Day Eight #3
It took too long to cycle, several whole seconds where all Kelli could do was stand there clinging to Rowan’s hand and try not to think of how the waste disposal mechanism had made that air-cycling sound, too.
But there was proper air on the other side when it opened.
Rowan let go of her hand. He ran to the central control panel and tapped in a few hasty commands, which made the airlock hatch slide shut again as soon as Kelli had stepped through.
It muffled the fire alarms into silence.
Kelli sagged against the wall at the sudden ringing quiet, catching her breath.
There wasn’t any visible smoke in the Wildfire, but as soon as she’d stopped moving, she started to cough again.
“Strap in anywhere, fast as you can,” Rowan ordered. “I’m not waiting around to do the safety checks.”
He barely looked back as he raced up the ladder to the cockpit, one-handed, struggling a little.
Kelli dived for the nearest sleeping bag.
The violet one right there in the front hallway, which Ting had been using just last night.
She couldn’t stop coughing. She could barely coordinate her shaking limbs to climb into the bag.
She got as far as zipping it clumsily up over her head, and then reached for the straps, but her panicked hands couldn’t remember what way to pull on them.
She’d normally done takeoffs and landings in the copilot’s chair, not in here.
The engines started up, too slowly, with a roar that only gradually overtook the creak and groan of whatever was happening outside them.
Then the rockets kicked into full gear and flattened her completely.
At least she was in the sleeping bag. Better to be pressed flat against its thick padding than against the actual floor.
She hung on for dear life, hands clenched around the straps, as gravity jostled her every way at once.
It felt like one of those suited goons standing on her, knees on her bruised ribs, shoving and shaking until she came apart.
She would have screamed, but it was hard to even breathe.
But then, abruptly, the pressure eased. Her body floated upward.
Kelli didn’t try to climb out of the bag immediately.
She was too busy panting with leftover terror.
Coughing again. Making sounds like small screams, to let the pressure out, in between the coughs.
Kelli wasn’t sure which parts of her hurt for what reason—what had been from the fight with that one man, or the fall into the trash chute, or the takeoff itself.
But there would be bruises later, maybe lots of bruises.
Her lungs burned from coughing, and the spot on her side, where the man had kneed her, kept complaining every time she moved.
Okay, but the pressure hadn’t slammed back on yet. Nothing had exploded in a fireball. Nobody had stomped onto the ship and boarded it to and arrest them. They had taken off correctly. It had been about a minute, and she was alive.
The coughing eased off eventually. Rowan had told her about the Wildfire’s air recyclers, back on Callisto. Whatever smoke had seeped onto the ship would get filtered and cycled out within a few hours.
Just to make sure, she crawled back out of the bag and floated to the nearest porthole.
The globe of Io turned below her like a rotten fruit, sickly yellow and orange, black and green. The night side of Jupiter loomed a little further off. Where they might go from here was anyone’s guess, but they were in orbit, all right.
They’d escaped.
As Kelli took that in, she heard faint voices through the wall.
Rowan was having some conversation over the comms. From out here in the hallway, she couldn’t quite make out the words.
But she wanted to hear them; she didn’t want to sulk here alone.
So she pushed off the wall and made her way into the cockpit.
Rowan lay in his chair with his restraints still on. His face was a mess—the blood on his mouth and chin had dried by now, but no one had wiped any of it away. A thin layer of sweat wobbled on his brow, and his eyes were open and alert, but his body floated limply.
“We made it out,” said Zhaleh’s voice over the comms. She said a few names—Ting’s, and others that Kelli didn’t recognize, but that must have been people Rowan knew. “A few still unaccounted for, but those are the ones with me. Rosaura’s with us too; she’s in a state, but she’ll come around.”
“Conchita?” said Rowan. He sounded exhausted, like even that one word took effort.
“Under arrest. Inspiration found it suspicious that a fire started just when they’d arrived to search the premises.
Now, on our side, the official story is that Conchita threw you in the trash in front of Kelli, who went wild with grief and set fire to the bad fuel line before running back to try to save you.
