He picks up his drink and knocks the rest of it back.
27
Morning breaks in acloud of anticipation. When I wake (alone in my bed, on top of the sheets because apparently pulling back the covers was too much), I’m immediately assaulted by memories of Lament, his skin, the feel of his mouth under mine. How Avi and Caspen barged in. The way Lament withdrew into himself, wary again, distant.
I groan and bury my face in my pillow.
I’m going to have to face him this morning. I’m already dreading it. We didn’t get a chance to talk about the kiss—about anything, really—because after Caspen and Avi returned my ray gun, I couldn’t come up with a good reason to stay. So I’d nodded and smiled and pretended like I wasn’t torn up inside as I followed them out, when really I was desperate to talk to Lament, ask if he was okay, ask if I’d just royally fucked everything up.
I roll onto my back and tell myself to focus on what’s important—today’s trip to The Parallax. But of course, that only inspires a fresh slew of anxiety. What if Lament is right and the whole plan is a setup? What if Ran Doc Min knows I’m trying to infiltrate his spacecraft and he catches me and ties me up and feeds me to a pit of sharks? Which is a thing Doc Min has. Because he’s probably evil.
Breakfast. I need breakfast.
I’m the first person to enter the detachment’s kitchen this morning. Since cooking feels beyond me, I raid the cabinets for whatever I can find, which ends up being a bunch of overripe bananas, the heel of a bread loaf, and a container of shelf-stable peanut butter sandwiches packaged in plastic. (They’re disgusting. I eat four.) I’m just polishing off the last of a frozen waffle which I am, regrettably, eating frozen, when the kitchen’s automatic doors spring open and announce, “A baby wombat is the size of a jellybean!”
Vera, Jester, and Avi enter the room looking frazzled.
“We have a problem,” Vera says.
“I hope it’s an I-forgot-to-put-on-underwear kind of problem and not a Moon-Dancer-was-stolen kind of problem.”
“Neither.” Vera wrings her hands. “You know how the Youvu Hums were supposed to distract the sergeant while we sneak out of the space station?”
“Yes…?”
“They can’t, because the sergeant is already gone.”
“Okay.” I drop the (now soggy) waffle onto my plate. “But isn’t that a good thing?”
“No,” Vera says, with less patience than I’ve ever seen from her (which is still quite a fair amount of patience). “Since the sergeant isn’t here to be distracted, and we don’t know where she went, she could return any time. It’s out of our control now.”
“Whichmeans,” Avi interrupts, with the air of someone eager to get to the point, “if we’re going to do this, we need to gonow.”
After that, it’s a rush to toss breakfast, break down the workroom’s collapsible wall, and clear a path for Moon Dancer onto the main flight deck. The Sixers arrive in pairs, everyone pitching in to help. I’m midway through pushing a pile of boxes out of the way when Lament appears, looking both put together and utterly disheveled. Put together on account of his outward appearance—hair combed, whites pressed, not a stray cord to be seen—and disheveled because of just… everything else. The bags underhis eyes, the downward turn of his mouth, the way he keeps tugging at his sleeves. I pause what I’m doing, feeling my heart twist. In an ideal world—a world unencumbered by anxiety or expectation or conflicted pasts—I’d go to him, pull him into my arms, and tell him it’ll be all right, but given how we left things yesterday, I know he’ll want space.
I’m wrong. He marches straight up to me and hands me a list of flying maneuvers, each of which is named after acrobatic stunts. The Gainer. The Double Back. The Rescue. “These are some of the moves I tend to favor in a firefight. I want you to look them over. We’re leaving Romothrida and flying into the Vacant Sector—unknown territory—which means we need to be prepared for every possible outcome, including open space battle.”
I start to reply, but my words die a quick death as he makes a fuss of fixing my clothes, checking the safety strap is tight over my ray gun, smoothing my jacket even though it’s already lying flat. His hand slides up to adjust a wayward piece of my hair, and the movement is so unexpected—so surprisingly tender—it makes me go blank for about one point five seconds, followed by a swift rush of feeling.Everywhere.
Because I thought Lament was going to be cold this morning. I thought he’d hide behind his usual mask. Actually, I was sure he would, because IknowLament. No matter how he feels about the kiss (how does he feel about the kiss?), he’s made his worries perfectly clear, and today was never going to be anything but difficult for us.
Except, right now, Lament is looking at me with a mix of exhaustion and concern and touching me like he cares, and I’m horrified to feel my throat close, because I’m… I need this. I didn’t even know how much I needed it until he gave it to me. Because—hell. I’m nervous for today. So much could go wrong. And that’s on top of being tied up about what happened last night, wondering if he regrets it, what it’ll change between us. I want to ask, I don’t know, a thousand things.What does this mean? Are we okay? Do you feel this, too?
I’m still staring at Lament when Toph whips off Moon Dancer’s tarp with a definitiveswoosh.
I don’t know exactly what Moon Dancer looked like before the accident, but what I know for certain is that here, now, she’s gorgeous. Her body is unlike any craft I’ve ever seen, one line blending seamlessly into the next, her green exterior shimmering like sun over the sea. Though she’s got a bit of length to her, she’s actually pretty small—you could probably fit her inside Vera’s Sky Runner three times over. And yet, there’s something abjectly powerful about her design. Something that makesyoufeel powerful, just standing near her.
It’s impossible, now that she’s fixed, to tell she was ever broken.
“All right,” Vera says in herit’s go timevoice. “You all know what we’re doing today and why. We have questions for Ran Doc Min, and somehow—call it fate, or chance, or the will of the Mother of Stars—we have an opportunity to find some answers. A lot of the plan hinges on Keller’s instincts. He’ll be acting on the fly, but we’ve seen what he can do with a ray gun, and we trust him to think smart under pressure, yes?” There’s a general murmur of agreement. Toph claps me on the back, and my knees buckle. “We’ve prepared as much as we can, but now it’s up to Keller to make this happen. If all goes well, tonight we’ll be back here toasting each other to a job well done.”
“And if things don’t go well?” Avi asks.
A Youvu Hum pats her shoulder. “Always know just what to say, don’t you, hon?”
Vera points to us. “Keller and Lament will fly Moon Dancer to The Parallax. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be waiting within range in case we need to stage an intervention. Remember, stick with your partners, no matter what.” She looks at me. “Ready?”
A fresh wave of nervousness surges through me. “Ready.”
