Chapter Sixteen

“No, Park. You can’t go back.”

Theo sat up straight in his seat at the thin thread of fear in Boom’s voice.

Jun had turned to his console to pull up a map, expanding it out to cover the main screen. The sparse, scattered planets of the outer zones of the Restricted Sector dotted the chart, interspersed with clustered stations and asteroid belts. It was so different from the tightly packed Core maps Theo was used to that he was momentarily distracted by it.

“I don’t have a choice,” Jun said. “He holds the main cache—of everything. Hoards it all in his rusted Dome compound. You know there isn’t a better way.”

Boom kicked her console, heavy boot giving a dull clang against the metal. “I know there isn’t a better way for you to get yourself killed.”

Neither she nor Jun reacted to the light sound of Axel’s laughter, their faces remaining dour when he said, “Sure, there is. I can think of, like, four, off the top of my head.”

“You don’t understand, Axel.” Boom didn’t look away from Jun even as she answered Axel, staring him down while Jun pulled up schematics alongside the map, his lips a tight, hard line. The schematics expanded to display the largest space station Theo had ever seen, topped with a massive dome. All around it, smaller stations were clustered in a wavering band.

“This isn’t a joke,” Boom continued. “He’s talking about walking back into the blood-soaked cesspit he clawed his way out of five years ago when he stopped running Crew with Barnes.”

The absence of Axel’s laughter was far louder than his voice. “Oh, shit.”

A chill crept onto the bridge, settling cold in Theo’s bones as he searched their stark expressions. Marco looked as if he might be sick, face pale and huge hands clutching the console behind him like he needed it to hold him up. A sense of foreboding shivered down Theo’s spine.

“Is there, perhaps, an alternative to said blood-soaked cesspit? I’ll admit it doesn’t sound particularly appealing. It might be prudent to consider your options before settling upon certain doom.”

Jun didn’t move apart from flinging one of the schematics off his screen with a sharp flick of his wrist. “No.”

With a gentle hand on his bulging bicep, Boom guided a stricken-looking Marco down into her chair and ran her glowing fingers through his curls. She then approached Jun’s console to examine the map with him and focused it on the largest section with a slide of her hand. “Alright, well, if you’re going to be a suicidal dingus, you’re going to be a suicidal dingus with a plan.”

It was somewhat shocking to witness Jun’s companionable nudge of Boom’s shoulder with his own, hints of a grateful smile on his face. “Thanks, Boom. This is going to be a hell of an undertaking.”

Boom reached across Jun to open up a new screen, tapping on it until hundreds of flashing red dots appeared across the station on display. “If any asshole can do it, it would be you, Park. You’re just filled to the bottled-up brim with—what’s that you’ve got written on lefty, there? Fearless stupidity?”

The flat lack of amusement on Jun’s face was practically a beacon aimed in Boom’s direction as he lifted his left hand and displayed one tattooed finger in particular. “You know what it says, Boom.”

Boom wobbled her head from side to side as though that were debatable and continued tapping the screen, turning half of the red dots yellow. “It’s all pretty much the same to me. Valor, bravery, stupidity. That’s you to an emotionally constipated T, Park.”

Jun shoved her aside with his shoulder. He bent over his console, typing furiously and muttering low. “You weren’t complaining when I blasted you out of that rust-bitten holding cell in Zingaria.”

Boom shoved him back with her hip. (Theo noted he didn’t budge.) “I’ll admit that occasionally your ridiculous heroic nonsense can be beneficial. But only occasionally. Usually, it’s annoying and dangerous.”

Sensing an opportunity to jump into the conversation, Theo leapt with both proverbial feet. “Oh, I have plenty of experience with both of those. Possibly more the former and less the latter, but, nevertheless. Ignoring danger and providing annoyance are both well within my skill set.”

The glint of appreciative humor in Jun’s eyes lightened his dour expression sufficiently that Theo was willing to make an utter fool of himself if it helped to keep that light going. “Yes. I’ve noticed.”

