Thalia Addams pulled her shirt down to get the wrinkles out, adjusted her glasses, pulled her shirt back up to preserve her modesty, made sure she had everything she needed in her bag, and, after careful consideration, pulled her shirt back down to show some cleavage. She had a feeling this job wasn’t going to go smoothly.
“Okay,” she told herself. “Either you can do this or you can’t, but you’re not going to find out by hiding in the ladies’ room. Now, get in, ask questions, get answers, and write an award-winning article.”
Taking a deep breath, she opened the door to step back into the club. The dull thrum of the music escalated into a slightly fuzzy-sounding cacophony as she walked back dim room lit by neon and made her way to the bar. She had to shove through a few sweaty, gyrating bodies belonging to giggling drunks to get there, but she chalked it up to an occupational hazard. Finally, she reached her destination and immediately caught sight of her target.
Hyde Jones. Formerly a stand-up member of the Red Quarter’s guard on Serkot, currently a smuggler aboard the ITC Breakwater with a rather impressive resume for destruction, and, most importantly, the subject of Thalia’s next article.
Thalia took a moment to study him, partially out of academic interest and partially because the holos she had of him did him no justice. There appeared to be a hint of silver shading his temples, though his dark skin was smooth. His dreadlocks hung loose around his shoulders and the vividly blue eyepatch covering his right eye—bar fight on Taldor, Thalia’s brain supplied—occasionally caught the dull light of the bar. Plastering a smile on her face, Thalia slid over to him.
“Hey there,” she said in what she hoped was a throaty purr. “Can I buy you a drink?”
Hyde snorted. “You can. Doesn’t mean I’m going to leave this stool until my captain shows up to drag my ass off it.”
Thalia pouted. “That hardly sounds like fun. What’s the point of coming to a bar like this if you don’t want to make friends?”
“Maybe I just wanted a syrupy, overpriced drink before I’m spaceborn again,” he told her.
“Then maybe you should let the pretty girl offering to buy you a drink to get you the syrupiest, most overpriced drink on the menu and see where the evening goes from there?” Thalia said, smile back in place, arching her back ever so slightly to thrust her chest out.
Hyde finally turned to look at her. His eye ran slowly down her figure and then back up to her face. Somehow, the inspection managed to be more clinical than sexy, though Thalia could swear his gaze lingered a bit—just a bit!—on her cleavage.
“You don’t exactly look the type to be hitting on random men in clubs,” he informed her.
Thalia was well aware of this. She looked more like the “lives in a bookstore and has an encyclopedic knowledge of role playing games (the nerdy kind, not the sexy kind)” type.
“Oh, I wasn’t really expecting to come here tonight,” she said breezily, tossing her hair over her shoulder. It was technically true. After she’d found the next place the Breakwater was bound to dock, she packed what she could and spent a good chunk of time and money making her way there. Once she managed to track (and definitely not stalk) Hyde to the club, she’d come to the realization that she hadn’t packed anything remotely appropriate. Or rather, she’d only packed things that were appropriate and found herself in need of something with a plunging neckline. “I just broke up with my boyfriend and decided I might as well go find myself some rebound.” Also technically true, if “boyfriend” was replaced with “university friends who thought crossing the depths of space to track down a criminal on the off chance of getting a story was a bad idea because they lack ambition.”
“And you picked me, the surly one-eyed asshole, over the pretty boy who’s been checking you out since you sat down because…?” Hyde asked, eyebrow raised, ever-so-slightly tilting his head at a pale-haired boy who looked like he’d snap in half if Thalia breathed on him.
“Maybe I like it when people play hard to get,” Thalia said. “Or maybe I just have the feeling that getting rejected by you is probably going to be more satisfactory than sex with him would be.”
Hyde smirked and sat in quiet consideration for a moment. Thalia felt a pang of nervousness in her stomach and forced herself not to show it on her face.
“You know, I just might let you buy me that drink after all,” he said after a pause. “But don’t think I’m going home with you just because of that.”
“Not that kind of boy, eh?” Thalia asked, looking over the menu. As it turned out, the club didn’t advertise drinks in order of most to least likely to get a bear shifter drunk enough to share his secrets, or at least not where she could see, so she just flagged the bartender down and ordered “two of whatever’s strong enough that I can’t tell what you’re cutting your liquor with anymore.”
The bartender, a lovely red-skinned Domian whose eyelids were coated in gold powder, returned a second later with two tall shot glasses of green liquid that seemed to glow when it caught the light, winked, and walked off.
Thalia stared at it apprehensively for a moment. “Okay, so, I’m going to need you to act suitably impressed with me after I drink this because there’s a non-zero chance it’ll kill me.”
Hyde just snorted and downed his shot, then made a face and shook his head.
“Jesus,” he coughed, “where were they hiding that?”
“I imagine somewhere the authorities will never find,” Thalia said, reaching hesitantly for her own glass.
“Come on now,” Hyde told her. “If you want me to be impressed, you have to actually drink it.”
“I was kidding earlier, but if this actually kills me I fully expect you to throw yourself wailing onto my casket,” she informed him primly. “I want full-on lamentation, can you do that?”
“I guess we’ll find out,” Hyde said, nodding meaningfully at her glass.
“So eager to watch me die,” she muttered as she tilted her head back and downed the drink in one go. Whatever it was, Thalia would bet her hard drive that someone had been looking the other way when this got shipped in. It burned all the way down her throat and sizzled in her stomach, the sensation riding the thin line between enjoyable and not. She looked down, letting her hair fall over her face so Hyde couldn’t see the expression she made.
Almost immediately the bar got slightly blurrier. It was hardly something she couldn’t handle, her college years being an experience in building up her alcohol tolerance. But the fact was it would be awfully hard to get Hyde drunk and question him if she was shitfaced herself. Shifters, as far as she knew, had a metabolism that helped process foods that humans would get sick eating but didn’t do much in the way of helping process alcohol, and he’d been drinking when she got there, but he had the luxury of not having to be careful. Thalia didn’t.
“Alright,” she said after a moment. “How are we doing on lamentations?”
“I’ve got a few lined up,” Hyde said, sounding far too amused. “Considering I don’t actually know your name, what I’ve got so far is mostly about the heroic way you downed that shot or the touching moment you hit on me in a bar because you wanted to score some rebound.”
“I’m going to need you to spruce that up a little,” Thalia told him. “My mother may be listening.”
“In that case, I’ll lie and say you died tragically protecting me from the evil, evil alcohol,” Hyde said. He was smiling now, small but real and warm. Something inside Thalia that hadn’t been dissolved by whatever had been in that glass fluttered. Shaking her head, she did what she’d been doing with inconvenient emotions for her entire life and suppressed it ruthlessly.
She had him now, or at least she was well on her way there. He was interested in her. All she had to do was slip him a little more alcohol and drop a hint about getting some air.
“So, what are you doing here?” Thalia asked, signaling the bartender for another round. “Other than, you know, valiantly resisting my wiles.”
“I wouldn’t say valiantly,” Hyde said teasingly.
“And I wouldn’t say that was an answer to my question,” she told him as two more shots got set down in front of them.
“My boss is talking over some business with a local contact,” Hyde said, picking up a glass. Thalia did the same and they clinked them together before downing their shots as one.
Once the gagging, burning feeling had worn off, replaced by an even thicker fog in her mind, she turned back to him.
“I just want you to know that your answer was incredibly shady, which means I now want to know everything,” said Thalia, who already knew everything she needed about the crew of the Breakwater, from the blond maniac to the tiny rage machine.
“I’m not drunk enough for that,” Hyde said, smirking. “And I wasn’t under the impression you just wanted to talk.”
“Well, now that I know you’re probably some kind of criminal mastermind I’m reconsidering. You’ll have to ply me with more alcohol, now.”
“I can do that. But after a minute. I think I’m still recovering from the last shot.”
Thalia nodded her head in agreement. “I’m with you there.”
“So, what is it that you do when you’re not hitting on one-eyed criminal masterminds in bars?” Hyde asked, leaning in.
“In hindsight, the eyepatch really should have given away the ‘evil mastermind’ deal,” Thalia mused. “You didn’t even loose that eye, did you? You just wear it to look more evil. Also, I’m not showing you mine until you show me yours.”
Hyde raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Look, a girl’s got to keep up an air of mystery when flirting with kingpins. I—shit.” She’d been absorbed enough in the conversation and influenced enough by the alcohol that she somehow hadn’t noticed the two men standing against the back wall of the club.
They looked like perfectly normal club-goers, more so than Thalia. Their hair was slicked back and their clothing was tight enough to show off their arms but loose enough to allow them to move, looking out at the sea of dancers. There was really no reason to be suspicious of them at all, except Thalia had seen them on Tolythanos just two days after leaving Serkot with a story to show the galaxy, and then again on Banos and Contellion. Just as she was thinking she could slip out without them noticing, one looked up and locked eyes with her from across the bar.
