“You’re really embracing this criminal activity thing,” I said. When I’d met Kest and her twin brother, they’d been scavenging from dead bodies because it was the only way they could support themselves on Van Diemann without joining one of the gangs that ran the planet.
“Not overtly.” She shrugged. “I’ve been messaging with the Technol who made that offer at the bazaar, making sure I can keep my clean record if I accept. She said they have special positions for third-genners as go-betweens with the non-prison planets, jobs where you’re not technically breaking any law, even if you’re helping someone else break it. There are ways to use CPA law against itself if you look hard enough. Sort of like me selling to Naph even though he’s a smuggler.”
I nodded. Kest and Rali had been born on Van Diemann, the children of the child of a political prisoner from their family’s home planet, so they’d had a lot of time to figure out how to get around the restrictions that would keep them from someday buying a ticket to somewhere else in the galaxy.
“Besides,” she went on when I didn’t say anything, “I was never going to get us off this trash heap scavenging. Doing it for sixteen years, I barely saved enough for one ticket. Sixteen more...” She sighed. “That would be a long time to wait.”
She sounded defeated, which I’d never heard from her before. I wanted to make her feel better, but before I could think of anything to say, Rali and Warcry came back from the dining car. Their arms were full of brightly colored cellophane baggies.
“We got food,” Warcry said, kicking the fold-down table so that it dropped into place between our four seats. He dumped his bags, then dropped into his seat.
Rali did the same with his armload. A couple bags slid off the mountain, and I caught the ones that dropped off my side.
“That’s a lot of food.” I turned one over and inspected the picture on the label. Looked like neon green shoestring potatoes. AlgaeFrize! the hot pink lettering screamed.
“A little for now, a little for the road.” Rali flicked his long hair out of his face with a jerk of his head and shoved a bag between his sister’s nose and her HUD screen until she grabbed it.
Kest frowned at the bag. “I thought you hated this mass-produced junk food stuff.”
“Yeah, because it’s full of impurities that can slow down or even impede your kishotenketsu advancement, and it tastes like an armpit,” Rali said. He squeezed his bulk past Warcry to the window seat.
“Don’t get him started, yeah?” Warcry said. “He complained about it the whole time we were picking stuff out.”
“But he still bought it,” I said.
“Technically Warcry handled the disgusting affair of exchanging fiat currency,” Rali said. “But it was all they had left in the dining car.” He eyed me and Warcry. “And given that the two most reckless members of our little band until yesterday had a healing script tattoo that would repair anything not immediately lethal, I thought it would be a good idea for me to infuse a bunch of whatever we could get our hands on with Healing Restoration.”
Kest blinked her lacy eyes. “Rali, were you planning ahead for once?”
“If you call attention to it, I’ll stop forever,” he said.
“Because it sounds like you were using logic and identifying patterns of behavior to plan for eventualities,” she teased. “It’s very Metal of you.”
He grinned and pointed at the bag in her hand. “Eat your lunch. I hunted and gathered myself to the bone for that.”
Things quieted down a little as we all dug into a bag. The AlgaeFrize weren’t quite as bad as Rali made them out to be, but they did have that extra-intense-fake-flavoring taste, and they left green residue on my fingertips like neon Cheetos.
“We’re almost the last passengers on the train,” Rali said, picking up another bag and closing his eyes. When I switched over to Ki-sight, his hands and chest glowed orange with Warm Heart Spirit. He was infusing the AlgaeFrize with his Healing Restoration ability. “I tried to strike up a conversation with the only guy besides us in the dining car, but he wasn’t interested.”
“Mantids never want to talk, do they?” Warcry tipped up his bag and dumped the last bits into his mouth. “I’ve done fights on their planet before. Dead silent, even during the big upsets. The only ones who ever say a word are their females, and only when they’re trying to talk you into fertilizing their eggs, then letting them eat your brains outta your skull.”
“You’ve been hit on by giant insects?” I asked, wiping some of the green AlgaeFrize dust on my jeans.
“Jealous, grav? Win a couple dozen Intergalactic Fighting Tourneys and they’ll be clickin’ in your ear, too. They probably won’t even care about your face,” he said, gesturing at me.
I laughed. After taking a couple poisoned thorn-whips to the face at the tournament, I was kind of scarred up, with a handful of pale barbwire-looking slashes across my left cheek. Could’ve been worse, though. Without the healing from the OSS script tattoo, my face might’ve still been scabbed over and festering.
Of course, Warcry was the only one douche enough to bring the scars up. My first instinct was to ask him how the ladies were going to feel about the explosion of glass shrapnel he’d had taken below the belt. But since I was working on thinking before I spouted off to friends I wanted to keep, I went with the softball instead.
“Mating with mantids? No wonder you’re braindead.”
Warcry pointed at me. “Oi, I got the offers, but I never agreed.”
“Guess it’s an honor just to be nominated,” I said, which none of them got because Earth humor.
“Female mantids eat the entire head,” Kest said absently, her nose already back in her HUD. “They don’t leave half-braindead mates walking around.”
“I don’t know,”
