Mari waved her hand and Leroy’s face turned back into stars. “Pink is on Sceilara. She’s working at a clinic for all the classy types who party there and need to clean themselves up before they leave.”
“Gross. Hope she’s making bank, at least.”
“I haven’t checked. I’ve been a bit busy.”
“I’m sure.” Pink had always threatened to get a cushy gig in the fringe, but it was weird that she’d jumped right to that after whatever happened with Pete. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too hard to tear her away from it once Eva got her ship back.
Because Eva was absolutely, positively going to get it back.
Eva’s hand went to the scab on her neck. “What about the cats?”
“Eva.”
“Well?”
“They’re still on your ship. Min was adamant about that, for whatever reason.” Mari turned to look at her now, an eyebrow raised. “You haven’t asked me about Vakar.”
“Fuck do you know about him?” Eva gritted her teeth. Her sister’s tone was gentle, not teasing, which did not bode well. “Yeah. Well?”
“He’s gone.”
All the breath went out of her at once, and her mind blanked like a booted datapad. Don’t cry, she told herself. Crying is bullshit. You knew what you were getting into and you knew what would happen. Life’s a bitch, then you die.
“Dios mío, you look like you swallowed a turd.” Mari put a hand on Eva’s knee. “He’s not dead, he’s just gone. Somewhere in quennian space. Last seen boarding Silent Vigil after visiting his sister on DS Nor.”
Eva sagged with relief, then shook Mari’s hand away. She didn’t want her sister to touch her right now, the fucking snake, much less feel her trembling. What the hell was Vakar doing? Never mind; she’d find out soon enough.
“Well. I guess that’s it,” Eva said. “Dump me at Dad’s and I’ll get my ship, get the gang back together, and figure out the best way to help you nuke The Fridge from orbit.”
“Not a chance. I’m taking you somewhere safe to lie low until my mission is complete.”
Eva remembered the conversation Mari had been having before she uncloaked. “Right, your important priority mission. In a week? Maybe that doesn’t seem so long to you, but I’d rather claw my own face off than sit around for a whole week waiting for you to come back and get me.”
Mari smiled with her mouth closed. “Think of it as a vacation. You haven’t taken one of those in a while, I’m guessing.”
“Nope, I’m good. I want my ship, I want my crew, and I want revenge, in that order.” Eva reclined her seat and closed her eyes as Mari fumed, and it gave her a savage glee.
“Would it kill you to think about someone other than yourself for a change?” Mari said.
That wasn’t the bite she expected, but she was more than happy to bare her own teeth. “Oh, it’s on,” Eva said. “Mira, resingada comemierda, you saved my life, and I’m pretty happy about that right now. But my life wouldn’t have needed saving if you hadn’t fucked me over in the first place.”
Mari opened her mouth to say something, but Eva shoved her hand in her sister’s face.
“Cómetelo, I’m not done yet.” She leaned forward, staring into light brown eyes that she would gladly punch at the slightest provocation. “I don’t know what kind of batshit fucking loco comemierdería you’re playing with, but you’re not in charge of me. You’re not my boss, you’re not Mom, and you can go swim in a waste collector like the piece of shit you are.”
Mari took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Eva could almost hear her counting to ten in her head. “The Fridge’s resources have the potential to be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands. They’ve found things that— Look, this is bigger than you and your crew, and I don’t want you in the middle now that I’ve finally got you away from them.”
“I’m already in the middle,” Eva snapped. “Or near the bottom, maybe, since shit flows downhill and they had me shoveling it.”
“Yes, but—”
“I’m not stupid.” This was more of a long shot, but she went for it. “A paleotechnologist specializing in the Proarkhe? Mystery tech sending out a subspace signal? What did they find, and how are they hiding it from BOFA?” She still wasn’t sure about the todyk and the booze run on Dalnulara, but maybe this would bait Mari into explaining.
It didn’t. “Not your problem,” Mari said. “Olvídalo. Worry about yourself.”
“First I’m selfish, now you want me to worry about myself?”
