He does wear black all the time though. "I'd bet my entire pot that even his underclothes are black," the a'ani captain of the guard states. His name is Dopekh and he's become a good friend. Plus, he's a decent partner in Sticks. I'm sitting across from him with nothing but two credit chips left to my name, the rest of the pile on Dopekh's side of the table. The a'ani shakes his head, grinning. "He's a good leader, but he does have a certain look about him."
"Your entire pot?" I pretend to consider the credit pile in front of him. I don't need the credits and I suspect that Dopekh does, but I do love a challenge. "You're on. Where's his laundry chute?"
Dopekh's brows go up. "You're serious?"
I throw my sticks down. I was losing anyhow, and this sounds like more fun. "Of course I'm serious. Let's see if these underclothes of his are as severe and ridiculous as everything else he wears."
Dopekh hesitates, then a grin spreads across his face. "You think they'd have a cape?"
Underclothes with a cape? I snicker at the thought, because Lord Straik does love himself a cape. "A small one for his tail."
The a'ani laughs and then gets up from his seat, and I do, too. Then we race down the hall, heading for Lord Straik's personal quarters.
Lord Straik sa'Rin's enormous ship is called The Darkened Eye, and I'm not sure if that's supposed to mean something or if he just thinks it sounds impressive. I'm told that the ship has two eyes painted on the front of the hull, which seems pretentious to me given that we can't see the hull, but Lord Straik is a man who loves nothing more than appearances, so I guess I'm not surprised. As Straik's guests, our quarters are between his and the a'ani, and while ours aren't large or posh like his, they're decent quarters. I suspect we all share a laundry bot, though, and when I get to the hall that houses our rooms, I pause, waiting for Dopekh to catch up.
Now that we're in front of Straik's double doors, my companion looks as if he's having second thoughts. I'm not going to let him walk away from his bet, though. Dopekh hesitates, gesturing at the ornate doors. "Those will be locked."
"We don't need the door," I tell him, moving to the closest wall panel and running my fingers along it. I've learned a few things from my years as a corsair—namely that wall panels on a ship can hide anything and everything. Since the laundry bot in my quarters picks up my clothing and disappears into the wall, I suspect it does the same for his rooms. The first panel I pry off reveals nothing but pipes and wiring, but the second one I pull off has the bot I'm looking for.
With a grin at Dopekh, I haul it out of its dock and pull it into the hallway. "This thing weighs as much as your mother," I grunt as I haul it forward.
Dopekh just snorts. "Your insult is useless. I have no mother. And Lord Straik likes clean clothes, I guess." He grins at me again. "You ready to be proven wrong?"
"Absolutely." Though I forget which one of us bet that his underclothes would be black. Don't suppose it matters. I pry the lid off the bot and pull out a few pieces of wet clothing. I don't find what I'm looking for at first, but then at the bottom…sure enough.
I yank the wet black underclothes out of the bot's belly and hold them triumphantly into the air. "I had black!"
"No, you idiot," Dopekh tells me, laughing. "I had black! You took my bet. That means you thought they were another color!"
I twirl the piece of clothing on my finger, just out of his reach when he tries to grab it. "Does it matter? The point is that his ass is just as pretentious as the rest of him."
"What the kef are you doing?" calls an angry voice.
Whoops. Busted.
6
ADIRON
Kaspar stares at me with an expression of confused disgust, his hands on his hips. In this moment, he looks just like Mathiras, disapproving and disappointed in me.
I lower the wet underclothes and toss them back into the bot. "This isn't what it looks like."
Kaspar turns slowly and eyes the large chunk of wall that I've pried the panels off of, then at the wet clothing strewn in the hallway. At the embarrassed clone at my side. "I'm not entirely sure what this looks like," he admits. "But can you not piss off our host? For five keffing minutes?"
"Maybe," I say grumpily and nudge the bot aside with my foot. "We were just having fun."
"I've been pinging your personal comm for ten minutes," Kaspar says, his exasperation giving way to that look of pure excitement on his face. "We've picked up a distress call on the frequency."
My eyes widen and I go still. "On THE frequency?"
Kaspar nods. "That very one. If you're done playing around with Lord sa'Rin's laundry, can you join us in his war room?"
"Right. Sure." I wipe my damp hands on my trou, hoping they don't smell too much like soap, and give Dopekh a sheepish look. "Uh, I've gotta go, buddy."
The clone just rolls his eyes. "I'll put everything back together. But if anyone asks, I'm blaming you."
I just laugh, because he might as well blame me. When you're the stupid one, you also get to get away with a lot more. "I guess you get to keep your credits for now," I tell him, reaching over to ruffle his hair like I would Zoey. He looks a bit like her, given that he doesn't have horns or mesakkah plating. Sure, he's bright red, and male, and a lot taller, but…he could be an overfed human. In a way, it makes me miss Zo because she was always up for my bone-headed schemes. "I'll catch up with you later," I tell Dopekh and jog down the hall to meet Kaspar.
My brother is already leaving, heading back the way he came, his tail swishing with impatience. I'm used to running after Kaspar, though, so I catch up easily and nudge him with my shoulder. "So, a distress signal?"
"Yes. Which you'd know if you spent more time on the bridge with the rest of us."
I make a face. "You really don't want me there." I'm not good with star maps. One quadrant looks much like another in my eyes, and I'm bad at charting fuel-efficient courses. The last time they let me navigate, I burned through all of our fuel because I wanted to get a good look at a double-ringed planet. I mean, if you can't enjoy the view, what's the point?
Kaspar doesn't answer, mostly because we both know I'm right. "The distress signal has to be from the Buoyant Star. It's the only thing we've picked up on this particular frequency. And it's in this quadrant, too. We're really close." He lifts his hands and cracks his knuckles, like he always does when he's antsy.
"I'm surprised anyone's still on board after three years. What're they saying?"
"Nothing. It's just the signal. There's no voices at all, which I thought was weird." Kaspar shrugs. "It might be that there's no one alive to turn off the signal."
The small hairs on the back of my neck stand up. "So it's haunted."
"It's not haunted."
"It might be. You said it's in this quadrant, right?" I gesture at one of the windows we pass by as we head for Straik's quarters. "Look around you, brother. This quadrant is utterly abandoned. You said yourself the only thing in this particular system is a couple of Class C planets." Class C means low resources and not eligible for colonization at this time.