Sue wandered back toward the cargo bay, holding one bot in each hand and scolding them quietly. Eva stood and hobbled over to put her taza in the sanitizer, wondering whether she should grab a snack or head straight to her cabin. Vakar appeared at her side, laying a claw gently on her arm.
“Would you like assistance returning to your room?” he asked, smelling like vanilla and lavender under all the licorice.
Eva grinned, raising an eyebrow. “I’m sure Fuácata wouldn’t mind the help.” The snack could definitely wait.
“I said rest, woman,” Pink called from the doorway. “Don’t make me confine you to the med bay. I have a bunch of remote patients in my virtual queue, and I don’t want to waste my very expensive time patching your sorry ass twice.”
Vakar wagged his head in the quennian equivalent of a shrug, while Eva snorted. But as soon as Pink was gone, they shared a look and Eva burst into laughter.
“Come on,” she told him. “There’s more than one way to rest. I can think of at least three and I’m not even trying.”
Eva woke up four hours later with a throbbing pain in her leg, to the sound of Min pretending to be an alarm through the speakers.
“Qué pinga,” Eva said sleepily, raising her head off Vakar’s chest.
“Sorry to bother you, Cap,” Min said, “but you’ve got a call on the new emergency frequency.”
Mierda, Eva thought. That could only be one of three people, and she wasn’t in the mood to talk to any of them.
“Should I go?” Vakar rumbled.
“Nah, I don’t wanna move,” Eva said. “Min, audio only, please.”
A holo image projected from Eva’s closet door into the dim room. At first it crackled with static, but it quickly resolved into the face and upper body of her sister, Mari. Her brown hair was tied back in a ponytail, and unlike the last time Eva had seen her, she wore a dark-red spacesuit with extra armored plating over the chest. Her expression was neutral, controlled, like she’d done a bunch of deep-breathing exercises before making the call. Which she probably had, given how good Eva was at getting on her nerves.
“Eva?” Mari asked, her neutral expression immediately slipping as a crease appeared between her brows. “Are you there? I can’t see you.”
“I’m here,” Eva replied, slapping Vakar’s claw as he ran it up her bare thigh. “It’s been a while. What do you need?”
The furrow smoothed out. “What’s the passcode?” Mari asked.
Eva sighed and consulted her commlink. The key generator Mari had made her install spat out a long string of letters and numbers, which she dutifully repeated.
“And what’s your favorite . . .” Now Mari pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at Eva. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“What?”
“Favorite food.”
Eva hmmed wistfully. “Paella. So good.”
“You’re allergic to shrimp, boba.”
Vakar’s palps tickled her face and she stifled a giggle. “Pink has been giving me a lot of allergy meds,” she said. “Really strong ones.”
Mari closed her eyes. Eva could almost hear her silently counting to ten.
“My turn,” Eva said. “What’s your favorite, uh, Mesozoic species?”
Mari smirked. “Ah, see, someone who didn’t know me well might assume it was equisetites, because of the ribbed stems, but actually it’s baculites because they—”
“Ya, basta, I know it’s you because no one else is this boring.” Eva reluctantly sat up and swung her legs over the side of her bed, wincing as her injured thigh protested. “What do you want, Mari?”
Her sister’s face grew serious again. “My superiors need to speak with you. In person.”
Now Vakar sat up, too, smelling as curious as Eva felt. She knew nothing about Mari’s bosses, except that they thought it was totally fine to throw Eva to the proverbial wolves if it meant taking down The Fridge. And now they wanted to talk?
“I thought you didn’t want me anywhere near your business?” Eva said, barely concealing the salt in her tone.
“I don’t, but I’m not in charge.”
Eva’s smirk died quickly. “What do they want from me?”
“That’s not for me to say,” Mari replied, smoothing a stray hair against her head. “But if you’ll agree to meet with them and discuss their offer, I’ll send you the coordinates.”
Secrets, as usual. Great. “I assume I’d get paid for whatever this is?” Eva asked.
“Absolutely. A fair rate, possibly including fuel subsidies.”
Eva wrinkled her nose at Vakar, who blinked his inner eyelids pensively. He smelled minty, but otherwise noncommittal. No help there.
“I have to discuss it with my crew,” Eva said slowly. “I’m not the only captain anymore, and either we’re all in or we’re out.”
“How egalitarian of you,” Mari said. Her features had settled into a mask again, and her gaze flicked up like she was looking at something Eva couldn’t see. “I have to go, but please let me know within the next cycle. We’re running out of time. And options.”
“Right, I’m never the first pick for the spaceball team,” Eva muttered. “Call me back in an hour; I’ll have an answer for you then.”
“Bueno. Cuídate.”
The holo image vanished, plunging the room back into darkness except for the dim light from the fish tank above her bed. Vakar’s sister, Pollea, had taken care of Eva’s fish while Eva was indisposed—okay, no need to be euphemistic, it was while Eva was in cryo after being kidnapped because of shit that was basically Mari’s fault. But Eva had gotten her ship back, and her fish, and added a few new creatures to the tank for good measure, including the orange-shelled snail currently stuck to the glass, and the hermit crab digging through the substrate. She hadn’t worked up the nerve to add live coral or anemones, but she figured she would get there someday.
That, of course, depended on whether she lived long enough to see “someday” for herself. Her leg throbbed as a reminder that nothing was certain, that every fight she walked into was a roll of the Cubilete dice, and the other side might get a Carabina first.
Eva’s stomach grumbled; must be time for a meal. She did a quick visual survey of her injuries, which were recovering as slowly as one might expect without nanites. Her thigh bandages were intact, but definitely in rougher shape than they should have been for someone supposedly resting.
“Pink is gonna be mad at us,” she told Vakar.
“It is probable,” he agreed, tickling her shoulder with his palps.
“Eh, worth it.” She grabbed her nearest article of clothing off the floor. “Help me put on my pants so she doesn’t see it yet, and let’s get this party started.”
Min’s human body joined them in the mess this time. She was using the hot plate to make gyeranjjim for herself and Sue, so Eva settled for reconstituting a vague approximation of picadillo along with the last of the instant rice. Pink shoveled her own rice and red-bean concoction into her mouth quickly enough to give Eva a stomachache from watching. Vakar wasn’t hungry, and he already knew what the meeting was about, so he sat at the table and waited with a patience Eva found admirable, if baffling.