Boom looked between the two of them, brows climbing as Jun hastily looked back at his projections. “Seriously, Park? You’re gonna involve him in this?”

The lack of immediate denial from Jun was promising. Excitement bloomed through Theo like a morning glory beneath the rising sun. “I would like to be as involved as the captain will allow me.”

Axel talked around some kind of neon-colored gummy snacks he had retrieved from his station. “I think we can all see the two of you are plenty involved already.”

“Get my ship ready to navigate the crowds around the Dome, and keep your sticky mouth shut,” Jun barked as he closed out two schematics and opened a third.

His clipped tone didn’t seem to deter Axel at all. The pilot just tilted his chair back with an ominous metallic creak and chewed louder. “Sure thing, Captain. We got nothing to worry about on my end. Sylvia’s a good girl; she’ll cooperate if I ask her nicely.”

Marco made a sound of disgust off to the side but remained focused on his odd contraption.

It was baffling. Theo would have noticed another crew member. He needed clarification. “I’m sorry. May I inquire, who is Sylvia?”

Marco didn’t glance up from his work, but he answered nonetheless while everyone else ignored Theo’s question. “She’s the ship.”

Oh. How exceedingly odd. Back home everyone referred to ships by their make and model. “I see. The ship is a girl?”

A metallic creak, and Axel’s chair was upright again while he goggled at Theo, aghast. “Of course she’s a girl. All ships are girls. Well, I should say, she was a girl. Until I made her a woman.”

Axel finished with an unholy grin and a waggle of his bright green eyebrows.

Marco and Boom gagged in theatrical stereo, Marco still pretending to retch as Boom gave her scathing remarks. “Wow, there’s so much to unpack there that I’m just gonna leave it in the box. Please never say anything like that ever again.”

Jun expanded a section of the map filled with red dots. “Seconded.”

Arm flipping to a pointer attachment, Axel aimed it at Boom accusingly. “Oh, come on! I’ve seen the way you practically lick your knives clean. You have no room for judgement. If anything, I’m the only one on this ship with a healthy investment in my job! You’re obsessed with destroying things, Marco’s obsessed with fixing things, and the captain is obsessed with kidnapping brainy little Doll-faced professors, apparently.”

The balled-up piece of paper Jun threw his way bounced off Axel’s face right between the eyes. He scrunched up his freckled nose as Jun aimed a severe finger at him. “No more creepy talk about my ship, Axel. I will fine you for every cringe.”

“Not fair, Captain!” Axel tilted his head back at Marco and Boom with an exaggerated pout. “Daddy’s playing favorites again.”

“That’s your first fine,” Jun snapped over Axel’s flailing protests.

“That wasn’t even about the ship!”

Jun made a short, sharp gesture at the entire bridge, expression flat. “Who cringed?”

Everyone but Theo raised their hand. Jun counted them out while staring Axel down. “That’s 300 chips so far. Care to keep going?”

It seemed like the right time to interject, so Theo did. “Well, I, for one, didn’t mind the Daddy bit. And you can’t fine me because you don’t pay me.”

The groan Boom gave sounded as though it had originated in the depths of space before exiting her mouth at full volume. “This is all frankly traumatizing to hear, so could we just move on, or should I start stabbing things? Starting with my own ears?”

Marco elbowed her lightly, his soft voice barely carrying across the bridge. “You can do my ears too. I’d thank you for it.”

The posture Jun assumed—finger and thumb pinching the bridge of his nose while he scrunched his eyes closed and tightened his mouth—was so reminiscent of Theo’s brother that it sent a pang through his chest.

“If we’re going to crash Barnes’s Dome”—Jun’s voice rang out across the bridge—“we need funds. Chips to flash around and drop into all the right pockets. The floor is open for your terrible ideas.”

He turned to Boom, who didn’t even pause in scanning her security feed, answering with a sardonic tone. “I don’t know; we could pick up a hit on somebody?”

