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

by Valerie J Mikles

  “I’ll be scarred,” Hawk muttered, laying his head on Sky’s shoulder.

  Chase rolled his eyes. “I offered to take you to Thea. You didn’t want to bother her.”

  “She’s already been shot at because of me,” Hawk mumbled, shaking his flask. Liza had made him a flask that never emptied, but it didn’t work now that they’d left Boone. It always felt empty.

  “Sikorsky’s worked a deal with Genova to get the supplies you want,” Sky said to Chase. “He wants you to go to Olcott to make sure you have what you need. His boat’s ready when you are.”

  Chase’s temple twitched. “You just decided that I’m going to Olcott?”

  “I really didn’t think about it,” Sky said, shrinking back. Hawk knew it was an act, but he still wanted to protect her.

  “No, of course you didn’t. You’re as bad as Sikorsky,” Chase grumbled, stalking out of the infirmary.

  “You’re not a prisoner here. If you want out, then go,” Sky hollered after him.

  “Fine. I’m going!” Chase bellowed from the hall.

  “Chase!” Sky called, sliding off the bed, dragging Hawk with her. Chase stopped at the hatch leading to the cargo bay, waiting and listening, but not turning around. “Isn’t your girlfriend in Olcott? I didn’t mess things up between you two, did I?”

  Chase rubbed his eyes, and Hawk knew she was getting to him. He also knew her question was sincere. As flirtatious as she was, she was protective of relationships.

  “I was going to ask you to take Hawk with you, but if you want to meet up with her—”

  “No, I’ll… I’ll take Hawk,” Chase conceded, letting out a shaky breath. “He deserves to see a part of Quin that isn’t bankrupt. Maybe that will help him understand the concept of money.”

  “I get to go to Olcott?” Hawk asked excitedly. “And then Clover?”

  “It’s up to Chase if he feels there’s an opening,” Sky said. “With this being your first time leaving Kemah, the media will probably be watching too closely.”

  “I need a shower. You should change into that ridiculous swank-garb for the media,” Chase said, waving a hand at Hawk, trudging through the hatch, his eyes downcast.

  “I don’t want to wear the swank-garb,” Hawk complained. Sky closed her eyes and exhaled, her chin dropping, and Hawk immediately leaned into her, concerned. “Bébé, what’s wrong?”

  “Can I trust you with Chase?” she asked, a twinge of fear in her voice.

  Hawk rubbed her arm, excited to leave Quin, but dreading a day alone with Chase. “Can I tell him?”

  “He’ll find out the truth,” she said. “Danny will seek him out on his own. I don’t want Chase distracted looking for Danny when we need him here.”

  “That’s cruel, Sky,” Hawk said, twirling his flask in his hand.

  “It’s necessary.”

  15

  Danny lay on his side in the hospital bed, staring at an inverted jar of white liquid and an IV of clear liquid. The white liquid traveled through a tube in his nose, feeling lukewarm against the soft tissue, and the steady drip landed in his stomach where it sat like a lead weight.

  “How are you?” Jennifer asked, stroking his temple. For the first time in days, he didn’t feel fevered.

  “Confused,” he replied. He didn’t remember coming to the hospital or the application of fluids, and while he was confused about how he got here, he did feel slightly more clearheaded about life in general. His hospital room was small with a long, narrow window looking out on the train tracks. Pierce’s hospital was set adjacent to the train station that connected the city to Clover, Olcott, and Pear. The only way to get to Kemah was through Olcott.

  “You’ll be happy to know your identity got you checked in safely,” Jennifer said, taking the chair that was tucked into the corner between his bed and the window. “Daniel Wrangham. Do you and Johann have competitions to see who could come up with the worst names?”

  “Actually, yes,” Danny said. When he laughed, the tube in his nose shifted, and he gagged instead. “What is this?”

  “Fluids and nutrients,” she said, reaching over and smoothing the tube against his cheek. “When I leave you with a cup of soup before I go on a night shift, I do not expect to see you nursing that same cup the next morning. When you don’t eat, you get this.”

  “It hurts to eat,” Danny said, pressing his aching stomach. It felt like he was moving air bubbles through his blocked digestive system. “Out there, I ate less. Amanda needed to get strong. Tray can’t go hungry without dying.”

