She smiled. “Yes and yes. Is the fact that I’m pink and he’s brown confusing you a little?”
“No, I just ... well, I ... I just wasn’t sure what to call you, exactly.”
I am such an idiot.
Mama B. pursed her lips, but the corners of her mouth quivered, like she was trying to suppress a laugh and look stern all at once. “Tabitha, honey, do you want to throw your clothes in the wash while we have power? I can loan you some of mine. They might not fit perfect, but it’ll be better that way if you’re going out. I have a cabby hat I can give you too. I used to steal Frederick’s all the time.” She smiled and sipped her coffee.
“Frederick?” I asked.
“Jordan’s father. He never minded my cabby hat thievery. He was a good man. Jordan’s a lot like him. Looks just like him too.”
“Well, he must have been very hot—er ... uh, handsome.”
On fire this morning. Absolutely on fire.
“Ah, so you think Jordan’s handsome? Well, I think you have excellent taste, honey. Of course, I am completely biased.”
I smiled in spite of myself. She was so disarming, so seemingly oblivious of my blundering, so ... motherly.
“Go on into my room, find whatever’s in that closet that’ll fit you, and get dressed, hon. Big day ahead of you.”
I walked into the other room and started rifling through the closet. “How long do you guys usually have power?”
“At our house, we usually max out around two in the afternoon on a day like today. When we aren’t doing chores, we can sometimes make it last until seven or eight at night. Helps that we’re gone so much of the day. I don’t know how Caleb and his wife manage it with four small children.”
“Children? I didn’t see any—”
“Oh, they were safely tucked away long before you two arrived.”
I exhaled as the full weight of the danger I had put these people in hit me. I tried to keep the conversation light. “Wouldn’t it be aces if you could save up power somehow?”
“Or at least install your own solar panels,” she replied.
“Yeah.” I pulled on a tunic and cinched my belt around it, then shimmied into Mama B.’s jeans. They fit around my waist, but the legs stopped partway up my calf. I pulled my boots on and stuffed the ends of the jeans into the tops.
Problem solved.
Mama B. came in as I was zipping up the sides of my boots. “This tavern we stay at on Mars has solar panels. Only nobody cares because it’s Mars.”
Mama B. laughed. “You must have had some crazy adventures.”
I sighed. “Yeah. Crazy adventures that have put all of you in danger.”
“You’ll have to tell me all about it over breakfast.”
I swallowed hard. Not the topic I really wanted to get into over eggs. Still, I followed her up the steps and out into the bottom floor of the townhouse. We walked up to the second level where the kitchen was. Caleb’s wife was fussing over breakfast and three very small children. I felt awkward and unsure of how to help, so I fidgeted with the hilt of my knife and tried to avoid making eye contact with the little guys.
Berrett, on the other hand, seemed perfectly at ease. In between shoveling down mouthfuls of scrambled eggs and toast, he played peek-a-boo with a kid in a high chair.
I thought I was safe, that the tiny monsters would be engrossed by Berrett, but one of them wandered over to me and tugged on my borrowed tunic.
“Escews me?” asked the boy. His dark curls framed round, ruddy cheeks. I coughed and looked away, but the little one was relentless in his quest for my attention.
“Escews me?” He tugged on my tunic so fiercely that it threw me off balance and I had to kneel down.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
Obnoxious little monster.
“Are you a pwincess?”
My mouth opened, but no words came out. I had no idea how to respond to that. Caleb’s wife laughed and Mama B. smiled. I went red in the face. “No, kid,” I said gruffly.
“Huh. I fought you was.”
The boy went back to his breakfast. I tried to shake off the urge to smile as I filched a piece of bacon and quickly snarfed it down.
“Buster, she is most certainly not a princess,” said Berrett. He grinned over his shoulder at me. I tried to squelch the sensation of butterflies taking flight in my stomach.
“Maybe, maybe she’s a dwagon hunter!” said Buster.
He took his fork and made it fly around and growl.
