Dragonfly (26 page)

I smiled weakly. I preferred it when marines were shooting at me. I’d get him back for this.

“Who likes fractions then?”

***

Three hours later, I was kneeling on the floor, cuddled in Dragonfly’s warm coat, trying to explain quantum superposition to a bunch of seven year olds with the reluctant school cat trapped beneath an upturned plastic crate.

“Alive
and
dead, see?
Gato muerto y gato vivo. Los dos
.”

The kids didn’t look convinced.

“
Es vivo,
” insisted one, and banged on the crate with his sticky fist.

The cat responded with a disobliging scuffle, and I had to scrabble the crate down to keep it from getting out, which sent the kids into gales of laughter all over again. I laughed too. We’d quickly gotten beyond the boring stuff they were supposed to be doing, and I wasn’t sure if this was what Isabel had in mind, but I was having fun and, from their cheeky grins and bright eyes, they were too. They’d proven more interesting than I’d expected, even if my Espan was broken and their Rus was missing in action. Funny, charming, mischievous, inquisitive—just like small versions of real people, except better, because they didn’t judge or pretend or deceive.

“
Es vivo
,” I admitted, and lifted the crate’s corner.

The long-suffering beast slithered out, its orange tail twitching, and speared across the room with an indignant miaow, stretching its head up to be petted.

Dragonfly bent to stroke the cat under the chin and watched me with that sweet, maddening smile. I swallowed, my skin suddenly warm and alive. How long had he been standing there? I forced myself to smile back, though I couldn’t hold my gaze quite steady. I was used to action, danger, deception, the rarified air of operations. I didn’t know how to face him like this. Not in the real world, doing normal stuff. It felt wrong. Disorienting. Frightening.

Isabel clapped her hands and broke the class up, and the kids disappeared out the door like a swarm of bees. The mess they left behind showered down like leaves after a storm, drifting slowly to silence. Isabel began straightening the tables, picking up scattered chairs and stacking them in rows. I picked up the crate and collected discarded paper scraps, pens, broken bits of plastic, and soggy cheese fragments with miniature teeth marks still showing.

Dragonfly helped, straightening the carpet and pushing picture books into a neat pile. The cyberpaper flickered and erased its text and pictures, resetting itself for another download, but the pages were old and gray and letters and image fragments still showed. The cat rubbed against his ankles.

“You’re good with kids,” he said. “Got any of your own?”

The chill stung my legs, and I pulled my borrowed coat tighter. Mishka had said he wanted kids someday, because he knew he wouldn’t live forever. To me, that seemed the perfect reason not to have them. It was one of those conversations where he’d eyed me strangely, confused, like we’d spoken a different language.

“Umm … no. Never had time, I guess.”

“Uh-huh.” He studied one of the books, its cover showing a bright yellow sun in a black star-studded sky and a cartoon spaceship with flowerpots in the window. “Too busy cracking crypto or drinking martinis at Esperanza?”

I dropped the crate on a pile of chairs with a clunk. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? A woman belongs in the home?”

My fingers itched to slap him. He was a vicious murderer. Who the hell did he think he was to judge me on the life I’d chosen? The fact that he thought he was talking to Lazuli, cyberthief and killer, only made me madder. From the corner of my eye I spied Isabel making a hasty exit and spun to follow her.

He grabbed my elbow and pulled me back. “You’re smarter than that. Look, I know it’s none of my business. But why are you really here, Lazuli? Why do you want this life?”

I shook him off, yanked my coat straight. “Carrie. It’s Carrie, okay? And you’re right. It’s none of your bloody business, Sasha, or Alejandro, or whatever you want to be called.”

But I couldn’t meet his eye. His question had hit me hard.
Why do you want this life
? I’d asked myself the same thing after Mishka died, and I still didn’t have an answer other than
I don’t know what else to do.

“Sorry, but you’re in my house, and that makes you my concern. I won’t be responsible for the dumbest decision you ever make.” He kept his tone low, but his eyes darkened, frustrated, or concerned.

Comprehension dawned like a winter sunrise, and I resisted a shiver. He believed my lies, and wanted to talk me out of a life of crime. He cared whether Lazuli lived or died.