  “We’re not going to run out of food here,” she said firmly, noticing his discomfort and standing to consult the monitors projected on the wall behind his head. “I thought Amanda was going to be the one dealing with refeeding syndrome, but she seems fine.”

  “Thanks to Johann,” Danny agreed. “It’s nothing I did. I can’t do anything right.”

  “That’s the depression talking,” Jennifer said, her hand pressing against his belly, massaging out the excess gas in his gut. He’d always known she was a nurse, but had never been in a hospital where she worked. In uniform, she looked clean and professional, but also tired.

  “I can’t stay here. In this city, it’s too confusing. It’s too confining,” he groaned, wiping his nose, inadvertently pulling the tube loose again. “Sanshin. I’ll take Amanda back to Sanshin.”

  “Shh,” Jennifer soothed, catching his hands. “Amanda has no interest in going back to the temple.”

  “Is she okay? I—I hurt her,” Danny stammered, trying to rub his eyes, pressing his face to Jennifer’s fingers. “I keep hurting her.”

  “She’s um—she’s here. In the hospital. Seeing a doctor,” Jennifer said, looking to the side, her cheeks turning pink. Then she looked over her shoulder and swore under her breath. The door opened slowly, powered by a mechanical motor, and in rolled Ezekiel Kernighan. He was a Terranan-born doctor, whose gravity therapy had not prepared him for planet-side gravity. When he came to Aquia, almost every bone in his skeleton had fractured. The long bones had been surgically replaced and reinforced enough to allow him to sit upright, but the tissue trauma and nerve damage was severe, and he had never recovered his ability to walk.

  “Hello Danny… Wrangham,” Ezekiel smirked. “For all the medication funneled into this room, I expected Gray here.”

  Jennifer paled, but Danny wasn’t afraid of Ezekiel. The man declared his loyalty to medicine, not government, and he’d helped Danny find medicine for Patriot refugees before.

  “Ezekiel, you have to help her. She doesn’t have a cover. As soon as they take her blood and her fingerprints, she’ll be found out! Parker will kill her!” Danny cried.

  “Quiet, Danny. The whole ward doesn’t need to know,” Jennifer said.

  “Danny, there has been no communication with Terrana for weeks,” Ezekiel said, rolling around, pinning Jennifer between his chair and the wall. He had an electronic, wheeled chair, because he didn’t trust grav-tech, and the motor made a soft whirring noise when he moved. “The Terranan Guard wanted her, not Aquian Enn. She’s not a fugitive here. There’s a travel ban. No bounty hunter would be able to collect. Unless Parker wanted her dead.”

  “Are you trying to trigger him?” Jennifer accused. “He can barely keep hold of where he is. He ran off Oriana before the ambulance even got there.”

  “With a prize. Why else would the new Captain cover for him?” Ezekiel cackled. His laugh sounded like three deep croaks. He inhaled deeply, making himself sit straighter for the space of the breath, but then he exhaled and his body shriveled and tilted to the left. “Perhaps I can help. I have a few other medications you can try for acute mental distress. What are his symptoms?”

  “Paranoid delusions,” Jennifer said, glancing at Danny. “And flashbacks. Things related to his mother’s death.”

  “Ezekiel, did Vimbai kill my mother?” Danny asked, recalling the bone-chilling delusion that had gripped him earlier that morning.

 
; “Your mother? Danny, you know she was before my time,” he sneered. Ezekiel lifted his hands slowly and steepled his fingers. His left hand had been replaced with an artificial limb so that he would have the dexterity to write. His right hand looked like skin stretched over bone. “Although the medical experiments that fueled the Vimbai wars have always been of particular interest.”

  “Vimbai wars?” Danny stuttered, gripping Jennifer’s hand, feeling the paranoia rise.

  “Street wars. Nothing political,” Ezekiel said, raising the seat of his chair so he was closer to eye-level with Danny lying on the bed. He had one blue eye and one brown, and Danny was almost certain the blue was bionic. “Vimbai thought he’d found a way to transfer endemic ability from one person to another. Although, he never had a healer on file, so I’m still stuck in my chair.”

