by Amie Kaufman
“Do you require directions?” she asks. “Mr. Bianchi’s museum can be a little overwhelming at first. Is there a particular exhibit you’re interested in?”
“Oh, thank you, that’s so sweet!” Scar smiles. She reaches into a pocket in her long red coat and holds up a picture of the sculpture that Auri scrawled all over the walls last night. “We’re looking for this?”
The Betraskan woman looks at the pic, a tiny LED in the memory implant at her temple flickering. Reams of glowing data roll down her black contact lenses for a moment, her lashes fluttering.
“Unnamed religious artifact from the Eshvaren Empire,” she finally says. “I’m afraid that exhibit closed quite some time ago. That particular artifact is now part of Mr. Bianchi’s private collection.”
“Is there any chance we could get a look at it?” Scarlett asks, turning her smile up to eleven. “I’m studying galactic history, you see, and my thesis is…”
The woman sadly shakes her head. “It wouldn’t be much of a private collection if it were open to the public, I’m afraid. Although we do have some other ancient artifacts on Level th—”
We hear a loud alarm blare, and the lighting overhead dims to red. A Terran in a jetball cap and an I ♥ EARTH T-shirt looks alarmed as eight heavily armed and armored security guards surround him and the glass case he’s leaning on. A shrill electronic voice spills out of the PA in a dozen different languages.
“PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE EXHIBITS.”
“Sorry,” the guy says. He picks his greasy StellarBurger up off the glass case and the priceless alien relic inside. “I didn’t—”
He yelps as the security goons hit him with a sickstick, drop him to the ground in a puddle of vomit. Grabbing him by the armpits, they haul the groaning man to his feet and drag him through the crowd toward the exit. Our walking information booth watches the drama with a small scowl.
“Your security takes things seriously around here,” I murmur.
“They’re not ours,” the Betraskan mutters, looking at the guards with distaste. “Mr. Bianchi has put on extra personnel for the masquerade tomorrow night.”
“Masquerade?”
The woman points to a projection on one of the walls. “It’s the fiftieth anniversary of the World Ship. There’s to be a grand celebration. Mr. Bianchi will be throwing one of his parties. Very exclusive. Very exciting.”
“Oh, riiiight,” I nod. “Of course. The masquerade.”
She blinks, looks me up and down. “You don’t have an invitation, do you?”
“Um, no,” I say. “I just arrived.”
“Pity,” she purrs. “I look amazing in a backless dress.”
I let my dimples off the leash, and with a flirty smile, she turns away, moves off to help more lost visitors in the crowd. I watch her go, the words backless dress echoing in my head. It’s only when I look around that I realize I’ve lost Scarlett.
My twin is six feet tall with bright blue eyes and flaming orange hair—it’s not as though she’s easy to misplace. I stand on tiptoes, looking around the throng, finally catching a flash of fiery red near the entrance. Scar’s talking to the two security guards, laughing and smiling as the blond leans in, one elbow on the wall above her head in that classic Intergalactic Romeo pose. She grins, toying with the secure-coded ID badge hanging around his neck.
I walk over behind my sis, clear my throat.
“Hey, Bee-bro,” she says. “This is Declan and Lachlan.”
“Hey,” Blondie says, not looking at me. The other simply nods.
“They just transferred here,” Scar explains. “This is only their fourth day on the World Ship. Declan came all the way from the Martian colonies, isn’t that amazing?”
“Scar, we gotta go,” I say. “Remember we got that thing?”
Blondie whispers in Scar’s ear and she laughs, smacking his armored chest. I rub my temples and sigh.
“Scarlett?” I say, trying not to let too much frustration creep into my voice.
She shoots me a death stare, turns back to Blondie, and bumps her uniglass against his, transferring her contact details. “Don’t be late.”
“The Great Ultrasaur of Abraaxis IV couldn’t keep me away,” he smiles.
