Sound Read online

  I raise my eyebrows. “And that means he’d do anything for you, too?”

  “Probably.”

  The way she says it doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. “Probably?”

  Cassia meets my eyes. “You trust me, right?”

  I hesitate. I do, don’t I? I wouldn’t be here otherwise. But then again, what was that whole business with the cat about? And why did she let me believe we were going to modify the shuttle when she wanted to trade it all along? Why not tell me?

  “Right?” Cassia’s mouth twists in a troubled line.

  I sit across from her and balance my fingertips under hers. Her hands are warm and soft, her nails smooth, like water-worn shells.

  “I do,” I say. I look down at our hands, at my scars, and then up at her again. “You just . . . if we’re going to do this, you can’t keep secrets from me. Like about Tibbet, or the ship. You have to tell me things.”

  “I’m sorry.” A strand of wavy hair falls across Cassia’s face, and she looks up at me through it. “I thought you’d change your mind if I told you.”

  I frown. “Why?”

  She shrugs and looks away.

  “Cassia—”

  She shakes her head. “Everything’s gotten so complicated.”

  I scoff. “You think I’m afraid of complicated?”

  “No. Yes,” she huffs. “I wasn’t sure.”

  “Well, I’m not,” I say. “We’re in this together, right?”

  She hesitates.

  I lean back, stung. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “I want to,” she says. “You’re here and everything. I know what that means. I . . . it’s only that it’s always been me and my brothers. Me and Nethanel, especially since his wife, Ume, died.”

  “Yeah,” I say quietly. It was Ava and me for a while, before we found Soraya. Just the two of us. A team. I never stopped feeling that way, even when she married Rushil and I left for the DSRI.

  Cassia presses her lips together, and I think for a second I see something glistening in her eye. “What you’re doing for me, it’s—”

  “It’s not only for you,” I say. “That’s not why I came.”

  She rubs her eye. One side of her mouth lifts in mischief. “I know. You just wanted more time to get to know Tibbet.”

  The tension breaks. I laugh. “Yep. He’s my favorite member of this crew.”

  “Not Rubio?” She raises an eyebrow.

  “He’s a close second,” I agree.

  We burst into giggles. We may be royally screwed, but at least we’re not alone.

  Ceres Station rotates beneath us, spread out over the dwarf planet’s surface like a copper grid shining through black lacquer. As we fly lower, the grid resolves itself into a million amber bulbs marking the corners of buildings and shining out from beneath the dusty, domed ceilings of the hyperbaric walkways that link the station together. Vast boreholes interrupt the neat pattern of lights, each gently glowing, as if the planet’s core houses a colony of fireflies.

  “It’s pretty,” I murmur, easing the controls forward.

  “Only from up here,” Cassia says.

  We dock near one of the smaller boreholes. Cassia checks Rubio’s bonds while I test my pressure suit for breaches. DSRI protocol requires that we wear one whenever we cross over to an unstable environment, and from everything Cassia has said, I’m pretty sure Ceres qualifies.

  “You’re going to be hot in that.” She tugs at the strap around Rubio’s left wrist.

  I frown. “Don’t they mine ice?”

  “I’m just saying.” She circles the bed and pulls at his other restraint. “At least don’t wear your jacket on top of all that.”

  “She’s right, you know,” Rubio says. “All that dust. The air circulation systems don’t work too well.”

  I stare at them. “Are you two agreeing about something?”

  They glance at each other. Rubio snorts, and Cassia looks away.

  A wave of thick, hot air rolls over me as soon as we open the air lock. Our ship is docked directly on the hangar floor, along with a dozen other small vessels loading and unloading supplies. A fine skin of dust coats everything—the floor, the exposed ductwork snaking along the ceiling, even the men and women guiding along lev trolleys weighed down by head-high corks of glistening ice. The air scrubbers grind and whirr above our heads, trying to keep pace with each breath of carbon dioxide the crowd exhales.

