Heat-resistant. Water-resistant. Exterior shell? Impenetrable.
“What the hell is this about?” Karr whispered.
He leaned in closer, tapping the screen to enlarge the image. More notes, and something written in a language he did not understand. But he assumed it was one of the ancients, from old Earth. Karr zoomed again, eyes widening as he found a signature at the bottom right-hand corner.
As if the blueprint itself were a sketch. A work of art.
Friedrich Geisinger
His brows knitted together as he stared at the man’s blueprint. Their new employer, no less. Was this thewrinkleCade had mentioned?
Karr looked up as the sound of footsteps arrived from down the hall, still distant… but drawing closer. He quickly tapped the screen back to dark, then swiveled Cade’s chair around and stood just as the door slid open.
Cade stood in the doorway, eyes narrowed. “Karr?”
“You really should keep your door locked,” Karr said nonchalantly. “There’s no telling who could stumble in here under cover of night.”
“You should be sleeping.” Cade crossed his arms as he looked around the room, eyes narrowing further still, as if he were searching for a ghost.
“I could say the same to you,” Karr answered. “I saw you walk off with the medhead.”
“I’m not entirely fond of him either,” Cade said, wincing at the slang term for Rohtt. “But he’s here on Geisinger’s command. An emissary, if you will, to ensure we complete the job.”
Cade wore a thick robe each night, to ward off the chilly recycled air on theStarfall.His old fighting scars peeked out from the opening.
They reminded Karr of the times he’d stood in the midst of a raucous crowd, surrounded by sweat and skin and fists full of money on the line. If he closed his eyes, he could still feel the struggle not to cry out as he watched Cade in the fighting ring, covered in blood.
It took him months to win his first fight. And months after that, to actually make money for them to pocket after giving their cut to Jeb.
But the blood and the bruises, the pain and the small payments didn’t matter. Cade had always done the best he could to keep theStarfallafloat. To keep the crew happy. Most of all, to keep Karr alive.
“What’s going on?” Cade asked now, drawing Karr back to the present. He sat down on the edge of his bunk, looking more exhausted than Karr had seen him look in ages. “Something you wanted to discuss?”
A thousand lies he could have made up.
Instead, Karr went for the truth.
“Whyus?” he asked. “Geisinger, I mean. Why would a man like him hire a bunch of black-market criminals to dig up this rock? If he’s as rich as the galaxy thinks him to be… if he owns the planet, why not just take a ship himself, hire his own crew, and dig it up?”
Cade shrugged. “We don’t ask questions. We get in, get what we’re asked to recover, and get out. You know that.” “But it’s strange,” Karr said.
“Aren’t all our jobs?”
He tossed the small chunk of Antheon to Cade, who held it towards the dim bunk light. “There’s a place near the center of the continent, on Dohrsar… old mines, on the outskirts of a Dohrsaran temple. Geisinger has been keeping an eye on things, upping his research. He’s been in communication with one of their leaders. He previously picked up on a hot spot for this Antheon. It’s worth trillions, in the right hands, in the right form.”
Karr shifted his position. The chair squeaked beneath him, a sound that brought forth a memory. His father, seated in this very room, this very chair, arms held out as he grinned and said,Come on, K. Come and help me decide where we’ll fly next.
“But why hide it?” Karr asked. “He owns the damned thing now.”
He’d never questioned a job before. But since Cade had mentioned their new employer’s name… something in Karr’s stomach hadn’t felt quite right. Like an obnoxious little gnat that wouldn’t quit, it picked at his conscience. Begged him to dig a little deeper.
Cade glanced over his shoulder, then lowered his voice, as if he feared the entire crew was standing behind the door, listening. “We’re scrubs, Karr. People who fly below the radar. The outcasts of the galaxy.”
To hear him say it aloud… Cade had never acknowledged what Karr had always thought.
He was always seated on a mountaintop, no matter their situation. But tonight, he looked like a man defeated, the circles deep beneath his eyes. “But not after this. I’ve spoken to Geisinger myself. I’ve heard the terms. I’m keeping you out of it, so that if we’re caught…” He shrugged. “I’m protecting you.”
“What exactly from?”