I hover patiently as they whisper a little more, then Scar takes my arm and, with a final wink at Blondie, walks me out of the Bianchi Museum. We wander along the promenade, back in the direction of Dariel’s flat. The colors and sights and sounds of the World Ship wash over us like a rainbow, and I wait till we’re well out of earshot before I speak.
“Hot date tonight?” I ask.
“Seven o’clock,” she replies. “Right after he gets off shift.”
“That means he’ll still be dressed for work. And still carrying his ID badge.”
“I told him I have a thing for guys in uniform.”
“Clever girl,” I nod.
“I am a Jones.” She smiles, squeezing my arm.
I squeeze her back, suddenly grateful all over again that she’s with me. She might never miss an opportunity to give me a hard time, but I know my sister would follow me to the edge of the galaxy if I asked. If blood is thicker than water, Scar and I are practically concrete.
“I’m surprised you didn’t have an ex working on this station already,” I say, stepping into a turbolift down to the hab levels. “You seem to run into one every other place we go.”
“Are you passing judgment on my number of relationships, Bee-bro?”
“Maker forbid.” I grin.
“It’s not my fault I get bored. Or that boys get boring.” Scar pouts, taps her lip. “There is one tiny problem, though. More of a six-foot-seven problem, actually.”
“The other guard?”
“Yeah. Declan’s buddy asked if I had a friend.”
“I hope you said no.”
“I needed to sweeten the pot. I said I knew a girl just Lachlan’s type.”
I fold my arms as the lift begins to descend. “Scar, you can’t take Zila on a double. She’s liable to shoot her date with a disruptor just to see what happens.”
“I’m not talking about Zila, Ty.”
“Well, you can’t bring Aurora, there’s a bounty on her head!”
My sister rolls her eyes. “I’m not talking about Aurora, either.”
I blink, doing the math in my head.
“…Oh no, you didn’t?”
Scarlett chews her lip and nods.
“I did.”
* * *
• • • • •
“No way,” Cat declares.
“Look, it’s simple,” Scar insists. “Just sit and smile, let me do the talking.”
“No. Bloody. Way.”
“Come onnnn, roomie,” Scar wheedles. “This is just like old times. You and me? Two space queens on the prowl? It’ll be fun!”
“It won’t be fun, it’ll be fu—”
“Stop being such a pessimist!”
“I’m not a pessimist, I’m a realist.”
“Well, good, because they’re rrrreal cute.”
“I see what you did there.”
“Cute.”
“No.”
“Cuu-uuuute,” Scar sings, wiggling her fingers.
“Maker’s breath, I hate you so much right now, Jones….”
We’re gathered back at Dariel’s damp stone den, sitting around his tiny lounge room while the life-support system rattles and hums overhead. The light in here is a little too dim for a human, provided mostly by the vines that cascade down from the ceiling.
Aurora is curled up on the couch, knees beneath her chin, flicking through the history of the World Ship on the uniglass I gave her. Kal is sitting nearby, studiously ignoring the girl beside him and studying the imported stalactites instead. I’m not entirely sur
e what’s going on between those two, but it’s something I have to keep a watch on.
Zila is playing on her uniglass as usual, Scar leaning in the bedroom doorway. Dariel himself is out doing the wheeler-dealer thing, so he’s left Fin in charge of not letting the place burn down while he’s gone. Looking at the heat in Cat’s cheeks, I’m not sure he’s gonna pull it off.
“Look, this is a two-girl mission, Cat,” Scar says. “It’s not like I can bring Zila or Aurora with me. We just need to hook these guys long enough for me to swipe an ID card. Then we can access the Sempiternity security network.”
Finian nods. “Been looking at some schematics Dariel dug up and poking around their system. They’re running the entire station on a reworked Occulus 19 grid with mimetic encryption. If we can get a leech into one of the main nodes, I reckon I could hack the camera network. We’d be able to see everything on the station. Including inside Bianchi’s luxury liner. Which means we can see where he’s keeping the…” Finian blinks, glancing at the display of Auri’s sculpture on one of the smaller monitors. “What’re we calling this thing, anyway?”
