“You okay?” Layth was a comforting presence on the edge of her personal space. Close enough for her to feel him, but not so close as to be touching.
She stretched her mouth into a smile and forced a nod. “Yeah, I wanted to give Hicks a moment before we head out.”
When the pilot lifted her head from Collins’s blue-gray fur, her cheeks were wet. “Okay,” she whispered. “Time to go. Be brave.”
Meja couldn’t decide if she was talking to the cat or herself. She lifted Collins from Hicks’s outstretched arms and put him back into the carrier. When she closed the gate, the locks beeped once and engaged. Layth had already helped her fashion a cover for the carrier out of one of his medical supply boxes. Bringing a live animal in-system usually required extensive paperwork and quarantines; she couldn’t afford either of those with Golden Ratio on the search for the stolen cats, and for all his protestations the doctor was a clever smuggler.
Zion stepped out of the cockpit and curled his arm around Hicks. He brushed his lips over the top of her head, and she turned and squeezed him tightly around the middle. The tenderness of the gesture had Meja consciously aware of how much she missed the simple pleasures of human contact. Other than the one aborted hug with Layth, she hadn’t touched another person in almost two weeks. She turned away quickly, annoyed by the sudden heat behind her eyes.
Layth, too, looked uncomfortable. “Ready?”
“As I expect I’ll ever be.” She swept her arm toward the shuttle’s cargo ramp. “Lead the way.”
Layth trailed along behind Meja, pushing the hand truck with Collins hidden on board, and found it hard not to see Hephaestus Prime through her eyes. He’d been twice before, and most of the people he’d met in the capital city of New Lemnos were criminals, which had colored his opinion and had left him jaded, or so he thought. Watching her changed everything. Her delight at each new sight or smell showed plainly on her face. The enthusiasm was infectious.
She stopped at a complex fountain featuring spitting seahorses pulling a buff Poseidon from a shell-shaped chariot. Around them, the strings of lights that festooned each building twinkled in the arcing spray. Her voice was giddy. “This is incredible.”
It was hard to argue, though he’d never noticed it before. “The one thing they’ve got plenty of on Heph Prime is hypersalinated water. It makes for gorgeous fountains, even if they’re a pain to clean.” He nodded to the crust of salt around the mouth of each horse, like a crystalline bridle. He knew custodial staff would be through in a few hours to knock the salt free, but it didn’t detract from the magic of the moment.
His guilt, however, did.
She’d asked an honest question about his family. And after sharing about herself. The delicate nature of trust indicated that he should have responded with something. Anything would have been better than slamming down the wall like he had. The pained look that flashed across her face had cut deep, reminding him all too well why he’d left home in the first place. Both of his siblings had exceled in their parents’ eyes, leaving him constantly expected to be more, better, or different. Then he’d done exactly that, and they’d never forgiven him. Joining Burbidge’s planetary military was apparently too different for them. And if not, then his hiring on with a smuggler crew afterward sealed the deal.
Smuggler. While he might not like to say it out loud, he could at least admit that part to himself. Mira Barnes and her ragtag crew had absolutely accepted him, no questions asked. April, the most standoffish member of the crew, apparently considered him a friend. It left him off balance, as though he’d helped himself to some of the opiates he traded to make money for medical supplies.
Another facet of his life that would mortify his parents. They were firmly seated in Burbidge’s upper class, through successful careers in law and government. They’d never known what it was like to struggle for something, or to be proud of a clever hack that extended an item’s usefulness another few weeks. Had never had to weigh selling one drug to buy another.
“You’re quiet. Care to share?” Meja’s voice cracked through his reverie, dragging him back to the present. She hovered on the edge of touch range, a courtesy he both appreciated and felt bad about, especially in the wake of Zion’s and Hicks’s casual touch on the shuttle.
He forced himself to smile. “Thinking about the last time I was here on Heph. It’s been a bit.” It wasn’t quite a lie. The general class in this section of town would have felt right at home to his family, and indeed they’d often frequented the equivalent in Londinium.
“What did you do?”
“Sold four kilos of medical-grade narcotics to a hover gang in exchange for enough SkinSeal, KnitFast, and Omni to keep the crew healthy and in one piece. For a few months at least.” And hormone patches for himself, but she didn’t need to know that.
He’d said it bluntly, to shock her. Remind her that she didn’t fit in with the world he lived in now, any more than he fit in with hers. She didn’t notice, instead chuckling half to herself. “I imagine Barr and Tyler go through rather a lot.”
“You have no idea.” He smiled, and it felt good. Even with April, he didn’t often have moments of mutual rapport, and he clung to the momentary joy tenaciously, knowing it wouldn’t last.
She led them to an expensive-looking nightclub with no sign on the outside—the sort of place where if you had to ask the name of the club, then it was clear you weren’t their target audience. She walked with casual confidence past the people lined up on the sidewalk outside and straight to the bouncer at the door. The larger woman stiffened, starting to reach into her jacket, but paused when Meja pulled out her omnidevice.
“I’m here to see Rhys Zuniga.” Meja oozed confidence and thrust her omni toward the other woman as though she could barely be bothered. “He’s expecting us.”
The bouncer looked skeptical, but she scanned Meja’s omni, smirking in surprise when the scanner went green to clear them. The woman opened the door to the protest of those still waiting outside. “Third floor. Overlooking the atrium.”
Following Meja into the club, Layth was uncomfortably aware of how far he’d drifted from this world of idle rich youth. Despite not being much older than the majority of the crowd—and younger than more than a few of them—everyone around seemed like children to him. And yet, it was exactly the sort of place he and his siblings had gone to on Burbidge.
Even in the lift, music assaulted them from all directions, the pulsing bassline like the building’s beating heart, evident everywhere, even if you couldn’t hear it. It reverberated up the souls of his feet from the floor, and his arms from where he held the hand truck. The drinks were brightly colored, and no doubt grotesquely overpriced. The patrons were practically a monolith despite their diversity. Rich, bored, and entitled.
It would have made him feel tired, frustrated, but for Meja. Like the eye of a multicolored storm, she was an area of calm control in the club’s manufactured chaos. She led them out of the lift on three and strode purposefully toward a circle of low couches that overlooked the open space and down onto the crowded dance floor. Three more bouncers stood on the perimeter while a man sprawled on the couch, wrinkling what had to be a designer suit jacket with the casual carelessness of someone who could afford it.