Starfall

by Melissa Landers

  “That’s right,” Doran agreed, and delivered an encouraging punch to Kane’s shoulder. “She’ll come around. Just unleash a dollop of that greasy charm of yours. You two’ll be bickering again in no time.”

  They were halfway to the winery booth when their com-links crackled with static and Cassia’s frantic voice called, “Kane!”

  He whipped his head toward the Banshee and saw the neurologist running—not walking, but actually running—down the boarding ramp. Before the man had even touched the ground, the ship’s engines roared alive.

  “We have to leave right now,” Cassia told him.

  He was already sprinting her way with Doran and Solara right behind him. “Copy that,” he panted through the link. He passed the doctor and kept going without a backward glance. As soon as they crossed into the cargo hold, Kane retracted the boarding ramp and said, “Tell Renny he’s clear for liftoff.”

  The words had barely left his lips when a sharp upward acceleration buckled his knees, and he landed on the floor. From there, he half walked, half crawled up the stairs until he found Cassia waiting for him in the galley. One look at her and he knew their personal problems would take a backseat to this emergency.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “It’s Fleece. We know how he’s finding us and listening to our conversations.”

  She waved him up the stairs to the residential level, where they waited for Doran and Solara to catch up. Once they were together, she led the crew toward Arabelle’s quarters and stopped outside her door. “She has a neuro-ocular implant,” Cassia whispered. “The doctor said it’s an old prototype that never made it to market because of brain damage. It collects everything Belle sees and hears, and transmits the data to an outside source.”

  “My god,” Solara breathed. “Fleece has eyes and ears right on board the ship.”

  Kane glanced at Arabelle’s door. “Did she know?”

  Cassia shook her head. “The implant only holds so much data before it has to be purged. Each time Fleece reset it, he erased those memories. That’s why she was confused about how long she’s been with him. She lost more than a year’s worth of awareness.”

  “What a bastard,” Doran muttered. “That’s why he sent her out on the food cart. She collected the names and faces of everyone who came and went from that hub.”

  “And then he erased the details before she could tell anyone,” Kane added. “Now she’s overdue for a purge, right? Hence the migraines.”

  “Exactly,” Cassia said. “The specialist couldn’t help, but he gave Renny the name of a guy who might be able to remove it.” She gripped the door latch and warned, “Fleece might be listening, so don’t say anything he can use against us.”

  The lights inside Arabelle’s room were turned off, but the hallway’s glow revealed her petite form curled up on the cot, a damp rag slung over her forehead. She was crying—not a faint sniffle, but the closed-mouthed sob of someone trying to muffle a great deal of pain. Sympathy swelled behind Kane’s ribs. He’d shoveled his fair share of shit in life, but no one had ever fused a microchip to his optic nerve and used him as a human probe.

  Solara sat on the edge of the cot and used her fingertips to massage Belle’s temples. The act seemed to bring instant relief, because Belle unclenched her shoulders and went limp. She felt around blindly until her hand found Solara’s knee.

  “Thank you, ’Lara.”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “You smell like engine grease.”

  Doran smiled. “Better than fish.”

  “Tell me about the wine,” Belle said, her voice slurred from exhaustion but sincere, as though she wanted to live vicariously through the details. “Was it as delicious as I’ve heard?”

  “Even better,” Solara lied, having never tasted a drop.

  “We wanted to bring back a few bottles, but there wasn’t time,” Kane said. “Now we have an excuse to go back someday.”

  Cassia glanced at him through her periphery. He searched for some sign as to what she was thinking, but her eyes gave nothing away and she looked quickly back at Belle.

  Since there was nothing he could do, he decided to go.

  He backed into the hall and headed toward the common room. A throat cleared from behind, and he turned to discover Cassia had followed him. She stood in the doorway of the quarters they used to share and gestured for him to come inside.

  She didn’t need to ask him twice.

