Unmade (11 page)

“I'm
not
worried,” Mira said with a sharp gloss of pride. “We talk all the time. Renna tells me plenty.”

“Like what?” Cade asked. She couldn't imagine what Renna would keep from her own crew but confide to the girl.

Mira ticked items off on her fingers. “She hates it when everyone's asleep and she sees a comet and she wants to wake all of you up but she knows that no one will thank her for it. And she loves foggy atmosphere and rain. And she gets scared, a lot.”

Lee's face crumpled and her hands hurried to the wall.

“Anything else?” Cade asked.

Mira nodded. “She's hungry.”

Renna's fuel needle wobble-pressed dangerously close to the empty line.

Cade and Lee and Mira watched it in a solemn lineup. Rennik and Ayumi, who'd been hailing nearby ships, hemmed them in.

“Did you know about this?” Cade asked Rennik.

He went a special shade of death-pale.

“How did it happen?” Cade asked. “I thought you had enough fuel for a whole run. What is that? A year's worth?”

“We did.” Lee patted Renna with an absent hand.

Rennik's face clenched tight. “Renna isn't a machine,” he said. “Her fuel is food. She's usually efficient in the extreme, but all of this fast-and-hard flying puts stress on her systems. Sometimes the only way to compensate is increased intake.”

“So she's stress eating?” Lee asked.

“Essentially,” Rennik said.

“Fan-snugging-tastic.” Lee broke out of the little group and walked off, possibly to hide the dots of water at the edges of her eyes.

“So we put down,” Cade said. “Refuel.”

“We can't.” This was no auto-argument. Lee hunched forward, feeling every word in her gut. “The nearest planet with the right supplies is too far. We'd spin out before that.”

“What are the right supplies?” Cade asked.

“Organic matter, vegetable in nature,” Rennik said. The crew—minus Lee, who must have already known—united to stare at him. “Cabbage, if we can find it. Renna loves cabbage.”

“We're only a day out from Andana,” Cade said. The only thing worse than putting down on her least favorite planet would be putting down to find everyone dead. “There's no way she can make it?”

Rennik answered her question with a hard stare.

Renna would fly anywhere, at any speed, if that's what Cade needed. But she couldn't bring herself to ask. She knew what it meant to be stretched too far, too thin, all the time.

Lee turned to Rennik, fear swapped out for grim sureness. “You know what we have to do.”

“No.” Whatever Lee was about to propose, Rennik had seen it coming, and he stood firm.

Lee turned to Ayumi, to drum up support. “There's a trading post—”

Rennik cut in. “A
nonhuman
trading post—”

“Between here and Andana. It's almost completely on the way.”

Renna slid the floor a few times, up, then back. Like a shrug. Not a vote of confidence, but at least it wasn't a doom-laden rumble.

“It's too risky,” Rennik said.

But Cade couldn't ignore the change under her feet.

“There's risky and there's dead.”

 

“Stop. Wriggling.”

Lee stood on a chair above Rennik, trying to drop gold tentlike material over his head. Ayumi and Mira waited on the ground to help pull it into place.

“Hatchum don't
wriggle,
” Rennik said.

“Well, you're not much of a Hatchum,” Lee said. “Hence the robes.”

The cloth, instead of a graceful flutter-and-fit, slumped. Stuck in odd places. Ayumi fiddled with the sleeves, which gaped three times too large at the wrist. Apparently, Rennik kept his old ceremonial robes hanging around, in case he needed to add a legitimate air to his diciest missions.

If Cade had ever needed help finding Rennik less want-able, these robes were made to order.

“You look very nonhuman!” Ayumi said, working against the sleeve-droop. Rennik adjusted the robes and ignored the compliment.

Lee jumped off the chair. “Now there's the question of who goes with him.”

“I do,” Cade said.

“No one,” Rennik said at the same time.

Lee pursed her lips. “See, that's where I think you're both wrong. I have a grip on how these trading stations work.”

“I won't let anyone risk their life,” Rennik said, tugging at his wide collar.

“No one will,” Lee said. “But you're an outlaw too, and if there's trouble, it's not the kind you want to take on with two hands. No matter how good those hands are at swirling blades around.”

