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  “Damn it, O!” Tariq collects what’s left of his haul. “This is why no one likes you.”

  I flick on my Monitor. “Captain? I’ve got a crewmember stealing food from the chow hall—”

  He pounces on me. I wrestle him for a few seconds before I let him see I haven’t switched my Comms on. His minute crime will continue to go unpunished.

  “Don’t trust her,” he tells Vega before heading to his bunk.

  Vega waits until he’s out of earshot before leaning toward me. “I’m noticing a pattern here. No loyalty amongst thieves, eh?”

  “They don’t like how close I am to the captain,” I say, waving her on. We’ve only made it to the bridge and the chow hall so far, and there’s a lot more of the ship to cover. “Saint Rita picks favorites. If you’re at the bottom of the list, you’re in deep space shit.”

  “How’d you make it to the top?”

  “First off, I had inside knowledge of IA.” My face flushes, but I hope Vega doesn’t see it in the dim lighting. It’s been a while since I felt the shame of betraying my own family and friends, but Vega brings it out again. “Second, I ended up being really good at two things. Obtaining and trading opalite.”

  Vega rolls her eyes. “Of course. You always loved that nasty shit.”

  “I put my survival first,” I explain. “I was technically an outlaw, remember? I was lucky Saint Rita found me. Otherwise, I’d be indigo dust by now.”

  “Or back with your family.”

  “Even worse.”

  She eats my reply like a fresh lemon, all puckered lips and regret. “How’d you end up with Saint Rita anyway? You disappeared so quickly. We thought you were dead. Picked up by slavers or fallen off the Arch.”

  The Arch is the tallest point in the galaxy—a giant red rock formation that forms a literal arch from one side of a cliff to the other. The canyon itself is so deep, nothing’s ever been recovered from it. Legends say it leads to another dimension. IA Academy is right in front of it, and stressed students often throw themselves off.

  “Didn’t jump off the Arch,” I confirm. “The morning of graduation, I decided I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be the robot my parents and siblings wanted me to be.”

  “We’re not robots—”

  “I felt like one,” I say as we near the hatch that leads to the weapons bay. “Day in, day out. Serving IA every second. Never a private moment. Never your own thoughts. I hated that hive mind concept, so I left.”

  “I don’t like it either,” Vega says. “I’m not brainwashed. I know IA has its flaws, but I couldn’t have done what you did. Besides, I wasn’t Defense. I would’ve gotten caught.”

  “I almost did,” I tell her. “I walked past campus security in my graduation uniform. Told them I was going for coffee. They fell for it, but when I didn’t come back, they called a Defense team to find me. They chased me around the port for a good two hours.”

  “How’d you get away?”

  I tapped my temple. “Wit. Most Defense officers aren’t all that bright. I led them in circles until an opportunity popped up. You see, Saint Rita decided to raid a cruise ship docked at the port that day, and the team chasing me was called away to deal with her. I snuck onto The Impossible and hid until the pirates took off again. Saint Rita found me in the cargo bay and almost killed me. Defense graduation uniform and all that.”

  Vega frowns, but I can’t tell if it’s because she’s worried about my past self or because she’s wishing I was dead.

  “Why didn’t she?” she asks.

  “I told her the truth,” I say. “That I defected and ran away. She saw an opportunity, just like I did. My knowledge of IA was useful to her, so she kept me around.”

  Vega goes quiet as we shimmy down the hatch. The clang of our boots against the ladder echoes through the corridors. I lead her to the weapons bay door and use my print to get in.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” I say as she walks in and stares wide-eyed at our array of blasters, grenades, and lasers. The place is a wreck from hastily processing the opalite that morning. Indigo dust coats every work surface. “Everything in here is locked and protected.”

  “With your print,” she notes, studying each and every weapon in the bay. “That’s an R-One. Did you bring that from the Academy?”

  “No, we weren’t allowed full access to R-Ones before graduation,” I explain. “I stole that one off a guard during a complicated raid a few months ago.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “Yes.”

  Her shoulders twitch like she’s trying to contain a larger shudder. “I don’t know who you are anymore, Fee.”