“Yeah, that’s what I am,” I said. I took the plate that Mama B. handed me and sat across from Berrett. “Tabitha Dixon, Dragon Slayer.”
“Isn’t that a bit cannibalistic?” asked Berrett.
I glared at him and threw a piece of toast at his chest.
“Children,” said Mama B. “Behave.”
“Yes, Mama,” said Berrett. He kicked my shin lightly under the table. I cried out in disgust.
Mama B. folded her arms and unleashed a look only a mother could give. “Jordan, let the girl eat.”
Berrett frowned and turned his attention to his remaining breakfast.
I smirked, and then started counting tiny monster heads. One, two, three .. “Thought you said there were four.”
“There are,” said Caleb’s wife. She put down her spatula and shook my hand. “I’m Gwen. Sorry we didn’t really meet yesterday. My oldest is on her way to school.”
I bit down on my lower lip. “I’m very sorry to have put your family in so much danger. I’d hate to think what would happen if—”
“Nonsense. You’re safe for now, as long as we keep you under wraps. The people around here are not exactly friendly toward the SUN. You could have marched in our doors in broad daylight and no one in this neighborhood would have said a word.”
“So why’d they come here?” I asked.
“The network,” said Mama B. “The SUN has access to everyone you know, and everyone they know. It’s quite easy for them to use that information to track down anyone connected to a crime, and then threaten to harm those loved ones if the criminal doesn’t emerge.”
My eyes widened. “Did they threaten you?”
“Don’t worry about it, Tabitha,” replied Gwen. “It’s nothing we can’t handle.”
I stared at Berrett. “What can I do? I can’t just stay here and endanger you like this.”
“Help me fold laundry,” said Mama B. “It’ll give us a good chance to get to know each other.”
After breakfast, Gwen had a long list of chores that needed doing. While she cleaned the kitchen, Berrett attacked the bathrooms and Mama B. and I sat down to fold huge piles of laundry.
Mama B. laughed as she folded the small homemade shirts and trousers. “It never ceases to amaze me that someone so tiny could create such a giant trail of destruction.”
“Yeah,” I replied. The guilt woke up inside me and stretched its legs, tickling my insides with the memory of my own trail of terror.
“So, your family. Tell me about them,” said Mama B.
I focused hard on folding the clothes in front of me.
“I assume Berrett told you why we are here?”
She nodded. “Just me, though. The others know you are in trouble with the SUN, but they don’t know why. They don’t particularly care, and your secret is safe with me.” She pointed to the chain around my neck and winked.
“Look ... this is hard for me. I’ve spent my whole life trying to disguise who I am and protect what I have, and in the past forty-eight hours countless people have discovered the truth about me and the vial.”
“I know, honey, and I wouldn’t ask except it’s important for me to hear it from you. And to tell you the truth, it’s good for you to talk about something you’ve been locking up inside you for so long.”
I sighed. “You sound like Miriam.”
“Who’s that?”
“Every cargo ship in the system has to have a medic or a healer on board at all times. Miriam is a healer,
and instead of just coming along for the ride, she actually takes her job seriously.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Not when she goes poking around in my head trying to figure me out. I don’t even have me figured out.”
Mama B. smiled. “You don’t have to have you figured out to talk about things that matter to you, though. Sometimes it’s when you’re talkin’ that you find out what it is you really feel.”
I scrunched my lips to the side and sighed. “I’m a terrible, terrible person.”
Mama B. laughed out loud. “Really?”
She saw my face fall and the tears threatening to spill from my eyes, and she put a hand on mine. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. You go ahead.”
I hung my head and a tear landed on the small shirt I was folding. “My parents and my brother are dead because of me.”
“Oh, honey. I’m sure that’s not true, but go ahead and talk to me about why you think that.”
“The SUN suspected that my parents had the vial. My family was murdered in a cruiser crash based on that suspicion. They had no idea it was in our house. I had it. My Aunt Tabitha ....”
