Starflight

by Melissa Landers

  “Demarkus has men working in hospitals, too,” Renny said. “That’s where half his narcotics come from.”

  “Right,” she agreed. “But people know me as Solara Brooks, a dirty, bruised-up felon from the streets.” She jogged to her supply container and pried off the lid, then pulled out the ball gown she’d purchased, the one she never thought she’d wear. Holding it up, she batted her eyelashes and drawled, “Not Lacy Vanderbilt, a vacationing socialite with a busted ankle.”

  “Nice dress,” Cassia observed.

  “Thanks. Doran bought it for me.”

  “Must’ve slipped my mind,” Doran said, narrowing his eyes at the gown. “How much did that little gift set me back?”

  “Not important.” She turned to Renny. “It’s the narcotics they keep under lock and key, not the healing accelerants. With your quick fingers and me to distract the staff, they won’t notice it’s gone until we are.”

  The first mate dragged off his glasses as a slow smile uncurled across his lips. “Why, Miss Vanderbilt,” he said, tipping an imaginary hat at her. “I like the way you think.”

  Once they were alone, Doran watched his new friend unfasten the single mahogany braid at the base of her spine, then gently shake loose the plaits with her long fingers. The ball gown he’d “bought” for her hung on the wall, and she gazed lovingly at the luminescent waterfalls of fabric, occasionally pausing to glance over her shoulder as if to ensure he was alive.

  “I’m still here,” he said. “And I still think this is a terrible plan.”

  “I still don’t care, so deal with it,” she answered.

  He hated the thought of her stealing. The risk was too great. But since she’d refused to change her mind, he held his tongue and pushed away invading tendrils of guilt, reminding himself that this was her idea, not his.

  It helped that she obviously couldn’t wait to get inside that dress. The way she admired its holographic sparkle, tipping her head to and fro with her lower lip caught between her teeth, made him wonder if she’d ever worn a proper dress before—not a hand-me-down frock for church Mass, but the kind of garment designed to turn a man’s head and leave his chin dragging on the floor. She’d kept mostly to herself at the academy and hadn’t attended any dances. With a pang of shame, he imagined how he might have reacted if she’d come to prom: the cutting looks and the thinly veiled insults he’d have used to make her feel unwelcome. He knew she would’ve touched the birthmark at the base of her throat when he called her Rattail because it jabbed at her fragile confidence, just as he’d intended.

  He wanted to tell her he was sorry, and that he knew how it felt to wear a target on his back. After his mother left, some older boys had caught him crying in the bathroom, and he’d quickly learned that the first rule of academy life was Tease or be teased. And years later, when Solara had won the alumni award, he’d lost more than a trophy. He’d lost a bit of esteem in his father’s eyes, the only family Doran had left. Now he saw that picking on Solara had been a cowardly move in so many ways, but he couldn’t tell her that. Instead he said, “That’s a Belladucci design from the newest eveningwear line. Every girl who sees you in it is going to turn twenty shades of green.”

  Her reaction wasn’t what he’d expected. She cringed, peering at him with regret in her eyes. “It was five thousand credits,” she whispered. But while her expression oozed repentance, her fingers reached toward the gown in a protective gesture that told him he’d only get it back if he pried it from her cold, dead hands.

  Since laughter would hurt too much, he held his breath until the impulse passed, then exhaled slowly. “I want to see you in it. After all, I’m the one who’ll have to explain the charges on my expense account.”

  Assuming he even had a job when this ordeal was over. He still needed to reach his ship on Obsidian and figure out the significance of the coordinates his father had given him. The more Doran thought about it, the more he suspected there was a connection between his mission and the Solar League’s false charges. Someone had gone to great lengths to ruin his reputation, and for no logical reason. He knew that should infuriate him, but at the moment he only had room for so much suffering.

  Solara gathered her hair to the side and frowned as if something had just occurred to her. “It’ll take more than a gown to turn me into an heiress. I didn’t think to buy matching shoes.”

