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ORION
Orion woke having made up his mind. He would bring his little scavenger toColossal,get a bit of crazy in his life, and prove to his parents once and for all that he would do his duty, but he would damn well do it on his terms.
Now he just needed to tell her the good news.
She had mentioned where she lived, and Orion had enough sense in his drunken stupor to record the cabin number in his memchip. It floated in his vision as he traversed the residential halls: Hall V, Cabin Seven.
Where are you?Bretton subvocalized through his Neurosync.We leave in an hour. Get to the docks.
He could wait.
The halls looked like shit, but Hall V looked a little less shitty than the rest. He didn't remember seeing it as an option for his layover. Was this one reserved for permanent residents of the station, or did Kaia have a bit more pull around here than he’d realized?
She had looked so scrawny. He just wanted to whisk her off and ply her full of sandwiches, as weirdly hot as that waif look was in retrospect. She had squirmed in her seat when he glanced at her chest at the bar, but those perky tits did something for him. They'd make nice little handfuls.
Orion stopped at Cabin Seven and knocked. Then knocked again, frowning. Where the fuck was she? He didn’t have all day, and he was already late, having had to sleep off a hell of a hangover. They were meant to fly out less than an hour for rendezvous withColossal.
“Lookin’ for Kaia?” A wrinkled old woman popped her head out from the cabin next door.
“Yes. Where is she?”
“Probably out at the dock.”
“Which way is that again?” The station wasn’t laid out intuitively, and he’d already lost his bearings.
“Check the fucking map, asshole.” The woman slammed her door shut.
The degenerates at this damn station had no manners.
It took him longer than it should have to navigate the twists and turns and find the dock again. If the scavenger hadn’t derailed him, maybe he’d have had time to find the mess hall for some breakfast, if this place even had one. For all he knew, they all subsisted on nothing but nutrigel.
Bretton was already at the needlefin, shoving himself into his flight suit.
“You’re late,” he said. “I’ve been pinging your NS.”
“And I’ve been ignoring it. You look like shit.” Bretton looked like he hadn’t slept an iota. Orion would bet he was running on stims.
“Thanks,” Bretton said flatly. “Someone had to guard the ship. Can’t risk it getting picked to the bone.”
“You slept here?”
“Bit of an overstatement,” Bretton groused. “Let’s go.”
“Gotta do something first. You can prep her for another passenger in the meantime.”
“What?”
“I’ll explain later.” Orion turned to scan the dock for any sign of Kaia.
He spotted an incoming ship through one of the viewports in the hull. It was a boxy old thing. All angles and chipped paints and patches screwed and glued. It had two metallic arms folded haphazardly on its flank, and it was a bit lopsided. Orion grinned at the figure behind the smudged cockpit visor.
The ship held steady as the outer airlock doors slid open for admittance.
“Orion? What other passenger? We’ve gotta get out of here.”
He ignored Bretton, watching Kaia pilot her own ship, a pirate ship, into the airlock. It was so fucking smooth.Shewas so fucking smooth. She made the ugly hunk of junk look like a goddamn Old Earth swan gliding to the surface of a lake. That's what they'd called enclosed bodies of water.
The craft disappeared in the airlock, and a few moments later the inner doors opened. It maneuvered into an empty spot a few markers away and Orion held his breath in anticipation of an impeccable landing. But the thing started to wobble and stray. He grimaced when the right landing foot screeched against the floor, sending up sparks.
