“What about the explosive rocks?” she asked, pulling a bag from her pocket. “I still have some left.”
Doran took the bag and shook its contents into his palm—two chunks of ore. “Two chances,” he murmured. “That’s all we get.”
“You throw and I’ll shoot,” she told him. Doran didn’t point out her questionable aim, but she must’ve known he was thinking it, because she added, “I won’t miss.”
Nodding, Doran rose to his feet and gauged the distance between himself and the departing shuttle. Then he drew back his good arm and launched the first rock into the air. The ore sailed into range behind the craft, and Solara fired three blasts in quick succession.
She missed.
“Again!” she shouted.
With the shuttle gaining speed, Doran took his last bit of ore and gimped forward in a jog. When he knew he couldn’t create any more momentum, he used every muscle in his core to hurl the rock at the shuttle, grunting as he released it.
Don’t miss, he prayed while he watched the ore fly into the distance.
This was their last chance.
Please don’t miss.
Gripping the pistol in both hands, Solara fast-tapped the trigger and filled the dim evening sky with pulses of brilliance. Doran lost count of how many shots missed the mark and bounced off the hull. But then a ball of light appeared, growing brighter until he had to shield his eyes. A thunderclap rent the air, and he peeked between his fingers as the tail end of the shuttle blew apart. The blast must have breached the fuel tank because another explosion took hold, and the next thing Doran knew, engine parts were raining from the sky.
Twisted ankle be damned, he grabbed Solara’s hand and ran toward safer ground. Metal fragments pounded the landscape, each one spurring his adrenaline until he couldn’t feel anything except the drag of half-empty air into his lungs. They’d just dodged a sheet from the hull when Doran’s body collapsed beneath his weight.
He couldn’t go any farther, not without air.
Solara dropped to her knees beside him and yanked free his oxygen tube, replacing it with hers. He started to object, but she shushed him.
“We’ll share it,” she said. “Cover your face to slow the leak.” From within his hissing helmet, Doran heard the com-link fizzle to life, followed by Solara’s message to the crew. “Renny, I need an immediate track-and-intercept,” she said. “We’ve got five minutes of oxygen to split between us. Do you copy?”
At first, there was only silence. Then Renny’s voice came through the link with four of the finest words in the English language: “We’re on our way.”
“Your chief is dead,” Doran shouted to the fifty or so pirates kneeling before him in the great hall later that night. This was the largest room on board with an oxygen supply, so the survivors who’d surrendered their weapons had gathered here. Rows of men bent their heads toward the floor, fingers laced behind their necks as they awaited judgment. He had no plans to kill them, but they didn’t need to know that.
“You’re alive by the mercy of Daro the Red,” Solara continued, resting a hand on the pulse rifle slung over her shoulder. “If you choose to bear his mark, you’ll leave here on shuttles that I’ve repaired for you. But on two conditions. First, that you never return to this wreckage site, or to the planet below it. And second, that you’ll repay Daro’s kindness if he ever calls on you for a favor.”
“If anyone objects to those terms,” Doran said, “I’m happy to escort you to the nearest air-lock.”
Not surprisingly, there were no objections.
The pirates remained on their knees until Doran summoned them, one by one, to the stage at the front of the room. There they swore allegiance to him and rolled up their sleeves to expose both wrists. Each previous chief had made a coin-size mark in the flesh, visible now as thin scars or faded tattoos. The younger Brethren wore only a single image, having served no one else but Demarkus Hahn, while seasoned veterans had brands halfway up the lengths of their forearms. Doran added his mark above the rest, an interlocking DR monogram stamped in thermal ink that would cool if he activated it.
“When this grows cold,” he explained, “you’ll know I’m calling for you.” Then he provided a radio frequency where he would leave instructions if that day ever came.
Once the pirates accepted Doran’s mark, Solara ushered them to the last functioning transport air-lock, where Renny and Gage filled the shuttles to capacity and sent them on their way. The crew kept the process moving, and in the span of a few hours, they’d fully evacuated the ship.
