“Thankfully, the excitement’s over,” Matt said, looking pointedly at me. “And you need to go to sick bay.”

  “Yeah, okay, Dad,” I said. “Will you carry me?”

  “If I have to.”

  “Actually, you need to get us into hyperspace. We need to get to Cicana."

  Matt nodded. "On it," he said, returning to the pilot's seat.

  “We’ll do a full debriefing later.”

  “Sounds good,” he replied, looking back at me, a muscle ticking in his tight jaw. “You just get better."

  “I will.” A little more movement had returned to my toes and the fingers on my left hand. My right one seemed to be lagging behind, but I was sure it would catch up. It was probably because I had sent the chaos energy through that hand to activate the push against the Exo unit. "Leo, I need you, Meg, and Grizz to figure out why the scale sigil failed.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” Leo replied. “We’ll get right on it.”

  “I’ll take you to sick bay,” Zar announced, unstrapping her seat belt. Emerald unstrapped me and stood up to move aside so Quasar could pick me up. It felt weird to be carried like a sack of potatoes, not that it wasn’t like I had any other choice. Quasar carried me off the flight deck and across to sick bay. Shaq watched me go with big, worried eyes, but remained on the sofa, knowing I would have asked him to stay there anyway.

  Emerald tried trailing behind us, but Zar paused at the door. “Why don’t you go get some rest, Em? It’s been a long day.”

  “I’m worried about Ben,” she replied. "I want to stay with him."

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Honestly. She’s right. You should get some rest. I need to rest, too.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  She bit her lower lip hesitantly before nodding. “Well, you get better. You know where I am if you need me.”

  “Thank you. I do need you, Em. I need you rested.”

  She started reaching out to put her hand on my cheek before thinking better of it. Another nod and she headed toward the elevator.

  “How did you know I needed a break from her?” I asked Quasar, once she resumed carrying me into sick bay.

  “I think we all do sometimes. She has a good heart, but she comes on way too strong pretty much all of the time, especially with you.”

  “Yeah, I know. Say, I didn’t get to tell you before, not in the way I wanted anyway. I’m sorry about Emil. I know you two hated each other in the beginning, but you became friends despite your differences in opinion.”

  She shook her head. “No, Ben, I’m the one who’s sorry. I should have known from those differences that he was capable of betraying us like he did. And in the back of my mind, I think I did know. I guess I wanted our relationship and this crew to be more important to him than money, even though that was never his nature. It was stupid to think he'd changed. It was stupid to trust him.”

  “You know what they say about hindsight. I really thought he'd changed, too.”

  Quasar lowered me to the autodoc and got me into position, restraining my arms and legs to make sure they wouldn’t slide out of place. With all of the tense action, it hadn’t bothered me that much that I couldn’t control my body. Now that the adrenaline had started to fade, a greater sense of worry and panic began bubbling to the surface.

  “What if I don’t get better this time?” I said as Quasar tapped on the autodoc’s screens, activating the system. “What if I’m stuck like this?”

  She looked at me with compassionate, serious eyes. “I don’t know, Ben. All I can tell you is that you saved my life. If you don’t recover, I don't know if the consequences will have been worth it.”

  I smiled. “Yeah. They will.”

  “Then I guess that’s your answer.”

  “I know there are mods for limbs. Can they do a whole body, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it, but I guess anything’s possible. This is going to take an hour or two to run. I’ll give you some space, and come back when it’s done.” She reached under her blouse, unclipping her comm badge from the inside of her clothes and placing it beneath my chin. “If you need me. I’ll have Asshole make me another badge."

  “Thanks, Zar.”

  “Anytime, Captain.” She squeezed my shoulder, and I smiled gratefully at her before she left the room, trying all the while. not to think about the fact that I hadn’t felt her touch at all. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t move. Most of my body was numb. It had been the whole time; I’d just been too involved in other things to notice.

  I sat there for a while, not really thinking about anything, just letting the slight whining movements from the autodoc lull me into a deeper state of relaxation. I realized I must have fallen asleep for a while when someone's presence startled me awake. I opened my eyes to find Meg and Leo hovering over me, the autodoc silent.

  “Geez,” I complained, my body jerking a little from being startled. “You could have used the comm.”

  “Sorry, Captain,” Meg said. “We—”

  “Hold on,” I said, taking a moment to assess the extent of healing to my body. I was able to move my ankles and wiggle my toes, and use all of the fingers on my left hand. I tried to do the same on the right hand without any success. I still didn’t worry too much. That would probably be the last part of me to recover. And I was starving again. “After you say whatever you need to say, can you go down to the kitchen and grab me a pizza or four?”

  “Sure, Captain.” Leo said. “I can go now, if you want.”

  “After is fine. I assume this is about the scale sigil?”

  “Aye, Captain,” Meg replied. “We know what happened to it. Simple, actually.” She paused, waiting expectantly.

  “Well?” I asked. “What was it?”

  “One of the power connection lines was cut,” she blurted.

  “Deliberately,” Leo added.

  “Sabotage,” she said softly.

  I shook my head, not really that surprised. “Druck, I assume. That son of a bitch.”

