Nightchaser

by Amanda Bouchet

  I frowned. “I’m not. I’m nothing. I’m just a Nightchaser who runs supplies in and out.”

  Mareeka scoffed. “Stand tall and speak forcefully enough to be heard, and they will listen.”

  A hot, prickly feeling grew under my skin. What was she talking about?

  “What makes Surral and me able to run this place without ever hitting a child, or even raising our voices?” she asked.

  That was an easy answer for someone who’d spent ten years on Starway 8. “Because a disappointed side-eye from one of you is way worse than any lash from a whip.”

  “Says someone who’s experienced the whip,” Mareeka pointed out.

  I nodded, wondering what she was getting at.

  “As a leader, fear will only get you so far, and for so long. Never, in the long history of humanity, has tyranny not ended in revolt. The Overseer would destroy our books and burn our past to hide it, but the outcome is always the same. Always, Tess. Some wars lasted days, some centuries. Some spanned regions, others spanned worlds. There is an ebb and flow. Even if we win this day, for our lifetime and maybe beyond, tyranny will rise again. And then revolt. There will always be those who impose. And there will always be those who would die for the right to self-determination.”

  “It sounds hopeless,” I said. “An endless cycle.”

  “A cycle in the long span of things, but you are alive now, and this is your time to influence events and outcomes.”

  The pressure suddenly felt heavy on my shoulders, and I hadn’t even done anything yet.

  “Respect is the key to leadership. You’ve shown it to others, and the inevitable reward is that you’ve gained it for yourself.” Mareeka leveled her piercing blue eyes on me. “The day you decide to lift your voice, do not be surprised when people listen.”

  I almost physically recoiled at her implications, somehow mixing in an image of my father spewing his totalitarian crap onto screens across the galaxy. That would never be me, but when I spoke up publicly—if I spoke up—not everyone out there would agree with what I said, either. I would never expect that.

  And part of me felt like I was just out of school, just out of Starway 8 and still muddling my way through the start of adulthood, even though eight years had passed. I didn’t want that kind of responsibility. I had it on my own ship, and that was enough. Simply not getting caught or killed was a good day for me, for any rebel space rat. That same part of me wanted to pass off the serum. To get rid of the stuff and make it somebody else’s decision.

  “My fight is here,” Mareeka said. “I might not take up arms myself, but don’t think for a second I don’t know how many of the children I raise end up in our not-war.” Her expression didn’t sadden at that, for those lost, or maybe lost, like Gabe. She looked like a general, her eyes on the future, her conviction strong. “My part is to show the difference, to demonstrate that the Overseer’s way is not, in fact, the only path. Every child who comes through here can then choose what to do with that.”

  Mareeka was laying things out more plainly than she ever had before, at least in my presence. She wasn’t telling me what to do, but she was letting me know that now was the time to step up my game if I wanted to.

  “How has this place not gotten destroyed?” I asked. Not every kid reached their majority and went straight out in search of a rebel crew to join, but plenty of them did. And those who didn’t… Well, they lived out their constricted lives, but they didn’t betray the spirit of this place. Often, I wondered how that was possible, what kind of magic protected Starway 8 beyond loyalty, because even that sometimes wasn’t enough.

  Mareeka’s mouth curved with a subtle smile. “Ask me that again someday. Right now, I fear the answer would betray a trust.”

  That was cryptic—and not at all what I’d expected. I’d expected her to roll her eyes and jokingly say, The Sky Mother, of course, because we both knew what that was worth. Now, I was dying to know what she was talking about, but I knew better than to push.

  “Take this,” she suddenly said, going over to a key-coded cabinet. She opened it and pulled out a Grayhawk handgun and ammunition clip. “Long story short, it was left here, and I don’t want it on the premises.”

  I took the gun from her and locked in the ammo clip, making sure the safety was on before slipping it under my shirt and into the wide elastic waistband of my borrowed scrubs. The weapon felt cold against the small of my back.

  “I’m worth two hundred million in universal currency because of the enhancer I took.”

