He’d never met a Crossman who didn’t drink, for starters. The Crossmen and women were some of the best medics in space travel, the kind that had pieced soldiers back together on the front lines of brutal, bloody wars. They’d been lucky enough to come across a few Crossmen in their days, the medics usually deserters on the run from their pasts.They all drank—some of Karr’s most vivid memories were of himself and the crew, scattered across the lounge in the sector above, listening to a drunk Crossman tell his tales. To a Crossman or woman, drinking was like a badge of honor: the more they could hold down, the more they deserved your respect.
But Rohtt wouldn’t touch a drop.
He’d joined the crew just before they left Beta Earth. Since then, he’d been a near-constant shadow to Cade, always watching.
“You listen to me, Kingston…” Rohtt’s voice hissed through the combox.
“No.”Cade’s voice again.“This is my ship. I give the orders here. Patch me through to him.”
“He is otherwise detained at the moment.”
Bodies shifted inside. There was the telltale squeak of Cade’s swivel chair, followed by footsteps. “I can’t eat. I can’t sleep.”
“All normal side effects of anxiety, Kingston,” Rohtt said. “Take a mood suppressor.”
“You’re mocking me.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
Silence. Then muffled sounds, a heavy sigh and the whine of Cade’s chair again as he likely sat back down.
“You know what lies inside of…” Rohtt’s voice trailed off as the connection fizzled. Karr cursed beneath his breath and scrambled to adjust the wires. “…the consequences if we fail.”
Cade was silent for a moment. “I’m well aware. At least… give me a sleeping draught. I want my mind clear when we land.”
There was the squeak of boots, as someone shifted towards the door.
Karr’s thoughts were running so fast that he hardly had time to move when the door slid open. He backed into the shadows beside Cade’s doorway, in a small alcove with a window that looked out at the stars. During sleeping hours, the corridors were lit only by the emergency exit lights. He pressed himself flat against the window as the two men marched past, blocking out the light of Dohrsar.
First came Rohtt, with a red medbox tucked under his arm. Cade followed after in his nightclothes. Behind them, Cade’s door began to slide shut.
Before he could stop himself, Karr slipped through the opening and into his brother’s quarters. The lights were dim, only the bunk lamp on.
Where Karr’s room was plastered with his belongings, photographs and sketches and stolen knickknacks—all signs that he’d made a life aboard theStarfall—Cade’s room was entirely absent of a personal touch. It was nothing more than a bunk, a built-in silver desk that protruded from the wall, and the old swivel chair that was once their father’s, soldered to the floor.
He’d thrown his dark captain’s coat over the built-in desk, leaving it rumpled, as if he’d taken it off in a hurry. A rare thing, for Cade not to leave his coat hung in the small closet beside the rest of his clothes, pressed and clean.
“What are you doing in here, Karr?” he asked himself.
Cade said the plan had wrinkles. He wanted to know what they were, and how best to iron them out.
Now that Karr was considering the job at hand, a question popped into his brain. It was one that had been lingering there since Cade had mentioned Friedrich Geisinger, but he hadn’t quite been able to put the question into words until now.
A man with his power, with his standing, should be able to soar onto any planet in any nearby galaxy and simply pay for what he wished. So what was so special about this Antheon that would make him hire a shipload of black-market criminals to acquire it for him?
Karr sat down in Cade’s chair, the question hot in his mind. Perhaps he’d sit here until Cade came back. He sighed, then reached down to remove the black rock from his pocket and ponder over it some more. But as he lifted it, his arm accidentally ruffled the edge of Cade’s coat.
The screen beneath it lit up.
Karr cursed at the sudden brightness and reached down to slide the screen back into sleep mode.
But something caught his eye.
A blueprint, glowing brightly on the screen.
Karr glanced over his shoulder at the door. Still shut, no sound of footsteps bounding down the metal corridor. He turned back to the screen, sweeping Cade’s coat aside to get the full view of it.
The blueprint looked like an alien beetle. It was the closest way to compare the headless mechanical creature with four hinged legs, sharp sword-like tips at the end of each. There were all sorts of numbers and equations, mathematical symbols and measurements written in the margins of the page, scribbled in a strange, tiny hand at each hinge. And Cade’s handwriting, scribbled on the far side of the screen, as if he’d pulled up the blueprint and began to write notes of his own.
