He nodded. “It’s efficient.”
“It’s so … cold.” And I knew cold. I’d witnessed and been the target of plenty of Evelina’s insults. “What number are you?”
He recited in one long breath: “Four million, eight hundred and thirty-two thousand, five hundred and sixty-six.”
“Yeah. Calling you Andy is way quicker.”
A hint of a genuine smile actually peeked through his grimace that time.
I knew I was treading on choppy waters, but for some reason I pressed on. Blame it on my lack of sleep. “Your father never called you anything else?”
And the smile disappeared. Shocker.
“Right, sorry. You said not to talk about him. But…” Here was a chance to connect with him. To befriend. And the pleasant surprise was, I didn’t even have to lie to do it. “I know how it feels to not get along with your family. I know it’s lonely.”
And there it was. Behold Cora Saros ripping her heart out of her chest and sticking it on a silver platter for the entire universe to see. The things I did to acquire endless fortune. Sharing emotions. Nothing was more criminal than that.
“Really?” Anders looked unsure. “You do?”
“I do.”
I had to look down at the table because, stars, this was embarrassing, and that was when I saw it. His hand, long knobby fingers with yellowed but neatly trimmed nails, inching across the table. Closer.
He definitely wasn’t reaching for a napkin. His hand was seeking out my own, and whether or not it was some kind of deception on his part, it freaked me the heck out.
Just then, Wren burst into the galley. “Good morning, fellow treasure hunters!”
His hand stilled. The nervous roaring inferno inside me extinguished instantly, replaced by the relief of a soaking cold sweat.
Wren busied herself with making a bowl of cereal for breakfast, sliding up next to Elio. They bumped their hips together, then he tapped his left elbow against her left, his right against her right, they spun around, and then finished by whooping and slamming knuckles. What in the … They had a secret handshake already? Elio was too sociable for his own good.
Anders watched Wren, puzzled, as she shoved a spoon in her mouth. “Is that the food known as oatmeal?”
“Cornflakes,” Wren mumbled, mouth full. “I wanted the frosted kind, but I’m low on ritles and couldn’t afford the splurge. When we stop for supplies, I’m stealing some.”
“Heads up!” Elio grinned, slamming a steaming bowl down in front of Anders. “This is oatmeal.”
“Why is this one fuming when hers is not?”
“Well, that’s the beauty of Earthan foods. Some are hot. Some are cold. And some are … both.”
“Like sandwiches,” Wren said. “Skies, I’m starving!” Spoon sticking out of the corner of her mouth, she rooted through the refrigerator and pulled free a plate of bread topped with some kind of floppy brown meat, which she shoved into the humming microwave above the stove. “It tastes better warm,” she told Anders when she caught him sniffing the air hopefully.
Standing on shaky legs, Anders slowly made his way to the fridge to investigate for himself. Gingerly, he tugged open the freezer door and pulled out a round tub of …
“Ice cream!” I practically sighed the words. Double chocolate chunk ice cream. Years ago, Cruz brought some back from the Earthan colony on Mars, and I ate so much I was sick for two days. Evelina took it away from me after that. Probably finished the rest herself.
Anders tried taking the coveted tub to the microwave, but Wren leaped in front of him and snatched it away. “No! Not that one! We don’t heat that one! It needs to be cold.”
“But you said…” He shook his head, helplessly pointing to a circle of dough that Elio was busy ladling with red sauce. Pizza. It had been years since I was allowed to have that too.
“Most people eat that one hot, but certain weirdos prefer it cold,” Wren said.
“Oh, for Neptune’s sake! I hate all of you.” But his insult held none of its usual venom. “I’ll be in my room.” He grabbed Elio’s entire pizza and rushed from the galley.
“I wasn’t finished with that!” Elio shouted after him. “Hey, do you think we should tell him that the pizza has raw anchovies on it?”
I stared at him blankly.