Cade rolled her eyes.

“Renna has been risking her life for us every day,” Cade said. “We can give her a few hours.”

“A fine point,” Lee added.

When Cade and Lee pooled their stubbornness, Rennik didn't stand a chance. He slid a glance between the two of them. “It should be Gori who comes with me. He's nonhuman. Darkriders are rare, so he might draw some attention, but less than I'd get with a human on my arm.”

“Great plan,” Lee said, “except it involves two impossible things.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Waking Gori up when he doesn't want to, and getting him to leave the ship, which he never does.”

Rennik's fancy sleeves crumpled as he put his hands up in surrender.

With that part figured out, Cade and Lee locked eyes, mouths set in harsh lines, wills matched.

“I can disguise myself as nonhuman,” Lee said. “Plus I have the flight skills.
And
the spaceport experience.”

There was no way Cade was letting them go without her. It looked like she was beat, but she still had a card to play. “Rennik told me the next time there was danger, he and I would go in together.”

Rennik looked stricken, but Lee broke into a smile. “It's settled, then,” she said. “We're both going.”

“Me, too!” Mira said.

“No,” Cade and Lee said chorused.

Rennik kneeled in front of Mira. “It's more than possible that you saved Renna's life.” Cade looked down on the scene and her chest swelled tight. “I'd like to ask you to stay here and take charge of keeping her safe.”

Mira's face twitched in an odd pattern, computing. She put a hand to the wall and struck a nod.

“All right,” Cade said. “Let's move.”

Ayumi, who had been quiet since the control panels, chose this moment to speak up. “You're sure you have to?” she asked. “Those attacks changed things for the human race. I have notes, I have stories, all of which back up the basic premise that, historically speaking, when things get bad for our kind, they get really bad.”

Lee pried Ayumi's fingers out of her curls, pulled her hands close, and centered them between her long fingers.

“If things want to sour on us, we just won't let them.”

Cade wondered if Lee would live by those words. If they would really stand between her and a good fight.

The meeting broke up, but Lee turned back and made one more dive at the bag that held Rennik's Hatchum finery. “Oh, wait, this is the best part!” She produced a slew of silver bells.

Rennik's sigh came from the depths of his gut. “I had hoped you would forget those.”

“Never,” Lee said.

She tied some around Rennik's neck, and others in circles around his upper arms, accenting the puff of his sleeves. Cade laughed once, and it sent Mira into fits. Ayumi pressed her lips together. Even Renna quivered.

“I hope you appreciate this,” Rennik mumbled to Cade as he passed her on the way out.

“Me?” she asked. “I'm not the one who pulled those things from storage.”

“No, but . . .” Rennik's scowl faded. “You're the only human I would act like a Hatchum for.” He headed for the control room, ringing all the way. Cade's heart kicked out of time, a little too hard. She told it to calm down. They had people to save. Vegetable matter to locate.

 

The trading station was bigger than Cade had imagined. In terms of size, it could have been a small moon, but it was wheel-spoked instead of round, with long arms spreading from a central point. The arms alternated, some lined with docks, some with shops where nonhumans could trade for what they needed on long space runs. Sharp lights—red, blue, green—outlined the metal in the dark.

It was beautiful.

Cade didn't waste a lot of time being jealous of nonhumans, but the trading station gave her good reason. Without spacesick, nonhumans could live in the black as long as they wanted. Since they weren't being hunted out of the universe, they could fly without the constant fear that crept over Cade's minutes and days.

Lee eased Ayumi's shuttle into the long rows of docks. Cade had never seen so many small craft in one place, not even at the spaceport on Andana.

Lee gave the shuttle's control panel a
good-ship
pat.

“This is one of the reasons we avoid space refuels,” Lee said, low enough that Rennik wouldn't hear. “Renna is one-of-a-kind when it comes to ships. On most of the planets where we put down, she's a curiosity, nothing more. But here we can run into Hatchum, and that starts the questions up right.”

It was true, Ayumi's ship blended with the others, but Cade knew that she'd be able to pick it out of any lineup. It didn't have distinctive markings from the outside. The difference was in the scale, the proportions. Something about its humanness.

