My mouth is chalky and swollen. My head pounding. All day I lay in my hiding place with the datapad Matteo gave me, studying Nagal, mind wandering to one thing and one thing only. Food. Food. Food. I’m mad from hunger and thirst.
When I hear nothing but the purr of engines, I slink through the machine shop toward the cargo bay. It is late in the ship cycle. The others should be in bed, the autopilot guiding the ship on its long journey across the Gulf. My hiding place seemed well-chosen at first. Located at the rear of the ship, just forward of the engines, the shop is seldom traversed by the crew of theArchimedesexcept for Sevro. Most day and night cycles I bear witness to his welding, his angle-grinding, his grunts, his curses, his giggles? And the music. Gods it’s terribly great.
What’s he making out there?
I know it’s my fault he’s not going home. He seems to have gone insane after the news of Ulysses. Dammit, but I wish I’d kept my mouth shut.
While I have gone nine days without being discovered as a stowaway, my hiding place has its disadvantages too. I have to travel forty meters, nearly the entire length of the ship, to refill my water and food supplies. So far I’ve braved only two supply expeditions. Each time I risk being discovered. If I steal too much at once it will be noticed.
No telling how they’ll react to a stowaway. They might turn the ship around, but maybe they’ll just jettison me out an airlock for my insolence…
I think back to the stories we shared in Camp 121 about these vaunted heroes. About their exploits and how my siblings and I dreamed of meeting them. In those fantastical stories, my brothers and sister always imagined we’d be their plucky lancers as Darrow and Sevro swept us away on their adventures, draping wolfcloaks around our shoulders when they realized what big hearts we had in our small bodies.
But now, seeing them, their scars, their machinelike limbs, the brooding danger in their eyes, well that burnt that illusion away like a welding torch over hair. These are serious people. Dangerous, serious people. They’d have to be to stand a chance at the game they play. Still, I guess I’d hoped they’d be nicer.
My heart pounds in the cargo bay as I pass under the gaze of their shiny new battle suits. They stand at attention in their racks, eerie and huge. The whole cargo bay portends violence. The place is stuffed with weapons and machines of war.
What have I gotten myself into?
I creep up the ramp, past the medical bay, training room, and showers. My armpits and privates stink, but I can’t chance a wash. Past those rooms I hold my breath for the most dangerous stretch of my expedition—the crew cabins. No sound comes from Darrow’s cabin, or the Pink’s. The faint murmur of voices creeps through the largest door, Cassius’s. He’s watching holos again. A metal bottle clinks, signaling he is awake. He’s always easiest to pin down, owing to his habits. Drinks like a miner, that one, mostly when the others are out and the hours are lonely. The only hours I can move around.
Lucky for me, drunk men hear like old men: poorly. I make it to the lounge without trouble. From there, I go right into the galley. I wince at the slight hiss of the door opening, and then reel back. The smell of fresh food washes over me in an awesome wave. My mouth drips with saliva.
A beautiful temptation awaits me. There, on the counter under themuted red glow of the fresher lies a feast for a queen—half a loaf of fresh bread with an open container of creamy yellow butter, shimmering apricot jam, a selection of stinky, thick cheeses, and a gorgeous, huge ham glistening with a dewy glaze of honey. My salivary glands ache and I swoon, but I can’t touch it. Any of it. I dare not. It will be missed. Must keep discipline. Never take the fresh food, Lyria; that’s a rule I made.
With a lonesome glance at the feast, I slump toward the larder, where I drink a liter of water straight from the spigot, then fill five new bladders and stuff them into my bag. Next, I steal several days’ worth of MREs, always picking from the back of the containers and only taking one from each container so the depletion won’t be noticed. I hesitate over the jars of sunflower butter. There are dozens. I’ve already taken two, but it’s my lone delight. Surely another won’t be noticed. I steal one from the back, feeling the thrill at my own daring.
With my supplies refilled, I prepare for my return expedition. But another temptation calls like a Siren from one of those Greek stories. The re-hydrator. I linger in front of it back in the galley, lusty, wishing I could dare to use the machine on my MREs. Oh, to taste hot food instead of the dead crunch of dehydrated calories that awaits me back in my sad little cubby. I could just do one meal. Maybe two. If only I could afford the noise the machine makes. No. I’m thinking like a madwoman. I already have my sunflower butter. I’ve been naughty enough. I pull myself away, only to feel a second tug. A greater tug. The ham. Oh sweet Vale, the ham.
It’s a huge ham for huge people. Surely they won’t miss a slice. Or two. A knife is right there on the counter. Ham, with a dollop of butter. A slice of bread. I could make myself a sandwich. A golden fantasy appears—me and my sandwich alone in my cubby, getting to know each other real sloppy like. I will make myself a sandwich. I deserve a reward for all this daring, don’t I? I peek over my shoulder. The coast is clear. I set down my bag and extend a trembling hand for the knife, another for the ham to hold it as I cut a small slice. But it’s such a big ham that I give into my greed and cut a larger slice.
As I shift the ham to cut it, I feel a strange resistance from the ham, a tension. Squinting, I see something. A faint, almost invisible thread attached to the ham and running toward the wall where it’s connected to a mysterious, fingernail-sized piece of metal.
Some primal part of my mind senses the danger before the logical part puzzles it all together. I’ve just taken the bait to a trap.Shit. Shit. Shit. Something snags my feet and jerks them out from under me. I’m flipped upside down.
Blood rushes to my head. The knife flies from my hand, but I hold tight to the ham. Feet pound in the hall outside. I spin, wheeling my arms, suspended in the air.
A dark shape runs full tilt into the galley. A demonic smile flashes on a crazed face that stretches as it screams at me. Ham in my hand, upside down, I yelp as Sevro rushes me and envelopes me in a sack.
—
“Sevro, get away from the airlock and put her down,” Darrow orders.
“She was eating our supplies.”
“Put her down.”
“Fine.” Sevro’s voice is monotone beyond the dark fabric of the sack. “Sevro, you’re paranoid. Sevro, you need to get more sleep. Your rat’s imaginary. Stupid Bellona. I told him we had a rat in the walls. I never miscount my sun butter.” He carries me on his shoulder.
“Tell me you didn’t hurt her.” Darrow’s voice. “Sevro.”
“She still has her scalp.”
“Sevro, Jove. She’s just a girl.”
“What’s what?” a warm, masculine voice with the most beautiful accent I’ve ever heard asks as he joins. Cassius. “The airlock alarm went off. Where’s Aurae? Is she all right?”
The Pink’s voice: “I’m fine. I thought I heard a girl scream.”
