I stumble to a halt right in front of her, and Rion crashes into my back, bracing himself on my waist to steady his balance. His hands linger there, strong and thoroughly distracting, as I regard Asra with a cool stare. Out of my peripheral vision, I catch Case and Zee edging toward the door, making sure we have access to our escape route if necessary.
“Mazneen?” I ask, still primed to bolt if I don’t like her answer.
She makes a face at my question. “Mazneen is my formal name and I hate it. Please don’t call me that.” Her fingers linger on her cheek for a moment, then she punches the air with a sudden burst of ferocity. “Ugh, I hate that they got a look at my face. Couldn’t avoid it, I guess. I didn’t want to introduce myself to you with the facechanger active. Kind of sketchy, you know? Jace and my brother don’t know about this flat, though, so we should be okay for a little while.”
She meets my gaze dead on, and her eyes are pure liquid fire. “I haven’t seen my stepfather in eight months. He plays the whole upstanding citizen thing, but he runs the entire criminal network of this colony, and everyone knows it. My ammu didn’t, back when we first moved here after my abbu died. You saw how he is. He puts on a good act. Donates to charity, runs a local business, sits on the council, but when Ammu found out about the rest, she lost it on him. She got my sister away from him and off-world, but I got caught.”
She sucks in a deep, calming breath through her nose. “He should have let me go, because Nani and I have been working to bring him down ever since. He’s laundering money for someone, but I haven’t figured out who yet. And at this point, I don’t really care. I can’t stand to share a planet with him anymore, which is why I came looking for you all. I want out of here, and I have a plan that will screw over his operation along the way. But I can’t do it alone. I was going to tell you about him, I swear.”
I glance over at Zee, who has relaxed somewhat during Asra’s explanation. Case, on the other hand, is like a porcupine about to shoot quills.
“What do y’all think?” I ask, looking over my shoulder to include Rion in the question.
“If she were going to sell us out, she would have done it by now,” Rion says after a moment, looking Asra over with a calculating gaze.
Case fiddles with the ring on her thumb and presses her lips into a fine line, then shakes her head. “No, sorry, but this is bullshit. We need to get out of here, Nax, right now.”
She’s right, I know she’s right, but I can hardly think over my brain’s constant chant of Stupid, stupid, you’ll get them all killed, way to go, asshole. Zee’s cooler head prevails, though; she steps forward with her hands out in a calming gesture.
“Maybe we can at least hear her out. See what this plan is. But in full detail, yes? No more surprises.”
Rion voices his agreement. Yes. Okay, that sounds reasonable. I can live with that. I step over to Case and nudge her hand with mine.
“Hey,” I murmur, “I feel you on this, but do you think we can at least get some more info before we decide for sure?”
Her eyes slide back to the door, then down to our hands. I brush a thumb over her knuckles, and it seems to help.
“Fine.”
I give her a little smile, then fold my arms over my chest and draw myself up to my full five-foot-ten height to look down at Asra. It makes me feel more confident, at least.
“Well, let’s hear it, then. Better make it good.”
Asra smiles. “Oh, it’ll be good. I can promise you that. How do you feel about taking a ride in a Honda Breakbolt Mark III?”
My ass hits the couch in an instant.
“I’m listening.”
Five
THE HONDA BREAKBOLT MARK III is the sexiest piece of machinery ever to grace this universe, and I’d do a lot to get behind that control stick. I don’t know how Asra sensed this about me, but her lips twitch with suppressed laughter. She brings her tablet back to the main screen, logs off, then boots it up again with a completely different operating system, somehow managing to type accurately while talking at lightning speed.
“If anything, I think you’ll be even more on board for this plan after seeing those wanted notices. They know you’re in Saleem, so you’ll need to get off-world before you can do anything to help your situation or the Academy.”
Case purses her lips and looks away, but doesn’t speak up.
