It did wipe the smile off Pete’s face, which was a plus.
Eva’s stomach tensed. “Is any of my stuff still here, or did you throw it out the airlock at light speed?”
Pete rubbed the stubble on his chin. “I think we put some things in the cargo bay. We did hope you’d make it back at some point, but we needed the room.”
“What about my fish?”
His brow furrowed. “What fish?”
What fish, she thought. Fuck everything. When she finally got La Sirena Negra back, she was going to enjoy watching the airlock close behind him.
“Don’t worry about it,” Eva said. “Tell me about this new ship you’re going to give me.”
“This,” Eva said, “is a giant piece of shit.”
She, Min and Pete stood on the rocky ground of a small asteroid mining station, in front of a Yusari-class small cargo ship, a retrofitted buasyr craft that resembled a pair of lovebugs in midfuck. From where she stood, she could already tell it needed at least one aft thruster repaired and a grav clamp replaced, so she could only imagine what the guts looked like. Guts, no doubt.
“I thought you liked a challenge,” Pete said, opening the remote cargo locks with his commlink.
“This isn’t a challenge, it’s a death sentence.” Eva examined the metallic surface, which was reflective in an oily kind of way. Like a dark rainbow. “This thing breaks, I’m going to have to get out and push.”
“Keep complaining about the free ship I’m giving you.”
Eva shut up, but only because she didn’t want to bite his head off. The starboard cargo bay door opened and Eva climbed inside, her left hip twinging in protest.
“Min, you coming?” she called back.
Min was still staring at the ship in dismay. It wouldn’t have surprised Eva if Min was seriously considering going back to Pete. She might as well have been trading a spaceship for a bicycle.
Eva’s initial prediction was unpleasantly accurate. All the pipes and cables that were neatly tucked away on La Sirena Negra were exposed here, as if some scrapper had come in and yanked out every panel that could be sold for more than a credit. Even the floor was gone, except for a single narrow path to the other side of the hold. An antigrav booster led up to the main deck through a gap in the ceiling. She called up lights with her commlink, and was relieved to see the power worked, even if it flickered and spat sparks.
“How am I even supposed to transport anything with this?” she asked.
“I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” Pete said. “You always do.”
Annoyingly true. Eva was already analyzing the setup: variable low-grav, so she could string nets up to keep cargo away from the tender bits. If she calibrated it right, everything would just hover in the center of the room anyway . . .
She sniffed the air, which smelled like ozone and farts. “There’s a gas leak,” she said. “Gotta patch that before we go boom.”
“I wasn’t planning on smoking,” Pete said.
Eva barely heard him. She was worlds away now, running mental system checks and sniffing her way to the source of the problem. There were probably tools somewhere on this station. Hell, maybe someone had left a few behind here. She’d also have to scavenge among the other busted ships and junk piles for parts, and if Pete wanted to give her shit about that, he could go fry ice.
She climbed up to the crew deck and poked around. It was pretty much a single long room with a galley on the port side and bunks welded to the starboard floor. The last owner hadn’t even yanked out all the buasyr sleep pods, and the ones that were gone had left behind ugly metal stumps that apparently doubled as storage cubbies now.
The aft bridge, by contrast, was practically a palace. Some of the instrumentation still appeared functional, but most had been moved out for the installation of a bed big enough for a family, a desk, a couch, and even a private head with its own sanitizer unit and hydrosonic shower.
“What a waste of space,” Eva muttered, looking out the open viewport at the stars spinning gently overhead. Then again, she’d never understood the whole double-pilot thing either, so who was she to judge.
She stalked to the fore bridge, passing Pete with hardly a thought. This was more what she was expecting, though it was strange to see the captain’s seat right next to the pilot’s chair in the middle of the room. That wasn’t a buasyr setup either; this had been modded for some reason.
