Patchy clouds roll in, giving the sky texture. Outside, the day is warm, windy. Our plan is to down a quick breakfast of PPMs, then load up into our respective spacecrafts and head back to Skyhub. Which, of course, only globs another spoonful of uncertainty onto my growing trepidation pile. Am I riding with Vera and Jester in the Sky Runner, Caspen in the cargo craft, or Lament?
Breakfast ends (my anxiety-hunger strikes with a vengeance; I eat my weight in PPM brownies) and everyone starts to clear out, but I hang back to see what Lament will do. He starts toward the exit. Pauses. Turns to face me.
Hope is a beam of golden light, pouring down my throat. My heart is going a mile a minute, because this has to be it, right? This is the moment Lament finally asks me to fly with him. After everything we’ve been through—I mean, he’s ready. To make this official. Solidify my place as his partner and a member of the Sixth.
Fly with me,I beg him to say.I want you by my side.
Lament pulls my handheld out of his pocket. “It doesn’t look like there’ve been any new messages.” He passes it over. The device is a brick in my palm. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry,” I croak.
He hesitates. “Should I not be?”
“I didn’t expect a message.”
“Okay.” His eyes drop to my lifestone, which has started flickeringhaphazardly. The hope is still there, partway derailed but still traveling on forward momentum. “Vera is waiting for you,” Lament tells me. “We’re airborne in five.” And with that, he walks away.
The brownies curdle in my stomach.
I tighten my fist around my handheld and tell myself not to be disappointed, not to let my mind travel down its usual paths. This is about Lament’s recovery, Lament’s timing. I mean, was I not just thinking about how I don’t blame him for being reserved, given what he went through? Given what I now know?
But that was before the other night. Before I opened up to him, revealed my past, admitted things I’ve never admitted to anyone. He’sseen me, and I’ve seen him. So why does he insist on boxing me out? I know I shouldn’t, that it’s selfish, but I feel abandoned. Left behind. Again.
My jaw hurts from clenching my teeth. The collar of my shirt feels three sizes too small. I swallow hard and catch the look Caspen is throwing me. “No good days for the Pirate King,” she says.
“You’re telling me.”
I march through The Bargainer’s cargo hold and down the back ramp. I catch sight of Lament climbing into his skimmer (his fingers grip the cockpit’s seal, boot wedging into the foot notch, lean arms hauling his body up) and I think he must hear me stomping around, because he glances over. Catches my eye. Looks away.
And you know what? Fine. Whatever. Lament and I can keep doing this little dance until the universe freezes over, if that’s what he wants. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.
The flight back to the detachment in the Sky Runner is quiet. Vera starts to tell me something but stops at a look from Jester. And somehow, that turns my mood even fouler. Like they think they have to walk on eggshells around me. As if I’m some kind of monster.
We switch into hyperspeed, and everything goes blurry and dark for a while. I practice an old breathing trick I learned from Master Ira, hoping it’ll help dissipate some of this hurt, but before long we’re approachingSkyhub, winging over its circular face, peeling past the ninety-nine identical detachments until we find the one labeled 94. The flight deck’s exterior metal door opens at our arrival, and Vera guides the Sky Runner inside, followed by The Bargainer and—bringing up the rear in his navy skimmer—Lament.
When I step out of the spacecraft, a DE-93 bot is already there on the deck waiting to take my gun. Which, okay—I get that I earned myself a red card, and red card protocol bars me from carrying weapons within the space station, but… seriously? They’re sending a bot to intercept me the moment I step foot back on Skyhub like they don’t trust me to hand the weapon over myself? Also, could they not bother sending an actual sentient being? I’m tempted to kick the bot in its stupid metal body.
“Keller?” Vera looks concerned. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I clip. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
I shove my ray gun into the bot’s open compartment (outlined by an obnoxious red sign that readsPLACE GUN HERE) and start marching toward the elevators. Lament is there, moving like he’s going to step into my path, but I ignore him and barrel past. My mood has shifted fromupsetto downrightvenomous, and my chest hurts, and right now all I want is to lock myself in my room before I do or say something I’ll regret.
I don’t get the chance, as the universe would have it, because there’s a sudden chorus ofzzzzhingas all our handhelds vibrate in unison. I pull mine out to see a new message from Sergeant Forst. Debrief, my office, 0900. Come straight from the deck. And make sure Mr. Hartman relinquishes his gun.
Which is just the icing on the cake, really.
We march together through the detachment’s clean, empty halls into the sergeant’s office. She’s waiting for us behind her desk, her hair pulled into its usual low bun, her eyes tracking our movement. Though there’s plenty of space for the ten of us to spread out, we traverse the room in a triangleformation, shoulder to shoulder, everyone’s blind spots covered. Like we’re marching to battle.
If the sergeant notices our positioning, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she steps to the side, revealing a man sitting in a chair against the wall behind her.
Professor Trey Morton.
I grind to a halt, causing Avi to bump into my back. The words whip out of me before I can stop them. “What’s he doing here?”
The sergeant lifts her brows. “Trey Morton is on the Board of Directors. It’s his right to observe fleet debriefs if he wishes.”
“Anyfleet debrief?”
