After much blushing and stammering, Renny told them yes, and they sealed the deal with a toast of watered-down Crystalline from his private reserve.
“So where to next?” Renny asked, setting down his drained glass. “The cargo hold will be empty soon, and our paying passengers have turned into crew. I can probably pick up a few jobs under the radar, but nothing’s changed.”
Nobody had to ask what that meant. Each of them was a fugitive from something or other—the law, the mafia, a distant kingdom at war. It seemed their only option was to make a life in the fringe, a prospect Doran had once considered worse than prison. Now he found himself grinning.
He settled a hand low on Solara’s back, confident that with her by his side, he could be happy anywhere. He thumbed at his brother. “I have an Infinium connection. Just think what we could do if we never had to buy fuel again.”
“We could work as traders,” Solara suggested. “That’s halfway respectable.”
“As long as the other half is shady,” Kane teased. “Otherwise, where’s the fun in that?”
“Half-shady traders,” Doran said, testing it out. “That sounds like us.” He glanced down the table at his brother, already knowing his response but needing to ask anyway. “Want to come along? That fancy compound has to feel small sometimes.”
Gage answered with a smile that was barely a smile at all. It probably didn’t look like much to anyone else, but to Doran it spoke volumes. The twinkle in his brother’s eyes was the same he remembered from their childhood, and for a brief moment they weren’t on the Banshee anymore. They were laughing beneath the roof of a blanket fort, using flashlights to illuminate their gap-toothed faces. He knew change wouldn’t happen overnight, but the warm feeling behind his breastbone promised that one day they’d laugh like that again.
“I’ll take a rain check,” Gage said. “Right now I have my own work to do.” He started to say something more, but then he reached into his pocket, and his smile died.
“What’s wrong?” Doran asked.
“My data drive,” Gage said, standing from the bench and frantically patting himself down. “I had it with me yesterday. All my research is on there. If anyone finds it, they can access my files and sell them to the highest bidder.”
While the crew scanned the floor and peppered Gage with questions—“Where did you see it last?” “Is it in another pair of pants?”—Renny quietly emptied the contents of his pockets onto the table: three fuel chips, a marble, some bits of plastic, a small pink device, and, most important, one golden file drive. The group released a collective breath as Renny slid the data drive across the table.
“Sorry about that.”
Cassia snatched up the pink tool and shook it at him. “What is it with you and my laser blade? It’s like a conspiracy to keep me hairy.”
“Told you I didn’t take it,” Kane said, slanting her a glance.
“This time,” she retorted with a flip of her dreads.
“Don’t start, you two,” Solara warned them. “There’s still some juice left in my stunner, and I’m not afraid to use it.”
Renny reached deeper into his pocket and produced her handheld stunner. “Then you’ll want this back.”
Doran couldn’t help laughing. He glanced at his brother, expecting to find a horrified expression on his face. But Gage watched the exchange with fascination, and another emotion Doran recognized from his own time on the Banshee: a desire to belong. He’d wanted that as well. Maybe they weren’t so different.
“Come on,” Doran said, and clapped his brother on the shoulder. In three days, their mother would return, and he intended to be long gone by then. “I hear there’s a perfectly good beach simulator in that complex of yours.”
Gage nodded, a challenge behind his gaze. “And a flag football set.”
“No way.”
“Way.”
“You know what this means, right?”
“Yeah, I know,” Gage said, and delivered the kind of menacing grin that only a brother could get away with. “It means you’re going down.”
Warmth was a rare delicacy in space.
Solara had almost forgotten how exquisite sunlight felt on her skin, and she couldn’t stop humming with the simple pleasure of it. These simulator lamps were almost as good as the real thing. Reaching both arms over her head, she stretched out on the beach towel until her fingers and toes met the silky caress of sand. The fine grains had absorbed the heat from above, and she buried both hands to soak it up. They only had a few hours before it was time to leave. She didn’t intend to take one second for granted.
“Mmm,” she said again, smiling. “This is heaven.”