Starfall

by Melissa Landers

  Come with me. To the Infinium compound—that was what he meant. Because apparently he couldn’t go five minutes without dropping a reference to his job offer. Just today she’d had to listen to him brag about how Gage had told him to name his own salary and choose his own territory and order all the custom upgrades he wanted for his company ship.

  She wished he’d shut up about it.

  Gripping her knife, she bore down hard on the onions with a satisfying thunk. It felt so good that she did it again, and soon the only sound in the galley was of her blade against the cutting board.

  “Whoa, take it easy,” Kane said, pointing at an onion. “Does it owe you money?”

  She snapped her gaze to his. “Would you rather do it?”

  He flashed both palms in surrender. “Never mind. Hack away.”

  For the next several minutes, they worked side by side at the counter, neither of them saying a word as she finished dicing the onions and Kane rinsed the lentils and set them on the stove to cook. She could tell he was working up the nerve to speak by the way he kept tapping one foot and sneaking glances at her. Finally, he propped an elbow on the counter and came out with it.

  “So, uh, did you get any sleep after lunch?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I had chores to do, and I wasn’t tired.”

  “I would’ve done your chores.”

  “I. Wasn’t. Tired.”

  “Well, you, um,” he began while nervously scratching the back of his neck, “you didn’t eat your leftovers from lunch.”

  “So what?”

  “So you’ve lost a lot of weight—that’s all.”

  “I’ll gain it back.”

  “And at some point we have to talk about what happened.” He hesitated once and then took her hand, still wet from the sink. “You’ve been through a lot. You can’t hold that pain inside or it’ll spread like an infection. The sooner you open up, the faster you’ll—”

  “I’m aware of what I’ve been through,” she said, taking back her hand. Did he think she needed a reminder? Or, rather, two reminders, as he’d already told her this earlier in the day, when he’d promised to stay with her until she was “okay.” Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he’d spoken too soon and now he was starting to realize how long “okay” might take. “Is that what this is about? Are you trying to hurry up and fix me so you can run off to your new job without feeling guilty?”

  “What?”

  “Is that why you’re pushing me to take naps and eat more?” She wiped her damp hands on her pants, backing away from him. “And nagging me to talk? Because you can’t move on until you fix what you think is broken?”

  For a beat, he went quiet—angry quiet. Then he exhaled an audible breath and said, “Yeah, you nailed it. I want to help you bounce back so I can leave sooner. Not because you’re my best friend and you mean everything to me. Not because I care about you so much that I left my mother behind and spent two years slinging grease inside this galley just so I could be near you. No, that’s not the reason.”

  She folded both arms and looked down, her face heating.

  “I’m only thinking of myself because I’m selfish, right?” he went on. “I never, ever put your needs first, do I, Cassia?”

  She winced at the use of her real name. She could count on one hand the number of times he’d called her that. “Okay, I get it. I was wrong.”

  He jabbed a finger toward the doorway. “Just go—take a nap, don’t take a nap—I don’t give a damn what you do.”

  She knew he didn’t mean it, but the words still pricked at her heart. Before she walked away, she paused at the threshold. “The secret to cutting onions is to do it under running water. I thought you should know.”

  The mood at dinner was tense, to say the least.

  She and Renny shared the bench on one side of the table while Kane sat in between Doran and Solara on the other. The lentils were too hot to eat, so each of them stared into their bowls as if the wafting steam might show them the future.

  When the lack of conversation grew nearly unbearable, Renny summoned a smile and rubbed his palms together. “I don’t have to ask whose turn it is. Make it good, Cassia. You’ve missed a lot of suppers.”

  All eyes shifted to her. It took a moment for her to catch on and remember their nightly ritual of playing “would you rather.” “Oh, right. Give me a second.”

  “Take your time.”

  She tried to think of a question no one had asked before. At first, nothing came, but then she thought back to the rebels on Eturia and their hatred of the throne. It seemed she couldn’t do anything right in their eyes. They didn’t care that she’d ended the war or given them food and rations. They wanted her gone because her last name was Rose. They’d forgotten that the founding houses had spent their entire fortunes terraforming Eturia. If not for the Rose family, the rebels would be living in slums on Earth.

  “I have a question,” she announced. “Would you rather be a servant in someone’s home and have all your needs provided for, or serve no one and exist in total poverty?”

  The crew pursed their lips in consideration, all except for Kane, who watched her while blowing on a spoonful of lentils. She could tell from the guarded look in his eyes that he knew exactly what she was referring to.

  “There’s no shame in being anyone’s servant,” he said. “But a man should be able to choose who he serves. He shouldn’t be born into it.”

  Renny pointed out, “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “The second one, I guess.”

  “Not me,” Solara said. “I’ve had a peek behind door number two, so I’d pick the first one.”

  “Ditto,” Doran answered. “I’m too pretty to be poor.”

  Renny chuckled and pulled a napkin across his mouth. “I guess it boils down to what I value more: freedom or comfort.” He pondered in silence for a few seconds. “Freedom, I think. So I’d pick the second one.”

  Kane leaned across the table and fist-bumped the captain.

  “What about you?” Solara asked Cassia. “You didn’t answer your own question.”