  “Are you sure it was him?” Leo asked.

  “Is there a reason to suspect anyone else?” I answered. “He was a good mechanic, and he found the external plug to link the sigil in the first place. He probably would have known how to disable it.”

  “But did he have time?” Meg said. “We scaled up right before we hit the water on Bushara. And I met him outside the armory only a few minutes after that. He would have had to be at the panel where he cut the link before we splashed down to have had any chance of cutting it in time. When I got to the panel it had been accessed recently, but it also looked like it was rusted shut at one point.”

  I stared at her, a new pit forming in my chest. Druck had obviously planned to betray us when we reached the planet. Had he been playing along, lying to our faces ever since he heard about the huge bounty? It made my skin crawl to think of the duplicity. “Couldn’t he have opened the panel ahead of time? Is it somewhere you would have noticed it?”

  “It’s possible he did,” Leo said. “The panel is back behind the elevator controls. They actually share the same catalyst and backup power supply. He knew which one to cut, which is interesting because the reason it took us so long to come to you is because we didn’t understand how that part of the electrical system works.”

  “Druck was on board a lot longer than you,” I said. “He had plenty of time to explore and learn about the ship’s systems. You two seem almost like you want there to be a second saboteur on board.”

  They flinched at the suggestion. “Oh, it’s not that, Captain,” Meg said. “Not at all. It’s just… well…”

  “We’re not sure about Grizz,” Leo admitted.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Nothing concrete. He seems nice enough. But how do we know we can trust him?”

  “How do I know I can trust you? Two hundred million would erase all of your debts. You’d be completely free, not stuck on a ship full of fugitives.”

  “I…well…we're not…” they both stammered.

  “My point is, I can either choose to trust everyone or I’m forced to trust no one. Or almost no one. In which case, you’re just as likely to be as suspect in my mind as Grizz. In fact, you have a better motive than he does. So, unless you can give me a solid reason why Druck isn’t the one who sabotaged the scale sigil, I’m going with him being responsible for it. Do you have a strong case against it?”

  “No, Captain.” Meg admitted.

  “But we can assure you it’s not us,” Leo added. “We wouldn’t turn on you for all the electro in the Spiral. You’re family.”

  “What he said,” Meg agreed.

  “I appreciate that. Watch Grizz. If you see him doing anything suspicious, definitely let me know. Otherwise, we have to take our chances because the alternative is paranoia.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “So, can you fix it?”

  The twins grimaced at one another. “Well…” Leo started.

  “The short answer is no, Captain,” Meg finished. “Not right now.”

  “For one thing, we’re not sure how the system works,” Leo picked up. “So we don’t want to try to patch it and wind up breaking the elevator.”

  “Yeah, that wouldn’t be good,” I agreed.

  “For another,” Meg continued, “we don’t have the exact type of cable we need, and it’s possible that there’s catalyst running inside. I planned to take it up to Archie’s workbench to look at it under magnification. If I’m right, we’ll need to get more catalyst and more cable to repair it. Ideally, I’d want Mister Keep to take a look too, since he understands all of this stuff.”

  “Understood. It’s not ideal to lose scale, but we lived without it before.” I exhaled a frustrated sigh. “Is there anything else?”

  “No, Captain,” Leo said. “We’ll get those pizzas for you.”

  “You might have to help me eat them too,” I added. I could feel my left arm to the elbow, but I wasn’t sure I had enough motion to feed myself.

  “Just don’t ask me to help you pee,” Leo replied. “Come on, Meg. Nobody wants a hangry Captain.”

  “Meg, wait,” I said before she could go. “I need someone to check the results on the autodoc.”

  “Sure, Captain,” Meg said.

  “I’ll be right back,” Leo said, leaving the room. Meg walked to the autodoc terminal and tapped on the screen a few times, navigating the interface.

  She hummed softy as she looked over the data, but didn’t say what was in any of the reports right away. I held back for as long as I could take it.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “I’m not a doctor,” she answered. “So I’m looking at these reports like you’re a starship and not a person, and I could be reading things completely wrong. As near as I can tell, you’re mostly fine.”

  “Mostly?”

  “According to the autodoc you have extensive nerve damage in your right arm, and it looks like for some reason the chaos energy going through your veins on that side isn’t trying to repair it. It’s almost like that part of your body is off limits.”

  I swallowed hard, absorbing the information like I had back in Doc Haines’ office. “Or gone,” I whispered, turning my head to look at my numb arm.

  “You can’t feel it?”

  “No. I can’t move it either.”

  “You’re still getting blood into the limb,” Meg said nervously. “So it’s not totally dead. And like I said I could be wrong. It’s only the special sauce that’s missing. I don’t really understand it. But I feel terrible that you can’t move it.”

  I pulled back from the threat of panic and depression. With blood still flowing to my arm, I hoped there was a chance it still might heal naturally, in time. But if I didn’t ever get the use of it back, losing it to save Quasar’s life was a more than fair trade. “What about the rest of me?”

