Starflight (21 page)

“You and I both know what you were doing,” Cassia snapped. “Now, get down here and help me.”

The argument made Solara wonder, for the hundredth time, how the ship hands knew each other. Despite their sharp looks and harsh words, they moved through the
Banshee
like planets in orbit, sharing everything from meals to inside jokes with a comfortable familiarity unique to siblings. But if they really were brother and sister, why the differences in their body language? With his shameless stare and flirty smile, Kane acted like someone who’d regularly seduced for his supper, not a trust fund baby.

The two of them took a break from bickering long enough to decide that Kane would style her hair while Cassia handled the makeup. Then they ushered her onto a stool facing the bottom bunk and got down to business: Kane brushing her hair from behind while Cassia sat cross-legged on the mattress sorting through a box of cosmetics.

From her new vantage point, Solara noticed an assortment of photographs taped to the wall beside Cassia’s bed. She spotted Kane in one of them, his arm slung playfully around Cassia’s neck as they toasted each other with cups of red juice. Hellberry wine, maybe. The other photographs were of landscapes—lush, rolling hills of lavender giving way to an endless indigo lake, its ripples reflecting the glow of twin moons. Solara had never seen a place so breathtaking, and she caught herself frowning when Cassia blocked the view by leaning in to dust powder on her cheeks.

“Where were those pictures taken?” she asked. “They’re beautiful.”

Cassia lost her grasp on the powder puff, and it sailed to the floor. At once, her eyes found Kane’s and softened in sadness. “Just someplace I used to live,” she said. Kane finished a brushstroke and used his thumb to skim the outside of Cassia’s wrist in a touch so brief that Solara would’ve missed it if she’d blinked. But she hadn’t missed it, and in that sliver of a moment, she watched an exchange of pure intimacy pass between them.

Definitely not brother and sister,
she thought.

Neither spoke after that, so she kept silent. But Solara couldn’t stop prickles of worry from creeping over her. She and Doran had slipped into an easy trust with the
Banshee
crew, and yet she knew nothing about what had brought them all together.

Who were these people?

Doran battled a wave of dizziness, squinting hard to bring Solara into focus when she and the crew returned to his room. He had imagined how she might look in her dress, but nothing could’ve prepared him for the complete transformation that made her into a stranger—strikingly beautiful, to be sure, but so unfamiliar that the sight of her caused his brows to pinch together.

It was her eyes he noticed first, peering at him beneath long, iridescent lashes. Two butterfly wings fluttered out from her upper and lower lids, painted in autumn tones and treated with a holographic glaze so they appeared to blink along with her. When combined with the halo of silver ribbons woven through her braids, the effect was mesmerizing. But he couldn’t reconcile those eyes with the pair he’d grown accustomed to watching across the dinner table each night during games of
Would You Rather
.

He let his gaze wander and took in the ball gown, which twinkled with the brilliance of a starry night sky. The strapless design hugged her curves like a second skin, highlighting her bare shoulders and arms, and through some miracle that defied gravity, her breasts were thrust upward in a display halfway to her chin.

Doran nearly swallowed his tongue, trying very hard not to stare and batting down the selfish urge to wrap her in a blanket so that nobody else could see her like this. He forced his eyes lower, all the way to the tips of her toes, which alternately flashed pink and purple with animated lacquer. Her fingernails were polished as well, and her tattoos concealed. In all her glitz and glamour, he could easily imagine her gracing the cover of a fashion magazine.

He didn’t know how he felt about that.

Warring impulses tugged at him in a jumble of emotions he didn’t understand. He wanted to keep looking at her, to tell her that she took his breath away, but at the same time, he wanted to ask her to wash off the makeup and put on her regular clothes, to remove the flashy polish and let the beauty of her naked toes shine through.

He wanted her to be the Solara he’d come to know—
his
Solara.

Cassia bumped Kane with her shoulder. “Look. He’s speechless.”

“We do good work,” Kane agreed, admiring their creation.

When Solara glanced up at him again, Doran found his voice. “Wow,” he told her. “I don’t know what to say.” But she deserved more than that, so he added, “Five thousand credits was a small price to pay. You’re stunning.”

Her answering smile warmed his heart.

“And you’re forgiven,” she announced. Before he could ask what he’d done wrong, she turned and padded away. He called after her to be careful, but he wasn’t sure she heard.

Sometime later, as he lay awake in the darkness with nothing but his pain to keep him company, it occurred to Doran that once he reached Obsidian, he and Solara would part ways. She would continue on to her job in the fringe while he finished his father’s errand and returned home to clear his name. Their paths might never cross again.

He didn’t know how he felt about that, either.

Actually, yes, he did.

But before he had a chance to examine the reason for the new tightness in his chest, another dizzy spell came over him, along with a vicious chill that seemed to leach the marrow from his bones. Doran huddled beneath the covers while his insides pulsed like an abscessed tooth. He hoped Solara returned soon with his medicine. Otherwise they might part ways a lot earlier than he’d planned.

W
ith its flashing billboards illuminating the craters of an anchoring moon, the retail satellite was impossible to miss by any pilot taking the direct route from the nearest outpost to Obsidian—the route the
Banshee
had carefully avoided. This place was a tourist mecca, a respite from the months-long voyage where travelers could cure their cabin fever with honeyed wine, laser quests, and chintzy souvenirs.

