Local Star by Aimee Ogden (ebook reader online free txt) 📕

wondering what overwhelming odds entail. Stopped an end-run against the flagship’s shieldfault and everything. Barely made it out of medbay after they stitched me back—”

“Show me.”

Kalo opened his mouth but caught his tongue between his teeth instead of arguing. He leaned forward and pulled up the hem of his shirt. The wound over his left hip hadn’t yet healed, and he winced when Triz crawled across the floor to brush one finger over it. She retreated immediately, but not all the way back to the wall, and he let his shirt drop back into place. How long had she made him stand around and wait in the wrenchworks, with a fresh hole in him? She was so stupid. “You should have died,” she said, then winced. That wasn’t what she’d meant.

But he took no offense. “Got pretty sloppy in there.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “Until the air pipes slurped up all the juice.” Juice. She hated how that sounded. Blood. She hated even more how he was looking at her now. “Triz . . .”

“This is stupid,” Triz said, and hiccupped. She hadn’t realized she was crying, but, well. No putting spilled coolant back in its tube. “I don’t want you to die. I wasn’t supposed to have to care anymore. You left me.”

“You’d already left,” he said, not unkindly. She looked away. He edged toward her until he could just reach her knee, and patted it sheepishly. She went to knock his hand away, but when her fingers landed on top of his, they stayed there.

“Well, the good news is, uh, I also don’t want me to die. Skimmers don’t just blow when they’re hit like the old Alchemists and Darts used to do, so unless I take a direct hit, the galaxy is more or less stuck with me.” The jocularity bled from his voice. He held her knee and said, “I’m not going to ground myself, Triz. I can’t do it. Flying is—well, you can’t know what it’s like if you didn’t grow up at the bottom of an Arcology. Nothing but steel for a sky, until you’re out there ,and you can go anywhere you want, as fast as you can fly.” A rueful grin chipped its way free of the sudden seriousness. “Anywhere you want that you can bend orders to mean, at least. If that’s a dealbreaker, it’s a dealbreaker, but this is what I do. And I was never going to stop doing it.” The grin dried up. “Not even for you.”

“Who’s asking you to give it up?” She dragged her sleeve across her face and rolled her eyes. “Nothing but steel for a sky,” she repeated. “Because of course, growing up inside a recycling engine is nothing but beams of sunshine and, and—rainmows. I mean, rainbows?” She stumbled over the strange word, and Kalo’s hand receded.

They were so different. Suns and moons, all over again. But maybe that didn’t matter.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to launch us into the Divine Trials of the Shitty Childhoods.” His elbows rested on his knees, and he leaned forward to rest his head in his hands. “I don’t know what I meant to do. I don’t know how to pull out of this tailspin. If we could just—”

She didn’t give him a chance to spill his latest half-brained idea. She stopped his mouth with hers. Her hands locked onto the collar of his shirt to hold on to the moment just a little longer, before he pulled away and turned this from maybe into absolutely not.

His hands locked onto her elbows. But instead of pushing her away, he lifted her higher, pulled her against him. Against her lips, he hissed in pain at the sudden movement. He didn’t break the contact, though, only held on tighter, his fingers winding into her hair where sleep had loosened it from her braid. “Triz,” he said, into the hungry space of her mouth, and she choked on a sob.

Then he did pull away, keeping her close with his hands on her face. She didn’t let go of his collar either, wasn’t sure her fingers would have uncurled even if she tried. Too many impossible things welled up inside her, and no time to say them all, and no words to say the things she really wanted to, so she blurted the most impossible of all. “I can have your fighter fixed before the tribunes get here. Today even, if I hit it with everything I’ve got.” The minor issue of her unemployment could be resolved when it became a problem. She would break Quelian’s fob and lock him in storage if she had to. “You could blow a hole in the top of the Hab and pull her out of Justice. Fly her off to wherever she’ll be safe.”

“That is—what?” Now he did let go of her, and she sat down hard on the floor between his feet. “Triz, I can’t do that.”

“Right. Of course not.” Her lips pulled back in a feral snarl, an echo of the expression she’d worn the first time a Tolvian mendicant had cracked open the recycling pits and called down to ask who was in there. A broken shard of light, so very far away, and now, just like then, she was afraid to see what it might show. “I wish I could fly. I’d do it myself. The same way everything gets done around here.” She didn’t wish she could fly. All that cold black on every side . . . the thought churned her stomach. She hadn’t thrown up in the bathroom, but she wasn’t ruling out throwing up on Kalo’s shirt right now. That offered some small comfort. He reached for her wrist, but she shook him off. “But no, of course not. You can’t risk your precious commission.”

“I can’t risk blowing a hole in Justice!” he shouted and it sent a lock of hair into his eyes.

Triz had never heard Kalo raise his voice before. It took the photons right