  “From what I can tell, the rest of you should make a full recovery. There’s another report here with a number. It says your CE levels were, at the time of your scan, zero point seven percent, and you’re expected life span is twenty-four years.” She made a face. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s based on the available data,” I explained, though the life expectancy did unnerve me a little bit. It showed just how close I had come to killing myself. “The numbers will improve as I regain my strength. It shouldn’t have been run with the rest of the diagnostic because it’s going to skew the other data. We’ll need to see if we can remove it from the rest of the dataset.”

  She smiled. “Now you’re speaking my language. I can help you with that.”

  I smiled back. “I figured you could.”

  “You’re not upset about your arm?”

  “I am. But I did what I had to do and I’m willing to pay the price.”

  “I guess the decision then would be whether to keep the limb or replace it with a mod.”

  “I can do that?”

  “Of course. We have the technology.”

  “I’m not ready to think about that just yet.” The door opened and Leo came in, cradling four pizza boxes and two bottles of soda. “Right now, it’s time to eat.”

  Meg laughed. “With you, it's always time to eat,”

  CHAPTER 33

  I spent the first three of the nine days it would take to reach Cicana in sick bay, slowly regaining the use of my body as restore worked to bring me back to health. For reasons unknown, the sigil didn’t appear to be able to do anything to heal my right arm. It remained numb and useless, a dead weight hanging at my side. While I didn’t regret saving Quasar’s life—if given a do-over, I would make the same choice again—the loss of the limb still affected me. The days I spent confined to bed gave me way too much time to think about my new situation, and I see-sawed between waves of denial and acceptance, depression and determination. Even when I was finally strong enough to be up and about, the little things I had to learn to do with my other hand alone quickly drove me to frustration. Not to mention, my days of piloting Head Case were over, at least for now.

  It was a damn good thing Matt had learned how to fly better than I ever imagined he would.

  A replacement limb would be an option once we reached a planet where we could find a reputable modder. Gia had assured me that not only could she locate the best in the Spiral, she would cover all of the expenses. I wasn’t sure I even wanted a replacement. Giving up on my arm felt like surrendering, and knowing what I knew about sigiltech, I wasn’t convinced that it wouldn't still heal me. Maybe restore couldn’t do it, but what if there was another sigil that could? Or what if David could invent a new one that would fix it? And if not that, perhaps I still had a slim chance my arm would heal on its own.

  The damage to my arm wasn’t the only bad news. Meg helped me run Justus’ diagnostic again after three days of recovery. According to the algorithm, I had lost ten percent of my overall capacity to store chaos energy, and the battle between restore and my genetics had accelerated, shortening my expected lifespan by nearly a century. Two hundred years would still be more than enough lifetime, but that presumed I stopped using sigiltech altogether right now, which wasn’t about to happen.

  The loss of capacity bothered me the most. I was already at a disadvantage against a Gilded due to the nature of my catalyst. I couldn’t afford to get weaker, especially so quickly. The results had even made me rethink saving Quasar. Would I still have done it had I known then what I knew now? I hated myself for second-guessing it, but there was more at stake here than just her life.

  Everything on the ship was almost back to normal by day seven. At least, as normal as it could be given the changes onboard. While Druck had never been much of a hand in the ship’s day-to-day operations, the lack of his presence was palpable whenever I went down to the kitchen or lounge, and especially when I returned to Quasar’s daily combat training. It pleased me to see that Meg and Leo had both started attending the group sessions, following along with her routines as best they could. They also took extra time at the end of the sessions for personal training, although Leo looked disgusted every time he ended up with a gun in his hand. He practiced with them anyway, not out of necessity but because Head Case had become his home. We were his and Meg’s family now, and he was willing to put his personal beliefs aside to protect us.

  I took extra lessons with Quasar too, learning how to fight with one hand. Meg and Emerald had worked together to design a sling for my arm that kept it comfortably tucked against my body, keeping it from swinging uselessly around as I maneuvered through the moves. They'd even hidden a small pouch in it for Shaq, with a small lip at the edge that he could use to leap toward a target. We all enjoyed watching him launch himself across the lounge, chirping instead of biting when he landed on whomever stood there waiting for him. The sling also had a holster built into the bottom, providing quicker access to a blaster.

  The sling wound up making a primary wardrobe change necessary for me, updating my style to something more befitting a starship captain. Gone were the ripped blue jeans and oversized hoodie, replaced with dark pants, the color of which changed almost daily, and a fitted black shirt. I wore the jacket I had bought on Windfall over the sling, modified with a clasp so it would stay on my shoulders without my right arm in the sleeve. My newer maglock boots from Shelton’s rounded out my attire.

  I had never been one to look in the mirror very often, but when I did these days, I barely recognized myself. In only a few short months, I had gone from a scrawny twenty-one-year-old kid with a thick mop of curly black hair and a baby face to a lean, mean, almost twenty-two-year-old man with a buzzcut, a neatly trimmed beard, and wise-beyond-my-years eyes.

  Then again, I barely recognized today’s Matt as the one who had picked me up at the hospital. Still good looking, still in great shape, but the stress of his capture and the mature determination of his attitude had changed his look from wannabe rockstar to hardened military man. He had traded in his jeans and t-shirts for flight suits and fatigues, and now spent a lot more time talking to Leo about thrust mechanics than strumming his guitar.