“Anchovies are little stinky fishies—”
“Oh stars, yeah, we should tell him.” I bolted from the galley, but I’d barely cleared the bend in the corridor when I was met with the familiar sound of Anders’s retching coming from a nearby washroom.
Here was the thing: as a criminal, as Evelina Saros’s daughter, I should have turned right around and left him to his misery. We had a treasure to find, and he was dragging us down. But as a friend … as the girl who sat across the table from him and tried not to flinch while his hand crept closer—whatever that had been about—I knew I couldn’t abandon him, not after I’d bargained for him to come with us. As much as I hated to admit it, we were a team. Or we had to appear as one anyway.
The only food I had on me was a ration packet that I’d swiped from the galley counter. Dehydrated potatoes infused with vitamin C. Not the best meal, but when he finished being sick he would definitely be starving, and it was better than nothing.
I pulled the packet from the front pouch of my flight suit and slid it under the crack at the bottom of the door. Anders groaned before another round of vomiting echoed through the corridor.
Maybe he would have been better off with the ice cream.
* * *
“He’s weak,” Wren said when I returned to the galley. Elio was admiring a spread of jellied toast that he’d arranged alphabetically by color across the table. “I’m pretty sure that on certain planets the leaders choose to eat the weak.”
“He just needs something to settle his stomach,” I said.
“You’re defending him?”
“No! I just…” I just knew I had to make this work. To make sure everyone got along so they would eventually let their guards down. But once again it seemed like taking a step toward Anders was a step away from Wren. I needed to figure out a happy medium, but right now that was just as invisible as Anders’s nonexistent aura, which was a sharp contrast to the smoky clouds of guilt spilling off Wren’s shoulders.
“Sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m just hangry.”
“Hangry?”
“Hungry-angry. Elio, be a dear and toss me some toast. Toast is my life.”
He scooped up three plates. “Do you want peach jelly, grape, or boysenberry?”
“Surprise me.”
He spun in a circle, beeping excitedly as he presented her with a slice of (slightly burnt) toast dripping peach jelly. He offered me the boysenberry, and I picked at a bit of the crust, pleasantly surprised to find that it didn’t taste nearly as bitter as usual. Elio watched with rapt attention as I chewed—wait, was that a hair?—swallowed—yep, that was definitely a hair—and gave him a shaky thumbs-up.
“Yes!” He rushed back to the counter to make more. I didn’t have the heart to tell him to stop. He looked happier aboard the Starchaser than I’d ever seen him at home under Evelina’s eye. He didn’t look like he was about to glitch anytime soon, even though nearly twenty-four hours had passed since his last. His recent record was four days glitch-free, but I wasn’t trying to push his already bad luck.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked, watching Wren bite into a second slice of toast and knock it back with a swig of milk. “The warden didn’t exactly give us a map. How are we supposed to know where to go first?”
Wren shook her head. “And you call yourself a criminal mastermind.” (I’d never called myself that a day in my life.) “First stop is to get Andy stomach meds. I need to land at the nearest outpost to refuel anyway, so we can grab them there. And I need to get a few repairs done on the engine. Not sure if you’ve noticed, but this ship, though charming, is a little old.”
No, really?
But instead o
f throwing another insult her way, I thought of Elio and the new body that would save his memory core. I shrugged and smiled. “I can do the repairs. I’m good with mechanics.”
Wren looked unsure. “I thought you were good with bombs? The last thing we want is this ship blowing up.”
The Starchaser was already one loose lug nut away from falling to pieces, no bomb required, but I kept my mouth shut about it.
“Can you fix the coolant chamber?” she asked. “It’s sort of, well, not cooling anything, so the engine likes to make this wheezy-sneezy noise like it has a head cold. It’s kind of concerning. And the tertiary molecular containment filter keeps clunking. That’s a little shady. And the flight stabilizer is tilting portside whenever I accelerate. Oh! And if you have a moment, the pipes underneath the level two toilet next to the med bay are backing up.”
“I don’t do plumbing repairs. The rest I can fix with a spark plug and a few rolls of tape.”
