Trade Circle: A Space Opera Adventure Series (The New Dawn Book 3) Read online

  “But I didn’t say anything,” Laos cried, cocking her fist. “I wasn’t flirting. I wasn’t doing anything—”

  “Are you really so dense? Could you not see the way he looked at you? The way his entire manner changed when he caught your eye?” Tolen said. “And you kept trying to stand closer to him.”

  Laos stared at him moon-eyed. She’d noticed, but she’d thought it was a good thing. A sign of trust and friendship. She hadn’t meant anything more. “Tolen . . .”

  “Did you ever wonder why it was you the Nayak took?” Tolen snarled. “No other girl but you. Did you wonder why they thought you above all would be complicit?”

  Laos was stunned. Her body felt numb, the pain of her assault consuming her from the inside out. Her brother had always been protective of her, but she didn’t know he blamed her for being taken.

  Suddenly, Brishen burst between them, punched Tolen in the face, and pulled Laos into a protective embrace. The violent outburst from Brishen was almost as stunning as Tolen’s damning words. Laos was too numb to cry.

  “They called you Sky the Bandit,” Tray said, slipping a splint over his tender wrist, wincing as the brace touched his raw skin.

  “Yeah. When I was younger, I was much more reckless about stealing. Didn’t think I’d live long enough to see the consequences,” Sky said, cradling his hand and cleaning the scraped skin. It wasn’t sprained like before, but it hurt.

  “More reckless than stealing the Bobsled and flying half way across a continent?” Tray commented. Before he came on Oriana, he didn’t get beaten like this. He’d had bodyguards that came between him and trouble, and their pay was cut for every scrape and bruise they failed to protect him from. He’d told himself that money couldn’t buy family, and that was why he put up with this. The excuse was old and hollow now. He just wanted to get to Quin, see his son, and put Oriana behind him. He’d spent the last five years trying to be a brother, and he wasn’t good at it.

  “The Bobsled was easy,” Sky chuckled, rummaging through the cabinets to find something to dull the pain. “I once spent three months impersonating a god.”

  “Why’d you stop?” Tray laughed.

  “I couldn’t control the weather. The Nunaq decided they’d spill my blood to summon a more powerful god,” Sky grinned, wetting a rag. “So I orchestrated my ascension to the heavens and hightailed it out of there.”

  “Nunaq?” Tray repeated, flinching when Sky used her damp rag to blot away dirt on his face. “You mean the ones with gems in their teeth?”

  “Those are Nayak. You’re not bringing Nayak here are you? Their medicine is half mysticism!” she said, pulling back.

  Sniffling, Tray slid off the bed and pulled his hair away from his face in a tight ponytail. “No. We found someone else. The Drava.”

  “Oh,” Sky said tersely. “They have good medicine.”

  Tray glanced at her, but Sky turned all of her attention to nursing his hand.

  “What did you do to them, Sky?” Tray asked, pulling his hand away.

  Sky wiped down the counter and started organizing the supplies. “I showed them how to convert their basic wagons into nuclear-powered vehicles. Even told them which Dome to trade with to get more.”

  “So they like you?” Tray asked, confused by her nervousness.

  “Should still,” she said. “They’re good people. Except that time they chained a poor girl and gouged her eyes out because they though she could see the future. That’s why I left.”

  “With one of their nuclear vehicles?” Tray asked.

  A smile surfaced, but was rattled away by her nerves. “That would have been poetic justice. I could do that right now. They always camp in the same dell.”

  “Sky—”

  “I don’t need a lecture, Skipper,” she said, abruptly leaving the room.

  Tugging his ear, Tray hopped on the counter and stared tiredly at the quarantine unit. He hated it in there, but he hated even more being out here and helpless. Amanda slept in the corner, a blanket tucked around her. He didn’t want to think of what Amanda would be like when she woke up, but hopefully, she’d just curl up next to Danny again and be calm. Even Hawk had come to visit Danny, pretending to pray, just as Danny had prayed over him.

  They all loved Danny. Did they even notice Saskia on the bed? She wasn’t having seizures anymore, but she wasn’t alert like Danny had been. Even if she were, she wouldn’t be playing for attention. She’d been alone since this whole thing began. Invisible. Like him. His eyes welling with empathetic tears, Tray grabbed the biosuit and pulled it on over his clothes again.

