Page 9 of Crave
June let out a sigh much bigger than she was. “Does anyone ever get the life they are promised?” She squinshed her face, which she probably believed made her look older and wiser but mostly looked like she’d stepped barefoot on a slymusk. “Well, probably somebody. And I probably wouldn’t like them anyway.”
Kinsley snorted. “I find it hard to believe there’s anyone you wouldn’t like. After all, you invitedmeto brunch.”
June scowled with a really nice person’s attempt at ferocity. “Mag,” she said abruptly. “I stay far away from him. He’s too big and scary for me. See? There’s somebody.”
“Well, you don’t have to date or mate any of the orcs, June,” Adeline said. “Maybe you’ll meet someone at the Luster instead.”
Kinsley looked down at her burrito which suddenly tasted like nothing more than one of the many frozen meals she’d eaten as a kid. “So you’re still going to the Luster, even though the rock isn’t the fortune they thought it was?”
“Not what they thought,” Adeline said, with another one of those irritatingly serene smiles. “But we’re figuring out a way to make it work, together.”
For a woman born and married into wealth, not work—even if she’d fled from it all—she seemed very confident. Kinsley felt equally assured that the opposite was every bit as possible, even if she’d never worked an honest day in her life either.
At least Sil was doing more than inspo-ing. Kinsley frowned. “From what I’ve heard, Luster Station sounds like a dangerous place. More like a gathering of scavengers and outlaws than respectable people.”
Adeline lifted one eyebrow; she hadn’t left behind such better-than-you mannerisms when she’d left Earth. “Respectable like…people who sneak onto spaceships?”
June glanced uneasily between them. “Kinsley didn’t try to sneak onto the pirates’ ship when they came for Dorn. In fact, she helped…” Her voice trailed off when Kinsley held up one hand.
“I did trick my way onto theDeepWander,” she admitted. “Because I followed you here.”
Adeline jerked straighter. “Followedme? How? I didn’t know you before.”
“I knew you, sort of. I was scamming your late ex-husband’s company.” Kinsley shrugged when the other two women boggled at her. “He was a bad guy, working for a bad business that did bad business with other bad people.”
Sitting back with a thump, Adeline stared at her. “I almost like you better now.”
Kinsley smirked. “Yeah, I don’t feel bad about it either. Or I didn’t, until they figured out what I was doing. When you disappeared, I decided I better do the same. I never would’ve guessed about…” She waved her hand.
Adeline huffed out a breath, but June nodded. “Like I said, we’re all here trying to get something we couldn’t find on Earth, so I don’t think anyone will choose to leave. If any of us were the sort to give up, we would’ve stayed where we were. We all wanted to change, and this is definitely a change, even if it’s not quite the change we thought.”
Kinsley took another gulp of coffee, tasting only the bitterness. So what did it say about her that she was being sent back to the scene of her various crimes, discarded under a cloud of suspicion and shame?
Maybe it said that things didn’t change at all.
Chapter 4
“No,” Mag boomed. The power of his rejection jostled the datpad Sil had balanced on the command dais, and the projected holographic map flickered uneasily, as if the apex could extinguish a galaxy at his command. “Absolutely not. You aren’t leaving. And you are absolutely not leaving for the Zarnox Zone.”
Sil paced a few strides around his brother in the gather-hall where he’d asked for an audience. “But—”
“You are not running off in pursuit of the lies of a stowaway probably mistranslating the ravings of a rock.”
Sil grimaced. He hadn’t deluded himself that convincing the apex of this mission would be simple, but he hadn’t thought he’d have to fight his brother this hard.
He squinted into the guttering light. “Teq. We may have lost our assay team leader, but as crusher, you must understand the potential here. Possibly centuries of the rock’s spalled material, waiting to be found and retrieved. At the Luster, the rare isotopes alone would be worth…” He shrugged all four arms in an elaborate Earther gesture. “Maybe enough that we’d never have to worry again.”
The big crusher crossed all his arms—another Earther gesture, one that Sil didn’t particularly appreciate right now—and mused, “Or it’s possible you’ll find nothing at all. From what you’ve said, Roxy was semi-dormant, without the resources it needed to synthesize, so likely not growing much at all and thus not leaving much behind. Also, from what Oliver indicates, it had very little awareness while it was cold. So it might not be relating accurately where it came from.”
Squaring off to the two males, Sil fought to keep his carapace from flaring. Not that Mag or Teq would attack him for such an atavistic threat display, but they’d think even less of his reasoned and rational arguments. “Isn’t it worth the chance? How is what I propose riskier than gambling on the Luster?”
Mag let out a frustrated rumble. “Even if the rock remembers and the Earther female is truthfully relaying its conversation, going after the remnants is too hazardous. We’ve already had trouble with pirates, and we don’t have the credits or connections for more firepower or friends. The Zarnox Zone is beyond patrolled space lanes, deep in uncontrolled territory, harboring worse than pirates. We’d be not just on our own but completely exposed, and theDeepWanderwould make too tempting a target.”
Sil straightened. “I would never risk the ship.”
“Because it’s not yours,” Mag agreed. “The Luster ismygamble.”
The needless reminder stabbed through Sil with laser precision, the truth of it cauterizing as it went—and yet still brutally painful.