With that task completed, they returned to the Banshee to tend to broken bones, lacerations, and laser burns. Doran meant to ask his brother if they could spend the night in the comfort of the underground bunker, but his brain shut out coherent thought as soon as Solara fastened a splint around his wrist. He kissed her on the cheek and collapsed onto the bed, fully clothed and neglecting to eat dinner.
Cheating death was exhausting.
At first light the next morning, Doran changed into fresh clothes and scrubbed his face, then gathered with the crew in the galley. Even Gage joined them, electing to take the seat at the farthest end of the table. The thick scent of porridge hung in the air, but bowls remained untouched as each of them stared at the metal crutch resting on the table.
It was all they had left of their captain.
Acorn padded into the room, her nose twitching as she sniffed for her lost “mother.” She climbed the wall and glided onto the table, where she scurried up and down its length in desperation. When she couldn’t find the captain, she let out a heartbreaking whine that sent Cassia rushing out of the galley. She returned wearing a faded blue jacket that hung to her knees, her hands lost somewhere inside the depths of its enormous sleeves. It must have been one of the captain’s, because the instant she sat down, Acorn chirped and took a nosedive into the breast pocket.
Cassia stroked Acorn’s head with a thumb. “Now we can start.”
Renny gave her a nod and stood from the head of the table. “I met Phineas Rossi when I was at the lowest point in my life,” he said. “About six months after I left home. We were in this seedy outpost bar in the middle of nowhere, and he caught me picking his pocket.” Renny smiled as if replaying the memory. “He bloodied my lip. Then, when he realized I’d taken a grease pencil instead of his money, he laughed and bought me a drink.”
Kane chuckled softly, and Cassia rested her head on his shoulder.
“He’d just bought a small cargo ship from a repo man,” Renny continued. “He told me the Banshee wasn’t much to look at, but if I wanted to join him, it’d probably beat stealing pocket lint from strangers. I had nothing to lose, so I came on board as a general hand. A week later he learned I could navigate, and he promoted me to first mate—just like that. Without knowing anything about me, except that I made his pills disappear.” Renny paused to remove his glasses and scrub away a tear. “He gave me a new life, and in the years after that, he gave me his friendship. I don’t know which I value more, because I needed both.”
“Remember when his Beatmaster charging paddle went missing?” Cassia asked with a sniffle. “Everyone blamed you, except the captain. And he was right. It turned out I was the one who’d stuck it in the wrong drawer.”
“It takes a big man to trust a thief,” Renny agreed.
Doran felt Solara sit up straighter beside him. She studied her tattooed knuckles and seemed to hesitate for a few beats. “That’s what I loved most about him,” she said. “I used to hate looking at my markings. But the captain taught me they don’t mean anything. Because I’m more than the sum of my mistakes.”
Doran took one of her hands and interlaced their fingers. “Captain Rossi showed more faith in me than my own father did.” He tried not to think about when he’d see his father again, if ever. The wound was too fresh. “I always put my dad on a pedestal, but he must’ve had a low opinion of me if he thought I’d turn against my own brother.”
Gage didn’t respo
nd, but color fanned out on his cheeks. Probably because not too long ago he’d shared that same low opinion.
“Biology doesn’t make anyone a parent,” Cassia added as she tucked her Eturian prayer stone beneath her shirt. She kissed her fingertip and pressed it on Acorn’s head. “The captain would’ve died before letting me go to auction. I can’t say the same for my parents. They only ever saw me as a commodity.”
That silenced the room until Gage cleared his throat. He poked at his porridge with a spoon, never looking up when he said, “I didn’t know Rossi for very long, but he seemed like a good man. I’m sorry he’s gone.”
“Thank you,” Renny said in that gentle way of his. “We’re going to miss him.” He spoke without a hint of resentment, as if Gage hadn’t held the crew at gunpoint and locked them inside his lab twenty-four hours earlier.
