An Unforgiving Desert – Chapter 6

“You know this guy?”

My voice is so sharp it could murder someone. That someone being Kalvin.

“Yeah,” he grinds out between locked teeth and a tight jaw. “Yeah, I know him.”

“You were a lot harder to follow than we thought. The flight school was… outside our purview.” The android, Ricardo Nine, tilts his head to the side. “We always said you were with us for life.”

“Funny that, coming from an android,” Kalvin mumbles.

My body heats so quickly the suit whirs, trying to keep the temperature inside stable. What has Kalvin gotten us into? And how am I going to kill him for it? Because I am going to kill him for this. Maim him. He will regret the day he crossed Skylar Kawabata.

My anger management courses at my first flight school never really worked, as is clear right the fuck now.

“How many people are on board? We can scan, but it’ll take a while,” Ricardo Nine asks.

“Three people, including us.” Kalvin offers the information so readily.

I lift my foot and bring it down hard on his ankle. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I yell at him.

“Ow! What the hell was that for?”

“You led them here to hijack the ship? How could you?”

He raises his hands, his face blank with horror. “Not me. Not in a million years.”

The android approaches us, grabs each of our arms, and yanks us forward. “Off to the bridge with you both.”

It’s useless to resist him. His grip will never falter, and he’s been reprogrammed by his boss, whomever that is, to be ruthless.

I drag my feet, but I don’t resist. The sooner we get to the ‘we’re going to airlock you’ part of the day, the better. I don’t want my death dragged out.

On the bridge, two people hold Damian hostage, a gun pointed at him. Jesus, a gun? On a spaceship? These people are out of their minds.

“We’ve got ten minutes, boss,” a man says on the open channel.

“Fantastic. We’re right on schedule.”

The female voice that answers chills me. She turns around to face Kalvin and me, and my stomach bottoms out.

“Cressida?”

With her flawless pale skin flushed pink and hair pulled back, it might have taken me a minute or two to place her. But her voice? I can never forget her voice.

“Well,” she says, placing a hand on her hip. “If it isn’t Skylar Kawabata.” She laughs, her mirth taking a manic turn at the end. “This is kismet.”

More like karma, and I’m on the receiving side.

“You know this person?” Damian asks, and clearly, he is unhappy, believing I have led Cressida to them.

“Yeah. Kind of.”

“They know each other,” Kalvin says, avoiding eye contact with me.

That can’t be good.

When Vivian and her first consort, Jinzo, finally got rid of Cressida, after she hung onto Jinzo far beyond what was socially acceptable post-breakup, she said she was going to lie low. She told everyone, including the media, that her days as a high-profile heiress were over. I thought she’d become a nun.

“Yeah, fate’s a cruel bitch,” I say. “Weren’t you going to join a convent or something?”

She rolls her eyes. “And give up my love of ships? Not likely.” She turns her back on me to access the touchscreens. It appears everything is online, at least for them. “My parents cut me off, out of the will, and sent me packing.”

“Really? The Briar-Stevens let a female heir go? That seems unlikely.”

Almost everything in the Duo Systems gets handed down to women only. Women are still in the minority here, and since the military revolution over a hundred and fifty years ago, women are also the dominant power between the two systems. Back in my system, the Brazilianos System, land can only be owned by women. Here, in the Californikos System, men can own land on only two worlds.

“I have a sister. She gets everything now.” She waves her hand as if it’s of no consequence to her. “Or I had a sister. I’m not a Briar-Stevens anymore.”

“Just Cressida?”

She forces a smile. “Just Cressida. And also the new owner of these gorgeous ships.” She sighs, letting her gaze linger on the bridge stations.

I look sideways at Kalvin, surprisingly quiet for someone who usually has a lot of shit to say.

“If you think they’re just going to let you take the ships, you’re crazy. These are brand-new donations to the flight school. You’ll never be able to disguise these enough to keep them.”

Cressida sucks in a breath through her nose. “That’s my problem, not yours.”

Looking out the front window, the school’s other ship looms closer with each passing minute. Amira and Tomas are on that ship with their instructor. I hope they’re okay.

Cressida pops more commands into the interface, humming along to some song in her head. The man with her keeps his gun trained on us.

This is one of the most bizarre situations I’ve ever been in, and I’ve been in plenty of trouble, most of it not of my own doing. Well, some of it. Like, how does someone as high society and wealthy as Cressida fall this far from grace? I don’t get it.

“Uh, what happened to your network? The guys you were with, last time I saw you on Laguna.”

“I let them all go, dissolved their contracts, and sent them on their way.” She waves her hand in a dismissive gesture.

Wow. She has lost her marbles, and I’m not surprised after everything she went through. We all rally around our relationship networks. And for her to let hers go? No sane person would do that. We need each of our people at our back.

