The Last Hope

by Krista Ritchie

  “Mykal, don’t!” Franny yells.

  He pants and curses.

  She hesitates between helping Court and aiding Mykal.

  I adjust Court against my chest. Tall and a little muscular, but I’ve carried heavier artillery into my combat jet. “Go,” I say.

  “No,” Mykal chokes. “Franny, stay with Court.” He struggles to a stance. She won’t let go of his wrist.

  Humans. “Look at me,” I tell Franny sincerely. “I need you three alive. I’m taking him to the sick bay where he needs to be treated. You both should come. I reckon that’s a win-win for everyone.”

  She nods tensely but only shifts her grip to his palm. She’s holding his hand, but it offers me room to step out of the pool.

  I climb out.

  Mykal keeps his distance, taking a knife from his boot. “We may share the same pa…” He aims the blade at my eyes. “… but you hurt even a hair on his head, I’ll be gutting you inside out.”

  Yeah, I can’t die.

  Today is not my deathday.

  But I enjoy my intestines inside my body. I nod. “Follow me.”

  I head toward the silver drapes, and Franny is slack-jawed in shock before she passes beneath the archway. Surprised that I’m allowing them through.

  I have to bring them to the sick bay. The captains will understand.

  We emerge into an office for all crew, including high-ranking officials: the captains and the admirals. Instead of a pool, a glossy oak desk is the focal point. A few hardbacks are stacked next to a hologram computer screen. Starry constellations shimmer in gold paint along the dark blue walls.

  Franny momentarily ogles the third towering archway. More silver drapes block her view of the courtyard, but as the fabric gusts, I make out the fountain: water lilies entwined in long dark hair, a woman chiseled out of marble. Head raised, eyes pointed to the sky. An effigy of Reva Woncu, a thirty-second-century war hero, has been in the Lucretzia for as long as I can remember.

  I leave the courtyard alone. The sick bay is accessible from the office, and I hurry to an arched door on our left.

  Propping Court more against my body, I free one arm so I can open the door—

  “Mykal, you can’t.” Franny panics, letting go of Court’s hand. She restrains Mykal, palms to his broad chest, and I look back.

  His eyes are reddened in pure frustration. He growls into a scream between his teeth, battling an invisible enemy. Grappling to move forward … blinking repeatedly.

  He wants to hold and carry Court.

  Desperately …

  “Why are you looking at him?” Franny snaps and waves her hand in my face. Forcing my gaze onto her. “Open the door.”

  I whisper under my breath, “As you wish.”

  NINE

  Court

  I wake to a fusion of combative sensations: a dreamy light-headedness, a rank stench of body odor, bare feet pacing on warm mosaic tile, and most clearly, an ass on a hard seat, tingling and sore from not moving, and a knife between coarse fingers: chipping at wood.

  And smoke, seeping down and scratching my esophagus.

  Eyes still shut, I cough lightly. “Mykal.”

  “Court?” He plucks something out of his mouth.

  I cough again as my gaze opens onto him.

  Mykal is hovering over me.

  He always says that I’m a beautiful sight, but when I awake to Mykal and his lopsided smile and the rigorous drumbeat of his kind heart, the sun has kissed me. And I feel unbelievably whole again.

  The corner of his mouth lifts higher, brightening the grave, dark places inside of me. “Well, aren’t you mighty pleased and satisfied.” He eyes my lips. “I’ll be taking credit for that.”

  I almost smile. “You should,” I whisper.

  He pats my cheek twice and then holds my jaw—but our reality suddenly rushes toward me.

  How I fainted in front of Stork. How we’re no longer in our familiar snow-covered country. Up above through a round sky port, a star-blanketed galaxy stares back. How, at any second, we could lose sight of the dangers and be taken from each other.

  Split apart or worse.

  I refuse to lead him or Franny into peril again, and that means staying focused on the task at hand.

  So I start to make sense of where I am. My back lies on what appears to be a dark-blue cushioned bench. A plush circular pillow beneath my head.

  Mykal balances his hunting knife and a whittled piece of wood on his lap. Sitting on a stool next to me, he says, “You’re glaring at me, you realize.” His crooked smile remains, even as he sticks what appears to be a lit cigarette back between his lips. “You have that cross face about you. Like you enjoy wringing happiness by the neck.”

