by Gorman, K.
She took a step back, rubbing her wrists. Cookie had been her first priority, and her untreated road rash felt like a burning heat whenever she touched anything or moved it. There was still grit and dirt inside the wounds.
But she could deal with that later, somewhere else. She certainly didn’t need to be in the room when Cookie threw up.
Grabbing a pack of quickskin from the open Med bag on the counter, along with a chemical ice pack and some cleaner, she retreated from the room and made for the sani room.
A few minutes later, she stumbled into Soo-jin in the hall.
“Can you believe this?” Soo-jin made a disgusted gesture at the spare cabin. “We still have Senton’s shit.”
Karin peered in. “Guess he forgot to take it.” She paused. “Any word from him?”
She still technically owed him a couple cures, if he found that his wife and child had been turned into Lost. Frankly, she wasn’t sure quite how much she cared about that. The military already knew about her. What could Senton really do to her?
And he had been a bit of an asshole.
On the other hand, if she could help people…
She shook her head, then grimaced at the movement, moving the ice back to her forehead.
Now wasn’t the time to think about that. She had a sister to find first.
Then she could go help people. If the people weren’t going to be assholes and try to trap her into servitude or medical experiments or something. The fear of that had faded somewhat, now that she’d seen just how desperate the situation was.
The light shifted behind her. A moment later, Marc peered over her shoulder into the room.
“I vote we ditch it somewhere, then comm him the location,” he said.
“Isn’t that kind of irresponsible? What if someone steals it?”
“We’ll hide it well. Besides, our circumstance has changed. I’d bet he’d rather have his stuff than have us swan off with it, right?”
“Yeah,” she agreed, moving the ice pack over her wrist. “I bet the inter-planetary mail system is a bit shot up these days.” She changed her gaze from the trunks and bags still piled in the room to Marc. “How’s Cookie?”
“Still out. The machine’s monitoring him.” He glanced back toward Med. “I might have you lift off somewhere soon. Get us a more secure place to hide out.”
“I vote we go to another beach,” Soo-jin said. “Didn’t get to enjoy the last one much, and I’ve got a spare hammock if anyone needs.”
“I might take you up on that, actually,” Karin said.
A loud thump sounded up the hall, followed shortly by the sound of someone heaving.
“Right. That’s my cue,” Marc said. He looked like he wanted to pat her on the shoulder, but pulled the motion and turned it into a wave at the reminder of the quickskin visible on her arm. He gave her a small, two-fingered salute and jogged back up the hall, vanishing into Med.
She and Soo-jin exchanged a look.
“I’ll go find that beach,” she said, taking a step back. “Someplace in the southern hemisphere?”
“Yeah, but not too close to the pole, obviously—wait, scratch that.” Soo-jin made a face. “We better stick kind of close to the city. Keep within range in case… well, just in case.”
“All right.” She backed out of the doorway and turned toward the bridge. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Though the bridge was empty, the quiet hum from the computers gave it a sense of activity. She eased herself into the pilot’s seat, rocked it back, and swiveled it at an angle to the dashboard so that she could reach it without having to stretch.
They’d disconnected the ship from any satellite feed, so her query relied on its built-in memory of the planet—something perfectly fine for what she needed. Unless there’d been a major continental shift since the last time this map had been updated, there’d be no problem locating a beach. The only thing it wouldn’t show was real-time broadcasts of ship activity.
The reaction time was actually slightly quicker now.
She sat in quiet for a few minutes, narrowing the results and checking out beaches. Then, moving the ice pack from her wrist to her knee—she really should have nabbed two from the Med bay—she leaned back and stared at the map, thinking.
A small shadow passed behind her. She’d seen Ethan come in, so she wasn’t surprised when he quietly sat in the chair next to her, pushing himself back.
His gaze went to the screen. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for a place to hide.” She idly rubbed her thumb and index finger together. “You have any preferences?”
“No.”