  “Who is that?” Tray asked, standing in the spaceport next to the piece of junk that Danny proudly claimed was their new spaceship. A young woman had just exited the rear hatch and climbed onto the wing.

  “Oh, that’s Saskia. She’s the mechanic,” Danny answered breezily, circling the ship, rubbing his sleeve over the shield. The old name ‘Lulu’ had been scraped off, but the faded paint was still visible. The creepy woman stood atop the wing, staring at them, as though they had just violated her personal space.

  “You hired a mechanic since yesterday?” Tray whined, already questioning his brother’s taste in business partners. So far, going into business with his brother seemed to consist mostly of giving Danny money and watching him spend it on foolish things. Tray’s father had accused Tray of doing the same thing.

  “Not as such. She came with the ship,” Danny answered.

  “What? Like a feature?” Tray said sarcastically, cringing and ducking behind Danny as the woman continued to stare. Dropping his voice to a whisper, he hissed: “You couldn’t get a model without the creepy mechanic option.”

  “She’s not a hull ornament, Tray, she’s a human woman!”

  Saskia stirred when Tray’s gloved hand touched her face. She’d come out of the coma! Tray figured that was good, but he didn’t know what to do about it. After a moment of confusion, there was a glimmer of recognition, then Saskia started forcing herself to sit higher on the pillow. Tray felt guilty. Aside from holding her down during the seizures she’d had that first day, the only time he’d interacted with her was to give her food and water, or take care of other physical needs.

  “It’s not time to eat,” Tray assured, placing a soothing hand on her shoulder so she’d stop moving. “Unless you’re hungry; are you? I thought you’d like company.”

  Her eyes clouded with confusion, and she lay back on the pillow, panting with exertion from the brief effort to move. The way she watched him made him shiver, but he forced himself to stay with her. If this illness killed her, he wanted her to know that he appreciated all she’d done for him—all the times she’d protected him from danger, saved him in a fight, or simply kept this ship from falling out of the sky. He couldn’t sit there and eulogize her, though, and he didn’t want to worry her with talk of the Nayak and the Drava. After a few failed jokes, he started prattling about the misclassification of fruits as vegetables, the importance of coriander and cilantro in sauces, and whether there was any real difference between the processed protein labeled ‘ham’ and that labeled ‘chicken.’

  “She’s making eyes at me,” Tray complained, slumping into a chair at the new table he’d bought for the captain’s suite. He’d expected the gift to prompt a dinner invitation, but Danny didn’t seem any more inclined than usual to invite Tray’s company. They were days away from the Oriana’s maiden voyage to Aquia, which meant four days with only Saskia, their pilot Alex, and Danny to talk to. No more port crews or Terranan socialites. It would have been nice to spend time with his brother without Saskia and Alex there, and so far, barging into his brother’s quarters was the only way to gain an audience. Most of the time, Danny wasn’t even there.

  “You think everyone is making eyes at you,” Danny countered, stripping out of one drab green shirt and exchanging it for a cleaner one. Tray didn’t have any clear memories of Danny from before they were reunited on Terrana, but in his head, he�
��d assumed his estranged brother had a better sense of style.

  “What are you going to pay her?” Tray asked. He was trying to keep accurate bookkeeping records, but the exchange rate between Quin and Terrana fluctuated madly, and Danny seemed to acquire half his machine parts by donation.

  “I don’t know,” Danny shrugged, checking the news feed on his Virp. “I figure I just feed her and give her a bunk—”

  “So she’s not an ornament; she’s a pet,” Tray said tartly.

  Saskia smiled, a soft breath of laughter escaping her lips. Tray wasn’t sure if it was all his talk about food or the mere fact that he was talking to her, but he was encouraged by it. Smoothing Saskia’s hair away from her face, Tray tried to get another laugh out of her, but her smile faded and she stared at him in stony silence. He should have known better than to force humor with her. She laughed at him more than his jokes.

  “Do you have any requests for dinner?” he asked hopefully. Saskia had a thing against soup, but in her current condition, solid food was out. Saskia stared creepily, and Tray shivered.

