The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (18 page)

             
Considering, Reece lowered the hob. Chances were, anything Owon…that is, the Vee…fed him wouldn't be the truth anyways, just talk to keep Reece from putting a bullet to him, as Gid would've put it. Unfortunately, he was right—Reece
was
curious. The not-knowing was like an itch between his shoulder blades.

             
“Give me one thing. One thing I can trust.” When the Vee continued to stare at him, he sighingly prompted, “You had to have once been like him. A normal person. Why did you become a Vee?”

             
Wariness glittered in those black, black eyes; Reece was clearly encroaching on forbidden territory. “Before the serum…” Hesitating, Owon shook his head. “We were different.”

His tone had a ring of finality, but Reece wasn't finished, even though he wished he could be. His next question wanted to stay in the pit of his stomach, where it'd been slowly fossilizing as he ignored it these past few months. It couldn't go unanswered forever.

              “Could you go back to how you were, now? Could Liem have gone back?”

             
“It is inconceivable.” After a beat, the Vee admitted, “But not impossible.”

             
Reece curled and uncurled his fingers around the grip of his hob, remembering Liem, scowling over the dinner table as Reece flicked peas at him, Liem, learning to ride a pushbike with Reece, angry when Reece learned faster. Liem, beaming as he graduated with highest marks from The Aurelian Academy…even beaming at Reece, for a second. All the memories Reece had of his stepbrother were the grudgingly happy kind, but there
had
been happiness there.

             
“He might have gone back,” he muttered, half to himself.

             
Owon chuckled a hoarse cough that sounded out of practice. “We very much doubt it. But continue deluding yourself, if it pleases you. We find your naiveté…amusing.” His arched one shaven eyebrow when Reece made his gun arm taut again, tut-tutting. “You still have not learned. The threat of death has no effect on us.”

             
“But you
do
want to live. I've seen it.”

             
“There is a difference between wanting life and fearing death. Life is preferable. But it only lasts so long, either way.”

             
Reece sat there, staring blankly, until his raised arm grew tired and reminded him that he had a ship to tend to outside the infirmary. He wasn't sure when, but he'd made his choice, and even if there'd be bogrosh to pay for it later, the fact the troubled lump in his gut was ebbing away was proof enough it was the right one for now.

             
As Owon watched him stand, he said in a gratingly satisfied voice, “You cannot kill us. We knew it.”

             
“Nope,” Reece agreed, and sharply thrust the heel of his palm into the Vee's startled face with a grinding
crack
. “But we can break your nose. In two places, sounds like.” While Owon swiped uselessly at the blood dribbling down and off his chin, Reece took him by a fistful of his jacket and drew him closer than was strictly comfortable. “Let's be candid here. I'm dumping you the first chance I get, and if you make any trouble for me or my crew,
any
, I know a Pantedan who will kill you happily and creatively before then. But you owe me one, Owon. You—owe—me.”

             
Owon spat blood to the side and rasped dangerously, “You threaten us when we could kill you in the space of the breath.”

             
“I know.” And with that, Reece popped the Vee across the skull with the butt of his gun and took a quick step backward as he toppled bonelessly to the floor.

             
Hayden and Mordecai straightened from leaning against the corridor wall as he opened the door and then closed it behind him.

             
“I didn’t hear a gunshot. What happened?” Hayden asked, frowning concernedly. “Are you alright? We didn't mean to eavesdrop…and we didn't hear much,” he hurried to add when Reece leveled him with a look, “but we did hear him talking about…about Liem…”

             
Slowly, staring off at nothing, Reece nodded. Answering once would've been as easy as saying yes or no, and letting Hayden clap him on the back or nod and go on like before. That was before he'd become captain, before life had gotten as complicated as rerouting a jumble of underengine wires.

             
“Do you think I did the right thing?”

             
“Yes,” Hayden immediately answered without blinking.

             
“Good.” With a grin, Reece burrowed his hands in his pockets and turned towards the bridge. “Then I'll let you plead my case to Gideon. Make it good. Be sure to tell him I broke Owon's nose. That might help.”

             
“You broke his—?”

He heard Hayden fumbling for the door handle, heard the door creak open and a startled exclamation, and picked up his pace. His hand was throbbing; it felt like he'd hit someone wearing a helmet. Vees and their bleeding serum.

              On the bridge, Nivy was reclining in her chair with her feet propped on the flightpanel, playing cat's cradle with a bootlace. She looked up as he entered, grinned at his exasperated expression, and lifted her feet so he could slide in front of the helm and switch off the autopilot. Leto had absorbed the width of the canopy window, and if the tweeting sensors on the flightpanel were any indicator, Aurelia was beginning her descent through the planet's dark atmosphere.

             
“I went to see Owon,” Reece admitted as he held the vibrating helm steady and peered intently at the green graph radar. He made a face when Nivy nodded at the corner of his eye, as if she'd guessed as much. “How'd you know?”

             
After shooting him a flat stare, she rolled her eyes and shook her head.

             
“Am I that predictable?”

             
She gave him another look.

             
“Yeah, well, just keep playing with your bootlace, Numpty,” he muttered as he returned his attention to flying. “I've got some surprises up my sleeve yet.”

             
It was hard to tell where the atmospheric clouds stopped and the free air began; everything was as black as coal, so dark the light of the cockpit, even dimmed, stung Reece's eyes. At a nod from Reece, Nivy shut the light off completely, so only the controls on the flightpanel glowed, and those softly. Reece grunted when he opened up the com for outside logs and heard nothing. He'd expected to be hailed as soon as the Letoians saw
The Aurelia
breaking atmosphere.

