My pulse jumps; it seems completely counterintuitive to come out and say we stole the damn ship, but I guess that’s the kind of place we’re at. Malik would have told her, anyway, and it’s obvious from the kind of work we need done. I keep my mouth shut as Asra taps her tab screen a few times and projects an image of the ship.
“We’ll give you thirty thousand for the whole job,” she says, totally cool, setting the tablet down on Brenn’s desk.
“Forty,” Brenn replies without missing a beat, her expression impassive.
“Thirty-two,” I shoot back. Now this I know. This is a game I can play, and I learned from my aunt, the master haggler, on my trips to Pakistan. Try me.
Brenn frowns. “Forty. I don’t negotiate.”
“Thirty-two,” I say. “I don’t overpay. We’re only here because my brother recommended you. I’m sure we could go elsewhere.”
We stare at each other. Her eyes are so hard that after a moment, I actually worry she’ll refuse to work on the Kick. Did I push too hard? Maybe I should I have backed down. It takes all my effort not to glance over at Asra. Brenn taps one stubby nail against her lower lip.
“Thirty-five. Take it and consider yourself lucky I don’t shoot you.”
I grin, but only a little bit, the receptionist’s warning in the back of my mind. “You got a deal.”
She stands and puts out her hand, and I grab it in a firm shake. Her eyes never leave mine, probing and curious, and she holds my handshake a moment too long. I feel like I’m being analyzed, but there’s something in the way she looks at me, almost sad, or worried. The moment passes, though, and she sits back down and kicks her feet up on the desk.
“Your lady’s new name will be the Swift Kick, you said, correct? We can do VSS or ESS registry codes here. Which do you want?”
“VSS.” Part of me feels like I should be running this decision by the rest of the crew, but logically I don’t think we can get away with passing ourselves off as an Ellis-sourced ship. Too many possible legal hang-ups, ways to get caught and deported, get the Kick taken away. Can’t risk it. And for better or worse, our home is out here now, and Asra’s always has been. Assuming everything doesn’t get destroyed tomorrow night. It’s the right choice. The safe choice. Clinging to Ellis Station and to Earth is pointless now.
It’s all I can do not to close my eyes against the emptiness that thought brings.
“Right then. Ellis-based registry woulda cost you extra anyway. Damn pain, that is,” Brenn says.
She pulls a small tab out of her back pocket and taps it a few times, then holds it out toward me. I pull out my own tab and wave it near hers. It receives the data packet and chimes happily.
“That’s instructions for transferring payment once we run our full inspection of the ship’s systems. Once we have your credits, we’ll move her in and get to work.”
“And how long should the work take?” Asra asks without looking up from her tab. Playing it casual.
Brenn smirks and folds her arms over her chest. “Should take about two or three days, assuming no one more important than you shows up.”
Assuming we’re not all dead before then, too. Asra and I lock eyes for a moment, and she nods slightly, just a dip of her chin.
“Well,” I begin, drawing it out. “I don’t know what Malik told you, but we might need to leave in a hurry. Two days isn’t going to work for us. Can we do the most critical stuff now, have her ready to fly by the end of the day, then move on to the less important stuff?”
Brenn’s mouth curls into a tiny wicked smile. “It’s gonna cost you something extra. Ten thousand additional for the rush job, and the whole amount in advance.”
I wince and open my mouth to haggle further, but Asra cuts in. “Fine. But you’ll have the ship space-worthy by nightfall, and we can come back any time to get the remainder of the work finished?”
“Yes, so long as you leave your credits here, you can do as you like,” she says with a vague hand wave.
I barely suppress an eye roll. “Great. Thanks. Pleasure doing business with you.”
She stares at us. I take the hint.
I step over the spare parts littering the ground and head for the door with Asra right behind me, somehow managing to weave around the mess without getting her jeans dirty. I swear she has a classiness field around her that keeps her looking clean and composed at all times. You’d never peg her for an underworld hacker queen.