That was when it occurred to Doran that Captain Rossi wasn’t the only person who’d changed everyone on board the ship. They owed their lives to the first mate, too. Placing one hand on the crutch in front of him, Doran said, “Nobody can replace the man we lost. But the Banshee needs a captain, and I nominate Renny for the job.”
“Seconded,” Solara said with a firm nod.
While Renny blinked behind his glasses, Kane asked, “All in favor?”
“Aye,” called five synchronized voices, including Gage’s.
Doran turned to Renny. “It’s unanimous. The job isn’t easy and the pay probably sucks, but I can’t imagine anyone else but you at the helm. Do you accept?”
After much blushing and stammering, Renny told them yes, and they sealed the deal with a toast of watered-down Crystalline from his private reserve.
“So where to next?” Renny asked, setting down his drained glass. “The cargo hold will be empty soon, and our paying passengers have turned into crew. I can probably pick up a few jobs under the radar, but nothing’s changed.”
Nobody had to ask what that meant. Each of them was a fugitive from something or other—the law, the mafia, a distant kingdom at war. It seemed their only option was to make a life in the fringe, a prospect Doran had once considered worse than prison. Now he found himself grinning.
He settled a hand low on Solara’s back, confident that with her by his side, he could be happy anywhere. He thumbed at his brother. “I have an Infinium connection. Just think what we could do if we never had to buy fuel again.”
“We could work as traders,” Solara suggested. “That’s halfway respectable.”
“As long as the other half is shady,” Kane teased. “Otherwise, where’s the fun in that?”
“Half-shady traders,” Doran said, testing it out. “That sounds like us.” He glanced down the table at his brother, already knowing his response but needing to ask anyway. “Want to come along? That fancy compound has to feel small sometimes.”
Gage answered with a smile that was barely a smile at all. It probably didn’t look like much to anyone else, but to Doran it spoke volumes. The twinkle in his brother’s eyes was the same he remembered from their childhood, and for a brief moment they weren’t on the Banshee anymore. They were laughing beneath the roof of a blanket fort, using flashlights to illuminate their gap-toothed faces. He knew change wouldn’t happen overnight, but the warm feeling behind his breastbone promised that one day they’d laugh like that again.
“I’ll take a rain check,” Gage said. “Right now I have my own work to do.” He started to say something more, but then he reached into his pocket, and his smile died.
“What’s wrong?” Doran asked.
“My data drive,” Gage said, standing from the bench and frantically patting himself down. “I had it with me yesterday. All my research is on there. If anyone finds it, they can access my files and sell them to the highest bidder.”
While the crew scanned the floor and peppered Gage with questions—“Where did you see it last?” “Is it in another pair of pants?”—Renny quietly emptied the contents of his pockets onto the table: three fuel chips, a marble, some bits of plastic, a small pink device, and, most important, one golden file drive. The group released a collective breath as Renny slid the data drive across the table.
“Sorry about that.”
Cassia snatched up the pink tool and shook it at him. “What is it with you and my laser blade? It’s like a conspiracy to keep me hairy.”
“Told you I didn’t take it,” Kane said, slanting her a glance.
“This time,” she retorted with a flip of her dreads.
“Don’t start, you two,” Solara warned them. “There’s still some juice left in my stunner, and I’m not afraid to use it.”
Renny reached deeper into his pocket and produced her handheld stunner. “Then you’ll want this back.”
Doran couldn’t help laughing. He glanced at his brother, expecting to find a horrified expression on his face. But Gage watched the exchange with fascination, and another emotion Doran recognized from his own time on the Banshee: a desire to belong. He’d wanted that as well. Maybe they weren’t so different.
“Come on,” Doran said, and clapped his brother on the shoulder. In three days, their mother would return, and he intended to be long gone by then. “I hear there’s a perfectly good beach simulator in that complex of yours.”
Gage nodded, a challenge behind his gaze. “And a flag football set.”
“No way.”
“Way.”
“You know what this means, right?”
“Yeah, I know,” Gage said, and delivered the kind of menacing grin that only a brother could get away with. “It means you’re going down.”
