The Gray Market: A Space Opera Adventure Series (The New Dawn Book 5)

by Valerie J Mikles

  “Here, eat this,” Sky said, handing him the bowl. “You do need to eat. Slowly.”

  “Thanks, bébé,” he said, taking the bowl and sauntering along the edge of the room, studying the contradicting walls. She figured he’d want to see a projector later and take it apart.

  8

  “There we go,” Sky said, returning to the table. She smoothed her dress and pulled her chair next to his, opting to fill her plate with the curry because she missed having spices. “Now we’re alone. We can eat and talk business.”

  “You were concerned about your alien friend overhearing something?” Sikorsky chuckled, cutting into the fish that took up most of his plate.

  “He’s burdened with enough,” Sky said. She needed Tray (or someone) to take Hawk off her hands for a few hours so she could focus on manipulating Sikorsky.

  “I need to get on your ship,” he crooned, glancing sideways at her.

  “I’ve been through the cargo. There is nothing there that you want,” Sky smiled, taking a bite of curry.

  “It belongs to me. I’m very possessive,” he smirked.

  “I’ll sell it to you,” Sky whispered hotly in his ear. She dropped her hand to his thigh, and rubbed. He obliged her with a contented grunt, parting his legs to invite more. Sky liked that Vlad understood the harmless flirtation and played along—unlike Danny.

  “I paid Matthews in advance. A hundred thousand marks,” Vlad said, forcing a business tone.

  “Ha! No wonder he’s broke,” Sky guffawed. “I’ll have an auction. Bidding starts at one-fifty.”

  Vlad raised his brow. “An auction’s an awful lot of work for someone of your flightiness. You’re not going to stick around long enough to spend that kind of money. I’ll cover my expenses while you’re here—”

  “—and you’ll fund the repair and refuel of my ship.”

  Sikorsky gave a deep-throated laugh. Sky wasn’t afraid to ask, because she knew it wouldn’t even make a dent in his resources. With him, it was always a dance to see how much she could get before he lost interest. “It’d be cheaper to buy you a new one. A better one. Current regulations won’t allow fueling of water haulers. I’ll trade you something smaller and faster. You leave that ship to me.”

  Sky wrinkled her nose at the brush-off. “What’s your interest?”

  “Nothing that concerns you,” he assured, stroking her thigh.

  “What are you looking for, Vlad?” she persisted, puckering her lips. “I know you’ve already broken onto my ship and if you’d found what you were looking for, I wouldn’t be here. What is it you want?”

  “What is it you want?” he returned, pushing back his chair to make room for her on his lap. Impressed by the invitation, Sky moved behind him instead and slid her hands down his torso.

  “I asked first,” she said.

  He clenched his fist, debating how to play the game, but whatever he wanted, it was more important than what he was giving up. “Terrana. I want a way back to Terrana,” he said finally.

  Sky frowned and circled back to her seat. “Any ship in port can get you there. You don’t care about laws. You can steal the fuel. You could go any time.”

  “And Parker would see me coming,” he said, stabbing his food with his fork, but not bringing it to his mouth. “No ship gets through that port that he doesn’t see. My absence here would be noticed.”

  “And how does a tour of Oriana change that?” Sky asked, picking the vegetables from her curry.

  Vlad sucked in his cheeks, then looked to the projected walls of their dining room. She wondered if he could see through the image—if he was checking for eavesdroppers.

  “Before the ship disappeared, a smaller vessel undocked,” Vlad said quietly. “It belonged to a man named LaMark, but he wasn’t on it. I assume he died with the rest of the crew. Diana was on it.”

  Sky took a bite to hide her response. When they had encountered hybrid-like power out in the world, the crew always came back to Diana’s sudden appearance on Oriana. But this was Quin, and if Sky let on that she knew something, Vlad would go after Hawk to get the information. “So? She stowed away and used the ship to escape before she hit gravity,” Sky said, hoping her eye roll wasn’t too fake.

  “No. She appeared on the ship after its departure. She would not have waited three days through transit to make her move,” Vlad countered.