My mind drifted back to the gallows on Mars. The image of the swinging noose filled the space behind my eyes.
I shook my head. “My Aunt Tabitha gave it to me, told me to give it to my father. I was twelve. I didn’t think it was that important. It was just a wooden box with a glass vial inside.”
“You know there’s no way you could have prevented that,” said Mama B. “If your parents had the vial, the SUN would have taken it back and you’d be long gone.”
I looked down as I reached for another tiny shirt. I had done this chore with my mother before she died. We had some of the best talks over folding linen. I felt an overwhelming desire to pretend that Mama B. was my mom, that I was a part of a family again.
“Sometimes I wish I was. Sometimes I wish I had died with the rest of my family. Then, at least ... at least I wouldn’t be alone.”
Mama B. put down her laundry and wrapped her arms around me. “Honey, it’s alright. Some of us live, some of us die. It’s the order of things. You may not see it yet, but I promise one day you’ll see good reasons for being alive. I do understand, though. I lost all fear of death the night I lost Frederick.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry about that. Berrett told me.”
She pulled back, but kept one arm around my shoulders. “You learn how to carry it. In the end, I feel much easier going through this life knowing someone is waiting for me on the other side.”
“You believe in heaven?” I asked.
“I never did until Frederick died. You know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think you have a brave heart. You were willing to risk your life to try to give your crew a chance to escape.”
“But I was just being selfish. I was trying to protect the Eternigen too.”
“I think that’s a necessary consideration in the interest of what that drug is capable of, don’t you?”
“I guess so.”
Once darkness fell, Mama B. and Berrett and I retreated to the cellar until Caleb came home. All the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end when I heard a door open and shut, but a few moments later Buster poked his head into the doorway and said, “You can come out now, pwincess!”
I followed Berrett and Mama B. up the ladder and into the kitchen.
“Dix, this is Master Caleb,” said Berrett.
Caleb eyed me warily over a dinner plate. “Nice to meet you, I think.” He turned to Berrett. “Wish it was under better circumstances.”
“Agreed,” I said.
Berrett spoke up. “Listen, about the Aventine—”
“You need to do some work on her outside the ‘sphere?”
Berrett nodded, and he and Caleb turned out of the kitchen and into the family room, leaving me standing with my arms folded in disgust.
Mama B. caught my expression. “Go after them!”
I went flying into the other room and ran smack into Caleb.
He whirled around. “Do you have a problem, girl?”
“Yeah. I’m a pilot first, girl second, and I’d like for you to stop treating me like it’s the other way around.”
“Really? Because around here pilots are mocked fairly relentlessly. Especially ones that blow up their own ships,” said Caleb. A hint of a smile skittered across his face.
I rolled my eyes. “Just fill me in, alright?”
Caleb and Berrett sat down on a sagging couch, and I sat across from them on a comfy old chair.
“So, you were saying?” asked Caleb.
“Yeah, I think I’m going to need to take Ave to a ... uh ... specialist. Do you mind?”
“Of course not. Here, Miss Pilot, sit between us on the couch and I’ll show you around the hangar.”
Caleb shot a wink at me. I glared at him, but I sat on the couch anyway as he flicked on his Cuff and showed me surveillance videos of the hangar, which was filled with massive engines, turbines, and parts I had only seen in textbooks.
“You guys are still using infrared imaging? I thought GSP phased those parts out years ago,” I said.
“It gets the job done. These are our cargo backups. Reliable, unmanned. I’m surprised a girl like you even recognized the parts,” said Caleb.
Berrett coughed into his sleeve. “Wrongthingtosay.”
“Why? Because girls only think about fashion?” I snorted. “Seriously, Berrett, what century is this flar—”
“Don’t! Just shut up, it’s not worth it,” said Berrett. “You’re totally missing his sense of humor.”
“If that was an attempt at humor, I don’t think I want to see his attempts at ship-building,” I said.
Caleb whisked his wrist away from me.