  In the span of a few heartbeats he had already joined her and shut the door. She faced away, making her intentions impossible to read, so he stood patiently by the door to give her space. He didn’t want to lose ground by pushing her too hard.

  “I was thinking,” she finally began, and then her damned com-bracelet started beeping again. Kane gritted his teeth. He hated that thing. He wanted to flush it out the waste port and force Jordan to handle his own problems for a change.

  “I’ll give you some privacy,” he said.

  “No, you can stay.”

  But he didn’t want to. He couldn’t stand Jordan, and besides, he doubted Cassia trusted him enough to speak freely with her general. As she accepted the transmission, he reached for the door latch. But then he heard a man’s nasally voice say “Hello, dear Cassy,” and his blood turned colder than a butcher’s heart.

  Glowering at them from the center of the room was none other than Marius Durango’s hologram. Kane glanced behind the image, but Jordan was nowhere in sight. He didn’t recognize the furnishings in the background, but the rich wood tables and plush chairs indicated Marius had somehow returned to his palace.

  Cassia froze with her mouth forming a perfect circle. The question how? was etched on her face, but she couldn’t seem to force it past her throat.

  “Yes, my dear, I promised I would find a way out of your prison, and I always keep my word.” Marius drew out his final syllable in a clear attempt to remind them of his other promises, like I’ll have your eyes gouged out and every inch of your skin flayed from your bones. “Your general was kind enough to link me to your band…after I threatened to drop poison capsules in your city’s water supply.”

  “What do you want?” Cassia asked.

  “My queen at home, where she belongs.”

  “And where’s that? In the family crypt?”

  Marius laughed coldly at her. “As if I would spend eternity rotting beside you. No, when I kill you, I’ll bury your remains someplace more fitting. Like the landfill.”

  “You are as charming as they say,” Kane quipped. “How could any girl resist an offer like that?”

  Marius fixed his gaze on Cassia when he spoke. “She won’t resist. Because now I know what’s making your people sick.” He flashed a razor-thin smile that transformed his face into something monstrous, like a wax statue with a slit where its mouth belonged. “My father earned quite the reputation for his neurological inventions, a reputation that reached all the way to Ari Zhang on Earth. It turns out the mafia commissioned my father for a delightful project before he died—a poison to subdue the masses.”

  “And let me guess,” Cassia cut in. “In exchange for this poison, the mob agreed to supply him with weapons.”

  “A win-win deal.” Marius’s smile widened. “My father handed over his greatest invention, but he reserved plenty for himself. I just discovered it in his lab, along with his journal. It seems he wanted to study the long-term effects of the product before using it on our people, so he set his equipment to release small doses to a different kingdom. You’ll never guess who he’s been using as test subjects.”

  Kane clenched and unclenched his fists. If he could use one of his theoretical wishes right now, it would be the power to strangle a hologram.

  “That’s right,” Marius said with barely contained glee. “Our neighbors to the south. And for each day my queen refuses to come home and face me, I’ll allow my scientists free rein to find out exactly how lethal this product can be.”

  �
�But I’m nowhere near Eturia,” Cassia argued. “It’ll take weeks to get there.”

  “Then I suggest you don’t make any stops, or you’ll have no one but corpses to greet you. When you arrive, return all my missiles—deactivated, of course—on an open barge with no hiding places for your troops. Pilot the craft yourself and come alone. Anyone who follows you will die.”

  With that, his image vanished.

  Cassia hissed a swear. “How did he escape?”

  “Let’s worry about that later.” Kane verified that the link had closed, then pointed at Cassia’s band. “Call your general. Tell him to spread the word that everyone should stay inside on days when the wind comes from the north. Whatever this sickness is, it’s airborne. If we can limit their exposure, it’ll buy us some time.”

