Starflight (39 page)

“Thank you,” Renny said in that gentle way of his. “We’re going to miss him.” He spoke without a hint of resentment, as if Gage hadn’t held the crew at gunpoint and locked them inside his lab twenty-four hours earlier.

That was when it occurred to Doran that Captain Rossi wasn’t the only person who’d changed everyone on board the ship. They owed their lives to the first mate, too. Placing one hand on the crutch in front of him, Doran said, “Nobody can replace the man we lost. But the
Banshee
needs a captain, and I nominate Renny for the job.”

“Seconded,” Solara said with a firm nod.

While Renny blinked behind his glasses, Kane asked, “All in favor?”

“Aye,” called five synchronized voices, including Gage’s.

Doran turned to Renny. “It’s unanimous. The job isn’t easy and the pay probably sucks, but I can’t imagine anyone else but you at the helm. Do you accept?”

After much blushing and stammering, Renny told them yes, and they sealed the deal with a toast of watered-down Crystalline from his private reserve.

“So where to next?” Renny asked, setting down his drained glass. “The cargo hold will be empty soon, and our paying passengers have turned into crew. I can probably pick up a few jobs under the radar, but nothing’s changed.”

Nobody had to ask what that meant. Each of them was a fugitive from something or other—the law, the mafia, a distant kingdom at war. It seemed their only option was to make a life in the fringe, a prospect Doran had once considered worse than prison. Now he found himself grinning.

He settled a hand low on Solara’s back, confident that with her by his side, he could be happy anywhere. He thumbed at his brother. “I have an Infinium connection. Just think what we could do if we never had to buy fuel again.”

“We could work as traders,” Solara suggested. “That’s halfway respectable.”

“As long as the other half is shady,” Kane teased. “Otherwise, where’s the fun in that?”

“Half-shady traders,” Doran said, testing it out. “That sounds like us.” He glanced down the table at his brother, already knowing his response but needing to ask anyway. “Want to come along? That fancy compound has to feel small sometimes.”

Gage answered with a smile that was barely a smile at all. It probably didn’t look like much to anyone else, but to Doran it spoke volumes. The twinkle in his brother’s eyes was the same he remembered from their childhood, and for a brief moment they weren’t on the
Banshee
anymore. They were laughing beneath the roof of a blanket fort, using flashlights to illuminate their gap-toothed faces. He knew change wouldn’t happen overnight, but the warm feeling behind his breastbone promised that one day they’d laugh like that again.

“I’ll take a rain check,” Gage said. “Right now I have my own work to do.” He started to say something more, but then he reached into his pocket, and his smile died.

“What’s wrong?” Doran asked.

“My data drive,” Gage said, standing from the bench and frantically patting himself down. “I had it with me yesterday. All my research is on there. If anyone finds it, they can access my files and sell them to the highest bidder.”

While the crew scanned the floor and peppered Gage with questions—“Where did you see it last?” “Is it in another pair of pants?”—Renny quietly emptied the contents of his pockets onto the table: three fuel chips, a marble, some bits of plastic, a small pink device, and, most important, one golden file drive. The group released a collective breath as Renny slid the data drive across the table.

“Sorry about that.”

Cassia snatched up the pink tool and shook it at him. “What is it with you and my laser blade? It’s like a conspiracy to keep me hairy.”

“Told you I didn’t take it,” Kane said, slanting her a glance.

“
This
time,” she retorted with a flip of her dreads.

“Don’t start, you two,” Solara warned them. “There’s still some juice left in my stunner, and I’m not afraid to use it.”

Renny reached deeper into his pocket and produced her handheld stunner. “Then you’ll want this back.”

Doran couldn’t help laughing. He glanced at his brother, expecting to find a horrified expression on his face. But Gage watched the exchange with fascination, and another emotion Doran recognized from his own time on the
Banshee
: a desire to belong. He’d wanted that as well. Maybe they weren’t so different.