Neither of you survived. It’s going to be in your best interest to get as far away from here as you can.
” Her voice had been dryly amused at the start, but here a note of real emotion crept in: frustration, or regret.
“I’m sorry, hon. I thought I’d planned for everything, but I didn’t count on Inspiration showing up so soon.
In the original plan, you ended up here with me, helping run this thing at my side. ”
Rowan let out a breath. “No, I wasn’t.”
It sounded, oddly, like an argument they’d had before. “You really were.”
“In your head, maybe I was. I don’t even know what’s in your head most days.
But I trusted you with my darkest secret and you used it as currency.
I’m glad it was for something like this, something big, and not just currying Conchita’s favor; that actually does take a weight off my mind.
But you can’t have me back. And where was Kelli, by the way, in this original version of the plan where we both supposedly ran things?
After you blamed another fire on her in front of everyone? Where was she going to go?”
Zhaleh paused just long enough for the pause to be telling.
Kelli was still floating there next to the ladder, but she didn’t think Rowan saw her, and it didn’t feel right, eavesdropping on a talk like this. She cleared her throat. “I had a question too,” she said. “Speaking of all that.”
“Oh, hi, Kelli,” Zhaleh said blandly. “Glad you made it out. What’s your question?”
“Were you the one that started the fire? I figured you were, but I’m wrong about things sometimes. Ting said they thought you were staging a coup, but they weren’t sure.”
Zhaleh sounded amused. “Well, Conchita’s warehouse is burning and I’ve got most of the surviving members of this branch of the Brimstone Syndicate here on my ship, temporarily answering to me. What does it look like to you?”
Kelli thought about Zhaleh’s crystal healing, her talk about being a visionary.
She’d complained about being one of Conchita Quixada’s good daughters.
Had any of that even been true? When she’d told her that Orlando had to be in love with Rosaura, had that been true?
Or was it all just pieces conjured up for Zhaleh’s chess game, the right grievances manufactured at the right moments?
She couldn’t ask Zhaleh, because if Zhaleh was a liar, she’d just lie again.
For the same reason, she couldn’t ask the question Rowan had just asked.
Maybe Zhaleh had been planning to let her die, or be arrested with Conchita, or maybe there’d been some complicated plan to save her, too.
She ought to be angry about that part, but it didn’t matter now, did it?
What actually happened had been none of those things.
But Kelli couldn’t quite leave it alone.
“I just have one other question, then,” she said.
“Are you planning to turn the Brimstone Syndicate into something better? Something people actually want to be part of, when they get tired of Inspiration, without needing all the debts and leverage and everything? Or were you just fed up with not being in charge?”
“I’m not running a charity,” said Zhaleh, gently amused. “But I like to think I’m righting some wrongs. Do you two have a safe place you can get to, lie low for a while?”
“I probably do,” said Rowan. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Good. You know better than to tell me where,” said Zhaleh. Her voice had softened to something that sounded suspiciously like real tenderness. “Well, then that’s it, I’m afraid. Kelli, you’ll take good care of him for me, won’t you?”
“No,” said Kelli, matter-of-fact. She crossed her arms. “I think I’m just about finished doing things for other people. I think we’ll take care of each other for ourselves.”
“That’s the spirit,” Zhaleh said. “Good luck out there.”
“You, too,” said Rowan, with a bittersweet little smile.
The comms closed with a click.
Only then did Rowan turn in his restraints to focus on Kelli, floating there in the doorway. “You’re hurt,” he said, concerned but no longer surprised.
“You’re hurt. There’s blood all over your face. And your wrist’s broken.”
“Believe me, I did not forget about my wrist. There’s first-aid stuff in the supply closet. We can go in a minute, but I don’t want to stay in orbit around Io a minute longer than I have to. You want to strap in while I set the trajectory?”
Kelli nodded. It was so strange—in all the rush, she almost hadn’t had time to understand that there would be a future.
In her exhausted state she couldn’t parse it out yet, the benefits or drawbacks of one path over another.
She glided up and fit herself into the copilot’s chair. “Where are we going?”