Anders appeared behind us, leaning heavily against me as he sucked an injured breath through his teeth. “We can’t leave. The weapons facility is on the other side of this floor. The key could be there. Or in the cabins. Or—”
“Or it could be right in front of you,” said a new voice from the doorway.
This time, Anders didn’t hesitate. He fired his blaster toward the door, but his injury caused his aim to go wide, missing the boy that stood on the opposite end of the conference table. But … why would there be an Earthan kid on an Andilly ship?
The boy took a step forward into the cockpit. He had brown skin and kind eyes, though they were currently pinched at the corners with fear. A simple gold key swung from a chain around his neck.
“W-why are you in my ship?” he asked. He had a small pocketknife clutched in his fist.
“This isn’t your ship,” I told the boy. Unless they were holding him hostage here and it was his prison.
“It is,” he insisted. “This is my bridge, and you … you’re one of them.” He shrank back at the sight of Anders’s red scales. “You’re the ones they’re looking for. You—all of you.” The boy’s eyes cut to the safe against the wall. “Wren?”
She took a step into the light, blaster propped against her shoulder, forgotten. “Marcus?”
“Yeah.” His voice cracked, warmth filling his eyes.
“How are you—? I thought you—?” She glared at Anders. “Put your gun down!” Then she rushed forward and tackled the boy with the fiercest hug I’d ever seen. Marcus. Her brother.
Of all the places for the lost boy to be, how had he landed himself on an Andilly warship?
“I pilot the ship,” he told Wren when she questioned him. “Most people from Andilly aren’t good flyers.” He glanced at Anders, who scowled back. “The pay isn’t great, and sometimes they don’t remember to feed me, but I’m still alive. How are Mom and Dad?”
Anders interrupted him. “Your heart-wrenching family reunion is over. We have bigger problems.” He pointed out the viewport. The guards had almost reached the top of the mountain. Most people from the marketplace had given up trailing them and boarded their own spacecraft, which were hovering in a buzzing cloud above the valley. Tunerth all over again.
Marcus rushed forward to look outside. “What”—he swallowed hard—“is that?”
“That,” I answered, “is all the people who want our heads. Wave hello. I’m sure they’ll introduce themselves later.”
“That’s why we need this key.” Wren made a grab for the chain around Marcus’s neck, but he ducked. “We have to get out of here.”
“No!” He clutched the chain at his chest. “They gave it to me. They said if anything happened to it, they would kill me, Wren!”
Anders hurried to block his path when he ran for the door. “If you don’t think they’ll kill you anyway once you’re no longer useful to them, then you’re out of your mind. Give me the key. Don’t make me force you.”
“No! Wren! Don’t let them hurt me, please!”
“I…” She looked so torn. I elbowed her and pointed out the viewport. The guards were at the door. I’d used my comm to lock down all the entrances, but they wouldn’t hold forever.
Wren held out her hand. “Give us the key, Marcus. We’ll keep you safe.”
“I can’t!”
And that was when I noticed it. A spot just below Marcus’s left ear, gleaming like it was covered in blood. But then—it vanished.
Wren saw it too. She gasped, and the relief that had filled her eyes upon first seeing her brother turned cold and hard. “Kill him.”
“No!” Marcus yelled, but Anders lunged forward, shooting his blaster at the boy’s knee. Marcus hit the ground, and Anders knocked him unconscious with a strike to his temple.
It wasn’t until his eyes slid shut that the change occurred. His skin rippled, turning red, growing scales. His jaw filled out, and the familiar swirl of Andilly military tattoos covered his flesh as “Marcus” transformed back into one of the warden’s guards.
Elio darted forward and plucked the key from the chain around the guard’s neck. He confirmed it was real with a beep.
“He was stalling until the others could get back to the ship,” Wren said quietly. She looked nothing short of devastated.
“My father must have known about your brother,” said Anders. “Maybe at one time he really was here—”
“Well, he’s not here now, Anders! He’s gone! Lost or dead or—or something!” She braced her hands on the control panel, staring at the freighters and cruisers dotting the sky over the desert, her shoulders heaving. “I’m stealing this ship.”
I blinked at her. “You’re crazy.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “But I’m still stealing this ship. Unless you have a better idea of how we can get out of here.”
I didn’t. The guards were trying in earnest to bust down the doors. I held up my comm, repeatedly scrambling their servers, but they were fighting back with their own tech and my grasp on the locks was slipping.
Gulping, Anders nodded and buckled himself into a jump seat beside the conference table. “Steal the ship, then.” He gave her a shaky smile. “Captain.”
Wren started up the engines while Elio and I strapped in. Off in the distance, the waiting ships flew forward, like they thought they could stop us. They were merely specks of dust compared to the size of the Andilly military craft.
The ground fell away under the rumble of the engines. The guards were blown back as we gained altitude, tumbling and rolling across the sand as the other ships surged toward us. Wren stared out the viewport, adjusting her grips on the controls.
She noticed a silver knob on the display in front of her. “Excellent! It has an invisibility shield. This thing is sweet.” And yet, her enthusiasm sounded forced.
