“Any reason why they’re looking for you?”
“They’re not,” Finn admitted. “They don’t know that I’m here. I’d like to keep it that way.”
“You do have a second identity you can use?” Most higher-ranking people did, even if it was illegal.
“I do.”
“Then use that, and stay on board. Problem solved.”
“The site reviews say Aurora is cheaper for ship services,” Rex said. “They say the cost of resupplying a ship with a standard package—whatever that means—is ten to fifteen percent lower than at nearby stations.”
He was looking at the screen that folded out from his metal arm.
Tina got up from the couch. “That’s it then. We’re going to Aurora. I’ll go and set the navigation. We can cope with unfriendly locals. We can’t cope with my severe shortage of money. I like the idea of someone being able to fix our inverter cheaply.”
When she walked past him, Finn still looked unhappy.
Tina climbed the ladder into the middle of the habitat, and ascended into the arm that attached the habitat to the rest of the ship. As she climbed, she felt herself getting lighter, until she could push off and float into the control cabin, which sat atop the central cylinder that formed the ship and which contained the engines.
The lights in this part of the ship were off to conserve battery power in case of an inverter mishap.
By the bluish glow from the ship’s controls, she floated over the rows of seats where the passengers sat when the habitat had to be stowed for arrival and departure.
She pulled herself into the pilot’s seat and went through the motions. She checked the coordinates, entered the destination, checked the jump queue and reported her intention to visit Aurora Station.
Sector Control came back with permission and a time slot when they would open a jump window. Tina made note of it and intended to be at the controls at least an hour before, to check if everything worked.
But first, there was time for dinner.
Honestly, she was looking forward to having something other than curry with goose eggs. So many things had already run out. It was high time they resupplied the ship.
Chapter Two
When Tina came back into the habitat, the couch was empty.
“Where is Finn?” she asked.
“He said he was going to the gym,” Rex said.
The gym was in the other swinging arm of the habitat section, and accessible only through the zero-gravity centre of the ship. She hadn’t noticed anyone coming past when she was at the controls, but the tube was at the back of the passage, and she had been busy.
“He seems so grumpy,” Rex said.
“Yeah, I’m not sure what’s going on,” Tina said. She stood behind Rex, looking at the little parts that Rex and Rasa had taken out of the airlock panel that lay on the table, labelled and numbered so that they could remember what went where. The collection of little chips wobbled slightly with the constant movement of the habitat’s rotation.
“You really didn’t want to go to Beta,” Rex said.
“I’ve been there. It’s a foul, disgusting place. I doubt pirate occupation has made it any better. It’s not safe for us.”
“It’s OK to say that it’s about me,” Rasa said, without looking up from her work.
They had turned up the light above the table to its maximum strength, which made Rasa’s skin look near-white. The tiny tattoo on her upper arm stood out black.
Rasa had told her that she’d been given the mark “when I was a young girl” but had said very little about the circumstances in which she had received it. Tina had tried to search for the meaning of the small rune-like sign that looked like a satellite dish pointing upwards, but had drawn a blank.
Yet it had to mean something, most likely ownership by a pimp.
“Well,” Tina said. “I wouldn’t want your old life to catch up with you.”
Rasa didn’t reply to that. Exactly what that old life of hers was remained a mystery.
She met Rex’s eyes across the table. The corner of his mouth twitched, while he used his metal hands to pull another chip loose from the circuit board.
Having Rasa along had been good for both her and Rex. Rasa was smarter than Tina would have given the dirty creature she’d first found living inside her long-abandoned ship credit for. She had expected to have to teach her to do the most basic things like clean her teeth and sleep in a bed, let alone things like reading and writing.
But to her surprise, Rasa had basic knowledge of most of those things, even if she was still scared of the noise made by the jets hissing water vapour into the shower.
Under her dirty stolen clothing, she had worn a belt with a satchel that contained a few treasures and an ID card in the name of Rasa Vichenko, with a photo of a young girl.
The name itself didn’t register any warnings, but the number matched up with the accessible part of the database and the birth date was roughly accurate. It showed Rasa as having been born at a place called Malan Intersect Station, which Tina was utterly unfamiliar with but turned out to be a medium-size industrial station in the Centauri Mining belt. Her parents were Dom Vichenko and Lara Petrova. They were both miners.
Rasa claimed that she had a brother in the Force. A Force membership search under Vichenko had brought up twenty-five records. The public side of the database didn’t allow users to view the details and images of the employees.
Rasa said his name was Jack. There was no Jack in the list.
At some point the family must have broken up. If Rasa’s timeline about this was correct, it had happened when she was a little girl, after which she and her mother had drifted from ship to ship, station to station, courtesy of a number of her mother’s dubious boyfriends, before Rasa either ran away or was kicked out of a ship
