“What should I do?” I ask ALCOR. “Go up and tell all this to Crux?”
“I think you should make her dinner. Then go to sleep. Tomorrow I’ll have a plan and Booty will be back online.”
“Oh, shit. I almost forgot about her.” A stab of guilt runs through my heart. I wish she was online now. She’d know which parts of Lyra’s story were true. ALCOR might have thousands years of learning under his belt, but Booty is a tenth-generation quantum AI. Small, and fast, and exists in many states at once. Plus, she’s been through hundreds of gates and interacted with thousands of people and other ships. ALCOR has been stuck here his entire life. And yeah, he’s been connected to the wider web for two decades, but that’s not a replacement for experience.
Booty has talents ALCOR never will. She knows things and she’s more human than most humanoids. Draden was my brother, Ceres was my sidekick—but Booty…
Booty is my partner. It’s been me and her against the world for almost a decade. Long before I won Ceres in a poker game down in the lower-level casinos and even though Draden and I started out as partners in the early days, he quit on me before Booty came along.
She is my world.
A bounty hunter is nothing without his ship. It’s the kind of bond that almost defies explanation. People assume it’s because they get us out of dicey situations or because their skills in navigating a series of gates in questionable states without detection means you live to steal another spin.
But that’s not really it.
It’s so much more than that.
We are connected. I don’t know how it happened. Hell, I don’t even know if it’s real or just some figment of my imagination. But at this point none of that matters. We just… are.
“Crux doesn’t need to know this right now,” ALCOR continues. “He’s busy making preparations for the memorial service.”
Well, fuck. I almost forgot about that too.
“Valor, Luck, and Jimmy are on their way home now. They should arrive mid-spin tomorrow.”
My other brothers—who I haven’t seen in many, many spins—are all coming home because I fucked up.
“It’ll be good to see them.” I sigh.
“Yes,” ALCOR says. “It will. But tonight you take care of Lyra. She needs it, Serpint. Believe me, she needs a nice, quiet, uneventful night. Because it might be her last.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll have more information tomorrow. We’ll talk then.”
The air goes still and silent and I know he’s gone. I know he’s gone and he won’t be back. Not tonight.
I turn to the bot and say, “Go away. We’re done for today.” Because I’m sick of his too-bright bot face and his stupid chirping, which he’s been doing this whole time ALCOR and I were talking.
His final annoying bleep is something I’ll just assume is goodbye—but he could be telling me to fuck off for all I know—because he leaves after that.
And now it’s just… us.
Me and her.
Serpint, the bounty hunter, and Lyra, the princess.
Or is she the future queen?
I don’t want to think about it so I get up, go into the kitchen, and start making dinner.
I enjoy cooking. I know it’s old-fashioned and out of style since the auto-cook can print anything I want and it’ll taste the same, but it relaxes me. I’m just kind of a foodie. It’s a cool pastime when you spend most of your days hopping through foreign systems. And to be honest, you learn a lot about people by what they eat.
Princesses who eat tushberries and passion limes to maintain their glow, for instance. Didn’t know that before today.
By the time Lyra appears in the doorway to the kitchen, leaning against the wall looking fresh and wearing another cobbled-together outfit from my closet and drawers—which I sorta love, for some reason—dinner is finished.
“Feel better?” I ask. Because she’s just staring at me.
She nods, then sighs. “Thanks.”
“For which part?” I ask. “The part where I put magnetic bracelets and anklets on you? The part where I collared you? The part where you got pierced in three places by an overzealous bot?”
She just continues to stare.
“Oh,” I say, pushing past her with our plates of food and setting them on the table in the small dining room. “You mean the part where I made you light up like a sun.”
I smile, then look over my shoulder to see how she’s taking that.
She blushes. Her skin is not pale like it was this morning. She got some color back in her cheeks the moment she walked out of that exam room. But now her skin is glowing.
Not the glow of sex, but the glow of health. Which is better, I think.
“So that’s what we’ve been missing out on, huh?”
“What do you mean?” she asks, walking over to the table. I pull out her chair—ALCOR did tell me to be nice to her—and she sits, muttering a small, “Thank you,” which, I admit, feels pretty good to hear.