Cassia and Kane sat with their backs to the pilothouse door, each studying the bolts in the wall. The first mate had taken a seat on the edge of his navigation table, polishing his glasses over and over while the captain stood nearby, leaning on his crutch. No one was smiling—not even Renny.
“What happened?” Doran asked.
The captain gave a terse nod. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I won’t blow sunshine up your trousers. You’ve been made.”
“Made?” Doran asked. “Into what?”
Solara moved close beside him and stood on tiptoe to whisper, “It means your cover’s blown.”
Pulse hitching, he glanced around the room and checked for weapons or rope—signs that they meant to hold him hostage. When he saw nothing to that effect, he released a quiet breath. “So you know who I am?”
“We’ve always known,” Renny said. “Since the first night, when the Enforcers hailed us. They were looking for a missing Zenith passenger called Doran Spaulding. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.”
Doran cocked his head in disbelief. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“None of our business,” the captain replied. “But that’s not why I called you here.” He pulled a data tablet from inside his jacket and handed it over. “This just broadcasted on the emergency frequency. When I said you’ve been made, I meant on a galactic level.”
Doran took the tablet while Solara leaned in to read over his shoulder. It was an all points bulletin with his name and senior picture at the top, the cheesy one of him leaning against a tree with a football tucked under his arm. Beneath his smiling face were the instructions ARREST ON SIGHT.
He read the charges—conspiracy to defraud the government, theft, industrial espionage, obstruction of justice, resisting arrest—but they made no sense.
“I didn’t do any of this,” he said.
The captain told him, “Keep reading.”
When Doran continued to the bottom of the page, the real blow came, a bullet to the heart that knocked him back until he actually swayed on his feet.
AN ANONYMOUS CITIZEN REPORTED SPAULDING’S LAST KNOWN WHEREABOUTS AS PESIRUS. HIS DESTINATION IS OBSIDIAN, BY WAY OF OUTPOST #8774.
“I changed course,” the captain said. “Just in time.”
All Doran could do was nod and try to breathe. Ava had betrayed him. She’d said that she loved him, and then she’d told the Enforcers everything. Maybe he’d never intended to move in with her, but he had trusted her. Shared his bed with her. Told her secrets he’d never revealed to his friends, like how he still talked to his mother’s picture at night when he couldn’t sleep. A lump rose in his throat, but no matter how hard he swallowed, he couldn’t push it down.
He couldn’t believe she’d actually turned him in.
“There’ll be too much heat around Obsidian,” the captain went on. “So we’ll steer clear and head straight into the fringe.”
Pressure built behind Doran’s eyes, but he bit the inside of his cheek to ward off tears. He wouldn’t lose it. Not in front of the crew.
Solara’s hand appeared on his forearm. Her fingers bit into his flesh, the steady grip keeping him upright. She told the captain, “Let’s not make any decisions yet.”
“The choice is already made,” the captain said. “When it affects my ship, you don’t get a say.”
Doran’s ears pounded, forcing the argument to his periphery. He mumbled a hasty promise to compensate the crew for all the trouble he’d caused and then stumbled down the stairs on weak knees. He didn’t remember the trip back to his room, but the next thing he knew, he was sitting on the bed, staring at the wall.
What was he going to do next?
He had no way to reach his father. He might be able to send a message to his friends, but if Ava had sold him out, it stood to reason they would do the same. He didn’t know where to go, and every minute he spent on the run would make him look more guilty. Maybe he should turn himself in and trust the Spaulding attorneys to untangle this mess.
Too bad he was fresh out of trust.
A quick knock sounded at the door, and Solara stepped inside. She didn’t say anything, but he had a pretty good idea what was on her mind.
“You were right,” he told her. “Go ahead and say it.”
“I’m not here to gloat.”
“Yes, you are.” He would gloat if their roles were reversed. “Just leave me alone.”
“I want to show you something first.”
Doran was about to snap at her, but she stunned him into silence by peeling off her gloves and tucking them in her back pocket. Then she displayed her tattoos and gave him an eyeful. It would’ve shocked him less if she’d stripped nude.
She sat beside him on the bed and held a hand between them. From left to right in bold black ink, the markings read SLPC 33.87, SLPC 43.14.
“It’s Solar League Penal Code,” she explained. “The first number is for grand theft, and the second is for conspiracy. What that basically means is that I stole something worth a lot of money and tried to convince other people to help me.” She glanced at him. “But only the first part is true.”
He waited for her to go on.
“I never told anyone what really happened,” she said. “Not even the Enforcers who arrested me. But I’ll tell you if you still want to know.”
Once Doran managed to close his mouth, he nodded.
“It started with a boy,” she said while staring across the room. “He was an orphan like me, but nineteen and emancipated, with a job and an apartment that he shared with a few other guys. He wasn’t gorgeous or anything, but he paid attention to me. He always smiled when I walked by.” Going quiet for a moment, she picked at a cuticle. “No one ever looked at me the way he did. Like every other girl in town was ordinary and I was on fire.”
“Was he your boyfriend?” Doran asked.
She nodded. “He was my first boyfriend. My first love. My first kiss. And my first”—her cheeks flooded with color—“well, everything.”
