"Not yet," he agrees. "You want to check me over?"
She simply glares in our direction.
"You should let us go," Kaspar tries. "We're no good to you."
"On the contrary." The female glances over at one of her men and tilts her head, indicating he should step forward. "Hastur here is going to watch over you. If you're lying, we'll know soon enough. If not, well, we'll wait for the infected female to die and see if you get sick." She casts a smile in our direction. "Even a salvaged pod is worth credits. The human's worth a lot more, but we shall just have to make do, won't we, Kaspar va Sithai?"
He winces. "I was wondering if you'd recognized me, Shaalyn."
I stare at the two of them. They know each other? What the fuck? I'm tempted to jerk on his tail again, but I remain silent.
"Oh, I remember you," the woman—Shaalyn—says. "And I know you're just as sleazy and out for yourself as your brother. I don't believe you with this tale of a sick human."
"Then come in here and say hello," Kaspar bluffs, gesturing at me.
I sneeze.
"I don't think so," Shaalyn responds. "But it doesn't hurt us to wait you out. After all, you'll have to emerge eventually, won't you? In the meantime, we can monitor you to see how this sickness plays out." She gestures at Hastur. "Stay here. Keep your blaster ready, and if they try anything, kill him. But not her. She's worth a lot of credits."
Hastur nods and settles himself in directly in front of our pod. The others retreat with Shaalyn and there's a loud, metallic sound of the doors closing behind our pod, trapping us in the new ship's cargo bay. The others retreat, and the only one that pauses is the one with the eyepatch, who watches Hastur for a moment before racing off to join the others.
Kaspar turns to me and crosses his arms over his chest. "Well, that could have gone better."
"You think?" I hiss. "I thought you said these were bad guys. How are you friends with them?"
"Shaalyn isn't a friend," Kaspar says. He scowls as if the very suggestion offends him. "My idiot brother thought he was in love with her until she stabbed him in the gut and stole our ship. It's bad luck that we've run into her." He pauses. "Worse luck now that they didn't buy our story."
"We're alive," I point out. "We can still figure something out. There's only one guy down there. Can you take him?"
Kaspar glances over at the window. "I can, but we have a bigger problem with the doors. If we kill him, how do we force them open? I don't have access to their systems and my brother Mathiras is the hacker. I'm just the muscle."
"Make him tell you?"
Kaspar pauses and stares at me. "You think I should torture him? Really?"
I'm a little horrified he went straight to torture. "I didn't say that!"
"What, you think if I tickle him he'll tell me?" Kaspar snorts.
"Okay, fine. So we need a better plan." I cross my arms and think. And sneeze. I can keep pretending to be sick, but I don't know how much it's going to help us in the long run. "So what are our options?"
"We stay in here until they realize you're not sick and they force us out," he says. "Or they wait us out until we starve. Something tells me they're not in a hurry."
He's right. Why hurry when you can just park us in the cargo bay and wait for us to come out on our own? They can just force us into admitting we're lying or wait for us to starve.
This is not looking good for the home team.
7
KASPAR
Alice sneezes and coughs and swipes at her face for hours while I pace back and forth.
I hate inaction. Hate it. I hate that she's miserable, too. All her constant face-wiping and snot-filled sounds remind me of when I was sick as a boy, when my lungs gave out and had to be replaced. My chest gets tight at the memory, and I pick up my data pad and scan the readings. All is fine. It's just my imagination.
So I pace a bit more.
Eventually, Alice curls up on her bunk. "Do we dare get a few hours of sleep?"
I don't. I won't be able to sleep anyhow. I'm too busy trying to figure out how we can somehow override those cargo bay doors to get out. I'm not the mechanic in my group of brothers. Mathiras knows how to hack into all kinds of systems, and Adiron's great at hitting things until they behave, but it's never been one of my strengths. Something tells me that if I shoot out the control panel (my first instinct) I'll somehow lock us in here for good. We need a plan.