She zipped around two cruisers and a cargo ship as our hull shimmered, metal panels sliding out to reflect the terrain around us. Our ship vanished completely.
Sapphire light spilled off Wren in waves. It didn’t let up, even as we traveled mile after mile away from the village and toward the Starchaser. The aura around her was more than just a simple burst of sadness.
I’d never seen anyone so utterly heartbroken.
23
We dumped the decoy guard in the middle of the desert. No one really felt bad about it. I mean, it wasn’t like we had killed him or anything. And after what he’d done to Wren, he would have deserved it if we had.
Wren retracted the invisibility shield once we landed beside the Starchaser, dwarfing the old ship instantly. “This thing purrs like a kitten.” She patted the control panel. “What did I do to deserve something so beautiful?” She was laughing, but I could see the murky blue cloud still floating around her, like she was trapped underwater and had forgotten how to swim. She caught my eye for a moment, then frowned and shook her head slightly. I got the message. Shut up, Cora.
The Starchaser’s engines were still useless, so after grabbing our belongings, we sadly agreed to leave the ship where it was and continue on in the Andilly military craft. With only a day and a half to get to Condor, we couldn’t afford to waste any more time.
“Farewell, old friend,” Anders said as the Starchaser faded from view. I was weirdly sad to see it go. It hadn’t been flashy, but it had been dependable. The dinky, rusty ship had been there for us, and leaving it behind, watching it get covered with sand as the desert winds blew, felt like I was chopping off one of my limbs.
Bye, bye, Elio wrote on my comm and held it up to the viewport. But our trusty ship was already gone.
“Let’s go over what’s going to happen on Condor,” Wren said. She shifted the ship into autopilot after we broke through Rebrone’s atmosphere and sat at the conference table. “I mean, besides Cora giving us an awesome tour of her home planet. Hey, wait!” she called when I pushed out of my chair. “Where are you going?”
To distance myself so I don’t grow more attached to you
, I thought. To find some magical way to turn my heart into a block of lead. To run and hide because I’m a coward.
“I’m taking a walk.”
“Oh, okay.” For a second she looked puzzled, but the expression quickly cleared. “Hurry back. I’m going to raid the galley. We might as well eat like royalty before we charge headfirst into disaster again.”
I flashed her a thumbs-up. “Got it. I won’t be long.”
She caught my arm before I could leave. “Hey. You’re okay, right?”
“Are you?”
“That’s not fair.”
Nothing in this universe was fair. “Who has the key?”
Wren pointed to Elio, and he tapped a storage compartment in his arm. Good. He was carrying a key and I was carrying a key. Only one more to go.
“Yeah, Wren. I’m perfectly fine.” I pulled my arm back. Hers fell limp at her side. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
She didn’t answer, and I thought I was in the clear. But I was gravely mistaken when Anders chased after me and pulled me to a stop after I crossed the bridge, emerging into the main atrium.
“Where are you going?”
“For a walk. Stars, is that a crime now?”
He stepped back, holding up his hands. “Not in the slightest. Would you … well, would you perhaps like company on this walk you’re taking that is most certainly not a crime?”
Yes. “No thanks. I mean, I’m tired so…,” I lied when his face started to fall. He quickly replaced the frown with an easy smile.
“Oh. Right. Of course. Better rest up before the big day. Are you excited to be back on your planet?”
I didn’t have to lie this time. “Not at all.”
“I understand completely. I wouldn’t want to return to Andilly either. I’m wondering if I’ll ever go back once we’re pardoned.”
“Really? Where will you go?” Or not go, because his freedom was currently up for debate.
“I liked Rebrone a lot. Andillians are made for warm climates.” He rubbed a hand over the lizard-like scales on his forehead. “What about you? Will you stay on Condor?”
“I … don’t know.” With my cut of the profits, I would likely have enough to travel the universe, even after I purchased Elio his new body. But Evelina would never allow it. She would want me home, available for any jobs that came our way.
“Ah. Well, you still have time to think about it, right? Oh!” He smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, I’m keeping you from resting, aren’t I?” He started back to the bridge, but then he pivoted, offering me his hand with his palm facing outward. Just like a—
“Five high?” He winked.
“Actually, it’s called a—”
“I know what it’s called, Cora.”
A spark of electricity rattled me to the core when his fingers curled gently around mine. Barely a breath of time passed, but it was long enough to make me wish I’d never stopped to talk to him. I shouldn’t have talked to either of them. Ever. I put myself in this position.
“Five high,” I whispered as Anders pulled back and walked away. He looked over his shoulder once. Then he disappeared through the door at the end of the hall, and I was left only with my thoughts.
* * *
Condor was dark. Shocker.
High noon in the middle of the city meant nothing. The sky remained inky black. Disguises in place, we left the ship in one of the landing bays beneath the city center and boarded an express tube out to the coast. The train was packed, full of people making the trek for the New Moon festival. Even if they didn’t have invitations to get into the party at the mansion, there were always floats and dancing in the streets, the crowds so densely packed it was almost impossible to forge a path through them. You could only go where they took you, riding the masses like a wave until you were able to push your way out the other side.