  She couldn’t argue the point without sounding like an idiot. “I’ll tell you what. You fuel my ship, and I will let you stow away with all the comforts of home on my next trip to Terrana.”

  “You’re not listening,” he hissed, smacking the table so hard the plates clattered. “She teleported.”

  Sky balked, then laughed at him. “Is that some new technology the Terranans are working on?”

  Vlad stood from the table, getting half a step into an angry pace before thinking better of it and sitting calmly at the table. He picked up his fork and loaded it anew.

  “You have always denied the existence of hybrids, but I know someone as well-traveled as you has seen things,” he said, his eyes narrowing.

  “You think Diana Solvere is one of those mythical hybrids?” Sky asked, adding some potatoes to her plate.

  “It would explain the Disappeared,” he said, taking a bite of his meal

  “The Disappeared are a bunch of dead prisoners that the Terranan government doesn’t want to fess up to killing,” Sky said, speaking through a mouthful of potatoes. For all the tubers they’d had in the wild, none had the buttery taste of the Quin variety.

  “If you don’t believe me, then there’s no harm in my wandering your ship looking for a non-existent pathway back to Terrana,” he smirked.

  “Vlad, if there were any path off that ship, I would have found it,” Sky said. “The only way back to Terrana is to fly. The Quin government doesn’t have armed ships keeping you contained here.”

  “Do you know what Parker has become since you left Terrana? He is not the man either of us remembers. He’s taking prisoners.”

  “I hate prisoners,” Sky allowed.

  Sikorsky nodded, knowing he’d struck a chord. “So you’ll help me?”

  “Refurbish and refuel Oriana,” Sky said.

  “Sky,” he protested.

  “Not for me,” Sky said. “For Tray. For Danny.”

  “For everyone Parker killed,” Sikorsky said, raising his glass.

  Hawk was glad to be away from the fancy table, the strange projections, and the formal meal. His heart ached for Tray, and Hawk wanted to know his friend was better before he dove into the opulence of Quin.

  The boat rocked with a gentle motion, much smoother than Oriana’s movements had ever been. Sometimes the wind threw him off balance, but it was fun, not nauseating. The boat’s engine thrummed, and Hawk circled the deck until he found stairs leading down to the engine. He wanted to go downstairs and see, but worried that his hold on his magic was too tenuous to risk it. In the pool room, it had taken only a moment for the buzz of the energy to move from pleasant to overwhelming. The stairs also went up, and Hawk tapped his foot to each step before trusting it with his weight. There were no fake windows on this side of the projection, but Sky had said the third story wasn’t real, so he knew there were more projections somewhere.

  The second level had a lot of open space and a small, transparent enclosure with a single woman inside, sitting on a chair, crying. Despite the tears, she was beautiful. She wore all black, and her running shoes were caked with mud. Her hair was tucked under a tightly wrapped scarf, and she used the ends to dab at her tears. Hawk circled the enclosure, and when he found the door, it was locked. Biting his lip, he jiggled the handle again, pushing just a hint of magic toward it until it clicked open.

  The woman jumped from the bench, bringing up her fists.

  “Are you a prisoner?” Hawk asked, offering her his half-eaten bowl of rice.

  The woman looked down her nose at the food, then slumped into her chair again. “Might as well be,
” she groused. Her Trade was rough, but at least she spoke it and he didn’t need the Virp to translate.

  “I can help,” Hawk said, peering into the room. The projections on the inside the room brought the outside closer, but shielded the woman from the wind.

  “I don’t need Valentino help. I need Vimbai help. Can you get me that?” she snapped, crossing her arm.

  Hawk shook his head. “That’s... Tray’s friends,” Hawk recalled.

  The woman finally looked past his obnoxious clothes and saw his face. “You were on Oriana with him?” she asked, crowding Hawk out of the small room and into the open air. “Is Tray really injured or is this a ploy to control public perception?”

  “He could die,” Hawk said, the food he’d eaten churning and threatening to come up again. “I shot him. It was an accident. I need to see him. I need to go to…”

  “Clover,” she finished, sucking in her cheeks. “Join the club. I can’t get to him or Hero.”