  “I don’t enjoy it,” I say curtly, and in all the gods-forsaken places I could rest my narrowed eyes, they fall to his mouth.

  Mykal mumbles with his cigarette, “Ah, so you’re looking to be kissed then.” He runs his thumb along my squared jawline.

  My nose flares, a sweltering intensity lighting my nerve endings. This close, I can only truly sense him and me. Embers eat the end of his cig, and smoke spills into the air like a tender wisp.

  I remind Mykal, “It has to be done.”

  “Kissing?” He plucks his cigarette out and blows a gust of smoke off to the side. Out of my eyes.

  “Staying focused.”

  Mykal sucks his cig again and cups my face. “Can’t we do both?”

  We can’t.

  It’s better to be cautious. To be alert. To be maddeningly strict and survive than to be starry-eyed in love and perish.

  His thumb glides roughly across my cheek and mouth with keen desire. Heat gathers. Pleasure rousing, and then stirring a need that should be kept dormant for his sake.

  He’s more overeager than shy, as I always thought he would be if we coupled. I could happily envelop myself in these feelings with him.

  But I caution myself again. And again. I can’t put him at risk.

  I try to set my stern gaze on his hard-hearted blues. His thumb parts my lips, and a wild, torrid fire ignites across my limbs—as though reminding me that this is life. I am alive. I inhale, breath pouring into my lungs.

  His chest rises, and he clasps my jaw, primal and rugged movements aching to swathe me. I feel his need grow stronger, and with a ragged exhale, his hand clenches the bench beside my head.

  Mykal craves to roll on top and tangle together like two young lovers in his village. All raw strength and wanting breath and uninhibited things.

  He resists the pull. Combatting his yearning for my sake.

  Our lips haven’t even touched, a single breath away, and I’m wrapped fully in his essence. Falling further away from focus.

  Focus.

  Abruptly, with my palm to his bare chest, I push him back and sit up. Gasping like I breached the surface of a pool. Undone. Air colder than his warmth. I comb my hair out of my face with two hands.

  Frustration springs into my muscles. I try to exhale his frustration.

  Leaning back farther, Mykal taps ash. “I think you love nurturing misery like a baby. Cradling the tot all day, all night. Letting it suckle your—”

  “Will you ever shut up?” I retort.

  Irritation flares madly in both of us, and he takes a harsher drag from the cig.

  I cough into my fist, stifling a glare.

  “I hate when you two fight,” Franny mutters from across the small room. She’s peering into the glass cabinets that contain medical instruments.

  “Court started it,” Mykal mumbles, picking up his hunting knife and wood.

  I do glare, this time at the sky port. “How long have I been in the sick bay?” I ask, hurrying to take note of our new setting. A row of seven cushioned benches, including the one I’m on, line one side of the room. Cabinetry on the other.

  Dotted squiggles and calligraphy are scrawled in ink on each tawny wall. Possibly an ancient, decorative map.

  “About five hours, I
think,” Franny answers.

  “You think?” I crane my neck over my shoulder. Behind me, a wide, silver-framed screen is hung. Much like the ones in the atrium, but instead of moving photographs, I trace the vivid blue outline of a male body that rotates slowly.

  My body.

  Familiar numbers flash in a column to the right of the silhouette.

  118/73. Must be blood pressure. Stable.

  84. Heart rate. Stable.

  Though, my medical knowledge is based on a Saltarian. Not a human. I can only assume that biologically, we’re very similar. But this monitor is far more advanced than the equipment in Yamafort’s hospital. Where I once walked the halls as a physician.

  “We only found a clock in the sick bay an hour ago,” Franny explains. “We didn’t want to wake you.”

  Mykal snuffs out his cigarette with the heel of his boot. “You weren’t tossing or turning. You felt … at peace.”

  Did I?

  I unconsciously touch my chest and solidify at the sight of my clothes. What … is this? I’m wearing a short-sleeved, high-collared white cloth that ends at my thighs, my tattoos peeking out on my quads. A leather belt is tied at my waist.

