These Broken Stars (Starbound #1)(55)

“Where did you learn to say that, Miss LaRoux?” I try, keeping my voice light.

“You just wait until it’s my father asking that same question, Major.” She pulls out the little kit and starts to unpack it. “Then you’ll know what real trouble is. Come down here, I’ll try to bandage it up.”

“I plan on being far away by the time the subject arises.” I carefully sink to my knees. “Exiled to some far colony to fight the rebels, in punishment for making eyes at his daughter.”

“You keep your eyes to yourself.” The wound’s bleeding properly now, and she wads up one of our bandages with our only gauze pad to press it against my palm, then straps it all into place with the other bandage. I wince as the pain begins to register properly, burning its way up my arm.

“Baby,” she teases, wrapping the bandage around my palm. Despite her best efforts, though, the blood starts showing through the bandages while she’s still packing away the nearly empty first-aid kit.

It turns out we’ve bent the metal far enough that she can wriggle in, and I wait anxiously as she turns herself sideways and squirms, pulling herself inch by inch into the darkness. “Keep checking you can move backward,” I say, squatting down to try to get a better look at her progress. “You don’t want to get stuck. And check with your fingertips before you grab anything.”

Her legs disappear, and I hold my breath, waiting. My heart hammers in my chest. There’s a clang, and the metal sheet shudders as she kicks from inside, then kicks again. It bends more easily with force in that direction, and once the gap is wide enough, I stoop to crawl in after her.

The air inside the ship is cold and still, but it smells okay. It’s not as dark as I’d feared—small breaks in the hull let in speckled daylight, though it won’t be much good once we go deeper. I keep my hand tucked against my body, hoping the bleeding will slow.

“We should be in a storage area.” Her voice startles me. “Cargo, luggage maybe. Some services as well.”

“There were a lot of troops on board. I’d love to find some rations. They taste like cardboard, but they’re nutritionally complete and they’ll keep forever.” I feel like biting my tongue as soon as I’m finished. I’ve been trying hard not to mention the possibility that forever is exactly how long we’ll be stuck here.

“There’s a proper hallway up ahead.” She disappears from view again, and then I realize her body was blocking the light as she climbed out of the service duct we’re in and into a passage. It’s tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, but we can keep our footing if we’re careful. I hold open the pack so she can fish out the flashlight, and suddenly we can see.

The first two doors we try are jammed shut by the warping of the ship, but the third one swings open. The room’s full of crates that have tumbled and smashed, and piles of circuitry litter the floor. Useless.

Lilac pushes open the next door, and I try the other side of the hallway.

“No use,” she calls as I push my door open.

Inside, there are piles of fabric everywhere, sheets and clothes all down one side of the room, lying together where they fell. I’ve hit the mother lode. It’s got to be the laundry. I don’t know if the stuff in here is clean or not, but it’s got to be cleaner than we are.

“Remember that ladylike behavior of yours?” I call out, letting her hear the smile in my voice. “This is the time for it. No pushing, shoving, screaming, or—”

I don’t get any further. She’s heard the shift in my voice and crossed the hallway in a heartbeat. She wastes only a moment in gaping, then shoves past me to dash across to the pile of clothes, laughing.

“Tarver, Tarver. There are—can you see them all?” She’s running the flashlight over the offerings, revealing swaths of fabric of every color.

I’ve got my mouth half open to reply when she starts unzipping the mechanic’s suit, and then my mouth falls the rest of the way open by itself. It’s dark inside the room, but I catch a quick glimpse of pale skin beneath the remnants of her dress before I remember myself, and decide to take a good, hard look at my boots. To judge by the sounds over on the other side of the room, she’s forgotten I exist. The mechanic’s suit must have been really uncomfortable, even wearing it over her dress, if she’s that eager to get it off while I’m standing right here.

“There’s dresses,” she whispers, and I catch a movement in my peripheral vision. Oh, God, come on. It’s the mechanic’s suit and the ruined green dress being kicked across the floor away from her. So what does that mean she’s wearing right now? She didn’t actually say I couldn’t look.

“Don’t look,” she cautions me, as though she just read my mind. Dammit.

I turn away and hold my palm out to examine it in a small stripe of light that falls near the doorway. The bandages are red, and it’s throbbing to the regular beat of my pulse. I wish it would stop. The scratch itself is nothing, and I’ve had far worse in the field, but never without any hope at all of a medic or stitches. It’ll just have to be all right.

“There are sheets, we can make a bed. A proper bed, imagine. We won’t know what to do with it.” She’s laughing as she speaks.

Oh, trust me, Miss LaRoux. I’d know what to do with it. I can think up a whole list of things, if you like.