  Hawk’s eyes widened. “Are you Hero’s mother?”

  The question seemed to upset her. “Tray told you about Hero?”

  “It slips out sometimes,” Hawk acknowledged. He racked his brain, trying to remember if her name ever slipped out. “What’s your name?”

  “Mikayla,” she sighed, sauntering to the real edge of the boat, letting the breeze dry her tears. “Well, thank you for saying ‘Hero’s mother’ and not ‘mother of Tray’s son.’”

  “He’s a non-custodial breeder. It makes sense. To me. In my culture,” Hawk rambled. “I got the sense that it’s far more complicated here.”

  “Non-custodial breeders are common where you’re from?” Mikayla scoffed, taking hold of the railing, then sitting down, letting her feet dangle over the side of the deck.

  “It’s a part of life,” Hawk said, sitting down too, but keeping a healthy distance from the edge. He didn’t know much about the water, but he knew he didn’t float like the boat did.

  “How many non-custodial children have you spawned?” she asked, her tone mocking and resentful.

  “Six,” Hawk said, stirring the rice around his bowl, breathing deeply to keep down what he’d already eaten. “My first was stillborn, so she technically doesn’t count.”

  “She counts,” Mikayla said, her eyes going distant.

  “We would have kept her. We wanted to raise her together. When she died, I couldn’t get invested in another child. The next two died in the first month, but my other three are still living. That’s a good record.” Hearing his breeding record out loud, Hawk felt the loss—not just from the ones who didn’t make it, but the ones he was separated from now.

  “Fifty percent survival is a good record?” Mikayla gaped, folding one leg as she turned to face him. “That sounds awful.”

  “That’s why I came with Tray. He said he could help me. We could find medicine or technology to help. So my children don’t grow up like I did,” Hawk said, squirming at her scrutiny, then scrambling for modesty as the kilt caught the wind. “These clothes are strange.”

  “It’s a fad,” Mikayla laughed. “Since we cut ties with Terrana, skirts, kilts, tunics, dresses, all those things that require gravity for fit and flow have become more popular. He’s got you dressed like a swank.”

  “I don’t know that word,” Hawk said, tugging at the clothes again, his skin starting to itch.

  “Someone who has money,” Mikayla explained.

  “I don’t know that word either,” Hawk sighed.

  This time she frowned in judgment. Her full lips darkened with the motion and her deep, brown eyes narrowed. “How did you pay for the clothes?”

  “Ms. Tarelli gave them to me,” Hawk said. “She wanted me to blend in.”

  Mikayla laughed and Hawk felt like he’d been victim of a prank. “What do your normal clothes look like?”

  Hawk scooted away from her, feeling threatened. “When I left home, I didn’t take anything with me. I couldn’t... Most of what I wear is Danny’s.”

  “Tray’s brother,” Mikayla said, her head bowing. “What happened to him?”

  Hawk froze. He didn’t have a lie prepared and Sky wasn’t here to deflect for him.

  “What? Did you shoot him, too?” Mikayla asked glibly.

  “No,” Hawk said, his ears burning.

  “Was it tragic? Was Tray distraught?” she asked.

  Hawk’s jaw flapped and his throat closed up. “Tray doesn’t know he’s gone.”

  The projection of the third story failed and the sky went dark. Hawk’s fingers curled as he tried desperately not to trigger any more power failures. The engine kept thrumming and a few minutes later, he felt Sky’s arms around him.

  “Did I break the ship?” Hawk whispered.

  “Nope. We’re heading back to port,” Sky said. “Do you want to sleep in a house or go back to Oriana?”

  “I want to see Tray.”

  9

  “Go home, Kit,” Roland grumbled, trotting up his front steps. He didn’t even need to see her bright pink jacket to know she’d be hanging out there. He was surprised to see her tucked behind the chair, squatting in the corner, hands over her head like she was sick.

  Kit checked the Virp on her wrist and shook her head. “It’s too early.”

  A working Virp was a novelty in this part of town, and the only reason Kit had one was because she’d scavenged the junk yards and refurbished it herself. Roland asked her once why she never sold them, and she’d mumbled some excuse.

