vertical bar with slits running up and down the length of it. The men kept working on something at its base. They would look up the pole, glance ahead, and then repeat the procedure.
Cole shut his eye to rest his retina from the halo of leaking light; he wiggled back against a pile of goods. One entire side of his body was almost completely numb from the cold metal, but he didn’t want to attract attention by sitting up. He worked the edge of the plate tight to his face again and cracked his eye to look for Riggs.
There was no sign of him, but he couldn’t see the entire deck. He craned his neck as much as possible, but the uncomfortable position and the constraints of his bound hands didn’t give him much of a vista. One thing he did notice was the absence of snow on the deck. Looking past the fur-clad men, he could see it was still driving sideways in heavy sheets, but none of it was in the air around the little craft. He couldn’t quite make out the bow of the ship, but something up ahead must’ve been splitting the flurries, sending the flakes to either side.
He raised his head to investigate, and one of the furry figures tapped another and pointed in his direction.
Cole froze. The alerted figure marched back in his direction, descending the few steps from the platform around the mast. At the base of the steps, the man stopped by a wooden barrel crisscrossed with ropes and pulled something from the lid—a mug of some sort. Stooping down in front of the barrel, he came up with a trail of steam rising from the mug, which wafted back in Cole’s direction.
The smell got to him before the man did: chocolate with a hint of rum. Or more like rum with a hint of chocolate. Cole felt paralyzed with indecision, wondering whether it was better to hide the plate and await his fate in darkness, or stay alert and have it stolen from him. Before he could decide, the figure was before him, crouching down close.
“I’ll have that,” the man said, snapping the plate out of Cole’s hand.
Cole squeezed his eyes shut and held them tight. The man’s accent was a bit different from the others, but there was still a hint of something foreign in it, or perhaps something archaic.
“Who are you guys?” Cole asked, his own voice shaky from the cold and fear.
The response was a loud sip from the mug, then the figure smacking his lips. Cole heard him put the mug down, followed by the sound of fluid being swished inside a vessel, like someone shaking a thermos back and forth.
“Who are we? We’re the same as you lads,” the man replied. “We’re the tainted.”
Before Cole could ask what that meant, he felt a wet rag laden with the smell of something chemical pressed to his face. He held his breath as long as he could, but he finally had to gasp for air.
As soon as he did—he was out again.
8
The Bern ship brought up from impound was far larger than Anlyn had expected. It was a warship, twice the size of the Ambassadorial craft she’d lost. She nearly balked and asked for another, wondering if she and Edison could operate such a craft for long periods of time.
The airlock hissed open, and a frazzled-looking pilot exited with his arms held high. Anlyn and Edison moved aside as the large Drenard squeezed past the duo to get to the control room. Bishar waved him through the door and thanked him, ushering him to the others who had stopped what they were doing to watch the bizarre confrontation.
“You aren’t thinking clearly,” Bishar said to Anlyn.
For a brief moment, she wondered if he was right. Perhaps setting off to aid Molly was just another way of running from home, from the looming war, from all her royal responsibilities. Maybe her
She shook the doubts away and backed toward the door, keeping the lance between her and Bishar. “Check the ship,” she told Edison in English.
She stayed near the airlock, the weight of the lance and the bluff it represented already exhausting her. Edison disappeared inside.
“There’ll be no foul play,” Bishar assured her. “My actions will not be questioned when I write this up.”
“I’m not in the most trusting of moods, Cousin. I’ve half a mind to take you with us to make sure nothing happens. I hope you can appreciate my honor for not doing so.”
Bishar laughed nervously. “I do. More than you know. When you get to the rift, I’ll have a barrier tug remove a few canisters. We’ll replace some of the interior ones, but I won’t have them out for long. If you hesitate to go through, I’ll assume you came to your senses, and you can dock up back here. I’ll gladly forgive these transgressions and have you as a guest for dinner. We’ll prepare the finest Drenardian cuisine and eat in honor of the dead. Then we’ll see about working toward justice come morrow.”
“If you’re sincere, I appreciate the offer. You’ve been more than fair.”
After a few minutes, Edison stomped back through the airlock, his chest puffing as if after a great run. He spoke to Anlyn in English: “Vacated, by rough inspection. Single deck with a looped perimeter passageway. Adequate nourishment and spares, but absolute dearth of armaments.”
“You had the weapons systems removed?” Anlyn asked Bishar.
“Of course, but not just now. We do that for every ship we capture and impound.” He glanced back and forth between the two of them. “Are you really planning on waging war with those who rule the rest of the universe?”
“I’m hoping I don’t need to defend myself from friends and family before I get there,” Anlyn replied.
A sudden sadness washed over Bishar’s face, erasing the tension and anger. “I’m sorry we met like this,” he said.
“As am I.” Anlyn handed Edison his lance and bowed to her cousin, keeping her eyes on him all the while. He gave her a nod and a frown as she backed through the collar adapter and into the starship.
Edison followed. She left him behind to close the ship’s door and secure the hatch while she rushed off alone toward the bow. As her bare feet padded along the steel decking, she tried to prepare herself for what must come next. She was about attempt something she had promised herself she’d never do again. Something she’d hoped to avoid for the rest of her days:
Anlyn had learned to pilot in the Royal Academy—just the rudimentary basics needed to qualify licensure and uphold ancient traditions for Drenardian royalty. She likened it to the Pheno people’s habit of teaching their important females to ride Theryls, even if there was no chance of them ever taking one into battle.
Her real mastery of the art of space warfare came at Darrin, during the tumultuous civil war between the two planets and her time spent as an arm-dealer’s slave afterward. She had spent more than a Hori cycle there chained to a cockpit, learning to kill and speak English while daily tortured by a vile human named Albert.
Since her flight into freedom just over a month ago, Anlyn had pledged to stay away from cockpits for the rest of time. She could imagine herself sinking back into a depression if she had to work in one—could see herself losing her sanity again. Now, she didn’t know she had a choice. She couldn’t ask Edison to take over for her while she cowered in a bunk; that was just a different sort of slavery, one self-imposed.
Anlyn jogged along the empty corridor, past a few crew quarters and a mess hall full of hastily stacked boxes. She went through a large cargo bay and then finally came upon the dreaded place. She paused at the imaginary boundary between passageway and cockpit, that invisible line in the decking rising like some Darrin forcefield. She stood there for a moment, listening to the pounding of her own pulse. When she heard Edison stomping through the cargo bay, his gait drowning out the sound of her heart, she knew she could no longer delay. Summoning her courage, she stepped inside and approached the forward seating.
Her skin crawled as she pushed through the invisible barrier, the sight of the empty chairs filling her with a sense of dread. They were human-sized, just like