  As we watch, one of the scrubbers overheats. It blares out a series of panicked beeps and winds to a stop. Two little boys in ragged coveralls dart up one of the access ladders bolted to the wall and race across the tops of the ductwork, sure-footed as rats on a wire. One of them reaches into the scrubber’s intake vent and scoops out a handful of black gunk—probably hair, dust, and sloughed skin turned damp in the humid air. The other straddles the duct and pulls a small suction fan from his pocket. Within seconds, they have the scrubber going again. The crowd below claps, and a few people toss coins or scraps of food up to the boys.

  “Come on.” Cassia nudges my back. “They’ll see you gawping.”

  By the time we make our way out of the dock and into a low-ceilinged market, I’m sincerely wishing I had left the pressure suit behind and dressed in short sleeves and trousers like Cassia. We have more people in Mumbai, but we’ve worked out ways to move around one another for the most part, and where we haven’t, at least we have the open sky above us. Here, the rafters rise only a meter or so above the tallest men’s heads, and vendors selling food or used ship components narrow the room’s current to one teeming lane. Everyone presses shoulder to shoulder to keep out of the way of the trundling ice sledges on their way to buyers at the docks. The thick smell of synthetic vegetable oil and frying dough permeates the air, undercut with the subtle stink of mechanics’ oil. Cassia reaches for my hand, and I grab it. If I let the crush of people separate us, I’ll never find her again.

  “Where are we going?” I call.

  She answers, but I can’t hear her over the thundering of the sledges.

  “What?” I say.

  “Underneath,” she repeats.

  My stomach drops.

  We ride an open-sided freight lift down a black rock shaft. The only light comes from a single lamp hooked to the top of the car and the eerie stripes of phosphorous paint guiding our descent. I look up through the lift’s metal grating and notice two rat boys riding above us, two small, silent silhouettes against our tiny pool of light.

  The lift comes to a stop before a wide, carved passageway leading to a massive air lock. I move to get off the lift with the rest of the crowd, but Cassia pulls me back.

  “Not yet,” she says. “Unless you want to mine some ice.”

  One of the miners—a boy a few years younger than I am—glances back at us as Cassia latches the metal grate. Our eyes meet for only half a second before we drop out of view, but it’s long enough for me to see the fear and alarm running over his face like wildfire. No one else has stayed behind on the lift with us.

  “So, this place we’re going . . .” I clear my throat. “You’ve been there before?”

  Cassia peers out and down into the shaft. “Once or twice.”

  I look up. The rat boys are gone. “And your Uncle Sweetie’s down in the bore pits . . . why?”

  “He’s Ceres’s shateigashira,” she says simply.

  “Its what?”

  “You know,” she says. “Like, the boss.”

  I frown. “The station head?” But why wouldn’t she come out and say that? And why would the lift to the station head’s office be down at the bottom of a deserted bore shaft? My palms begin to sweat inside my gloves.

  “No,” Cassia shakes her head. “Not like that. You know how sometimes one person’s in charge officially, but somebody else really runs things?”

  “Yes,” I say uneasily.

  “Sweetie’s like that.” She tucks a few escaped curls behind her ears. “He’s the one you see if you need something
done.”

  “Wait, your uncle’s a . . .” I scramble for the right word and finally hit on one I remember from one of Ava and Rushil’s old movies. “A mobster?”

  “He’s not a mobster, he’s the shateigashira.”

  Vaat. First the cat, then kidnapping, and now organized crime? You can’t be so quick to trust, Mi. Ava said that after I told her about Kiran and the kissing bottle. You have to be careful with yourself. You have to get to know the person. I push her voice away. What did she know about it? I knew Vishva better than practically anyone, and she still stabbed me in the back for a night of dancing. Besides, we’re already deep in Ceres Station, with a DSRI pilot trussed up in the hold of our stolen ship. The time for second thoughts is long gone.

  Darkness greets us at the bottom of the shaft. We step off the lift into what looks like one of Mumbai’s man-high drainage tunnels. Phosphorus paint coats the rounded concrete walls, and a slush of mud and ice melt gathers at the bottom, dragging a dark line through the glow. Something chitters and scrabbles in the shadows ahead.

  “Hello!” Cassia calls into the emptiness. An echo quavers back at her. “It’s Cassia, Kaldero’s daughter.”

