Page 9

The mattress folded out from the wall, the old hinges squealing in complaint.

His eyes widened. It was narrow. Very narrow.

His shoulders would hang over both sides, and he’d have to open the locker at the end to shove his feet in unless he curled up like a child. Which he was absolutely not going to do. He had his pride. He’d slept in combat zones and in shuttle seats. Once, he’d even slept in the storage compartment of a freight hauler.

But this?

This was just insulting.

At least the bedding inside the locker looked clean. He poked at it. It was folded in a plastic-wrapped bundle beside a thin slab of a pillow and an emergency pack—possibly the smallest emergency pack he’d ever seen. Water tabs, nutrient bars, basic med patches. Pulling it out, he turned it over in his hand, then shoved it back.

Not enough to treat anything serious. Not even close.

A quiet part of him pointed out that he wasn’t here to inspect the safety standards of a human charter ship. He was here to get six females away from traffickers.

Once they were safely elsewhere, he would get his ass out of here, return to the Dream, and let somebody else worry about their questionable ship maintenance and pathetic emergency supplies.

Out of habit, he checked the small vent near the ceiling. He tested the door’s manual override. Ran a thumb over the fire suppression nozzle in the corner.

He was about to rattle Jex’s cage again when voices rose outside his door.

“Oi! Where are the medical supplies, and why aren’t they in the med bay?”

He paused, covering his bracer with one hand. The last thing he needed was somebody hearing the conversation and asking who he was talking to.

“Medbay, you call that a medbay?” someone shouted back. “It’s a fucking closet!”

“It’s still a medbay, and unless you want to bleed out if something happens on this tin can, then I need my damn supplies!”

“They’re in the cargo bay. Next to the ice cream,” came the shouted reply. Seriously, could they not hold conversations at a normal level on this ship?

“What the fuck?” The first voice was closer to him, which meant that if they were in medbay, that was close as well. Good to know. “What are they doing next to the ice cream? Why do we even have ice cream?”

“It’s mine!”

“Why do you—fuck’s sake, why did you bring ice cream? Why not something useful?”

“It is useful, and I didn’t argue when I helped you haul all those dumb books aboard, did I?”

“They’re medical journals. Aka useful.”

The conversation faded away, punctuated by the squeal of a cart’s wheels and somebody muttering about idiots. Rann lifted his hand from his bracer.

“Seems you found yourself in an... interesting situation there,” Jex said dryly. “What’s going on?”

Rann ignored the question. He sat on the edge of the bunk, and the frame creaked beneath his weight in a way he did not appreciate.

“So can you do it?” he asked. “Or not?”

Jex snorted. “Can I hack into the nearest human authority and then create you a pilot’s license out of thin air with all the background paperwork and feed presence so that it doesn’t look like you popped into existence yesterday? Because that wouldn’t look suspicious as fuck, would it?”

Draanth.

Rann stared at the rust-streaked wall opposite him, his jaw tightening. He’d spent so long flying under the radar that he’d forgotten most people’s lives left traces. Work records. Medical records. A thousand tiny pieces of proof that a person had existed yesterday and would probably keep existing tomorrow.

Not just turn up in a draanthing docking bay wearing a dead man’s coveralls.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “Can you?”