Eva sat in the captain’s chair and synced her commlink to the ship’s computer, holding her breath until that tiny mental nudge came, when the systems did the usual fist bump and hug. Something about that simple act felt like giving up, like La Sirena Negra was already gone and she was moving on. But that was what she did, wasn’t it? Keep going. Move on. Don’t linger too long in any one place, or the present would start to drag and the past would catch up.
She called up the diagnostics, reading through a laundry list of minor issues alongside the few major ones she’d already noted. Working long cycles, it would take at least a week to—
“Comfy?” Pete said, startling Eva out of her thoughts.
“Don’t sneak,” Eva said. “Beggars can’t be choosers, right?”
“You always have a choice,” Pete said quietly. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Eva opened her mouth to argue, then shut it, thinking of Pholise suddenly. “She’ll need some work before she’s safe to fly,” she said. “Some of it I can put off, but—”
“I’ll leave you to it, then. Take any parts you want from the station.” Pete crossed his arms like he was hugging himself, staring at Eva from across the room. Like maybe he had more to say but couldn’t work up the testicular fortitude to spit it out.
“Salpica,” Eva said. “I’ll be fine. I’m a big girl.”
“I noticed.”
“No jodas tanto.”
“No es lo que jode . . .”
The rest of the dicho hung in the air between them with everything else they weren’t saying. Without another word, Pete waved and walked out. Eva watched him go, out onto the asteroid surface, back to her ship, and wondered where the fuck everything had gone so wrong.
The tears threatened to come again, the shakes, the inner scream that wanted to get out but wouldn’t make her feel any better if she let it. She had fucked her crew over for a sister who never needed saving in the first place, and now here she was, trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together after he fell off a damn space elevator and hit the ground like a meteorite. Pink was gone, Leroy was gone, and Vakar . . .
Vakar. She had no idea where he was. One minute they’re on a cruise, the next he’s missing, and now what the fuck was she going to do?
Échale tierra y dale pisón, Eva told herself. One thing at a time. You’ve got Min, and you’ve got a ship to fix, before the fart smell gets any worse.
The new ship—which Eva christened El Cucullo—needed more of a crew than just her and Min, but she wasn’t going to get the band back together without making the damn thing spaceworthy, so that was step one. She started with the problems that were easiest to fix, feeling a twinge of pleasure when some red or yellow system diagnostic message flicked to green. But it was still slower going than she had hoped, and every time she cut or burned or zapped herself, she cursed the hour she was born that no one was there to give her a hand.
Mala and the other cats were there, of course, but only as moral support. They had no hands. And Min was busy integrating herself fully into the systems, getting comfy in her new shell.
Toward the end of the second cycle of work, Eva was deep in the belly of the craft, trying to manually recalibrate the cargo bay’s grav core, when something crawled up her leg and perched on her knee. Not knowing what it was, she went very still, counted to three, then bashed the hell out of it with a wrench.
“Aw, sockets!” said a tinny, garbled voice.
Eva opened a panel in the bottom of the ship and peeked out, upside down, at a human in a pink flight suit examin
ing a tiny clump of yellow metal. Her black hair was spiked out at odd angles, and her face was smooth as a baby’s butt and just as dimpled and chubby. She hardly looked old enough to drink, much less show up alone at a random secret shipyard by herself.
“The hell are you?” Eva said.
The girl frowned. “You hit Forty.”
“I’m gonna hit your face if you don’t talk fast.”
“Agent Virgo told me you were tough,” the girl said. “She didn’t say you were Cranky McCrankerson. I’m your new engineer, Susan Zafone. You can call me Sue.”
Eva forced her face into neutral before her emotions took off with it. “Hey, Sue,” she said. “Sorry about the, ah . . .” She waved her wrench at the yellow thing, which winced and let out a squeal. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
“Really?” Sue’s brow furrowed. “I’ve been signaling you for hours.”
Eva had turned off comm notifications after an incident with the firewalls. Whoops. “I’ve been busy,” she said. “Give me a minute.”
