“What the hell are you talking about?”
“He posted a job looking for engineering help. That’s you, genius. Do you really think I lost a game of strip poker to a simpleton like Dicker on accident?”
“Oh.”
“Oh, is right,” she snaps back.
I don’t think I like this ship. “Do we even have seven thousand credits in our accounts?”
“Well, I do. I’m not sure about you.”
“What?”
“Your credits are my credits but my credits are… well, my credits. I could give you a loan though. But I’m gonna need some collateral. I’m not sure you’re good for it.”
“You know what?”
“What?”
“You can go fuck yourself. We’re both on this mission and I’ll call the Loathsome One right now and tell her you’re being insubordinate. And don’t bother threatening me back because Jimmy is here and I’ve got the perfect plan to get him on board.”
“That was my plan,” she hisses.
“Yeah, well. Your plans are my plans, right? I’m the responsible party here. So you’d better transfer seven thousand credits to my account right now or—”
“I’m setting you up for success, Delphi,” Queenie snaps. “Because my success is tied to your success. But for the record, I don’t like you.”
“Credits,” I seethe through clenched teeth.
“Fine. Done. But I’ll expect this to be paid back.”
“Put it on your expense report,” I say, turning my back to exit the ship.
“Don’t forget to apply for the job,” she calls, just as I enter the airlock. “You’re welcome!”
“Don’t let her get to you,” Flicka soothes as we leave. “She’s a nasty ship.”
“That ship is so nasty not even the Loathsome One would steal her soul.”
“Yeah,” Flicka agrees, blinking her gold light as she hovers in front of my face. “That ship is so nasty you want to pass it in the night.”
I smile, feeling a little better. “That ship is so nasty, when someone takes out the trash, she leaves the docking bay.”
Flicka chirps her approval in my ear as we enter the receiving area. Thank God it’s not that crowded. We must be the last wave of people to get off the ships.
“We don’t need her,” Flicka says.
“We kinda do,” I say. “But only to get Jimmy back to the Loathsome One. Then we get our reward, free Tycho, and get as far away from the Cygnian-Akeelian war as we can.”
It sounds impossible when I say it out loud, but Flicka is nothing but supportive. She and I have been a team since I was three years old. When all my harem sisters back in the palace were being assigned nannybots, I was given Flicka instead.
Dragonbee bots are notoriously sneaky and mean and they bite and sting you when you piss them off. They can also cook up little poisons in their belly regions. Flicka has about a dozen different poison recipes in her repertoire. She never uses them. She’s actually a really nice bot.
They’re not much to look at alone, but let me tell you—a swarm of these things are a horror screen in the making. And they have this little stealth mode that lets them sneak up on you too. You only hear them coming if they want you to. The buzzing is used as a threat. So being gifted Flicka instead of a nurturing nannybot was punishment for being bratty. But Flicka, Tycho, and I became a tight little dream team in a place made of nightmares.
I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t dreaming of a free life outside of Cygnus. My father used to bring me books. Fairy tales and myths of long-ago times when being a Cygnian princess meant you were destined to find a prince who’d whisk you away to a fantasy station where you ate tushberries and sparkling passion-lime wine all day while sitting on plush cushions.
Flicka would listen with me. We’d dream up all kinds of ways to escape. She was a prisoner just as much as Tycho and I. And without her scheming there’s no way we could’ve ever made it out of the system.
I owe her. But also love her. She’s my best friend. Probably my only friend after Tycho and I’m not sure he counts because he’s my brother.
The line for Mighty Passes isn’t long when we arrive and there’s only a few families still left in the receiving area, so we shuffle up behind them and wait our turn. When we get to the counter I’m informed that Flicka counts as a full person even though she’s smaller than my big toe.
“All sentient beings must have a pass. And you must sign a contract taking full responsibility for her actions.” The Mighty Ambassador gives my little bee the stink eye as she says this. “If it bites anyone, or stings anyone, or harasses anyone—”
“I get it,” I say. “And she’s not an it, she’s a she.”
The girl behind the window visibly shudders. Like imagining my bee as her companion gives her the creeps. She’s one to talk. She’s dressed up in a Mighty Minions red and black gown with horns made of holo flames coming out of her head. Who’s the crazy one here, lady?