The Karakoian docking station was long behind the Black Fang, but Fang wasn’t convinced they were out of Bor’tho space just yet.

  She turned her attention to the control panel, running through the standard airborne ship checks. Fuel reserves—stable. Navigation—locked onto the right trajectory. External hull integrity—no anomalies. Internal pressure balance—holding steady. Even the secondary redundancies were all green. Still, she went through them twice, fingers flicking switches and scanning the readouts.

  Hunter, lounging with her feet propped up on the console on the co-pilot’s station, cracked an eye open. “You’ve rarely been this serious about protocols.” She'd been doing this for years now, the propping of her feet, the routine of checks, the familiar grumble of the ship, the subtle shift in the atmosphere when things weren’t quite right. But there was something about this mission that made it harder to simply slip into the familiar ease she relied on.

  Maybe Fang was feeling the weight of it all too.

  Fang didn’t stop. “This ship isn’t insured. I’m not getting a dime if it’s blown to bits.”

  Hunter smiled. “You rarely say that, also. Now there’s only us two, you got something on your mind you wanna talk about?”

  She had been trying to say this to her the last time they were alone. The two hadn’t been as close since, well, the argument, but Hunter figured it was for the best. Their opinions on life were fundamentally different on many fronts. Fang believed in lucky charms. Hunter didn’t. Fang also believed in those weird get-rich-quick schemes that sounded too good to be true. Hunter didn’t.

  Fang believed in facing her fears. Hunter didn’t.

  Fang didn’t say anything for a moment. Hunter waited for a few seconds, then just said, “If you don’t, I’ll get us two cans of Grosmunster.”

  The subtle tension in Fang’s shoulders hadn’t faded, and neither had her irritation. “I hate Sloan being on the ship.”

  “Yeah?”

  Fang rolled her shoulders and let out a soft grrr before speaking. “If she’s just going to be silent all the time and not contribute anything, she really should’ve just stayed on Mendax. What’s the point of having her around?”

  “You might’ve said the same thing about Priest had you been there before the old man, though.”

  “At least Priest gets things done. Sloan just sits there, barely talks, and acts like the rest of us are beneath her. I don’t trust people like that.”

  But you wouldn’t have known that Priest can get things done. The first time we met Priest, he was fiddling with a malfunctioning vending machine in the verge of the galaxy. He wasn’t fixing it to make the thing work—he was taking it apart just to see if he could. He was doing nothing with his life. Hunter shrugged. “You need someone to dig up files the proper way, you’d rather Gravel do it?”

  Only then did Fang turn to her. “No, I’d rather not need someone at all. I noticed you’ve done the most defending Sloan out of anyone here. Why?”

  Hunter tilted her head slightly. She wanted to say something else, but she ended up swallowing her words and replied with something entirely different from what she’d originally planned, “I guess I don’t mind her as much as you do.”

  Fang snorted. “So you like her because she doesn’t talk?”

  “I like that she doesn’t get in my way,” Hunter corrected. “But let’s not kid ourselves. She’s sitting on a lot more than she’s saying.”

  Fang scoffed. "I don't get you sometimes. I thought you were the type to keep a close watch on things like this, but you’re just letting it slide."

  Hunter stretched, folding her arms behind her head. “Alright, then. What do you think she’s actually capable of? And if what you’re worried about does happen, what’s your plan?”

  Fang’s fingers tapped against her knee. “Worst case? She’s a plant—working for someone else, feeding them intel. If that’s the case, we cut her off before she compromises us.”

  Hunter nodded. “And if she’s just keeping secrets but not working against us?”

  Fang’s brow furrowed. “Then I get those secrets out of her. One way or another.”

  Hunter smirked at that but said nothing, letting Fang continue.

  “She could also just be using us for protection, waiting for the right moment to bail when she finds something better. In that case, we make sure she knows there’s no ‘better.’ If she’s with us, she’s with us—end of story.”

  Hunter watched her for a moment, then gave a slow nod. “There you go.”

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  Fang raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  Hunter shrugged. “You’ve got your solutions. If any of that happens, I’ll defer to you.”

  Hunter wanted to ask Fang whether she had resolved it with her boyfriend. Whether they had talked it out. But the way Fang narrowed her eyes told Hunter she was in the mood for something entirely differently. "Why do you always say that?" Fang asked as she swept strands of her hair behind her ears.

  Hunter glanced at her. "Say what?"

  “That you’ll defer to me. Or Gravel. Like, I trust our captain, but I don’t go around saying it every time. Even last time, when Xaxx looked like he was about to turn us into spacedust, you still trusted his judgment. Why?”

  Of course. It can never be about your life or my life anymore. Has to be about Sloan, or Gravel, or anyone else.

  “You trusted his call on that one too.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t trust him on the first day. Especially with the way he lets his mouth run. Our dear Captain is still making that sushi joke.” Which started seven months ago, and didn’t even stem from an actual interest that Hunter had in tentacles, but was from that one time she ate a still-wiggling Earthling octopus leg when no one else dared to. Fang did join in on the joke, but only Gravel kept throwing back to it months later.

