Page 30 of Taken By the Alien Killer
“Long day,” the voice sighs. “Make me believe you.”
“Sending a saints’ fee,” she sings, thumbing a transfer chip. “And a maintenance-tag request for a ship that absolutely isn’t here.”
A pause. “Received. Berth H-12. You saw nothing; I saw nothing. Try not to leak anything interesting.”
“We leak only charisma,” CynJyn replies. “H-12 it is.”
I angle us in. The berth yawns open like a tired mouth. Our borrowed peacock of a cruiser shimmies into shadow and settles with a low, contented purr. My heartbeat hasn’t learned the trick. It flutters against my ribs like a bird that wants a bigger sky.
“Hey,” CynJyn says, soft now, eyeing my white-knuckle grip on the yoke. “You good?”
“Define good,” I say. “If good is ‘operational and full of electricity,’ then yes.”
She laughs, unbuckles, and plants a quick kiss against my temple. “You are a menace, and I love you. Mask on. Hood up. We blend.”
We step down the ladder into a wind that smells like coolant and fried noodles and someone’s old pillow. A dockmaster in a patched pressure suit rounds the corner, four arms loaded with clipboards and a face tattoo that’s technically a map.
“You the maintenance crew?” he grunt-asks, squinting at our boots.
CynJyn smiles like sin in church. “We are the maintenance crew of your dreams.”
He grumbles. “Dreams don’t tip.”
“They do tonight.” She palms him a chip. “We also need the bay doors to forget this ship exists.”
“The doors don’t forget,” he says, but the chip vanishes. “They nap. Three hours, if the saints are bored.”
“Wake them only for fire,” she says. “And if anyone with a crest asks questions, tell them we left to buy better questions.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He jerks a thumb down a corridor that wheezes. “The Latch is that way. Don’t get married in it.”
“Perish the thought,” I mutter.
We head out, moving fast and casual. The station’s guts are noisy: clanking pipes, drones whining as they haul crates, vendors hawking cables and contraband apples, a preacher praising a saint I’ve never heard of with a megaphone that hates its job. People flow around us, stitched together by bad decisions and mutual need. The gravity sags then compensates, and my stomach does a little rollercoaster sigh.
CynJyn bumps my shoulder. “Head high. Look like you belong.”
“I’m trying to look like I owe rent,” I say.
“Perfect,” she says. “Now smell like it.”
“The Latch” is a cantina shackled to a view dome, its sign a busted hatch cover painted with a sloppily winking eye. Inside, it’s a riot—Kilgari dockhands stacked two-deep at the bar; a trio of off-worlders playing a gambling game that involves throwing metal teeth; a couple in matching mechanics’ coveralls making out like they found god. A greasy kitchen window belches steam that smells like spicy oil and regret. Music thumps low from speakers taped to a cracked beam, the rhythm stitched from a dozen planets’ bad ideas.
“Bless this mess,” CynJyn declares, rubbing her hands. “We drink the neon; we make friends; we leave no forwarding address.”
I pull my hood further forward. “We fail to be seen.”
“We fail magnificently,” she agrees, already carving a path to the bar. “Two drinks that won’t kill us and one that might,” she tells the bartender, a scarred woman who registers us with one sharp glance and decides we can’t afford trouble.
“You like yours sweet or angry?” the bartender asks, slamming down cups that have known too many lips.
“Angry,” I say.
“Sweet-angry,” CynJyn says. “Like revenge with a sugar rim.”
The bartender grins despite herself. “I got just the poison.”
I feel eyes. Not the bar’s general curious once-over; this is a needle. I shift my weight, scanning. A human with a bad haircut? A Reezah with a throatscar? The mirror behind the bottles throws back a chaos of faces. One catches, a beat too long. A man in a trader’s vest, jaw clenched, gaze stuck on my profile like gum on a shoe.