  While she flew into action, he sat on the edge of the lower cot and tried to brainstorm a way out of this mess. Assuming Marius wasn’t bluffing, he had three weapons at his disposal: water contaminants, a legion of troops unaffected by sickness, and his father’s twisted science experiment. Jordan’s men could reassemble the confiscated missiles and threaten to use them against Marius, but that would take time, and half the population might be dead by then. Somehow they had to find a cure for the sickness; otherwise Marius would hold it over their heads for generations to come.

  Kane thought back to the inhalers Fleece had given the infected hatchery workers. If he could get his hands on one of those inhalers, the Rose lab could replicate its contents and distribute it throughout the colony.

  An idea struck.

  Kane bolted upright, hitting his head on the top bunk. He rubbed his skull and tapped the com-link pinned to his shirt. “Captain, I need a favor. Put your ear to the ground and find the nearest settlement outbreak. I want to take the shuttle there while you have Belle’s implant removed.”

  The answer had been in front of him all along. To find the cure, all he had to do was embrace the sickness.

  “This is the most pinheaded idea of your existence,” Cassia snapped a few hours later as she stood beside him, seething at his reflection in the washroom mirror. “And that includes the time you licked a neutron battery to see if it had a charge.”

  He smiled at the memory. The battery had had a charge, something he’d discovered when it sent a surge of power through him and stopped his heart. Luckily, one of Cassia’s tutors had already taught her cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

  “This isn’t funny, you idiot canker knob!”

  “Who’s laughing?” he asked, and turned his head from side to side in the mirror. The ancient bottle of black dye he’d scrounged from the depths of the storage closet had done its job better than he’d expected. Now if he could score a pair of cosmetic lenses, his own mother wouldn’t recognize him, let alone Fleece. “Maybe I don’t need the lenses,” he mused.

  Cassia growled and slugged his upper arm. He rubbed the spot while giving himself another once-over, and then decided he looked fine the way he was.

  “Listen to me,” she demanded. “You can’t do this. It’s too risky.”

  He shifted her a sideways glance. “Riskier than handing yourself over to Marius? What’ll that solve? He’ll just kill you and use his father’s poison to control the whole planet. We have to find an antidote. There’s no solution without it.”

  She glared at him while releasing a long breath through her nose. She had to know he was right. “Fine. Then I’m going with you.”

  Kane hid a smile. Sharp as the demand was, it hinted at progress between them. “Does that mean you trust me now?”

  “To pull this off on your own? Hell no.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Don’t change the subject. I’m going, and that’s final.”

  He didn’t try to talk her out of it, partly because it was easier to change the weather than Cassia’s mind, and in part because he needed her help. Someone would have to pilot the shuttle and pick him up after he snatched an inhaler from Fleece and made a run for it. But he couldn’t tell her that. If she knew his whole “pinheaded idea” hinged on her involvement, she might not come with him.

  “I’ll let you come on one condition,” he said, holding an index finger in front of her nose. “You have to promise—”

  She cut him off by grabbing that finger and bending it backward, forcing him to his knees. It was a move she’d used a dozen times on him when they were kids, back before he’d learned better than to wave his finger in her face.

  “You won’t let me do anything.” She released him and strode toward the exit. “I’ll be waiting for you in the shuttle.”

  Cassia couldn’t believe it had come to this.

  “There’s stupid, and then there’s stupid,” she told Kane as he landed the shuttle near the outskirts of a settlement so new she couldn’t remember its name. “We’re operating three levels below that. What’s this place called again?”

  “Batavion. They mine fuel ore here.” He cut the engine and pulled a tarp from behind his seat. “And if you have a better idea, I’m all ears.”

  There was no plan B, and they both knew it. Batavion was the site of the only active outbreak they could find, which meant infiltrating the settlement was the most likely way to secure an inhaler. So while she helped Kane cover the shuttle, she mentally reviewed the details of his idiot scheme, making sure they hadn’t overlooked any snags beyond the obvious.