“Shit,” Thalia said again because it bore repeating. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Hyde frowned and looked around. “What, is that your ex?”
“I wish,” Thalia said, tossing a few credit chits on the bar and hastily grabbing her bag. “We should leave now.”
“Look,” Hyde said, pulling away, “you’re real cute, but I’ve got enough shit in my life without whatever it is you’re involved in. You’re gonna want to leave me out of this one.”
“Too late,” Thalia said, grabbing his shirt and staring wide-eyed over his shoulder. “I’m here for you, and that’s the only reason I can think of that they’d be here for me, so you’re already pretty involved. Can we please run away now?”
She could feel the way Hyde went tense. “What do you mean, you’re here for me?” he asked, low and dangerous.
“Two choices here, buddy,” Thalia hissed. “You can get the fuck out of here with me and I’ll explain everything later, or you can stay here and maybe one of them will tell you what’s happening before putting a bullet in your skull.”
Hyde stared at her a long second, then grabbed her arm and started pulling her through the crowd toward the back door.
They burst out into the cool night air a moment later. Thalia, never the best athlete, stumbled forward and only avoided falling on her face thanks to Hyde’s iron grip on her arm.
“When we get to the ship,” he told her as he yanked her behind him, “you’re going to explain everything. Anything you lie to us about, or neglect to mention to us, will have some very negative consequences.”
As far as Thalia was concerned, that still beat finding out what the two goons that had been following her had planned.
“So, this is awkward,” she told him as she struggled to keep up with him, “but we really need to go to my hotel room to get my stuff.”
The choice swear words that came out of Hyde’s mouth in response to that would have made an Outer Rim dock worker blush. “You must be out of your goddamn mind if you think—”
“All my things are there,” she hurriedly said over his objection. “That includes my equipment. I think we’d both prefer it if that stayed with me.”
Thalia could nearly hear the grind of Hyde’s teeth. “Where?”
“The Grinning Knave. It’s a few blocks that way,” she told him, pointing.
Muttering under his breath, he changed direction, still dragging her after him.
“Knew it was a stupid fucking idea,” he said. “’Oh, Hyde, go relax, get a drink. What’s the worst that could happen?’ Fucking knew it.”
“To be fair,” Thalia said peaceably, “this seems like a pretty run of the mill encounter for you.”
“See, the fact that you know that? Not helping me relax,” he told her through gritted teeth.
The journey to the Grinning Knave was mercifully short. She’d picked that place out to be convenient and was suddenly very, very glad she’d done so. They nodded at the receptionist as they passed, making a beeline for the elevator. Once inside, Thalia punched the button for the fifteenth floor, then leaned against the wall.
“So this is fun,” she said, closing her eyes and pressing her forehead to the metal of the elevator. She was still a little dizzy, but the shock of the events at the bar had done a god job of cutting through the haze of alcohol. Nothing said “sobriety” like abject terror.
“As soon as I find out what I need to know from you, I swear, I’m going to drop you into a black hole,” he said murderously.
“See, that’s a horrible tactic. Now I don’t want to tell you anything. Also, you were so nice at the bar, can we go back to that, please?” Thalia responded, trying to get her breathing under control as quietly as possible.
“Who are you with, anyways?” Hyde demanded. “Blackfangs? Blue Tongues? The Red Hand?”
“Actually, I’m with the Periwinkle Toes. We’re a new gang starting out of Fenos, we specialize in assassination and mahjong,” she said, opening her eyes and turning to look at him. At the look on his face, she sighed. “I’m not with anyone. I couldn’t convince anyone to come with me.”
“To do what?”
“To talk to you.” She shifted her stance. “I’m a journalist. I wanted to interview you for a story.”
Hyde snorted. “Sure. A journalist. That’s exactly the type that runs away from possible assassins without breaking a sweat. Who are you really?”
“I assure you, I’m sweating plenty. You go very, very quickly when motivated.” She rummaged in her bag for her wallet and, after finding it, gave him her ID. “My name’s Thalia Addams. I’m from Goton. I work for a local paper in the Blackstone district.”
“This could be a fake,” he said. “What story could possibly important enough to go through all this just to get it?”
“Serkot,” Thalia said right as the doors opened with a ding. She powerwalked out, heading straight for her room and digging in her pocket for the room key. She fumbled a few times due to the shaking of her hands—embarrassing, she thought—before managing to open the door.
Her room was neat, only a few things not still in her suitcase. She habitually traveled light and had gone to the club almost immediately after checking in, so it was easy to sweep everything into the case and zip it up. She turned to find Hyde standing in the doorway, waiting on her. There was nothing left of the smirking man from the bar left in him. Now, he resembled a particularly homicidal statue as he stood rigid, something dark burning in his eye.
“Why do you want to ask me about Serkot?” he asked, his voice deathly calm.
“Now? Really?” Thalia asked, trying to push past him.
“Yes, now. I’m trying to decide if I should just kill you now or not,” he replied.
“Please don’t,” Thalia said. “Okay, so, long story short. Seven years ago, you were an exemplary member of southern Serkot’s Red Quarters until all of a sudden, Councilor Marcus winds up dead with your DNA all over the scene. You flee. Obviously, you know all of this. What I’m trying to write my article about is what really happened. Logan Tillman, the man who framed you, did it because he wanted to be able to push his registration bill and didn’t have enough votes. After framing you, not only did he have enough votes to get the bill passed, he got elected to chancellor.”
“Shockingly, I have been keeping up with the news on that,” Hyde said drily.
“Have you been keeping up with the aftermath of the registration bill passing? Things were already bad for shifters in in the Gorgon system. Don’t think I didn’t go over how much you had to get a place in the guard. After the Tillman debacle, it only got worse. Anti-shifter violence isn’t legally considered a hate crime there anymore.”
Hyde raised an eyebrow. “And you think one little article is going to change that?”
“If it’s just one little article, what’s the harm in letting me write it?” Thalia countered.
“Are you really asking me that right now, while we’re running from the people after you?”
Thalia considered his point. “Fair enough.”
“So as much as I don’t want to ask this,” Hyde said, looking like someone who was about to attend his own execution, “but what are you going to do next?”
Thalia blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“After we get out of here,” Hyde expanded, gesturing at the room. “Where are you planning to go?”
“A different inn, where I plan to use a fake ID to get a ticket online. Hopefully I can shake these assholes for a while,” Thalia said. “Maybe they’ll think I gave up on the story and fuck off.”
Hyde snorted. “Speaking from experience, Tillman’s not the sort to just let things go. You need a more permanent plan.”
Thalia thought for a moment. “Move to the Outer Rim and settle down with a jakit herder?” Hyde’s face managed to display several strong emotions in response to that without ever shifting. He seemed to go through all five stages of grief, starting with denial and ending with acceptance, in roughly as many seconds and rubbed at his temples as though he had a headache.
“Look, my plan to remain unmurdered was somewhat dependent on publishing my article. I’m winging it at the moment.”
“Come with me,” Hyde ground out like it pained him to say.
“What?” Thalia asked warily.
“Come back to the Breakwater with me. The others would never forgive me if they found out I left you alone and defenseless, and there’s no way they wouldn’t find out.”
“So, in order to protect me—grudgingly—from a few mercenaries sent by a super sketchy criminal dickwad, you’re taking me to a ship filled with mercenaries and sketchy criminals?” Hyde nodded. “Fuck it, I’m in. Point the way.”
“Follow me,” Hyde said, stalking back out into the hallway. Thalia had to jog to keep up with him. The trip to the elevator was uneventful, as was reaching the lobby. It was only when they reached the street that things went to hell. Chasing down the sort of people that frequented the dangerous parts of town meant that Thalia, too, had to frequent those parts, which how when a bullet slammed into the wall next to her head she knew no self-respecting law enforcement officer would be showing up to lend a hand.
Hyde swore and pushed her into the nearest alley, which was good because Thalia’s brain had chosen to shut down. People stalking her across a system and a half wasn’t the best experience ever but suddenly the realization that she could die crashed over her. It took all her years of experience with repressing emotion to keep herself from freaking out.
“Are you armed?” Hyde asked, looking through the scattering crowd for their attacker.
“I have half a candy bar and a can-do attitude,” Thalia responded automatically. She was wearing decent shoes. Could she get away if she ran? And how much of an asshole move would it be to leave someone who had offered her protection—albeit somewhat reluctantly—to get possibly murdered while she made a break for it?
“Fantastic, let me know how bringing optimism to a gun fight works out for you,” Hyde shot back as several men emerged from the crowd, striding with undisguised purpose. Thalia was no great mathematician, but there were definitely more than two of them.
“I mean, optimism, a candy bar, and a badass space pirate,” Thalia said, pasting the best shit eating grin on her face as Hyde spared a moment to throw a thoroughly annoyed look over his shoulder. “Look at it like this: you can’t kill me, which I have no doubt you’d love to do at the moment, if they,” she nodded at the steadily advancing figures, “do it first. So, you know, grin and bear it.”