  “Still Ophelia,” I say. “Just different values.”

  “And a corrupt moral center.”

  “That depends on your perspective.”

  She points at the R-One locked up behind the laser. “You murdered a person with that. You killed more today. I saw you firing that thing. Perfect shots every time.”

  “Then you should’ve noticed me aiming for legs instead of hearts.” I cross my arms, hugging them tightly to my chest to keep my heart from beating too fast as my temper heats up. “I ordered my team to maim, not kill.”

  “Because that’s so much better?” Vega spits. She flicks a leftover opalite crystal across the room. It shatters against the wall, and its sulfurous odor wafts outward. “It fucking stinks in here.”

  We spend the rest of the tour in stony silence. Vega refuses to look at me or talk to me unless she has a question about the ship or the crew. I steal glances at her out of the corner of my eye, trying to read her erect posture and enigmatic expression. At the Academy, we were inseparable. Instructors had to pry us apart with a crowbar. Back then, Vega was a quiet, skinny kid from the slums of Palioxis, and I was a plump brat from the upper boroughs of Proioxis. The IA Academy on Harmonia brought us together, and we were best friends from our first day there at ten years old to graduation at eighteen.

  Vega, in a lot of ways, is exactly how I remember her. She keeps her guard up at all times, observes her surroundings with a level of attention I envy, and makes fun of me every chance she gets. The old Vega meant no harm with her insults, but this adult version of her purposely probes like she’s checking my emotional armor for weak spots.

  “Your dad’s in therapy,” she mentions offhand as we pass through the dormitory area of the ship. Most everyone is working, so the bunks are fairly empty. “I don’t think it’s helping though.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Your mother thinks he’s losing his mind,” she goes on. “He keeps mumbling about a Third Planetary War like he’s some kind of prophet. Repeats your name over and over. It’s sad.”

  She’s trying to bait me, but I don’t rise. I’ve had plenty of practice with this technique in Soleil’s company.

  “My dad’s a war veteran,” I reply. “Some vets can’t move past emotional trauma.”

  “Not without a support system.”

  “He has three other family members and a bunch of friends,” I remind her. “That’s a support system.”

  Vega’s relentless. “He thinks his missing daughter is dead. You’re the one haunting him, Ophelia.”

  “Can you shut up?”

  “Your brother’s a wreck too,” she continues. “He thinks it’s his fault you dropped out of Defense, that he pushed you too hard.”

  “Liar. Laertes never blames himself for anything.”

  “He organized the search teams that were looking for you,” she says. “When IA declared you dead, he took himself out of the field and started desking.”

  “Laertes?” I say. “Desking? No way.”

  She nods gravely. “I’m telling you, Fee. You fucked everyone up.”

  I punch her in the ribs. She catches my hand, whirls me around, and tries to pin me to the wall, but I duck into a bottom bunk, turn, and kick out. She flies across the dorm and lands in the bunk across from mine. We glare at each other, breathing heavily.

  “Ma
ke out!” another crew member calls from a nearby bunk.

  “Shut up, Martian,” I shout back.

  “It’s Marvin,” he mutters before rolling over and going back to sleep.

  Vega lifts her shirt to check her torso for damage. Her flat stomach is red with the outline of my boots. “Thanks a lot.”

  “I offered to take you to the med bay. You said no.”

  She makes a face at me and continues inspecting herself.

  “Is Mom still head of Intelligence?” I ask.

  Vega pretends to be absorbed in her self-diagnosis, but I know she’s avoiding the question. I throw a pillow at her, and it thumps her in the face.

  “Hey!” she shouts.

  “Is she?” I demand.

  “Yes,” Vega relents. “She’s the best IA’s got. No one’s even close to dethroning her.”

  “So she’s at HQ on Harmonia then.”

  “No,” Vega says. “Once your dad took a downward turn, she ordered IA to let her work on Proioxis. She only goes to Harmonia for business trips.”

  I go quiet. If my mother’s on Proioxis, she was there for our raid on the Intelligence building. Had she seen me on the security feeds?