After a minute, Asra flips the tablet around and sets it down in the center of the table, which we crowd around, pressed shoulder to shoulder. The tab’s tiny projector fills the air between us with a three-dimensional rotating image of a ship. She’s a gorgeous piece of work. All long lines and sleek rounded wings and powerful engines that are nearly boner inspiring. The thought of getting behind the controls of a ship like that is hot.
Asra grabs the image and pulls to zoom in. “This is the RSS Manizeh. She’s barely a year old, with expanded cargo bays and upgraded living quarters. She’s the classiest, most luxurious transport ship on the market, by far the most beautiful ship in Jace’s smuggling fleet, and if you’re up for a bit of crime, she can be ours.”
Every cell of my body says, “Oh god, yes! Crime? I can do some crime!” I want this ship like I’ve never wanted anything in my life. I had a poster of the first-ever Breakbolt model on my bedroom wall when I was nine. It’s like a manifestation of every dream I’ve ever had, everything I’ve ever wanted for myself: a piloting license, a beautiful ship under me, and stars out the viewport. Child Nax says, “Do it, do the crime!”
Rion leans his shoulder into mine with a raised eyebrow, and Zee shakes her head at me with a small smile, as if reading my thoughts. They’re not feeling it, I guess. Case’s brows draw together, though, and she thumbs at her lower lip in a thoroughly distracting way. Her eyes darken—looks like her fuse is starting to burn.
“Okay, I’m not getting it. Besides the fact that this is completely illegal and wrong and only adds to the charges against us, how is stealing a ship going to help us keep a low profile and avoid enforcement?” she asks, and I wince. She’s obviously not let the ship get into her pants the way I have. Am I aerosexual or something?
“It won’t,” Asra says frankly. “But it’s a sweet ship, and stealing it will get us off this planet and buy us time to figure out what to do. It’ll also make Jace very unhappy, which I personally find hilarious.”
I shouldn’t even be considering this, but I have to ask anyway. “I get that your stepdad—”
“Jace,” she snaps.
O-kay. “I get that Jace is some kind of big criminal boss, but are you sure you really want to steal a ship from him? How does you going all outlaw fix what he’s done?”
Asra’s lip curls, and she scowls at the table in front of her like it’s personally wronged her. “He’s more than just a criminal. He’s got his hands in every terrible thing on this planet, and some others, too. He screws up families, cooks up drugs and smuggles them to other planets using this ship, he . . .”
She swallows hard and looks away. “Nothing would make me happier than taking away his favorite toy, and putting a dent in his drug-running business can only be a good thing, right?”
Zee pours another cup of tea and passes it to Asra. I hide a grin behind my hand. Something’s wrong? Drink more tea. My ammi is the same way.
Zee smoothly changes the subject, giving Asra time to pull herself together. “The Academy’s story, about the attacks and the disabled transmitter. It’s a very neat lie. Gives the insurgents plenty of time to do . . . whatever it is they want to do without being bothered.”
Rion leans back, resting against the front of the couch with his bottom lip between his teeth. “I wonder why they’d give a timeframe at all. In four days, everyone on the station will still be dead. There’s no way they can cover that up forever. What happens when that time is up?”
A chill runs down my spine at the implications. Case says exactly what I’m thinking: “Unless it won’t matter in four days. Unless they only need four days
to accomplish whatever objective they have set.”
Zee gives a thoughtful hum. “It makes people feel better, I think, having a specific date in mind. It’s not time to really worry about the station until those four days are up. It keeps everyone away for a while without causing panic.”
“Do you think they’re planning something against Earth?” Asra asks, holding the steaming teacup under her nose. She takes a cautious sip, then sets it back down. “I don’t know what else it could be.”
“It could be anything.” Case pulls her bag toward her and takes out the flight recorder from our crashed shuttle, turning it over and over in her hands. “There’s no way to know for sure. The station is the hub for all emigration, trade, and communication between Earth and the colonies. They could be targeting Earth, but it’s just as likely to be against any one of the colony worlds.”
