door handle…

  “Doran, listen to me,” she shouted. “You don’t want to tell the crew who you are.”

  He grabbed a floating bungee cord and used it to tether the door handle to a nearby hook in the wall. The tension wasn’t as strong as he’d like, but it should hold long enough for him to alert the captain.

  “Remember the buzzing last night?” she went on. “That wasn’t the engine. It was a warning blast from the Enforcers. This crew is running from the law.” When he turned and prepared to launch himself toward the stairs, she added, “These are the kind of people who might ransom you.”

  Her warning stopped him cold in his tracks.

  He reached out a hand to steady himself against the door, and then he wasn’t in the ship’s engine room anymore. For a sliver of a second, he was locked inside a dark closet. The air smelled musty and metallic, like mold and blood, and there wasn’t enough of it in the tiny space. He panted for oxygen and choked on acrid smoke while the echo of his brother’s screams filled his head.

  Doran gritted his teeth and told himself it wasn’t real.

  That closet doesn’t exist anymore. It burned to the ground.

  He opened his eyes and cemented himself in reality. He was safe.

  “You’re just saying that to save yourself,” he yelled. He couldn’t stop his voice from cracking.

  “I can prove it.” She must’ve pressed her lips to the door because she sounded close enough to stun him again. “They pulled the ship’s tracker. If you don’t believe me, go to the bridge and check. The port will be empty.”

  Doran rubbed his forehead and considered his options. He knew that criminals disabled their trackers, but that didn’t mean Solara was telling the truth. He needed to check—alone. He set off through the hallways and stairwells, flinching every time his weightless body thumped against the wall. Waking the crew was a bad idea, at least until he knew he could trust them. When he reached the top level, he gingerly slid aside the pilothouse door and shielded his face from the starlight streaming through the front window.

  Once his eyes adjusted to the brightness, he scanned the control panel until he found a red bull’s-eye with the acronym SLATS stenciled above it—Solar League Auto Tracking System. He pulled his way closer and dipped his finger into the circular depression where the tracker belonged. The port was empty, just as Solara had said.

  “Damn it,” he whispered.

  Leave it to her to book them on a ship full of fugitives.

  As much as he hated it, she was right. Revealing his identity to this crew was as smart as sticking his arm in an ore grinder. Just like the others, they’d hear the name Spaulding and see easy credits. His dad loved him enough to pay the ransom, but Doran wouldn’t put either of them through that hell again.

  Never again.

  Somehow he would have to let his father know he was safe, then lie low until the next outpost. His dad would send a private shuttle, maybe even pilot it himself to make sure everything was all right. That was what he’d done last year—walked right out of a shareholders meeting to fetch Doran from spring break during a mutated flu pandemic. Any other man would have sent an assistant. Not Richard Spaulding. He might be ruthless when it came to business, never hesitating to slash thousands of jobs to raise profits, but he believed in putting his son first. And unlike most men of his stature, he backed it up with action.

  In a sudden flood of relief, Doran remembered it was his father who’d sent him to Obsidian, for a job that was classified, not illegal. His vacation with Ava had been a ruse to throw off the competition. Once they arrived at the beach, he was supposed to send her home and retrieve a private ship, then continue to a set of coordinates and await further instructions. Now that the original plan had changed, maybe he and his father could travel there together.

  Doran blew out a breath. Everything would be all right.

  In the meantime, he’d have to play the part of Solara’s manservant. The idea made his jaw clench. What were the odds of them sharing a bedroom for the next few days without killing each other?

  About as likely as him admiring her toes ever again.

  After closing the pilothouse door, he followed the sounds of fists against steel to the impromptu holding cell he’d created on the bottom floor. He released his prisoner with a warning: “Try anything and I’ll shove you in the garbage chute, where you belong.”

  The little rat drifted into the open, shooting daggers with her eyes while her hair snaked out in all directions. Her nostrils flared as she heaved a furious breath. Now that she’d dropped the whole innocent act, she reminded him of Medusa. Which fit her true nature a whole lot better. “Well?” she forced through her teeth. “Believe me now?”

  He refused to acknowledge the question, instead turning and launching himself toward the stairs. “I’d estimate we’re at least two days from the nearest outpost. If we’re going to coexist until then, we need to establish some ground rules.”

  She smirked and followed. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Rule number one, I’ll keep the stunner,” he said, holding out his palm. The weapon might come in handy if the crew discovered his identity.

  “No way.” She pressed a protective hand to her side pocket. “How do I know you won’t use it on me?”

  “Because unlike you, I’m not a lowlife convict.” When she hesitated, he told her, “This is nonnegotiable.”

  “Fine. It only has one use left anyway.
” She tossed the button-like device into the air between them. “Rule number two,” Solara said. “We’re not sleeping together.”

  A snort of derision tore from his throat. “As if I’d share a bed with you.”

  “Then enjoy the floor.”

  “Why shouldn’t you take the floor?”

  She flashed a dimple at him. “Because I’m not the one at risk for ransom.”

  Anger flushed his skin. He couldn’t believe he’d ever thought she had an honest face. “You’re a real masterpiece, aren’t you? How many of my credits did you steal at that outpost?”

  “Hey, at least I didn’t leave you stranded there—like you tried to do to me.”

  “Clearly you would’ve been fine.”

  “If that’s what you think, then clearly you’re a pampered horse’s ass!”

  “You don’t know anyth—”

  A distant throat clearing interrupted their argument, and Doran turned to find Captain Rossi making his way toward them in the spry movements of a man accustomed to zero gravity, twice as quick in the air than on his feet. Doran studied the captain for any sign that he’d overheard something incriminating, but the only emotion etched on his wrinkled face was annoyance.

  Solara waved. “We were just coming to wake you. I fixed your gravity drive.”

  Rossi’s furry gray brows jumped.

  “I’ll bet you didn’t know,” Doran said to dispel suspicion, “that our Miss Brooks is a budding engineer.”

  The captain turned his dark eyes on her, but he didn’t say a word. He simply stared until the silence grew awkward, then drew a sudden breath and said, “There’s not much I do know about our Miss Brooks. I think it’s time to remedy that.”

  Solara paled a few shades and nodded. Judging by the twitch of her feet, she looked ready to pitch herself out the air-lock—a decision Doran fully endorsed.

  “Let’s talk over breakfast,” she squeaked. It was satisfying to watch her squirm, until she added, “My servant will cook for us.”