I steeled myself against sympathy and turned again to leave. “Thanks very much, but I can take care of myself.”

He grabbed my shoulder, and this time he didn’t let go. “Why are you always walking away? Listen to me. Are you listening?”

Frustrated, I nodded.

“You’re young, talented, intelligent. You could do anything, have any life you want. Why choose this? You saw what it’s like on
LightBringer
. Always running, always sleeping with a gun in your hand. We all end up in prison or dead, and those around us die first. Why would you want that, when you can have so much more?”

I’d wondered the same thing about him on Esperanza. His dark gaze burned into mine, his fingers somehow warm on my skin through the thick coat. Damn, he sounded so sincere. And in truth his questions applied just as much to my career with Axis as they did to a life of insurrection and thievery.

“If you’re so high-minded, why don’t you give it up?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Because it’s bigger than me now. Too many people rely on me.” He shrugged darkly and dropped his hand. “I used to be like you. It was all so exciting when I still believed I could change the world. You’ll go far. Just be sure it’s where you want to go.”

I remembered the girl I’d been when I first made it into Axis: fresh, determined, full of zeal for a better, bigger, richer Empire. I chewed my lip, self-conscious. What had I achieved, besides a few dead insurrectionists and a twice-broken heart? What had I sacrificed? Could I leave even if I wanted to?

He gently straightened my coat where he’d pulled it awry, and lifted his hand to tuck my hair back, but changed his mind and let it drop. “Look, I’m sorry I snapped at you before. Of course you’re welcome here. Stay as long as you want. But take my advice, Carrie, if what I say means anything to you: kill it while it’s still small, while you can still control it. Don’t let it swallow you.”

“And if it’s already swallowed me?”

My voice sounded small, afraid. Shit. No fair that he understood me when I still had no clue what was really on his mind.

He gave a little headshake and a smile, as if he didn’t believe it. “You still don’t understand. Come with me tomorrow and I’ll show you what we do here.”

My stomach tightened. At last, I’d learn what he was up to. I should have been triumphant. But cold reluctance wormed under my skin, and I tucked my hands in my pockets and turned away.

29

I ate dinner with them that night—Dragonfly and Isabel and the other man. Their kitchen lay upstairs from the schoolroom, a cold and cluttered space, the knife-scarred plastic table filling most of it, with a stained laminate sink and an electromag cooker that looked like they’d cannibalized it from an ancient spaceship wreck. Only pale remnants of daylight remained, and a dim lightbulb buzzed overhead, mutant insects dancing around it on oversized wings. Isabel’s cooking, though, made up for it all. I hadn’t eaten properly since Esperanza—dead furry animal and marine freezepacks are not real food—and my mouth watered at the smell of frying shellfish and paprika.

I’m inventive with ration packs and room service, but in a real kitchen I’m clueless. To my relief, Isabel had good-naturedly shooed me away when I offered to help. She had only frozen or freeze-dried ingredients, except for a fresh green herb bunch that Dragonfly had evidently brought her on this latest trip, but produced a steaming
paella
as if by magic. I watched the others a moment, unsure, but when they stuffed themselves like they hadn’t eaten for a week, I did too, relishing the heavenly flavors of seafood, herbs and rice.

The other man, whose name was Paco, glared at me constantly, like I might grow a second head or disappear, until Isabel taunted him for it a few times, after which he subsided into ignoring me. Their Espan flowed too fast and complicated for me, and I stumbled along as best I could whenever I thought I knew something to say. They never corrected me or showed displeasure at the way I mangled their language, just grinned and replied as if I’d gotten it right.

It felt weird. In the Imperial forces, mistakes in your Rus earn you swift derision and a month’s worth of shitty jobs before they’ll trust you again. I’d learned that the hard way as a junior lieutenant, when my vowels still smacked of a Victorian colony, the kind of place where we still said
hell
and
damn
even though the Empire didn’t officially allow religion. By the time General Shadrin chose me to work for him, I’d sounded like some New Moskva billionaire’s resort-finished daughter. I made sure of it. I’d yearned so desperately to be one of the chosen.

Well, here I was, the Empire’s best and brightest, and the simple way these people accepted me shamed me to the core.