  “She didn’t recognize you,” Vega answers my unasked question. “Otherwise, she would’ve confronted you herself. She’s good, by the way. Better than ever.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Whatever you say,” Vega says. “Are you going to feed me or is it customary to keep your hostages hungry aboard The Impossible?”

  I bring Vega to dinner at the chow hall, but the food options aren’t much better than they were earlier in the day. The ship’s cook—a woman called Lurch due to having one leg shorter than the other—has whipped up a cabbage soup. Bits of jerky float around in the broth. It’s not the best thing I’ve ever eaten, but it’s nice to have hot food again. I fill a bowl then lead Vega to my usual table in the corner.

  The chow hall is packed, and it’s the first time Vega’s interacted with so many pirates at once since her capture that morning. She doesn’t encourage their antics. She ignores their yells and inappropriate comments until we sit down together and someone chucks a bread roll at her head. She catches it with catlike reflexes and hurls it back. It hits the original pirate in the face before landing in his soup and splashing him with hot broth. His mates double over laughing, and a few crew members give Vega respectful nods.

  “Dicks,” she mutters, stirring her cabbage around.

  “You get used to it,” I say.

  A bunch of beat-up dice roll across the table, and Tariq sits next to us with a tower of empty cups. “New girl,” he says, handing Vega a cup. “Ever played this game before?”

  Vega warily takes the cup. “What is it?”

  “Pirate’s dice,” I say. “Roll your hand and make a bet on how many dice faces are on the table. Next player can bid or challenge. If you challenge and you’re wrong, you lose a dice. If you bluff, you lose a dice. Whoever’s left with dice at the end of the game wins.”

  Vega picks five dice from the pile on the table and dunks them in her cup. “You guys do this a lot?”

  Soleil sits next to Tariq and collects her own hand of dice. “Almost every night.” She extracts a handful of gold coins from her pocket and dumps them in the center of the table. “Fifty credits for the pot. Who’s got what?”

  Tariq eyes the gold hungrily. Credits are hard to come by, even for pirates. Cash in Pavo is mostly invisible, but credits are an old-school sign of classic wealth. Soleil hoards the coins like a dragon, and she doesn’t often risk losing them.

  Tariq sets an opalite crystal atop the coins. It’s perfectly processed. He either stole it off an IA officer during today’s raid or put in extra hours at the weapons bay to produce it. Either way, it’s just as valuable as Soleil’s credits.

  Vega offers up a data disk. “IA Intelligence secrets,” she says, spinning the disk like a top. It crashes into the pile of gold and falls over. All three of us—me, Tariq, and Soleil—stare at it with unconcealed hunger. “I’m guessing whoever gets to take that to Saint Rita will get a big fat gold star for their ugly pirate bomber jacket.”

  She’s right, and she knows it. She’s already showing her game strategy for surviving on The Impossible, and it all has to do with pitting us against each other.

  “You’re up, O,” Soleil challenges. “What’ve you got?”

  “There’s a ripe apple in my bunk.”

  “Boo,” Tariq says. “Boring. No one wants your apple.”

  “Then I don’t have anything to play.”

  “Got enough guts to bet your First Mate patch?” Soleil asks.

  I could kill her right there. Instead, I give her the most rational answer. “Even if you win it, it’s not official unless Saint Rita approves.”

  Soleil simpers. “Scared she might?”

  Without backing down from Soleil’s gaze, I detach the patch from my vest and toss it on top of the pot. Tariq blows out a heavy breath.

  “Damn, this just got real,” he says.

  We play the first game for practice to let Vega get the hang of it. It’s a game of probability, but you also have to be a decent liar to get any chance at winning. Vega’s face gives everything away, and I call her bluff every time.

  “No worries,” Tariq tells her after she loses yet another dice. “You’ll get the hang of it. Let’s get started on the real game.”

  We reset and roll again. Vega’s expression changes. She studies each of us as we make our bets, and I swear she catches every eye twitch, subtle grin, or nervous shoulder roll. When it’s her turn, she keeps her bets low to play it safe. Tariq loses the first dice. Soleil loses the next. By the end of the third round, Vega’s the only one of us who’s still playing with the original five.