“Really?”
“Sure.” I mean, maybe, but I wasn’t going to admit to her that I didn’t have the slightest clue about charter ship engines. Whatever. Elio would download a blueprint. It would be fine.
Wren clearly didn’t believe me, but it looked like she too was trying out the shut-up-and-let-it-go method. “Okay, fine. Wonderful. I’ll let you know when we’re about to land. It gets bumpy, which won’t be good for Andy’s stomach.”
The galley door slid open automatically as she approached it. “Elio, fill her in on where we’re heading after the outpost.” She looked up at me, beaming. “He came up with this all by himself. Whether or not this treasure is real, I’m convinced that together we will accomplish great things. Great, but possibly not legal, things.” And then she was gone.
“Well, well, well.” I ran my knuckles across the top of Elio’s head. “Looks like someone made a friend.” If I joked about it, hopefully he wouldn’t realize I felt a little slighted that he told Wren some vital piece of treasure hunting information before he’d shared it with me.
I tried to clear my mind. Jealousy would ruin everything. Befriend now, betray later. I needed to get it together.
So I sat in silence, choking down another piece of toast, and listened to Elio talk. Apparently, there was a plethora of information about the Four Keys of Teolia spread across the net if you knew the right places to look. Dark, shady corners of cyberspace filled with conspiracy theorists and those who had long since succumbed to treasure hunting fever. The only information the warden had given us was that one of Jupiter’s moons had been the location of the first key—Teolia’s favorite planet, a place she adored. And so Elio delved deeper into his research, noticing the same name of the same planet spoken again and again by all the fanatics on all the net sites: Cadrolla.
It was rumored that Teolia had adopted pets on Cadrolla in the spiraling Whirlpool Galaxy during her adolescent years, which wasn’t shocking considering the planet’s tropical climate and sprawling jungles were home to a host of questionable creatures. Most were outfitted with claws and horns that could turn a fully intact body to ribbons of flesh before an attacker knew what hit them. Others were cuddly but bulged full of poisons so rare and vile that not even Elio could name them.
And then there was the flora. The shrubs that dripped acidic substances and the weeds that used their vines to strangle passersby without provocation. There were the streams that reversed their currents on a whim, sucking everything within reach to a watery grave. The loosely packed earth that caved in at the slightest movement, sending each living creature in the vicinity to a premature death.
Teolia must have been a warrior to step foot on that planet and leave alive. Either that or she had no fear.
If we were looking for a pattern between the keys’ locations, Cadrolla was a prime suspect. Elio stated it had been a place she visited frequently, each time bringing home another furry terror plucked from between the jungle vines to unleash on her enemies. According to Elio, many of the theorists on the net believed one of the keys was hidden in the ruins at the top of the planet’s tallest mountain, though no one could say for sure. Everyone who claimed they were off to seek the key had never returned to the net to post about their experience. Likely because they had been ingested by something not very friendly that lived in the jungle.
“Cadrolla is barely the size of east Condor. The key shouldn’t be that hard to find,” Elio explained, scrubbing at the plates covered with toast and jelly. One of them slipped, crashing at his feet. “Whoops.”
I helped him pick up the broken shards. “Assuming we don’t get eaten.” Not to mention the oxygen levels on Cadrolla were dangerously low. If Wren didn’t have sufficient oxygen masks on board, maybe I could construct some. It would give me a good excuse to poke around the Starchaser’s laboratory, maybe even start rebuilding some of my old gadgets.
“Everything will be fine, Cora,” Elio said. He leaned in to hug me, but his body was so small that his arms only reached my thighs. “And then we’ll be one step closer to home.”
Where we will accomplish great, but possibly not legal, things.
I didn’t know if searching for a key on a jungle mountaintop filled with poisonous critters and oodles of killer vegetation was classified as legal, but it certainly wasn’t classified as sane.
And yet, I had been making a habit lately of doing things that were considered not quite sane.