  The Batavion mine workers had recently begun to show symptoms. According to the pattern, that meant they would grow worse and disappear in about a week—plenty of time for Kane to join them and catch a potentially deadly lab-engineered disease that might or might not have a permanent cure. Meanwhile she would lie low in a town full of outcasts and convicts who’d probably never seen a lady outside of a brothel. Then, assuming Necktie Fleece actually showed up with the cure, Kane would pocket an inhaler, and in his weakened state, escape on foot from the galaxy’s most infamous assassin. At which point Cassia would pick him up in the shuttle, and they’d evade a heavily armed ship and reunite with Renny somewhere in the void of space.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  “Did you bring the tracker?” Kane asked. “And the glue?”

  She pulled them from her pocket and scanned his body for the right place to stick the pea-size beacon so it would stay put. Belly button, she decided. “Lift your shirt.”

  He chuckled, but for the first time since they’d left the ship, he seemed to lose some of his confidence. It showed in the wall that went up in his gaze. “While you feast your eyes, are we going to talk about our fight? Or are we still avoiding the subject?”

  She hadn’t expected him to bring that up. Glancing at his boots, she rolled the tracker between her fingers. “I think your navel’s the best place for this. If anyone sees it, they’ll assume it’s a piercing.”

  “Still avoiding,” he muttered under his breath.

  He lifted his shirt to midchest and forced her to do a double take. The once-golden curls that encircled his navel were now a thick, inky black, making him seem older somehow. She hadn’t realized he’d dyed his body hair, too, and she couldn’t decide if she liked it. Her pulse seemed to, because it ticked to a new rhythm as she knelt in front of him and squeezed a bead of adhesive in his belly button.

  When she inserted the tracker and held it in place, the hard press of dirt beneath her knees reminded her that she was kneeling, something she’d vowed never to do before any man. She started to shift to her feet but then relaxed into her original position. Kane didn’t count. He would never try to make her feel small or degraded.

  In that moment she knew the answer to the question that’d plagued her since the night of the rebel raid. No matter which direction the evidence pointed, Kane hadn’t betrayed her in any way that mattered. He wouldn’t do that to her. So she stayed on her knees until the glue dried, then tapped the device a few times to test it before standing up.

  “Where’s your com-link?” she asked.

&n
bsp; He patted his pocket. “But it’s muted, so you won’t—”

  “Be able to call,” she finished. “I’ll wait to hear from you.”

  “Do your best to—”

  “Stay out of sight. I will.”

  “And stay close to—”

  “The shuttle. I know.”

  He gripped both hips and stared her down. His brows were lowered and his mouth curved up, as if he was torn between irritation and amusement. “Since you can read my mind, go ahead and tell me what I’m about to say.”

  “Let’s see,” she said, and began ticking items on her fingers. “You want me to be careful, wear my pistol at all times, not talk to strangers, eat my vegetables, and say my prayers at night.” She mirrored his pose. “Does that about cover it?”

  “And don’t tell Renny—”

  “What we’re really doing here. Or he’ll jerk a knot in both our tails.”

  He nodded with exaggerated slowness, watching her for a few silent beats. Then the barrier in his gaze went up again. “I also want you to know—”

  “That you didn’t spy on me.” She dipped her chin. “I know you were only protecting your mother. I wish you had told me instead of going behind my back, but now’s not the time for that discussion, so let’s keep avoiding it.”

  “So we’re okay?”

  “Until Fleece kills us, I guess.”

  “Well, be safe,” he said.

  “You too.”

  And then she watched him walk away, reminding herself as her feet twitched to run after him that there was no plan B.

  To his surprise, it took less than a day for Kane (or Jude, as he was known) to settle in among the miners in their camp outside the ore caves. No one questioned his story when he walked into the dorm and announced that his cousin’s wife’s best friend’s brother—intentionally confusing so he wouldn’t have to remember any names—had secured him a job. The miners didn’t say a word, not even the foreman. They simply pointed their sooty fingers toward the empty bunks in the middle of the room and returned to their conversations and dice games.