“I’m so glad you were there,” I tell Asra as soon as Brenn’s door closes behind us. “She would have scared the piss out of me if I’d been there alone.”
“I don’t know, Nax, I think you were plenty terrified even with me there,” Asra says, biting her bottom lip to hold in her grin.
“The woman is like a tiny Texan velociraptor!” I say in self-defense. “Vicious, and calculating, and can you imagine a pack of Brenns surrounding their unsuspecting prey, ready to tear their throats out?” I shudder.
“I thought she was pretty nice. And her accent was fun.” Asra’s full-on smiling now, but I think she’s being serious. She actually liked that woman. I shake my head.
“Whatever you say.”
I smile at the receptionist guy on the way out and push open the outer door—
—and run straight into Malik.
I’m not ready.
I wasn’t ready for this.
My world tilts on its axis, a feeling of unreality settling like a fog over my brain.
Malik.
His narrow eyes fix on me, the same flinty near-black as mine, looking down at me over the same nose. His expression is completely unreadable. Am I supposed to be able to read him? He left home two years ago, and I haven’t seen him on a video message for almost as long. Whenever Ammi and Dad watched them, I always found somewhere else to be.
The scar is still there, though. The one unchanging thing about him, cut right into his jawline as a constant reminder.
I close my eyes against the intense pulse of sense memory (momentum, stomach lurching, sharp pain, so loud) and take a deep breath, letting the cold, clear air carry the rich scents of soil, greenery, and ship fluids into my lungs.
I’m not ready.
But it doesn’t matter.
“Come on,” Malik says, the first words he’s spoken to my face since the day he left. “We can talk on the way.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder to guide me out the door, and I flinch so bad that he snatches his hand away as if burned. Without another word, he turns and leads the way out.
That’s it? That’s all I get? Two years since he completely abandoned me, and that’s all he has to say? The words pile up in my chest, boiling into a hot stream of anger and a million other things I can’t even begin to untangle. I shove a hand into my hair and yank once, blow a hard breath out my nose, and count to five. Slowly.
Then I follow. So does Asra.
The hulking forms of vicious, torn-up ships loom over us as we cross the tarmac to meet up with the others. And there, on the edge of the landing zone, the Swift Kick sits peacefully in the golden-yellow light of Valen’s sun, awaiting the start of her new life. I hope she gets it. I hope I’ll be around to see it. Between Malik and Earth First, it’s not looking good. And Jace’s people. And Tiger Squadron. Is there anyone else who wants us dead?
They’ll have to get in line.
Fifteen
ONE SET OF AWKWARD INTRODUCTIONS and an uncomfortable car ride full of explanations later, we pull up to a small cottage in the middle of nowhere. One of the bonuses of colonial living: huge plots of cheap land with no neighbors for tens of miles. I’m surprised Malik would choose to live in a place like this; back home, he was always driving into the city with his friends to “escape hickville.” Enormous shade trees tower over the house, throwing dappled evening light through the windows of the aircar as it comes to a rest in the landing space.
We spill out of the car in silence, and the others immediately gather behind me and a bit away, leaving
me alone in facing Malik. They left me to do all the talking on the way, too, left me fumbling to explain the massacre at the station, the situation on al-Rihla, stealing the Kick, the plan for the spaceport . . . all of it.
Yeah. Thanks, y’all.
Through the whole thing, Malik was totally blank. He still hasn’t reacted, in fact. Nothing to say, really? Framed for a massive attack, colonies in danger, you included, and . . . nothing?
Malik gestures for us to follow him as he walks toward the house, fiddling with his tab. He leads us to a side entrance under a covered work area where a half-rebuilt speeder bike rests in greasy pieces. His tab pings when he waves it at the lock, and the door clicks open. Inside, the house is bland and functional, done up in simple patterns and solid navy blues. Malik has always been a flashy person, though—this doesn’t strike me as his style at all.
“Whose house is this?” I ask.