  “How do you know I trusted Gravel since the first day?” Hunter’s smile turned into a silly grin.

  “Why don’t you tell me about it then? You’ve told me many stories, yet there is always something I haven’t heard,” Fang replied.

  The Black Fang had ascended onto the troposphere, and the thickening clouds were all they could see from the front viewport. From her pouch, Hunter took out a nano-welder that fit on her index finger. She turned it over in her hand, the tiny tool groaning as it activated.

  “This thing saved my ass once,” she mused. “First job with Gravel, we had a busted containment latch mid-flight. Cargo was military surplus, stuff that would’ve made us a prime target if it spilled out where it shouldn’t have. I spent half an hour trying to figure out how to fix it, and ran through every stupid protocol I could think of.”

  Fang glanced at her. “And?”

  “And Gravel just walked up, yanked a welder off the rack, and said, ‘Just fuse the damn thing shut and land at the nearest port. Then you can wreck your brains off.’” Hunter smirked. “I thought he was reckless. But we made it through, and later, when we did have time to fix it properly, we completed our assignment and were a lot richer.”

  She then leaned back further. “Then there was this other job. Simple cross-system carrier delivery—nothing fancy. We were passing through Ouroboro, and none of us had been there before. He took one look at the coordinates and said, ‘Straight route, no detours. We run hot through the patrol sectors, nobody has time to scan us.’”

  She shook her head slightly. “I wasn’t like I am now. I overthought things. Spent an extra hour running simulations, figuring out a staggered route that would take us through a secondary lane, off the main paths, avoiding inspections. Told him my plan, and you know what he said? ‘Sure. If you’ve thought it out, roll with it.’”

  “Anddddd?” Fang chimed in.

  “Nothing went to plan. Lane disruption, randomized patrol schedule, mechanical failure, you know. Worst of the worst.” She stood and walked out of the cockpit, raising her voice as she went. “Getting us some Grosmunster.”

  “Don’t leave in the middle of a story!” Fang called after her. But she was already gone, only to be back a minute later with two cold cans in her hands.

  Hunter tossed one over to Fang. “Gravel pulled us out of that mess. Not cleanly, not easily, but he did. The next time, I went with his gut instead of over-analyzing. And it worked.”

  “Right, so that’s all it took? One bad mission and suddenly Captain Gut Instinct has all the answers?” Fang asked.

  Hunter dropped back to her seat and popped the can open. “After a while, I started keeping track. Every time we followed his instinct, things worked out more often than not. So yeah, I trust his judgment.” She took a sip. “This tasted better before.” Then she gulped half the can down before Fang could open hers. “Working with him for as long as I have, you start picking up some of his habits. I’m just a lot more laid-back than I used to be.”

  Fang tilted her head. “Gravel was against Sloan being on the ship. You were against that decision of his!”

  Hunter stretched, rolling her shoulders. “Thing is, Gravel’s never trusted anyone that much. Seven years, and how many people has he let into this crew?” She gave Fang a knowing look. “If it’s recruitment-related, I’ll trust my own judgment more than his.”

  Fang stared at Hunter for a moment, then cracked open her can of Grosmunster. The fizz filled the silence between them.

  A sharp beep resounded from Fang’s wrist device. She peered at the notification, then opened the message, then stared at it for far too long.

  Hunter cocked her head. “Kai?”

  Fang’s brow furrowed. “No. Linlin.”

  Hunter would’ve preferred it to be Kai. She would have something to talk about. So she kept sipping her drink, waiting.

  Fang didn’t make her wait long. “My cousin. He says Jiye is in the same star system as us. Confirmed.”

  Hunter’s eyes narrowed. “Liu Jiye? Your other cousin who’s serving in the Republic?”

  Fang nodded slowly. Her expression was neutral, but there was an edge in the way she crushed her half-empty can a little tighter than necessary. “We were even somewhat close in the past. Played together whenever his family visited Earth. But he figured extorting the common folk for money was easier if he was an officer.”

  “That’s one way to climb the ladder.”

  Fang gave a grin. It was bright, but not the usual Fang-certified kind of bright. “See, you can’t trust anyone fully. Even your own kin.”

  Hunter said nothing. She was busy thinking about how Fang was a giant jumble of contradictions. She said no one could be trusted fully, but she put your life in their hands every time they landed on hostile territory. She complained about Sloan keeping secrets, but she was not exactly open herself. And if Hunter had asked her about Kai right then, she would have twisted her answer so many times, she’d have to file it under philosophy instead of facts.

  Hunter was a walking contradiction too. But at least she didn’t hide that fact.

  “What do you think you’ll say to Jiye if you guys ever meet?”

  “I don’t know.” Fang gave her a bitter smile. “But I think we won’t be meeting. If we do meet, more likely than not he’ll put me in jail.” Then she took another sip of Grosmunster.

  Beyond the viewport, the clouds thinned, revealing a pod of skywhales slowly floating toward the giant sun. They shimmered with bleached biolight, trailing soft, musical thrums that barely reached the ship. Like a lullaby from another age.

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