  “Display’s not even showing the time, is it?” he teased, giving her a hand up. She had a goose egg on her forehead, the way kids got when they got clotheslined by the low branches in the orchards.

  “Tobias’ vitals,” she said, fiddling with the projection. “He’s awake. I’m not going home until he’s blacked out on Zen.”

  “It’s the middle of the day,” Roland said.

  “Why do I need to rush home then?” she smirked. The screen door on the neighboring porch creaked open and Kit jumped behind him, grabbing his shirt. He gave her a look, but he wasn’t any more confident about facing Granny Lois than she was.

  “Did you find Cyn?” Lois groused, pulling off her cooking gloves and tucking them into her apron.

  “She hasn’t been to the pharmacy,” Roland reported, looking longingly at his rocker, knowing his next assignment was on the tip of Lois’ tongue. He’d been all over Clover hunting Cyn. “Her last delivery was in Kemah, the day Matthews showed up.”

  “When do you leave?” Lois asked, leaning on the railing, looking out into the street rather than at him.

  “I don’t,” Roland snapped, crossing his arms and dropping into his chair. “I am not walking into Sikorsky territory on a hunch.”

  “I’ll go,” Kit volunteered, looking hopefully at Lois.

  Lois turned her icy gaze on the girl. “You already botched one job for me. I ain’t giving you another.”

  “You never gave me a job,” Kit said, her voice getting tight. She clasped her fingers nervously.

  “The delivery to Vimbai?” Lois sneered, turning up her nose. “If you did your job, how come she’s still alive?”

  “I delivered what Cyn gave me,” Kit said, stomping her foot and stepping challengingly toward Lois.

  “I’ll deliver that same mix to your veins. See how long you last,” Lois said, closing the gap and leaning over the porch.

  Roland jumped between them, grabbing hold of Kit before she could throw a punch.

  “In the house. Do your schoolwork,” he told Kit. “I’ll set her straight.”

  Kit’s jaw clenched, but she gave a nod and disappeared inside. It was the invitation she’d been wanting since the first day she started loitering on his porch, and he hoped she didn’t take it as an open invite. He closed the door behind her, then took a moment to calm himself.

  “What has gotten into you?” he asked, climbing over the railing between their porches. “You used to look out for us, and now you’re threatening our lives and
killing ‘crats. Asking Cyn to kill. And Kit. And me. Cyn could’ve screwed up the package. Or Matthews—”

  “She’s hiding the habit,” Lois said, fishing a Zen pipe from her apron and lighting up. “Matthews wouldn’t know to intercept it.”

  “What I mean is Morrigan Zenzele has a patient, and she hasn’t left the hospital since he arrived,” Roland argued. “Maybe her mind is on something other than getting high. Did you think of that before you went and threatened a twelve-year-old girl?”

  Lois rolled her eyes, and dug a hand-scrawled list from her apron. “We got three more names from the Enn database. Check ‘em out.”

  He didn’t know if it was the Zen that made her ignore him, or if it was some other wisdom of leadership. It had probably always been the Zen. Stalking off her porch, he went back to his own house and locked the door.

  “Kit! You still here?” he called. It wouldn’t have surprised him if she’d jumped out a window to escape Lois, but he found her again, bright pink against the dull green-grey furniture. She leaned by the front window, which he’d left open for ventilation.

  “Tobias said you’d become a killer for her. I didn’t believe him,” she said, a tear rolling off her nose and splashing on her thumbs. She’d eavesdropped on his conversation with Lois.

  “I haven’t killed anyone yet,” Roland said, blustering to his kitchen—the one he used for food, not drugs.

  “Just buried a few bodies,” Kit accused, chasing after him.

  “What else is Tobias telling you?” Roland said, surveying the dried grains in his pantry, wishing he’d spent less time on Lois’ jobs and more on paying gigs. He missed having real food.

  “That’s why she’s stirring hate against the doles, isn’t it?” Kit continued. “So she’ll be able to burn a body, leave it on the street, and blame an angry mob.”