“We have done the work of justice this day, sisters,” one of them said.
“Blessed be the victors, who walk among the stars and are unburned,” the other two replied.
“Oh, they’re Chanters,” Eva muttered to Pink. “Madre de dios, those people will fuck you up. I’m glad I wasn’t here for that.”
Pink shuddered and nodded agreement.
“Did anyone see who threw the chair?” one of the security guards asked, her voice amplified to be heard over the crowd.
Eva picked up her pace and did not look back. She knew what happened to people who looked back, and it wasn’t good.
As they zipped away from Medoral, Eva checked her q-mail to find a message from her mom.
“Assuming your missing person wasn’t buying new bathroom lighting, he and his companions took a shuttle to Charon and bought three tickets to the gathering there. Hope this helps. Love you.”
Charon. Eva groaned. Why would Josh go there? And who was he traveling with? Mari hadn’t mentioned anything about him being with other people. At least there was a Gate nearby, so it wouldn’t be another few cycles just to reach Pluto.
“Hey, Min,” Eva said. “Set a course for Charon.”
“Really?” Min asked. “Are we, I mean, do we have time to—”
“Yes,” Eva said, rubbing her temple. “We’re going to Evercon.”
They convened in the mess again to discuss what they’d learned on Medoral and what to expect on Charon. Sue refused to sit, pacing back and forth in front of the table as Eva blew on her instant noodles to cool them. Min watched Sue pace, snacking on a protein bar; it was interesting that she’d ventured out of the bridge yet again, but Eva had more pressing questions on her mind. Mala had deposited herself in the middle of the table, in clear violation of Eva’s previous rants about hygiene, and had tucked her paws underneath her so she looked like a loaf of fruity pumpernickel.
“I have confirmed that your sibling did pass through Medoral,” Vakar told Sue. “The Fridge agents attempted to apprehend him and were unsuccessful. While they maintained a presence on the station for unrelated purposes, they were tasked with alerting their superiors if Josh were to return.” Between statements, he ingested cubes of nutrient paste quickly and methodically, and Eva resisted the urge to tell him to slow down.
“And your mom is sure he went to Evercon?” Pink asked.
“Pretty sure,” Eva said. “And with other mystery people, so that’s fun.”
“I can’t believe we’re so close to finding him,” Sue said, flapping her hands in excitement. “I hope he’s okay. I hope they didn’t make him do anything too bad.”
Pink leaned back in her chair, pursing her lips in a way that told Eva she had opinions. Eva waited, slurping her hot food carefully and burning the roof of her mouth anyway.
“You trust her?” Pink asked finally.
“My mom?” Eva asked, unable to keep the surprise out of her tone. “Yeah, I trust her. She could still be wrong, but I don’t think she’s lying if that’s what you mean.”
“I’m just saying, you trusted your sister and look where that got us.”
“This isn’t like that.” Eva put her fork down and sighed. “I know I’ve probably told you about this before, but my mom left Pete because he was a lying sack of crehnisk shit who thought laws were blueprints for building better crimes. She was worried about him putting us all in danger, but she hated the law-breaking and lying more than anything else. She always used to tell me, ‘Eva, lie to me and you’ll get double punished,’ and she meant it.”
“You still did it, though,” Pink said, smirking.
“Claro que sí,” Eva said. “I got away with it enough that it was worth rolling the dice. I didn’t even tell her exactly why we were looking for Josh, because what, I’m gonna say we’re on retainer for Mari’s super-secret intergalactic anti-Fridge club?” She grabbed her fork again, maybe a little too aggressively, and stirred her noodles.
“Agent Virgo said The Forge came first,” Sue said, pausing midstride to accept a random ship part from one of her tiny yellow bots.
“Counterpoint: Agent Virgo sucks plutonium exhaust,” Eva said, and Min giggled.
“So your mom’s not gonna stab us in the back later, then?” Pink asked. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. She might stop helping us if she thinks something is funky, because she takes the law a little too seriously, but she’s not gonna call the cops on us.” Sure, Regina worked for BOFA now, but she was auditing files or whatever. Staring at numbers on a holoscreen all cycle didn’t translate to calling in strike teams to drag her own daughter to the nearest rehab station.
“If you say so,” Pink said, shrugging. Then she smiled, her single eye staring vacantly at the cabinets behind Eva. “My brother was always big on rules, too. We knew he’d make a good lawyer someday, and he is. He can find loopholes a flea would have to squeeze through, and he’ll turn an argument right around on you before you can even get a proper grip on it. He’s slippery as a greased pig.”
“Good thing he uses his powers for awesome and not evil,” Eva said, taking another bite of food. “How about you, Vakar, you ever make your parents want to throw a chancleta at you?”
“My parents were not inclined to attack their offspring with improvised projectile weapons,” Vakar said, his scent laced with cinnamon as he relaxed. “I encountered some difficulties during my early training modules, primarily because I found them juvenile and uninteresting, but the programming adjusted quickly to compensate.”
“Hey, that sounds like me,” Min said. “I would get so bored, I would hack into the q-net and play free games instead of working. I totally brought down the whole system with a virus once.”
“By accident?” Sue asked, pausing to stare at Min.
“That time, yeah.”
Sue finished her circuit, stopping finally to lean against the counter. She flexed her calves so that she went up and down on the balls of her feet. “Josh got in trouble a lot,” she said quietly. “He’s way older than me, so he was allowed to do big-kid stuff that I wasn’t, but he still messed around.”
“Are we talking, like, skipping school and tagging buildings?” Eva asked.
Sue grimaced. “More like building prototype rockets and testing them without supervision.”
“That’s right,” Pink said. “Your family makes ships.”
“Mostly, yeah,” Sue said. “Ships, rockets, mining bots . . . custom stuff, you know? Sometimes we mod, sometimes we build from scratch.”
“Did you get in trouble, too?” Eva asked. It was hard to picture the pink-faced girl in front of her acting out, but Sue had robbed banks, so who knew.
“Our parents were less strict with me,” Sue replied. “I did a lot of the same stuff, but Josh was usually there to help, and if anyone got in trouble it was him for instigating.” Her forehead creased as she frowned. “He got really . . . intense after BOFA made us move.”
“Because of the Proarkhe discovery on your home planet,” Vakar interjected.