by Dixon, Ruby
I pick up a small piece of fruit, shine it on the oversized tunic I'm still wearing, and consider. Ruth wants to outsmart. To get the upper hand. "So you don't think we should trust them?" I ask Ruth. "You don't like the idea of going back to their ship?"
She looks at me as if I've grown another head. "You really want to be part of their crew?"
"I don't know if we have a choice," I admit. "There's a fine line between being cautious and being so hardheaded that we get ourselves killed."
Ruth just shakes her head. "I think we figure out how to rob them, replenish our supplies, and send them on their way." She speaks in a low voice, glancing over at Adiron, but he's oblivious. "I don't trust them. How can we believe that the first four rounds of pirates were awful creatures but somehow these guys are all right? That they just happened to find us and want to rescue us because they like humans but don't want to fuck us? It sounds like bunk to me."
At the table, Alice takes a bite of fruit, then shrugs. "What about the ice field thing? Do you believe that?"
"They could be lying to us about drifting," Ruth says. "Trying to force us to go with them."
Alice thinks for a moment, then nods. "They might be."
"What are our choices?" I ask. "Even if they are lying, are we any less vulnerable with them than we are here? We're low on air filters. We're low on food. We can't operate a good deal of the ship's controls. If we stay, I worry that we're making a bad decision." I sigh, considering. "Then again, if we go, I'm worried about the same."
Helen is quiet. She sits up and wears a sad expression on her face. "I wish we knew if they were lying. That would make this all so much easier."
"That's the problem," Alice says. "We don't know if they're lying or not. Everything they've told us sounds believable…but they've also been so kind and quick to volunteer to help us that it makes me suspicious."
Ruth gets an intense expression on her face. She slides into her seat and leans in. "I can sneak on board their ship when everyone's sleeping," she whispers. "Climb into the ductwork and spy on them. Listen to some conversations. Then we can find out if it's the truth or not."
"No," I protest. "That's dangerous and a bad idea."
"Are you kidding? It's a great idea."
Alice looks worried. "If we spy on them and get caught, we could piss them off. And if what they're telling us is true, we might need them."
"No spying," I say again with a shake of my head. "We could always try and get that one drunk and see what he confesses."
"But won't he know what we're doing?" Helen asks. "Then he could just tell us whatever and pretend to be drunk."
She has a point. After he got me drunk, he'd be foolish to think I wouldn't try to retaliate at some point. "Doesn't really matter," I say. "I don't think we have enough alcohol left on the ship. Unless he can get drunk on noodles, that plan won't work."
Ruth grabs another piece of fruit, frowning. "I'm so sick of noodles."
"But you want to stay?" Alice asks her.
"I'm not sick of living," Ruth replies. "Just noodles."
"So your vote is to stay?" I repeat, needing clarification.
"Unless you let me go spy on them to learn otherwise, yes, my vote is to stay and take our chances," Ruth says.
"Helen?" I turn to her.
Helen's beautiful face is troubled. She glances between all of us for a moment and then says, "I want to go." Her answer is strong and sure, and surprises me. Helen's never one to disagree, especially not with strong-willed Ruth. That must mean she's more excited about the other ship than she's let on.
The other ship…and probably Mathiras. If we go with them, I'm definitely going to have to have a talk with him. "You, Alice?" I ask. "What do you think?"
"I'm going to go with whatever you think, boss."
"That's not an answer," Ruth protests.
"Jade hasn't led us astray so far," Alice counters. "I trust her to make the right decision."
Ruth glares at her. "Still a bullshit answer."
"I don't care if it is or not. I feel things are shit all around, and the only person I trust right now is Jade. So…Jade?" Alice prompts. "We're tied. Do we stay or do we go?"
I look at their expectant faces. I think about the people in the stasis pods, waiting to be woken up.
And even though I shouldn't, I glance over and look at Adiron.
Stay or go?