  “What do you mean endemic ability? That’s superstitious nonsense,” Jennifer said, gritting her teeth.

  “I’m surprised to hear that from a religious type,” Ezekiel said, raising an eyebrow. “But you’re right. It hasn’t been proven, and as far as I know, it hasn’t been replicated.”

  He held her stare for a moment longer, then looked back at Danny. “Sikorsky must suspect you’re alive.”

  “I’m sure it’ll come out. I just need to recover enough to fight,” Danny said, motioning to the tube in his nose. Compared to Ezekiel’s physical ailments, it was nothing.

  “Be careful who you ask for help,” Ezekiel warned, rolling toward the door, giving Jennifer some breathing room. “Vimbai may have abandoned the endemic business, but there are still hunters out there who believe the market can be rekindled, and Amanda’s power is one worth stealing.”

  Danny had no idea what to make of the warning or the history of the Vimbai wars. Danny’s mother and her friends, the Zenzele’s, comprised the Vimbai family. They were business people, honest and good. What Ezekiel said didn’t match what Danny knew of them.

  The moment the door closed behind Ezekiel, Jennifer pressed Danny’s shoulder to the bed and disconnected the IV. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  “It’s Ezekiel. He’s helped the Citizens’ Channel before,” Danny said, feeling ill as she removed the tube.

  “He trades in information,” she said flatly. “He gives us medicine to get details to trade to someone else.”

  “We have to get Amanda out.”

  “The psych ward has better security than any place we can hide her,” Jennifer said, shaking her head. “She’ll be safe, so long as she is there. We just have to make sure we’re ready to protect her when she’s released.”

  Danny nodded. “How long?”

  “Three days. For her. Involuntary commitment is three days,” Jennifer said. “For you… I have a feeling by the end of the day, some crime boss will have purchased the news that you’re still alive.”

  Danny tensed, his eyes filling with tears, his throat filling with nutrient-rich liquid. He didn’t need another enemy in this Dome.

  16

  Leaving Oriana filled Hawk with fresh jitters. The city was alive with mechanical devices, the deafening whir of engines making his skin vibrate. He took a sip from his canteen—he’d filled it with more than enough gin to last the day. It was beautiful on the water, and the bay glimmered in the morning light. Hawk leaned on the railing at the ferry’s top deck and stared past the awning where the Dome’s protective cover ended and the natural sky began.

  “Danny loved boats,” Chase said, leaning his elbows on the railing. “When the day caught up with him, all I had to do was bring him to the water for an hour.”

  Hawk took another swig of gin, feeling trapped. Backing away from the railing, he glanced at Chase, then at the crowd of people packing into the ferry.

  “He was in a similar situation to you when I met him,” Chase continued. “Didn’t want to be in Quin. Couldn’t talk about what was bothering him. We had the Bobsled. So we didn’t have to.”

  Ignoring Chase, Hawk capped his canteen and studied the tall pipes coming out of the top of the boat. This boat was built for transport, and its tall pipes were real. It was powered differently than Sikorsky’s cruiser.

  “Do you know, we can drop a clean engine in your glider, you can take it around the Domes,” Chase tried.

  “Clean engine?” Hawk repeated. “You have engines just lying around?”

  “Not lying around,” Chase smiled, his expression warming. “But not out of reach either. We can modify something or build something. Sikorsky wouldn’t even notice the cost.”

  “We wouldn’t be taking from someone who needs it more?” Hawk checked, putting a hand on the wall separating him from the navigation center. There was no machinery inside; it was just a wall.

  “No. I guess they are just ‘lying around’ in that sense,” Chase allowed, moving closer to Hawk as more passengers crowded to see the view. “Does your home dedicate a lot of engines to aircraft?”

  “No. I stole this one to make my glider,” Hawk confessed, shedding a tear when he blinked. “I modeled it after my father’s, but his exploded a long time ago when he tried to fly it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Chase said. “How much do you know about the specs of the ethanol engine you have in there? We can look at some options today. Maybe get you flying in his memory.”

  Hawk considered the man again, feeling baited into a conversation, worried it was a trick.

