by Sara King
His daughter caught his reaction, and grief poured from her in a wave. “Can you take me to her?” she whimpered.
“Oh, uh, no,” Joel said. “Sorry, she doesn’t want—”
“I’m here, sweetie,” Jeanne said suddenly. “I’m just fine. I’m here.”
His daughter flinched and peered around him, like she was expecting to see her mother sitting in the cockpit.
Joel was glad the cockpit door was out of sight and closed. “She’s, uh, just having trouble getting out here to greet you and, uh—”
“Shut up, Joel. Daytona, baby, I missed you so much. I’m so very sorry I made you leave.”
Immediately, Daytona’s face hardened. “Yeah, well, I think we both know why that had to happen. You couldn’t even trust me, Mom, and you’re obviously not even trusting me right now, getting some dude to do your talking for you.” She turned to leave.
“Daytona!” The sheer agony in Jeanne’s voice ripped at Joel’s heart. “Please!”
Joel reached out and caught his daughter by the arm. When she stopped and, frowning, looked up at him, he cleared his throat embarrassedly and said, “You should listen to your mother.”
She rolled her eyes and yanked her arm free. “Yeah, right.”
“Because,” Joel said, “I know the paterfamilias of your genetic line, and I’ll tell you everything you wanna know, if you’ll hang around and stop with the insolent peevishness.”
The girl blinked at him. “Huh?”
“He means your attitude. Stop with your attitude and he’ll tell you about your father.”
The girl froze like they’d dumped icewater over her. “You…will?”
“Yeah,” Joel said. “Listen. Your mom had a damn good reason not to tell you. Your dad was a libertine and a rake and you really didn’t want to meet him.”
Immediately, his daughter’s face darkened again as Joel tarnished the perfect image she had created in her mind. “You don’t know shit.” She moved to brush past him again.
“I know you’re different,” Joel said. “I’d like to know how.”
“Goddamn it, Joel!” Jeanne cried.
The girl had stopped on the ramp, her back to him. Very slowly, she turned to face him. “Mom told you?” She sounded hurt, betrayed.
“She only said you were different,” Joel said. “And she was hoping I could help figure it out.”
The kid scoffed. “Only my dad will know what’s wrong with me.”
Joel gave her a really long, pointed look.
Daytona froze, exhaling suddenly. “You’re…him?”
“Joel, I swear to Aanaho, I will shock the living shit out of you!”
“Hey, I didn’t tell her anything!” Joel cried, holding up his hands. “Didn’t say a word!”
Daytona turned to face them completely. “Joel…Triton…is my dad?” She seemed to be looking at the inside of the ship, now. “Mom?”
And, in that moment, Joel realized Jeanne was standing at a crossroads, her entire relationship with her daughter depending on her next words. If she fought it, denied it in any way, said anything but the truth, Daytona was going to walk away, and she wasn’t going to come back. Joel also knew he couldn’t interfere. It was something Jeanne needed to do herself…
“It was Joel,” Jeanne whispered.
Daytona looked up at him, obviously disappointed. “But you’re just a smuggler.”
Ouch. Joel winced. “I, uh, yeah…” He scratched at his cheek. “I mean, I’m not the greatest guy on the planet, but I like to think I’m—”
The girl turned away from him before he’d finished his sentence. “You sure it couldn’t have been somebody else? I mean, how many guys were you with?”
“Just one,” Jeanne said softly. “Just him.”
That seemed to totally devastate the girl. “Well, shit. You’re just a…a…scumbag.” She looked him up and down in nose-twisted disgust.
Joel’s mouth fell open. “That’s not true!”
“Yeah, whatever.” She shook her head in disgust. “That’s why you didn’t wanna tell me, Mom? Because he was a loser?”
“Jeez, why don’t you go grab a knife and stab me while you’re at it!” Joel cried.
“Maybe I will!” the girl snapped back, obviously furious. “You were supposed to know!”
That, again. “Okay,” Joel said gingerly. “Look, I need to see whatever the problem is, okay? I can’t help if nobody tells me what we’re up against.”