But none of that interested Solara.

She leaned forward in her seat and peered out the shuttle window, scanning past multicolored scrolling advertisements for
QUICK SHUTTLE REPAIR!
and
LOOSEST SLOTS IN THE GALAXY!
to the single security checkpoint located at the top of the static bubble shielding the complex. That narrow apex was the only way in or out.

Not the ideal blueprint for making a quick getaway.

“Please tell me there’s a secret back door,” she said to Renny, who cut the shuttle thrusters and steered toward the checkpoint, essentially casting them out of the frying pan and into the fire. Their craft drifted near enough for Solara to make out the silhouette of a cloaked laser canon, invisible but for the distorted space around it, which rippled like heat waves rising above asphalt.

“I could do that,” he replied. “But I’d be lying.”

Solara blew out a breath and strapped a gel pack around her ankle while Renny tugged at the cuffs of his dress coat, trying to lengthen its sleeves. If he wanted to look dapper, he should’ve swiped a jacket from a taller man.

“Remember,” he said, holding up an ill-gotten credit fob. “I’m Uncle Jared, your mom’s brother, and you’re staying with me for the summer.”

He piloted their shuttle to the automated checkpoint scanner, two panels on either side of a narrow passageway monitored by a guard keeping watch from inside the station. While invisible beams swept the shuttle for weapons, Renny pressed his stolen fob to the side window. Casual browsing wasn’t permitted here, much like the auto-malls, and visitors had to supply proof of credit to gain entry. Through the station glass, the guard pointed a handheld scanner at the fob and asked Renny to state his name and identification code.

Renny tuned into the station’s frequency and said, “Jared Rogers,” followed by a series of letters and numbers. With no further delay, the guard disabled the security shield and allowed them to pass.

“That wasn’t hard,” Solara said, relaxing into her seat. She noticed that her palms had grown damp, and she glanced around for a place to wipe them, eventually settling on Renny’s sleeve. When he drew back in offense, she shrugged and pointed to her dress. “It was five thousand credits.”

He reached beneath his seat for a flask of Crystalline. “Take a sip of this, but don’t swallow,” he said. “Swish it around a little, then spit it in your hands and wipe it all over the front of you.”

She did as he asked but carefully avoided the dress. Even drunk, no girl in her right mind would spill booze on this gown. Leaning in, she asked, “Do I smell like a raging party?”

“Close enough, but it’ll evaporate soon.”

All the more reason to snatch the Tissue-Bond and run. Playing dress-up was fun, but the reality of what they were about to do—and the consequences of failing or getting caught—had begun to set in, and Solara’s heart pounded hard enough to rattle her rib cage.

Renny navigated past a strip of retail stores and dining establishments to the medical center at the far end of the complex. Instead of landing the shuttle near the emergency entrance, he alighted behind a ship twice their size.

“This’ll be easy,” he told her while cutting the engine. “But if anything goes wrong, come straight back here. The shuttle’s the safest place to hide, and you know how to fly it back to the
Banshee
in case…”
They catch me and you have to run.

He didn’t have to say the last part. Solara understood from her time on the streets. As honorable as it sounded to leave no man behind, that was a naive policy that would result in more damage, not less. The Enforcers would arrest them both and try turning them against each other in the interest of a speedy conviction. If the guards nabbed her, she fully expected Renny to save himself and return the medicine to the
Banshee
. Doran’s life was leaking out of him, and they didn’t have time to be noble.

“Thank you,” she told Renny. “I don’t know why you’re helping us, but I’m glad you’re here. There’s no way I could pull this off on my own.”

He flashed the same genuine smile that had melted her heart the instant they’d met. She wished he really were her uncle; that blood would tie them together no matter how much distance stretched between them. It wasn’t fair that people couldn’t pick their own families.

“It’s not an easy life out here,” he told her. “I think you know that. So when fate places a kindred traveler in your path, you do your best to make the journey last.”

“What’s your story?” she asked. This might be their last chance to talk, and she felt suddenly desperate to know more about him. “How did you end up on the
Banshee
?”

He shook a chiding finger, as if scolding her for lack of faith. “I’ll tell you this much. I had a home on Earth, with a good job and a woman who loved me more than I deserved. But my condition got in the way. I stole from the wrong people, the mafia, and it wasn’t safe to stay there anymore.” He patted her on the shoulder. “You’ll have to wait till later to hear the rest.”

He opened the shuttle doors, and Solara looped both arms around his neck when he came around to fetch her. As he carried her across the docking lot, she rested her head on his shoulder and grimaced in a show of pain, just in case the guards were watching the security feed. When the med-center’s emergency doors parted, cool air washed over them, thick with the biting scent of antiseptic.

She released an audible groan while Renny rushed to the admissions counter and told the attendant, “It’s my niece. She hurt her ankle at a party.” He drew a breath and went on, each word tumbling out quicker than the last. “I never should’ve let her go, but she promised there wouldn’t be drinking.”

“
Heyyyy
,” Solara slurred, jabbing a finger at his chest. “
It’sss
not my fault. They told me it was fruit punch.”

Ignoring her, Renny made pleading eyes at the receptionist, a middle-aged woman wearing a pinched expression that said her shift was nearly over and, along with it, her patience.