“Come on,” Doran said, and clapped his brother on the shoulder. In three days, their mother would return, and he intended to be long gone by then. “I hear there’s a perfectly good beach simulator in that complex of yours.”

Gage nodded, a challenge behind his gaze. “
And
a flag football set.”

“No way.”

“Way.”

“You know what this means, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” Gage said, and delivered the kind of menacing grin that only a brother could get away with. “It means you’re going down.”

W
armth was a rare delicacy in space.

Solara had almost forgotten how exquisite sunlight felt on her skin, and she couldn’t stop humming with the simple pleasure of it. These simulator lamps were almost as good as the real thing. Reaching both arms over her head, she stretched out on the beach towel until her fingers and toes met the silky caress of sand. The fine grains had absorbed the heat from above, and she buried both hands to soak it up. They only had a few hours before it was time to leave. She didn’t intend to take one second for granted.

“Mmm,” she said again, smiling. “This is heaven.”

Though her eyes were closed, she knew Doran was watching her. She could tell by the way he circled her navel with an index finger. He didn’t seem to share the opinion that she looked ridiculous in her makeshift bikini of shorts paired with a cutoff T-shirt. It wasn’t long before his touch began to wander, straying to the ticklish curve of her waist.

With a giggle, she rolled onto her stomach and rested one cheek on the towel. “When you promise a vacation, you really deliver,” she said. “If I get any more relaxed, you’ll have to scoop my melted body off the sand.”

“It’s no private yacht in the Caribbean, but it’ll do.”

“No private yacht,” she repeated, mocking him. “This room is a wonder.”

Squinting against the light, she opened her eyes to take in the turquoise water gently lapping at the sand. The wave pool was designed to mimic the ocean, an effect achieved by its sloping floor, and it resembled the real thing if she didn’t look too closely.

“I changed my mind,” Doran said, walking two fingers along her lower back. “Forget yachts and snorkeling in the open sea. This vacation is perfect because it gives us the one thing we can’t find on Earth.”

“Hmm?” she asked. “What’s that?”

He leaned down until the warmth of his bare chest met her shoulders. Then his mouth was at her ear, whispering, “Total privacy.”

Before she could agree with him, he brushed his lips along the sensitive bend of her neck and rendered her speechless. With his body so close, a new kind of heat settled between her hipbones, quickening her breaths in time with her pulse. She rolled over for a kiss, but instead of lowering his mouth to hers, he lay on his side and propped on one elbow, gazing at her with the expression of someone seeing the stars for the first time.

The shift in him caught her off guard. “What’s the matter?”

At first he didn’t say anything. He brushed back a stray tendril of hair that had escaped her braid and caressed her cheek while his eyes moved over her face. Then he wrinkled his brow as if trying to solve a quadratic equation. “Sometimes I look at you, and it feels like my chest is caving in. How do you do that to me?”

Solara’s lips parted. How did she do it? She could very well ask him the same question, but she didn’t. Because like so many other times when she was alone with Doran, the words wouldn’t come. She didn’t know why, only that there seemed to be a disconnect between her heart and her voice. Maybe she loved him more than words.

Instead of talking, she threaded her fingers in the dark hair behind his neck and pulled him down for a kiss with all her heart behind it. She hoped that someday she would be able to turn feelings into conversation. Until then, she’d have to show him. And she did. They were so tangled up in each other that they didn’t hear the door open.

“Aw, come on,” Kane drawled. “Take your burning love somewhere else.”

“Seriously,” Cassia agreed. “Some of us are trying to keep our lunches down.”

While Solara threw them a withering look, Doran groaned, keeping both eyes shut as he swiveled his face in their direction. “Didn’t you read the sign?”

“What sign?” Kane asked, glancing around for the best spot to plant his folding chair.

“The one I hung on the door this morning,” Doran told him.

“Oh,” Cassia said. “The board that says ‘Stay Out’?”

“That’s the one.”

