Page 41 of The First Spark
Whoever did Mira’s decor seriously had to be fired. The rugs in what passed for a living room looked like they’d been salvaged from a scrap yard, and the wall decorations were just bizarre. Old posters and strange signs, green placards with the names of random towns, maps and brochures, a dented sign with a hazard symbol on it.
Mira lifted a low-hanging cable. Kalie ducked under it, wincing as sparks flew from the frayed cord.
A flickering light over the kitchen’s cracked wooden table cast eerie shadows on the door closest to the kitchenette. Above the door hung a hovercraft’s dented license plate: V3STA.
The door slid open, and Mira sauntered inside.
“Come on in.” Mira kicked a shirt under the bunk on the far wall. “Don’t mind the mess.”
Kalie drifted through the door. This room had to be where all of Mira’s credits went. Unlike the dingy main cabin, the room was high-tech. Heavy-duty assault rifles were suspended in an open hatch beside the bunk’s rumpled sheets. Holographic surveillance feeds hovered over a table. Screens with diagnostic scans covered an entire wall.
Something whirred, and a glowing display case detached from the wall opposite the screens. The top-of-the-line weapons inside disappeared as the case rotated.
Kalie stumbled back, tripping over a canister.
Racks of clothes spanned the wall where the display case had been.
“Pretty neat, huh?”
Her mouth went dry. Dark outfits filled the closet. As Mira seized a black jacket and offered it to her, flashes of smoke and blood rushed her in a vicious surge. She squeezed her eyes shut at the memory of Ariah’s crumpled body.
Tossing the jacket across the room, Mira held out a brown sweater. “There was a time I couldn’t wear black either.”
“Because of them?” Kalie croaked, seizing the sweater. It was baggy and soft, not trim and stiff like Ariah’s lost jacket. Her insides hollowed out at the thought of that crumpled uniform, stuffed in a purse, abandoned in a supply closet on theChimaera. Her last link to Ariah, gone.
Mira’s jaw clenched. “The legionnaires did to my family what they did to yours. And I swore I wouldn’t stop until I made them burn.”
“Did you? Make them burn?”
Darkness lurked in Mira’s eyes. “Yes. The ones who were there. But it won’t be over until every last one of them is dead.”
“No,” Kalie said lowly. “It won’t.”
Dead Space, Sector 8
Decemmensis-10, 817 cycles A.F.C.
Despite her heavyeyelids and the exhaustion muddling her mind, Kalie wasn’t able to sleep. The loud roar of the thrusters and the sputter of a broken air circulator reminded her how unspeakablywrongeverything was. She and Ariah were supposed to be back on Dali by now, celebrating Marcus’s victory over breakfast with Aunt Calida and Lexie. Instead she was in this hovel of a ship, blindly following a mercenary to a potential ally without a name, while Mother and Selene circled the throne.
She wanted to rage. She wanted to sob.
She didn’t have the energy for either.
When the intercom crackled the next morning and Cybel announced that they’d be docking in ten minutes, Kalie pushed herself off the stiff bunk and trudged into the common area. The aroma of freshly-brewed kaf swirled through the cabin.
“Morning,” Mira called, with a two-fingered wave. She, Wells, andCybel crowded around the holoprojector, staring intently at holographic monsters circling each other. “There’s kaf in the kitchen, and we’ve got a game of travar going, if you want to join.”
“I’ve never played,” Kalie admitted, brushing her hair behind her ear.
“That’s just criminal. Grab some kaf and join us.”
Wells smirked at Mira. “Do you need an audience to see you lose?”
She swatted his arm, and he raised his hands.
“Kidding.”
“You’d better be.” Mira hunched over the projector, gripping the controller. “You’re going down, playboy.”