27
ADIRON
I can't get the vid-screen working. Or rather, I can, but we're so far out and there's so much interference from the nearby ice field that it can't link up to anything. I'm selfishly glad, because I don't want to give them a reason to decide to stay behind. I don't sabotage the vid-screen…but I would if it made a difference. I'd just pretend to be real stupid and accidentally put one of my tools through it or something. Kaspar or Mathiras would see through me right away, because they know me, but maybe these females wouldn't.
Doesn't matter, though. They don't tell me what's decided. No matter how much I hint that I'm curious, they just shake their heads, exchange meaningful looks, and talk discreetly about other things. They eat all the fruit and then one by one, head to bed.
Jade waits by the door, indicating that it's time for me to go to sleep, too.
I gesture at the room. "Maybe I'll stay here and clean up." I'm too wired to go to sleep. My entire life has changed in the space of a day. This morning, I woke up excited to go treasure hunting, and tonight, I'm going to sleep worried that my female—because Jade is definitely mine—is going to be stubborn and demand to stay behind. If she does, I'm going to have to kidnap her and her friends, because I'm not going to let her get stuck out here. Walking away from her is not an option, no matter how much she might think it is.
She's mine now. She just doesn't realize it yet.
By the door, Jade arches an eyebrow and gives me an amused look. "You forget I've seen your living quarters. I don't think you know how to clean anything."
Busted. I laugh. "I'm just not all that tired."
"Well, I am, and I'll feel more comfortable if I know you're in your quarters instead of poking around on the ship. Can you please just do this for me?" Her tone is weary, her smile tired.
Damn it. She knows just how to get to me. I can spar with a teasing Jade all night long, but weary Jade just makes me want to take care of her. "Of course."
She's quiet as we head through the silent, echoing halls of the Buoyant Star. The sour smell of the filters tickles my nose, but I can live with it for a day. The rest of the ship seems clean, at least, and I wonder if they know how to run the bots or if they just clean it all by hand out of sheer boredom. I can't imagine what their life is like on this ship, and if they can survive three years of being trapped, I guess I can live through one night of going to sleep early.
Even so, I have to be me. When we get to my door, I turn to Jade. "Don't suppose you'll let me tuck you in?"
She snorts, but her lips curl in a smile. She puts a hand on my chest, gently pushing me into my room. "Go sleep. There'll be plenty of time to harass me in the morning."
That sounds promising. "Because you'll be coming back with us?"
"I didn't say that," Jade replies quickly.
"Yeah, you did."
She gives my chest another, far-less-subtle nudge. "Just go to sleep already, okay?"
I grin at her. "My sister Zoey always wanted a kiss goodnight. Can I interest you—"
This time she shoves me, but I deserve it. I laugh to myself as the door slides shut and I'm alone in my quarters. You never know unless you ask, and I'm a big fan of asking.
* * *
Hours later, I still can't sleep. I lie on the bunk, scratching at the base of my horns, and stare at the ceiling. There's just too much to think about. My head is full of Jade and her smiles, Jade and her wariness, Jade and her need to protect those around her. She's so smart and responsible. I like that in a female. I like that she cares about others. I think of Shaalyn, who only lik
ed people she could use. The difference between them is night and day…or human and mesakkah, I suppose.
I don't like thinking about Shaalyn, though, because that's long past. So I get to my feet and head out of my room, deciding to go for a nighttime walk. I know if Jade catches me, she'll think I'm spying, but I just need to get some of this restless energy out. I'm not going to touch anything she doesn't want me to touch. I head out of my room, the floors cold under my bare feet, and rub my arms. It's definitely cold on this ship, and I wonder if they're deliberately keeping the temperature down to conserve fuel? Or if it's just another thing they don't know how to fix?
Either way, I can solve that.
I pause by Jade's room, listening, but when I don't hear noise or movement, I conclude she must be asleep. I won't wake her, then, to tell her what I'm doing. The protective feeling in me surges once more, and I want her to get a good night's sleep. I want her to get her rest. She deserves it.