Something in Jun’s sigh indicated this was not the first time he had refuted this suggestion. “No, terrible. Next?”

To say Marco spoke up would be to say he spoke at a normal, conversational volume rather than his usual quiet tone. “Petty theft? Strip some abandoned fleet for parts and sell them off to junk raiders?”

Jun gave that one some thought, furrowing his brow, then tilting his head in Marco’s direction. “Better. Takes too much time. Next?”

“Sell your fucking Doll and make a stack of chips right off.”

Theo sat up straight at the unexpectedly sharp snap of Axel’s voice.

Only Axel and Theo jumped when Jun swooped down to cage the pilot in, with his hands gripping both armrests of Axel’s chair. His expression brooked no argument as he stared Axel down. “We don’t joke about the Doll trade on this ship. You will speak to your fellow crewmates with respect. Apologize.”

Leaning back as far as his chair would allow, Axel turned his face to side, words tumbling over his shoulder. “Shit. Sorry, dollface—” He winced as Jun flicked him once, hard, directly over his larynx. “Ouch, fuck! Okay, okay. I’m sorry, Dr. Campbell. Won’t happen again.”

Jun waited until Axel reluctantly met his eyes and then growled, gripping the armrests. “No. It won’t.”

To Theo’s complete surprise and secret delight, Jun turned to him next, lifting expectant eyebrows like he had not just intimidated his pilot into submission. “What would you suggest, Dr. Campbell?”

Finances were not exactly Theo’s expertise. No one had ever asked him for his input on something like that. He gave it careful consideration before asking, “Well, what do you usually do for money?”

It was astounding, the way every member of the crew abruptly found something very important to focus on at each of their consoles. Marco even poked at a blank panel as if it was a screen.

Axel finally answered after a few beats of silence. “Didn’t the captain tell you? We’re in the delivery business.”

Was it the kind of profession Theo had imagined it might be? No. But he was intrigued nonetheless. “Oh, well. Could you make a delivery?”

It wasn’t the kind of question Theo had anticipated might provoke laughter, but Axel seemed to find it hysterical. “I don’t know, Captain, could we?”

Jun stood facing the schematics with a thoughtful expression, the fingers of one hand tapping restlessly against his thigh. It was the closest Theo had ever seen him come to fidgeting. “He’s right. We need to make the next drop ahead of schedule.”

Theo bounced over to Jun’s console to stand alongside the captain and Boom. “What are you dropping?”

Boom turned to Jun rather than acknowledging Theo. Jun pretended he didn’t notice her scrutiny as she said, “Seriously, why is he here, again?”

The obnoxious crack of Axel’s knuckles resounded in the room. He had rolled them into a fist to press against a flat attachment on his other arm. “Let me put it to you this way, Doc. It’s best in this business if you don’t ask too many questions.”

Hopping up onto the small stretch of empty space at the end of Jun’s console, Theo gave a delighted gasp. He dismissed Boom’s warning snarl with a wave of his hand. “My word! You’re criminals!”

Boom scoffed while she closed out her screen and pulled up something that appeared to be an encoded inventory list. “There’s no crime when there are no laws. You’re not in the Core anymore; this is the deep dark.”

Theo clapped and pointed at Jun, who continued to pretend like he was all alone on the bridge, poring over the list. “Brigands, then! Scoundrels. Rapscallions.”

Even Axel seemed to be working now, furiously typing something out on his console, strings of numbers flying across his screen. “Yeah, no, we’re definitely not whatever that last one was. That sounds like the opposite of awesome.”

“I’d kind of like to be a rapscallion, actually.” The soft sound of Marco’s voice made Theo smile as he gestured to Theo with his contraption, which appeared to have nearly doubled in size with clear tubes now protruding in all directions.

For once, Boom’s disgusted sigh was tinged with warmth as she slanted a glance at her brother. “You would. Probably because it sounds like some kind of food.”

Theo swung his legs, drumming his heels against the metal panels of Jun’s console and beaming at the crew. “I’ve fallen in with a band of ne’er-do-wells. How utterly thrilling! I demand that you teach me your scofflaw ways.”