  Silence. Cassia wets her lips and tries again. “We need to see Sweetie.”

  A heartbeat. Two. Then a pair of human shapes melt out of the shadow beyond the bend in the tunnel. They wear rags and black-painted body armor. Oddly shaped stunners hang at their sides. No, not stunners, guns. Real guns.

  We’re surrounded by rock. I try to calm myself. No risk of decompression. But decompression isn’t the only way a bullet can kill.

  Cassia steps forward wordlessly and holds out her arms to let the guards pat her down. I follow suit, trying not to look at their guns or breathe in the sour sweat stink that clings to them. Behind them, a rat skitters through the slush and freezes, staring at us. One of its eyes glows bright, electric red.

  The guards lead us down the glowing drainage ways, past an air lock set into the stone, and through a barely lit corridor lined with humming refrigeration containers and crates. More rats watch us from behind the crates and from inside crevices built into the rock. I’ve never been afraid of rats—spiders are what turn my stomach to liquid—but I shudder anyway. There are too many of them, too many red eyes darting in and out of view.

  At last we come to a metal door on rollers. One of the guards bangs on it.

  His coms hiss to life. “What is it?”

  “Visitors for Sweetie,” the guard answers, and I’m surprised by the tenor of the voice—high and feminine, almost sweet.

  A few seconds of silence, and then, “He’s not expecting anyone.”

  Cassia grabs the guard’s hand and leans close to the coms. “Tell him it’s Cassia Kaldero.”

  The guard jerks her hand away and reaches for her gun, but before she can drop Cassia to the floor, the door shrieks, and a crack of light splits the darkness as it begins to rumble open.

  I blink and hold up a hand to shield my eyes. Rows of day lamps hang from the ceiling of the long room before us, illuminating walls red as a whale’s gullet. The back wall is full of feeds—hundreds of them glowing infrared green. A small group of men and women stand examining an array of jet-black small arms spread out over a table. They tense as we enter, hands hovering over the weapons.

  A muscular man with sallow skin and a close-cropped stubble of bleached hair steps away from the table. Black and green tattoos crawl up the back of his neck and cradle the base of his skull. His long-sleeved shirt must have been white once, but years of sweat and dust have dulled it to a watery gray. His eyes are quick and black, close set around a crooked nose that looks as if it’s been broken more than once.

  “Ah.” He smiles easily, revealing a mouth of teeth the dead brown of beetle carapaces, and holds out his arms. “Cassia. The littlest Kaldero. How are you, my dear?” His sleeves slip back to expose more ink on the back of his hands.

  “Uncle.” Cassia allows him to draw her into a hug. The rest of the group around the table relaxes and goes back to examining the cache of weapons spread out before them.

  “It’s been too long.” Sweetie steps back and looks her up and down in a decidedly un-uncle-like fashion. “Much too long.”

  Cassia stiffens but keeps the smile on her face. “It has.”

  Sweetie swings his lazy gaze to me. “And who’s this?” He frowns and shakes an admonishing finger at Cassia as he meanders back to a cluster of white leather couches below the wall of feeds. “I thought your father taught you better than to bring guests unannounced.”

  “Miyole’s good.” Cassia spares a glance for me as we trail after him. “And my father’s hurt, or else he’d be here himself.”

  Something flits across Sweetie’s face—worry, maybe, or surprise—but just as quickly, it’s gone, and his expression is smooth and heavy-lidded again. He drops down onto one of the couches and spreads his arms along its back. “You’ve run into some trouble then, little tinker?”

  From afar, the furniture looked pristine, even strangely luxurious against the bare concrete floor, but up close, a thousand rips and cracks show in the stained leather. The feeds jerk and swing wildly—a floor-level view of the phosphorous tunnel, another from high above a refrigeration unit, some showing nothing but the ghostly gleam of animal eyes. The rats, I realize.

  Cassia stands before her uncle, her back straight. “Some jackers caught us. Razed our ship, took Nethanel . . .”

  Sweetie examines his nails. “That’s a sad story.”

  “Not if I get him back,” Cassia says.