  “She’d pick door number one,” Kane mumbled with one cheek full.

  Cassia nodded. “As long as I was treated fairly, yes.”

  “Now it’s my turn,” Kane said, and leveled a challenging gaze at her. “Would you rather leave your home world forever, or stay on your home world and never leave?”

  All around the table, the crew gave a collective “Oooh” and fired off the same response. They chose wanderlust over home and said the question was too easy. They didn’t realize what Kane was trying to do: force her to admit how much she’d miss space travel once she settled down as queen.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and meant it. Neither option appealed to her. She wanted both—to have her world and leave it, too. As much as she loved Eturia, she couldn’t deny that staying there forever would feel suffocating. She’d barely scratched the surface of what the universe had to offer. But she supposed she’d already made her choice when she’d taken the throne, so she answered, “The second one.”

  Doran drew back an inch. “Really?”

  “But…but…” Solara sputtered, tongue-tied from shock. “You’d never leave home. That means you’d never visit the Obsidian Beaches or see the quantum nebulae fields.”

  “Or drink hellberry wine,” Kane added.

  “I could have it imported,” Cassia said.

  “Wouldn’t taste the same as drinking it fresh on Pesirus.”

  She used a spoon to stab at her lentils. Everyone was taking this game too seriously. She was about to tell them so when her com-bracelet beeped a transmission request from General Jordan. “Start the next question without me,” she said, and stood from the table. “I’ll be right back.”

  She jogged up the stairs to the landing and tapped the Accept button. There was a flicker of light, and Jordan’s hologram appeared—all six feet of him, practi
cally on top of her. She took a backward step and bumped into the wall. The added space didn’t help much. She was still close enough to waltz with his image.

  The color in his cheeks said he’d noticed it, too.

  “Wait, let me find a better place to talk.” She strode into the lounge, where the crew usually spent the hours after dinner playing billiards or sitting around the holographic fire pit. “Better?”

  Jordan took in the surroundings, peering at the wall mural behind her.

  “It’s the Black Forest,” she told him. “My captain, the previous one, had it commissioned to remind him of home.”

  “Your captain. He must have meant a lot to you.”

  “He did. I loved him like a father.”

  Jordan nodded, though his face was impossible to read. “So how is it, being back on the ship again?”

  “I won’t lie; it’s strange,” she said while lowering herself into one of the cushioned chairs around the fire. “It feels like I’m wearing a pair of boots that don’t fit anymore. It’s a good thing you called when you did. You saved me from death by awkward dinner conversation.”

  He gave her one of his rare smiles, and with no warning whatsoever, a flutter broke out inside her stomach. “I live to serve.”

  She rubbed a hand over her abdomen. Maybe she was hungrier than she’d thought. “Did you find anything at the armory?”

  “Yes and no,” he said, tucking both hands in his pockets. “The shipment from your wedding day contained a supply of shock wave grenades.”

  “No biological weapons?”

  “None that we could find.”

  “What about Markham?” she asked. “Any word from the other kingdoms?”

  “Yes. They haven’t reported any outbreaks.”

  She swore under her breath. “That can’t be a coincidence.”

  “It’s not,” he agreed. “Someone’s trying to weaken us.”

  “Until we find out who, we need to keep this quiet. I want a gag order issued.”

  “Already done,” he said. “We also quarantined infected colonists to their homes.”

  “Good, thank you.”

  They exchanged a few silent glances after that. There didn’t seem to be anything more to say. Just when she assumed Jordan would sign off, he grinned in an almost sheepish way and told her, “Troop inspections aren’t the same without you.”

  That made her smile.

  “Stay safe,” he murmured, and then disconnected.

  She released a breath when his image disappeared and found herself wishing she’d kept the conversation going a little longer. She sat alone in the quiet room, listening to the scrape of utensils and muffled conversations from the galley until her rumbling stomach forced her back downstairs to finish her dinner.

  Her bowl sat alone on the table when she returned. Doran and Solara were gone, probably to the engine room, and Kane stood at the counter drying the last of the crew’s dishes. Renny had already filled his favorite mug with Crystalline. As he headed for the doorway, no doubt to occupy the same cushioned chair she’d just vacated, he pointed at her bowl and asked, “Want me to heat that up for you?”

  “No thanks.” She patted his shoulder. “You go ahead.”

  She picked up her bowl and leaned against the wall, watching Kane stow the clean dishes inside the cabinets. She waited for him to ask about the transmission. When he didn’t, she volunteered, “That was Jordan.”

  “Figured as much.”

  “He didn’t find anything at the armory.”

  Kane nodded in acknowledgment but didn’t offer his opinion. He finished putting away the dishes and latched the cabinet doors. Then he stood in front of her and dug inside his pants pocket. “I keep meaning to give you this.”

  He placed something light and warm into her hand. She knew without looking that it was the Eturian prayer necklace he’d bought for her. She’d memorized its weight like a favorite song.

  “You accidentally left it in a box of my stuff,” he added.

  They both knew that wasn’t true. She gripped the stone pendant and drew it to her breast. “I’ll be more careful with it from now on.”