The balled-up bit of candy wrapper that Axel threw at him got stuck in his hair, leaving Theo to tease it out. Axel laughed at that, while Jun’s jaw just continued to tighten. “Sure thing, Doc. First lesson—stop talking like you know someone who owns a rusted castle.”

Theo winced guiltily.

Axel’s eyes widened. “No shit? You really do know someone with a castle, don’t you?”

Twisting the candy wrapper between his fingers, Theo gave a halfhearted shrug. “It’s more of a palace, actually. The battlements are hardly fortified, and I doubt the portcullis is even functional. My aunt married up, you could say. It’s not as though I’ve spent more than a few nights there; I haven’t even visited since I was fifteen. There may have been an incident involving an overpriced yet terrifically ugly vase and a third story window; although rumors of my involvement remain unsubstantiated.”

The entire bridge crew grimaced at the volume of Axel’s appreciative whistle. Theo just relished the novelty of being the least irritating person in a room.

“Damn,” Axel said. “A palace. Imagine that. Hey, they gotta have, like, loose valuables in a place like that, right? What was it you were saying about it wasn’t fortified?”

“Shut up, Axel.”

As Jun stared them both down, Axel leaned back in his chair, arms raised in surrender, and Theo sat up straight, hands folded on his lap, blinking back innocently.

Jun rubbed his temples with a low sound that made Theo want to bat his hands away and offer to rub there himself. And maybe other places. Just as a bonus kindness. Theo was nothing if not giving of himself.

“The drop. Axel. What’s our ETA?”

The numbers paused on Axel’s screen for just a moment. He screwed up his face in concentration. “Looks like it’s gonna take another cycle and a half, give or take a few hours.”

Chin dipping once, succinctly, Jun moved on. “Good. Boom?”

Solid heels were already clunking away from the console and out into the corridor as Boom tossed her answer over her shoulder. “On it.”

“I’m still only about three-quarters of the way through repairs to the combustion chamber,” Marco offered with an apologetic frown. “It doesn’t want to cooperate.” He held out his odd tube-riddled contraption as if it was proof of such.

Jun sucked his teeth, habitual scowl sliding back into place. “Damn. Do what you can to optimize fuel consumption in the meantime.”

Marco gathered his tools and left with a jaunty salute at Jun’s rigid back.

“Well, isn’t this cozy?” Axel’s attention bounced back and forth between Theo and Jun as if watching a tennis match, his mouth still chewing something. “Tell me, Dr. Campbell, do you have to manually remove the stick from the captain’s ass or does he prefer to leave it in?”

He flinched so hard that he fell out of his chair when Jun feinted toward him with a snarl. “Okay! Okay, I’ll leave you to it. It’s not like I work here or anything.”

One of his brightly colored snack packages fell from the pile in his arms when he stomped away, muttering in Patch.

Theo stooped to pick it up, puzzling over the sickly yellow font declaring them to be Power Blasted Fruit Nuggets.

When he turned to Jun to ask about them, he caught Jun’s gaze jerking away from his posterior in a move Theo had gotten most adept at picking up from a certain type of gentleman.

The type of gentleman who was interested in Theo.

Snack forgotten, Theo stepped closer, grinning when Jun backed up a step and crashed into the console behind him with a metallic ringing sound. Theo pitched his voice into a soothing purr, offering a sympathetic pout. “Don’t worry; I’m not going to climb all over you, Captain.”

Jun’s shoulders dropped incrementally, the harsh lines around his mouth softening a little. Theo leaned in closer to watch the lines deepen again, his own gaze falling to Jun’s supple lips. “Unless, of course, you asked me nicely.”

Never in Theo’s life had he witnessed someone appear so furious over their own arousal. Jun’s face contorted into a sneer even as his pupils dilated, and his attention slid down to Theo’s mouth, watching him lick his lips with a low growl. Theo found the reaction rather…

Motivating.