“I know, but—I haven’t done anything yet, you know?I’ve just been in my room being…um…waylaid…and you know Veebee. She always complains.”
Kotti eyed me suspiciously. “If you’re sure…”
“Oh, yeah, take some time off. I got this,” I added with a wave of my own hand.
“Perfect,” Dad said. “You know, eventually that finger’s not fittin’ back on. Let me know when you’re done?”
Once we agreed, he passed us on the gangway and headed for the hangar bay tech. The lander was acting up again—something about the comms—and Kotti had already tried everything to fix it, so might as well outsource it. While it was technically out of her purview as head of guest relations, she had a knack for engineering in a way that Entoo, regrettably, did not. So she ended up doing a lot of tinkering in her spare time. I think she liked it—she could take out her guest relations frustrations on faulty hardware, and this ship had a lot of that.
While theStarfarerwas renowned, it was also old as dirt, and with every tour came another thing that broke.
It was only a matter of time before the ship got too expensive to keep in the skies.
Kotti had pulled her arm from mine and climbed the gangway to the open airlock. Even though I couldn’t see her face, I knew she was annoyed with me for lying.I caught up to her in the mouth of the ship and tugged her arm to get her to stop.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to her.
The annoyance on her face softened. She sighed. “It’s fine. I was just worried about you.”
“I know.” I turned my eyes downward so she couldn’t see the Sian-sized guilt there.
She studied me for a moment, and I wondered if she knew what I was hiding, though she couldn’t possibly.
Then her communicator beeped in her pocket. The garbled voice of Daaric relayed that the ion chamber had been delivered, and she threw back a reply that she’d be right there. Then she said to me, “You’re your Dad’s heart, you know.”
“I know,” I replied guiltily, and left for the galley.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Droids
When theStarfarerwas empty, I could hear it breathe.
Obviously the ship wasn’treallybreathing—it was the ventilation system moving air in and out of the ducts—but there was a sort of life to this place, the kind you could only really hear when its belly emptied of all the tourists it ferried to faraway stars. My footsteps echoed through the corridors, rebounding to me in whispers. Every so often, the ship groaned as it settled its old bones, and electricity whirred through the bulkheads as thumps played through the pipes like a heartbeat.
I knew this ship like a second body. I knew its quirks. I knew its habits.
That was what happened when you spent your entire life on a ship. You figured out all its little nooks and crannies before you ever learned about yourself.
This was my home—the only place I belonged.
I headed down the corridor to the main body of the ship. Since the CR90 was a civilian vessel now, it hadbeen completely refurbished to house guests and keep the crew hidden. The first, or bottom, deck housed the crew quarters, laundry, storage, cargo, maintenance, galley, and launch bay, which fit a lander for excursions.
From the midship turbolift, the next floor up held our guest quarters, with rooms remodeled to add an air of elegance to our hundred-guest tours; three public refreshers; and administrative offices. But it was the third deck that had changed the most from the old CR90 layout. The conference chamber had been turned into the main chamber, and the operations forum became the mess hall. There was also an entertainment room, the med bay, engineering, and the bridge. These two decks were themed to reflect an old warship, complete with blaster holes and fake vents and rust-colored blood splatter, just to sell the story. Dad loved a good story.
The fourth—or top—deck held the captain’s quarters, which was once the stateroom suite, and a few operation hubs that kept the ship running, like the power systems, generators, and offline weapons. I rarely went up there. It was always so cold and drafty, anyway.
On the bottom deck, I put my stuff in my room on the way to the galley. It had been my room for as long as I’d been alive, so the bulkheads were pinned with flimsiplast posters and marked up with paint, souvenirs from different places around the galaxy hanging fromshelves, fabric draped across the ceiling. I did anything I could to make my room not look like every other one on the ship—honestly, I tried to make it not look like a ship room at all.
I hung my satchel on a hook on the bulkhead and placed the fluorescent blue datatape on the shelf next to the others, an array of jewel-toned colors. Kotti would laugh at me if she knew I wasn’t going to read it, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the ending.
Besides, I had bigger, more distracting things to deal with. Like the saber. It rattled when I picked it up, like something deep inside it was broken. My thumb snuck toward the discolored button on the side. What color was the saber? Did it give off heat? How did it sound?
Sian said it was broken, but that could mean anything, really, and what was the harm in trying to turn it on? I’d never seen one before. I heard that their blades hummed and gave off impressive heat, and I wondered if you could feel the hilt vibrate with the power of the blade, or how it turned all those different colors.
I held out the instrument, saber spout pointing away, and pressed the button.
The saber fizzled.