She almost laughed. Instead, she leaned her head back and swiveled the chair a little so that she could see him better.
He looked worn. Not as worn as when they’d pulled him off the Ozark, but definitely a kind of up-past-his-bedtime kind of worn. Did kids his age even have bedtimes? She didn’t know much about children at all. Even her childhood memories were a bit dodgy in that regard, given how she and Nomiki had been raised.
“How are you doing, anyway?” she asked. “It’s been a big night.”
He shrugged, his gaze wandering to the floor. “Fine.”
“Mhmm.”
She rocked back and forth once, twice, then swung back to return her attention to the screen, letting her thoughts wander. Three locations flashed on the map, with only their basic cartographic geography visible around them. If they’d been connected, she’d have gotten pictures, too, and maybe pings from local businesses if she’d logged into her personal account. But without the connection, it was just blank.
She wasn’t even sure if they were all beaches. Sure, they came up in the search as such, but she’d had some experience with the liberties the keyword specialists took when it came to listings. They might turn up to a beach and find a rocky shoal instead.
But, given the location, she put their odds of finding sand at roughly fifty percent.
Ethan followed her gaze. After a while, he cleared his throat.
“Uhmm… can I ask something?”
“You just did,” she said.
He shot her a dark look which she fully deserved—that smartass remark had been cliché—and went on. “Are we going back to get my dad?”
She was careful to school the emotions on her face. “Yeah. We plan on it, anyway, I think.”
“You said you would,” he said.
“Yeah, I know. We just have a lot on our plates right now. We have to get the ship back in space without the Alliance noticing us, for one. They’re going to put out a bulletin sooner or later. And there’s a couple people I missed healing at the sanctuary. Not sure if we can get back there, but maybe Soo-jin could arrange something.” They had seemed crafty, there, and she did feel bad about missing the people. If they could get in without getting trapped in some scheme… “Plus I have to find my sister. I still don’t know where she is.”
“Yeah, but you do know where my dad is.”
That was true. And she did feel quite guilty about it. She hesitated, then conceded his point with a nod. “That still doesn’t make him easy to get, but I think we will try.”
She didn’t even need to speak to Marc or Soo-jin to know how they’d feel.
“Do me a favor?” she asked, sitting back in her seat. “Get me my purse? It’s on the bed in my room.”
She held up her ice pack for sympathy.
He half-rose. “Why? You need something?”
“Yeah. There’s a book in there. I’m hoping it’ll have some answers to this whole mess.”
He gave her an odd look, but he slipped off the chair. The light shifted slightly as he stepped behind her and left, his footsteps making tiny patpats on the metal floor.
As she waited for him to come back, she stared into the dashboard map, not really seeing its lines and curves, and a familiar pang tightened in her chest.
She pushed it aside as Ethan came back.
“Hey, can I borrow you
r netlink?” he asked. “There was a show I was watching.”
She passed it to him without a word.
Then, ignoring his curious look, she opened the book on her lap and flattened her fingers against the pages, feeling the change between rough and smooth as she went from paper to plastic wrapping. The familiar silhouette of the standing stones jumped out at her from the page, their shapes contained in a flat, glossy picture.
It was time to find out just what her sister had been up to.
THE END
Author's Note
Hello, K. Gorman here. I’m sorry, you’ve come to the end of the book—but don’t worry, there’s more! Renegades is set to release on September 30th. If you want to lock in your pre-order (Or if you just want to oggle at its cover and covet its book description. I don’t judge.), you can click or tap here to check it out on Amazon.
Like Black Dawn, it’ll be in Kindle Unlimited—and it’ll be only 99 cents for its release sale. Unlike Black Dawn, it will (excepting the release sale) stay at $3.99 for the foreseeable future, so if you want to nab it at a discount, then release week is your best bet. If you’d like a reminder of when that sale is happening, join my e-mail list by clicking here.
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Cheers,
Kelly
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