“Everything,” he echoed in understanding. That was a lot of firsts for one boy to take from a girl. Doran could sense where this story was headed.
“Once he had me hooked,” she said, “he told me about a group of revolutionaries called the Patron Brotherhood. They were going to change the world—feed the hungry, help the poor, make it so everyone could afford to live on Earth. But to do that, they needed money.”
“Of course they did,” Doran said. He’d heard of this scam. “What did he ask you to steal?”
“The coolant coils and buffering plates from city trams,” she told him. “Worth a fortune on the black market. And there were a bunch of us in on it. We’d steal the parts, and then he would fence them and send the money to the Brotherhood.”
“Which didn’t exist.”
“And I had no idea,” she said. “When the Enforcers busted us, I stayed true to the cause. I told them nothing—didn’t say a word to defend myself. Not even when they offered me a plea deal.”
Doran was willing to bet her boyfriend hadn’t extended the same courtesy.
“And the whole time,” she went on, “he was pinning the operation on me.” She shook her head and scoffed. “In exchange for full immunity.”
“And because you refused to talk…”
“I took the blame by default.” She retrieved her gloves and pulled them on one slow finger at a time, as if telling the story had drained her. “The only reason I’m not in a penal colony is because the judge didn’t believe I was the ringleader.” She grinned. “I guess criminal masterminds don’t sob during their trials the way I did.”
“What happened to the boyfriend?” Doran asked.
Solara shrugged and traced a leather seam with her fingertip. “Nothing. I imagine he’s still running around out there, looking for new hearts to steal.”
Doran didn’t like hearing that.
“He told me I was special,” she said quietly. “And that was all it took to u
nravel my integrity. So you can probably understand why I don’t like talking about it. Or looking at my hands.”
Doran nodded. All that made sense. What he didn’t understand was why she’d shared her story with him. “Why did you tell me? We’re not even friends.”
“Because we’re members of a secret club now,” she told him. “Both of us were used up and betrayed and thrown away by the people we loved.”
“I never loved Ava.”
“But still,” Solara said.
“But still,” he agreed. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“It didn’t happen to me. I made it happen.”
Doran glanced at her hands, now concealed beneath black leather. He wanted to confess the real reason he had panicked when he’d first seen her tattoos, but he couldn’t get the words past the knot in his chest. So instead, he said, “I guess we’re stuck with each other.”
She gave him a sad smile, and he realized for the first time that her eyes were hazel, not simply brown or green. A starburst of warm amber surrounded her pupils, giving way to olive-hued irises that were rimmed in glowing emerald. The effect was striking. Odd that he’d never noticed before.
Looking into those smiling eyes, he felt a little less alone.
“Guess so,” she said. “Too bad you make lousy tea.”
In the weeks that followed, Solara settled into an unspoken cease-fire with Doran, neither hostile nor friendly. They hadn’t shared any more secrets since the day she showed him her tattoos, but he’d stopped calling her a felon. And while she still coerced him into galley cleanup and cargo loading, it was only in the interest of improving their standing with the crew, not out of spite.
Well, okay. Maybe a teensy bit out of spite.
She couldn’t deny the tingle of satisfaction that came from watching Doran get his hands dirty. With each new chore, his fingernails lost a little more of their sheen. A few blisters on his palms had hardened into calluses, and in her opinion, that was far more attractive on a guy than baby-soft skin.
So really, she was doing him a favor.
“You missed a spot,” she told him, pointing at a patch of mildew encircling the bathroom drain. The ship’s recycled air was so dry that only the hardiest molds took root, making them nearly indestructible. “That’s going to take some serious elbow grease.”
Doran took a break from his work to sit back against the wall. He dragged an arm across his sweaty forehead and locked those indigo eyes on her, the heat of physical labor glowing brightly behind his gaze. He released a tired chuckle that lifted one corner of his lips, and for a split second, a tiny pair of angel wings fluttered behind Solara’s navel.
She rubbed a hand over her stomach to erase the sensation. She was probably just excited about shower day. Nothing more than that.
“Feel free to show me how it’s done,” he told her.
“Nice try.” She slung her towel over the nearest stall and hooked her caddy of toiletries to the showerhead. “I spent all day turning the engine inside out to find the reason for that screeching sound.” With no luck. “This shower has my name on it.”
“We paid ten thousand fuel chips for this trip,” he said, tossing aside his scrub brush. “And by we, I really mean I.”
“So?”
“So are you sure all this extra work is making a difference?”
“Of course,” Solara told him while pulling a hairpin free. “It’s endearing us to the crew.”
“Doesn’t look that way to me,” he said. “The captain’s getting free labor, and he still won’t take me to Obsidian.”
She pointed her hairpin at him. “Not with that attitude, he won’t.”
“Psh,” Doran scoffed. “I doubt a few smiles will change anything.” In demonstration, he flashed his teeth and used both hands to frame a grin. “Not even on this pretty face.”
Solara laughed with her whole belly. Lame as it was, that might’ve been the first joke she’d ever heard Doran tell. “Patience, my attractive friend. I’ll get you to Obsidian.”
Still smiling, he arched a brow. “I thought we weren’t friends.”