  She wanted to say something more, to thank him for the peace offering and apologize for what she’d said to him earlier. But before she could shake the words off her tongue, she found him with his back turned, disappearing down the stairs to the cargo hold.

  Weeks later, when they reached the outer realm, Kane and the crew met in the bridge to pinpoint the exact location of their moving target. Stooping to avoid hitting his head on the low ceiling, he approached the navigation table and studied the star charts spread out across its surface.

  Earth wasn’t the center of the galaxy—not by a long shot—but the Solar League liked to pretend it was. They’d divided the Milky Way into four sectors and five rings, similar to a dartboard with their planet as the bull’s-eye. If the League ever moved headquarters, they’d probably recalibrate the whole star chart to reflect it, but for now, the first ring in the Solar Territories was the tourist circle, a playground for the wealthy. Next came the colony planets, including Eturia, followed by the ore mines and the prison settlements. The fifth ring was known as the outer realm, or the fringe, a lawless collection of planets the League hadn’t annexed because of the lack of taxable income.

  Money—it made all worlds go around.

  And because Kane understood that simple fact, he also knew money was at the root of whatever deal Marius’s father had struck with his backer. People didn’t invest in foreign wars for fun. There was something to be gained by helping the Durango kingdom defeat the other three houses. All Kane had to do was figure out what, and it would lead him to the man who’d poisoned his mother.

  He leaned closer to the table. “Where’s our target?”

  Renny tapped their location with an index finger. “About an hour away. Cassia’s theory was right. The coordinates keep moving because they’re in orbit around a planet that’s not even terraformed. It’s a satellite station.”

  “Of course I was right,” Cassia said. “It’s a black market hub. Why else would it be out here in the…” She paused to yawn, and while doing so, shot Kane a glare that warned him not to suggest that she go lie down. “…middle of nowhere?”

  He patiently held his tongue, but he was getting tired of pretending not to care that she was the last to go to bed at night and the first to wake up in the morning. Or that she spent the hours after dinner holed up in her bedroom. At least her face had filled out and her pants no longer hung from her hip bones. If nothing else, that was progress.

  He turned his focus to Doran. “If it’s a black market satellite, we might need Daro the Red to come out of hiding.”

  Doran frowned at the tattoo on his wrist: four curved sabers forming a figure eight. It was the logo for the Brethren of Outcasts, pirates who ran roughshod over the fringe. A few months ago, Doran had accidentally inherited one of their territories when he’d killed a pirate lord named Demarkus Hahn. And because no self-respecting criminal would swear allegiance to the preppy son of a fuel mogul, Doran had donned a costume and taken a fake name during the fealty rite. Since then, he’d delegated most of his authority, but he still had to dress up and make appearances once in a while.

  It was a long story.

  “Fine,” Doran said. He raked a hand through his dark hair, which he would have to color red. “But we’re almost out of dye. I should’ve called myself Daro the Black.”

  Solara stood on tiptoe and whispered to Doran. Whatever she said made the tips of his ears turn pink. He whispered something back and then kissed the tattoo on the inside of her wrist, which matched his, because she was his fake pirate wife.

  A very long story.

  Renny told everyone, “This time we stay together. All of us, no matter what. I suggest you use the bathroom before we leave, because any pit stop you make on that satellite will be a team effort.” He pushed his glasses higher up his nose. “Understood?”

/>   “Yes, Cap’n,” they echoed.

  “And remember to keep your heads down. Stay away from large crowds, and don’t advertise who we are once we’re inside. I crossed the Zhang mafia once, and they never forget a name.”

  “But they operate on Earth,” Doran said. “The fringe is Brethren territory.”

  “Tell that to my pistol wounds.” Renny pointed at Doran. “And don’t go throwing your name around, either, Daro the Red. All anyone has to do to claim your territory is challenge you to a fight.”

  “Or kill you,” Kane added with a grin and a hearty slap on his friend’s back. “I heard the pirate lord in sector three was garroted last week.”

  “Thanks for the reminder.”

  “Anytime, buddy.”

  “Let’s keep it simple—in and out,” Renny said. “We’ll only use Doran’s alter ego as a last resort. Got it?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Good. You have one hour until we dock. Crew dismissed.”

  Kane had never visited a black market satellite until now. The satellites tended to move to locations that were kept secret—one day here, another day there—and they drew the kind of people a guy tried to avoid if he had a bounty on his head. Still, the hub looked similar to how he’d always imagined it: like a common trading post, only sketchier.

  Artificial light flickered overhead, casting a jaundiced glow over the faces of shoppers as they browsed the long rows of booths erected near the pub. A variety of items were on display, everything from weapons that were probably stolen to prescription drugs that had likely expired. Other goods were advertised on signs, services rendered by escorts and hit men. Half the booths stood empty, and the other half were manned by vendors with their feet kicked up and their hats pulled down. Once every few minutes, a peddler would spot an easy target and try to wave him over, but otherwise most folks avoided eye contact and kept to themselves. None of that surprised Kane.

  What he hadn’t predicted was the smell.

  “Hot damn,” he said, pulling his shirt collar over his nose and mouth. “It smells like a skunk threw up on a dead body in here.”