  “Go barefoot,” Doran suggested. “Girls always take off their shoes to dance. You can pretend you left them at the party.”

  “But what about my hair? And makeup. I’ve never—”

  “Ask Cassia to fix you up. She’s a society girl.”

  “What?” Solara spun to face him. “Who told you that?”

  “Nobody,” he said with a shrug that sent a ripple of pain down his side. He gritted his teeth until the throbbing passed. “I know my own kind. She walks around the ship like she owns it.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Actually, it does,” he insisted. Cassia carried herself with the authority of someone accustomed to power at an early age. Doran recognized it because he’d behaved the same way, until his father busted him for using company interns to schedule hot dates. After that, Doran joined the ranks of the interns to learn a lesson in humility. But he’d noticed physical evidence of Cassia’s upbringing, too. She carried a clue right on her skin. “Have you ever smelled her?” he asked. “Really close-up?”

  Solara recoiled like he’d demanded to know her bra size. “No. Have you?”

  “Once.” It had happened the morning of the Pesirus hellberry festival, after he’d spent an hour hauling and stacking crates. He’d accidentally collided with Cassia in the washroom, and although sweat had soaked the front of her shirt, nothing but the scent of orchids had emanated from her skin. Only one thing suppressed natural body odor like that, and the procedure was so painful and expensive that even he’d turned it down.

  “She has perfume microbes implanted in her sweat glands,” he said. “They’re rare and invasive. I’ve only met one other person who had it done, and he’s a Solar League diplomat. That means she’s not just loaded; she’s important.”

  He waited for Solara to say something, but she just stood there, glaring at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  She shook her head and slung the gown over one shoulder, then left without a word.

  As Solara charged down the hall, she recalled something Doran had told her on board the Zenith: Anyone who stinks like a toolshed is safe from my advances. She’d forgotten about that, and now she wondered what she smelled like after a week with no shower.

  Certainly not perfume.

  It was none of her business and she didn’t know why she cared, but under what circumstances had Doran smelled Cassia really close-up? The two hadn’t spent much time together, at least not that she knew of, but then again, romantic trysts didn’t take long. Cassia had openly announced that hookups were the best way to fight transport madness. Had the pair secretly decided to help each other rev up those endorphins?

  Solara’s stomach felt sick.

  She shouldn’t be doing this, speculating and jumping to conclusions as if she owned him. It wasn’t like she wanted Doran to boost her endorphins.

  So why was her face throbbing in time with her pulse?

  “Let it go,” she muttered. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “What doesn’t matter?” asked Cassia, leaning her fair head out the open door to her bedroom.

  Solara stopped short, clutching the ball gown to her chest. She faked a smile and said “Nothing,” but she couldn’t help surveying the girl with new eyes. She looked past the dishwater blond dreadlocks, dull and coarse from months of neglect, and beyond the unmade copper-hued face to the mannerisms beneath.

  Cassia had gone to great lengths to hide her privileged upbringing, but there it was—a slightly haughty lift of her chin that allowed the tiny ship hand to look down at Solara despite their height difference. Cassia’s body langua
ge resembled Doran’s in that way, self-assured and completely in control. He was right. They were two of a kind.

  “You okay?” Cassia asked.

  “I’m just nervous about the job,” Solara lied. “Do you think you can make me pretty? I’ve never worn makeup before, so I need all the help I can get.”

  “No problem. Come on in.”

  When Solara followed inside, curiosity hijacked her body. She rushed Cassia in a hug, locking both arms around the girl under the pretense of gratitude while burying her nose for a deep whiff. An enchanted garden filled her senses, seeming to originate from beneath the skin instead of on the surface. It was heavenly. Cassia stiffened at the ambush, and Solara stepped back, battling a surge of envy. She wished she could smell of springtime breezes instead of engine grease.

  “Thanks,” Solara said. “You’re the best.”

  Cassia’s room bore a striking resemblance to hers, except with one bunk stacked atop the other instead of a full-size bed. She noticed Kane watching her from the top bunk, a protein bar suspended an inch from his lips. He wore the same puzzled expression as Cassia, their blond heads tipped at precisely the same angle as they tried to make sense of her abrupt display of affection.

