6
The Rust Bucket
Polly
ThePinkSlipisdying.
Okay, that’s dramatic. She’s not dying—she’s just bleeding out in about seven different critical systems while making sounds that no ship should ever make. The kind of groaning, metallic wheeze that says I tried my best, Captain, but you really shouldn’t have asked me to outrun three Meridian kill-ships while also doing a barrel roll through an asteroid field.
In my defense, we didn’t have a lot of options.
“STATUS REPORT,” Zip announces in what I’ve learned to recognize as his ‘deeply concerned but maintaining professional dignity’ voice. “COOLANT MANIFOLD IS HOLDING AT JURY-RIG STABILITY. STEALTH DRIVE FLICKERING BETWEEN TWELVE AND EIGHTEEN PERCENT EFFICIENCY. NAVIGATION ARRAY SUGGESTS WE ARE CURRENTLY LOCATED IN WHAT IT DESCRIBES AS ‘DEFINITELY SPACE, PROBABLY.’”
“That’s helpful, Zip. Really narrows it down.” I’m hunched over the cockpit console, running calculations that keep coming up with the same unhelpful answer. The Zater Reach is too far. Way too far for a ship that’s basically being held together by spite and my exceptional repair skills.
“ADDITIONALLY,” Zip continues, “OUR DIGITAL SIGNATURE IS COMPROMISED. MERIDIAN TAGGED US DURING THE CHASE. IF WE ATTEMPT TRANSIT THROUGH ANY STI-MONITORED JUMP POINT, WE WILL LIGHT UP THEIR SENSORS LIKE A SUPERNOVA.”
“So we’ll either explode mid-jump or announce our location to every Meridian ship in three sectors. Great. Love that for us.”
Behind me, I hear Rynn shift in the co-pilot’s chair like he’s posing for a royal portrait. Despite the fact that we’ve been shot at, chased through an asteroid field, and nearly frozen to death in my bunk—where he pinned me down and threatened to fuck me until I forgot my own name—he still looks... immaculate. Annoyingly, perfectly immaculate.
I am not thinking about how those thighs felt bracketing mine. Or how his hand felt between my legs. Or how he tasted like—
Focus, Polly.
His posture is rigid, his jacket is unwrinkled, and his golden eyes are fixed on the viewport with a calm that makes me want to scream. Or climb him. Possibly both.
“We cannot make the jump to the Zater Reach in this condition,” he states, his voice smooth and maddeningly logical. “The distance is too great. The Pink Slip will disintegrate in the slipstream.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Lord Sunshine.” I bank the ship hard to the left, sliding us into the dense, swirling orange gas of the nebula. The maneuver presses me back in my seat, and I’m suddenly, viscerally aware of the seam of my flight suit dragging across—
Nope. Not going there.
“And you’re right. We can’t make the jump. Which is why we’re making a pit stop.”
He stiffens, and I watch the muscles in his jaw flex. That jaw I wanted to bite. Still want to bite. Stars, I want to climb onto his lap right here in the cockpit and—
“A pit stop?” His voice cuts through my increasingly inappropriate thoughts. “We are being hunted by a Meridian kill-squad, Polly. Stopping is death.”
“Flying a ship that’s spewing coolant and radiation is also death, just louder.” I tap a sequence into the nav-computer, very deliberately not looking at how his hands rest on his thighs. Those elegant, long-fingered hands that know exactly how to—
Stop. Just stop.
A new destination locks in—a jagged, ugly cluster of coordinates buried deep in the sector’s trash belt. “We’re going to Junker’s Rest.”
Rynn leans forward, reading the data on his screen. His lip curls. It’s a subtle movement, elegant and disdainful, and it does absolutely terrible things to my insides. Things that involve that mouth on various parts of my body.
“Junker’s Rest? That designation is flagged in the STI database as a Class-4 hazardous waste zone and known criminal haven.”
“Exactly,” I grin, though my heart is hammering against my ribs and I’m still wet from this morning when he growled in my ear that I’d smell like him. “No sensors, no patrols, and they only take cash. It’s perfect.”
“It is a garbage dump.”
“It’s my garbage dump. And right now, it’s the only place we can get a stealth stabilizer without flagging your family’s enemies.”
I level the ship out, bringing us into the approach vector. Through the swirling gas, the station appears—a massive, floating monstrosity welded together from the hulls of dead starships. It looks like a robotic tumor growing in space, bristling with mismatched antennas and leaking atmosphere. It’s ugly, dangerous, and smells like ozone and bad decisions.
Home sweet home.