  “That’s a tunic apparently,” Franny explains, taking a seat on the closest bench.

  “It’s odd-looking,” Mykal mentions, carving a chunk out of the wood. “But you make it look handsome.” His neck reddens, and I feel the flush ascend his face, as though the heat belongs to me.

  I swallow my feelings.

  “Mykal undressed you,” Franny says, catching my gaze. “He made everyone leave the room.” She smiles at that. “I only took off your socks.”

  I’m appreciative. For both of them. I should say this aloud, but I find myself on a mission to loosen the leather belt.

  I’ve been in insurmountable pain, and now I feel none.

  Careful, I lift only a corner of the tunic up to my waist. The Lucretzia crew must not wear undergarments beneath tunics because I clearly wasn’t supplied any. Some kind of medical dressing is clinging to my hip.

  “He said it’s a Band-Aid,” Mykal tells me, flaking wood. I don’t ask where he found the material to whittle. A stool near the door is missing a leg and leans askew.

  I peel the sticky bandage off my hip. Stitches removed, they cauterized the cut. My golden-brown skin appears less aggravated and exponentially healthier.

  Yet I slept … almost too well. “What medicine did they give me?”

  “Something to rid your infection,” Franny says, “and painkillers. Stork told us that humans can die too easily from infections if we’re not careful.”

  I inspect my arms for bruising, for any intravenous fluids, but I’m not covered in cords or wires. All I discover are two translucent, thin dots stuck to my wrist.

  I rip one off, and the monitor behind me beeps aggressively in warning before the screen blinks to black.

  “Heya.” Mykal points the tip of his hunting knife at me. “Put that back. It’s been helping you.”

  I stick the clear dot back to my wrist, and the monitor flashes to life once again. This is technology that I can’t comprehend.

  “And there are such things as diseases,” Franny proclaims dramatically.

  Mykal cringes. “Sounded real nasty. So we let them prick us.”

  I freeze. “You let them what?”

  Franny crosses her legs beneath her bottom. “We had a stew first.”

  I would imagine Mykal quarreling about medical tests. More so, I’m in utter disbelief that they allowed Stork to test them for diseases. “You trust Stork?” I ask, voice strict.

  “He has answers, and he needs us alive,” Franny defends. “But he’s still a wart who tried to shove me into a pool.”

  Mykal mumbles something about fatherhood, but then he shakes his head and expels a gruff breath. “I dunno what to think, Court.”

  Every time their guards dip, mine shoot upward. The last person I trusted unconditionally, who wasn’t linked to me, had been my cell mate in Vorkter—a man who tried to cut out my heart.

  The last thing I want is for Mykal or Franny to meet that callous betrayal and gut-wrenching agony. They’ve already sensed enough through me.

  “Don’t open your arms too wide yet,” I caution.

  “You’ll be happy to know,” Franny snaps back, “that we’re all disease-free.”

  “Wondrous,” I say dryly. “Did he tell you why you have random nosebleeds then? Or is he withholding that knowledge for a time that benefits him?”

  She bristles. “Maybe he knows nothing about my nosebleeds.”

  That’s only one possibility, and a slim one. He said he knows everything. And if that’s true, he’s a bastard for letting her wade in uncertainty. The kind that will plague her day and night.

  I know this because I was that bastard. Before StarDust, she’d pleaded to retest her deathday, and I kept telling her to wait. Saying now’s not the time.

  And I’ll regret it for the rest of my gods-damned life.

  She needs answers, and she deserves them. Sometimes the truth is more painful, and maybe that’s why I’ve been content to never discover our origins. Our history.

  But I’m willing to confront these answers for Franny.

  I swing my legs off the bench, facing her more. “Obviously he’s withholding a vast amount of information.” All so we’ll help him with his retrieval operation. I continue, “But if you want answers, Franny, you don’t need to wait.”

  Back when we met in Bartholo, Franny never pressured me to open up about myself because she was being kind. I could barely return to my past without becoming ill. But Stork is being tight-lipped as leverage. Using his knowledge to exercise power over us.

