Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Tish had needed time to think about her next steps.
Her first choice had been to go for a walk in the bio-dome.
She’d ruled that idea out quickly. The message had taken more than two weeks to reach Defiance.
If the posting had gotten here ahead of the warning from her fathers, it was possible someone had already seen it.
That meant the second she left the ship, she’d be an easy target for any bounty hunters on the station.
On board the True, only two bounty hunters could reach her—Mace and Xaber.
Not that she thought they’d turn her in.
They would likely rage and rail at her once they knew the truth.
Mace would do his glower and growl thing.
Xaber… She wasn’t sure what he’d do. He might be angry, or he might retreat in silence. Probably the second one.
Since leaving the ship wasn’t an option, she’d gone with her second favorite thinking spot—the shower.
She was in the cabin she’d claimed as her private sanctuary, enjoying the benefits of unlimited hot water.
Water cascaded around her, and lightly scented steam filled her lungs as she tested out various ways of approaching the now-unavoidable conversation.
She was rinsing the last of a conditioning mask out of her thick curls when she heard indistinct shouting from somewhere on board.
She stepped out of the flow of water so she could hear better. This time, she made out the words.
“Tix! Where are you?” Mace bellowed.
“She’s not answering.” That was Xaber. He was still too far away to hear what he said next, but the tone was urgent.
She turned off the water, grabbed a towel, and hurried into the main part of the cabin. She had no idea what was wrong, but it sounded serious. “I’m in here!”
Bootsteps pounded down the corridor, coming closer.
“Where?” Mace demanded.
“The little cabin! Hold on. I’m coming.” She wrapped the cyborg-sized towel around herself and activated the door. “What’s happening? Is everything okay?”
They were both directly outside the door, which made her take a wary step back. They did not look happy. At all.
“You’re still here,” Xaber said.
“Where else would I… Oof!” She was cut off mid-sentence as Mace surged into the room, picked her up, and wrapped her in a bear hug.
“Hi,” she managed to wheeze with what little air was still in her lungs.
Mace kept going, carrying her back into the cabin. He kept walking until he reached the bed she’d pushed against the outer bulkhead. She slept with them, so she’d turned it into a sort of daybed with plenty of pillows and a soft blanket.
He put her down on the bed, kissed the top of her head, and then moved back. “Livy, lock down the ship.”
“Lockdown command acknowledged and in progress,” the AI said.
Xaber moved to stand beside Mace, and the two of them looked at her with hard stares that made her want to hide under the pillows like she was seven years old and about to be grounded for a month.
“We need to talk,” Mace stated.
Xaber winced and shot his batch-brother a bemused look. “You really need to drop that phrase from your vocabulary. Though in this situation, it works.”
“What is going on? Are you two alright?” she asked.
Xaber turned his focus back on her. “We’re fine.”
“Totally fine,” Mace rumbled.
“Though it has come to our attention that we’ve never been properly introduced. Hello, Tishna Vay. It’s nice to meet you.”
Well, fraxx. Tish mustered up a smile despite the fact that her heart was slamming itself against her ribcage.
“Hi. I guess this means I don’t need to finish rehearsing the speech where I explain all this. Huh?”
Neither of them cracked a smile. Xaber shook his head, but Mace stayed impossibly still, the way only a cyborg could.
“We know some of what’s happening. The rest, we want to hear from you.”
“And no more lies,” Mace said.
“No more lies,” she agreed. A weight slid off her shoulders as she spoke the words.
It was time for the truth.
She sat on the bed, wrapped in her towel, her hair still dripping wet, and gestured for them to sit with her. She wanted to be able to touch them. To connect while she shared her story. She needed them to hear her and, hopefully, to understand.
Mace moved first. He sat to her left, and Xaber claimed a spot to her right. She wouldn’t be able to see them well, but she could touch them. That was better.
She placed a hand on each of their shoulders and closed her eyes. “What do you want to know first?”
“What happened the day you left your owner?” Xaber asked.
So they were doing the hardest part first. Okay.
“His name is Hamish Kerr, and he is an asshole. I didn’t sign a contract with him.
He inherited it from his aunt when she died unexpectedly.