“That’s all you have left to worry about.” She leaned closer, eyes narrowing. “Dad has your ship and you can’t afford another. And even if you could, your crew have all moved on.”
Eva stood and stretched. “I’ll ask them. Maybe they’re not as in love with their new lives as you think. It’s not like I’ve been gone that long, right?”
Her sister smiled again. It was not a happy smile.
Everything Mari had said replayed in Eva’s head, dread climbing in her chest despite the mechanically controlled rhythm of her heart. Because the thing about cryo was, you went right to sleep, and then you woke up, and in between there weren’t even dreams to give you a bridge between moments. It was like a Gate, where she’d gone in one end and come out somewhere entirely different, and there was one question she hadn’t asked yet, one very, very important question that hadn’t occurred to her until now.
“Mari,” Eva said quietly, “how long have I been gone?”
No answer. Eva pulled up the chronometer on her commlink.
“Me cago en diez,” she whispered.
Chapter 18
The Empire Strikes Forth
Eva looked like shit. Being in cryo hadn’t done much to deteriorate her muscle mass, but she still felt weaker. Brittle. Every line on her face seemed new to her, like she was really looking at herself for the first time.
A year gone. A whole damn year.
Eva felt slightly worse about giving Mari shit after hearing what had gone down in that year. She’d already be dancing for the Glorious Turd if her sister hadn’t tampered with the delivery in a lot of minute ways, from message disruption to outright sabotage. The final fabrication that had kept her safe until Mari could free her was completely overriding shipping manifests to make it look like Eva was a random container bound for storage, where she had sat, quietly, for more than nine months.
Considering it was pretty much Mari’s fault Eva had been on Omicron in the first place, she didn’t want to give her sister too much credit. Nothing to be done about it now. Onward and upward, off this ship and back to her own.
And then? Justice. Revenge. And, of course, there was the little matter of finding her crew. Finding Vakar.
Her skin prickled with nerves. He had said he’d find her, and he hadn’t. Not that she was surprised; hadn’t she failed to find any Fridge facilities herself? And Mari had been actively hiding her the whole time.
It had been a year, though. He might have given up. Moved on. Or whatever trouble he’d been running from when she met him might have caught up.
But back to the task at hand: getting her ship. The Fridge had come down hard on her dad before they took her, throttling back once they got what they wanted, but he’d still been pretty much ruined. And after she went missing, they’d assumed he had something to do with it and conscripted his ass the same as they’d done to Eva, according to Mari. Getting La Sirena Negra back had been a godsend for him, however he had managed it, but that didn’t mean she was going to let him keep it.
Eva took one last look at her reflection—at the gray spacesuit Mari had given her to replace that awful leopard-print thing she’d slept in, at the scar that hadn’t disappeared from her cheek by magic—then snarled and gave herself the finger. People didn’t hire her because she was pretty, they hired her because she could fly, fight and fake civility. And because she did her fucking job.
Back in the bridge, Mari was prepping for landing. “You’re sure it’s here?” Eva asked
her, dropping into her seat.
“If you ask me one more time, I’m spacing you. And no, I’m still not going to tell you how I’m tracking it. Now shut up so I can concentrate.”
“You could let me fly,” Eva muttered, but she settled back to watch their approach. It had been hard enough convincing Mari to bring her here at all; she didn’t want her sister to change her mind now, not when she was so close to her ship.
The planet of Conelia in the Talyl system was a garden world, full of diverse intelligent life that bore a sometimes-uncanny resemblance to certain Earth animals. A lot of truateg lived there, along with a few toad-like vroak and delicate eac, which had razor-sharp beaks but skin more like a snake’s. The biggest groups were the rani and neho, whose fuzzy fox- and rabbit-like forms were the delight of humans with corresponding preferences. The military training facilities were top-notch, and their labs had a penchant for coming up with interesting new tech and slapping it onto spaceships. They needed both, given how often they ended up fighting someone or other.