  “I don’t know much of anything about it. Not anymore. I have a sense of how it works, but I always see it better when I’m looking at it. I used to see it.” Hawk trailed off and touched the hull of the boat again, desperate to get a sense for the machine that carried them. He’d lost confidence since Liza told him his knack for getting machines to work was based on magic and not skill.

  “I’ve seen the way you navigate Oriana’s engine room. I think you know more than you think,” Chase chuckled, patting Hawk’s shoulder.

  “The machines—they whisper to me,” Hawk confessed. “But I don’t see anymore, I just feel. I feel blind here. I can’t tell how the power gets from that solar cell up there to the engine. I can’t feel it turn.”

  “You’ll feel it when it moves,” Chase laughed. “Have you ever seen a steam engine?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to?” Chase pressed his lips together, a glint in his eye. With a tip of his head, he led Hawk down to a lower deck, then pointed into a roped off room. Hawk felt more of the hum and vibration here, and his eyes traced the path that the energy followed. The engine started, startling Hawk but not Chase. Chase pointed out a few of the moving parts, explaining what they did, and it was nothing like how Hawk imagined it in his head. Without his eyes, the magic was gone. Hawk unscrewed the cap on his canteen, and sipped the gin.

  Chase was frustrated about being sent to Olcott like an errand boy, and separating Hawk from Sky wasn’t making it any easier to learn the fate of his friends. It was nice to be out of Sikorsky’s shadow and back in the realm of real people again, though. Olcott, being the home of Quin’s thriving fishing industry, managed to keep a lid on their organized crime ring, despite being home of the Genova family. Like Pear, it was a place where the average, honest citizen could carve out a decent existence.

  The moment they set foot off the boat, Hawk got a taste of that life. A dozen teenagers rushed him, begging for pictures, hugs, and autographs. Apparently, as the savior of the ghost ship, he’d become a minor celebrity. If they knew he was Sikorsky’s puppet, it didn’t show, because they felt completely safe approaching a stranger. Hawk smiled shyly, but stayed close to Chase.

  “Trade?” he asked one of them, holding out a hand in greeting.

  “Careful, Hawk,” Chase laughed. “They’ll rip your clothes off just to have a souvenir of this encounter.”

  Hawk looked down at his blue and green striped kilt, the quirk on his lips telling Chase he wouldn’t be too heartbroken to lose it. His shirt had a gold and green geometric print, and he topped off the look with heavy wo
rk boots that looked like they were Danny’s. “But they’d be recycled, right? Like the clothes the doctors took from me?” he checked.

  Smiling, Chase decided their first shop should be a clothing store. Hawk needed something he could be comfortable in—not this costume Sikorsky’s people had come up with for him. The moment they passed the front window, Hawk’s gait slowed and he gaped at the display. The store was not for aristocrats; it was the kind of store Chase could feel comfortable in. The cost was low, the materials durable, and the clothes designed for lots of washes and wears.

  “Would you rather wear something like that?” Chase asked.

  “These aren’t allocated?” Hawk asked.

  Chase was confused by the question, but he pushed Hawk into the store anyway. Hawk’s feet froze in the doorway, and he stared awestricken at the racks of shirts, pants, shoes, belts, hats, and gloves. There were no kilts or skirts in this store; they didn’t cater to fashion trends. Three mannequins were dressed with display pieces, and Hawk went to the one with the brightest colors. Chase chuckled to himself. He’d assumed because Hawk tromped around Oriana in Danny’s clothes that Hawk would gravitate toward the same neutral tones.

  “This one has pictures,” Hawk said, picking up one of the t-shirts from the shelf.

  “Can I help you?” an irritated store clerk huffed, taking the shirt away. She was a short, older woman, and her polite words were a reaction to Hawk’s high-class attire.

  “Trade?” Hawk asked, looking from the woman to Chase.

  “He doesn’t understand,” Chase said, taking Hawk’s shoulders and pulling him away from the clerk. “He’s apprenticing me in my shop, so he’ll need some work clothes. Pants, t-shirt, kerchief to keep this hair back, and a glove mount for his Virp that won’t snag at the first sign of hard labor. If you have a sample set he can walk out with—”

  “Just like a ‘crat, not prepared to work the first day of an internship,” the old lady sneered.