Eva explained the situation briefly as everyone ate. The first to respond when she finished was Pink, who pushed her empty plate away with a look like she’d bitten a lemon.
“Mari is a liar and an asshole,” Pink said coldly. “And her bosses were good with her busted-ass plan that fucked all of us over. That’s two strikes already and we don’t even know what they want.”
“We cannot trust them,” Vakar agreed. “However, some of our goals are in alignment overall.”
“We all hate The Fridge,” Sue said, blowing on her food to cool it. “And it seems like they have, um, you know . . .”
“Money?” Eva supplied. “Resources? Information?”
“Yeah, all of that, pretty much.”
“Food?” Min asked, poking what was left of her fluffy egg substitute. She’d gotten way more interested in eating once their options had improved.
Eva gestured at Min with her fork. “That, I don’t know.”
Pink leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “If this were any other client, you’d tell them to go piss up a rope. Is the risk worth what we might get out of it?”
“Mari did say they’d pay us well,” Eva said. “Maybe even a fuel allowance.”
“Ooh, a fuel allowance, says the liar.” Pink nodded sarcastically, her eye wide.
“We do need fuel,” Min said. “I mean, I do. The ship me.”
Vakar smelled like ozone with a hint of incense—uncertain, concerned—but there was also an undercurrent that reminded Eva of night-blooming jasmine. Thoughtful, which meant he wasn’t entirely opposed to the idea. She considered his angle, and what he might stand to gain from it.
“You want to know more about them,” Eva told him. “Mari’s people, I mean, whoever they are.”
Vakar shrugged in the quennian equivalent of a nod. “As a Wraith,” he said, “I have been tasked with documenting the activities of the entity known as The Fridge, and disrupting them. Your sister is employed by yet another organization whose identity and motives are unknown, but whose reach appears extensive. Under the right circumstances, they could be a valuable asset.”
They certainly seemed to have reached right into The Fridge itself, if Mari was any indication. How many more spies did they have, and how much information might they be willing to trade?
Pink shook her head, her dreads swaying slightly. “So assuming we agree to meet with them, then what?”
“We see what they want.” Eva shrugged. “Worst case, we turn them down and walk away.”
“Worst case, they blow us up and melt down the scraps,” Pink muttered. “I want to believe we’re all on the same side, but there’s history, and that shit repeats.”
Sue spoke up then, in a quiet voice. “Sometimes good people do bad things,” she said, staring down at her empty plate. “They think the reasons are good and important, and it will all work out in the end. It’s not smart, maybe, but it’s . . . it happens.”
Sue was thinking of her own past, no doubt. Her brother, Josh, had been kidnapped by The Fridge, after which Sue had robbed a few banks and an asteroid mine in the hopes of paying off his ransom. But Josh was still missing, and none of their Fridge-busting fun had turned up any leads so far. Looking at the dark-haired girl, just out of her teens, Eva would never have believed she was capable of such a thing. Sue could barely curse properly, though Eva was trying to teach her.
Then again, the same things could be said about Eva, or Pink, or anyone else on the ship. Eva most of all, given some of what she’d done back when she worked for her father. She had enough regrets to fill their cargo hold, and more.
Eva didn’t seem to be the only one following that plutonium exhaust trail of thought, so she cleared her throat to bring everyone back to the table.
“Vote time?” Eva shifted her butt, wincing at the pain that shot through her leg. “I say we check it out, with another vote to decide whether we take whatever offer they make.”
“I also believe we should investigate,” Vakar said.
Min brushed her faded blue hair out of her face and smiled. “Fuel sounds good to me.”
Sue hesitated, then said, “It can’t hurt. Can it?”
“It certainly can,” Pink said. She rolled her eyes. “I feel like I’m having to be paranoid enough for all y’all, but whatever. At least we’re being foolish together.”
“Look at it this way,” Eva said, “if you’re right, we can burn them for good.”
“If I’m right,” Pink said with a scowl, “we’re the ones who are gonna be hosed.”
Eva really, really hoped Pink wasn’t right this time.
Chapter 2
Forging Fates
The coordinates Mari provided sent them to Suidana, a dying binary star system two cycles from the nearest Gate. Pink insisted on collecting their Fridge bounty first, and Eva was only too happy to do so, since they needed enough credits for the fuel to get to Mari’s mystery site. Their client was grateful, if nervous about possible repercussions, but Eva assured them The Fridge would be more pissed at her than they would at him.
“Squirrely little guy,” Pink said as they were leaving. “Are we sure he’s legit?”
“Min and Vakar both checked him out,” Eva said. She smiled as the account-transfer notification pinged into her commlink. “We did our good deed for the week, and now we can sleep like babies all the way to Casa Carajo.”
Pink’s lip curled. “Sure is a long flight for a big question mark.”
Eva had wondered about that as well, but she didn’t want to back out now. “Should give you plenty of time for your patients, though,” she said.
Pink had joined a pool of remote doctors to handle the massive medical needs of a far-flung universe, the kinds that sophisticated virtual intelligences weren’t adept at diagnosing, or that wanted a pseudo-personal touch. It meant more work for her, but as Pink had put it, “My résumé won’t pad itself.” Besides, she loved helping people, whether by figuring out what ailed them or putting a foot up the right person’s ass.
As pressed for time as Mari had said her employers were, Eva wasn’t inclined to hurry. She let Min proceed well within safe speed parameters, even dropping to sublight a few times so Sue could repair a particularly fussy ship component. Vakar caught up on reports for his Wraith bosses, Eva caught up on administrative bullshit, and together they caught up on each other as much as her healing leg would allow. Sue fixed Eva’s gravboots again and worked on some new mass of metal in the cargo bay, Pink doctored or fiddled with her latest sewing project, Min piloted and played the strategy games she defaulted to when her q-net access was laggy. During the late meal, Min queued up the most recent Crash Sisters holovids, so they could all watch former crew member-turned-star Leroy “The King” Cooper stomp around kicking asses and pretending to be a villain. There was even time for Min to help braid Pink’s hair, which had to be done in stages because it had gotten so long, and for Min and Sue to hang out, chatting about giant mechanical creations and other girly stuff.
It was as close to a holiday as they had gotten for as long as Eva could remember, and she savored every minute of it, because she wanted to be well rested when the shit hit the air filters.