“I’m throwing you into a fucking turbine the second I think Annie won’t have me drawn and quartered for it,” Hyde said backing slightly more into the alley.
“Aw. Chivalry isn’t dead, it just smells funny and hasn’t moved in a while. What’s the plan?”
“I can’t beat all of them like this, and I’m assuming you’re not going to be much of a help. I’m going to have to shift, which means we need to get to the Breakwater immediately afterwards. I need you to take my comm unit and call Richard Chapel,” Hyde told her, stripping his jacket off in one fluid motion and throwing it to the side. As it turned out, despite going a few rounds with his truly sharp tongue and being in imminent danger Thalia was still capable of finding him ridiculously attractive.
“I can do that,” Thalia said. Hyde handed her his communicator.
“See the dumpster over there? Get behind it. Tell Rick what’s going on, and if it sounds like I’m dying feel badly about your life choices and run away.”
“I’ll just practice my lamentations, shall I?” she said, making her way to where he told her to go. “And… try not to die.”
Hyde snorted. “Sage advice. Now, hide.”
Thalia hid.
She heard the slightly nauseating sounds of muscle expanding and reforming and the creaks and snaps of bones rearranging. The urge to look was strong, but Thalia had priorities and tapped once on the comm, the holoscreen flickering to life. If she lived, she’d maybe get to see him shift again another day, and the best way to get out alive was to do what he said.
She opened the video call function of the comm and scrolled until she found “Chapel.” Her finger was just about to press the connect button when she heard a shout, followed by a growl, followed by the loud pop of a blaster going off too close for comfort. Flinching, she forced herself to make the call.
The sounds of the fight continued, echoing off the alley walls, and Thalia was somewhat embarrassed to realize her breaths were coming shorter and shorter.
None of that, she told herself. What sort of self-respecting investigative journalist can’t handle a little danger?
Nevertheless, it was a relief when the call connected and a man with touseled brown hair and, of course, gold eyes peered out at her from the screen.
“See, you’re calling me from Hyde’s comm link, but you don’t appear to be Hyde,” Rick Chapel said, “so I imagine you can understand my confusion.”
“I’m almost always confused, so I understand perfectly,” Thalia assured him. The distinct sound of bones breaking, accompanied by a squelching noise, cut through the air and Thalia flinched again. “Okay, so, um, it’s like this: I sort of stalked Hyde to a bar—not for weird reasons, I just need to interview him for an article—and, wouldn’t you know it, apparently the people I’m writing the article about don’t want it to get published, which, fair enough, they’d probably go to jail. So it turned out they had people following me and they apparently decided to act when they saw me talking to Hyde and so now he’s a bear and I’m sitting behind a dumpster next to what I really hope is an unused condom and hoping they die before he does. And he told me to call you to tell you this was happening and that we’re going to be making a run for the ship, pending our survival. So. Um. Just letting you know?”
Rick took in the rant with a slow blink. “Are you telling me that you’re in trouble and Hyde is helping you? And that he’s bringing you to the Breakwater as part of that?”
“Yes?” Thalia said.
Rick sighed. “Karma is a beautiful thing. I’ll get everyone ready. Good stars.”
The image winked out. Not knowing what else to do, Thalia peeked around the dumpster and immediately wished she hadn’t. She had known, intellectually, that getting in a fight with a bear wasn’t the sort of endeavor that left a pretty corpse behind but the sight still shocked her. On the bright side, it looked like Hyde was almost done.
Thalia leaned back against the alley wall, forcing herself not to think about what was on it, and breathed deeply. She couldn’t go falling apart now. Actually, she should be happy. Not only had she found her man, she was going to be sailing off with him. Surely at some point she would get a few answers, and that was all she needed. Journalism, it sometimes seemed, was the art of making mountains out of molehills. So, really, everything was going even better than planned. It wasn’t like she’d rather have the mercenaries very much alive and succeeding in their goal. This was the best outcome for the situation.
She took a deep breath in and then slowly let it out, letting the tension leak from her shoulders only to tense right back up when something very large and suddenly very close to her huffed. The warm air hit her face and she winced at the smell before she could help herself. Slowly, she opened her eyes.
Hyde in bear form was much, much bigger than Hyde in his human form, as well as significantly hairier. The eyepatch hadn’t stayed on after the shift, the scar tissue over his eye standing out against his dark fur. The look in his remaining eye held a tad more judgement than Thalia thought a bear should be capable of.
“All done?” she asked, voice level.
The bear huffed again, which she assumed meant yes. She pushed herself to her feet and then, cautiously, looked around the edge of the dumpster.
The scene wasn’t any more pleasant than it had been when she’d looked before. She took in the broken, ruined bodies, suppressing the urge to vomit, then nodded at Hyde who ambled towards the alley exit. Thalia paused, dashed back to get his jacket—the only article of clothing to survive the encounter—and followed him.
If the good people of Starbright City had ever seen a bear before, Thalia couldn’t tell from their reactions. There was a good amount of gawking, with some hushed whispering thrown in. Hyde seemed to be ignoring it all, so Thalia followed suit as she hurried to keep up with him. They trekked through the Portside District and to, predictably, one of four docks for designated for trade ships. A tired-looking guardsman looked up and then back at his comm unit before doing a double take and staring wide-eyed at Hyde and Thalia.
“Is that a bear?” he asked, incredulous.
Thalia looked over her shoulder. “What? Where?” She could almost hear Hyde’s eyeroll.
The guard just pointed wordlessly at Hyde’s hulking form.
“Oh, you mean him?” Thalia forced a laugh. “No, no, this is Huckleberry. He’s my…service dog.”
“Your service dog,” the guard repeated, a furrow forming between his eyes.
“Yes. He helps with my anxiety,” Thalia told him earnestly.
The guard seemed unconvinced, possibly because he wasn’t an idiot. “Ma’am, I don’t know what—”
“Look,” Thalia cut him off. “We’re trying to get on our ship to get out of here. Now, either this is my beloved service dog Huckleberry and we go on through or this is a bear and you have to contact the necessary people and fill out the necessary paperwork. Do you think they’ll pay you overtime for that shit?”
The guard stared at her for a long moment before deflating. “All service animals are required to be on some kind of leash.”
Thalia shrugged and pulled two pairs of pajama bottoms out of her bag. She tied them together, then gently wrapped one end around Hyde’s massive neck. The look in his eye was more exasperation than fury, she was pleased to note.
“There,” she said, straightening back up with one pajama leg in her hand. “Leash.”
The guard nodded. “Have a nice night ma’am,” he said before turning and walking woodenly away.
“God bless the complete uncaringness of the underpaid work force,” Thalia sighed as Hyde dragged her along.
“There certainly are benefits to so many people willing to look the other way,” a soft voice behind her agreed.
Thalia probably should have been more frightened of the assassins that had just been trying to kill her than she was of hearing someone behind her but, as she found out, she very much wasn’t. she spun around, heart in her throat, and took in the sight of the quietly amused looking woman behind her.
She was several inches taller than Thalia with dark skin and black eyes, a patterned headband holding the black cloud of her hair out of her face.
“Hello,” she said. “My name is Delphine. I’m here to help you back to the Breakwater. I see I was somewhat unneeded.”
Thalia looked over at Hyde, who looked far more resigned than bears were generally capable of.
“I could still use a guide,” Thalia said. “I’m Thalia, it’s nice to meet you.”
Delphine gave a small smile and inclined her head. “And you. Please come with me.”
Thalia figured she might as well. The rest of the walk to the ship was short and delightfully free of mercenaries trying to kill her. There were two people waiting by the loading ramp when they got there, a man Thalia recognized as Rick Chapel and a short dark-haired girl who was smiling so hard it had to be painful.
“Well, hello there, Hyde,” she said. “I see you’ve brought a friend. Is this the part where we have a nice little conversation about tossing her out the airlock?”
“Hi, Hyde. I like your accessories,” Rick said.
Hyde snorted and wandered off, taking Thalia’s pants with him as he disappeared into the ship.
“So, you’re a reporter? That’s cool,” the dark-haired girl said brightly. “I mean, not if you write shit about us, obviously, then we’d probably have to at least consider killing you, but in general. Very cool.”
“Zosha,” Rick said, a fond reprimand. Zosha’s smile became smaller and sweeter as she turned it on him.
Delphine cleared her throat. “Is everyone else ready to go?”
“Ah. Yes. Leo’s taking first shift in the cockpit and everything is taken care of that we came here to take care of,” Rick answered. He gestured broadly towards the ramp. “Please, come in.”
Hiking her bag up on her shoulder, Thalia followed them into the ship, anticipation stirring in her gut.
“So what was up with the pants noose Hyde was rocking?” Zosha asked as they walked.
“Thalia convinced a guard he was her service dog named Huckleberry,” Delphine said placidly.
