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  Kaesare again. That mercenary captain intended to plague Craze well into death, taunting him, irking him, waiting for her chance to pounce and take what he had for herself. She had quite the talent for vexation the way she kept cropping up in his life. Every time he believed his days were rid of her, she came roaring right back.

  “I think we can make a better ally than her,” he said.

  “She’s our link to the Huon, ‘n he may have tech that can hand us a quick victory.” Dialhi drew in her lips and rubbed at the back of her neck. “Whatever your feelings about Kaesare, she’s a better neighbor than those who betrayed us on Pardeep.”

  Stupid point. Jeez. Scowling, Craze checked his accounts to buoy his sinking mood. The chips he’d earned remained accessible, but the last deposit had been two weeks ago. Not a thin chip since. “The ass is takin’ what’s mine.” He growled. “What about you, Pauder?”

  The old man tapped on his tab, frowning. “No rents in two weeks. I’ve got two bazookas ‘n a month’s worth of ammo with his name on them. If he’s made allies, which is likely, we can’t just go in shooting without decent intel.” His finger etched a trail into the surface of the device, which produced a wailing screech. “We must still have friends on our moon.”

  “Meelo reported she’s holed up with some folks. She wants to know how to get into your arsenal.”

  Massaging his long sharp chin, Pauder considered that for a moment. “She’s a snitcher, a spy for the Fo’wo’s.”

  “Was.” Defending her sat wrong on Craze’s tongue as the remnant of a habit. It had to be. His trust of Meelo hadn’t completely repaired. He couldn’t forget how she secretly fed his life and the lives of his friends to the Fo’wo’s. He couldn’t love a woman who’d stoop to what she’d done. Yet he didn’t believe she’d do it again. “She’s all we’ve got.”

  “Wrong!” The old man threw his tab against the floor. The composite had some give to it, so the device didn’t break. It bounced. “You said she’s holed up with others. One of those others will do nicely. There’s no room for gooey sentiment this time, son. Get yar head ‘n heart in the right place or we lose everything that’s ours. Ya want that?”

  “As the Lepper is blue, no. You know I don’t. But I will say, those others is trustin’ her.” Craze crossed his arms and lifted his chin. “We best not forget that.”

  Built for a world with greater gravity and having the strength to match, Dactyl gripped onto the wrists of both Pauder and Craze. He squeezed until Craze’s joints groaned.

  “We must get Rainly first.” His gaze steely and jaw squared, the Quatten stomped an anvil-like foot. “She has no idea what she’s doing. Yous know she doesn’t.”

  Craze did and the conflicting concerns had his head spinning. One spun faster, screaming at him louder. “I love her like family, like a better sister than I have, but what’s the point of bringin’ her back to nowhere? Pardeep Station comes first. We must wrest it out of the theivin’ hands of the double-crossin’, no good, scuzzbucket, flea on a leecher’s ass who doesn’t deserve it.”

  Howling through his teeth, Dactyl shoved Craze onto the floor. “I have no home without her.”

  Rising to his feet, Craze stood chest to nose with the Quatten. “What about our friends ‘n neighbors? They didn’t ask for Nahv ‘n whoever he has supportin’ his coup to send their lives into the gutter. They need our help. We need them. ‘N you owe me for savin’ your sorry ass from that freaky alien.”

  “Owe? We owe each other nothing, bartender.” Dactyl’s voice grew eerily soft, and he shook his finger with each syllable he spoke. “We stand here because of each other ‘n in spite of each other. Pardeep will still be there a year from now. Rainly might not. She needs me, ‘n I won’t let her down.”

  “She chose to go.” The words burned in Craze’s throat and echoed within the Olvis. How could she? How could she have broken her promise and taken off to some secret place? The truth jabbed him harder than earlier, and he gasped, rubbing at his throat, grabbing for some shred of sense about what she had done. He croaked, “Besides, we don’t have a solid lead on her.”

  Raking his fingers through his long brown waves, Dactyl glared at Ronu’s empty spaceport. “It won’t stop me. I’ll find my own ride.” His stride shook Dialhi’s spacecraft, and he headed off the bridge.

