Starbreaker

by Amanda Bouchet

  “Tie him up.” Raquel nodded to Solan. “We’re just wasting time now.”

  Solan rose with a groan, moving slowly. After a hard blink, he grabbed my wrists and forced them behind me. A cord circled them, cold hard plastic. He drew the single cuff tight with a yank that jarred my shoulders.

  “So much for a decade of not-quite-friendship.” I rounded on him in disgust. “I guess I was right to never really trust you two. You always do something to screw me over.”

  Solan shoved me toward Raquel, muttering, “I didn’t want to.”

  “That didn’t fucking stop you!” I hadn’t even begun to think about being court-martialed, or spending life in prison, or whatever the hell was about to happen to me. I only knew these assholes had just ripped my first happiness in years away from me.

  Solan refused to look at me, his expression stony.

  “Take the key card from my pocket and give it to Tess. And don’t touch her.” They had me. As promised, they’d better leave her out of this.

  “Shade…” Tess’s weak croak made me want to set fire to the universe—and then burn it down a second time. Raw pain ripped through me. This couldn’t be over.

  “Tess!” My end wouldn’t be hers. I’d make sure of it. “498721BVR—that’ll turn on the cruiser. Do what you need to do and get out of here.”

  She moaned, her eyelids drooping.

  “Baby! 498721BVR,” I shouted again, trying to penetrate the fog she was in. “You gotta remember the ignition numbers!”

  If she didn’t, she’d be stranded here. The crew might think she didn’t make it. She didn’t even have her tablet to contact them. They had one device, and it was on the Endeavor. She’d never get into mine unless she had expert hacking skills I didn’t know about. The thought of Tess alone halfway across the galaxy from her crew with no ship, no money, and Nathaniel Bridgebane as her only possible point of contact sent me into a blind panic.

  “Tess!” I bellowed.

  Raquel rolled her eyes and dropped Tess in a way that could’ve been disfiguring if she’d gone over face-first. I jerked against my restraints—an automatic impulse to catch her. But I was too far away and fucking tied up. I howled. Tess lay on her side, breathing shallowly, her eyes half-open and on me.

  I glared at Raquel, white-hot fury consuming me. How had I ever had a normal conversation with this woman? Sat at her table? Shared meals with her and Solan? “You’re such a bitch. Just wait until you find out that payback is an even bigger one.”

  Raquel smirked. “Good luck with that—from life in prison.”

  Oh, she had no idea. If the Dark Watch killed me, I’d haunt Solan and Raquel across the galaxy until I had my revenge for this, but I wasn’t thinking about me. I was thinking about Tess and her friends. If Tess asked them to, they’d find the bounty hunters and fuck them up in ways these two couldn’t even imagine. If Fiona had her say in it, it might involve tetrafumic acid.

  Raquel took a pen from her utility belt and wrote the cruiser’s ignition numbers on the inside of Tess’s forearm. She scowled at me. “Happy?”

  “No. Not ever again in this lifetime.”

  Her chin went up, her expression brittle. “Let’s go.” Her eyes flicked to Solan. “We have to get back to Maya.”

  My eyes narrowed. They loved their daughter—the little girl was probably the only thing they loved besides each other—but I’d never heard one of them say that before, especially when a hunt had been this fast and easy.

  I refused to move, even when Solan pushed me. “What about Maya?” As far as I knew, the five-year-old was home in Sector 6, as usual.

  Raquel’s face lost some of its habitual callousness. For the first time in ages, she looked almost human. Actually, she looked like her daughter, with big mahogany eyes, heavy dark lashes, and wavy hair down to her elbows. Maya’s long hair was blacker and springier, which she got from her father.

  A visible anxiety I’d never seen before in her crept into Raquel’s features. “Why do you think it took us ten days to come after you?” She shook her head like I was the idiot and the asshole, when they were the ones who’d just ambushed us, captured me, and drugged my girlfriend.

  “I don’t know. You tell me,” I ground out.

