He kicked his starship back into warp gear. He flew away from the nebula, one wing missing, hull dented, limping but still flying.
Maybe it would have been kinder to let the weegles devour me, he thought.
A moment of pain, then no more pain ever again. It was tempting.
But no. Eaten by weegles? There were better ways to die. With any luck, he'd be dead within a year, dull with grog and drugs, a vemale or two in his arms.
Bay looked down at his backpack. He nudged it with his foot, revealing the treasures within. Fifteen thousand scryls shone there—crystal skulls the size of marbles.
I'll have to buy Brooklyn a new wing, he thought. So much for buying myself a new hand. For buying a house. For buying a way out of this life.
His eyes stung. A new hand? A new house? What were they worth without Seohyun? Again he could hear her voice, calling to him, see her charred hand. He wanted to remember her smile, her sparkling black eyes, but he saw the burnt hair on her skull, and—
Again Bay pounded his own hand against the dashboard, letting the pain shove her away.
No. Don't think of Seohyun now. Don't fall into that pit.
He clenched his teeth and flew faster. He charged through space, his ship rattling, his fist clenched around the joystick. He was no longer fleeing cardsharps now, but he was still running. He was still fleeing terror.
CHAPTER SIX
"Dude, I don't like this," Brooklyn said. "We've never flown this close to the border."
Bay patted his starship's dashboard. "Don't worry, Brook. We'll be fine."
"I can detect your heartbeat and respiration levels, you know," Brooklyn said. "I'm not only a starship. I'm also a flying lie-detector. And you, sir, are lying. We won't be fine." The starship shuddered, rattling everything inside her, including Bay. "Let's get the hell out of here before we fly into a scorpion's nest."
Bay glanced out the starboard porthole. He had left the nebula far behind, along with the damn grugs. Off the starboard bow spread open space. There was nothing to mark the border, but his monitor was already flashing warnings. Just there, less than a light-year away, was Hierarchy space.
Scorpion territory.
It was Bay's turn to shudder. He had spent his life in Concord space, this alliance of sentient civilizations that spread across half the galaxy. Humans were perhaps pests here, the only homeless species. But most of the cheaper bars, casinos, and brothels would tolerate Bay after a bribe.
Out there, in Hierarchy territory . . . that was a different story.
The Hierarchy wasn't an alliance of civilizations. It was a brutal, bloody empire, the scorpions on top. Bay hated weegles. He hated grugs. He hated marshcrabs and hoggers and bonecrawlers and most other aliens for that matter. But the Skra-Shen, the giant scorpions from the darkness, made all those other aliens seem downright cuddly.
The scorpions didn't just see humans as an annoyance. The scorpions were obsessed with humans, had based their entire society, their very religion, on the notion of humanity's evil. Their goal was one—to purify the galaxy of the human infestation.
With another shudder, Bay turned his eyes forward. In the distance he could just see it now, the place he sought. It was a dim sparkle from here, barely distinguishable from the stars, but his navigational systems confirmed it.
Before him hovered Paradise Lost.
"We gotta stop there, gorgeous." Bay patted the dashboard. "You're hurt, Brook. Gotta repair ya."
The starship groaned. "Dude!"
"I know, I know," Bay said. "We don't like docking so close to the border. The scorpions are so close they could piss on us after a pint. But you need a wing if we're to land on a planet again. And they got repair shops at Paradise Lost."
"Dude, no." Brooklyn's dashboard camera shook on its stalk like a head. "We are not going to Paradise Lost. It's the greasiest of all grease joints! There's no smell in space, and I don't have a nose, and I can still smell the grease from here. It's positively crawling with dirty robots."
"You're a robot," Bay said.
"I am no robot! I'm an intelligent starship. Very different thing. The robots at this place, the ones you'll hire to repair me? They drip old oil. Some of them have ants in their joints. Ants, dude!"
"Brook, robots don't have ants in their joints. They're robots, not picnic baskets."
"As if you've ever taken me on a picnic!" Brooklyn sighed, vents rattling. "Take me on a picnic, Bay. Can't we land in some nice, sunny port far from the frontier?"
"Nice ports are on planets," Bay said. "Planets have air. You need two wings to fly through air. We're going to Paradise Lost."
Brooklyn huffed. "You just want to go there because they'll have bars and brothels."
"Damn right," Bay said. "I intend to get properly drunk, win a card game or two, and pass out in a virtual reality tank, two holographic girls in my arms."
Brooklyn was quiet for a long time. Finally she spoke softly. "Bay. It doesn't have to be this way. We can go back home."
He stiffened. "We don't have a home."
"We do," she said. "We did. The Heirs of Earth will welcome us back. I can dock again in the hangar of the ISS Jerusalem. You can reunite with your family. We—"
"No!" Bay shouted, surprised at how loud his voice sounded. "No, Brooklyn. No! Do not suggest that again. Not after what my father did. Not after how Seohyun died." His eyes dampened. "Never speak to me of my family. We will never be Inheritors again. This is our life now. Running. Fighting. Boozing and whoring and gambling. I don't like it any more than you, but this is how we survive. Do you understand, Brooklyn? Tell me you understand, or Ra help me, I will rip out your AI."
Brooklyn had no eyes, but her monitor turned a sad blue. Her camera wilted on its stalk. She spoke in a soft voice.
"I understand."
She turned herself off.
Good. Good! Let her hide in the innards of the ship. Bay didn't care. He didn't care about any of them. Not Brooklyn, not his father, not his sister—nobody. He cared only about one person, and she was dead now, and he would be dead too soon enough.
A glow caught his eye. He could see Terminus ahead now, the last wormhole in Concord territory. He was close.
Nobody knew who had built the wormholes. They were millions of years old, predating any extant civilization. Ancient aliens had built the Tree of Light, a network of passageways that crisscrossed the Milky Way galaxy. Inside Bay's ship was an azoth crystal, able to bend spacetime the way a diamond could refract light. With it, he could travel in a warp bubble, moving faster than light. But a galaxy was a very large place. Even at warp speed, it could take months to travel between Concord worlds. Traveling through wormholes took only moments. You could cross a hundred light-years before you could finish a pint of grog.
The Concord alliance controlled about half the wormholes. The Hierarchy controlled the other half. There were a handful of wormholes in disputed territory too. Most major systems had grown around a wormhole. The Concord Mint, the Peacekeeper Courts, the great Dyson sphere of Aelonia—they were all by wormholes. These galactic stations were prime real estate, and great courts, cities, and establishments grew around them.
And then there was Terminus Wormhole.
You could call it the black sheep of the wormhole family.
First of all, Terminus only led to one other wormhole, one near a sulfur mine only ten light-years away. Not a particularly busy route. Second, the nearest planet to Terminus was a marshy world called Akraba. The entire planet was a swamp crawling with giant, sentient crabs who spent their lives eating carcasses, noisily breeding, and biting anyone who approached. Again, not much of a tourist draw.