Elio grinned, nestling his head against my legs, beeping softly. Hopefully. But I noticed with a pang of sadness that he was refraining from beeping too loud—hoping too much.
Sighing, I hugged him back.
Might as well keep my insanity streak alive.
10
It rained during our entire stop at the fueling outpost, which I considered a disheartening omen for the trip ahead. Winds whipped, sending debris pinging off the Starchaser’s hull, adding more dents to its already impressive collection. The cargo hold flooded with four inches of water, and Elio and I spent the majority of the afternoon scooping it out using gritty pots and pans that we dug from a cabinet in the galley. I recoiled every time the murky water rushed over my skin, seeping between my fingers. I was standing in the Starchaser, but in my mind I was locked in the crypt in Vaotis, floodwaters swallowing me whole. I was eight again, flailing in the inground pool in the backyard of Cruz and Evelina’s house while they deemed me an unfit swimmer and left me to drag myself out of the water, coughing up chlorine.
Eventually, Anders took over for me, tossing water out onto the tarmac while he cursed Wren in his native language for landing the ship in the middle of the only storm the desert outpost had seen all year. She had conveniently disappeared as soon as we started mopping up the ship, and we hadn’t seen her since.
The only consolation during our otherwise dismal day was that Anders had finally stopped regurgitating his meals. The pills Wren had stolen for him from the outpost’s general store before she ditched us had curbed that problem pretty quickly. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
Late in the evening, just as the roar of the storm receded to a dull drizzle and the clouds parted slightly, allowing the moon’s glow to shine over the wet tarmac, Wren returned to the Starchaser, lugging two bulging bags of food behind her.
“What is that smell?” Anders asked as Wren dropped the bags at her feet. I poked my head out of the engine room just in time to see a heavy can roll out of the larger bag and slosh through the remaining water on the cargo hold floor. I ducked back down the ladder, landing with a thud beside the engine. My spark plug and tape idea was going swimmingly. As in, some of the water from the cargo hold had dripped on top of the panels above the engine and I would be stuck swimming down here if we didn’t drain it. Elio ducked inside the engine room, tossing me a towel and a schematic of the molecular containment filter before disappearing again.
I heard Anders’s angry growl from the floor above. “Whatever that is, it smells foul. I have very sensitive olfactory receptors. I can’t be in the same r
oom as that.”
“It’s just canned ham. Eat up, kiddos. I was only able to steal from the expired stash.”
“I’ve never tried canned ham before,” Elio said.
“That’s because you can’t eat!” I called up from the engine room. A moment later, Wren appeared at the top of the ladder and held out a hand to me.
“About done?”
I gave the filter one final twist with a screwdriver, then kicked the main control panel until it let out a contented purr. Honestly, it was shocking how many mechanical issues could be solved with a simple kick. I just wished that applied to life issues too.
I took Wren’s hand and let her pull me back up. “Yeah, it’s done, but the room is going to flood if we don’t do something about it. Then we’ll really be in trouble.”
She tugged off her boots, turning them upside down to drain them. “I’ll take care of it. It is pretty swampy in here. What have you guys been doing all day?”
A growl of epic proportions escaped Anders’s mouth, making the crates in the corners of the hold vibrate. If I could see his aura, I knew it would look just like mine. Inky clouds spilling off both of us, moving toward Wren’s throat to choke her.
Eyes blazing, Anders turned and splashed toward the lift. “I’ll be in my room.”
“But what about the water?” Wren asked.
“Wren, I am finding myself terribly hungry, and if I stay in this room any longer I might not be able to fight the desire to eat something. Believe me, the first item on my menu will not be canned ham. Does that make sense?”
“I—”
“He means you,” Elio finished somewhat unhelpfully.
“Oh please. Anders, if you tried to eat me, I would strangle you from the inside out.”
The lift doors slid shut, obscuring the points of Anders’s bared teeth and the promise of death spilling from his eyes.
The Good for Nothings Page 11