Again, Lira’s scales heated.
Again, she forced them to cool.
It was why she slept on metal, and with no sheets. Because the dreams became too real, and by the time she’d awoken, any bedclothes would have burned to cinders anyway.
A knock on the door pulled Lira from her thoughts.
It swung open, revealing Breck and Gilly again.
“I’m just resting,” Lira blurted out. A stupid, unbelievable lie.
Breck frowned, her hands on her hips. She had to duck to keep her head from hitting the doorway as she entered. “You’re sulking, Lira. And Marauders don’t sulk alone.”
Gilly tossed a deck of cards onto Lira’s lap. An expensive edition of Fleet, a game widely played across Mirabel.
“I just beat Breck,” she said, twirling one of her red braids around her finger. “And I think I would also like to beat you.”
Lira sighed. She couldn’t be beaten. Gilly knew it.
But she also knew how to make Lira feel better when it felt as if the galaxy was pressing in around her.
“Come on, then,” Lira said, waving the girls inside. Gilly giggled and settled cross-legged on Lira’s metal cot, smiling as she dealt out the glowing cards.
Lira looked down at her hand. A good set of armor, a solid few soldiers, but her weapon? Of course—a Godstars-damned sword. It was as if fate was laughing at Lira, reminding her constantly of Andi’s absence on the ship.
“What if they don’t make it out?” Gilly asked, laying down her first card.
An Explorer ship, quickly followed up by a fully trained pilot.
Plenty of attack power.
Lira cleared her throat, staring out the window at the floating pieces of twisted metal as she laid down a card to cancel Gilly’s attack ability for the turn. “They’ll make it out,” Lira said, even though she herself didn’t quite believe it. “Trust me. And if you can’t trust me, then trust Andi.”
“We trust you,” Breck said. She frowned as Lira dug into her pocket and popped a chunk of Moon Chew into her mouth. “If you keep chewing that stuff, you’re going to make me vomit.”
Moon Chew was her stress reliever. The sickly sweet substance wasn’t to everybody’s liking, but to Lira, it was one of her favorite things.
Lira spat a wad of it into the cup she kept by her cot. “Your turn, Gil.”
“I’ll draw a card instead.”
Lira nodded her permission.
“Andi is only mortal,” Breck said to both girls. “We don’t know who the Xen Pterrans are anymore, or what they’re capable of. If they’ve really got the capability to kidnap Valen Cortas and cart him across the galaxy without being seen or heard...it makes me wonder what they’ve been up to all these years.” She was staring out Lira’s window, ignoring the game of Fleet, as if she were able to see Andi from this distance. “It makes me wonder what else they could do, or have done, without the rest of Mirabel knowing.”
“We just have to hope,” Lira said, “that Andi and Dex have thought of that. And that Soyina can truly be trusted. Because right now...” She sighed as she remembered her aunt saying these very words, years ago, when the Wexen Pox swept across Adhira. “Hope is all we have.”
“Hope is a raging asshole,” Gilly said.
“Explain to me, Gilly,” Breck said with a sigh, “how exactly can an asshole rage?”
Lira choked on a sudden, unexpected laugh. “I swear, the two of you. You were both born with my brother’s sarcastic soul.”
“You’re dead,” Gilly said suddenly, slamming down three rare red-glowing cards.
Lira absentmindedly set down three more, the stats already having formed in her mind, the win instantaneous. “Apologies, Gil.”
Gilly howled a round of fresh curses, and Breck silently shook her head, finally giving up on censoring the young gunner’s language.
They played three more rounds, and soon Lira lost herself in the laughter of her friends, the swift dealing of cards from her fingertips, the revel in each and every win.
It wasn’t until she heard the knock on the door and turned to see Alfie walk in that the terrified ache returned to her chest. And a sudden smell came along with it, pungent and horrid enough to make her eyes water.
Gilly jumped up off the cot, her cards scattering to the floor, their light winking out. “How did you escape?”
Breck’s head whipped to her. “What are you talking about, Gil?”
Alfie glided over silently, his head tilted to the side. The smell arrived in full force with him. “With help from the Marauder’s Artificial Intelligence system, I was able to unscrew the bolts on the waste bay’s door to remove myself from the room. It would be most appreciated if you would remove further attacks on me from your in-flight agenda. It is in the best interest of your mission.”
Lira sat there, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Then a large bark sounded from across the room as Breck doubled over laughing. “Gilly, you beautiful little demon. You actually did it! You locked him in the waste bay!”
Gilly smiled smugly and crossed her arms.
Then a thought came to Lira. “Alfie, did you rebolt the door to the waste bay?”
Alfie cocked his oval head. Lira could see the gears moving in his body, as if he was deeply pondering her question.
“No, I did not reassemble the door. The mechanic bots should be reassembling it now.”
The three girls let out an exasperated moan.
“Alfie, you idiot,” Gilly groaned. “We don’t have mechanic bots on this ship.”
Lira bent over and nearly gagged from the smell.
Before they could let all hell loose on Alfie, the ship’s cool female voice spoke over their heads.
“Incoming message for Lira Mette.” After a moment, Memory added, “Hello, Alfie.”
