She returned to her cabin after a hot shower in the head nearest the steam pumps. Didn’t bother to turn any lights on. Dropped her towel on the floor and collapsed into her bunk, her hair still damp.
The pillows reached up to cradle her head, and the blanket sighed softly across her. The silence of the room with the purr of the engines beyond and the rain gusting in sheets against the glass and wood around her promised uninterrupted slumber.
Her eyes shot open, sleep forgotten.
Someone was in her cabin.
Chapter 22
Her hand found the light switches on the panel behind her head. She pressed the middle button for the red nighttime chart-reading lights. It wouldn’t do to be blinded by the cabin’s full lights, and double her vulnerability.
Only a few paces away, Hankirk sat at her desk, one ankle over the opposite knee. He slouched slightly, elbows on the arms of the carved wooden desk chair, fingers tented. Looking all gods-rotted smug.
He was still in the civilian clothes he’d been wearing the last time she saw him. There was a black streak across one sleeve. He must have climbed aboard along the refuel lines at Subrosa and stowed away with their coal reserves. He was probably even dirtier than she could tell in the half light.
She couldn’t help but remember the hobby lights at Jasper’s shop which had been much the same as the chart lighting in her cabin now. The body of her old friend. The assassins hired by Hankirk, whose revolvers were now stowed in the drawer of the desk next to him.
“What, Imperial captains can’t afford their own passage?” she said, and swung her legs under her to sit up. She gathered the sheet in front of herself with one white-knuckled fist. Kept the other hand free, moving it toward the pistol she kept tucked alongside her mattress pad.
“We need to talk again,” he said. Apparently his idea of an explanation for stowing aboard.
She spared that a humorless laugh, then took a deep breath and resisted the temptation to pull the gun on him. She’d never meant it for ex-boyfriends.
“A chance to ambush us in the storms, more like.”
“I need that ring.”
For this, you’re gonna climb aboard my ship?
“Told you back on Subrosa,” she said. “I don’t have it. You should’ve snuck into the alien captain’s bunk. That ring is on the other side of the border by now.”
“I need you to get it back for me.”
“The hell would I do that for? I owe you some favor I forget about? You threatened to hang me and my crew. My wrencher’s still nursing the bruises your crew gave her. You shot at my ship, stalked me to Subrosa, and sent assassins after me and mine. Now you’ve stowed away on my ship and lurked in the shadows of my cabin. You get your eyeful? No, I owe you a long cold drop is what I owe you.”
“You gave it to the aliens. Foreigners. What do they care about Peridot? They’ll take their knowledge and leave, and where does that put us? If they take the ring, what good is that?”
“It’s about seventy-five thousand presscoins good to me. And if you want it so badly, I’d rather that ring leave our atmosphere with strangers than give you the rotted thing.”
“Talis, please,” he said, standing and taking a step toward her.
That did it. She pulled out the pistol. Thumb-cocked it.
“You came here to beg? Really?”
“I came here to reason with you. I’m trying to save the world. I give you my word.”
“People keep accusing me of being reasonable lately.” She pressed the intercom near the light switch, acting like she didn’t care that the movement required briefly baring her chest. “Someone bring some rope to my cabin, please.”
“Aye, Cap.” Tisker’s sleepy voice, confused.
“We have a minute.” She motioned back to the chair with the barrel of her gun, and used the back of her elbow to switch the full cabin lights on, squinting to prepare herself for the flood of brighter illumination. “Say your piece.”
He blinked as the lights over her shoulder caught him off guard. Hesitated, then let out a defeated sigh and sat back down. “They’re up to something.”
“Everyone is up to something. You certainly are. What makes your something more righteous than theirs? Than mine?”
Gods, she thought. Am I truly defending the aliens?
Hankirk ran both hands through his hair, massaging his scalp. He inhaled audibly through his nose. “The ring belongs to Peridot’s people.”
“Your people, you mean.” Here was the crux of it. She felt it coming.
“You’re one of my people, Talis. We’re the true heirs of the gods’ power.”
Talis made a disgusted sound and stood to claim her trousers from the pile of clothes she’d left on the floor. Kept the pistol trained on him, casually as she could while trying to keep herself covered and pull clothes on at the same time. He made no move but watched her; had the decency, at least, not to ogle. His gaze met hers and silently pleaded.
“Can’t you feel it? Something is wrong with our world. I’ve known it in my blood since I was a boy. We shouldn’t be this way. This broken planet. These five races. It’s wrong in a way that has to be fought.”
“By Silus’s cosmic wind,” she swore, borrowing one of Tisker’s pleasantries. “You haven’t changed. The same unrelenting racist zealot I remember.”
“I—” he started, but she cut him off.
“You’re seriously going to sit there and tell me I should help you steal back that ring so you can just… erase four of Peridot’s peoples? That’s your big sell? Genocide?”
“We want unity, not destruction.” He leaned forward, hands open as if they held evidence of his sincerity. “I’ve been to the Wind Monks’ drifting archives. I’ve seen the Lost Codex. We were all one people once.”
The muscles in her forearm