My stomach growls, and for a moment, I consider heading to the mess hall on the ship and seeing what they have in their dispensers for a snack…but I remember how much Jade delighted over their food. How she said they had nothing left but noodles. I don't want to eat away at their stash of supplies, so I just pat my angry stomach. "Some other time, buddy."
I head for the control room, checking out the systems. Everything is neat and clean here, and there's a few of the buttons with tiny labels stuck to them, strange, blocky letters written next to arrows. This must be the humans making notes for themselves on how to run things. They're smart, and I wonder how much they had to figure out on their own.
I think of Jade and the others, pushing strange buttons and hoping that this one doesn't make the ship explode, or space them, and I can't imagine. They're so keffing brave. I think of the males that woke them up just to abuse them, and my fists clench. Part of me wishes those males were here so I could strangle them with my bare hands…but then that means Jade would have been abused that much longer. So I guess it's good that they're gone. Maybe after we get the Little Sister back we can hunt them down and make them pay.
I brighten at that thought and get to work on the control panel.
A couple of hours later, I have to acknowledge that I'm not getting anywhere. Whatever system is set up here, it's locked down tight. I can't override anything without taking it all apart, and I can't risk doing that in case something breaks. The systems haven't been serviced in three years and there's a bit of rust here and there, and dust clogging things. If it's working, best to just leave it alone.
At least I'm tired now, though. With a yawn, I head back down one of the halls, heading for my room. As I turn down another shadowy hallway, something appears out of the corner of my eye. I could have sworn I saw a figure moving, disappearing the moment I came around the corner.
Ghosts?
Kef me. I knew this place was haunted.
28
ADIRON
Ghosts. I hate that this ship has ghosts. That should be against the rules, shouldn't it? If a ship already has bad luck, adding ghosts on top of things is just adding insult to injury.
I hesitate in the dark halls of the Star. Do I wake up Jade and tell her that her ship is haunted? Or do I try to hunt down the ghost and protect my female? Not that I know how to stop a ghost, but I could at least try to scare it off. I war with myself for a moment, then decide I have to check it out. Damn it. I jog in place for a moment, trying to work myself up, and then race after the ghost, heading down the lonely halls in search of it.
Two turns down the corridors later, I'm relieved to find it's not a ghost at all. It's Lord Straik, of all people.
"You scared the kef out of me," I blurt out as I jog over to his side. "I thought you were a ghost."
"Of course you did." His tone is thoughtful, distracted. He leans against a railing that curves along the hallway, and stares out the large window in front of him. I'm not entirely surprised to see he's gazing out at the cargo bay. Jade showed me this window earlier. She didn't take me in to look at the cargo closer, instead just showing me from here. Instead of a view out to space, this window faces the cargo hold and from here, I suppose whoever was in charge of the ship watched the crew working on the cargo. There's no crew now, and all of the work stations are empty.
The cargo hold is not, though. It's filled with dozens upon dozens of pods that anyone familiar with the slave trade recognizes. They're stasis pods, stacked high and deep, and I'm just guessing, but I suspect the entire hold is full.
And I also suspect it's weighing heavily on Lord Straik's mind. For all that he likes to pretend he's a badass pirate, something tells me he's not as familiar with the seedier underbelly of the universe as he thinks.
"Couldn't sleep?" I ask, moving to stand next to him. I pretend to stare out at the pods, but all I can think of is Jade. She was in one of these, at some point, and some keffing loser saw her sleeping and decided to wake her up to entertain himself.
If I ever find out who that male—or female—is, I'm going to destroy them.
"Sleep?" Straik shakes his head. "No. I'm not sleeping. There's too much to think about."
"So you came over here to think?" I look around. "Do the girls know you're here?"
He shakes his head. "I needed to see for myself. No need to wake them."
I'm pretty sure Jade isn't going to be thrilled that Straik's hanging out on what she considers “her” ship, but the male just seems so depressed that I don't have the heart to go and wake her just yet. "You all right?"