It made me think of my father, the way he’d cursed me when I’d said I wanted to leave. The agricultural planet I came from was battered and torn from futile secessionist uprisings, but many ordinary civilians still supported the insurrection against the Imperial garrison that, they said, was bleeding our land dry. My father would sneak out of the ghetto to secret midnight meetings, thin shoulders huddled in his worn plastic coat; and my mother baked the Imperial soldiers’ loaves short, making up the weight with sawdust and hiding her secret grain stash under a brick in the crumbling outhouse. But principles don’t mean much to a hungry little girl. The Imperials were well-fed and sheltered while we starved and froze. They were educated and tech-savvy while my parents couldn’t afford to send me to high school. And I knew some of the Imperial kids. I sneaked into the barbed-wire compound and played with them in secret, the garrison sergeant’s pale-haired boy and his sister, until their mother saw me and chased me away. They had a funny accent I tried to copy, and they never got sparrow pox or footrot or had infected grass seeds stuck under their fingernails. I envied their warm clothes, their haircuts, their big house and safe neighborhood, and I wondered: why them and not me?

My father scolded me in that provincial accent I’d become ashamed of.
Keep from them, Caroline. They inna like us. They ken they’re better than you
.

News flash, Dad. They are.

I burned a lot of bridges when I ran away to enlist. My family wouldn’t answer my calls or take my money, and after a while I gave up.

For years I’d told myself I didn’t care, during tour after tour on troop carriers and battleships, storming star systems and cleansing rebellious colonies so Imperial civilization could spread unchecked. Sure, our ways might step on a few toes every now and then, but on Imperial worlds, people don’t starve in the streets or die raving of Kirov swamp fever. We have the best health care, the greatest statesmen, the most vibrant culture. I’ve been on enough so-called “free” worlds to know that they’re invariably dark, dirty, lawless slums, bereft of order or hope. The choice—civilization with a few rules, or petty freedoms in poverty—always seemed a simple one to me. But some people just have to be beaten into doing what’s good for them.

So sixteen-year-old Private Thatcher got to see the galaxy, and never went hungry. I liked the guns, the techie hardware, the predictability of it all. I was diligent and clever and always followed orders, so they made me a corporal. When I got a field promotion to second lieutenant, one blood-soaked night in a broken city aflame with rebellion, I dragged what was left of my platoon out alive and the higher-ups let me keep my rank. I was twenty-two and I got an officer’s education, friends, a life beyond repairing harvesters and scraping for food every day. I kept people alive. I was making a difference.

Of course, I knew now that my father was right. The Empire overused our soil, poisoned our land with skin-rotting pesticides until nothing would grow—I’d seen it on countless worlds. But civilization always has a cost. Resources have to come from somewhere. And when you’re commanding a company of exhausted shock troops, hunting terrorist guerillas through a toxic tropical swamp two hundred million klicks from safety, you don’t care too much where the food in your dwindling ration packs came from.

My family were probably dead by now. They’d either got themselves shot as traitors before the Imperials left, or had starved to death afterward because they wouldn’t submit and ask the Empire for help, not even to stay alive. I’d never admired them for it. Principles are no good if you’re dead. I’d gotten out while the writing was fresh on the wall. It wasn’t my fault they were too proud to do the same.

I always said the Empire was my family now. For a while—until I met Nikita—I’d even believed it. And tonight, here I was, eating
paella
with the enemy. Making friends with people who thought those empty principles were worth stealing and killing and dying for. To say I felt awkward was like saying Dragonfly was okay at sums. If a black hole could open in the floor and crush me, it’d be a relief.

Dragonfly—damned if I’d call him by his real name—leaned over to whisper to me in Rus, maybe to make me feel at home. I swallowed. He’d been doing it all night: murmuring in my ear, making me blush with a candid glance from those magnetic brown eyes. Teasing me. Making me laugh. Letting his fingers touch mine as he reached for something on the table. I wanted to scream, because I liked it. It made my stomach all hot and fluttery, and it maddened me. I could handle some meaningless flirting if it got me closer to the information I needed to bring him down. But when had I started seeking out his smile, letting eye contact linger, imagining his touch?