  They should all be standing together, not splitting apart. Craze glowered at the captains and Pauder. “As much as I love Rains, I can’t let Pardeep go without a big fight. We can catch up with her ‘n Dact later.”

  “Glad ya have that much straight.” Pauder gripped onto his favorite bronze war medal. He wore five hanging from his neck on tattered ribbons, two silver and three bronze. “We is all lost without home.”

  His throat tightening, Craze couldn’t swallow or speak. He had to huff to get enough air into his lungs. “We can’t lose it. We can’t.” Pardeep Station would not become his past. Setting his jaw until his cheeks ached, he stared into the faces of his friends. “So what do we do?”

  “We call Captain Kaesare ‘n get her ta take us ta see the Huon. In the meantime we gather what information we can.” Pauder rose onto his feet and fixed his fatigues with a tug and a snap.

  The old man’s plan sounded suspiciously the same as before Pardeep’s troubles became known. Everything had changed, the plan should change.

  Craze shook his head. “What about Meelo ‘n our friends stuck on Pardeep? That seems a long time to make them wait for our help,” he said.

  “They’ll have ta hold on.”

  Could they?

  Chapter 3

  Meelo

  Meelo’s tab remained dark and silent, not one word from Craze. Ten days had passed since she sent him a message. She stood alone in the middle of her fields, squinting at the dusty wake that made its way from the docking facility.

  When no reply had come from Craze and the others off world, Meelo and a small band of loyal Pardeepans hiding with her decided to return to their normal routines.

  “W-we can’t win if we don’t know what’s going on,” Meelo had said.

  Eina had nodded. Melancholy crept into her dark somber eyes and gaunt cheeks, returning her to the mood she had worn when first arriving on Pardeep. Sage and wheat tinted hair quivered with her every twitch like a meadow in a breeze. “Where do we say we’ve been, ma dee?”

  Huddled around a candle in a cavern below Meelo’s crop of rootbaggers, they had hatched up a story about camping in the mountains to the south.

  Mos, Eina’s just as gangly brother, said, “From the type of ships coming in, I’d say Nahv has help in this takeover. Mercenaries is the types of folks to look for proof of our story. We better have it ‘n in a convincing quantity. Give me a head start, ‘n I’ll go south to create it. Can we wait that long?”

  Meelo brushed the short greasy hair that had fallen over her eyes out of her way with a small mangled hand. The weather made her fingers permanently chapped and red. Her life before Pardeep had left the scars. “W-we been out of contact nine days. How much longer do you need?”

  “I took a two week break,” Nellese said. The brain booster embedded into her scalp flickered with sparks calling attention to the swirls, petals, and loops raised like bone from her skin. Peach and silver colored her in subtle hues, delicate and pretty like the sound of her voice. “So I still have reason to be away from the docking facility. I can go with you, Mos. The signs of our trip will seem more authentic with two of us.”

  Pardeep’s future depended on Meelo making the right decisions. In her calculation, letting them go south would serve her and the others better than not, so she had agreed. After giving Mos and Nellese a three day lead, Meelo sent the others home and returned to her normal life on a very altered Pardeep. Used to be, the only threats came from the moon itself —thin air, a lack of water, cold, and dust storms. Mercenaries had never bothered her out at the farm, and until they showed up fifteen months ago, the Fo’wo’s hadn’t either.

  Fr
om her fields, Meelo had seen many red egg-shaped ships come in with strange markings — painted over insignias of the Eptus. Three triangles arranged in a triangle had a red X over each one and a ragged red circle went around half of the old mark. What did the modifications mean? Bothers. A sense of it lodged in her gut, taking root in her bowels.

  “I-it’ll be OK. It’s OK,” she chanted, readying the soil for a new crop of greens. The cloud of dust moved nearer. Shivering, she swung her hoe into the dirt and plowed under the plant remnants from the previous harvest, hacking them into bits, pretending the roots and dried up stalks were the Fo’wo’s who had killed everyone she knew.

  Her thoughts skittered and her sister lay in the ditch, reaching out an arm that no longer had a hand, begging for rescue, imploring for time to go backwards, for everything to return to what it had once been. Thousands of times Meelo had seen her little sister in the dust, but not once had time reversed. All these years and the memories didn’t fade.