Which was why her dad was there, presumably. While the Conelians weren’t ones to keep most of their inventions to themselves, they were in the middle of a civil war. According to Mari, the planet had been blockaded for a month, with the rebel faction attacking anyone who was coming or going. This made Conelian tech a bit harder to come by, as not only were the Conelians hesitant to sell things they could use to blow stuff up, but planetary defenses got trigger-happy with outsiders because of the near-constant surface raids.
But they also needed money to fund war efforts, so trade still happened with those daring enough to brave what could turn into a combat zone at any time. Assuming her dad was still working for The Fridge, Eva had no doubt that “daring” translated to “unwilling but able.”
They dropped through fluffy white clouds onto a brown, green and blue surface whose cities were hard to spot because of how they’d been built, in harmony with the plant life instead of bulldozing through it. But most people lived in the mountains during wartime, hunkering down in cave networks, which made landing more of a challenge if you wanted to be anywhere near the stuff you were picking up.
Mari maneuvered them through a series of canyons, soaring rock formations arching overhead or forming natural bridges farther down. Eva remembered flying through here a long time ago, during a different war, back when Tito was her boss and attitude was her copilot.
“You ever get the urge to do a barrel roll in here?” Eva asked.
Mari didn’t roll a damn thing, not even her eyes.
They touched down at a narrow landing platform that held a squad of ships, none of which was hers—all Conelian fighters, guarded by a squad of truateg wearing uniforms a darker shade of blue than the sky. Eva’s skin prickled with anxiety. Had La Sirena Negra already left? Or had something else happened? She tried to ping Min, but there was no response.
“I thought you said they were here,” Eva said, narrowing her eyes at Mari.
“They are,” Mari said. “I’m getting too much interference to pinpoint their location. Try to pull them up on comms.”
Eva gestured and a display popped up. “HSS La Sirena Negra, open line, are you receiving?”
No response.
“La Sirena Negra, are you receiving?” Eva repeated.
Still nothing. Her stomach twisted.
“Strange,” Mari said. “I wonder if—”
An alarm cut in from the platform outside, quiet but insistent. A queer buzzing in Eva’s teeth told her the rest of the sound was likely at a frequency higher than she could hear, and after a moment her translators pinged her as much.
“The Conelians are under attack,” Mari said, gesturing at a message that had popped up on a holoscreen. “Probably the rebels again. They’re scrambling ships for defense.”
“Coño carajo,” Eva said. “Great timing.”
Outside, pilots began to pour out of a reddish-brown building and race toward their ships, lean pieces of work with too many sharp angles for her taste, or triangular, with wings that seemed too small to keep them airborne or maneuver. Nothing like her sleek black mermaid; more like angry birds and warty toads.
The holoscreen translated the Conelian comm chatter, mostly a list of names and ship orders, a few of which Eva recognized from the bad old days. Vixen Nimbus, Awing 2, Conelia City. Slippery Croke, Aggressive Badaba, Conelia City. Caracara Carlo, Heaven Talon, Conelia City. Lively Hea, Zorr Twice, Conelia City . . . Pretty much everyone was converging on the same location, the planet’s capital.
Mari took a deep breath through her nose and exhaled slowly through her mouth. “Looks like we’re stuck here for now. We’ll jump if this location comes under fire.”
“We’re not leaving until I get my ship back,” Eva said.
“We won’t get your ship back if we get blown up first, cabezona.”
Eva slumped down into the copilot chair, lips pursed. So far, this ship recovery operation was not going well. Where the hell were Min and her dad?
There was a sudden pop on comms. “This is La Sirena Negra, line open, we are receiving. This location is under attack.” It was Min, sounding panicked. “We’re stuck under debris and can’t evacuate. Requesting immediate assistance.”
“No me diga,” Eva said. “Mari, I have to find them!”
Mari shook her head. “It’s not safe. We wait for this wave to be over and then we go look for them.”
“They could be vaporized by then.” Eva grabbed her sister’s shoulder. “Please, Mari, I have to get to my ship.”
“Absolutely not. What could you even do to help?”