Rick made a choking noise and Zosha gave a bark of surprised laughter. “Why Huckleberry?” she asked.
“Because, you know, bears,” Thalia said. “Bears make me think about, like, huckleberries and moonshine and growing your own tomatoes.”
“Alright then,” Rick said, still clearly amused. “We’re heading to the kitchen now, you’ll meet everyone and then we’ll take the absolute piss out of Hyde and decide what we want to do next.”
“Why…?” Thalia started.
Rick show her a small smile. “We’ve somehow gained a knack for acquiring women in need of assistance, and Hyde has a habit of arguing that we shouldn’t help them—”
“—or that we should shove them out the airlock—” Zosha cut in.
“—or that, so the fact that he showed up with you is somewhat ironic to the rest of us,” Rick explained.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure he brought me specifically to throw me out the airlock,” Thalia told him, “so his streak hasn’t really been broken.”
“Don’t care, still mocking,” Zosha said.
“I think Custer feels similarly,” Delphine said quietly. “He was somewhat pleased to hear that you had contacted Rick on Hyde’s behalf.”
Custer had been the easiest to find information on for reason that Thalia wasn’t sure she could discuss in the company of small children, the easily nauseated, or the devout. Half of her never wanted to meet him; the other half thought he might be the most interesting man alive simply because no one seemed to be able to predict him.
“Is that why you’re all being so nice about me needing your help?” Thalia asked, genuinely curious. She admittedly hadn’t spent much time with smugglers before but she was under the impression they were usually less altruistic than this.
“Yup,” Zosha said cheerfully. “It’s not like they don’t have experience with this kind of thing and the opportunity to mock Hyde forever makes up for any possible setbacks.”
“You and Hyde don’t get on, I take it,” Thalia ventured.
“Oh, we get on fine now, which is good because we both work the communications array, but he wanted to space me after the crew realized I was hiding onboard to get out of a sticky situation. Apparently he wasn’t too fond of Annie at first, either—you’ll understand why that’s strange when you meet her—or Delphine, although to be fair most of us weren’t crazy about Delphine when we first met her on account of the fact that she was trying to kill us. Oh, we’re here.”
The kitchen was cute, a lot more lived in than the ones on some of the ships she’d taken before without looking disgusting. There was a table in the middle that had five matching chairs and three chairs of different designs all pushed in a tight circle. In one chair was a pale blond who lit up when he saw them enter.
“My, my, I almost didn’t believe it,” said the man who could only be Custer delightedly. “Our widdle Hyde, breaking the rules.”
“We have rules?” Zosha asked, all wide eyes and guile.
“Actually yes, but no one ever follows them. It’s a pity, they got written up and we had to sign them and everything,” Rick said.
Zosha blinked. “Really?”
“Yup,” Custer said, nodding. “Number five was to keep cussing to a minimum. Number eight was no unnecessary risks. You understand why we didn’t listen.”
“Should I be concerned for my life?” Thalia asked.
“I mean, I’m still alive and I’ve been reliably informed that I’m a lightning rod of catastrophe, so…” Zosha shrugged.
Thalia was intrigued. “’Lightening rod of catastrophe?’”
“Apparently ‘danger magnet’ wasn’t a strong enough term,” she explained. “Which I don’t think is fair, necessarily, because we have Annie and she…” Her voice trailed off and Rick coughed pointedly.
Thalia raised an eyebrow. Did these people really think she hadn’t done her research? “The thing with Strathmore, right?” she asked.
The others didn’t freeze, but Zosha and Rick did stiffen slightly and Delphine managed to convey the threat of immediate death without moving a muscle.
“Do you know,” Custer asked almost conversationally, “that I am almost positive that that’s not public information?”
“I mean, he sent out wedding invitations,” Thalia said. “I called one diplomat posing as another diplomat’s secretary and asked if he’d be in attendance and if he knew anything about the bride-to-be that would help my ‘employer’ plan a gift that wouldn’t get him murdered. I followed the story after she ran. It’s actually how I found out about Hyde.”
“Oh, good,” Hyde said behind her. “You stalking me is just a side effect of you stalking my captain’s wife.”
Thalia turned and smiled at him. “Aw, don’t worry. One day someone will stalk you for you.”
Hyde snorted and sat down.
“So,” Custer said with a smile that had to be painful, “are you going to advocate for tossing this one out of airlock as well? Did you get bored with the lull in young women to threaten?”
“Custer,” Hyde sighed, “the only thing stopping me from killing you is…” he trailed off and cocked his head, eye squinting as though deep in thought.
“The value of community and advantages of steady teamwork?” Rick asked.
“A sense of fire-forged camaraderie?” Zosha chipped in.
“The fact that I would hate to do an extra laundry load to get your blood out of my clothing if you did?” Delphine asked quietly, a small smile on her face. Thalia decided she was both terrified and a little in love with her.
“Probably one of those,” Hyde grunted. “Where’s the captain and the others?”
“Leo’s not coming,” said an auburn-haired women followed by a short, tan-skinned man with close cropped black hair. “He declines the opportunity to go through this decision making process again when, and I quote, ‘we all know what’s going to happen, just tell Hyde to borrow a condom from someone because God knows he doesn’t have any of his own.’”
Zosha gave a delighted bark of laughter as Hyde rolled his eyes. Thalia wasn’t exactly sure how to react, but she was pretty sure her ears had just turned red.
“Please,” the woman said, gesturing at the table, “have a seat.”
Everyone took a moment to sit down, Zosha leaning into Rick, Delphine slipping quietly into the seat next to Custer, Hyde plopping down next, leaving the only seat available to Thalia between Zosha and Hyde. She settled into it, a bit afraid to lean too far in either direction. It would seem that while she could get through the somewhat homicidal happenings of the past few hours no worse for the wear, social anxiety could still make a dent in her.
“So,” the redhead woman said, “I think you should probably start at the beginning.”
Thalia cleared her throat. “You’re Annie, right? Right. So, there was this journalism grant, right? And the prize was a grant, and so I decided to try it out. My article was originally on incarceration rates in my home town, but about two weeks before the deadline, Captain Strathmore starts sending out wedding invites and it’s like, whoa, that’ll work. Like I told the others, I pretended to be the secretary of a diplomat to find more stuff out about you and Strathmore. Only a week later, Strathmore and the Appomattox are on the move and I haven’t completed the article. I submitted the first article I wrote and won, obviously, but I still wanted to know what had happened, so I used a little elbow grease and dug up the bounty that was on you and figured out what had happened—or at least, I think I have. It doesn’t matter much right now anyways. The point is, I looked into everyone registered to the Breakwater and came across Hyde being framed for murder on Serkot and figured I have this grant, I might as well use it for something good. So I sort of stalked you all and I maybe didn’t cover my tracks well enough because I’m here but so are some of Tillman’s lackeys.”
“And how did the lackeys know to follow you here?” Annie asked.
“I…” Thalia began, rubbing a hand over her face. “I asked some questions. About where Tillman’s support came from, about his policies since he was elected to office, that sort of a thing. I wasn’t as subtle as I apparently should have been, and I’m no tech savant, so in hindsight it’s not surprising that they managed to follow me.”
“About that,” the short man on the other side of Hyde said, leaning forward to stare placidly at Thalia. “If you’re not good with tech, how did you find us?”
“I am perfectly decent with technology,” Thalia retorted, “I’m just not amazing with it. And I just called around acting like I needed to hire you.”
“So, ninety percent of what you do is calling people pretending to be someone you’re not and hoping for the best,” Rick clarified.
Thalia thought about it for a second, then shrugged and nodded. “That’s fair.”
“I have to ask,” Annie said. “If Hyde’s been running from these assholes for the better part of a decade, what makes you think publishing an article will help?”
“I don’t plan to publish it in Serkot,” Thalia explained. “Serkot is one of three major powers controlling that system. The other two are Antrecore IV and Rajan. I figure, with my grant and my award, I can convince some of the better news stations to run my article. Framing Hyde only worked because Serkot already had an anti-shifter bent and people didn’t want to look too closely. Even with the excuse that it’s been seven years the evidence doesn’t hold up. I’m hoping if I can give one or both of the other two powers a reason to launch an internal investigation, they’ll be able to at least unseat Tillman.”
“And they’ll definitely launch the investigation if they have the cause to do so,” Zosha said. “Serkot’s been steadily increasing the fine trade ships have to pay to dock there over the last five years, which is disrupting trade flow.”
“And Antrecore IV’s main source of money, not to mention political sway, comes from the export of neulithium crystals,” Delphine added.
Zosha nodded. “They’ve been trying to get an exemption, but Serkot hasn’t granted it. Even if Rajan stays out of it, Antrecore IV would get involved just for the chance to get rid of the fine.”
“Exactly,” Thalia said.
“And you need me for all of this,” Hyde said, resigned. “I guess I’m in, as long as I don’t have to go back.”
