“Save it. We’re about to land on Nirmana to fuel up and get some repairs done, and I need both of you to make yourselves useful. You get one more chance to stay on the ship, if you want it. Which means no arguing, no fighting, and nothing but nodding your head and saying yes, Captain and no, Captain.”
Arjan nodded. “Got it. Yes, Captain.”
“And you, Eton?”
The man took a deep breath. “Yes, Captain, I understand.”
Qole hit the big red button next to the airlock door and it hissed open. I flinched.
“Well, great.” She put her hands on her hips. “All I have to do to get you two thick skulls to listen is throw you around and put you in a cell, I guess. Now that we’re a crew again, all of you shake hands.”
I grimaced. Eton’s handshaking hurt, and would likely especially hurt now. Not so great timing on our chat, after all. “Must we? I feel very at peace with everyone already.” Qole gave me a look, and I reached out. “Okay, okay.”
Eton hesitated, glanced at Qole, and then took it. To my surprise, he didn’t crush it. But he did hold on to it for a moment longer than necessary and look me in the eyes. I understood as clearly as though he had spoken: one sign of ill intent on my part, and he’d happily try to kill me again, whatever the consequences.
Arjan shook my hand, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. The entire experience seemed to have hit him the hardest; Qole and this ship were nearly all that he cared about in life. I doubted she’d ever threatened to take it away from him before.
Qole nodded, satisfied. “Good. Remember, I don’t need to work with people who can’t voice opinions, but there’s a difference between sharing your thoughts and not following orders. I know you don’t trust him, but if you’re going to be on this ship, it’s me you have to trust. Now, you”—she pointed at me—“are going with Basra to sell our Shadow and make sure he doesn’t get mugged in the process. I want those canisters out of my hold. You two”—she jerked a thumb over her shoulder—“get cleaned up and ready to get the Kaitan fueled and shipshape. We don’t have much time, and we have to make this quick.”
A series of suggestions and considerations rang out briefly, until Qole raised both eyebrows and crossed her arms. I shut my mouth along with the rest.
A few hours later I was wearing the same disguise I had used on Alaxak, and Basra and I were on our way. The landing bay the harbormaster had assigned us was at the top of a roughly eight-hundred-foot tower composed almost entirely of docking bays and a web of walkways all in dangerous proximity.
“Do you think Qole is just trying to get me away from Eton?” I asked Basra as we descended one of the gangplanks leading from where the Kaitan had landed. She had reverted to one hundred percent captain mode, all signs of the personable girl I’d talked to the night before gone. I couldn’t deny that I found that interesting in its own right, but I couldn’t stop thinking about our conversation.
Why had I taken her hand and ruined everything?
“Maybe. Or maybe she knows that making these transactions carries its own set of risks.” Basra’s reply was entirely unsatisfactory. Then again, the only one I would have properly appreciated would have been, Absolutely, Nev, because you inspire such terror in him. And also, there is no way she’s trying to avoid you, in case you were wondering. Here, have a refreshing beverage.
Instead, he glanced at me again, and then to the bag I carried slung over my shoulder. “Do you think it’s wise to carry your blade with you? If someone saw it, they would recognize it and ask uncomfortable questions.”
I shook my head. “Once you earn a Disruption Blade, you try to keep it with you at all times, and I’ve been failing enough at that. Besides, I think I’ve shown I can keep it secret. Why in the systems are we walking on these instead of taking a turbolift?” I asked, changing the topic.
Basra was leading me down the gangplanks that connected to an increasingly complex series of catwalks. Low fencing and solid plate flooring gave way to woven rope and grating; it would have been dizzying at this height, but the city below felt too abstract to register. It was a precarious and crowded system as we danced around groups of workers carrying equipment and supplies or just loitering on corners and talking.
“Most of the harbors on the outskirts of the city are old and cheap, which also makes them the most crowded. The turbolifts are only used at certain points of the day to transport heavy cargo in order to prevent them from breaking down. Either that,” Basra amended, “or they are already broken down. If you don’t mind attracting attention you can bribe your way on, but I think we can manage.”
I glanced around at the hive of activity. Other towers, their edges like jagged combs from all the docking bays, were constantly disgorging a wide variety of smaller freight ships. “Do you know this all from a previous life? The Kaitan couldn’t possibly have gotten this far before now.”
“I grew up here,” Basra said, ushering me through a doorway that looked identical to the others. “Tell me, how did a prince of the Dracorte family, the heir no less, manage to land in the outskirts of the system by himself without an army of bodyguards?”
I paused, not due to an unwillingness to talk, but because of the vista that had just opened up in front of us. My view from the landing pad had been obscured by the Kaitan before Basra had whisked us on our way, but now I had an unobstructed perspective of Ranta, the largest city on Nirmana.
I had been to Ranta before. The Nirmana family, renowned for their skill at all things financial—stock markets, banking systems, secure transaction concepts—had spent a measure of their immeasurable wealth making Ranta one of the most beautiful cities in all the systems…along with outright buying the planet itself and renaming it after their family. Nestled in a rain forest at the foothills of mountains that had remained largely untouched by drones, the city was a wonder of architecture, learning, and art. In my studies, I had visited their Econom Academy on multiple occasions to listen to lectures or participate in debates.
In all my visits, I had never seen the outer city.
Ranta itself was surrounded by a thick wall of carefully tended gardens. But just outside those gardens lived everyone else who wasn’t wealthy enough to dwell in the city proper. While Ranta was white and gleaming, the outer city was dull red from rust and the way the light caught a dusty haze. Industrial pipes belched fire and smoke, and jagged apartment blocks rose impossibly high out of an endless sea of tiny housing. It looked as though a giant child had tipped a bag of toy houses out into a pile on the floor, kicked them around, and left.