“My girlfriend’s,” Malik says, waving the lights on as he goes. “I haven’t been home since you—since the attack. Too many eyes on my place in Center City.”
He leads us through to a small combined kitchen and dining space with a table crammed against one wall and a small pile of dirty dishes in the sink. Malik rolls his eyes and sets the hot water to run, filling the basin with soapy water for soaking. Some things never change. So offended by a few dirty dishes.
“You may as well sit down,” he says, pulling several containers of prechopped vegetables from the refrigerator. “I didn’t get my lunch break at work today, and I’ve gotta eat before I can think about any of this.”
Sure, remind me again what an inconvenience I am, why don’t you? I haven’t heard it enough in my life.
I lean against the wall just inside the door, leaving the four chairs at the table free for the others. Malik throws a pile of veggies into a hot oiled pan with a dramatic rush of sizzling and leans back against the counter, poking at the food as he studies me.
The rich, spicy smells and the scrape of the spatula in the pan remind me so much of home. He learned all of Ammi’s recipes during his summers home from college, and if I close my eyes I can almost pretend it’s her cooking instead, with my dad whipping up batter for cupcakes right beside her and luring me into an argument about the fate of our favorite TV characters. I get my sweet tooth and my taste in bad television from our dad. Malik, of course, hated both of those things. The reminder of home should comfort me, but my senses are on hyper-alert. Waiting for the inevitable attack.
“You know, there’s one thing you still haven’t told me,” he says.
My stomach twists. Here it comes. Please don’t ask, Malik, just—
“Why did you wash out? I mean, you’d be dead if you hadn’t, so I’m glad you did, in a way, but satisfy my curiosity.”
I stumble over my words, stutter like a guilty child.
“Wh-what does it matter? We should—”
“Did they find out about your record?”
“No. Can we not do this please?”
“Which was it, the wreck, or all the break-ins?”
Damn it, Malik.
The silence is heavy and awkward, punctuated by the occasional pop of oil in the pan, but I can barely hear anything over the blood rushing in my ears anyway. Five sets of eyes pin me against the wall, but I can’t look at any of them. We’ve only been together a few days; they’re probably thinking they don’t actually know me at all. We’re all criminals now, but I bet I’m the only one here who had an actual record back on Earth, who was a criminal by choice rather than necessity. I take a shuddering breath.
“How did you even know about the break-ins? You’d already left by then.”
Malik scoffs. “I actually talk to our parents, Nax. Was it that, then?”
I chew on my thumbnail for a moment, then close my eyes. He’s not going to agree to any plan to help us unless I tell him. I give a helpless, bitter laugh.
“I failed my piloting test.”
“What?”
I risk a look up at the others. Case’s mouth is still hanging open from her exclamation. Asra is wide-eyed, her lips pulled into a small frown. Zee and Rion have their blank wait-and-see expressions on. Expectant. I guess I owe them an explanation. A lot of explanations. Malik huffs a laugh, though, and turns back to his cooking.
“Ah, I should have guessed. Pushed it too hard?”
My blood boils. “I wanted to make wing leader. I was on target to make top score on the practical piloting exam, but I needed the cushion room in my points total in case the girl with the next-highest score did better than me on the written exam we had to take afterward. I pushed it too hard.”
I swallow, my throat sore and my face hot with remembered embarrassment and fury.
“You’re right. I did what I always do. I just had to go that little bit too far, had to show off and be all extra about it. And I crashed the sim. Automatic failure.” A bitter laugh. “Honestly, it’s a miracle I haven’t killed us all before now. I never should have gotten behind the controls with you all on board. I only ever did because we didn’t have another option.”
“And . . . the rest of it?” Case asks. God, I hate that she looks so suspicious.
“It’s not what you think,” I begin. Malik snorts, and I shoot him a glare. “Really, it’s probably less bad than you’re all thinking.”
