Yes, my common sense replied.
But no one would guess he’d stowed away on theStarfarer. A commercial touring company? It was the last place anyone would look. If you needed to get somewhere fast, stowing away on a cruise ship was the long way around. It was nonsensical.
I went to the control box to close the ramp.
“Steward Quay, do you have room for one more?” came a voice from the mouth of the ramp, drawing me out of my thoughts.
“I’m sorry, but we’re…” My voice trailed off as one last guest stepped onto the ship, sweat prickling his brow as if he’d run halfway across Coruscant to make it here.
I froze.
Because in front of me, framed by the ever-busy, ever-moving city, was the ghost of someone I thought I’d never see again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Son
I stared.
There was a young man at the top of the docking ramp, a duffel slung over his broad shoulder. His honey-brown hair was pushed back, curling chaotically at the ends, framing a sharp face and sharper hazel eyes. The same eyes I had.
Eyes inherited from our mom.
The world blurred around me, like I was on a ship kicking into hyperdrive.
“Val?”I choked.
Suddenly I wasn’t staring at a familiar stranger framed in the open ramp of theStarfarer; I was three years in the past on the night he’d left, sitting at that cramped little scratch table in the galley, arguing with him while the rest of the ship slept. I always lied that I didn’t remember what the argument was about, but of course I did. I had nightmares about it, because what if I was the reason he left?
We’d been drinking tea late that night, our throats scratchy from our recent tour visit to Hoth, back when Dad deemed Hoth moderately safe (or as safe as an icy-tundra-covered planet in the Outer Rim could be), before the First Order had swooped in. The cup warmed my frigid fingertips. I remembered that the most, how the cup felt searingly hot, like a brand.
Val had sneezed and sniffed, rubbing his nose on the sleeve of his uniform coat.
The entire ship had been in a somber mood since returning from Hoth. Most tours went off without a hitch. We’d land planetside, show where the Rebel Alliance took a stand against the Empire during the Battle of Hoth, and return. It had been a bloody battle, one the rebels had lost, so it was already a hard tour stop.
Still, even without knowing any of that, the remains of Echo Base and the wreckage of Imperial walkers across the tundra made the experience solemn. The tours usually didn’t get close to the wreckage—most everything had been picked through, anyway—but that day had been different.
For one, the tour had a group of younger men who had been troublemakers the entire trip, so when Dad found them unaccounted for back on theStarfarer, along with Val, he immediately figured out where they’d gone.
“You could have said no,” I’d finally said, breakingthe silence. Looking back on it, I wished I hadn’t opened my mouth at all. “You didn’t have to take them to the ruins.”
“I wanted to see them, too,” he had replied.
Once Val had returned to the ship with the lander and guests, Dad immediately snatched back the master key he’d given Val just two months before. They had a long talk in his office, and I heard some of the words that were shouted, because ships made of metal carried voices well. Val was going to take over theStarfarer. He was going to be captain one day—that was always the plan—so Dad always put more pressure on him.
Val was fiddling with his fingernails. There was still grime under them from exploring the ruins. “You can’t say you aren’t alittlecurious what’s out there.”
No, actually, I wasn’t. “Dad said they’re graves. We don’t mess with graves.”
Val rolled his eyes. “Nothing was in there.”
“You wentinsideone? Val—”
“Why not? As I said, nothing was inside. It was picked clean. Probably by some damn scavengers or something.”
I studied him quietly. My fingertips were warm on my cup, and I absently traced my thumbs around the lip of it.
“Don’t give me that look,” he said. “I know you think all his rules are stupid, too. ‘Don’t touch anything, don’tmove it, keep everything exactly as it is.’ ” He rolled his eyes. “As if therestof the galaxy does that.”