Warmth was a rare delicacy in space.
Solara had almost forgotten how exquisite sunlight felt on her skin, and she couldn’t stop humming with the simple pleasure of it. These simulator lamps were almost as good as the real thing. Reaching both arms over her head, she stretched out on the beach towel until her fingers and toes met the silky caress of sand. The fine grains had absorbed the heat from above, and she buried both hands to soak it up. They only had a few hours before it was time to leave. She didn’t intend to take one second for granted.
“Mmm,” she said again, smiling. “This is heaven.”
Though her eyes were closed, she knew Doran was watching her. She could tell by the way he circled her navel with an index finger. He didn’t seem to share the opinion that she looked ridiculous in her makeshift bikini of shorts paired with a cutoff T-shirt. It wasn’t long before his touch began to wander, straying to the ticklish curve of her waist.
With a giggle, she rolled onto her stomach and rested one cheek on the towel. “When you promise a vacation, you really deliver,” she said. “If I get any more relaxed, you’ll have to scoop my melted body off the sand.”
“It’s no private yacht in the Caribbean, but it’ll do.”
“No private yacht,” she repeated, mocking him. “This room is a wonder.”
Squinting against the light, she opened her eyes to take in the turquoise water gently lapping at the sand. The wave pool was designed to mimic the ocean, an effect achieved by its sloping floor, and it resembled the real thing if she didn’t look too closely.
“I changed my mind,” Doran said, walking two fingers along her lower back. “Forget yachts and snorkeling in the open sea. This vacation is perfect because it gives us the one thing we can’t find on Earth.”
“Hmm?” she asked. “What’s that?”
He leaned down until the warmth of his bare chest met her shoulders. Then his mouth was at her ear, whispering, “Total privacy.”
Before she could agree with him, he brushed his lips along the sensitive bend of her neck and rendered her speechless. With his body so close, a new kind of heat settled between her hipbones, quickening her breaths in time with her pulse. She rolled over for a kiss, but instead of lowering his mouth to hers, he lay on his side and propped on one elbow, gazing at her with the expression of someone seeing the stars for the first time.
The shift in
him caught her off guard. “What’s the matter?”
At first he didn’t say anything. He brushed back a stray tendril of hair that had escaped her braid and caressed her cheek while his eyes moved over her face. Then he wrinkled his brow as if trying to solve a quadratic equation. “Sometimes I look at you, and it feels like my chest is caving in. How do you do that to me?”
Solara’s lips parted. How did she do it? She could very well ask him the same question, but she didn’t. Because like so many other times when she was alone with Doran, the words wouldn’t come. She didn’t know why, only that there seemed to be a disconnect between her heart and her voice. Maybe she loved him more than words.
Instead of talking, she threaded her fingers in the dark hair behind his neck and pulled him down for a kiss with all her heart behind it. She hoped that someday she would be able to turn feelings into conversation. Until then, she’d have to show him. And she did. They were so tangled up in each other that they didn’t hear the door open.
“Aw, come on,” Kane drawled. “Take your burning love somewhere else.”
“Seriously,” Cassia agreed. “Some of us are trying to keep our lunches down.”
While Solara threw them a withering look, Doran groaned, keeping both eyes shut as he swiveled his face in their direction. “Didn’t you read the sign?”
“What sign?” Kane asked, glancing around for the best spot to plant his folding chair.
“The one I hung on the door this morning,” Doran told him.
“Oh,” Cassia said. “The board that says ‘Stay Out’?”
“That’s the one.”
“I thought that only applied to pirates,” she told him, and spread a blue-striped towel on the sand. “Or the Daeva.”
“Public beach, guys,” Kane added with that flirty grin—the one he knew didn’t work on them but insisted on using anyway.
Solara exhaled long and slow. She asked in Doran’s ear, “What’s that you were saying about yachts and privacy?”
He laughed without humor. “The open sea isn’t looking too bad now, is it?”
Starflight Page 28