  “Does she talk at all?” Tray asked Danny. In the weeks of repairing the ship and getting it ready to fly, Saskia hadn’t said two words to him. Tray didn’t even know what her voice sounded like.

  “Just says she wants the first bunk on the right,” Danny said with a grin.

  “Aww, Danny!” Tray whined. It was bad enough that Saskia didn’t talk to him, but now he was being kept out of business negotiations. “That’s the only one besides the captain’s bunk that has a sink in it.”

  “She’ll keep the ship running. That counts for something,” Danny said. When they’d drawn straws to see who got the captain’s bunk, Tray hadn’t realized the short straw was so short!

  “I’m the owner! Don’t I get a say?” Tray complained.

  “You can fight her for it.”

  Tray clammed up. Saskia was deadly. Tray had seen her kill two people in cold blood already, but since she’d done it defending Danny, Tray hadn’t complained.

  “How do you know she won’t kill us in our sleep?” Tray asked quietly, standing shoulder to shoulder with his brother. Saskia was glowering at a guard in the spaceport. Tray assumed that acidy gaze was her way of arguing vehemently.

  “She didn’t kill the last Captain,” Danny shrugged, seemingly immune to the expression on Saskia’s face.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Stop being so paranoid,” Danny said, giving Tray a light shove, and then going back to work.

  “Easy for you to say,” Tray grumbled. “She likes you.”

  “Tray, they’re here,” Hawk said, poking his head into the infirmary.

  Tray stiffened. He hadn’t been expecting anyone before sunrise. The traders were early, and he still looked like road kill. Saskia had nodded off at some point, but Tray still had to fight to free his hand from her grip.

  “We’re getting medicine,” Tray assured her. “You’ll feel better soon, I promise.”

  22

  Amanda felt a rush of air as the quarantine unit opened, but she stayed perfectly still. Her body ached and bones creaked. Gravity had finally caught up with her, and she was crushed. The blanket pulled up to her shoulders felt like a lead weight. She heard two people talking. One of them nudged her out of the way, kneeling with his back toward her. Amanda opened her eyes.

  The room was white, but the person beside her wore an ill-fitting yellow suit. She remembered being in the infirmary and fighting Sky for the device that could save Danny. Rolling onto her side, Amanda cried out. Her eyes filled with tears as the effort to scream only caused further pain. The person in the yellow suit turned, but Amanda pushed with all her might, knocking him off balance. He extended his legs and jumped up, careful not to step on the body behind him—Danny’s body. Another yellow-suited person knelt on the opposite side of Danny, holding a device against Danny’s bare chest.

  Clenching her teeth and summoning her strength, Amanda lurched toward Danny. She cried out again, feeling pain in her ribs and right arm. Her legs still responded, and she dug her heels into the floor until she could push the other person away.

  The first yellow-suited person sat on top of her, pinning her hips, sweeping her hands off of Danny.

  “Let the doctor work, sweetheart.” Tray’s voice was gentle and patient. Startled, Amanda squinted at the facemask of the yellow biosuit. Too much was obscured for her to visually confirm the identity, but the voice was recognizable. Panting in relief, Amanda shifted onto Tray’s lap, trying to minimize the pain in her torso while maintaining a view of what the doctor was doing to Danny. In the Terranan prison, the doctors never simply treated injuries; there were always drugs. The medicine was meant to numb her mind, but it never worked, and the pain was excruciating.

  “The disease is not airborne. The girl is not infected,” the second person announced, removing the helmet of her biosuit. She had a kind face and wrinkles around the corners of her lips. Except for the mottled brown skin, she reminded Amanda of her godmother Lily.

  “Hello, young one,” the doctor greeted, smiling kindly at Amanda as she continued to use her mysterious device to study Danny.

  “Hello, old one,” Amanda said. “You’re helping Danny?”

  “I will try,” the doctor said. She touched a crescent-shaped device attached to her brow. The device was darker brown than her skin, but close enough to the eyebrow that it blended in. Amanda wouldn’t have noticed it at all if she hadn’t touched it.

  The woman made faces as she worked, alternately reading her device and glancing at her surroundings. There wasn’t much to see from this vantage point. They were all crammed in the quarantine unit. There was a narrow aisle on either side of the bed that Saskia laid on—just enough space for a person to stand, or a machine to be wheeled in. Danny blocked the aisle almost completely. The doctor was half-under the bed, her back to one of the support legs.

