He pushed himself up into a sitting position with a grunt and heavy sigh. “The ship? No. You can’t fly a dredger ship that size alone. Takes a minimum of a five-man crew.”
Hmm. So if not the ship, then … “Something on the ship?”
His expression scrunched into a sulky little grimace. “Sort of, yeah. I was supposed to be looking for someone the dredgers might have harvested.”
I frowned, studying his grim profile as he shifted uncomfortably. “Who?”
Phox shrugged his brawny shoulders. “Didn’t get a name. Just a DNA signature. Supposed to be an Alzumarian, though.”
My frown deepened. “An Alzumarian got picked up by dredgers in my solar system? Why?”
He turned his face away, seeming to grow more uncomfortable by the second. “I didn’t ask, okay? Goes with the territory. If you want to make a living doing what I do, you don’t ask those kinds of questions. You just get the info you need to get the job done and the money upfront.”
“And you weren’t even curious?”
He threw his head back with an exaggerated groan. “Urrgh, okay, fine. I did a little asking around. Just in case I was about to walk into a hailstorm of gunfire. All answers came up basically the same. Odds were, I was headed out there to pick up a wanted fugitive. Probably someone the Alzumarian Interplanetary Council wanted to arrest. It seemed plausible. A primitive system like yours is a good place to hide out if you need to lie low for a while.”
Hmm. So he was in the business of secretly moving wanted criminals around? Boy, this just kept getting better and better.
Phox sat for a little longer, rubbing the back of his neck beneath his shaggy black-and-silver hair. Then he let out another noisy, growling breath and stood. “We’ve got a few hours before the elder sun sets. That’ll cool things off. Might as well rest until then.”
I watched him stride away, stooping over some in the small interior of the ship. He paused at the glass-topped table and ran a hand over it, activating a shimmering blue hologram of a sphere. A planet? Thermax, maybe?
Lying in silence on the cool metal floor, I let my mind wander as my eyes tracked him all around the inside of our new salvaged ship. It wasn’t until he’d begun going through a few of the hidden compartments hidden beneath the floor panels that I noticed something on his hands. Phox’s knuckles, fingers, and palms were smeared with dried, flaking bits of black and dark red.
Was that … blood?
If it was, it couldn’t be his. There were no wounds on his hands that I could see. No nicks, cuts, or scrapes.
That only left one other option.
I gulped as my stomach clenched into a hard knot. He’d already admitted to being a thief. But what else had he done? Had it been in self-defense? Or in an effort to steal this ship just so we could survive? And what else would he have to do to make sure we lived another day?
I shut my eyes tightly and willed my body to relax, inch by inch. Breathe. I just had to keep breathing. Whatever Phox had done, there was no taking it back now. And part of me wouldn’t have wanted him to even if he could.
We were alive. That was all that mattered.
For now.
12
ALIEN BIRD
Five long hours dragged by until the temperature finally dipped into an endurable range. Phox declared it was safe for us to go out and begin our search for more supplies. Not that we’d been sitting on our hands the entire time. By then, we had worked together and gone through every nook and cranny in our newly hijacked runner craft, searching for anything we could use. So far, things were looking up.
Well, relative to five hours ago, anyway.
There were two surface survival suits stashed in one of the hidden compartments under the floor panels. One of them fit me well enough that all the climate regulating devices worked properly, so that meant I could go out into the heat without dying of heat stroke. The second was too big for me, but way too small for Phox. I had a feeling he probably ran into that problem a lot when it came to clothing. Lucky for him, it wasn’t as much of a problem. Phox claimed that his species had a much higher tolerance for pain and physical stress. Basically, he was tougher. He could handle the heat so long as he stayed hydrated and got a chance to come back and take a breather for a few minutes.
Fortunately, water wasn’t a problem for now.
Along with a variety of tools and a few spare parts, we’d also found a few days’ rations, six gallons worth of drinking water stored in thick rubbery bags, some medical supplies, and even extra ammunition. No weapons, though. Phox seemed especially disappointed about that.
“Just how is this ammunition, anyway?” I asked, holding up one of the slender glass vials about the size of my finger. The bluish liquid inside sparkled and glowed prettily as it drifted in sluggish bubbles, almost like a miniature glittery lava lamp.
“Because if it comes into contact with anything while the particles are energized from fast motion—like, say, being fired out of a long-range plasma rifle—it explodes. Pretty spectacularly, in fact.” He leaned over me, invading my space long enough to swipe the vial from my hand and tuck it carefully back into the long, padded belt that held all the others. “So how about you not mess with it, yeah?”
I scowled up at his smug, weird face as he buckled the belt around his torso and shoulder. “I’m not the one who goes around punching things, you know.”
“Fine, you can hold this.” He shoved a long metal object into my hands. One end was motorized to make the other