Alfie glanced up. “Memory’s voice is very enticing to my inner programming. I should like to converse with her when you are done, Lira Mette.”
“Oh, Godstars,” Breck said. “Do not tell me our ship is about to hook up with the general’s AI.”
Lira raced to the opposite wall, tapping a holoscreen embedded into the metal. Seconds passed before the screen lit up and a message blinked into view.
She could practically feel the tension unwind from her muscles as she turned toward the waiting crew.
“It’s from Soyina,” Lira said, smiling as she swept past Alfie and out into the hall, where she raced toward the bridge, her fingers already itching to grab the Marauder’s wheel. “Time to go get our girl.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
* * *
ANDROMA
“ANDROMA! OH, GODSTARS, WAKE UP!”
She was lying in the darkness beside a burning ship. Her father’s voice called to her, muffled as if he were underwater.
His hands gripped her face, and they were warm against the frigid night.
She wanted to keep sleeping, but the voice was desperate. A pleading, almost ruthless thing that begged her to wake.
* * *
Andi opened her eyes and gasped.
Cold. It was so cold.
Dex hovered over her, his hands on either side of her face. “You’re alive,” he choked out. His breath slipped away from him in a thick cloud. His eyes were wide. Terrified, as if he’d been staring at her corpse. “I didn’t know if... I couldn’t live if you were...”
Shock overwhelmed her, and she struggled to keep the panic at bay. Her chest ached as if she’d been shot, each breath threatening to snap her apart. She tried to gasp in air, but there was a weight on her chest.
“Can you breathe?” Dex asked. “Stay with me, Androma!”
He began to pull something heavy off her. It felt as if he’d pulled a boulder from her chest.
She gasped in a breath and realized, with
horror, what had been on top of her.
A corpse.
Now when she breathed, she felt the cold press of something beneath her, like an uneven carpet. Slowly, with the rational side of her mind—the part that had been honed by years in military school and then, later, life on the Marauder with the girls—she gained control of her thoughts.
Assess the situation. Remember to breathe.
But Godstars...the smell. Andi choked on it. She looked left and right. Corpses, all around her.
She gasped in another breath. The weight of death and the pressing odor of decay were everywhere, filling the small transport ship they were in. Stiff, frozen fingertips pressed in between her shoulder blades. She felt the sharp prod of a bare foot leaning up against her knees. And finally, a woman’s hairless head, her four eyes wide and unblinking as Andi turned her face to get a closer look at her surroundings.
“Get me out.” Andi gasped again. In her mind, all she could see was Kalee, dead beside her in the transport ship, eyes closed, blood everywhere. “Get me out!”
Dex pulled and shoved and finally, finally, she was free.
He wrapped his arms around her and they practically tumbled backward. Together, Dex’s arms still around her, they sank back against a metal wall, the corpses near their toes looking as if they were trying to pull them back into the pile with dead, frigid fingers.
“What the hell happened?” Andi asked through her teeth.
“Soyina shot us,” Dex said. “She actually shot us.”
He was still holding her. Andi knew she should pull away, but he was so warm and the transport was so damned cold.
Finally, after she stopped shivering, Andi removed herself from Dex’s grasp and turned to look at their surroundings.
Low, rounded metal ceilings seemed to press in on her from overhead, the walls equally claustrophobic. There was a single door across the small space, and as Andi breathed in again and quivered from the putrid stench, she felt a rumble beneath her.
It was the unmistakable feeling of a ship’s engine roaring as a pilot, likely behind that closed door, accelerated. Her body swayed with the motion, which meant the ship was small.
The memories clicked into place. Soyina, that sneaky fiend.
Andi could still see the way the Revivalist had leveled a gun at them in their final moments inside Lunamere, still feel the pain that had bloomed across her body. Then darkness. A space as empty and unknown as a black hole. Soyina had made good on her promise to get them out of Lunamere, that much was true. But Andi had never imagined it like this, on a transport ship designed to cart dead bodies from Lunamere to the Junkyard, out past Dark Matter, where dead ships and even deader people swam endlessly through the starless sky.
Andi lurched to the right, and a wave of nausea hit her along with the scent.
She wouldn’t vomit.
The Bloody Baroness did not vomit.
Andi took another gasping breath, forced her body upright and promptly loosed the contents of her stomach.
Into Dex’s lap.
His mouth opened and closed as he stared at the mess.
Then, incredibly, he laughed. For a moment, she thought he’d lost his mind. But then the chaos of the past job and the realization that they had escaped Lunamere and lived to tell the tale swept over Andi.
She laughed with him. When she could laugh no more, she got a good look at him for the first time in the dim emergency exit light above their heads.
Beneath her sick mess, he was covered in dried blood that stained his black suit. A green-and-yellow bruise had spread across his forehead, as if he’d been smacked with a hammer the size of a fist.
She’d seen bruises like this before, from Gilly’s double-triggered gun. A stunner bullet, meant to incapacitate, but not kill.
Soyina, Andi thought again. She was devilishly smart, capable of completing their mission while saving herself at the same time. But this certainly hadn’t been part of the plan. And what if Soyina’s bullets hadn’t been stunners?