She slid back inside and turned the ship’s comm back on, then pinged Min. ((Messages?))
((Wow, yes.))
The pilot sent them over. There were several from Sue, and one from Mari. Audio only. Eva pulled that one up and closed her eyes.
“Congratulations on finagling yourself a new ship,” Mari’s message said. “I was hoping you would end up somewhere out of trouble, but at this point it’s enough if you at least stay away from The Fridge.”
“Not fucking likely,” Eva muttered.
The message continued. “I’ve got another person who—well, it’s a long story and not really your business, but she needs to lie low, too. So she comes with you, and you pretend like you’re not babysitting.”
“Not happening, mija,” Eva said. She’d drop this girl off the first chance she got.
“She’s an excellent engineer, so she should be able to pull her own weight. Or Vakar’s, I suppose, unless you can find him. Meanwhile, I have to get back to The Fridge before they realize I’m off-mission. Cuídate.” The message ended.
“Carajo. I do need an engineer.” Eva frowned.
“Everything okay?” Sue called from outside.
“Solid as a hull.” Eva slid back out, still upside down. “I haven’t listened to all the messages, so why don’t you fill me in on what they said?”
Sue’s already-pale skin went a shade lighter, even as her cheeks turned as pink as her shirt.
“Well, okay,” she said meekly. “The most recent ones were mostly me saying I was on my way. I only got lost once!”
“That’s . . . good.” Eva idly tapped her wrench against the ship’s plating. “What else?”
“I, uh . . . oh, Agent Virgo had me tell you about my background.”
“Which is?”
The engineer squirmed. “I’m originally from Nakkai—that’s a settlement in the Ryship system—but we had to leave when I was little.”
“Why?”
“There was a huge Proarkhe discovery!” Eva mentally groaned at the mention of the aliens, but Sue’s discomfort was replaced by excitement, and she began talking faster and faster. “My big brother Josh was there, and he said it was this huge cave, and in the middle there was a weird pink lake with these ancient pumps that no one could figure out how to turn on, and—” She must have realized she was rambling, because she stopped and cleared her throat. “Anyway, some BOFA people showed up and kicked us all out.”
Eva stopped tapping her wrench. “The whole planet?”
“Yeah. So we had to move to Katoru.”
“That’s near Nuvesta, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Sue’s expression darkened. “It was a pretty quiet place. All my friends left for Nuvesta when they got old enough, but I stayed behind to work at my family’s shipyard. Mostly repairs.”
“Mostly?”
Her cheeks pinked again, and she gave Eva a shy smile. “I also designed and built mech prototypes. When I had time.”
“Interesting.” Especially given how young she was. If the engineer was old enough for her class-D pilot’s license, Eva would eat her gravboots. “Well, welcome aboard, Sue. I’ll introduce you to Min, and then we can—”
“Captain Innocente,” Sue interrupted, standing straighter, her mouth set in a determined line. “There’s something Agent Virgo didn’t want me to tell you.”
Eva raised an eyebrow. “And that is?”
“I . . . I’m kind of a criminal.”
“A criminal?” This she had to hear.
“I figure you’d find out eventually, so I wanted to tell you first. Some bad people kidnapped Josh, and my family has been trying to pay the ransom for months. I got . . . impatient, so I started doing things I shouldn’t have.” A pause. “I may have robbed a few banks. And an asteroid mine. And a vet clinic, but that was an accident.”
Bad people and kidnapping? Odds were she meant The Fridge, especially if Mari was involved. And that explained why Sue needed to lie low, as Mari had put it—Fridge problems plus a criminal record likely meant someone was after her. BOFA? Some planetary or system authority? People Eva was eager to avoid herself, no doubt.
“I understand if you don’t want me on your crew,” Sue continued, voice trembling as if she was holding back tears. “I promised Agent Virgo I’d stay out of trouble, though. She said you could help. I’d really appreciate that.”