“Hyde,” Custer said very, very seriously, “if that’s because you actually did kill that man, then you know we’d help you cover it up.”
“I didn’t kill anyone, you half-brained shitlark,” Hyde said, irritation clear in his voice.
Thalia blinked. “You’ve killed, like, five people in the two hours I’ve known you.”
“I didn’t kill the specific man they’re saying I killed seven years ago,” Hyde ground out, glaring. Thalia put her hands up in surrender.
“So are we going to vote on what to do with her, or…?” Rick asked.
“Of course we’re not putting it to a vote, we’re going to help her out and then she’s going to stay with us forever and probably end up sleeping with Hyde,” Zosha said, rolling her eyes. “That’s just what happens to us.”
“I… am on board with this plan,” Thalia said.
Hyde smirked. “I’m flattered. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, considering you stalked me halfway across the galaxy.”
“Oh, I’d sell you to a Miclorian Inquisition squad for a half-eaten bag of chips,” Thalia said, which was a filthy lie because she’d been half in love with him by the time she’d finished her investigations on Serkot, “but you’re very pretty.”
Rick coughed. “Okay, so, this was funny at first, but now I realize that there is no context in which I want to see Hyde flirting.”
“And I’d respect that, except you and Zosha can’t seem to manage to keep quiet. Or engage noise mufflers,” Hyde drawled. The short man next to him snorted and Delphine looked incredibly wooden. Apparently, smuggler ships had the same issues Thalia’s dorm freshman year had.
“If we could get back to what we came here to talk about,” Annie said calmly. The room immediately quieted and refocused on her. “Zosha’s right. Hyde, you brought her, she bunks with you. Get her settled in, then have her talk to Rick about seeing if she can do some work for us while she’s here. Zosha, talk to your friend, see if he’s got anything that’ll help us. Delphine, you’re staying with her if she’s not already staying with someone else.”
“I hate to ask,” Thalia said, “but about the people after me…”
Custer laughed. It sounded surprisingly genuine. “What, those discount thugs Tillman’s sending after you? Please. After the shit we’ve already gone through, that’s child’s play.”
“But we still can’t afford to be complacent about them,” Annie said with a pointed stare in his direction. “They don’t need to be good, just lucky. Any other questions?”
“No. Wait. Actually,” Thalia said, “and I know this is a long shot, but can I interview some of you?”
“God, why?” Hyde asked.
Thalia shrugged. “Habit. Extra information for my article. Information for another article. Getting to know the people I’m imposing on. Take your pick.”
“That’s fine,” Annie said, cutting off whatever Hyde opened his mouth to say. “But respect it if they don’t want to answer questions and no recordings without permission. Lastly, if you’d like to talk to anyone about what you’ve been through, any of us would be happy to listen.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I have maybe three emotions and they’ll all whiskey,” Thalia assured her.
Annie raised an eyebrow. “The offer stands. If no one else has anything to say, then we’re done here.”
The squeal of chairs being pushed back filled the air as people filtered back out of the kitchen.
“Treat her right,” Custer snickered as he walked past. Hyde put his hands on the table to push himself, only for the short man to grab his wrist.
“Dominic,” Hyde said in a voice that managed to be threatening and patient at the same time.
“Not worth getting disemboweled over,” Dominic said softly.
“Thank you,” Delphine said with a small smile. She turned to Thalia. “Would you like to see where you’ll be staying for now?”
“I’ll take her. I don’t trust her alone in my room,” Hyde said, slipping his arm out of Dominic’s grasp.
“We can all go. It’ll be a party,” Thalia said, leaning down to grab her bag. “A really, really awkward party.”
Hyde sighed. “Just follow me, and don’t touch anything.”
The space on the ship that wasn’t reserved for cargo or the massive amount of machinery required to both run the Breakwater normally and to allow it to access its namesake ability—which was surprisingly well documented for something Thalia assumed was supposed to be a secret—was actually fairly small. Not cramped, exactly, but Thalia could see why she was sharing a room (that is, purely for logistics reasons and therefore not anything that should be causing butterflies in her stomach). The hallway was straightforward, with five doors leading to five living spaces, each with a keypad by it. Hyde walked up to one and hit the enter button. The door swooshed open.
“What’s the point in having a keypad if you don’t require an access code?” Thalia asked as they stepped inside.
“When you’re living with seven nosy assholes, five of whom have enhanced hearing and can decipher the code from the sound of the beeps, a code is sort of useless,” Hyde said, spinning on his heel and plopping onto his bed.
Thalia looked around the room. It was insanely clean to the point that she wasn’t sure anyone actually had ever been in it before. The only sign of life was a tablet on the bedside table and the multicolored stickers on the intercom over the bed.
“I feel like I shouldn’t be surprised that your room looks like a hotel room,” Thalia told him, “but I am anyways.”
Delphine snorted. “It’s because he can’t bear to be parted from the communications station. He can hang up on anyone he doesn’t want to talk to there.”
“Not a social butterfly, is he?” Thalia asked.
“Watch it,” Hyde growled.
“More like a depressing, pessimistic moth,” Delphine answered, smiling serenely.
Hyde stared at her. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you developing a sense of humor is one of the worst things that has ever happened to me.”
“Are you comfortable being alone with Hyde?” Delphine asked, ignoring him.
Thalia took a moment to consider the man who snarled and threatened and hadn’t once seemed to genuinely consider leaving her behind. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.”
Delphine inclined her head slightly. “If you need me, shout. My hearing is excellent.” With that, she turned and walked out the door.
“So…” Thalia started after a moment of heavy silence. “Your crew. They’re interesting.”
“That’s a diplomatic way of phrasing that,” Hyde muttered.
“I mean, there’s not a whole lot of ways you can describe Custer, from what I’ve read. He seems like a handful.”
“Yeah, a handful of live dynamite,” Hyde said, leaning back. “His defining characteristic used to be ‘masturbates with his metal hand.’ Now it’s ‘ended up in a committed relationship with the splice assassin sent to kill us.’”
Thalia tucked that little tidbit of information about Delphine away for a rainy day which, courtesy of being spaceborn, could arguably be any day she chose. “They’re good people, though. Or at least, they seem like it.”
At that, Hyde actually laughed. “Oh, no one on this bird is a good person. Closest we’ve got is probably Zosha just because she doesn’t kill people directly. But we’re hospitable.”
“Right,” Thalia said, drawing out the vowel. “’Hospitable’ is exactly the word I would use for you.”
“Not dead yet, are you?” He asked, eyebrows raising.
“The ‘yet’ part sort of ruined the effect I think you were going for there,” Thalia replied. “Can I sit?”
Hyde gestured broadly. “Go for it.”
Thalia pulled the chair away from the oddly spotless desk pushed against the wall opposite the bed and sat gingerly, allowing her bag to fall to the floor.
“So if I start asking you questions, are you going to shift and bite my head off?” Thalia asked, rummaging around for her main tablet.
Hyde looked at her, considering. “How about this. You ask me a question, I ask you one.”
Thalia looked up. “Okay? I mean, I’m not very interesting. You’ll be disappointed.”
Disbelief flickered in Hyde’s eye. “You track me down and chase me across at least one system border to get this story, then corner me in a bar with the apparent intent to pull a honeypot on me, and you say you’re not interesting? Come on.”
“Alright,” Thalia said, shrugging. “I warned you, though. Why did you want to join the Red Quarter’s guard?”
“They paid well, and the insurance covers damn near everything. And I’ve always been aggressive,” Hyde answered easily. “Why did you become a journalist?”
“Took a bunch of random writing electives and then realized I had to actually graduate at some point,” Thalia said. Hyde made a go on gesture and she sighed. “I think people are idiots who make shitty decisions. I want them to be informed so they have the opportunity to make less shitty decisions. What’s your family like?”
“My parents are live on Rajan now. They’re strict, but good parents. They know what I do for a living now and haven’t disowned me. What’s yours like?” Hyde asked.
“We all get on much better now that most of them are dead,” she answered, which was a fair summary of the first fifteen tear-stained years of her life. “Who are you favorite and least favorite people on the ship?”
“Dominic and Annie, I get along with the best,” Hyde said. “We understand each other. Everyone else is fine, except Custer, who’s the sentient version of an infected ingrown toenail. Who are your favorite and least favorite people?”
“I have a couple friends I hung out with back on Goton. I try not to have least favorite people because it’s exhausting, but at the moment Tillman is at the top of that list as the person who has most recently tried to kill me. What do you do in your free time?”
“Talk to Dominic. Read. I like crossword puzzles. You?” Hyde asked.
“I have been known to do the occasional crossword. I watch a lot of soap operas,” Thalia told him.
“Soap operas? Really?”
Thalia shrugged. “Look, my job is talking about all the ways reality sucks. Soap operas are basically my happy place. If you could go anywhere in the universe, where would you go?”