  After a few minutes, the woman shifted to the foot of the bed and stood. She turned in the narrow space, took a deep breath, and squatted again, motioning Tray and Amanda closer to her. When Tray moved, Amanda bit back a scream. Her body curled, trying to protect itself from the pain that came with moving.

  “Your arm is broken,” the doctor observed, threading her fingers under Amanda’s right arm.

  “It is?” Tray asked, looking guilty and embarrassed. “Since when?”

  Amanda shrugged. She didn’t know for sure. “Gravity is all wrong here,” she suggested in Terranan. “Did I fall?”

  Tray made a face.

  The doctor lifted Amanda’s arm gingerly by the elbow, pushing up the sleeve of Amanda’s coat and tapping the purple skin. About three quarters of the way between Amanda’s wrist and elbow, the doctor paused and frowned. “Do you have splinting materials?” she asked Tray.

  “Yes,” Tray said, carefully shifting Amanda off his lap. It took all her energy not to cry, and she didn’t try to sit up. The doctor leaned over and Amanda could feel the old woman’s breath on her skin. She tensed, preparing to fight.

  “I am Kavari of the Drava,” the old lady whispered. Her breath smelled like rotting meat. “Young one, have these men hurt you?”

  “Not the men,” Amanda answered, cringing in confusion. She hadn’t just fallen on her arm wrong; she’d been shot by Sky. She told Danny that Sky tried to kill her and Danny always insisted that her memory was flawed. Sky wasn’t supposed to be trying to kill her anymore.

  “Are you hurt elsewhere?” Kavari asked, sitting up and speaking more loudly.

  Reluctantly, Amanda pointed to her ribs. She desperately wanted Tray to come back and protect her, but the doctor had sent him away. Amanda gritted her teeth, pressing her eyes shut as the doctor pulled open her jacket and lifted her shirt.

  “Oh, god!” Tray exclaimed, pressing his face to the wall of the quarantine unit. He came back in quickly, dropping to his knees beside Amanda. Without the helmet covering his head, Amanda could recognize his face, and she
felt much safer. Kavari asked if she had been kicked or punched, and Amanda nodded. Her fight with Sky came back in bits and pieces, but it was hard to hold any thoughts together while Kavari was touching the wounds.

  Amanda wasn’t sure if the doctor was still speaking to her. Tray answered questions, regardless of whether they were directed at him. After confirming that Amanda hadn’t been vomiting blood, the doctor prescribed painkillers and a warm bath for the bruise on her stomach, then she began splinting Amanda’s arm.

  “Look at me, young one,” Kavari said, using a finger to guide Amanda’s chin. Amanda’s vision was blurred with tears. She felt helpless and confused.

  “Danny’s still sick,” Amanda moaned, her fingers over the rough bandage.

  “I’ll get to him in a moment,” Kavari assured, pressing her finger to Amanda’s brow line. Amanda felt pin prickles on her skin. A metal device had adhered to her skin—like the tracking chips implanted into prisoners on Terrana.

  “Sit down before you hurt yourself,” Dr. Vhitar said, but Amanda didn’t listen. The cuffs chaffed and bruised her wrists as she struggled to free herself. Vhitar had given her the map to the tunnels. She’d thought him a Patriot, but here he was, serving a Terranan dictator. He had set her up and all she could do was scream, throw her pillow, and rattle the frame of the hospital bed she was chained to. Suddenly she felt a burning on her neck. Her free hand shot to her neck. She knelt on the bed, burying her face on the mattress and rocking.

  “Make it stop,” she begged quietly. “Please.”

  Too slowly, the burning subsided. Dr. Vhitar picked up the pillow and placed it next to her head, but she didn’t move. “That was the tracking chip.”

  “It is cruel,” Amanda said into the mattress.

  “It will hurt less as you get used to it. But as I was saying, you cannot hide in the 5.”

  “Then I can’t stay in the 5,” Amanda said.

  Amanda’s eyes were burning. Tray curled over her protectively, his fingers hovering over the device. “What is that?” Tray demanded, looking accusingly at Kavari.