“I thought that only applied to pirates,” she told him, and spread a blue-striped towel on the sand. “Or the Daeva.”

“Public beach, guys,” Kane added with that flirty grin—the one he knew didn’t work on them but insisted on using anyway.

Solara exhaled long and slow. She asked in Doran’s ear, “What’s that you were saying about yachts and privacy?”

He laughed without humor. “The open sea isn’t looking too bad now, is it?”

“Neither is that grassy spot behind the barn on Cargill.”

“Before I forget,” Cassia said while digging inside her beach bag. “I have something for you. Renny gave me these before he went topside with Gage to refuel the ship. He said to return them with the usual spiel about how he’s sorry and he can’t help it.” She twirled a hand. “Blah, blah, blah.”

Since private time was over, Solara sat up to find out what was in the bag. She didn’t expect to see a pair of silvery bracelets, and it took a moment to recognize them as the indenture bands that had once linked her to Doran as his servant.

“Look,” she told him while taking the bracelets in her hand. They were heavier than she remembered, but she had no problem recalling the high-pitched beep that used to call her in the middle of the night. “I wonder how long Renny’s had these. I forgot all about them.”

Doran frowned at the bands, reaching out to touch the
MASTER
emblem and then pulling back. He didn’t seem to enjoy looking at them. When his gaze shifted to the birthmark at the base of Solara’s throat, she wondered if he was thinking about that day in the ticketing station.

Let’s get something straight, Rattail. If I agree to finance your passage, the only words that will leave your mouth for the next five months are “Yes, Mr. Spaulding.”

She gazed into the electric-blue eyes of the boy sitting beside her on the sand. Instead of a tuxedo and a haughty smirk, he wore baggy secondhand cutoffs and a frown of contrition. This version of Doran had abandoned a life of privilege to travel on a decrepit ship with a crew of fugitives. She couldn’t reconcile him with the other Doran, the one who’d hired her to wash his floor and fetch his champagne.

Taking his injured wrist, she carefully faced it up to expose the tattoo that matched hers, then traced the inky swords with her fingertip. “Seems like a lifetime ago when we wore those bracelets, doesn’t it?”

He wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Two lifetimes.”

“Neither of us had any idea what we were getting into.”

“One of us did.” He peeked at her through dark lashes. “I had no intention of making it easy on you. If we’d stayed on the
Zenith
, I would’ve run you into the ground, just because I could. You don’t know how awful I was.”

“Trust me,” she said with a grin. “I knew.” Holding up the indenture bands, she asked, “So what should we do with these?”

“Burn them.”

Solara found herself gripping the steel bands in case he tried to take them away. It was ridiculous to want them so badly when until a few minutes ago, she’d forgotten they existed. But she and Doran had a history, and these bracelets had set every wild moment of it in motion. The bands were as much a part of her as the tattoos that branded her a felon, and she had no plans to erase those, either.

“I’m not sorry it happened,” she told him.

Doran turned to meet her eyes, shaking his head as he took her face in his palm. “Me neither,” he said. “I’m sorry
how
it happened.”

“Semantics,” she dismissed with a wave. While kissing him on the nose, she tucked the bracelets out of sight beneath her beach towel. She wasn’t giving them up. “But enough of that. You promised me a vacation.”

“So I did.”

“Then let’s get back to it. Playtime’s over in a few—” She cut off with a gasp, her face drenched from the mighty splash of Cassia pushing Kane into the water. A second spray came shortly afterward when Kane hauled his princess over one shoulder and took his revenge. Cheeks dripping, Solara finished, “A few hours.”

Doran laughed and used his discarded shirt to blot her face. It smelled like him, and that made her smile. “I predict they’ll be bickering again in three…two…one.”

He was right, of course. But Solara wouldn’t have it any other way, because these were her people and this was their journey together—messy and wild and wonderful. She had no idea what the future would hold for any of them, beyond possibilities as infinite as the stars.