  The man she had pledged to marry had made Meelo promise to live. “We isn’t going to make it, lifelove.” Grime coated Tasser’s bright pink skin. His weak blue eyes, the same shade as Meelo’s, sparkled with unshed tears.

  They sat in a ditch surrounded by dead family and friends, a truth so blunt it made Meelo mute and numb. One of her tails rubbed at an itch on her cheek, sparing her hands which had been reduced to bloody bits of flesh from fighting and burrowing into the rock. She couldn’t scream anymore and couldn’t cry.

  “Th-then let’s die.” She clasped his hand and pulled her last grenade out from her tattered dress.

  Gently, he took the explosive from her battered fingers and kissed their ragged tips. His gaze held hers with such tenderness. “Oh, I understand that, lifelove. The Afterlife must hold more joy than this. However, I can’t let you die. Promise me you won’t. Promise me you’ll do whatever it takes to survive. Because if somebody doesn’t, no one will ever know about any of us, ‘n that’s a bigger tragedy.”

  Was it?

  “Promise me. I will hold our love in eternity. You must keep it alive in this universe.”

  She could never refuse him when he begged. “I-I promise.”

  “Tell me five more times with conviction.”

  She did, her voice getting louder with each oath, her heart steeling to what would come next — he would leave her. Facing an abandonment worse than death, she threatened to break into a billion pieces, yet for him and all the others, she’d carry on. She’d let them share with her the years they had been denied. Every day, she’d think of them and greet them in her heart. Every night, she’d wrap herself in the memory of Tasser, recalling how she had once been so well loved. It would have to see her through. From stories, she knew the brief time she had shared with Tasser was more than a lot of Backworlders ever had. “There’s no one but you,” she had whispered. “To you I will always be true.”

  Then Tasser leaped out of their hidey hole and added her grenade to the others strapped under his clothes. He sprinted straight at the Fo’wo ship. With every stride, he took fire and became a candle burning blue from fizzers. His pace didn’t falter, and he made it inside. When the boom shook the ground under her feet, Meelo sat motionless for a long time. She hid among the dead, crawling among them, buried amid them. She cut squares from their clothing, collecting remembrances.

  Later, when apprehended by the Fo’wo’s, she added them as pockets to the wool coat Tasser had once gifted to her. Wearing it, she found the strength to do as the Fo’wo’s asked so that she’d survive. She did it for all the ghosts around her. They came with her to Pardeep Station. She had hoped over time the dust and cold would numb her completely. It didn’t. The pain dredged up anew every morning and settled into her dreams every night, made all the worse by her betrayal, her spying for the Fo’wo’s. However, if it meant no one else would die, she’d do it again.

  The opportunity was coming. Nahv rumbled over the rills of dust.

  Maybe she’d convince him she hadn’t taken sides against him and he’d go away. She could hope and hacked at the old greens, pulverizing them into the loam it had taken her years to cultivate. She lost herself in the work and the knots in her back eased, until the distinct whine of a frizzer imposed on her solitude.

  She ran a chapped, mangled hand over her brow and glanced over her shoulder. Nahv stood there with a posse of what had once been female Eptus. Their skin had been bleached, half of them as colorless as starlight, the other a startling red. They had hacked off their snouts to their sharp canine teeth, their faces gaping holes of fangs with eyes and big triangular ears. Their tongues hung out, and they all held frizzers — the taboo Fo’wo weapon self-respecting Backworlders refused to use. Setting one of the dastardly guns paralyzed the target in pain, setting two blistered the skin with blue flames, and setting three began a slow excruciating death as the victim’s bones calcified. Meelo’s sister had died that way.

  Bringing her hand up to shade her eyes from the glare of the sun and the extra brilliance reflecting off Azta — the planet Pardeep orbited — Meelo blinked at Nahv and his strange entourage. “A-afternoon.” In the flowered corduroy pocket of her long wool coat, she clutched onto a hand grenade.

  Chapter 4

  Talos

  The doctoring bed beeped softly, keeping time with Lepsi’s heartbeats and breaths. He lay as frail as solar sails shredded in a turbulent cosmic current. Was he beyond recovery?

