It was short and terrifying. She didn’t have the parts. She definitely didn’t have the credits to buy them but that made no difference on a prison planet.
You missed the seal on the intake valve, Fred said, his voice flat in her ear. And the coupling for the lateral thruster shows stress fatigue. Also, we need coolant. A lot of coolant.
She didn’t argue. Just added them. “Anything else?”
A stiff drink and a new family, he suggested. But I suspect the budget won’t stretch.
“Funny, Fred. Very funny.”
I’m a riot. It’s the only thing keeping my circuits from frying.
She snorted, the sound harsh in the quiet heat. Across the pad, the air shimmered, distorting the shapes of the other ships like reflections in a dirty puddle. The veteran on the far left had her ramp up, locked tight. Paranoia or just good sense? Probably both. But the older woman with the mid-size hauler, she had her cargo bay open. Crates stacked near the entrance.
Inventory. Spares.
She clipped the comp to her belt and slid the access panel back into place, locking it with a sharp twist of her wrist. The metal burned her fingertips and she hissed again.
Cait. Fred’s tone stopped her before she could stand. Not his snark voice. The one he used when the math didn’t add up. I’m flagging the encrypted file to your solicitor’s secure channel. Immediate transmission.
She paused, wiping sweat from her upper lip with the back of her hand. “Why? We can send it over when we get back.”
Because if something happens to you on this rock, he said, there should be a record somewhere that isn’t on this ship. Somewhere Kian cannot scrub.
She sat back on her heels, the grit of the slabcrete biting into her knees. Through the open cockpit door, she could just see the edge of the console where his cartridge was plugged in. A battered grey box, scarred from a dozen transfers, housed in a custom interface she’d built herself when the manufacturer stopped supporting his model. Her family called him defective. Glitchy. A liability. They’d tried to replace him three times.
She’d told them where they could shove their upgrades.
“Do it,” she said softly.
Transmission complete. Receipt confirmed. There was a moment, then a second. Stay in visual range of the ship, Cait.
“I always do, Fred.”
I know. I just like to say it. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Or something.
“You’re a nag. You know that?”
I’m a tactical flight AI with a robust survival protocol. Nagging is a feature, not a bug.
She rolled her eyes, the tightness in her chest easing a little. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say.”
Standing, she tucked the comp under her arm and started across the pad. The sun hammered down, turning the air into a solid pressure against her skin. Her boots crunched loudly on the gritty surface as she headed for the mid-size hauler and the woman moving in its shade.
She had a plan, a repair list, a route home. When she got there, she had a case to build that would bury her brother so deep he’d need a mining permit to see sunlight.
3
Chapter 2
Heat rolled off the slabcrete, cooking through the thick soles of Cait’s boots. If she wasn’t careful, they’d be Swiss cheese before dinner. Crouching down, she ducked under the edge of the hull and then froze as a shadow stretched out across the slabcrete in front of her. It was long and lean. Definitely not a cargo drone. It was human-shaped or humanoid at the very least.
She didn’t flinch. Long experience taught her not to show all her emotions on her face. Instead, she just rocked back on her heels, adjusted her grip on her comp, and looked up.
And then kept on looking up.
The guy in front of her was tall, way too tall to be human. He had to be at least seven feet of lean, hard muscle blocking the sun from reaching her. Holy sh-he was right on top of her and she hadn’t even heard him approach. That was bad. Real bad. She knew from long experience that she had to keep her wits about her in places like this, but nobody had warned her about aliens who could creep up on you without making a fuc-fudging sound.
She narrowed her eyes against the glare, trying to get a glimpse of his face. He was silhouetted by the sun, so all she could see was dark hair pulled back, but then he moved and her breath caught in her throat as her thoughts scattered.