“The Whatchamacallit?” Scar offers.
“The Doodad?” I suggest.
“The Trigger,” Zila says quietly, not looking up from her glass.
“Well, you can all stick your Trigger where your Trigger isn’t s’posed to get stuck,” Cat says, scowling around the room. “I didn’t train for this crap.”
“It’ll be sixty minutes, tops,” Scar insists. “Just relax. Let your hair down.”
Cat aims a pointed glance up to her fauxhawk.
“My hair doesn’t go down.”
Scar looks to me, and I push myself off the wall, approach my Ace with considerable caution. “Cat, I know this isn’t your ideal mission. But we need intel.”
Finian nods. “Best way to get eyes inside Bianchi’s liner is the cam system.”
“Ah, we’re trusting the knucklehead who irradiated the academy propulsion labs now,” Cat scowls. “Fan-bloody-tastic.”
“Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.”
“Well then, you go on the double date, Finian,” Cat growls.
Fin puts his hands to his cheeks in mock horror. “But…whatever would I wear?”
Cat lunges across the room at our Gearhead, and I grab her shoulders, force her back. For a second we’re touching, chest to chest, and I’m reminded of the last time we were this close. The last time I ever had a drink.
Graduation day back on Cohen IV.
“Ease off, Legionnaire Brannock,” I warn her.
She glares at Finian, but she stops trying to push past me. Straightens her clothes and then straightens her fauxhawk. She’s wearing short sleeves and I can see the Ace logo on her right arm among the other tatts. I remember sitting with her in the parlor as we got inked, the liquor we used to dull the sting at the bar later. Looking at each other across that table as the empty glasses stacked up and knowing the mistake it’d lead to.
Because that’s what I told her afterward.
That’s what it was.
A mistake.
Cat turns her glare on Aurora, and the accusations in her eyes as plain as starlight: This is your fault. Without you, Tyler would have got his golden squad and I’d be part of it and none of this would be happening.
And it’s true. Every word. And not for the first time, I hope Battle Leader de Stoy knew what she was doing when she told Auri to stow away on our ship. I hope Adams knew what he was saying when he asked me to believe. Because it’s getting harder by the minute.
“Please, Cat,” I say, soft. “We could really use your help on this.”
My Ace meets my eyes, then glances once more at Auri. The girl stares back, lifting her chin, faint challenge in her eyes. Cat clenches her jaw. But I know what she’ll say before she says it. The same thing she said the morning after, lying on those rumpled sheets when I told her a CO couldn’t date a subordinate, that an Alpha couldn’t date his Ace, that best friends who’d known each other since kindergarten shouldn’t risk that friendship to try for something more.
“Sir, yessir,” Cat says.
• • • • •
“This toilet is not big enough for the five of us,” Kal says.
“It’s not my fault you’re seventeen meters tall, Pixieboy,” Finian growls.
“And it’s all we could afford,” I say. “So quit griping, they’ll be here soon.”
Me, Kal, Fin, Zila, and Auri are crowded into the small and grimy bathroom of a love motel on the lower side of the World Ship’s nightclub district. We’re pressed in like ration packs, Fin’s elbow in my ribs and Kal’s left boot in the commode. The room our bathroom is attached to has been booked under my sister’s name, and it’s a short stagger from the bar where she and Cat are hopefully working their magic. Any minute, we’ll hear them coming through the door, and then it’s game time.
But in the meantime…
“It stinks like my fourth grandmother’s underwear drawer in here,” Fin says.
“You know what your grandmother’s underwear drawer smells like?” I ask.
“My family is very cosmopolitan.”
“I do not think that word means what you think it means,” Zila murmurs.
“Um,” Auri whispers. “Sorry, but is someone touching my butt?”
“…Would you like someone to be touching your butt?” Fin asks.
Kal clears his throat. “If you wish it, I—”
“Shut up!” I hiss.