“And in the meantime, we’re all boned,” I say. “They’ve framed us for an attack and charged us with treason, and it’s only a matter of time before someone calls enforcement on us. Considering those notices got blasted to every single citizen’s tablet, comm, and toilet this morning, and the whole four-day timeline thing, I think whatever we decide to do, we need to do it soon.”
I’m about to ask another question when a musical voice begins to call outside, the sound drifting through the town and into the open window. The lilting melody carries the familiar words calling the faithful to the Maghrib prayer. Asra stands and looks to the window, the warm colors of sunset glowing through the curtains.
“I’ll be back in about ten minutes. I’m sure you all have brain whiplash right now, so take some time and figure out what you want to do. I don’t expect you to take my word automatically, and I won’t be offended if you don’t trust me, but we need to decide quickly. Just let me know what I can do to help, okay?”
She grabs a small rolled-up rug and disappears into the back bedroom, closing the door behind her. The sound of running water comes a few seconds later as she begins her ablutions, so I turn back to my newfound partners in crime. Rion has a giant smirk on his face, and he shakes his head.
“What?” I ask.
He chuckles. “I just find it funny, is all. She’s saying we don’t have to trust her, but—no offense, mates, but I don’t even know you lot! We met, what, a few hours ago? Am I the only one who finds it a little weird that in less than a day we’ve gone from strangers to co-conspirators in a grand theft aero plot?”
Truth. I haul myself up off the floor and plop down on the couch, clapping Rion on the shoulder. “I would seriously question your judgment if you immediately trusted the madman who crashed a shuttle with you in it. But here’s the way I see it: we all washed out of the Academy, which gives us something in common—for whatever reason, we don’t fit their mold. Honestly, after the short time I spent there, I’m thinking that’s a compliment.”
Case crosses her arms over her chest, as if protecting the Academy crest still displayed there. “Speak for yourself. I would have been top of my class if they’d let me in.”
She’s spitting mad, but underneath it is an all-too-familiar open wound. I don’t blame her for it. If she’s anything like me, the Academy was her dream for years. For me, it was escape from my too-small hometown and the chance to be my own person. An opportunity to rebuild myself from scratch: a crack pilot and captain of my own ship, not a screwup who’s only good for video games, chicken feeding, and making the local news for all the wrong reasons. Malik got his dream—a life on one of the new colony worlds, a good job, friends, money to support his expensive taste in everything.
It was supposed to be my turn. The Academy was my way out.
The grin fades from my face with the memory of the venting atmosphere, the cold voice saying the station had been “neutralized.”
Silence settles over the group for a few long moments. I pick at a loose thread on the hem of my shirt, letting the faint clatter of pans in the restaurant below carry me back to my parents’ kitchen at home, Malik and me bickering at the table, my parents sneaking a kiss behind the freezer door while they tuned it all out. A surge of homesickness lurches in my stomach, and that does it—suddenly there’s hot pressure behind my eyes, and it takes everything in me to hold it back. It wasn’t supposed to happen yet. It was too fast and sudden, no time to really think about what we were doing. I’ll never set foot on Earth again, and my last-ever time with my parents was spent in the horrible awkward silence of our parked aircar at the spaceport.
My throat hurts too much to swallow. I sneak a hand over to Case, the feel of her shoulder under my fingers a small comfort. Some of the stiff tension bleeds out of her at the touch, her shoulder sagging with a shaky exhale. I suck in a deep breath through my nose and push it all away.
“Look. At the end of the day, we’re stranded together. The no-return rule is in effect for us. The station runs the courier shuttles, so we can’t send a message back to Earth. We can’t go to the police here if they’re allied with the Academy. We can’t stay here without a visa. We’re essentially all screwed—but together, right?” I look around, meeting each person’s eyes. “That makes us natural allies. And hey, it’s not like I’m a space murderer or something. I prefer to think of myself as an ambitious up-and-coming pilot in need of a ship. I promise not to kill you in your sleep.”
Rion knocks his knuckles against my shoulder with a laugh. “Glad to know you aren’t a space murderer. Warms my heart. How about the rest of you lot?”