Straik stares out that window so hard that I'm surprised his eyes don't burn holes through the glass. "Ask me that question again tomorrow."
I get it. He wants to mope tonight. I cross my arms over my chest and stare out the glass myself. That…really is a lot of stasis pods. "I was kinda hoping that the big cargo would be dark-matter cores or untraceable credits. I mean, this definitely counts as a big score, but…it's slaves. I guess we're lucky that we found them instead of someone else who'd actually sell them."
"Slaves," Straik repeats, and he sounds utterly melancholy. "I don't know how they got here."
I frown at that. "You mean how they loaded the pods onto the ship? There's bots for that sort of thing—"
He turns and glares at me. "My family is not in the business of running slaves! We are a proud lineage! The house of Rin is an old, respected name. We are a proud family!" He gestures angrily at the window. "This is not what we do!"
"How do you know that? ’Cause it kinda looks like it is what you do."
Straik looks as if he wants to rip my face off. His response comes out in an angry hiss. "We do not need the credits—"
"Now," I point out. "You don't need the credits now. Where did the credits you have come from if not this?"
His face falls. He turns back toward the window again. "We made our fortune in trade. I was told it was silks." He stares out at the stasis pods as if he's a man betrayed. "These…are not silks."
"You think they lied to you, then?" It's entirely possible that someone took over the ship, dumped all the silks into deep space and loaded the humans on but…that seems awfully stupid. It'd be far easier to just sell the silks somewhere, and with this big of a cargo hold, someone would have had word of a massive shipment of illegal silks sold somewhere. Either the silks were dumped, or they never existed in the first place.
"I don't know." Straik puts his hands on his hips, staring out the window. "It bothers me that I don't know. Here all this time, I thought I was the one in the family that broke the rules, the one that was shaming our good name. Now I see this…" He gestures at the window. "I don't know what to think."
"Hey, cheer up. Your uncle was a rebel before you were, right? The one that married a human and gave away a bunch of the family lands to them on Risda? You probably look pretty good compared to him."
Straik blinks. "Yes. You're right."
"I am?"
"I need to talk to my uncle." His look of melancholy dis
appears, replaced by one of determination. "He will know the truth of things. He will tell me if everything the Rin house stands for is a lie."
"Okay, uh…great?" I'm not sure when he thinks we'll be going. We're in the Slatra system, and there's no way we can get a comm out to Risda III, which is all the way on the other side of the galaxy. "I suppose we can all head that way after we bring in the Star, since we'll need to figure out a place for all these humans. I guess we can't wake them up yet. And I guess someone's going to have to stay on the Star here and fly it, since there's no crew."
"Yes," Straik says thoughtfully. "There are a lot of moving pieces that need to be considered."
"It's a pain in the keffing ass," I admit. "Might have been easier for everyone if this ship was never found."
"Mmm." Straik stares out the window. "Indeed."
Of course, that would mean I never met Jade, so I'm personally glad we found the Star. I can see how it bothers Straik, though. For all his pretentious black clothing and lofty way of speaking, he's got a good streak and tries to do the right thing, even as a pirate. There's no faking how horrified he is about the flesh trade we've discovered. I don't envy him trying to make sense of things.
I'm too tired to think about any of that anyhow. I yawn, ready to head back to bed. Now that I'm actually tired, I'd like to just rub one out while thinking of Jade and her delightful amber eyes, and then sink into sleep (also hopefully filled with Jade). "What's done is done," I say with a shrug. "I'm heading to bed. You going to sneak back out or do I need to tell Jade and the others that you're here?"
"No need to wake anyone," Straik says. "I'll be gone before anyone wakes up. I promise."
Perfect.
29
ADIRON
I'm a keffing moron.
I stare at the unconscious forms of my two brothers, dumped unceremoniously in the hall where the ship-to-ship connection used to be.
