He seriously needed a hammer, or whatever super-advanced alien tool would stick two pieces of wood together. He sauntered through the halls of Bonebreak’s lair toward one of the back rooms. It was in a sector Bonebreak said was off-limits, but the hell if he was going to rebuild that crib with spit and duct tape alone.
“Hey, anybody here?” He stuck his head into a few empty rooms. “Hello?”
He riffled through a few crates but found nothing useful, and kept searching. All the doors were unlocked except the last one, at the end of the hall. He shoved it with his shoulder, but it was stuck.
He backed up, aiming his shoulder with the artificial shielding, and raced toward the door. He felt the force of the impact all the way to his teeth, but the door buckled open. He rubbed his shoulder, then pushed the door all the way open.
He stopped.
What the hell?
Bonebreak and his men stood in a circle beneath a ship. A real goddamn ship. It was a clunker to be sure, painted a pukey shade of green, but there it was. All docked, everything official. Mosca writing on the side. Spare parts and tools lined the walls. A goddamn ship in a goddamn flight room Bonebreak had told him was off-limits.
“You liar!” Leon barked. “What happened to forty years before the next ship returns?”
Bonebreak turned, and Leon caught sight of what they were all gathered around. A dead body lay in their midst. Upon closer inspection, Leon noticed the red-soled boots of the Mosca crew’s former second in command. He also noticed the knife jutting out of the second’s back.
“Uhh . . . on second thought, I’ll come back later.” Leon whirled.
“Stay.” Bonebreak’s voice crackled with static. He stepped around the second’s sprawled arm. “This is just a little housekeeping. So. You got curious and came exploring, hmm?”
Leon held up his hands, stuttering to think, which was hard while staring at a dead body. “Just, uh, my mistake.”
“Well, now you know. There is a ship. Yes. If I had told you as much, I would never hear the end of it. Take me home, Bonebreak. I miss my family. I miss taco night. I miss my kitty-cat.” Bonebreak made a disgusted sound from behind his mask. “Do you really think you’re the first human we’ve worked with? I’ve heard it all, boy.”
Bonebreak’s disdain was starting to wear on Leon. He narrowed his eyes, darting his gaze between the dead crew member and the ship. “You should have told me anyway.”
“You work for me, not the other way around. My second in command had a problem understanding that.” He stepped right on the Mosca’s dead body, whose bones snapped beneath his feet. “Do you have a problem too?”
“Me?” Leon winced as more bones popped. “Nope.”
“Good. You never saw this ship, understand? If I let you return to Earth, then who is going to crawl around the tunnels for me, hmm? As you said yourself, nobody steals quite like you do.” Bonebreak poked Leon’s stomach with a spindly finger. “Unless you get too fat to fit in the tunnels. Then no home for you, no nothing for you, just a knife in your back.”
Leon clutched at his stomach. “It’s mostly muscle!”
“Silence. Do you have the payment for the last trade?”
A sinking feeling overcame him. He touched his pocket, hoping for a miracle, but it was still empty. “About that. There’s a problem. The other half of your business partnership died before I could collect the payment.”
Bonebreak straightened. “Roshian is dead?”
“Yeah, but not before I peeked into that black bag of his. You know what you’ve been supplying him with, right? The makeup and stuff? That creep was human.”
Bonebreak took another step over the body of his former second in command, giving a flick of his fingers. “It is not my job to care which species my clients are. And I do not appreciate not getting paid for my shipments.”
“He was dead. What was I supposed to do?”
“That’s your problem,” Bonebreak said, and then crunched the second in command’s foot. “We’re just full of problems today, aren’t we, crew?”
The other Mosca, in the shadow of the ship, did not answer. Bonebreak stooped down and pulled out the knife from the second in command’s back. He slowly wiped the blood on his jumpsuit.
Leon held up his hands. “I can get the payment. I swear.”
Bonebreak cocked his head. “You already owe me for that safe room. Your credit is running thin. Too thin, I think.” Leon couldn’t tell what expression Bonebreak was making behind the mask, but he didn’t like the way the knife was aimed toward him. But then Bonebreak holstered it and signaled to his underlings. “Roadag. Silverquake. Show the boy what he gets for sneaking around.”
Before Leon could turn, a plank of something hard smashed into his face.
He staggered backward.
Blackness. Sparks. Pain.
He knew he shouldn’t fight back. The dead second in command had probably fought back too, which was why he was in his current condition. But damned if he had ever let anyone best him in a fight. He let out a bellow and tried to slam into them, but they already had him on the ground. Hitting him with the stiff plank again and again. Pain burst across his face, then his left shoulder, then his kidney, until he was staring up at Bonebreak’s ugly mask.
“Now,” Bonebreak said. “What exactly did you see in this flight room?”
“Uhng. Nothing.”
“And what are you going to tell your friends about the ship?”
“
What ship?”
Bonebreak cackled in delight, or maybe he was just envisioning all the ways he’d stomp on Leon’s cracking bones. “Good. Keep not seeing any ships.”
Leon pressed a hand against his face. He stumbled back to his room, where he collapsed on his bed. At least the deal was still on. Nok and Rolf and that baby of theirs would be safe. But as soon as he closed his eyes, his thoughts returned to what he’d seen.
A ship, he thought. A goddamn ship.
Or rather, a goddamn useless ship that would never take him anywhere.
But what if it could?
And what if Cora was right about Earth still being there? He could drink a beer. Preferably while watching rugby on his sister Ellie’s crappy old television set, preferably millions of miles away from hunchbacked murderers.
He briefly wondered how much it would cost for Bonebreak to give him a seat on that ship. For all the Mosca’s threats, Bonebreak could always be swayed with the right price.
But no. Cora and Mali and the others were his family now. Kin. He had left them behind once and he still felt the shame of that written on his face as plainly as the tattoos.
He groaned and fell back on the bed.
He really missed beer.
31
Cora
CORA WOKE TO THE sound of a door opening. For a second, she was surprised to find herself in a strange bed, in a room where the lights never went off. Cassian’s room. It all came back in a rush that made her head throb. She touched beneath her nose, but there was no blood this time. Just bad memories.
A sharp stick. A bleeding eye socket.
She sank back onto the bed. It still held a trace of Cassian’s scent, and faint sparks of the sensation she felt at his touch—or maybe that was just in her imagination. She swung her legs off and sat up. There was no clock to tell how long she’d been asleep, nothing besides the tears that had crusted under her eyes.