  “You can trick him,” I clarify, “or talk his ear off until he lets something slip.” She fooled many StarDust candidates with the indigo cards, and though he seems clever, his guards seem to lower around Franny. He smiles more, teases only her, and so there’s a possibility that he’ll falter.

  Her brows jump. “You trust me to do that?”

  “Yes.” I nod. “Just be careful.” Please be careful. I shut my eyes tightly, already partly regretting this idea.

  I feel her smile before I even open my eyes.

  “I will,” she says quietly. “And I’ll wait for the day where you say it’s too dangerous and then I’ll continue on anyway.”

  Mykal laughs. “Predictable.” He reaches for a carton of something.

  “No more than you,” I say distantly. “What are those?”

  “Human cigarettes.” He hoists the pack at my eyes. “Not too strong, but they do the job all right.”

  Franny motions to the cabinetry. “Mykal found them in a cabinet drawer. We were joking earlier how the Lucretzia’s sick bay looks like a Bartholo cigar parlor.”

  They have been here for a while. I comb another hand through my dark hair. Kicking myself for fainting and risking their health.

  I go rigid. “Did either of you faint after me?” I should’ve asked this first.

  “No.” Mykal shakes his head, but a sort of brawling torment festers and scalds his eyes. He sucks deeply on a newly lit cigarette. Smoke glides down my lungs, feeling Mykal, and aggravation swirls angrily inside him.

  I don’t understand the source of his emotion. “It feels like a yes.”

  “Well it’s not,” he retorts.

  He’s not lying.

  I’m sorry. I must’ve put him in a position that hurt him somehow—

  “You don’t need to be apologizing.” Mykal points at me with the cig between his fingers.

  “I didn’t say anything,” I tell him smoothly.

  He jabs at his chest. “I felt it in my soul.”

  I roll my eyes and let them land on Franny. “Did Stork seem suspicious about us?”

  “No.” She picks at a frayed hole in her slacks, ripped at her knee. “He didn’t seem to know about our link.”

  I nod. “Good. Let’s keep it that way.”
The less he knows about us, the better, and our link may be our last well-kept secret.

  TEN

  Franny

  I whip up a plan: find someone else on this starcraft who speaks Saltarian.

  So far, no one we’ve met except Stork has spoken our native tongue. Not being able to communicate with anyone else is a bothersome fact. Stork may have carried Court to the sick bay and helped us escape the Romulus brig, but I can’t forget that he needs us for the fleet’s retrieval operation. Without that, he may not even care whether we live or die.

  I search for a handle or knob to the sick bay’s door. Gods. I should’ve paid sharper attention to how the nurses exited. The metal door sparkles metallic silver, and four diamond pegs slide along crisscrossing tracks.

  I shift one peg and wait for the door to open.

  Nothing.

  Nothing happens. Who’d think to transform a door into an elaborate puzzle? Albeit I only spot four pieces, but a four-piece puzzle is more than any door should have.

  It is a beauty, though. Just like the rest of the doors on the Lucretzia. Midnight-blue drapes frame the arched entryway, drawn and pinned on either wall.

  I reach out to attempt the puzzle again, and the pegs suddenly slither rapidly. All on their own.

  I fast lose sight of which pegs end where, but as soon as the door whooshes open vertically, I step forward—holy hells.

  I bump into a hard chest, and I quickly catch the door frame to stop from stumbling backward. He must’ve opened the door on his side.

  He being …

  Oh.

  No.

  Mykal and Court go quiet, but their heads whip around. Concern cramps their limbs, but I start to concentrate elsewhere and their senses drift further and further away. Becoming faint.

  I’m staring at silver-laced open-toed footwear, up higher to a pair of muscular thighs that peek beneath a leather skirt. Blondish hairs on chalky skin.

  Stop looking.

  Higher, against better judgment, I ogle the leather strap across an armor-less chest. A sword sheathed across a broad back and a leather band twisted along a chiseled bicep, spiraling down a strong forearm.

  I lived my Fast-Tracker life with simple pleasures: the laughs of a few long-gone friends, the rush and high of drugs, the heat of tangling up in limbs, the rumble while behind a Purple Coach wheel, and the marvelous tales that my mom whispered at night.