  “Even though we chipped you, we didn’t pursue you ourselves or tell any of the other bounty hunters where you were because we chose not to.” Raquel seemed to regret that decision wholeheartedly in retrospect. “In spite of her two hundred million units being transferred to your head.” She pointed back and forth between Tess and me, as if I needed the visual cues to know exactly who she was talking about.

  Did she want me to thank them? Fuck that. “What changed?” I asked.

  She clamped her mouth shut, so I glared at Solan.

  He scrubbed a hand over his shaved head, grimacing. “Maya got sick.”

  “What?” My brow slammed down. “What kind of sick? What happened?”

  “Everything was normal at first,” he answered. “After your asinine behavior on the Squirrel Tree, we went home and kept tabs on you. We watched you go to Starway 8 for some reason, then you zigzagged around the Outer Zones with no logical direction, then you disappeared. We thought you’d been blown up or something. There was no trace of you anywhere. Then Maya collapsed the other day.”

  Solan took a deep breath. He glanced at his wife. She stared straight ahead at nothing. “She was playing normally. Then she started complaining about feeling dizzy. ‘Spots in my eyes,’ she said. We gave her a snack and thought she was okay again. A few hours later, she just dropped, folded like her strength fell out from under her. She couldn’t get back up. She’s in a clinic now. They say it’s an aggressive new blood disease, and they don’t know how to treat it.” His next words choked him. “They say she won’t make it.”

  “Shit. I’m sorry.” I was sorry, despite the rest of this. Then anger reared up. “And you ditched her in a clinic to go hunt down the one person who might actually care about her besides you two?”

  They both flinched, which was unprecedented. I’d only seen Maya here and there, a couple of times a year, on average. She wasn’t the easiest kid in the galaxy—hell, look at her parents—but I usually got her to come around to games that didn’t involve setting things on fire or beating the crap out of something. And I knew where Solan and Raquel kept the paperwork. The paperwork that fucking named me as Maya’s guardian if the two of them bit it somewhere.

  “We didn’t ditch her,” Raquel said stiffly, not sounding like herself either as she moved closer to me and Solan. “We put out feelers. There’s a black-market dealer who says he’s got a cure-all like nothing anyone’s ever seen before. He swears it’ll fix anything, even this, but he’s only got one. He’ll sell it.”

  “Let me guess,” I bit out. “For two hundred million.”

  “Three hundred million.” Solan actually looked sorry, like this wasn’t how he wanted things to end between us. “You popped up on Korabon—alive, apparently—so we told him we could get the money for his cure-all. We tracked you here in the meantime.” He shrugged. “The rest is history.”

  Black-market dealers were greedy fuckers, but still… “That’s a hell of a lot of currency.”

  “It’ll wipe us out,” Solan said. “But at least we’ll have Maya.”

  “There’s no guarantee of that.” They’d never acted like they were born yesterday. Why start now? “This guy could be pulling a fast one on you. He could take your money, hand you a useless saline solution, and disappear into the Dark forever.”

  “You’re just trying to save yourself,” Raquel spat out, livid—probably because she feared exactly what I just said. She reached out, twisted her hand in the neck of my T-shirt, and pulled. “Our cruiser’s over at the next lodge. Start walking.”

  Tess laughed from the ground. Little huffs and giggles leaked from her as she shoved
herself up and sat against the wall of the bungalow. She blinked like her vision was fuzzy. I couldn’t believe she was even conscious. Was her A1 blood helping her?

  Raquel let go of me and whirled on Tess, practically foaming at the mouth as she stomped back toward her. “You think this is funny?”

  Tess laughed again. Raquel pointed the Grayhawk at her. Cocked it. I leaped forward, but Solan jerked me back, growling.

  “Don’t!” I shouted, my heart banging in my throat. “You promised.”

  Raquel’s lip curled. She lowered the Grayhawk.

  “Not funny,” Tess mumbled. She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “Your drug is making me loopy.” She wrinkled her nose and blinked some more, looking owlish. “I can help.”

  “Come again?” Raquel stared at her, so hostile I tensed. I’d seen her kick in someone’s teeth when they were down, and I had no doubt she’d do it again.