“I’d stay here,” Hyde answered immediately. “My crewmates are insane, but they’re my crewmates. Why do you write the kind of articles you do?”
“Didn’t I just answer this?” Thalia asked.
“No, you told me why you became a journalist. That’s a general question. I’m asking why you write the specific articles you write. No offense, but you don’t seem the good Samaritan type.”
“You stalk a man once…” Thalia sighed. “I write the specific articles I write because I don’t see the point in having a platform capable of reaching people billions of miles away and using it for gossip. Or at least not just for gossip. Why didn’t you leave me behind when you had the opportunity?”
“Because the others would have never let me live it down,” Hyde said. It was almost believable except that his gaze was trained on her left ear instead of her face.
Thalia made a buzzer sound. “Wrong! Either tell me the truth or pass and I’ll dedicate myself to wheedling the truth out of you later. It’s what I do for a living, I’m very good at it.”
Hyde stared at her for a tense moment, then huffed out a resigned sounding sigh. “I don’t relax. Ever. It’s not that I enjoy being uptight, but Dominic and Rick are the only ones on this ship that think before they act, and Dom can’t put himself in situations that stress him out too much and Rick trusts the captain too much. So that means when people make dumbass decisions, I’m sometimes the only one willing to say they’re dumbass decisions. Like with Annie, and Zosha. I’m glad they’re here now and that it all worked out, but at the time they were strangers with dangerous people chasing them and we didn’t have the connections we have now. We didn’t have the benefit of being able to see the future and know it’d all be fine, so I stand by not trusting them when they first boarded. There’s too much jumping first and looking second on this ship for me to be able to take it easy most of the time.”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with me,” Thalia said uncertainly.
“At the bar, when you walked over… I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t think of a reason to be tense. For once, my first instinct was to just go with flow and see where I ended up. You sidled up, all smiles, and offered to buy me a drink and I was able to relax for what seemed like the first time since we ran into Annie.”
Thalia felt something uncomfortably like guilt twitch in her stomach. “And then I nearly got you killed.”
Hyde snorted. “No, and then you nearly got you killed. Tillman’s hitmen are as incompetent as his politics when he’s not framing innocent men for murder.”
“Still, I’m…” Thalia swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
“Why do I get the feeling you don’t apologize much?” Hyde asked, sounding almost amused.
“Because you’ve got animal instinct on your side. How do you feel about pretending this never happened and never, ever telling anyone we had actual emotions?”
“Sounds good to me,” Hyde said.
There was the sort of awkward pause that followed unexpected emotional connections. Thalia reached into her bag and pulled out a plastic water bottle that’s she’d filled with rum. She popped the top and took a swig before wordlessly handing it to Hyde, who accepted with a raised eyebrow. He nodded approvingly after taking a sip.
“Not bad,” he told her, handing the bottle back over.
“I figure there’s a time to get wasted on the cheap shit and a time to bring out the decent stuff,” she replied. “This is the second.”
“I have nine hours before I’m on deck. Is there anything you need to do before that?” he asked.
Thalia considered. “Nope, can’t think of anything.”
Hyde pushed himself up the bed until he was leaning against the wall and grabbed the tablet on the table.
“Alright. I’ll probably go to sleep in an hour, so if you need anything after that, go find Delphine.”
Thalia stood up and walked to the far side of the bed, bottle held loosely on one hand. She sat, toeing her shoes off, then rolled over so she could see what Hyde was working on. Hyde gave her a silent, judging look but proceeded to turn to his tablet and open a crossword app without telling her to fuck off so she decided to count it as a win.
“Eight down is ‘coronation,’ you know,” she told him.
He grunted in response and typed it in. Thalia watched as he typed in a few more answers before giving in to her need to be talking.
“So what’s your deal with Zosha, anyways?” she asked.
Hyde sighed. “She’s irritatingly perky and thinks she’s more mysterious than she is. She’s somehow become our mascot and I don’t like it. Also, she listens to annoying music while at the deck. Why don’t you have thirty million friends and what’s the theoretical temperature at which molecular activity ceases, two words?”
“That’s two questions.”
“Okay, one, you skipped my turn, and two, I don’t count help on a crossword worth personal information on its own,” Hyde informed her.
“I don’t have thirty million friends because I’ve been reliably informed that I have trouble ‘letting people in’ and ‘expressing myself,’” she told him, making finger quotes. “Also, absolute zero.” She took a long sip of rum as he typed it in. “Why do you pretend you don’t have friends? Or at least, why do you pretend that Dominic is the only person on board who’s your friend?”
“I’m not pretending, I’m just not an emotive person and don’t care to correct other people’s misassumptions. If you don’t like connecting with people, why did you choose a job that requires connecting to as many people as possible? Also, ‘egglike,’ five letters.”
“Ovate. And the difference is my articles connect my readers to an event or a place or a person, not to me. I’m not the destination, I’m the pilot. Does that make sense? Great. So if you’re Mr. Lowkey from Planet Serious, why do you wear a bright blue eyepatch?”
Hyde’s eye narrowed. “There’s nothing wrong with my eyepatches. How are you so calm about all this, and I need a six letter word meaning ‘irritating,’ starts with a ‘T.’”
Thalia pouted. “Hey, now. I am a delight. I’m not freaking out because… I don’t know? I’m not exactly used to being in danger, but the worst that could happen is I die, and that’s going to happen anyways.” She paused for a moment. “’Trying.’ And why are you still being nice to me.”
“You think this is nice? You may want to make some new friends,” Hyde said, a hint of disbelief coloring his tone.
“In general? No. For you? Yes. I think every single one of your expressions is a variation of ‘it’s a shame I’m too busy to disembowel you right now, I’ll have to make a note to do it later’ but with me you’re… softer, maybe? The point is, you advocated for throwing Zosha out the airlock apparently because she annoys you. I chased you down to dig up your past and got you chased by assassins and you play twenty questions with me. You should hate me, but it doesn’t seem like you do,” Thalia said.
It took so long for Hyde to answer that Thalia suspected he wasn’t going to. “Manning the array in wildspace is irritating. You’re not close enough to a tower that you can reliably get good connections, so you have to spend hours fine tuning the equipment so you can get a clear enough signal just to be able to pick up communication requests. But every so often, you pass by a ships that running on the exact same frequency as you, and the connection is perfect. No lag, no static. And I kind of get the feeling you’re maybe on the same frequency as me,” Hyde said, eye never leaving the screen.
Thalia leaned her head on his shoulder. “I can’t believe you’re the lonely hot guy,” she said quietly.
“The what?” Hyde asked.
“The lonely hot guy. You know, you’re super hot but you don’t let people get too close even though your soul cries out for love. And I’m the lady who walks in at your best and only friend’s thematically important engagement party in a red dress and four inch heels and we make eye contact across the room, but I have, like, a fiancé, or a mafia boss dad, or some big important secret and we can’t be together until you chase me down in an airport to stop me from leaving by confessing your love and kiss me. While it’s raining.”
“Is it raining in the airport?” Hyde asked with the voice of someone who dealt with people far stranger than Thalia on a daily basis.
“Obviously,” she said, rolling her eyes. She looked up to see the barest hint—bearest hint, ha—of a smile.
“You know, you—” she started before a yawn cut her off.
“Long day?” Hyde asked wryly.
“Oh, shut up,” she retorted, suddenly aware of how heavy her eyelids were. She had guessed she would crash quickly after all the excitement of the day, but she wasn’t prepared for the swiftness of the lethargy creeping over her body. “I’m just…” she trailed off, resting more heavily on his shoulder and letting out a muffled curse when her glasses pressed uncomfortably into her cheek. She pulled them off and tossed them to the side before curling instinctively back into the warmth of Hyde’s body.
“I’m just gonna sleep for a little,” she told him blearily. “Wake me up if something happens.”
“Of course,” Hyde answered.
“And listen,” she said, closing her eyes and feeling her body almost melt into the mattress, “I just want you to know.” She grabbed his hand to make sure he was listening. “I’m glad you’re on my frequency.”
She felt his fingers twitch once before gently threading through hers.
“Good night, Thalia,” she heard him say softly before she slipped off into sleep.
Thalia woke up, rested and refreshed (if a bit groggy), eight hours later to Hyde shaking her shoulder.
“Whazzit?” she asked, blinking up at him.
“I’m going to my shift,” he told her. Check in with Rick or Annie at some point to talk more about what’s going to happen.”
She nodded and waved him off, pressing her face into the pillow and falling back asleep almost before he was out the door.
The second time she woke up was an hour later, her body having had enough of stillness. Dressing and taking care of her morning hygiene routine quickly, she strode out the door before realizing she had no idea where she was going or what she was doing. She wandered aimlessly until she realized she was hungry and made her way to the kitchen where she found Zosha and Delphine watch a holovid over what appeared to be dried fruit.
They looked up when she entered, Zosha smiling and Delphine nodding in acknowledgement.