I wish I had people here to have my back right now. It’s just me and useless Kalvin, who hasn’t uttered a word in far too long. I glance at Damian, and his eyes are on the floor. Fat lot of good these men are.

The ship pings as we close in on the other vessel. Shit. I lean to the side to look out the window and follow the trails of three escape pods heading towards Sonoma. My guess is that’s Amira, Tomas, and their instructor.

I elbow Kalvin, but he shakes his head. I sigh.

“So…” I jerk my thumb at Kalvin. “How do you know this loser?”

Cressida laughs. “I always liked you better than Vivian. Kalvin used to be my chief pilot, but he got cold feet last year and tried to quit. When I wouldn’t let him go, he stole eight thousand of my credits and ran. It took me a while to find him again, but by then, he was already deep into flight school.”

She walks up to Kalvin and grasps both of his upper arms in her hands. “This is the best way to pay me back. We’re even now.”

“Are you going to kill us?” Damian asks, finally taking part in this whole situation.

“Nope. I don’t care if you tell the universe I stole these ships. No one will believe you. I have a carefully curated digital life that can’t be cracked. This” — she waves to the state she’s in — “is my actual life now. We’re going to maroon you. It’s my way.”

“Maroon us?”

But Cressida has already turned her back on us, and her henchman waves his gun in our direction to get us moving.

The android steps out of the way and joins Cressida as we leave the bridge.

For fuck’s sake, I was mere moments away from graduation, and this happens? I must have been a tyrant in a former life to deserve all the shit that’s come my way these last few years. Who knows what the hell will happen now? Will we be flunked out? Will we be re-tested? No clue. But this flight license was all I was working towards for years! I can’t fail at the last minute.

The man with the gun brings us to the life pods on the second level outside the galley. He waves his gun again.

“Get some food and water for the life pods. Miss Cressida doesn’t like it when people get marooned without basic necessities.”

Is he kidding?

“What happened? Did she find religion or something before she became a thief?”

He bops his head from side to side. “You could say that. Now, go.”

Trudging around the galley in our pressure suits and gathering food and water is laborious, especially with the three of us in there at once. I’m sweating by the time my arms are full. It’s not like there was much here to begin with — just a few bottles in the fridge and some snacks and MRE’s. We divide them up between us, and I’m grateful that neither Damian nor Kalvin try to signal they’ll fight. No, no fighting. No trying to take back the ship. Fuck that. Let her have it. She’s got a gun and men and a fucking android. We couldn’t stop her, even if we tried.

“Ready?” When we nod, he gestures with his gun again at the life pods down the emergency corridor. We shuffle into the hall, single file, Damian at the back. “Stop.”

We all turn and face him.

“You first. In.” He jerks his gun at Damian, and Damian sighs, ducks his head, and enters the life pod. The doors close behind him, a brief alarm sounds, and a whoosh precedes the display next to the door changing from green ‘Available’ to red ‘No Life Pod Present.’

I turn to Kalvin. “Did you really have to steal from them?”

His eyes widen. “They owed me six months’ worth of wages. They stole from me. I took my back payment and got the hell out.”

“Is this why you’ve been calling me a princess? Because that’s what you heard from Cressida?”

His chin pulls down, and his jaw tightens.

“Son of a bitch. After this, I never want to see you again. Ever. Hear me?”

He throws his hands up. “Same here, princess.”

When I turn around to get into my life pod, I’m confused to see the broad smile on the henchman’s face. His eyes narrow as he gestures to Kalvin.

“You’re going with her.”

“What?” we both say.

“Come on, Alonso,” Kalvin pleads. “I can take my own pod.”

Alonso inhales and smiles. “No, I think Miss Cressida would agree that this is better. She may have found a conscience before becoming a thief, but she still loves revenge. And I won’t forget that you stole my last bottle of Laguna 43 bourbon, too.” He clicks his tongue as he shakes his head. “Bad move, boy. My grandfather gave me that bottle.”

My body goes from hot to fiery depths of hell as I curse all the gods for putting me on this ship with Kalvin. I shoot him a look that could kill, and he shrinks back.

“In you go,” Alonso says, a fake smile splitting his face.

I stalk into the life pod, dump my food and water into the storage bin, and lock it shut before strapping myself into the harness. Kalvin does the same, across the pod from me. These pods can fit six people, eight if necessary, so it’s not like we’re crammed in. Still, I don’t want to be anywhere near him.

Alonso sticks his head in. “Don’t forget to write!”

He pulls out, the doors shut, and the clamps holding us to the ship release.

“Skylar, I —” Kalvin starts.

“Don’t you fucking say a goddamned word to me, or I’ll rip your balls off and feed them to you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replies meekly.

The life pod jolts, the thrusters fire, and we clear the ship.

I tap the back of my helmet against the headrest and think. Think think think. What’s next?

This is not what I expected to happen when I woke up this morning.