I hear the ping of the electronic lock on the front door, smothered laughter. My squad falls silent as we listen to heavy footsteps, a drunken guffaw. The door slams, someone stumbles, a glass breaks.
“Oh noooooo,” says a male voice, muffled through the bathroom door. “Declan, you dropped the booze.”
“Did I?” comes a second male voice.
“You”—hic—“did.”
“Oh noooooo.”
“Declan, come over here,” someone purrs.
Scarlett.
“Lachlan, stay waaaayyyy over there,” someone growls.
Cat.
“Why are there”—hic—“three of you?” Declan asks.
“There’s just one of me,” Scar laughs. “You’re tipsy, come sit.”
“I kinda”—hic—“like the idea of three of you.”
“Believe me, handsome, one of me is way more than you can handle.”
“I think…I’m gonna be sick,” Lachlan declares.
“I know the feeling,” Cat sighs.
“No, seriously,” he burps. “Where’s the…bathroom?”
Inside said bathroom, the five of us exchange a brief, horrified glance.
“Can’t feel my feet,” Declan mumbles.
“All the more reason to get you off them,” Scar purrs. “Come on, come sit on the bed with me.”
“Seriousssly, I can’t feel’em,” he giggles. “What was in that las’drink?”
“Approximately twelve milliliters of benzothelemene,” I hear Zila whisper behind me. “If Scarlett followed my directions precisely.”
I hear a heavy thud, followed closely by another.
“Sounds like she did,” I smile, opening the bathroom door.
Sure enough, laid out flat—one on the floor, one at the foot of the bed—are the two security guards from the museum earlier today. Sitting on the bed beside Blondie is my sister, looking vaguely disappointed. Cat’s sitting on the second bed looking vaguely annoyed, her boots resting on the bigger goon at her feet.
“Okay, let’s do this,” I say.
Fin leans down to inspect Cat’s trophy. “If you’d told me he was this hot, I would have gone on the date for sure.”
“Shut up, Finian,” she replies.
We strip the sle
eping guards naked and haul them into bed. Kal and I then pull on their power armor and loop their ID badges around our necks. Finian stares first at the photo on my badge, then up into my face.
“I gotta admit, the likeness is pretty uncanny,” he says.
I glance at the unconscious goon in the bed. “We look nothing alike.”
My Gearhead shrugs, hands me a small device. “All you dirtchildren look the same to me, Goldenboy. Now you need to plant this in the uplink nodes. Centr—”
“I heard you the first seven times, thanks.”
Kal finishes suiting up, smooths back his braids, gives me the nod. He cuts a pretty impressive figure. Good thing Lachlan here was so tall.
“The dosage will keep them sleeping for at least six hours,” Zila says, looking at the slumbering SecBoys. “They will remember very little.”
“Just make sure you have their armor back here by dawn,” Scar says. And without ceremony, she clamps her lips onto the sleeping blond’s neck and starts to suck.
“Holy cake,” Auri whispers, watching with wide eyes. “Please don’t tell me that on top of everything else, vampires are real?”
“Evidence.” Scarlett comes up for air with a smirk, and I can see the angry red love bite she’s left on the goon’s neck. She unclasps her bra and tugs it out through her sleeve, then drapes it over the bedside lamp and writes thanks xxx on the wall in deep red lipstick. “Can’t have a crime without leaving some evidence.”
Cat makes a face. “If you think I’m leaving my bra behind in this dump, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“There’s enough of mine to go around.”
“Touché,” Cat nods sadly.
“You ready for this, Kal?” I ask.
My Tank adjusts the ID badge around his neck and gives me a small bow.
“I am always ready,” he replies.
We turn toward the door, but Aurora’s voice stops us.
“Hey…wait…”
She looks at me as Kal and I turn back to her. Dragging her hand through her bone-white bangs, she chews her lip, searching for the words.
“Thanks,” she says, glancing about. “I know how weird this is. I know none of us really know what’s going on here. And I don’t like sitting on the bench while you risk your necks for me. So I want you to know…I appreciate it.”