Zee nods, toasting with her cup of tea.
“Also not a space murderer,” she says, dry as the desert.
Case clears her throat. Her mouth is pressed in a hard line, and her eyes are flint and steel, ready to spark. Is she a space murderer? She might be soon, the way this is going.
“This is completely ridiculous,” she says. “You all are really considering stealing this ship, aren’t you?”
“Well, yeah,” Rion says, looking from side to side like he’s missed something. “I don’t really see another option, do you?”
Case barks a harsh laugh.
“Are you kidding me?” She holds up the flight recorder again. “We have evidence, right here. We haven’t done anything wrong, nothing that wasn’t in self-defense. There is zero reason why we can’t just go to the embassy, turn over the data, and plead our case. I’ve never heard of the no-return rule being overturned, but we have to try.”
“No,” Zee says, just as Rion laughs out a pointed “Sod that!” He shrugs at Zee as if to say, “Can you believe her?”
“That’ll never work,” he says. “They’ll ship you back to Ellis Station, all right, but you’ll be executed in quarantine for your treason and grand theft and all that rot without ever setting foot on the Rock. At least this way we can warn all the rest of the colonies. Maybe they can mobilize and do something.”
Case slides the flight recorder back into her bag, leaving her hands free for angry gestures in Rion’s direction. “So the obvious solution is to add some real crimes to our list of fake ones? No, look, I have a friend of the family who works for the embassy, pretty high up in the ranks. She’ll help us get in, help us be heard by the right people—”
“No,” Zee says again. “I don’t want to go back to Earth. Ever.” She pauses, thinks for a moment. “Let me rephrase: I’m not going back. If you decide to do this embassy plan, you can leave me out of it. I won’t beg to go back to someplace I couldn’t wait to leave.”
“Too right,” Rion agrees.
Case throws her hands in the air and lurches to her feet, pacing the short length of the room. “What about you, Nax? You on board this train wreck, too? You been awfully quiet over there.”
I feel her crosshairs settle on me, prepping for a head shot.
“Actually . . . I’m not so sure.”
Zee and Rion both look at me in surprise. I close my eyes to block them out and push past the vision of the Breakbolt’s sleek lines. Tempting, but . . .
“Look, ther
e’s no way I can get a piloting license without going through the Academy. Without a license, I can’t be a pilot. And if I can’t be a pilot, I don’t see much point in being separated from my family on Earth for the rest of my life.” Especially not with the way I left things off. I have to fix it. “If there’s a chance I can go back to them, I should take it.”
The bedroom door clicks open and Asra pads out, quietly rejoining the circle next to Zee. “Sorry for eavesdropping,” she says, “but that’s actually not true. I made fake IDs and ship registration documents for my ammu and sister when they left al-Rihla. I can do it for you, too.”
She pulls her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on them. “Not to brag or anything, but I’m pretty great at it. It’ll stand up to the highest scrutiny, I guarantee it.”
“Still illegal,” Case says, though it sounds like obviously. “Still an actual crime instead of a falsely accused one.”
I hate this. Every option sucks in some way. There’s no clear right or wrong, no way to make everyone happy, to get everyone on the same side. I close my eyes and tune everything out; decision time. What do I feel is the right thing to do?
I bite my lip, glance at Zee and Rion, then meet Case’s expectant stare.
“I’m with Case on this one,” I finally say, wincing at Zee’s tut. “I don’t think it’s going to work, but I think we at least have to try doing the legal thing here. And if it doesn’t work out, we’ll consider option B.”
“Not doing it,” Rion says, pulling away from me and storming across the room. “My dad knows by now that I faked his signature on the age waiver. If I set foot back on Earth, that’ll be it.”
“You aren’t eighteen yet?” I ask. I thought I was the only one.
Rion shakes his head. “He has my whole life planned out for me. It’ll be more internships, and political science in uni, and suits and lies and bullshit. I’m not doing it.”
The Disasters Page 6