Oh, Eva was going to help, all right. Mari was trying to saddle her with this girl to keep her from going to certain places, or doing something reckless, out of a sense of responsibility. But Sue was old enough to make her own choices, and if the girl wanted to go after The Fridge and find her brother, Eva was more than happy to facilitate.
Eva grinned. “I think we’re going to get along just fine. Would have been great to have you sooner, but there’s still plenty to do.”
Sue’s expression brightened. “You bet! I’m great with repairs. What’s left?”
Wiping sweat off her forehead, Eva gestured with her other hand at the grav core. “Trying to calibrate this, and then I wanted to see if I could fix some of the ablation damage to the secondary landing thruster before I—”
“I can do that,” Sue said. She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled sharply. “Line up, everybody!” she shouted.
As if by magic, dozens of tiny yellow robots appeared, swarming over each other as they formed up in three single-file lines and turned in unison to face Sue.
“All right, troops, we’ve got an assignment.” Sue marched in front of them like a drill sergeant, hands behind her back. “Ablation damage to the secondary landing thruster. Patch it up, smooth it out, and get back here on the double.” She whistled again, and off they went in a rush, like a hungry mob at a buffet.
Eva watched it all with a raised eyebrow, unsure whether to be worried or impressed. “Did you make those?”
“Yeah.” Sue practically preened. “They’re best suited for repairs, cleaning, that kind of stuff.” Her eyes widened as she leaned closer to Eva. “Just don’t let them get any curry,” she murmured. “Wreaks havoc on their little systems. Flaming burps for cycles.”
“All right, as long as they don’t muck up my ship.” Eva climbed back up into the grav core, thought for a moment, then swung back out. “Get on board, pick a bunk. And make sure your yellow buddies don’t mess with my pilot’s cats, okay?”
Sue’s face went white. “You have— Oh no.” She ran up the cargo ramp.
Girl couldn’t have been much out of her teens. A criminal already, thanks to The Fridge. But as long as she was a better engineer than Eva—
“Cap,” Min said through the speakers.
“Yeah?”
“Are there any problems with my systems? Because I suddenly feel . . . tickled.”
For the first time since Mari found her, Eva laughed, loud and long.
Maybe she would be able to make this work after all. Now that she had Min, it was just a matter of finding Pin
k, who would hopefully know what happened to Vakar.
And once Eva pulled her crew back together, she was going to give Pete a little visit. They’d see who was friendless then.
Chapter 20
Me Sube la Bilirrubina
Two cycles and countless repairs later, Min brought El Cucullo in for a gentle landing on Sceilara, one of Kepra’s twelve moons. Kepra was a gas giant, and most of its moons were settled by miners, except Sceilara. What had started as a cozy spot for smugglers to hide in had been gentrified over time into a part-trendy, part-tacky destination for people who believed nighttime was the right time to party. Sex, drugs, gambling . . . all manners of entertainment were available for a price, and all species with negotiable currency were welcome. There were still smugglers, of course; gentrification didn’t stop them, but it did give them handy targets, if they were suave and subtle enough.
Pink’s place was on the cusp of a seedier area, within a quick hop of the high-class spots but catering to folks who worked for a living, often underneath the people who played for a living. Like every other building on that street, its dark walls were outlined with brightly colored lights, the flashing sign out front simply reading clinic in alternating green, orange and, of course, pink.
Eva cursed under her breath about docking fees and the price of skycabs as she walked into a crowded waiting room. A dozen pairs of eyes took her in, along with a couple of probosci (proboscises? proboscodes? Eva could never remember) and a scandalously long purple tongue. She ignored them and ambled up to the receptionist, a kloshian who offered her a closemouthed smile before returning his attention to whatever was streaming on his commlink.
“I’m here to see Dr. Jones,” Eva said.
“Please provide an accepted form of identification and fill this out.” He slid a datapad to Eva without losing his glassy-eyed commlink stare.
“I’m not a patient, I’m a friend. I need to see her.”
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