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Loran threw his weight into his chair, narrowed eyes pinging between Kaia’s own. “You’re not sick…”
“No.”
Now he knows I’m fucking crazy. Unhinged. Useless. I’m definitely getting spaced.
But Kaia wasn’t about to volunteer an explanation. She wasn’t giving him that—thewhy. She wouldn’t tell him about her little brother’s cancer, or that it had all been her fucking fault. Her parents had scraped together everything they had to send Ahton to Heaven when he died, and that was nowhere near enough. Kaia had no idea where they got the chips for it. The rest of her life revolved around saving what she needed to get to him, and each year it was getting harder to live with the guilt of what she’d done. Killed him, and then left him all alone in Heaven. She’d gotten impatient for her atonement, and that made her careless.
Thankfully Loran didn’t seem interested in all that. He was thinking. She saw it in his eyes, schemes ticking over. Loran was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. She had the space now, but remained pinned to the wall. Was he calculating how much use he could get from her before tossing her out the airlock?
“You’re much more his type,” Loran muttered, snapping Kaia out of her reeling thoughts.
“Huh?”
He regarded her, eyes roaming down as though assessing her as a series of parts. Usually when he did that, there was this hungry undercurrent on his face. That was why she thought he sent for her in the first place. But now the gaze was impersonal, calculating. Kaia hugged her arms across her chest, even though no part of her was exposed. She was still wearing the long-sleeved base layer that went under her flight suit and fitted synth khaki trousers. Kaia turned her eyes to the toes of his boots.
“I can get you what you want, Scav.” Loran reclined in his seat. He put an ankle over his knee, thumb tapping against his calf. “And you can make up for this littledebacleyou’ve created.”
“H…” She swallowed the dry scratching in her throat. “How?”
There was still a chance. She may not get spaced after all. She may get a chance to do it on her own terms, with enough chips to join Ahton.
“Heard ofColossal?”
“The colony?”
For a moment Kaia recalled playing on Artega Seven with Ahton. They’d sat on the dirt floor pretending rocks they’d collected were colony ships discovering New Earth. He loved that nonsense. She’d played along because she owed him that much and more.
A curt nod from the warlord brought her back. He sat forward, all calm. All cold, calculated practicality. It gave Kaia confidence to push herself off the wall and work her head back into the game.
“There’s something happening onColossal,” he said. “Something big.”
She shoved her ass up onto Loran’s desk. “What?”
“Mare Halena, the commander. She summoned her one and only son back to the ship.”
“So?”
“So…” Loran scooted his chair to the table, legs spread wide on either side of her own. A callused hand drifted to her thigh, fingertips picking over the seams in the pockets stitched there. “Her son hasn’t been on that ship in over a decade. He’s been holed up on Mars, living it up. If she’s summoned him back, it means something is close. Something like a changeover.”
“…So?”
Loran looked at her like she was an idiot, fingers suddenly digging into her thigh as if to squeeze her into understanding. “My little greedy bitch, you can’t be that clueless.”
Kaia scowled, jerking her leg from his grip. “I’ve been too busy running jobs foryou, Loran. Not giving a shit about the colonies.”
His lips twitched in a small smirk. “I know. Don’t worry. You’ll get it. If Orion Halen—”
“Orion?” Kaia scoffed. “Does he have a brother namedCanis Major?”
“You’ll get to ask him yourself soon.” Kaia didn’t like the flash of Loran’s smirk, but remained silent as he continued. “Orion Halendoesn’t want anything to do with that colony . He’s got… a reputation. And I have a feeling he’s none too happy about the prospective wives his parentsprobably have picked out for him once he drags himself back toColossal.”
Kaia’s thought back to the sleek ship she saw in the docking bay earlier, and the expensive-looking man with blue-black hair and long, bitter eyes chiseled into his stony face. Was that him?
“You know all this how?”
Loran shrugged. “Don't you worry about that, little Scav. The rich kid wouldn’t pass up on a chance to stick it to his parents.Ibet…”
Loran walked his fingers up her thigh, a small frown on his brows as he strafed inward. He smiled as her muscles tensed under his touch, her breath hitching. Kaia despised him, but it wasn’t just fear that held her in place, and she fucking hated herself for it.