  “I can help your daughter,” Tess said more clearly. “And I won’t even charge you three hundred million units in universal currency.” She pointed at me, her hand wavering. “I want him in exchange.” Her hand dropped, thunking into her lap again.

  Raquel whipped back around, her laser-sharp gaze zeroing in on me. “Is she for real?”

  “Shade, man, what the hell’s she talking about?” Solan sounded half pissed-off and half anxious with hope. Poor bastard.

  I laughed. I threw back my head and laughed, just like Tess had. This was so fucking perfect.

  “Yeah, she can help you. Assholes.” I strained against the cuff biting into my wrists. It didn’t budge. “And we both would’ve helped Maya if you’d just fucking asked. I have no hope of buying my docks back now. But I would’ve bought her life with that cure-all if you’d just told me—instead of this.”

  Neither of them would look at me. Did that mean they were capable of guilt?

  “Let him go,” Tess said.

  “Not a chance, bit—” Raquel stopped, swallowed the rest of her insult, and tried again. “Tess. Show us what you’ve got and then we’ll decide.”

  Tess struggled to her feet. She swayed and slid back down the wall, her hair clinging to the fake wood and falling in slow motion around her shoulders. She closed her eyes. Giggled. Took a few deep breaths. “You got an antidote for this stuff?”

  Huffing like a dragon, Raquel tucked Tess’s Grayhawk into her belt, pulled out a small pistol, and shot Tess.

  Tess gasped. Her eyes popped open, and her leg jerked up, a blue-tipped dart jutting from her thigh. The red-tipped one was still in her shoulder.

  “You’re unbelievable!” I snarled. Raquel shrugged.

  Tess blinked a few more times, scrunching up her face. She stood and ripped the darts from her leg and shoulder. “Wow. That works fast.” She looked at me and managed an odd smile. “See you in a few minutes.”

  I nodded, some of the tightness in my chest easing now that she was up, steady, and moving again. Tess walked to the cruiser. Since we’d been doing essentially the same thing for Bridgebane in the privacy of my little ship, we had everything she needed to draw her own blood and pass if off as a surprisingly red cure-all.

  Tess climbed into the pilot’s seat and looked out through the clear panel at me. She sat there for a moment, staring. Solan’s grip on my shoulder hardened until it hurt. “She’s gonna leave without you and screw us all over.”

  My stomach dropped. She could lock up the cruiser. Ignite the engine. Meet Bridgebane. Go to Demeter Terre. All without me. “No.”

  “She did before.” Solan didn’t need to remind me. Raquel murmured in agreement, her eyes fixed on Tess in the cockpit.

  “That was then. This is now.” Right, baby?

  Tess glanced at her arm, clearly looking at the ignition numbers. Ice-cold panic pierced my chest.

  “She’s about to take off. Fuck,” Solan muttered. “Never trust a rebel.”

  My pulse went haywire. “Just give her a minute. Then you can get the hell out of here and help Maya.”

  Tess bent down. I lost sight of her below the clear panel and stopped breathing. Was she setting coordinates?

  She straightened, and I braced for the engine to fire up. For my heart to shatter. For my life to be over. The highest-earning bounty hunter in the galaxy brought in for the biggest bounty ever offered. The irony was almost poetic.

  Tess stood and moved toward the back of the cruiser. Relief hit me like an asteroid. She wasn’t leaving.

  I breathed again. I breathed until I didn’t feel broken.

  “Huh.” Solan grunted in surprise. Then his brow furrowed. “She wouldn’t do something bad? Something to hurt Maya?”

  “You mean something scheming, untrustworthy, and unprincipled?” My blistering tone hopefully scathed both of them to the bone.

  “You’re no better than we are,” Raquel snapped.

  Solan was smart enough not to agree with that.

  Tess’s tall form flitted across the open central area of the cruiser and then disappeared again. “The woman in there is the most compassionate person you’ll ever meet. She would never hurt a child, and she’s going to save yours.”

  “How?” Raquel asked.

  “How doesn’t matter.” I hit her with a rock-hard stare. “Just don’t ever forget what she’s doing for you.”

  “She’s doing it for you, not us.” Solan slanted me a curious look. “So why were you so worried?”