In the privacy of our cabin, the four of us watched the city lights of Condor fade away, replaced by dozens of smaller coastal towns. The air outside the tube was swampy, as it always was on this side of the planet, and Wren traced her fingers through a path of condensation on the window. “Do you and Elio live out this way, Cora?”
“No, we’re on the opposite side of the city. Manufacturing district. We don’t have nearly as much open space there.”
Wren hummed. “I like it here. I might stay. Will we get to meet the rest of your family while we’re here?”
I cast a quick glance at Elio, who was playing some type of dice game with Anders that the two of them had picked up back at the tube station. He felt me watching and gave me a shrug and a beep.
“They’re probably pretty busy at the moment,” I told Wren. “But you might see them. You never know.”
What Wren wasn’t aware of was that I had been messaging Blair ever since our ship touched down in the landing bay. The whole family was en route to Verena’s compound and was lying low, waiting for my signal. The last comm I’d received from him read: Nana Rae won’t stop singing, and I’m way too sober to listen.
Why are you sober? I asked him.
You aren’t the only one taking this job seriously.
In a way, he was right. Out of all of us, I was probably taking today the most seriously. But everyone in this cabin had something at stake, not just me. And that was why, when Anders tapped me on the arm and motioned for me to join him and Elio in their game, I shook my head.
I also believed I had the most to lose.
* * *
Wren and I climbed the steep ivory ramp to the front of the mansion. The cobblestone roads behind us were more crowded than I’d predicted, filled with men, women, and children carrying multicolored sparklers, dancing to heavy brass bands that had popped up on every street corner. Wren adjusted her long beaded veil, and I smoothed out a fold in my silk dress, pressing my VED more firmly against my chest. I was Earthan tonight, demure and unassuming. And every good thief knew it was the most unassuming criminals who were the most dangerous.
We were two groups away from the mansion doors. The black mist that shrouded Verena’s compound settled over our shoulders, while the jagged cliffs connected to her home pointed down at us like knives.
Wren reached under her veil and squeezed my hand. “Together we will accomplish great, but possibly not legal, things,” she whispered.
Against my better judgment, I squeezed back. “Aye aye, Captain.”
The group in front of us stepped away. We were next. Gulping, Wren wrenched her hand away and clapped it over her chest. “I’ve heard,” she started in a loud voice, “that Verena’s table settings are worth more than one hundred thousand ritles each! Hey, you there!” She elbowed me. “What would you do with one hundred thousand ritles?”
I turned my nose up to the black sky, playing along. “I’d have enough to start a campaign to knock Verena right off her throne, that’s what. But the table settings are child’s play. What you should really go after are the candelabra. Word on the net is that each one is made of palladium from Planet Nine—”
Wren gasped dramatically. “Planet Nine! A myth, surely!”
“Definitely not! It’s the wealthiest planet in the Milky Way Galaxy, and what Verena doesn’t want anyone to know is that she has plenty of its priceless artifacts right inside her very—”
“Excuse me.” The shadow of an android guard fell over us. A red laser from his right eye roved over our faces, but not even it could see through the illusion of the VEDs. “What is the meaning of this commotion?”
“Well, excuse me. No, excuse you.” Wren got right up in the guard’s face, pretending to sway drunkenly. “I don’t believe this … commotion, as you say, is any of your concern.”
She ran her fingers over the android’s metal arm before gripping his wrist and attempting to twist it behind his back. I could feel the crowd behind us pressing forward, impatient. Hopefully they were listening in as well.
In an instant, the guard had Wren on her knees. But he was careless. He’d turned away from me, leaving his blast
er partially exposed on his belt. I dived for it, but I was attacked by a second guard who emerged from the mansion doors, throwing me down. My head hit the ground with a crack. The crowd gasped. Chest constricting as the guard pressed his boot firmly against my spine, I looked up at Wren through the tears in my eyes.
Accomplish illegal things? Certainly. Great things, however—that was yet to be determined.
The pressure on my back increased. Stars, it was going to snap. Where was—
Then, like something out of a net drama, the mansion doors swept open with a creak.
Finally.
The buzz of a fully powered blaster accompanied two leisurely sets of footsteps. The first set belonged to another, smaller android. The next set belonged to a Condor guard, his shiny black boots the only part of him I could see until he crouched down in front of me. Bright white skin, sharp ears, glowing eyes. He raised my chin with his weapon.
“You weren’t thinking of robbing the empress.” He exchanged his gun for his fingernails, which dug two long scratches into my cheeks. “Were you?”
“Of course not,” I answered. “We’re no criminals.”
The guard hummed. He studied the others as a hush fell over the crowd. The New Moon was a time of celebration, but I doubted the citizens of Condor would object to an arrest or an execution. Anything for entertainment.
The Condor guard—the guard commander, judging by the insignia lining the shoulders of his uniform jacket—lifted me off the ground by my throat. I tried fighting him, but he dug his thumb into a pressure point in my neck, and my legs turned to rubber. The android who had accompanied him outside dragged Wren to her feet.
“You’re both coming with me,” the commander said.
“Sir!” The first android guard rushed forward to object.
“I don’t want to hear it. Keep an eye on these doors. Ensure there are no further disruptions.”
The Good for Nothings Page 26