  Mareeka paled, her eyes widening. It was no wonder; you could buy a small city on a decent rock for that.

  “If anyone comes here looking for me, tell them I came to say goodbye.” I thought about Shade Ganavan, money symbols lighting up his mercenary eyeballs. “You can tell them I blew myself up with the stolen goods right outside your window. I’m now one with the nebula.” I glanced at the colors outside. That was exactly where I wanted to be when I died.

  “You saw the whole thing,” I added. “Saddest day of your life.”

  Mareeka’s expression soured. “It certainly was.”

  I gave her a hug goodbye, refusing to acknowledge that it could be our last. Every departure was the same; we could only hope for a reunion.

  “Stay safe.” She hugged me back. “No sign of Gabe?” she asked, drawing away enough to look at me again.

  It suddenly struck me as odd that everyone would still think I was pining for Gabe. Of course I cared what had happened to him, but it had been years…

  I shook my head. “You, either, Surral said.”

  Mareeka smiled vaguely, seeming sad—mostly for me. “You two… When I think back.”

  We’d been in love. There was no doubt. My heart still sometimes gave a hard thump when I thought about him. Every now and then, I felt a phantom touch, a memory, and my belly clenched.

  Unfortunately, that belly clench had shifted to Shade over the last week, but it was tainted now, a cramp more than a thing of warmth.

  Chapter 26

  I was four levels from the Endeavor’s dock when I heard the firearm cock behind me. My steps slowed at the distinctive sound. Cautiously, I turned.

  “I knew you’d come.” Nathaniel Bridgebane’s words came at me down the barrel of a gun.

  My pulse jumped hard. My uncle stood not thirty feet from me. He’d always been tall and handsome, and he’d aged remarkably well. Too bad inside was so much uglier than outside. I remembered when the two parts of him had still matched.

  I asked the only question that seemed important to me right now. “Did you infect children to draw me here?”

  He didn’t even flinch. “No, but I made sure no one came to help. I knew you’d do that yourself.”

  “How?” I didn’t bother telling him that there had been deaths. He wouldn’t care.

  “Because you came back onto my radar for stealing what you thought were cure-all vaccines. That tells me public health means something to you, and you grew up here…” He shrugged, trailing off.

  “Public health should mean something to you! To anyone!” I spat.

  “I think I’m beyond that.” He sounded toneless. Dead.

  What an asshole.

  “Put your hands behind your back where I can cuff them,” he ordered. “Then turn into the wall and kneel.”

  Mareeka hadn’t said anything about the security cameras coming back online yet. No one was seeing this and would come to my rescue. If Bridgebane had arrived in a discreet, small cruiser, there was a good chance no one even knew he was here. There were guards around, as usual, but they couldn’t have eyes everywhere without the cameras. And with the sickness on Starway 8, the sentinels may have been fewer and less vigilant, thinking no one would want to come anywhere near the orphanage now anyway.

  I slowly lowered my hands behind me, but I didn’t turn. I drew the
Grayhawk as fast as I could, cocking it as I leveled it at him.

  He left his gun up, too. “And now we’re at an impasse.”

  The problem was, he didn’t sound like he meant it.

  I tensed a split second before I felt the barrel of a gun press against my back, right between my shoulder blades.

  “Easy does it, starshine.”

  Shade. My whole body clenched.

  “Impeccable timing, as usual.” My uncle’s eyes flicked over my shoulder. “Although I’ll have to decide if this technically counts as you bringing her in.”

  “Lay down your gun and do as the man says,” Shade told me.

  That sedative obviously hadn’t knocked him out for long. Not long enough, anyway. “Fuck you, Ganavan.”

  “I think we already cov—”

  “Shut up!” I snapped.

  He did, thank the Powers.

  I kept Bridgebane on the other end of my pointed gun. They would have to wrestle the Grayhawk from me.

  “How did you even know I lived?” I asked.

  “I had no idea what happened to you after you left Starway 8 for good. Not until you announced yourself in Sector 14 after your little heist.”

