Then came a deafening bang as the bot smacked its head against a steel buttress so hard Boots felt the hit through the soles of her feet. The trio came to a halt, and Nilah rushed back to look at her robot.
“Oh, sweetie, are you okay?” Nilah shushed the bot as it examined the offending steel beam, lenses flashing and motors whirring. She stood on tiptoes, and Teacup leaned down so she could polish its forehead with her sleeve. “Blast it, you’ve scuffed your faceplate.”
“If you didn’t like that,” Boots huffed, “you’re really… not going to like… taking your battle armor into… actual battle.”
Nilah cradled the bot’s head in her hands and baby-talked it. “Don’t listen to her, my pet. You won’t get scuffed, because you’re so graceful, no one will be able to shoot you.”
“Charger gets shot all the time. It’s a regular spellcatcher.”
Nilah replied with automatic racing bravado: “If Orna were as fast as me, it wouldn’t be a problem for her.” She remembered herself and gave Boots a serious look. “You are not to repeat that to her.”
Boots laughed and rubbed the fingers of one hand together. “Secrets cost money, kid.”
With a rude gesture and a smirk, Nilah said, “Jog on, then.”
“After you.”
They resumed.
But it was an ill match. Nilah established what she called “a reasonable pace” with the flashing of her dermaluxes. She kept apologizing for leaving Boots in the dust, and every time she did, Boots felt guilty for holding her up. Nilah was built better, and she needed to train better. After a while, Boots waved her and the bot onward, waiting until they’d rounded the corner to double over into a wheezing mess.
She regarded the next leg of her path—an impending stairwell—with hands on her knees, and a drop of stinging sweat trickled into her eye. Wiping only seemed to make it worse until she’d rubbed her eye raw. She hadn’t jogged so much since flight school. Physical training reqs had fallen off in the war.
“Screw this.” Boots headed for the mess. There’d be some water there, and after a couple of glasses, she could carb up with a beer. That was a thing she’d heard runners say.
When she arrived, she found Alister and Jeannie tucking into their breakfasts, preparing to start their shift in the kitchen. The twins weren’t great cooks, and they relied on a ton of prepackaged food, but they got the job done. Boots wasn’t about to complain. She hated cooking. If they’d left meal prep to her, she’d have the crew noshing Insto and ration bars for every meal.
“Morning,” said Alister. “You ready for a little breaking and entering?”
Boots grimaced, pinching her tank top’s chest and fanning her sweaty collar with some quick pulls. “Like, today?”
“When we get to Baron Gaultier’s,” said Alister.
“You don’t know that’s the plan.” Jeannie pulled her thin lips into a disapproving frown.
Alister balked. “We always steal stuff.”
“We’ll just see,” said Boots, sliding in beside them. After the tough run, even the hard benches of the mess felt like fluffy clouds on her butt. “Looks like you two are settling into KP just fine.” She added, “Kitchen Patrol,” seeing their confused looks.
“Oh, yeah,” said Jeannie. “We’re thinking of quitting and opening our own restaurant.”
Boots was about to tell her some harsh truths about their skill level when Jeannie cracked a smile. Of the whole crew, Boots had the most trouble reading the twins’ mannerisms, but they were both grown in test tubes by evil scientists, so any disconnects in communication were foregone conclusions.
“I was about to ask where you’d open your hot dog stand,” said Boots, winking.
“Gourmet hot dog stand,” Jeannie corrected. “But you know, if you have a problem with the cooking…”
She held up her palms. “Not me! Point me at the meal, and I’ll make it disap—”
“You know what we haven’t had in a long time?” Alister interrupted.
Stifling her annoyance at his preempt, Boots waited for his answer.
“Stuffed cabbages,” said Alister. “Armin is really slacking off, you know.”
The air in the mess hall seemed to vanish as Boots searched for the words to explain to him that Armin had sacrificed himself so everyone else could live. She looked to Jeannie, finding the woman’s shoulders tensed.
“Alister,” Jeannie began, but her brother’s eyes went distant.
“Oh,” he said. “Right. Yeah, sorry. Sorry. It’s just… hard to believe.”
“For all of us,” Boots added. The more she considered it, the further and further a post-run beer fell from favor. She’d have to sit there and sip it with the Ferriers, while Jeannie negotiated Alister’s mystery problems in front of her. It’d be an ugly setup.
“Maybe I should scram,” said Boots. “Don’t want to bother the cooks.”
“Yeah, maybe so.” Jeannie gave her an appreciative look. She obviously hadn’t been pleased Boots saw the confusion.
“Later,” said Alister with a weak wave.
Boots bade them good day and stepped into the hall. She could head back to her quarters, clean up, and take a nice nap before her watch. The hallway speakers, the ones used for emergency broadcast, chimed beside Boots.
“I’ve been tracking your progress with the ship’s sensors,” said Kin. “You’re about twenty-seven percent finished with your run.”
“You know, you’re a lot less fun, now that you’re such a narc.”
“Now now, if that’s something that bothers you,” said Kin, “maybe you should look into it.”
“But for now?”
“For now, you run.”
Chapter Two
Crew
Boots tossed and turned, searching her bed for sleep. Her legs burned from the run, and though her body longed to be in a coma, her mind wouldn’t stop turning over their mission parameters.
Baron Valentino Gaultier lived on Carré. Boots hated that planet with a burning passion, from the stinking Gray to the privileged noblesse living in the clouds. It’d been the site of the Clarkesfall Armistice, where Boots’s home country of Arca had signed their provisional surrender to the Kandamili. It’d been where Mother jammed a long sword through Didier Thomasi’s head after—
She winced, remembering the shine of the dripping blade.
Since Didier’s murder, there hadn’t been time to date, but perhaps that was a good thing. A man wouldn’t fit into Boots’s life. With a sore groan, she sat up, afraid that the longer she lay there, the more Didier’s ghost would come to haunt her. Something soft and sweet might chase him away, though.
“Kin,” she rasped.
“Lizzie,” came his voice, gentle in the night cycle.
She rubbed her eyes. “Water. Get some donuts going in the autochef. Want them hot when I get down there.”
The autochef was one of the last pieces of original gear remaining on the Capricious, but it was buggy and had a nervous habit of vomiting synthetic starch all over the floor whenever someone asked for a sandwich. It could still mix and fry donuts like a champ, though, so Boots was basically the only person using it.