“Hey there,” Zosha said brightly. “Care to join?”
Thalia smiled back and took a seat. Delphine pushed the plate of fruit over to her and she gratefully took what she thought was an apricot.
“So, are you going to interview us?” Zosha asked, leaning forward and propping her chin up on her hands.
“Do you want me to?” Thalia asked around a mouthful of apricot. “Because I totally can.”
“Great! Do I need to pull my hair back so I look more serious?” Zosha asked.
“No, I work mostly with audio,” Thalia said, laughing. She opened the recording app on her multi-tool and cleared her throat. “Breakwater series, entry one, subjects Zosha and Delphine. It is nine hundred in standard time and we are in the Breakwater’s kitchen. How did you two end up on the Breakwater?”
“I stowed away in the cargo hold because I was trying to get away from people chasing me,” Zosha said. “So, a little like you. We had to settle a civil war to get them to leave me alone, but we did it. I ended up falling for Rick and never left.”
“I was sent to assassinate the crew in retaliation for a business relationship that was disrupted when they settled that civil war. They convinced me to join them,” Delphine said.
“Hyde mentioned that you were a splice. Who did you work for?” Thalia asked.
“I would prefer to keep the company I was employed by off your recordings as part of an arrangement we currently have with them,” Delphine answered. “I will tell you later if you are curious.”
“Sounds good. How do you think being part of the Breakwater crew has changed you?”
“I am more aware of myself, I think,” Delphine said. “I was raised to believe that love and attachment were weaknesses and that I should feel nothing and only obey. Now I realize I am not a means to an end.”
“The Breakwater’s a lot more stable than life on Lytos. And I have people. It’s nice to know that you’re not alone even when you’re by yourself,” said Zosha.
“I see. Delphine, you said you no longer feel that, well, feeling is a weakness. How has that changed?” Thalia asked.
“It hasn’t. Love is still a weakness, but it has made me understand that I was also weak before. It is merely an allocation of strengths and weaknesses. Before, I had little to lose but I was virtually alone. Now I have much to lose, but I have—as Zosha said—a network. Looking over my past weaknesses and my current ones, I must say I prefer the present,” Delphine answered easily.
“That’s amazing. But I have to ask—Custer? How does that even work?” Thalia asked.
Delphine let out a little laugh. “He is not, perhaps, a good man, but he is a good friend and an excellent lover."
“Nice,” Zosha said with a leer, nudging Delphine in the ribs with her elbow.
Thalia grinned. “Zosha, what’s being with Rick like? He’s first officer, right?”
“First mate, technically, because we’re not working within the boundaries of a legal system, but yeah. And he’s… he’s great. He’s calm and kind and so, so funny. And we never fight, which is a new thing for me. Whenever one of us gets mad, he makes us sit down and talk it over, so we disagree sometimes but it never becomes a big thing, you know? Anyways, he’s the kind of guy that makes you think ‘okay, this one I’m keeping.’” Zosha looked like she was far away, a smile on her face and a shine in her eyes.
“What about Annie and the captain? What’s that like?” Thalia asked. She was curious about the captain, she’d admit.
“He acknowledges she’s ninety percent of our brain power, same as everyone else,” Zosha said with a shrug. “It helps that he’s disgustingly in love with her. Be glad you didn’t have to sit through his vows. I was about to throw up, and I think Rick was about to stage a mutiny just to get away from it. How’s Hyde?”
Thalia spluttered. “What?”
“Hyde. How is he? I don’t mean sexually,” Zosha clarified. “Well, not just sexually, I’m a little curious and I’m willing to admit that, but tradition states that you’re now ours forever and specifically Hyde’s so, how is he?”
“I… I don’t know how to answer that,” Thalia said. “He’s good, I guess? He’s…not nice, exactly, but… I don’t know. Anyways, that wraps this entry up, end recording.”
The app closed out with a beep and Thalia stood to leave. “Thanks for talking to me. Do you know where I could find Annie or Rick?”
Delphine’s eyes were knowing but she just said, “I think Annie’s in the cockpit.”
“Rick’s asleep, but he should be up in four hours or so if you need him,” Zosha added.
Thalia thanked them and walked out of the room. She had the sinking suspicion that she liked these people and that staying on board the Breakwater would be one of the best things that could happen to her, but that would be dependent on Hyde’s acceptance, which she didn’t deserve. The fact he was if not nice, then kind to her was already too much.
Annie was, in fact, in the cockpit, wearing her hair in a bun and piloting the ship in what were probably her pajamas.
“Hello,” she said without looking up from the navigation panel. “Have you talked to Zosha?”
“Yeah, just now,” Thalia told her.
“Did she explain the situation with her friend to you?” Annie asked.
“No, that did not come up,” Thalia answered. “But I feel like I know her better as a person now.”
Annie sighed. “That girl. She talked to her friend, and he says Rajan and Antrecore IV both have a significant number of people willing to run the story and politicians who eagerly anticipate it breaking. Write it, send it in, and they’ll take care of the list. I’ll have a list of news outlets wanting to participate sent to you.”
“That’s…” Thalia blinked. “Wow. I mean, I was planning on releasing it as an independent online article on my blog and then alerting outlets to its existence so I didn’t have to grant any one outlet exclusivity, but that… that makes things easier.”
Annie looked up and smiled. “I want to thank you for doing this. Not the way you went about it, maybe, but Hyde didn’t deserve what happened to him. I’m glad someone’s doing something about it and so is he, even if he doesn’t say so.”
“That’s… thank you,” Thalia said around the lump that had suddenly appeared in her throat.
“So, how’s interviewing him going, anyways?” Annie asked, turning back to the dashboard.
“Well, actually, I’ve decided I’m just going to make something emotional and touching up and then make him pretend he said it,” Thalia admitted, scratching her neck. “After getting to know Hyde better, I’ve come to the realization that nothing he would ever say on record could be used in an article designed to provoke sympathy and outrage on his behalf. So, you know, it’s nice to know I came all this way to basically do it all by myself.”
Annie laughed. “I mean, it’s not like you gained nothing by coming here, or prove that you’re dedicated—if somewhat foolhardy—when it comes to your work. Have you ever considered using one ship as your base?”
“I…” Thalia searched for what to say next. That all depends on the man I stalked and then got jumped? I don’t actually know how to consistently work with the people around me? I’d prefer to not get my hopes up, thanks? “I haven’t, no.”
“Well, think it over. I think you’re good for Hyde. He sometimes gets it into his head that it’s him against us, but I get the feeling he’s not about to start thinking that way about you.” Thalia waited for her to expound on the subject, but after a moment of silence Annie just looked back at her. “When do you want to interview me?”
“I’m still a little to terrified of you to ask,” Thalia told her truthfully. “Maybe later?”
“Well, just let me know,” Annie said, sounding amused. Thalia took that as her dismissal and hightailed it back to the main body of the ship.
Without a clear goal in mind, she once again wound up wandering aimlessly once again only to wind up in a massive space filled with machinery. Dominic looked up from his pad in the corner he’d been sitting in and regarded her calmly.
“Um, hi,” Thalia said after a beat.
“Hello,” he said. “Can I help you?”
“Nope, just looking for somewhere quiet,” she told him.
“Well, stay as long as you like,” he told her, turning back to his tablet.
Thalia wondered for a moment if this was one of those times she was supposed to read in between the lines and be polite and walk away, then decided she didn’t care and sat down by a wall, leaning back against the cool metal and feeling the thrum of the engines reverberate through her body.
She pulled up the article on her multi-tool, scanning over it. She’s had most of it done before meeting Hyde, only needing him to add a bit of pathos to the scathing overview of statistics and details on the rise of anti-shifter activity in the past decade as well as a list of evidence of Tillman’s many, many misdeeds. She located parts that sounded too dry and tweaked the wording, finding places to slip in quotes that sounded vaguely like what Hyde would say if he wasn’t a sarcastic asshole about ninety-five percent of life. She was in the middle of debating whether or not it would be over the top to write about the glimmer of unshed tears in his eye when Dominic unexpectedly began talking.
“Is that the article? The one about Hyde?” he asked, nodding at her holoscreen.
“Yes? Well, it’s not just about Hyde, but yes it’s the article that I chased Hyde down to write and have since decided to write without him because I want people to be more sympathetic towards the shifters on Serkot, not less,” Thalia said.
Dominic tilted is head. “I thought journalists were supposed to be moralistic.”
Thalia snorted. “You don’t meet a lot of journalists, do you?” She turned so her back was towards him and he could read over her shoulder. “At the moment, it’s mostly just facts and evidence.”
“I like the part where you describe Hyde as a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in sarcasm wrapped in the body of a Greek god,” Dominic said.
Thalia laughed. “Thank you. Unfortunately, like everything else in red, I need to replace it with something more professional.”
Dominic hummed, thoughtful. “You like Hyde, then?”