  Worried? I was fucking terrified. My back stiffened. “I wasn’t.”

  “Sure you were.” Raquel—helpful, as always.

  Solan offered up his thoughts when I didn’t answer. “You need her more than she needs you. It’s obvious.”

  “What are you talking about?” I balled my hands into fists behind me. For the last year and a half, all I’d wanted was for these two to leave me alone, but they kept showing up, uninvited. Tracking me. Calling me with offers to work together. Messing up my hunts. Ambushing me and stealing my targets. To top it all off, now they were giving opinions about my love life? My jaw flexed.

  “You dumped everything for her.” Solan’s dark eyes were a little too perceptive and penetrating. “Why? Her bounty was your docks back. The prize money would’ve finished off the sum you needed, and Scarabin White would’ve been obligated to take your offer. She was your life back—everything you’d been working toward forever.”

  Did he think I hadn’t agonized over the decision? That it hadn’t been hell? My own personal nightmare?

  “Because he’s stupid,” Raquel said in disgust.

  I clamped down on the burning urge to crank my forehead into the Wicked Witch of the Galaxy’s nose. “You just know, don’t you? You meet someone, and that’s it. There’s life before them, and there’s life after.” I shrugged as best I could with my hands cinched behind my back. Tess once told me it was do or die. She’d been talking about other stuff, missions probably, but her words had hit home. I’d understood the consequences. “I made a choice. I chose her. I don’t regret it.”

  Raquel heaved a sigh that made me wonder if a small part of her actually did care about my well-being. “You screwed yourself out of everything.”

  I disagreed entirely. “I got what I wanted most.”

  That shut them both up. Finally.

  Tess appeared again at the front of the cruiser, her dark hair swinging as she moved around the confined space and wiggled into her cropped leather jacket. It would cover any bruises or needle marks but would also leave her suffocated and sweating.

  “Didn’t you guys know?” I asked, watching Tess through the window. She gathered what she needed and turned to the door. “When you met. Love at first sight or something?”

  Raquel’s snort was telling.

  Solan chuckled. “Hell no,” he answered with feeling.

  “No?” Frowning, I threw a quick glance at each
of them in turn. Raquel looked put together, despite the hot and sticky weather. There wasn’t a smudge or a scratch on her. Unsurprising, since she hadn’t brawled like we had. She’d obviously conned Tess into thinking they’d have a fair fight without weapons. Solan had a swollen eye, a bruised cheek, and a split lip. Good. He deserved it.

  “It took us a while,” Solan admitted. He tipped his head toward his wife. “She’s mean.”

  Raquel’s eye twitched. It was entirely possible she was contemplating the best way to carve up his balls and serve them to him for dinner.

  Suddenly, they were smiling at each other, surprising the shit out of me. I shook my head, my lips curving also. In an instant, it was as if the last two years got shaved off our rocky partnership. We used to work better together, without all the sneaking around, stealing targets, and trading insults.

  Tess hopped down from the cruiser and shut the door behind her. She looked perfectly steady. Three capped-off test tubes filled with dark-crimson liquid dangled from her fingertips.

  “Dump all the bullets out of your guns,” she said, holding up the vials and gently swinging them. Her threat was implicit: Do as I say, or I drop them. “Tranquilizers, too. Then toss aside the weapons. We’re keeping them.”

  Solan and Raquel dumped their bullets and darts out on the hot landing-pad surface. They threw their weapons into the bushes just to be pains in the ass and make us search for them.

  “That’s my Grayhawk,” Tess snapped before Raquel could heave it into the ferns. “I want it back.”

  Without a word, Raquel threw the weapon toward the doorstep.

  Tess narrowed her eyes, seeming to search for tricks or hidden gadgets. Raquel didn’t go for anything in her belt, which was always filled with illegal shit no one was expecting.

  “Give up your belt,” I told her. I wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Oh, come on!” Raquel complained.

  “You want to help Maya?” I asked.

  Her nostrils flaring, Raquel unbuckled her utility belt and flung it toward the bungalow. After that, she didn’t move a muscle. Neither did Solan.