  Little heist? “So, I guess you didn’t know about my fun stint on Hourglass Mile?” I sank a lot of bitterness into my voice, and to my satisfaction, I could tell my words had stung.

  “No.” Bridgebane’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t ask. He didn’t ask about my partner, about the mines, about the whips, or about anything that might have happened to me there. “But I pieced that together from your false name.”

  “Well, aren’t you clever. Good job.” I ignored Shade and his gun at my back. My raised hand was steady, my weapon level. I felt surprisingly numb. “But that’s not what I meant. I meant how did you know I’d survived the Black Widow?”

  Behind me, Shade drew in a sharp breath.

  “I had a rebel heading to death row on board DW 12. I gave him a choice: lethal injection, or the Black Widow in a small cruiser. If he somehow survived and reported back, he was free to go with the cruiser, and I gave my word to clear his name from the system. He chose the Widow. He survived.”

  “Where did he come out?” I asked.

  “Seventeen.”

  So, the wormhole didn’t only lead to Sector 2. I wondered how the Widow chose.

  “Did you clear his name?”

  Bridgebane’s nod didn’t surprise me. My knowledge was limited, but the only time I knew of that Nathaniel Bridgebane hadn’t done exactly what he’d said he would was the day he brought me to Starway 8.

  After all this, he probably wished he’d just offed me when I was a kid, like my father had ordered. “Too bad I didn’t die, huh? Hourglass Mile? The Black Widow? Your bounty hunters? Sucks for you… Now you have to decide all over again.”

  “Quin, I’ve—”

  “You’ve what?” I interrupted. “Turned into the biggest asshole in the universe?”

  “You don’t know it, but I—”

  I wasn’t listening to his crap. Not now. Not ever. “Or am I useful again now that I’ve destroyed your lab?” I asked.

  “You destroyed it?” I think he paled.

  Lying was surprisingly easy. I twisted the knife. “I blew that garbage up. Boom!”

  He cursed. “That was the only thing keeping him from coming after you again,” Bridgebane ground out in apparent disgust.

  “He thinks I’m dead!”

  “No!” His shout nearly blew me back. I might have moved—if not for the gun behind me. “Everything that’s happened since Sector 14 is in his records. He knows.”

  My breath choked off, strangled by the dread clamping around my throat. I’d used my real name over the com. I’d been talking to Bridgebane, thinking I was about to die, but of course other people had heard me. He wouldn’t have been alone on the bridge of that huge warship. But then with the Black Widow, the shock of not dying, the dangerous landing, the repairs, and Shade…I’d forgotten.

  I squared my shoulders. I’d think about the Overseer later. Right now, I wanted answers from Uncle Nate.

  “Did you know we could have saved her? Just a few drops. It’s not as though there wasn’t enough to spare.”

  A shadow flickered over his expression. “Lower your gun, and I’ll lower mine.”

  “Well, that’s a problem for me, since I have your goon at my back.” I kept my arm up, even though the gun was getting heavy. “Now answer me. Did you know?”

  “I wasn’t there! I came back two days too late.” Bridgebane’s face twisted, suddenly reminding me of the man I used to know, the one with emotions and a heart. “Don’t you remember? I didn’t know. I wasn’t there.”

  That was true. I did remember that. “And he didn’t care?”

  “Your mother was too hard to control.” His eyes turned haunted. “Just like you are.”

  “You threw me to the wolves!” To my dismay, my voice nearly cracked.

  “I gave you a life!” he countered.

  “And your recent dead-or-alive bounty really helps with that,” I snapped.

  “I made it clear that alive was more profitable.”

  I scoffed. “Well, thanks, Uncle Nate. What a prince.”

  Suddenly, it did seem as though we were at an impasse. Neither of us spoke. I stared, rage and hurt boiling inside me, anxiety making it all worse, and he stared back, his blue eyes like chips of ice and his mouth a hard line of tension.

  After a charged moment, Shade filled our silence. “Uncle Nate? Quin… Tess…” He put it all together in an instant. “Quintessa Novalight? I don’t fucking believe this!”

