The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (17 page)

             
He expected to get a good rise outta Reece with that one, but surprisingly, it only made him smile grimly and shake his head. He suddenly looked bone-weary tired as he pushed a hand through his brown hair.

             
“I know, Gid. Trust me, I know.”

             
Once the cap'n had left for the bridge and it was just Gideon and Po still in the cargo bay, she pushed him lightly and frowned.

             
“You don't gotta go at him so,” she said unhappily. She gave her braid a tug as she stared after Reece. “He's just tryin' to do what's right.”

             
Watchin' her watch Reece go, Gideon grunted and thrust his revolver roughly into its holster. “The right thing would be to put a bullet in the Vee's brainpan before it can do any more damage than's already done.”

             
“And what if you were right about what you said to Reece back on Honora? About Liem, and everythin'? Is it really so bad'a him to want to give Owon the second chance he might'a given Liem?”

             
“If Liem really was a Vee, he deserved what he got,” Gideon said harshly, then regretted it. Cringin', he looked up to make sure Reece really had gone. Didn't matter if he and the cap'n were at odds…there were some things that were better left unsaid, even if everyone knew them.

             
Po shuffled the bright red boots he'd given her with a sigh. “I know what Cap'n said to you about touchin' Owon…but do you think maybe you could promise me you won't hurt him, too? I know it don't make sense…but I just feel sorry for him. He believes so hard in what Eldritch made all the Vees believe, he doesn't have room left in him for anythin' else. He might'a never had the chance to be anythin' but what he is. It's sad, to me.”

             
Blowin' out a breath as he scratched the back’a his head, Gideon grudgingly shrugged, cavin' to Po's big-eyed look. Between the threat'a garbage duty and the thought'a disappointin' her, he didn't see any way he could still off the Vee in good conscience.

             
“I think you might be able to see the good side of a rain cloud,” he grumbled as he started for the galley. He meant to submerge himself in some porridge and burnthroat.

             
Skippin' along beside him, Po brightly said, “That's easy. It brings the rain.”

IX

Owon to the Rescue
(If He Doesn’t Kill You First)

             
Reece frowned, toggling the controls to the left of the yoke to dim the cockpit light. Going by his pocket watch, it was dawn, Honoran time. Nivy looked over at him as his sigh turned into a yawn and raised her eyebrows. She was wearing a gold scarf like a cowl up over her hair, keeping her ears from the cold Reece could feel prickling through his jacket.

             
“No,” he answered her questioning look. “We're nearly there.”

             
Aurelia was coming up fast on Leto, and in order to exit the Euclid without being torn to shreds by the deceleration, he needed to get her engines warmed up to the right speed for reentry. Besides, Nivy wasn't all that better off, as far as being sleep-deprived went. With Gideon taking turns watching Owon, they were both pulling extra hours at the helm.

             
At the thought of Owon, Reece bumped his head back against his seat and barely stopped another yawn-slash-sigh. It would've been nice if his tutors at The Owl had thought to warn him that becoming captain meant inviting everything to go wrong. Now he had a broken turbine, a freezing ship, a Vee for a passenger, and a crew expecting him to make the right decision—their opinions all differing on what that might be, of course.

             
Clearing his throat, he reached and pulled the com link down to his mouth and switched it on to ship wide communication.

             
“Everyone, get strapped in for reentry.” He hesitated, mouth open, and then decidedly hung the com back on its peg. He'd gone over this during last night's moot…the possibility of the strain of deceleration being too much for Aurelia's sick engine, the chance The Kreft might be not seconds behind them once the merged out of the Stream. They knew when he said
get strapped in
, what he meant was closer along the lines of
here's hoping we don't blow up
.

             
His hands firm on the yoke, Reece eased up the bar under his feet. The Afterquin wearily whined, powering up to full speed without actually accelerating. As the whine reached its peak, he edged the yoke one gentle inch at a time to the right, leaning with it. The Stream rushed over the canopy window, rushed, and rushed, a streaking haze…

             
Reece's stomach jerked as Aurelia was spat out of the Euclid, and he quickly loosed the yoke and let up on the leveler bar, his head jarring as the ship righted herself. It took his eyes a moment to focus. Dominating the canopy window was the planet Leto, a dim, grey sphere that looked smudged at its edges, cloudy. To Aurelia's left, the Euclid trickled on, seemingly infinite, while a second Stream glittered faintly a half day's flight to her right. The Perseus would bear
The Aurelia
almost all the way to The Ice Ring, assuming she wasn’t jumped by The Kreft between here and there. Reece urged her forward.

             
Thump thump
.

             
He eyed Nivy sideways as she tapped insistently on her mouthpiece. She pointed at him, then laid her face on the side of her hands, closing her eyes. Well, they
were
an hour out of orbit. And the others wouldn't thank him if he fell asleep in the middle of trying to land Aurelia.

             
“Thanks,” he said as she pulled up on the secondary yoke and took the controls. “Just let me know if there's any movement out there.”

             
He'd meant to go to his loft and farm some Z's, but his feet carried him right past his ladder and into the back corridor. Shoulders hunched against the cold, he wandered, making a sharp turn when he heard Scarlet and Po's chatting voices coming from a room ahead. He needed the wandering time, maybe even more than sleep time; he needed to not think. Even sleeping, his brain didn't want to stop running, turning over fresh worries or reinventing old ones he'd thought he'd already dealt with. The Kreft. Owon. Liem.