“Okay,” Thalia said, setting her multi-tool down, “why is everyone asking me that?”
“Because he needs someone,” Dominic replied, “and you… he lets you in, I think.”
“Oh my God. I’m totally the girl at your engagement party in the red dress,” Thalia breathed out, eyes wide. Dominic looked at her curiously and she waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just going to…” she picked her multi-tool back up and starting working again.
There was surprisingly little left to do. She had planned it out so that Hyde’s personal story would enhance but not dominate the article, so within half an hour she was finished and edited. She looked down at her multi-tool in disbelief and mild suspicion, like it all was about to disappear.
“Done?” Dominic asked her.
“I think I am,” she told him.
He looked down at his tablet. “Hyde gets off shift in thirty minutes. You should show him.”
“Thank you,” she told him, standing and stretching. Her legs were stiff and her spine popped uncomfortably, but she felt better than she had in ages. “I’ll see you around.”
Dominic grunted in lieu of a reply and Thalia almost flew back to Hyde’s room. She tossed the multi-tool on the table and opened the list Annie had, indeed, sent her, sending a message to each one notifying them of the article going live before opening her blog and, before she could think twice, uploaded the article.
She looked at the holoscreen for a moment, staring in fascination at the date of publication under the title, before shaking herself out of it. Hyde would be back soon and she wanted to shower before he arrived. Grabbing a change of clothes and tossing them on the bed, she slipped into the bathroom and started up the sonics. She stripped quickly and hopped in, sighing in relief as she felt the clean-feeling tingle cover her skin. As she tilted her head back and closed her eyes, she tried to think up what she wanted to say to Hyde. She knew the points she wanted to convey, but felt that begging him to let her stay was a bit much. She decided to say what she wanted as plainly as she could and let things fall where they might.
She didn’t want to get out of the shower, but she also didn’t want to be the person who used all of someone else’s charge so she reluctantly stepped out and wrapped herself in a towel. Walking out of the bathroom, she stopped short at the sight of Hyde sitting at his desk and looking over the article. Her heart did something dramatic at the sight of him staring so intently at the screen.
“I was expecting it to be a good article,” he told her quietly, “but I wasn’t expecting this. It’s… amazing. You…” He swallowed.
Thalia walked carefully over to him, feeling a tingle of shock go through her as she saw the steadily rising viewer count. “Well, that’s my job.”
“You do it well,” he told her with a wet laugh. “You really did it, you know?”
“I had a lot of help,” she said, suddenly nervous. “You’ve got a pretty good network here. I’ve been wondering if you’d let me be part of it for a little longer.”
He looked up at her, an incomprehensible table of emotions in his eye. Gently, he reached out and took her hand. “Just don’t corner me in a bar the next time you need a favor, okay?”
Thalia smiled and, before she could second guess herself, leaned in and pressed a kiss against his lips. He sat perfectly still for a moment before leaning in. There were words somewhere, in some language, that could describe the sensation of his mouth on hers but in that moment Thalia couldn’t think of a single one.
They broke apart and Thalia smirked at him. “So, you a third date type of guy, or…”
Hyde growled, heat flashing in his eye. “So help me God I will throw you on that bed.”
“Don’t bother,” Thalia told him, pushing away from him. “Let me.”
She sauntered over to the bed as best she could on legs that were about to give out and dropped the towel before laying down as gracefully as she could. Turning over so she could look at Hyde, she was delighted to see he was staring hungrily at her.
“You look…” he trailed off and shook his head.
“Mmm, I know. So, you gonna get over here or what?” Thalia asked, like she wasn’t naked on the bed of the most attractive man she’d ever seen. Forcing herself to remain outwardly nonchalant she rolled her shoulders. “I’m getting cold. And bored.”
“Well, we can’t have that,” Hyde said roughly, yanking a boot off.
“I’m glad you understand,” she told him as he pulled the other one off as well and started for his belt. “Also, as much as I appreciate the strip tease, I’d definitely prefer it if you came over here instead.”
“You want me to leave my clothes on?” he asked, eyebrow raised.
“I want you, period, and you’re taking too damn long,” she replied.
Hyde grinned at her and pulled his belt through the loops, tossing it across the room. He sauntered over to the bed. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you patience is a virtue?”
As soon as he was close enough, Thalia reached up and grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him towards her. He was surprised enough that she was able to unbalance him, dragging him down so that he was half on and half off the mattress, his right knee digging into the bed beside her hip and his right hand bracing himself on the pillow so he didn’t crush her. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you to treat a lady right?”
Hyde smiled and leaned into her. “Well,” he said against her lips, “if that’s what you want, I’ll see what I can do.”
He pressed his mouth to hers, hard but chaste, but Thalia had never been one for teasing caresses and gentle touches in bed. She parted her lips and arched up, making Hyde moan. Sliding her arms around his neck, she took the opportunity to lick her way inside his mouth as he settled on top of her.
Thalia slid her bare legs along his clothed ones, delighting in the contrast as the sensation sent sparks of pleasure though her body. The way her breasts brushed against the material of his shirt somehow felt more erotic than any touch she’d had in the past and she whimpered as Hyde slid a hand down along her side and cupped her ass.
“Aren’t you going to tell me what you want?” he asked in a voice like melted chocolate, squeezing ever so slightly.
“You,” Thalia gasped out. “I want you to touch me. I want you to fuck me.”
“Maybe if you ask nicely I’ll consider it,” Hyde said with a wicked grin.
Thalia looked up at him, widening her eyes and slipping her hands down to the fly of his pants.
“Please, Hyde,” she breathed out as she undid the button. “Please fuck me.”
If the look in Hyde’s whiskey-gold eye had been hot before, now it was molten. “Anything you want,” he said as she worked his zipper down.
Thalia stroked his hardening member lightly, pleased by the ragged edge his breathing took.
“I’m so glad you think that,” she told him, applying slightly more pressure to hear his breath hitch, “because you’re here, and I’m here, and I have a birth control implant, so really there’s nothing stopping you from fucking me into you matress. And I really, really want you to do that.”
Hyde groaned. “Are you ready, or…?”
“I’m past ready,” Thalia said, because he was big but she was impatient and besides, she wanted to feel it tomorrow, a tangible reminder of what had happened.
Hyde swore and reached down, lining himself up and sinking ever so slowly into her. Thalia sighed and pressed herself down, trying to increase his maddeningly slow pace, but he was stronger than her and pinned her in place. She was helpless, whining and squirming in his grasp, until at last he was fully inside her. He paused for a moment to let her adjust and Thalia nearly snarled at him.
“If you don’t move in the next three seconds,” she told him, “I swear, I’ll leave and—” The rest of the threat was cut off by a gasp and Hyde thrust his hips forward suddenly, sending something electric sparking through her. “Oh, God, like that.”
Hyde rocked forward again, repeating the motion until he had settled into a brutally passionate pace that left Thalia gasping for breath. It had never been like this before, never been this hot or this wet or this good, and suddenly she felt cheated. Everyone, she though deliriously, should have a Hyde, as long as they didn’t try to take hers.
Thalia was, distantly, aware that this was both already the best sex she’d ever have at only a minute in and also going to be over embarrassingly quickly on her end. She could already feel the tell-tale pulse of pleasure thrumming between her legs as she gasped and moaned as quietly as she could while Hyde moved over her, his eye squeezed shut and mouth slightly open as he panted. There was a thin sheen of sweat over his face and Thalia thought he might be the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She wanted, very badly, to have this forever—the gleam in his eye when he looks at her and his smiles and his threats that he never meant and everything else. Then Hyde hit something inside her and it was like every nerve in her lit up with pleasure and thought was suddenly beyond her. All there was, was her body and his body and the perfect way they moved together.
Hyde grunted over her as the arm he’d been using to hold himself up trembled and gave out and he ended up sprawled on top of her. The warm weight of him and the steady thrusts of his hips combined pushed Thalia even closer to the edge and she turned his face so she could kiss him. He slid his lips down to suck at the sensitive skin just under her ear and she clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle a shout as she felt herself begin to shake apart. Distantly she was aware of the sounds of Hyde’s orgasm following on the heels of her own but she was too caught up in the whirlwind of her own pleasure to be able to do anything but observe.
Finally, the sensations died down and Hyde rolled over, slipping out of Thalia’s sensitive body. They lay there, getting their breath back, and Thalia reached over to slip her hand in Hyde’s.
“So was it good for you too?” she asked breathlessly.
He laughed. “It was… yeah. It was good.” He squeezed her hand. “Thalia…”
Thalia looked over and saw questions in his eye, hesitations and worries and just a smudge of hope. She smiled and him and rolled over so that she was half on top of him.
“Hey,” she said gently, reaching up to cup his face. “Relax.”
She leaned down to kiss him and felt the tension leave his body as he wrapped his arms around her. His mouth curved under hers and Thalia could swear her heart skipped a beat.
This, she thought. This I could get used to.