“We’re not.”
“Then what are we?”
“You want a label?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I think I do.”
She thought about it while combing out her hair. They’d attended the same academy, but the word classmates implied a certain level of camaraderie that didn’t apply to the boy who’d once uploaded a picture of her stained coveralls to his SnapIt account to prove she’d worn the same pair twice in a row. Last month she had considered Doran an enemy, but that didn’t apply, either. They were in uncharted territory now, feeling their way one day at a time.
“Cohorts,” she finally decided. “That’s how the Enforcers would classify us.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Cohorts. That sounds sketchy.”
“If the shoe fits…”
“Or the gloves, as it were,” he said, nodding at her hands. “I was right. You do shower with them on.”
That wasn’t true and he knew it, so she didn’t bother with a reply.
“You should stop wearing them. Nobody here cares about your markings. By hiding them, you’re giving the ink too much power.”
“Oh, so you’re a therapist now?” she asked.
“It’s just common sense.” Abruptly, his lips pulled into a frown, and he stared at his own knuckles in silence. A shadow passed over his face, making Solara wonder what he was thinking. “Believe me,” he muttered. “If I can stand to look at your ink, then so can you.”
If he could stand to look at her?
Her shoulders rounded as she shrank into herself, stung more than she wanted to admit by the careless words. “It’s like English is your second language,” she said. “And your native tongue is Jackass.”
His head snapped up. “What?”
She fisted her gloved hands until the leather creaked, but it didn’t stop the ache growing inside her chest. She shouldn’t have shared her story with him. It hadn’t changed anything. All she’d done was give him the power to hurt her. “Should I be flattered that the Great Doran Spaulding can bring himself to look upon my tattoos?”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Just get out,” she said, jabbing a finger at the door. “You’re not going to ruin my shower the way you ruin everything else.”
He shook his head in contempt and pushed to standing. As he passed by, he mumbled, “I don’t know why I bother trying.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” she said. “I’m downgrading you from cohort to accessory.”
“You can kiss my accessory.”
“In your dreams!”
The washroom door slammed shut, but the argument wasn’t over. At least not in Solara’s head. She cursed Doran while yanking off her shirt and throwing it against the wall. Then she did the same with her clothes and boots until she stood naked in nothing but her fingerless gloves. She studied the worn leather and chewed her bottom lip before tearing the casings off and tossing them onto the pile. As much as she wanted to banish his voice, she couldn’t help wondering if he was right.
Had she given the ink too much power?
Standing beneath a steaming spray of water, she used one hand to wet her hair while holding up the other for inspection. Soon the heat reddened her skin and reminded her of sentencing day, when the Enforcers had marked her. The law entitled her to topical painkiller, but that hadn’t stopped her knuckles from swelling too large to fit inside her gloves. She’d returned to the group home with no way to hide her shame. The other orphans had known better than to ask questions, but they’d whispered when her back was turned. Even worse was knowing how deeply she’d disappointed Sister Agnes, who’d blamed herself for teaching Solara mechanics in the first place. She would never forget the humiliation of wearing her mistakes on both hands like a flashing beacon for the whole world to see.
As punishments went, this one was effective—with plenty of po
wer all its own.
“Screw you, Doran,” she muttered under her breath. As usual, he didn’t know his ass from his elbow.
She squeezed a dollop of shampoo into her palm, but before she had a chance to put it in her hair, her body lurched forward and she hit the stall face-first. A jolt of pain exploded behind her right cheekbone, replaced by the sharp ache of her backside suddenly meeting the floor. The violence was over as quickly as it had begun, and in the span of two heartbeats, she was sitting on the wet tile, panting in shock.
A metallic taste crossed her lips, and she dabbed her cheek to find it bleeding. She crawled back to the shower and turned off the water, then grabbed her towel. By the time she wrapped it snugly around her dripping body, her brain had recovered enough to process what’d happened. Because there was no noise of impact, the inertia that had catapulted her into the wall must’ve been caused by a figurative slamming of the brakes. Which could only mean one thing.
The accelerator had come loose again.
She tugged on her clothes while muttering every curse in her vocabulary. When she reached the engine room, her right eye was swollen shut. The good news was that it only took one eye to diagnose the problem. The bad news was she couldn’t do a thing to fix it.
“The accelerator’s fine,” she called toward the noise of approaching footsteps. “But your propellant cell sprang a leak. You need a new one.”
Renny appeared beside her, leaning in to look at the lime-green ooze fizzing and bubbling on the engine room floor. The substance’s bark was louder than its bite. Once exposed to oxygen, propellant lost its combustive properties—a safety feature to keep the ship from exploding. Each sizzling pop faded softer than the last, and within seconds, it was nothing more than a placid puddle of goo.
“Can we scoop it up and put it back inside?” Renny asked.
Solara shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“Where are we going to get a new—” He cut off, eyes flying wide as he glimpsed her face, and shouted, “Oh my god!”
She gently probed her swollen cheek. “That bad, huh?”
Renny reached out to touch her but quickly drew back his hand. “You might need a stitch or two. I’ll get Cassia to bring the med bag.”
Starflight Page 10