Black holes ablaze.
Death had never felt so close.
“We actually did it,” Andi said. “We actually made it out.”
Then her heart lurched against her chest.
Valen.
Andi turned, staring across the lumpy space, wide enough to fit thirty dead in a row.
“Help me find him,” she demanded. “Help me find Valen!” When Dex didn’t move, Andi cursed and began to dig through the cold dead on her own, swearing to the stars that if she’d screwed this up after all they’d gone through, after all the lives she’d stolen...
There. Across the pile at the opposite end of the transport, lying facedown, his shredded back open and bare. Andi crawled toward him, ignoring the disgust roiling in her gut, the feeling of wrongness spreading through her as her hands pressed down against frozen, scarred skin.
He was cold when she reached him, but his pulse was there. A delicate flutter. Dex finally joined her, and together they heaved him over onto his side, careful not to touch the lacerations on his back. The wounds looked like sharp claws had shredded his skin, allowed it to heal and shredded it all over again.
Andi’s gaze traveled to Valen’s face.
It was the first time she’d truly been able to stop and look at him, to study the way his features had changed in some places and stayed the same in others.
His hair was shorn near the scalp, but she recognized the dark mahogany color he’d had years ago. His cheeks were shallow, the bones protruding at sharp angles. And his lips, once full, were colorless and empty.
“It’s a wonder he’s not dead,” Dex said.
Andi found herself unable to respond. Staring at him was like staring at her past. But saving Valen—her one chance at redemption—hadn’t changed the emptiness she still felt inside.
The void was still there.
Seeing Valen had simply opened it up, and now it threatened to suck her back in.
“How long have we been out?” Andi asked.
Dex shrugged. “Not sure. I woke up and then I saw you and...”
She couldn’t forget the haunted look in his eyes when he woke her.
Soyina’s voice echoed in her mind. We didn’t, you know. Your comrade wanted to whine like a baby about his feelings for you.
But Dex wasn’t allowed to have feelings. He wasn’t allowed to look at Andi the way he had a few moments ago, wasn’t allowed to hold her face as if he were cradling the world in his hands.
Andi dismissed those thoughts. He’d been shocked. He’d thought his partner was dead. Of course he’d been concerned.
“Lira’s probably wearing a hole in the floorboards of my ship with her pacing.”
Dex raised a single brow. “My ship.”
She didn’t argue this time, knowing in her heart that she’d already won the fight long ago. With effort, Andi tore her eyes away from Valen. The job wasn’t done. She wouldn’t relax until they were back on her ship, reunited with her crew and had Valen taken to the med bay, where Alfie could get to work on healing him.
Plus, the smell was starting to get worse.
Asking for Dex’s help wasn’t one of her favorite things, especially after he’d just seen her lose control upon waking. But she knew he was the only way they’d be getting out of this damned transport before it emptied them out into the Junkyard.
“Dex.” She said his name like a sigh, hating the way it felt so familiar on her tongue.
They were too close together. Too alone, despite the corpses and Valen’s unconscious form beside them.
“Androma,” Dex replied, inclining his head.
“Do you remember the night you bypassed the locks on my door in your old Junker ship?”
“How could I ever forget?” Dex’s eyes glittered like stardust. “Your nightgown was—”
/> “Not a point of discussion right now,” Andi hissed, cutting him off. There was the old familiar annoyance. She sighed. “Can you do it again? To that door?”
He glanced past her shoulder, his eyes sparkling with a different sort of mischief as he nodded.
“Good,” Andi said. She looked down at her boots and began to remove their laces. They were strong and sturdy, luckily not frayed from the fight in Lunamere. “Then do it now.” She coiled the bootlaces around her fists, then pulled them taut. The strands sang with a satisfying twang.
“Are you going to kill me with your shoelaces, Baroness?” Dex asked.
Andi looked at Valen’s sleeping form, begging the Godstars to keep him breathing until they got him to the safety of the Marauder.
“No,” she said as she began to crawl back across the bodies. “But I am going to take care of the pilot once you get us through that door. And then you are going to fly us back to my ship.”
“Not you?” He raised a brow at her. “After all the fear you’ve instilled in others, you’re still too afraid to fly a—”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Andi spat out.
“Does your crew know?”
Andi was silent, and he smiled like he knew her secret.
Like he’d very much enjoy keeping it for himself.
* * *
Five minutes later, Andi sat in the copilot’s seat, a fresh corpse tossed in the pile behind the open door. Another tally, another face to haunt her. Dex took the throttle and angled the transport toward home—the glass starship that sat waiting like a gem in the starlit sky.
Chapter Thirty-Four
* * *
DEX
DEX’S SENSES WERE being wrongfully assaulted.
The mystery of the missing AI had finally been solved, leaving an unhinged waste bay door in its place, and now the scent of unmentionable things had begun to swim its way through every deck of the ship, rivaling the smell of the corpses. To add insult to injury, Andi’s crew of she-devils hadn’t stopped following her around since they’d nearly crash-landed in the Marauder’s small docking tunnel.
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