Until then, my life wasn’t too bad. She treated me like a regular employee for the most part.
Hamish didn’t. He saw me as property. All the informal arrangements I’d made with Zendi went out the airlock the day he arrived to take ownership. ”
“How long ago did she die?” Mace asked.
“About eight months ago. Hamish didn’t even come to the funeral.
He sent instructions for ‘the staff’ to keep the place running until further notice.
I don’t think he realized that I was his aunt’s only full-time employee.
Amadox Station is not in a high-traffic system, and our shop had competition. ”
“Your fathers?” Mace guessed.
“Yup.”
Xaber turned to look at her quizzically. “You sold your services to your family’s competitor? Why?”
“That’s a different story, but I can sum it up quickly. About thirteen years ago, a ship came into our shop for repairs. It turned out it had been somewhere it shouldn’t have been, for reasons that don’t matter to this story.
“Their ship was infested with a metal-eating lifeform they picked up during the trip into a quarantined area. We didn’t know about any of it.
While the ship was docked, the infestation moved to the station and caused significant damage.
Amadox, the corporation that runs the station, billed my fathers for it. My dads didn’t have the scrip.”
She shrugged. “Zendi did. So I signed a fifteen-year contract with her. She paid the bill, and I went to work for her.”
“Your parents let you do that?” Mace asked.
“They didn’t know anything about it until the contract was signed. I was an adult, and it was my decision. They were not happy about it, but they couldn’t stay mad at me forever.”
Xaber chuckled and patted her hand. “I’m starting to see a pattern with you. Forgiveness instead of permission.”
“In my defense, this situation is vastly different. I didn’t know you at all when I told you my name was Tix. How was I supposed to know we’d wind up here?”
“You should have told us sooner,” Mace said.
She caught the note of betrayal in his voice and felt a pang of guilt.
“I thought about it more than once. It was just….” She sighed and blurted out the truth.
“I was afraid that if I told you the truth, I’d lose all this.
” She gestured around the cabin she’d made her own.
A holo of her dads sat on a small desk in one corner.
She’d asked permission to use ship’s fabricator to create some new clothes as well as several lengths of plum and gray fabrics that were now draped over the metal walls to soften them.
She’d also created some pillows and a blanket to match.
“But mostly, I was afraid I’d lose you. Being with me wouldn’t be easy anymore. Everything about my situation is complicated.”
Mace growled. “How many times do I need to say this, temptress? Your battles are our battles.”
Tears pricked her eyes as she turned toward him.
“I think I needed to hear it one more time. You’re not the only ones with trust issues.
I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, because Amadox didn’t have many families living there.
The ones I did have? They didn’t want to stay in contact once I signed away my freedom.
Like being indentured was contagious. Boyfriends?
Same thing. Zendi promised me that if anything happened to her, the contract would end.
She lied about that. My whole life, the only ones who always had my back were my parents.
” She swallowed to push down the lump in her throat.
“Until I met the two of you. You changed everything, and I was afraid that telling you the truth would mean I’d be alone again. ”
“You’re not alone anymore,” Xaber said. “But you still need to tell us what happened that day.”
“I think you can guess. Hamish saw me as his property. Not just as someone who owed him a set number of hours each day, but as a thing he could use any way he wanted. When hinting at what he wanted didn’t work, he got frustrated and tried to force things.”
Her stomach clenched as the memories took hold of her, dragging her back to that moment.
“He grabbed me. I pushed him off. He punched me in the face. I grabbed a wrench and clocked him over the head with it. He dropped like a sack of rocks, and I ran. Staying wasn’t an option.
I shoved a few things into my bag and took off before he woke up.
I called a family friend who told my fathers what had happened.
They figured out a way to get me off the station without being seen. ”
She squeezed their hands. “I got a message less than an hour ago from my fathers. The first one since I left. They warned me that a bounty had been issued. I was in the shower, figuring out the best way to break the news to you when you came in bellowing like a pair of enraged Torskis. How did you find out?”
“Flek told us. He said we have a little time before anyone on the station finds out about the bounty on your head, but not much,” Xaber said.
