“Oh boy, now what?” I wheezed. At least he was breathing somewhat heavily as well.
He pointed toward the docking bays in the distance. “We can head over the rooftops back to the ship.” His other hand activated the comm on his ear, which, now that I noticed, was far nicer than anything the rest of the crew sported. “Kaitan, Basra.”
“Basra, Qole. Find a buyer?”
“Yes, but we’ve attracted attention. We’re taking a different route back, and might be delayed. Tell Eton to be on the lookout for company.”
There was a pause on the other end, but then Qole’s voice came back, calm and steady. “Affirmative. Stay safe, and let us know if you need any assistance. We’ll be ready for takeoff when you get here.”
Basra turned to me. “Follow me, and do exactly as I do.”
I tried my best, while Basra scrambled across boards, climbed old ladders, jumped between adjacent shacks, and scaled walls with cleverly chiseled footholds. He either had supreme faith in my abilities or didn’t care what happened to me.
It took a while, but it finally began to dawn on me, as we picked our way through the sunset-drenched rooftops, that I was viewing yet a third ecosystem of the city. Here, things were quieter, and anyone we met left us to ourselves, as we did to them. These were the pathways of the people who had to stay out of sight and out of mind, people with no power. Basra was ignored, but anytime someone caught sight of me they shrank out of sight as quickly as possible. I had known my traveling clothes were a bit too sharp for rustic communities, but here I apparently reeked of wealth. It was a level of disparity I was not used to.
And Basra must have come from it, to know it and fit in so well. Maybe his parents had indentured him to the Big Two because they couldn’t afford the extra mouth to feed. Or maybe Basra didn’t have parents, and he’d indentured himself.
In any case, Basra, in spite of his unique appearance, knew how to blend in and lay low. Though perhaps he now stayed for other reasons, this was no doubt why he had chosen Alaxak and the Kaitan at the start, especially if he was secretly working for someone powerful. It was the last place somebody would think to look for anyone or anything of significance.
Well, until now.
Basra bribed the turbolift operators for our final ascent, something I was grateful for. Speed was more important than stealth at this point. We arrived at the landing pad without incident—outside of my general anxiety and profuse sweating. Eton met us, face grim, with a snub-nosed and very polished photon gun cradled in one hand. It wasn’t anything like the XR-25 Molten-Force, but it was well taken care of and would still do the job of punching a sizzling hole through someone’s chest.
“It took you long enough,” he said. “Come on, get yourselves onboard.”
“Shadow?” Basra asked.
“Payment received and cargo unloaded,” Qole informed us, walking down the ramp. “Just waiting on you. It’s been quiet up here, no chatter or snoopers, so let’s leave while the leaving is good.”
Eton swore, spying over the side of the landing pad with a set of vision-amps. “There’s a fellow in a suit leading six goons into the turbolift on ground level. Are those your friends?”
I peered down. It was too far down to see anything but indistinct shapes, but I was sure I spotted a tiny blond head disappearing into the building beneath us. “If there’s a blond crew cut, yes.”
Eton nodded and raised an arm to usher Basra and me up the Kaitan’s ramp, but I ducked under, turning away.
Eton swore. “What are you doing? We’ve got a minute tops before they’re up here. Get on the damn ship!” He barked at me again when he saw me run for the turbolift doors. “The controls up here don’t even work!”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I reached into my bag and felt the familiar shape of the sheath that contained my blade. My thumb easily found the release point, and the case popped open, feeding the sword into my hand.
Disruption Blades weren’t just called that because they cut through energy shields. Any sword would be one, otherwise. They were Disruption Blades, because when you activated a switch in the hilt, they would output an energy field that could destroy shields, communication waves, or anything electronic in close contact with the weapon.
A flip of my thumb, and blue light shot up the middle of my blade as I ran toward the turbolift door. The light blinked more rapidly as the lift drew nearer, and I drove the point of the sword into the turbolift controls. Sparks arced in a miniature lightning storm, scoring the metal around it and leaving the smell of burned ozone. The lights above the door dimmed, brightened, and then went out.
I yanked out my blade and ran back to the ship, past a stunned Eton, snagging my bag as I went. It felt good to be useful again.
I was too focused on taking off and too deafened by the roar of the engines as we left the planet’s atmosphere to notice him coming up behind me. But then I felt the pressure of a hand on the back of my captain’s chair. I wasn’t sure if I knew it was him, or hoped it was, or dreaded it. A quick glance through the floor’s metal grating to the level below told me it wasn’t Telu or Basra—they were both at their stations. And Arjan and Eton were still too shamefaced to approach me with anything less than an emergency.
I missed the days of my uncomplicated crew family. Nev was something else. He was too complicated. I felt good around him, and I hated myself around him. It burned, practically, the two pulls. Like liftoff, the tug-of-war between gravity and the thrusters, with me squashed in between, with his stupid smile and his damned eyes.
And then, when I’d let myself get too close to him, my eyes had made everything worse.
Without giving him the chance to speak first, I said, “Please go inform Telu of how we should approach Luvos so she can set our precise coordinates once I activate the Belarius Drive.”
“I already did,” he said. “Qole—”
“I don’t have time for any—”
“I know. And by all means, lay on the speed until we reach a safe range to engage the drive. But we’ve got some time yet. You need to see this, and I wanted it to be me who showed you.”
Nev leaned over my shoulder before I could object, coming uncomfortably close to touching me as he tapped at an infopad plugged into its stand on the dash. He was no longer wearing his jacket, just a fitted black undershirt. That wouldn’t last once the chill of space set in. Good thing, too. I tried to lean back, tried to quiet my pulse, tried hard to hate the muscles in his forearms. Instead, I found myself noticing that he smelled of sweat from Ranta’s heat, and something else, something indefinably him.