  Talos clutched Lepsi’s tab in his hands, his forearms resting on his legs, his posture molding him to the shape of the chair. “I found your tab, mate. For you, I’m going to send a picture of my ass to your brother. Ready?”

  Talos peeled away the back of his trousers and aimed the device at his exposed skin. “Kiss it, Federoy!” he half shouted and half sang. Chuckling, he met his best friend’s vacant gaze. “Did you like that?”

  Not a flicker changed in Lepsi’s expression. Talos frowned. “You safe now, surrounded by friends. Craze is here ‘n Dactyl ‘n Pauder. A new friend you haven’t met yet, but you’ll like her. Her name’s Dialhi. This is her ship. It’s the one you left clues on. Took us awhile to find it, otherwise I would’ve rescued you a lot sooner.”

  Scouring Lepsi for any sign, Talos squeezed his fingers white. The awkward quiet stretched into part of an hour. Lepsi’s mouth didn’t quiver, the color in his cheeks didn’t improve, he didn’t glance at Talos, he stared up at the ceiling barely blinking. Talos craned his head back, studying the composite no different than the dark gray walls and floor. It wasn’t interesting.

  “We stopping on Ronu for a bit. It’s a Backworld. The first along the Edge, or last. Depends on which way you going, I guess.” Talos ran a hand through his short blue hair, chortling. “Either way, I got you home. I know you been through worse than bad, but I’ll see to you. I always will.” He straightened the lapels of his long beige coat and gripped the badge pinned to the right one. Carry On it said in orange letters on a blue background.

  “Tell me what to do. Tell me how to make you better. Please.” Talos gripped the button harder, driving the pin into his hand. The sting couldn’t come close to the agony Lepsi had experienced. Battered, tattered, wasting away, his arm rotting to gangrene, his reason taking flight through the nearest wormhole, Talos’s best friend had definitely suffered. The other nineteen souls Craze had rescued didn’t fare any better.

  “We haven’t saved you.” Talos propped his chin in his hand, resting his elbow on his knee, hoping the answers would materialize from the soft chirps blipping in a rhythm from the doctoring bed, from Lepsi’s periodic groans, from the way Lepsi’s breathing sometimes hitched and threatened to stop, from anything.

  Dactyl’s distinctive heavy tread clomped past the infirmary in the direction of the hatch. Talos glanced that way. There went the answers. “That lawman knows. He was once like you, mate.” And Dactyl had lived, had figured out how to thrive, had fallen in love, and had found a way to embrace life. “He can’t leave. You need
him.”

  Talos rose and chased after the reformed genocidal Quatten. Lepsi’s best chance lay with him. Before Talos made it ten steps, however, he bumped into a reason to delay his mission. Judging by the empty berths surrounding the Olvis Deluxe, Dactyl wouldn’t be going anywhere, and only a miracle could bring Lepsi around in quick order.

  Dialhi leaned against the wall in the corridor. “How is he?”

  “The same.”

  She pulled at Talos like the stars, potent and enchanting. Exploring all her nuances would take as long as visiting every Backworld. The idea of that comforted all the aches Lepsi had lodged in Talos’s heart.

  He picked up her hand, which felt like rain, something he had missed since leaving his homeworld of Doku. “He improves physically ‘n is out of danger. Mentally ‘n emotionally, though…” Sighing was all he could manage.

  Her fingers squeezed his. “The other folks Craze rescued is no different. They just stare at nothing like we not even here.” She swung his arm and graced him with a shiny smile. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll get them all well.”

  He touched his lips to her cheer, intending to absorb it for himself, wanting to forget all that skewed wrong in the galaxy. At least for a few minutes. Mouths engaged and locked, he led her out of the hatch. Walking down the ramp was as ingrained as breathing, so he didn’t need to see to find his way onto Ronu’s docks. Dialhi tasted like rain, sweet and cool. He’d never get his fill. She twisted around and filled his arms. He laughed, drawing her in tight. Maybe they should have stayed on the ship.

  “Hands where we can see ‘em or you ez all dead.” A gravelly voice barreled over the docks like a frozen engine.

  Talos’s lips froze. His gaze swiveled in the direction of the threat. Craze and Dactyl had revolvers to their heads. Five more pointed at Talos and Dialhi.

  Chapter 5