“Things are a little less formal on the colonies, I gather,” said Caleb. “You insult me all you want, but you insult one of my babies, and I swear on my mother’s grave I will eat your first-born child for breakfast, and I will like it.”
Berrett’s eyes went wide.
I laughed. “I felt that way about a ship.”
“A ship. And you wonder why I have no respect for pilots? Every ship deserves that kind of love,” said Caleb. “Take the Aventine, here.”
He opened another video on his Cuff and my jaw went slack.
There was the most gorgeous ship I had ever seen. She made the Misfit look like a pimply, teenaged basement-dweller.
“Your friend Jordan has been building Ave with me since he was old enough to be an apprentice,” said Caleb.
“You built that thing?” I asked.
“I had a little help,” said Berrett.
The curvature of her design alone was enough to make grown men cry. Her bow jutted out, like a woman sticking out her jaw. Her silhouette curved around and rolled into a high arch over the cargo hold, then rushed back down and pulled tight to the inside. Her underbelly looked like a wolf’s, tight at the stomach and rounder where the ribs would be. She was gorgeous, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
“Alright, stop drooling and focus, pilot. We have items to discuss if you’re taking her off-world,” said Caleb. “There are a few things you should know, and then you should probably get back in the cellar just to be on the safe side. Every day, we come to the hangar at six. Sometimes I’m late and Jordan opens up alone. He knows the code to get in. Right?”
Berrett nodded.
“Right,” said Caleb. “There is a half-hour window between when he unlocks the doors at six and when the rest of the workers arrive at six-thirty,” said Caleb. “In that time, three things need to happen. We need to hook her up to the trailer and drive her out to the launch pad. Then we need to open the launch pad doors. I cannot emphasize this enough. If you blow through my doors, I’ll kill you both myself. When the doors are open, disengage the parking break, hit the thrusters, and off we go. Just make sure to send the code back to seal the launch doors behind you. It’ll
make it easier for the team coming in if they don’t have to pick up after your launch. Make sure you get the new tags on. They’re in the cockpit.”
“Thank you,” said Berrett. “You got all that, Dix?”
“Yeah, but why—”
“I think we’re done here, Master Caleb.”
“But wait, I—”
Berrett grabbed my arm and pulled me off the couch. “We’ll head down to the cellar now. Thanks again for everything.”
“You got it, my young apprentice. Hey, Jordan,” called Caleb.
“Yes sir?”
“Be—”
Before Caleb could finish, the little boy came trotting in again and tugged on Caleb’s shirt. “Daddy, I fink she’s a pwincess.”
“A princess, huh?” asked Caleb.
“Yesh.”
“Well, kiddo, let’s hope she can live up to the title.”
I held my breath as Berrett nodded and pulled me down to the cellar door. Mama B. was already down there, resting in her room on an air mattress and scanning the SUN reports on her Cuff.
“We need your help getting some things ready, Mama,” Berrett said. “We’re stealing the Aventine.”
BLATANT THIEVERY 11
NO LIGHT SHONE THROUGH THE CRACKS IN THE BEDROOM door. I rolled over and looked at my Cuff. It wasn’t even 5:30 a.m. A few minutes later, my bedroom door creaked open and Berrett’s face peered in.
“What are you doing in here, you creeper? Hoping to watch me sleep?” I whispered.
“Are you always like this first thing in the morning?”
I threw a pillow at him.
“I thought we didn’t have to be at the shipyard until six.”
“True, but I wasn’t sure how long you needed to get ready.”
I rolled out of bed and pointed out the fact that I had slept in my clothes. I grabbed the toothbrush he had brought for me and stuffed it in my mouth as I waltzed past him into the bathroom.
“You’re not normal, are you?” he asked.
“You wouldn’t like me as much if I were.”
Berrett laughed quietly. “Right. I got a cabby hat for you. It’s hanging on your door handle. I’m gonna go steal Caleb’s Cuff and shut down the cameras.”
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