  I snorted. “I guess you’re not the only one with secrets, asshole.”

  I ducked, spinning as I elbowed him in the ribs. He turned with me, and my knee came up, hitting him hard in the groin. Shade bent in on himself with an explosive exhale. It wasn’t the kick in the balls I’d promised myself, but it was close enough. I slammed the flat of my gun down on his skull with a satisfying crack.

  “Fuck! Tess!” Shade stumbled back, shaking his head.

  I wasn’t anywhere near done. Fury fueled me, and I hauled off, kicking him hard in the gut. He reeled back into the wall, twisting and taking the blow on his arm instead of his back.

  “Not the pack!” he wheezed with enough urgency to make me pause.

  I kept my guard up. “Why? Got a bomb in there?” I geared up for another kick while his head was still ringing and I actually had a chance of doing some damage.

  “Bonk,” he said.

  I pulled up short. “What?”

  Bridgebane put his gun to my head. I stiffened. Either Shade had just screwed me over—again—or…

  I didn’t know what was going on.

  Shade pushed off the wall and stood taller, his eyes darting from me to Bridgebane.

  My uncle grabbed my arm and pulled me against him. “I have to produce something, Quin, or the Overseer will set the galaxy on fire trying to make more of what you took.” His jaw tightened, visibly flexing. “I wanted to turn over the lab. Without it, I need you.”

  “Or him,” I said through clenched teeth, the barrel cold against my temple. “Why doesn’t he use himself? Or is he too much of a coward to get pricked and drained and have his insides stolen from him over and over? Clearly, I didn’t get it from Mom, since she died from a fucking fever!”

  “Because it’s not him, either,” Bridgebane said.

  “What?” How could that be? Did the anomaly start with me? Then who were the Mornavail?

  “I’ll do what I can for you,” Bridgebane said. “You don’t seem to believe it, but I always have.”

  My bastard of an uncle glanced at Shade. “Cuff her, Ganavan.”

  Shade moved. He was going to do it, and my stomach hollowed. I�
��d almost thought for a moment… I swallowed. I’d hoped…

  “I don’t think so, boss.” In the blink of an eye, Shade had his gun right in the center of Bridgebane’s forehead.

  I inhaled in disbelief. “Shade?”

  “Baby, I only ever wanted you to get away safe.” He didn’t take his eyes off my uncle. “Now take your cat and go.”

  “Cat?” Bridgebane echoed. His face whitened, turning livid. “Baby?”

  Chapter 27

  While Bridgebane stood there with Shade’s gun to his head and looking like he’d just been hit by an asteroid, I raised my Grayhawk and hit him hard in the temple. He went down on one knee. My uncle groaned, clutching his head, and I grabbed Shade’s hand and pulled.

  Shade resisted, the idiot.

  “Go!” he shouted, keeping his weapon pointed and cocked.

  “You have Bonk!” And Shade had just defied a direct order and threatened a Dark Watch general and the Galactic Overseer’s second-in-command with a lethal weapon. He was toast—unless he came with me.

  Bridgebane staggered upright again. Neither Shade nor I shot him. I’m not sure why. Maybe we didn’t have murder in our blood.

  I added my gun to Shade’s, keeping my uncle from raising his weapon, if he knew what was good for him. I didn’t kill anyone if I could help it. In fact, I’d never killed anyone at all, but I had no problem shooting him somewhere that hurt.

  “Where are your goons?” I asked, glancing quickly around.

  “I don’t bring the Dark Watch here,” Bridgebane snapped. “Don’t you know that by now?”

  “Why?” I asked, an odd tingle creeping up the back of my skull. Did he have something to do with this place? With Mareeka being left in peace?

  “We all choose our battles, Quin. Stop being so blind to everything but yourself.”

  I drew back as if struck. “I’m selfish because I don’t want to be a lab rat?” I asked.

  “You’re selfish because you’re capable of prolonging war until we’re all dead!”