“Do you really want to play this game?” the Captain stopped before the pod, boots gleaming in the starlight. “Stop hiding in the shadows like a bug.”
A second passed.
Karr held his breath.
Then a hand slipped into the shadows, gripping the collar of his oil-stained suit. Karr yelped as the Captain yanked him out into the open.
“That escape pod is ancient. You’re signing yourself up for a death sentence!”
Blood boiling, Karr forced himself to stand tall as he glared up at his older brother’s face.
“What the hell do you want, Cade?” Karr asked.
They could have been twins, the Kingston brothers, if Cade weren’t thirteen years his elder. They shared the same hazel eyes. The same curly hair, strong jaw and lean build.
But where Cade was tall and strong, the picture of a captain, Karr was short and scrappy. The smallest on their crew, by far.
And the two could not have been more different on the inside.
Cade was all plot and plan, control and command.
Karr lived moment to moment, like space trash, tumbling head over heels, unsure of where he was going or if he’d ever make it there.
“I want to protect you,” Cade said, his tone every bit like a disappointed father. “I can’t do that if you’re intent on throwing yourself into a pod that hasn’t worked for over thirty years.”
“Thirty years is generous,” Karr said. “I can fix it.”
But even as he spoke the words, he began to doubt them.
“You could,” Cade said, inclining his head at the pod behind Karr, “if you had a year’s worth of time, and thousands of creds’ worth of parts that we don’t have on this ship.” He placed a hand on Karr’s shoulder. “This is ridiculous. You can’t just run away.”
Karr barked out a laugh. “Isn’t that what we’re best at?”
That damned throb-throb-throb returned, which quickly reminded him that his dear brother before him was the one who’d ordered Karr knocked out, bound up, and placed in a locked room aboard the Starfall. Conveniently, just in time to leave Beta Earth and Karr’s dreams of freedom behind. “Let me go back.”
Cade stooped to pick up the old, rusty wrench. One of the few belongings left from their father besides Karr’s ring. “We aren’t free to choose our destinations. You know that.” He turned the wrench around, grease marring his evenly trimmed fingernails. “You also know we have a mech drone you can use. It would make it easier to fix this junker up.”
Karr took the wrench from Cade’s hand. “I prefer to use my hands. Just as I prefer not being kidnapped by my own flesh and blood.”
“It was that or allow Jeb to handle you.” Cade rapped the side of the pod with his knuckles. A bit of metal flaked away. “You were reckless. I did what I had to do.”
“And you enjoyed it,” Karr spat.
Cade worked his jaw back and forth in the very same way Karr did when he was trying to hold back a curse. But Cade had self-control. Karr had a mouth like a bottle rocket.
“Blood is stronger than fear,” Cade said softly. A classic captain’s line. “You’ve taken that to heart, and you’ve always had my back, even when you’d rather stab a knife in it.”
“Screwdriver,” Karr said. Cade raised a brow. “I’d choose a screwdriver instead of a knife.”
Cade ignored that sentiment. “We have an opportunity before us, Karr. One that will award us the prize of our lives. Play our cards right, and we can go back to Beta. But not in a pod. We’ll take the Starfall. Hell, we can buy Jeb as our personal pet, and make him do the smuggling for a change.”
“You,” Karr said as he looked into Cade’s eyes, “have gone mad. We’re never going to get away from this life. I’ve known it since the day Jeb plucked us out of the system. And if we’d been truly convicted by the ITC?” He dropped the wrench on the ground, wincing at the clatter. “We’d both be spending the rest of our lives behind bars. And he’d still be free.”
The truth hung between them.
Bare naked and ugly.
Cade sighed. “We’ve had a change in employment.”
Karr’s neck cricked from whirling it so fast.
The brothers were prisoners to the black market; prisoners to Jeb and the illegal empire he’d built, selling drugs and smuggling goods to wealthy collectors galaxy-wide. They’d never be free of this life until they simply took a stand. But even then, Jeb would find a way to get back at them.
Cade removed something from his jacket pocket and held it out. At first glance, it was simply a dull hunk of jagged black rock. “This is our freedom. And it’s not going to Jeb.”
“You’re going to double-cross him,” Karr realized. “You want us to double-cross him. “With who?”
“Friedrich Geisinger.”
Karr burst out laughing.
Friedrich Geisinger was the king of a pharmaceutical empire. A reclusive man who’d created so many medical advances, society practically bowed at his feet. It was his great-great grandfather that discovered the atlas orb, the cleanest and strongest source of power known to man. It was his great-grandfather that had cured the common cold, and his uncle that had cured cancer.
It was Geisinger’s father that had created the supplemental vaccine that was supposed to save lives from the environmental changes. It was widely taken by all on Earth before it turned into the Reaper’s Disease. It had wiped out half of humanity there; a fate that Friedrich Geisinger had spent his entire life trying to unwind. To clear his family name.
Though only in his forties, Friedrich had a pill on the market for every ailment. A patch for every problem. Small solutions… but he’d never cracked the code on the Reaper.
“There is no way in hell,” Karr said through his laughter, “Friedrich Geisinger would hire us for a job. He’s busy trying to unravel the knots his father made.”
But Cade wasn’t laughing.
He crossed his arms and leaned back against the pod, face as stoic as a statue.
“Cade,” Karr said.
“Come on.” Cade only shrugged.
“Seriously?” Karr’s laughter fizzled to nothing. “You’re serious.”
“A captain never lies. He recently purchased the dwarf planet at auction. A low-level acquisition, being that the planet is practically uninhabitable by outsiders. I think many were shocked to find one of Geisinger’s emissaries wasting their time at the auction. But he’s sending us out on a short-term mission to dig up some of the planet’s resources. He’s a powerful man, despite his father’s history. He says he’s on the verge of something big. And that little planet is the last key to helping him unlock it. One more job, and we’ll have our freedom.” He set the rock in the open doorway of the pod and backed away.
Karr chuckled beneath his breath. “It’s a pipe dream. Jeb will kill us all.”
“We have the protection promise of Friedrich Geisinger. Jeb can’t compete with that.”
True, Karr thought. For he knew that despite all of Jeb’s contacts and threats, he could never hold a candle to a man as wealthy as Geisinger. “What does it do? The rock.”