“Which means your ass is staying on board this ship until we figure out our plan.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I can’t stay on the True forever. This bounty isn’t going away unless it’s paid, and I don’t have that kind of scrip.”
A thought occurred to her then, and she voiced her concern immediately. “And neither do either of you, so don’t even think about offering.”
“You saw the bounty posting? Did you see why it’s so high?” Xaber asked.
Something about his tone made her uneasy. “My parents sent me a copy of the first page, but not the whole thing. Just the bit with my name, photo, and the amount of the bounty. What else did it say?”
“You’re not going to like it,” Xaber warned.
“Tell me.”
She managed to stay quiet until Xaber reached the end of the list of her supposed crimes. Then she went ballistic.
“That qarfing, fraxxing, son of a star beast. The entire company wasn’t worth that much scrip, and there sure as hell wasn’t that much in his cheap, tiny office safe. A safe that he never locked because he couldn’t remember the fraxxing code!”
She wanted to hit Hamish with a wrench again.
Repeatedly. According to the information Flek had provided, that lying weasel had claimed she’d stolen a digital wallet from his safe.
One loaded with a small fortune in scrip.
In his version of events, the confrontation had happened in his office.
He’d caught her breaking into his safe. When he tried to stop her, she had become violent and hit him over the head with some kind of weapon.
That part made her laugh. She didn’t need a weapon. She’d been in the garage, surrounded by tools. None of it made any sense. Especially the part where he claimed that along with the scrip, she’d made off with several expensive tools from the shop.
“How was I supposed to have escaped while carrying that lot?” she ranted. “Even if I only took one of each, I’d be lugging around more than thirty kilograms of crap.”
“I take it this asshole didn’t know much about the business he inherited. Do you think he picked the most expensive items listed on the shop’s inventory and claimed you took them?” Mace asked.
“That…is quite possible.” And it made perfect sense. “Hamish is both greedy and stupid. Insurance fraud would seem like a great idea to him.”
Xaber nodded. “Greedy and stupid are good. It means he’s not going to see us coming.”
“We’re going back there?” That sounded like the best idea ever and also the worst.
“I think we have to. You need to clear your name, and we want to have a word with the asshole who put his hands on our female.”
She wriggled out from between them, got to her feet, and then turned back so she could see them both. “You’re offering to come back to Amadox Station and help me get my life back?”
Mace growled, and the sound made her bare toes curl into the rug that covered the hard metal deck. “Do I need to say it again?”
“No. I just… I wanted to be sure I understood the plan.”
“It’s not a plan yet. Right now, it’s more of a statement of intent,” Xaber said, but he was smiling.
“We’ll figure out something, but before we start planning, I have two things to say.
First, I want to thank you both. For having my back.
For believing in me. For trusting me to fix your ship.
” Tish took a deep breath and let herself say the words that had dwelled at the edges of her mind, waiting for her to find the courage to admit they were true.
“I love you. Both of you. That’s why I didn’t run when I got the message about the bounty. I…just thought you should know.”
They were on their knees in front of her in a flash, both of them taking one of her hands in theirs.
“I love you, too,” Mace said it first.
“Me too. I mean, I love you, Tishna. Or Tix. Or whatever you want us to call you.”
She laughed, suffused with joy, relief, and hope. “Tish. Call me Tish. That’s who I really am. Though Tix is okay too.”
“Tish. There’s one more thing we need to talk about,” Mace said, suddenly serious.
Xaber nodded. “Right. That. I almost forgot.”
“What now?” Her ability to cope was already at its breaking point.
“When we were out today, we talked about you a lot. This thing with the bounty just made it more urgent,” Xaber said.
“But we had already agreed that we wanted to ask you something.” Mace glanced at Xaber, who nodded for him to continue. “We want you to stay on the True with us. Permanently. This ship needs an engineer. And we need you.”
Xaber sighed. “You forgot to ask her the question, Mace.”
“He doesn’t need to.” This was what she wanted. What she’d dreamed about from the first morning she’d woken up nestled between them. She was free to be herself. The lies, the guilt, and the worry were gone.
With a whoop, she threw herself into their arms, sending them into a tangled tumble. “The answer is yes.”