             
“No logs,” he muttered, and squinted out the window, “and no lights in sight. What's the green say?”

             
Nivy bowed her head over the green and shook her head. Nothing. Which was both bad and good. Good, because it meant The Kreft weren't close. Bad, because it meant Reece could be getting ready to turn them into a hotcake against a mountainside.

             
“See if you can map out a semi-level terrain. I want to put her down as soon as possible.”

             
After a moment of scanning the radar's read of the planet, Nivy tapped at a point on the screen and nodded.

             
“About thirty miles out. That's not bad,” Reece mused. He glared out the window again. “I don't get it. We're under the clouds. We should at least be able to make out some—”

             
Suddenly the canopy window was filled with green, a silent flash of color so bright, he threw his forearm over his eyes and cursed.

             
“What the bleeding bogrosh was that?” He blinked over at Nivy as she furiously rubbed her fists in her eyes. “It was like—”

             
Another flash, this time red, but just as sudden and silent. It
was
lightning…
colored
lightning. Heart thumping, he started taking Aurelia down, turning her hard to starboard in a tight spiral. Better to land on uneven terrain than risk flying through an electrical storm, if that's what this was. He couldn't hear thunder, or wind, and there was no rain that he could see, but the air had the same eerie quietness of a late summer storm, and even inside the ship, he thought he could smell the damp humidity.

             
He landed Aurelia and called for the crew to assemble in the cargo bay. Gideon was last to arrive, herding in Owon, who had a strip of bonding tape across the bridge of his crooked-looking nose, with harder-than-necessary prods to the back. Reece shook his head. It really would've been so much easier to get rid of the bleeding Vee before he did any
real
harm. Overturning a bowl of steaming hot porridge into Gideon's lap didn't,
didn't
count, no matter what Gid said.

             
Nivy slid down the stair railing to join the others as Reece assumed his normal position on the overhead bridge, his arms folded. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she looked back and forth between Po and Scarlet, who had their heads together and were ominously giggling, and Hayden and Gideon, who were arguing on either side of Owon. She settled for sitting beside Mordecai where he was laying on the floor humming a campfire song.

             
“Scarlet.”

             
Scarlet looked up at Reece mid-laugh as Po dissolved into a fresh bout of giggles behind her. Reece shifted his feet. He was probably better off not knowing.

             
“What can you tell us all about Leto?”

             
Quirking an eyebrow at him—hey, he'd never denied she could be useful, not outright, anyways—Scarlet brushed down her skirts and sat on a crate, making it somehow look like a throne. “As much as anyone can. Their culture is limited to a single city capital, barely big enough to sustain their population—which fortunately hasn’t grown much in recent years.”

“Because of their short life spans,” Reece guessed, and Scarlet favored him with a mildly impressed look from her crate-throne.

“That’s right,” she said. “Between the planet’s harsh climate, and the Letoians’ practically archaic sanitation systems, most of the common folk don’t make it to their sixtieth birthdays. Several decades ago Leto City’s mayor attempted to transplant some of the population—settle them in villages, to help with the sanitation issue—but the settlements all failed. The desert was simply too severe. Thus why Leto City itself is underground. It—”

             
“Explain the lightning.” At a dangerous look from Scarlet, Reece added in a moderated tone, “Please.”

             
“The atmospheric lightning is Leto's main power source. I can't tell you much else. The Letoians' secrets are guarded with closed-mouths, even from their allies. They have never expressed interest in accepting Honora's help in advancing their…civilization.” Her mouth twisted around the word, as if she'd used it against her better judgment. “They have the weakest leadership structure of any planet I've studied. The smallest misstep could send it tumbling. Perhaps it would be prudent to—what?” she suddenly snapped, glancing sharply at Gideon, who coughed.

             
“I said it's almost like bein' in class again, only boringer.”

             
Scarlet went as red as her namesake. “It's
more boring
, you illiterate ox.”

             
After a beat, Gideon glanced questioningly at Hayden, who mumbled something beneath his breath. Gideon's eyebrows shot up towards his dark hairline.

             
“I ain't illiterate!
Hey
!” Gid barked at Owon as the Vee took a seat. “No one told you to sit!”

             
Owon sneered. “No, and if you had, you can rest assured we would be standing. We do not obey the whims of—” He looked at Scarlet, who paled a bit under his too-black stare. “—illiterate oxen.”

             
“Alright, cut it out,” Reece called tiredly, rubbing his forehead. Tutor Agnes had been right. Once upon a time, she had told his Mechanical Engineering class that a captain was a jack of all trades, more than just the pilot—the cook, the doctor, the mechanic. He tagged
peacemaker
onto that list not quite happily. “Who wants to be on the expedition team?”

             
He should've known better than to ask. Everyone had a perfectly legitimate reason for wanting to come along (well, except for Mordecai, who was merely after some Letoian tobacco he'd heard about on one of his escapades). He sighingly gave them a moment to argue, his chin on his fist.

             
“—can't come anyways,” Scarlet was saying to Gideon, calm, but with bite to her words. “You have to stay and watch…him.”

             
“It's Mordecai's turn to watch him.” Brightening, Gid grinned and added, “Unless you're sayin' I'm the only one up to the job.”