             
He arrived at his destination and was surprised to realize he'd meant to come here all along. Because Gid had the right of it, no matter how Reece told him otherwise. He'd tried to look at the situation from every angle—tried to consider things objectively, like Hayden might've—but the answer always came to him the same. He couldn't put his crew at risk because he wasn't hard enough to do the right thing.

             
He paused and peered through the infirmary door's round window, frowning. Hayden was at his desk, his head bowed over a collage of notes. If Mordecai hadn't been there, relaxing on the cot next to the desk with his revolver in hand, Reece would've given him a talking-to for having his back to Owon. The Vee was likely only pretending to be engrossed in the book he held before his hawkish nose as he paced the room—unless he was secretly a
Legends from The Voice of Space
enthusiast.

             
Hayden looked up as Reece opened the door and glanced over his shoulder at the still-reading Owon as if just remembering he was there. Which didn't exactly steady Reece's nerves.

             
“Are we there?” Hayden asked.

             
“Nearly. We're out of the Euclid, anyways.”

             
“And still in one piece.”

             
“For now.”

             
Hayden surveyed him thoughtfully, then, as he turned back to his notes, said too lightly, “You missed breakfast.”

             
With a snort, Reece propped himself on the cot next to Mordecai. “And who cooked, pray tell?”

             
“Gideon.” Hayden grimaced. “Though I suppose it wasn't cooking so much as it was him putting a loaf of bread on the table and telling us to tuck in.”

             
“It was as fine a loaf as I've ever seen,” Mordecai said, his mustache twitching as he smiled sideways at Reece. “But that ain't all you missed.” He pointed his head at Owon, who continued pacing, unperturbed. “Hayden tried to get One Thousand Two Hundred and One here to take some porridge. I expect Gideon's still down there scrubbin' the stuff outta his clothes. Never knew a bowl to fly so far, so fast.”

             
Reece just shook his head, grim. One of these days, Hayden's niceness was going to land him with a knife stuck in his back, and Reece wouldn't forgive him for that when it happened. He thought he might develop a twitch without Hayden around to counterbalance the rest of the crew's moods. Hayden was blessedly normal. Or if not normal, at least transparent.

             
“You should be sleeping,” Hayden said suddenly, studying Reece over the tops of his bifocals. “Did you need something?”

             
Mordecai, Hayden, and Reece all looked up as Owon suddenly slammed his book shut, turning about slowly to face them. He smiled humorlessly, a bare twitch at the corners of his lips.

             
“He is here for us.”

             
There was an uneasy pause as Reece studied his hands, clenched into fists on his knees. The cold metal of his hob's barrel suddenly seemed to soak through his shirt, stinging where it touched his side.

             
“Hayden,” Reece said, more quietly than he'd meant to, “wait outside. You too, Mordecai.”

             
“But you don't mean to—”

             
“Hayden.”

             
After a pause, Hayden slowly stood, pointedly avoiding Reece's eye as he walked from the room. Even not looking at Reece, his expression screamed disapproval, and worse, disappointment.

             
It wasn't till he'd gone that Mordecai took his turn standing and stretching unhurriedly. “You do what you think is right,” he said with a shrug. No matter his flippant tone, his blue eyes were sharp as they glanced over Owon, making the Vee's cool smile actually twitch. Nodding as if that was what he'd intended, Mordecai went out after Hayden, his thumbs hooked behind his belt. The sound of the infirmary door clicking closed seemed too loud in the silence left behind.

             
Slowly but decisively, Reece stood, untucked his hob, and brought it around to face Owon. With his bold nose and his dark eyes, Owon looked like a bird as he cocked his head to one side and studied Reece. This would be easier if he
was
a bird. Reece had killed birds before. Then again, he'd killed Vees, too. Just not since…

             
“We did not think you would do it,” Owon said, sitting down on the cot opposite Reece. “The Pan, yes…but you? You surprise us.”

             
“You can stop trying to stall me. I've already made up my mind.”

             
“Minds can be changed.”

             
“Not this time, Owon.” Reece cocked the gun. Hesitating with his finger on the trigger, he admitted, “I'm a little surprised myself. I expected to have to shoot you before you had the chance to run.”

             
Something close to real amusement crossed Owon's face before he could school it to haughtiness. “Would it rest easier with your conscience if we attacked first, Reece Sheppard?”

             
“Maybe. As long as I have your word you'll throw the fight.” What was he bleeding doing? Now wasn't the time to go and get chummy with the Vee he'd decided to execute. He was already going to have difficulties smoothing this memory over in his head without digging for little proofs that Owon—no,
the Vee
; he had to stop calling him by his bleeding pet name!—had retained some of his old humanity, his old life. He had to remember. This wasn't Liem.

             
He ground his teeth, lifted the hob, took aim…and froze as the Vee calmly murmured, “And so you destroy your one source of answers about your stepbrother.”

             
Warning bells rang in Reece's head—the Vee was playing him, trying to make himself invaluable—but he still peeled his finger off the trigger, even if he didn't lower the gun. “I'm not looking for answers. I know what he was.”

             
“Do you?”

             
“He was becoming a Vee. Eldritch told me that in another year, his transformation would've been finished. He would've been just like you.”

             
The Vee's voice was almost humanly wry as he said, “Not just like us. But that is beside the point. A Veritas he might've been, but what does that mean? Are you not curious?”