  Solara greeted him with a cool nod.

  He recovered then, apologizing with his eyes. “Hey, I’m sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have run my mouth like that. I didn’t mean a word of it. That was the Crystalline talking.”

  Solara wasn’t sure if she believed him. He’d seemed plenty sober to her.

  “Doran’s already banged up,” Kane went on. “The last thing he needs is me making him feel worse.” Dipping his head, he asked, “Did you tell him what I said?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Then maybe we can keep it between us,” Kane suggested. “I like Doran. He’s a good guy, and I don’t want the rest of the trip to feel awkward.”

  Solara rubbed the dress between her fingers, unsure of what to do. Kane seemed sincere, but her first loyalty was to Doran, and she still felt he had a right to know.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said. To change the subject, she added, “We should hurry. Renny wants to leave soon.”

  “Sure.” Kane’s lips slid into an easy grin, as if nothing had happened. “But you don’t need holographic goop to make you pretty.”

  “Of course she doesn’t,” Cassia agreed, and reached up for a bite of his snack. She tore off a chunk and handed it back, then pointed at her own face and clarified, “Well, except for the bruises.”

  “And the birthmark,” Kane added. “It’s cute, but it’s an easy giveaway.”

  Despite having not fully forgiven him, Solara felt her mouth curve up. “You think my birthmark’s cute?”

  His impish grin widened, his voice dipping low and smooth. “I think every part of you is cute.”

  Cassia responded by climbing the bunk ladder and smacking her roommate upside the head. When he gaped in protest, she thrust a finger at him and hissed, “I like this one. Leave her alone.”

  Kane rubbed his head and scooted to the other end of his mattress, not that it afforded him any protection from the furious girl glaring at him hard enough to singe off his eyebrows. “I was just being friendly. What’s wrong with that?”

  “You and I both know what you were doing,” Cassia snapped. “Now, get down here and help me.”

  The argument made Solara wonder, for the hundredth time, how the ship hands knew each other. Despite their sharp looks and harsh words, they moved through the Banshee like planets in orbit, sharing everything from meals to inside jokes with a comfortable familiarity unique to siblings. But if they really were brother and sister, why the differences in their body language? With his shameless stare and flirty smile, Kane acted like someone who’d regularly seduced for his supper, not a trust fund baby.

  The two of them took a break from bickering long enough to decide that Kane would style her hair while Cassia handled the makeup. Then they ushered her onto a stool facing the bottom bunk and got down to business: Kane brushing her hair from behind while Cassia sat cross-legged on the mattress sorting through a box of cosmetics.

  From her new vantage point, Solara noticed an assortment of photographs taped to the wall beside Cassia’s bed. She spotted Kane in one of them, his arm slung playfully around Cassia’s neck as they toasted each other with cups of red juice. Hellberry wine, maybe. The other photographs were of landscapes—lush, rolling hills of lavender giving way to an endless indigo lake, its ripples reflecting the glow of twin moons. Solara had never seen a place so breathtaking, and she caught herself frowning when Cassia blocked the view by leaning in to dust powder on her cheeks.

  “Where were those pictures taken?” she asked. “They’re beautiful.”

  Cassia lost her grasp on the powder puff, and it sailed to the floor. At once, her eyes found Kane’s and softened in sadness. “Just someplace I used to live,” she said. Kane finished a brushstroke and used his thumb to skim the outside of Cassia’s wrist in a touch so brief that Solara would’ve missed it if she’d blinked. But she hadn’t missed it, and in that sliver of a moment, she watched an exchange of pure intimacy pass between them.

  Definitely not brother and sister, she thought.

  Neither spoke after that, so she kept silent. But Solara couldn’t stop prickles of worry from creeping over her. She and Doran had slipped into an easy trust with the Banshee crew, and yet she knew nothing about what had brought them all together.

  Who were these people?