  “New girl’s got moves,” Soleil remarks as I forfeit a die to the center of the table.

  “So it would seem,” I reply.

  The game continues. Eventually, probability evens out the odds. By the time we’re all playing with two dice or less, our game has drawn a crowd. The pirates pick favorites, cheering or groaning when one of us loses. Surprisingly, quite a few of them root for Vega.

  “I’m out,” Tariq says at the end of a round. He tosses his last die into the pot. “Damn it.”

  I only have one dice left. So does Soleil. Vega’s got two under her cup. I glance at my hand. It’s a five.

  “Two fives,” I bet. It’s risky—that’s half of the dice on the table—but it forces Soleil into a tight corner. If she calls my bluff and she’s wrong, she loses the game, her coins, and my First Mate patch. If she ups the bet, then Vega has the chance to call her out.

  Soleil checks her cup and grins. “Two sixes.”

  Vega doesn’t even check her hand. “Three sixes.”

  I stare at her. I wasn’t expecting her to go higher. She’s definitely losing a die this round.

  “You’re bluffing,” I say.

  She reveals her hand. Two sixes. Soleil turns her cup. One six. Three in total.

  I lose.

  The pirates go wild, hollering loud enough to make the bay windows shake. I throw my last die into the pot and cross my arms, pouting. I’m screwed no matter who wins.

  Soleil starts the next round, her upper lip curling. “Two fours.”

  She’s determined to make Vega lose a die so the game’s fair again, but Vega stuns the crowd once again.

  “Three fours.”

  “Calling it,” Soleil says immediately. She reveals one four under her cup.

  Vega reveals two more.

  The noise in the chow hall is deafening as Soleil’s jaw drops open. Vega grins and stands up to take a bow, but when she reaches into the center of the table to collect the pot, Soleil grabs her hand.

  “You cheated,” she hisses.

  Vega rolls her wrist to break Soleil's grip. “Nope. Beginner’s luck.”

  With everyone watching, Soleil can’t challenge. The one rule of pira
te’s dice is to take your losses with dignity. Any dispute automatically forces you to start your next game with one less die than everyone else. Soleil sits down, and Vega pockets the coins, the opalite, the data disk, and my First Mate patch. Then she stretches and yawns.

  “This was fun, everyone,” she announces, “but I should head to bed. After all, tomorrow’s my first day as First Mate, and I don’t want to disappoint the Captain.”

  The crowd howls with laughter. A few crew members thump me on the back as my face burns bright red. I haul Vega to her feet and out of the chow hall. She waves a cheery goodbye to her fans, pockets clinking with gold coins.

  In my bunk, I slam the door shut and round on her. “How’d you do that? The probability of getting three fours was low as shit. Did you turn your dice or something?”

  “I couldn’t let her win.” Vega empties her pockets and sifts through the coins. When she finds my First Mate patch, she slaps it into place on my vest. “Could I, First Mate?”

  “So you did cheat.”

  “Let’s just say I made some upgrades to the hardware in my eye.”

  She winks. I stare at her in awe.

  “You helped me?”

  Her smile disappears. “Don’t mark me as an ally, Fee. I did this for me. If Soleil got First Mate, your captain might’ve transferred me to her care. The devil you know, you know?”

  “Fine. Just don’t kill me in my sleep, okay?”

  “No promises.”

  5

  Vega literally kicks me out of bed the next morning. I land hard on my shoulder as Vega rolls herself up in my share of the blankets. On the upside, she didn’t try to kill me. On the downside, I got less than three hours of sleep.

  “What was that for?” I say.

  “Monitor won’t shut up,” she mutters back.

  The Monitor chirps from where I left it on the porthole sill last night. I pick myself up and check the Comms messages.

  “It’s the Captain,” I say.

  “Super. Get out.”

  I strap the Monitor on my wrist then hammer Vega with a pillow. “Get up, Major. She wants to see us both.”