Cade picked a corner of the hold and helped Lee into the form-fitting Saea outfit that would keep her safe in the nonhuman crowd. Lee had insisted on Cade wearing it, and Cade had counter-insisted, which led to a coin toss: loser wears the suit. Cade rolled the light blue skin-film over Lee's freckled shoulders, and pasted the bonus eye to the back of her neck.

With Lee transformed, they met Rennik at the back of the hold. He'd slid into a different personality easier than he'd shrugged on the robes. He was hard-faced, calm, twice as unreadable as the real Rennik.

The dock swirled open.

Rennik and Lee went in first, and Cade ducked around their shoulders to get her first true look at the trading station. Low ceilings, bright lights, glass walls, the stir-and-bustle of shops. It made the black market on Andana look like an old smudge.

Years working in space meant Rennik and Lee were used to this. Cade would have to make up for her limited experience with a quick stare and a touch of brass. But as soon as she stepped in sight of the nonhumans, she knew that no amount of posturing would do. They stared at her and the air went flat, like someone had strangled everything that was good to breathe out of it.

Lee checked a map at the center of the hall, so casually that Cade thought she might start whistling. Lee had lots of practice in pretending that her plans were solid and intact when they had already unraveled.

“Organics are in row 4, section 19,” Lee said, in Saea. Cade understood the words, which gave her a little scrap of meaning to hold on to. Saea was one of the languages she could mostly understand, and sort of speak. It was something Cade had always done on Andana, at the club, picking up bits of dialect like dropped coins.

Lee led the way, and Rennik stayed close to Cade as they turned into row 4. He tried to hide her but it was useless. A fresh group of nonhumans stared. Saea detached themselves from the crowd, and two walked right up to Lee and hailed her as one of their kin.

Rennik stepped forward and put his most intimidating calm into effect. “It's a great pleasure to meet you,” he said in their language. The vocabulary was basic and Rennik's accent was clean. Cade had no trouble following along. “I'm Nesko, of Hatch.” He nodded at Lee. “This is my second in command.”

“And the human?”

The sleeping air bristled.

“She's Hatchum,” Rennik said. It was a bold lie, and Cade couldn't imagine him getting away with it. But if Rennik had the same worry, it didn't show in the smallest crease of his skin. It looked like he wasn't done lying. “This is my new wife.” He clutched Cade to his side, where she fit perfectly.

Cade blushed so hard that it added weight to Rennik's absurd story. “She's shy,” he said. “Doesn't speak much.”

“Only when I need to,” Cade added, speaking Saea—which Rennik didn't know she could do.

His calm took a direct hit as Cade watched him figure out that she must have understood the part about being his wife. Lee forced a laugh down her throat.

The impatient foot-shuffles of the Saea pulled Cade away from her friends' reactions. “Where are your orbitals?”

“Sending messages at the post.” Rennik's answer came fast, but not too fast. He was good at this game, and the Saea could sense it.

So they doubled their efforts on Cade.

One of them stepped forward, nudged into her space. “She's short for a Hatchum. And her eyes are—”

Rennik caught the Saea's hand, half-raised. “Not yours to inspect.”

His killing grip turned the Saea's fingers white, and all of row 4 trembled, on the edge of a fight. Cade had a knife in each pocket, and her hands hung loose at her sides. But she didn't let them travel the last few inches. Not yet.

The Saea backed off, summoning fake smiles. “All the happiness in the universe to you.” They turned to leave, but Cade didn't feel one bit safer until they were around the corner, their bonus eyes unable to track her.

Lee leaned into Rennik, then Cade, with an impish twist of a grin. “That's a timely match.”

Of course, that was the real brilliance of Rennik calling Cade his wife. If anyone tried to touch her, or even stand too close, a Hatchum would take it as an insult to his honor. And insulted Hatchum were famous for hacking into people.

Rennik, Lee, and Cade took the halls at a fast-tapping pace, but not a run. Cade's mind rushed ahead, pushing at the self-imposed limits of her feet. She started to hate the low, bright halls.