She snorted with something akin to despair. “‘What we’re up against.’” She shook her head. “I can’t believe this, Mom. You disappear for six months and come back dragging one of Geo’s goons. What’d you do, pay him to pretend he’s the sperm donor? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Daytona…”
The hurt in Jeanne’s voice was too much. Joel grabbed his daughter by the shoulders and yanked her around. “Listen to me,” he growled. “Your mom just went through a lot, and I mean a lot. I seduced her, fucked her, and dumped her in the desert. I scuttled her ship and stole her entire life savings. I refused to answer her waves when she tried to get me to come help her have our baby because I was too busy blowing the cash I’d stolen from her on whores and gambling dens. I continued to ignore her after she birthed you alone and afraid in the jungle because she’d been kicked out of Silver City for begging. I repudiated her, so if you’re gonna sit there and pout because she couldn’t get hold of me to tell you that in person, you really need to consider a new perspective.”
Daytona swallowed, hard.
“Now,” Joel growled, because he was on a roll, “you’ve got something you both are worried about. Something that made your mom just spend six months trying to track me down so I could take a look at it. For the love of the Phage, what the hell is going on?”
The girl looked up at him slowly. She was shaking all over, and there was uncertainty and tears and hurt in her eyes. “You left her to die?”
“Did it,” Joel said. “Not proud of it, but yeah, I did it.”
“Oh.” She lowered her eyes again. “Okay.”
“So?” Joel said. “Will somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?”
“You don’t have to sweetie,” Jeanne said quickly. “Don’t ever feel pushed to do anything you don’t want to do.”
Daytona looked up at Joel again, meeting his eyes, searching. He watched her debate, saw her desperation, her need to know…
Without another word, she pulled him inside the ship and hit the hatch button. Then, once they were alone, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then, still holding his gaze, she reached up and slid her finger across one of the intricate lines of the bicep-bracelet.
Immediately, her skin changed color, her normal green eyes and farmer’s tan fading away, leaving something…else.
Joel’s heart stopped. He found himself utterly speechless as he stood there, staring down at her dumbly.
Her eyes were the reflective silver of polished steel, her hair like a bundle of fine silver wire.
As if that wasn’t startling enough, laced up and down the girl’s body was a smoke-like web of moving silver lines that swirled like eddies within her, never staying in one place, so polished and reflective they looked black. When Joel reached down to touch one of the lines, it was ice-cold and hard, and it spread outward from his touch in a flush, turning her whole arm a silvery black. Joel’s breath caught and he quickly removed his hand. Immediately, the silver went back to licking across her skin the way it had before. The polished metal looked to be flowing within her, like flame.
“So?” Daytona demanded. “Any ideas?” The way she was standing there, looking up at him with overconfidence and fake bravado, left Joel with the realization he could totally, irreparably break her with a single word.
“Well,” Joel said, finding it hard to breathe over the pounding of his heart, “I can honestly say that’s not what I was expecting.”
His response obviously hit her hard. D
aytona bit her lip and quickly looked away.
“But it’s pulchritudinous,” Joel managed. He was still breathless, mesmerized by the stunning ebb and flow of the mirror-like shine roiling over his daughter’s skin. Never before had he been so completely blown away, so speechless.
Daytona jerked to look up at him, squinting. As she did, a swath of mirror-black silver flowed across her cheek and over her scalp, down her neck, and under the back of her shirt. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Beautiful,” Joel breathed.
Daytona seemed to take that in stride. “Soooo,” she offered gently, “what is it?”
Joel blinked, forcing himself to tear his gaze back to her face. “Huh?”
“What is it?” She raised a brow. “You should know, right? I mean, I obviously didn’t get it from mom.”
Joel flinched. Scratching his skull, he said, “Did you ever eat any, I dunno, radioactive food or something?”
Daytona narrowed her silvery-black eyes.
“Yeah, bad question,” Joel said, quickly waving it off. “Okay. So.” He cocked his head at her, watching a tendril of silver sway across her forehead, then down over her brow, across her nose, and down over her mouth, over her chin, down her neck and…
“Joel.” Daytona snapped her fingers in front of him, producing odd clicks unlike any finger-snapping he’d ever heard before.