“You almost killed us both with your piloting,” Malik snaps, visibly angry for the first time since our reunion. “You were in the hospital for two days, Nax, and me for weeks, and it cost Ammi and Dad a ton of money. We couldn’t go anywhere in town without people bringing it up. You made Ammi look bad, embarrassed the hell out of her at work—do you have any idea how much stress you put on us all? And then after it all, you wouldn’t let any of us help, you just cut me out completely like I was—”
“Stop it!” I snap, covering my eyes and dropping into a crouch. I take a shuddering breath and look back up at Malik, though in my mind I see him as he was then, bloody and unconscious, a jagged piece of metal lodged in his jaw right where his scar sits now.
“I know, okay?” My voice comes out ragged. “It was my fault. The biggest of all my many screwups. I’m perfectly aware.”
I shift my eyes to the others and brace for the impact of their mistrust, their disgust.
“I was fifteen and had just gotten my learner’s permit. Malik was in the car with me, supervising a practice fly. I’d been simming since I could reach the pedals and had flown with my ammi, and I was already a confident pilot, so I thought I could handle it. Like he said, I was too much of a hotshot. I wrecked. We got hurt.”
I take in a slow breath through my nose and fix my gaze on Zee’s face. She’s always been understanding. Stay calm. Get through it.
“My ammi’s a cop. I think I told you that. She responded to the scene, tried to keep it as low-key as she could. But we come from a small town, so everyone knew what happened. But I swear, after that wreck, I was always so careful. I never let anyone ride in the car with me, never flew hot outside a closed course, never put a toe out of line after that.”
“Except for the breaking and entering?” Case asks, her eyebrow arched. Skeptical. My judge and jury. I actually snort at that—not with much humor, but compared to the wreck, this part is downright hilarious.
“The breaking and entering really is just . . . you’re going to laugh, but after the wreck I was restricted from flying, and I was so beyond grounded. I had to come home straight after soccer practice every day, which meant no extra sim time at school. Our parents couldn’t afford to pay for extra sim time at the training center after my accident cost them so much money, so . . .”
“Oh my god, you didn’t.” Rion’s lips twitch as if he finds the whole thing immensely funny. “You complete nerd!”
I chuckle a bit. At least he can find the humor in this. “I did. I started sneaking into the school on weekends, and sometimes in the middle of the night, so I could get more sim time. I know it was utterly cracked, but you don’
t understand. Being a pilot is all I’ve ever really cared about, and after the wreck I couldn’t keep my skills at Academy level with the hour or two a week they gave me at school. But I started getting cocky again, and I was gone more and more until Ammi finally busted me. Again. That one we dealt with privately, no record.”
I’m too afraid to look up at the others, to see their reactions. The silence has gone from awkward to oppressive.
“I know you have no reason to trust me after hearing all that,” I continue. “Obviously I don’t have a great track record for decision making or—” I close my eyes against a flash of memory, the crash on al-Rihla (screeching metal, shattering glass, hard ground rushing up). I clear my throat. “Or safe piloting, I guess. But I would never do anything to deliberately put you all in more danger. And, if you’ll have me, I still want to be part of this.”
A hand appears in front of my face—Zee, offering to help me up. She pulls me to my feet and taps me on the cheek twice, like something my ammi would do.
“You’ve led us this far,” she says. “You’ve proven yourself to us. To me, at least.”
“And me,” Asra and Case say in unison, then lock eyes and bust out laughing.
“And me,” Rion says from the closest chair, just loud enough for me to hear. Our eyes meet for a long moment. I press my lips into a hard line and look back down at the floor, feeling my face flicker between shame, gratitude, embarrassment, disgust. I really can’t screw up this time. Everything is riding on this. My eyes skitter away from the scar on Malik’s jaw, and I squeeze my eyes shut again.
“He has good reason to be angry at me. And I know you hate me, Malik,” I say, forcing myself to look him in the eye and maintain the contact. “But this is bigger than me and my issues. This is . . . everyone. Millions of lives.”
I swallow hard. This is the big question.
The Disasters Page 18