Min cut in again. “Repeat, requesting immediate assistance to Conelia City. It’s the gmaarg, they’ve found us again, we—” With a squeal of static, the line went silent. Then, another voice cut in.
“Insipid breathers of oxygenated gases! We have come to recover Eva the Innocent, captain of the Black Mermaid vessel. Give her to us or we will destroy your planet and defile its ashes!”
Eva closed her mouth, which had fallen open at some point. It couldn’t be.
“Glorious?” she asked. “He’s here? Why? How?”
“He’s been tracking your ship, too,” Mari said. “I haven’t figured it out myself yet, but every few months he chases them around in his fathership for a couple of cycles and then gets bored and goes home again.” She steepled her fingers and tapped them against her lips. “The gmaargit social structure really is fascinating, when you consider no one seems to care about the time and resources he’s wasting to chase one random human.”
“Yes, fascinating,” Eva said. “You should write a book about it.”
“Please, with everything on my plate, I don’t have time to—”
“I was joking, comemierda!” Eva shouted. “Fucking move!” She had to get to Min before this turned into another Omicron.
Mari closed her eyes and breathed, then opened them again. “I said no. It’s too dangerous.”
Eva stood and loomed over her sister, leaning against the back of the pilot’s chair. “Hey,” she said quietly. “You want to find out what’s really dangerous?”
Mari stiffened. “Are you threatening me?”
“Nope.” Eva smiled. “I’m making you an offer. You let me fly over there, and I won’t airlock myself right now and hitch a ride with someone else.”
“You can’t hitch a ride on a Conelian ship; they’re single-seaters.”
“Shit, you’re right.” Eva pulled out one of the pistols she’d nabbed at the Fridge base. “Guess I am threatening you, then.”
Mari stared at the gun, lips twisting like she’d bitten into a sour orange. “Don’t be ridiculous. How would you fly while holding me at gunpoint?”
“I wouldn’t.” Eva gestured at the airlock. “Get out, and I’ll come back and get you once this is over.”
“After all this, you’re seriously ready to shoot me? Because I’m not moving.”
Eva was tempted. Very, very tempted
. But she sighed, deflating slightly. “No. Asshole. But . . . I will definitely shoot myself. I’m assuming there are medical facilities at the capital. I’m betting you can reach them before I bleed out.” She aimed the gun at her own leg.
“How will being stuck in a hospital help your crew?” Mari shook her head. “That’s like five bad plans you’ve had in two minutes. How are you still alive?”
“I move fast.” The blinking comms alert on the control panel caught her attention. “Okay, final offer: you let me fly there, or I tell Glorious exactly where I am right now and we see what happens.”
Mari rubbed her eyes with one hand, pinching the bridge of her nose. “This is seriously that important to you? You would shoot yourself or risk being captured by the Gmaargitz Fedorach?”
“Yes, and the longer we argue, the more desperate I get.” Eva stared her sister down, wishing she could exude the smell of her earnestness like Vakar.
“Alabao, fine.” Mari got up and sat in the passenger seat. “There. Go. Show me your fancy pilot skills.”
“You’re coming with me?” Eva asked. “No, it’s too dangerous. Get out.”
Mari raised her eyebrows and cocked her head to one side, pursing her lips as she slow-blinked at Eva.
“Right, point taken.” Eva sighed. “Let’s go.”
The comms crackled again. “Your prevarications emphasize your ineptitude! My empire will unmake your pathetic planet, you—”
Eva flicked the comms off. “Seriously, that guy. How has no one strangled him with their own bra?”
The ship’s controls were as simplistic as Eva remembered, and a single flick of the wrist turned everything on. Most of the work of flying an Albatross was done by the computer systems, with only the actual maneuvering controlled by the pilot. There was a trigger for the laser cannon, a red button she didn’t immediately recognize, and—
Eva raised an eyebrow. “You have a gravity disperser? Fancy.”
“And a spinner shield,” Mari said. “That’s the green button. Please don’t use it unless you have to. It makes me queasy.”
Chilling Effect_A Novel Page 25