Joel quickly tore his gaze back upward. “Huh?”
This time, Daytona laughed, the skin-colored skin of her face blushing with her giggle of delight. “You don’t know, do you?”
Transfixed by the silvery flames moving over her, Joel could only shake his head.
“Well…crap.” She sighed and touched the silver—Aashaanti?—band on her arm, and immediately, her image went back to normal.
“That is a bad ass holograph,” Joel whispered. He knew people who would literally kill to get hold of something that advanced. “Where’d you get something like that?”
Daytona pulled away before he could touch it, obviously acutely possessive of it. Warily, she said, “This Cobrani kid. He’s kind of a space-case, but he found some cool alien tech and he traded it to me so I’d let him use my tools.” She shrugged. “Don’t really mind. He always puts everything back.”
A Cobrani kid. Joel frowned, seeming to remember something about a Cobrani kid…
“So where’s Mom?” Daytona asked. “Her ship got totaled. She in the bedroom in traction or something?”
Joel opened his mouth, though he didn’t know what to say.
“Come to the cockpit, honey,” Jeanne said. “I’ve got something I want to show you.”
Joel tensed, already imagining how that was going to go. “Jeanne, are you sure—”
Jeanne shocked him, and Joel yelped.
Daytona gave him an odd look. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Joel managed. “After you.”
Daytona began walking deeper into the ship, hissing in commiseration as she came across the damage the bags of nodules had caused in their tumble around her mother’s ship. “Aanaho,” Daytona whispered. “How did anyone live through this?”
“It was pretty rough,” Joel told her, remembering quite distinctly what it had been like to take a palladium bar to the face, the throat, the nuts…
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Daytona agreed. “I mean, look at that support. That was damaged from an impact on the inside.” She whistled, sliding her hand across a dent in the scaffolding. “This thing got pounded.” She swiveled to give him a surprised look. “What was Mom carrying?”
“Shrieker nodules,” Joel said.
Daytona frowned at him. “That’s it?” She glanced at the dent again. “I mean, this was crushed. Like, we’re talking thousands of pounds, crushed.”
“It was a lot of Shrieker nodules,” Joel admitted.
Daytona cast an irritated look over her shoulder. “A couple bags of Shrieker nodules couldn’t have done this.”
“It was more like a few thousand, sweetie,” Jeanne offered. “Are you gonna come to the cockpit?”
“Gimme a minute to figure out how long this is gonna take me to fix,” Daytona muttered. She stopped at yet another wall, her fingers tracing a dried blue line of slime with a frown. Turning back to Joel, she said, “Wait. She was carrying a couple thousand nodules or bags of nodules?”
“Bags,” Joel said gently.
Daytona whistled. “Okay. So Coalition shot her down?”
“She got distracted and crashed,” Joel said. He wasn’t about to tell the girl that her mother had blown her own brains out over the front of her console.
“Huh.” Daytona frowned, her fingers still lightly touching the wall. “That’s…weird.” She cocked her head, giving Joel a confused look. “Does this ship have AI?”
“Uhh…” Joel began.
“Mom hated AI,” Daytona said, looking back at the ship in bafflement. “Said it wasn’t right, putting a perfectly good mind in a hunk of metal. Creeped her out and she felt sorry for them.”
Joel swallowed down the rising agony inside. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I know how she felt.”
She glanced back at Joel. “And, well, you know. She didn’t want me around intelligent machines. Might give me ideas.” She snorted bitterly, gesturing at her armband.
“Daytona,” Joel whispered.
“Whoa.” Daytona suddenly pulled her hand back and started shaking it out, giving the ship a nervous look. “Yeah, I don’t think it likes me.”
“No,” Joel said, finding it hard to breathe again. “I’m pretty sure she likes you just fine.”
Daytona raised a brow. “She?” Shaking her head, she said, “I always thought it was stupid the way guys always called their material objects girls’ names. I mean, like this is the freakin’ Dark Ages still.”