  Sweetie looks up at her, sharp, all his casual manner gone. “And you expect me to fix it? For old times’ sake?”

  “Not fix it,” Cassia says. “Help me fix it. Isn’t twenty years of trading worth one favor?”

  Sweetie rubs his chin. “What are you asking?”

  “Lend me a ship. A junker, anything, so I can go after them.”

  Sweetie cocks an eyebrow. “You know where they are, then?”

  Cassia and I exchange a look. We know their signal, but we most definitely do not know where they are.

  Sweetie sighs. “What ship was it?”

  I pull out my crow and flip through to the dakait ship’s signature. “The Proioxis,” I say, and hold it out to him.

  Sweetie acts as if I haven’t spoken. He only has eyes for Cassia. “Little tinker, that’s a Söner ship.”

  She flinches, but barely.

  “You know what that means.”

  She nods.

  Something cold slides down the inside of my chest. I don’t know what a Söner is, but if it’s something that gives Sweetie pause, I don’t think I want to find out. Mumbai has its share of Bad Men and Bad Women, Auntie Rajni among them. But Sweetie is a different genus altogether.

  I try to catch Cassia’s eye, but she won’t look at me. My palms itch like mad.

  Sweetie leans back on the couch. “Your father would kill me if he knew I let his youngest go after some Söner Neitibu all alone.”

  “I’m not alone.” She finally looks at me. “I have Miyole.”

  Sweetie glances at me. “Forgive me if I’m not full of confidence.”

  “We’re going after them either way. We have a shuttle we can retrofit—”

  “A shuttle?” Sweetie straightens.

  “Yes.” Cassia hurries on. “But it’ll be much faster with your help.”

  Sweetie rubs his chin in silence.

  “Please, uncle,” Cassia says. “I know you hate them, too.”

  A smile flashes across Sweetie’s face. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Is that it, little tinker? But you know I don’t do charity work. What you’re asking—it’s a lot, even for your father’s sake.”

  “I know.”

  “So what are you going to do for me in exchange?” He cocks his head, exposing a skull with elongated teeth, inked on the side of his neck.

  “Anything,” Cassia says without hesitation.

&
nbsp; Sweetie’s smile spreads. “Right answer.”

  Chapter 10

  We follow Sweetie and his guards along a deeper set of tunnels cut straight through the asteroid’s core. Somewhere above us, a distant growl penetrates the rock.

  “The Söner?” I hiss at Cassia. “What’s that?”

  “A separatist group. ‘Native Sons,’” Cassia murmurs. “They run parts of Enceladus.”

  I frown. “No, they don’t. The Satellite Authority’s in charge there.” I should know. Enceladus is the moon where the Ranganathan and all her sisters’ bones were grown.

  “I told you.” Cassia sounds tired. “There’s what’s official and what’s really . . .” Sweetie turns to us, and she trails off.

  “Here we are, then.” He spreads his arms wide.

  Behind him, the tunnel opens into a pressurized hangar with raw rock walls. A collection of ships in various states of disrepair sprawls over the floor; some sport pocked hulls and burn streaks; other are up on lifts, with coolant lines and wires dangling from their open bellies. Sweetie leads us to a blocky craft, twice the size of our shuttle and twenty times older, but more or less intact. Grime lies thick as silt on its front viewport.

  “Hybrid. Twenty square meters of cargo hold and a sleeping berth big enough for twelve,” Sweetie says. “Commons and the galley are all one room, but it’s plenty big.”

  Cassia eyes it. “What’s her name?”

  “The Mendicant,” Sweetie says.

  She nods. “We can work with that.”

  “Good.” Sweetie lifts his chin at one of the guards, who disappears back the way we came. “We’ll load you up, then.”

  Sweetie activates the berth’s loading ramp and waves forward a group of men rolling two-hundred-liter drums across the hangar floor. Part of the “anything” Cassia promised.

  I pull Cassia aside. “‘We can work with that?’ Are you out of your mind?”

  She shrugs. “Sweetie says it’s solid.”

  “How do we know it even runs?” I shoot a look at our benefactor.