  Doran battled a wave of dizziness, squinting hard to bring Solara into focus when she and the crew returned to his room. He had imagined how she might look in her dress, but nothing could’ve prepared him for the complete transformation that made her into a stranger—strikingly beautiful, to be sure, but so unfamiliar that the sight of her caused his brows to pinch together.

  It was her eyes he noticed first, peering at him beneath long, iridescent lashes. Two butterfly wings fluttered out from her upper and lower lids, painted in autumn tones and treated with a holographic glaze so they appeared to blink along with her. When combined with the halo of silver ribbons woven through her braids, the effect was mesmerizing. But he couldn’t reconcile those eyes with the pair he’d grown accustomed to watching across the dinner table each night during games of Would You Rather.

  He let his gaze wander and took in the ball gown, which twinkled with the brilliance of a starry night sky. The strapless design hugged her curves like a second skin, highlighting her bare shoulders and arms, and through some miracle that defied gravity, her breasts were thrust upward in a display halfway to her chin.

  Doran nearly swallowed his tongue, trying very hard not to stare and batting down the selfish urge to wrap her in a blanket so that nobody else could see her like this. He forced his eyes lower, all the way to the tips of her toes, which alternately flashed pink and purple with animated lacquer. Her fingernails were polished as well, and her tattoos concealed. In all her glitz and glamour, he could easily imagine her gracing the cover of a fashion magazine.

  He didn’t know how he felt about that.

  Warring impulses tugged at him in a jumble of emotions he didn’t understand. He wanted to keep looking at her, to tell her that she took his breath away, but at the same time, he wanted to ask her to wash off the makeup and put on her regular clothes, to remove the flashy polish and let the beauty of her naked toes shine through.

  He wanted her to be the Solara he’d come to know—his Solara.

  Cassia bumped Kane with her shoulder. “Look. He’s speechless.”

  “We do good work,” Kane agreed, admiring their creation.

  When Solara glanced up at him again, Doran found his voice. “Wow,” he told her. “I don’t know what to say.” But she deserved more than that, so he added, “Five thousand credits was a small price to pay. You’re stunning.”

  Her answering smile warmed his heart.

  “And you’re forgiven,” she announce
d. Before he could ask what he’d done wrong, she turned and padded away. He called after her to be careful, but he wasn’t sure she heard.

  Sometime later, as he lay awake in the darkness with nothing but his pain to keep him company, it occurred to Doran that once he reached Obsidian, he and Solara would part ways. She would continue on to her job in the fringe while he finished his father’s errand and returned home to clear his name. Their paths might never cross again.

  He didn’t know how he felt about that, either.

  Actually, yes, he did.

  But before he had a chance to examine the reason for the new tightness in his chest, another dizzy spell came over him, along with a vicious chill that seemed to leach the marrow from his bones. Doran huddled beneath the covers while his insides pulsed like an abscessed tooth. He hoped Solara returned soon with his medicine. Otherwise they might part ways a lot earlier than he’d planned.

  With its flashing billboards illuminating the craters of an anchoring moon, the retail satellite was impossible to miss by any pilot taking the direct route from the nearest outpost to Obsidian—the route the Banshee had carefully avoided. This place was a tourist mecca, a respite from the months-long voyage where travelers could cure their cabin fever with honeyed wine, laser quests, and chintzy souvenirs.

  But none of that interested Solara.

  She leaned forward in her seat and peered out the shuttle window, scanning past multicolored scrolling advertisements for QUICK SHUTTLE REPAIR! and LOOSEST SLOTS IN THE GALAXY! to the single security checkpoint located at the top of the static bubble shielding the complex. That narrow apex was the only way in or out.

  Not the ideal blueprint for making a quick getaway.

  “Please tell me there’s a secret back door,” she said to Renny, who cut the shuttle thrusters and steered toward the checkpoint, essentially casting them out of the frying pan and into the fire. Their craft drifted near enough for Solara to make out the silhouette of a cloaked laser canon, invisible but for the distorted space around it, which rippled like heat waves rising above asphalt.