“This one’s a she,” Joel said.
“I’m getting that,” Daytona said, looking almost nervous. Then, at his odd look, she shrugged and said, “Eh. It’s just something I can do. Ships and things talk to me.”
“I think,” Joel said, “this one wants to talk to you very much.”
“Yeah, well.” Daytona sighed, looking deeper into the ship. “I don’t think I’ve got time to fix this one. I mean, my time is money, and we’re looking at something that’s gonna take years to fix. Mom should probably just go steal herself another one—this is shot. Hell, if you really stole a whole hull full of Shrieker nodules, you can buy yourself a new one.” She brushed her hands off, as if the matter were settled. “So where’s Mom?”
“Up front, honey,” her mother whispered.
Daytona sighed. “Can’t you come out here?”
“I’m…busy,” Jeanne said.
“You’re seriously gonna make me wade through this junk heap to find you?” Daytona made an exasperated sound. “Typical.” She started awkwardly wading through the broken struts and wrinkles and lumps—trip-hazards that Joel had simply become accustomed to over the last three weeks.
“So Mom came and got you and you guys crashed together or what?” Daytona asked, as she climbed the stairs to the second level.
“Oh,” Joel said. “Well, uh. I guess you could say I was in on the heist.”
“He told me we were going to dinner,” Jeanne said. “And I find myself in restricted Rath airspace, instead.”
Daytona giggled. “Yeah, okay.” She glanced over her shoulder at Joel. “You pull stunts like that a lot?”
Joel felt his chest swell with pride. “All the—”
“I pulled that one off, thank you very much,” Jeanne interrupted. “Joel was going to bolt with a fraction of what they gave us.”
Daytona laughed. “Yeah, okay. What’d you do, Mom? Shoot ’em all?”
“No,” Joel snorted. “She was going to shoot them—and, I might add, get us both killed—but I talked her out of it. Then I walked her through pulling the biggest Yolk heist in history.” Too bad they’d lost most of it on the insides of the ship…
“Huh,” Daytona said, grinning. “So basically, you helped each other swindle some dumb Coalers you couldn’t have taken alone. You split the loot?”
Joel grimaced. Most of the surviving ‘loot’ had gone to bribing the wrecker to coming out and picking them up, then Magali and her tribe had begged him to let them make use of the rest, promising him long-term interest, once they kicked the Coalition off Fortune.
Daytona caught his look and frowned. “There’s no loot.”
“Weeeellll,” Joel said, “I’ve got a friend who made a really good argument—”
“He’s got a soft spot for a nice set of tits,” Jeanne growled.
He made an indignant scoff. “I didn’t even look at her tits.”
“She basically brushed them in your face, Joel. Believe me. You looked at her tits.”
Daytona giggled again. “You two always like this?”
The way she said ‘always’ had an almost hopeful note to it that was not lost on Joel. He cleared his throat, embarrassed. “Well, uh, yeah.”
“I heard you were the guy flying against the Coalition Space Force in the Tear,” Daytona said. “People say you’re pretty good.”
“He’s good,” Jeanne said, grudgingly. “Better than me.”
“Wow, Jeanne,” Joel said. “That sounded like you were pulling teeth. You can add a few molars to that necklace of yours.”
“Gladly,” Jeanne said, the threat not lost in her tone.
Daytona grinned. “She still doing that necklace thing? I always thought it was gross.”
“Maybe,” Joel said, “but it was very effective at making chickenshit guys like me think twice about crossing her.” He wondered, again, if he had been the inspiration behind said necklace.
Daytona chuckled, then hesitated and frowned at the empty cockpit. “Wait a minute.” She stiffened like a cornered animal. “This some sort of heist? You hear I was different and decided you were gonna sell me, Joel?” The bitterness in her green eyes flashed like hardened emeralds.
Jeanne, thankfully, came to the rescue. “No, baby,” Jeanne whispered. “Come into the cockpit.”
“Yeah, right,” Daytona said in a nervous snort. “Corner myself in an enclosed area.”
