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Nearly two hours after she’d almost fallen to her death, her hands still shook.
Jupiter couldn’t take her eyes off of them. Part of it was the rawness of the skin—which was starting to throb now that the adrenaline and terror had faded away—but mostly it was that they wouldn’t stop shaking no matter what she did. She clenched her hands into fists and did her best to remember the breathing exercises Vladie had pulled up on YouTube while he was trying to talk her into harvesting her eggs. She did nothing but make herself feel like a fool and still her hands trembled on.
“It’s to be expected.”
“Holy shit.” Jupiter whipped around, her arms flailing wildly and embarrassingly. Not even a karate stance. Talk about an overreaction.
Captain Tsing, who stood in the doorway of what Jupiter supposed was some kind of rec room with her hands clasped behind her back, barely even tilted her head.
“You startled me,” Jupiter said. Unnecessarily. People as far as away as the next galaxy could see that.
“My apologies.” Captain Tsing inclined her head. She pursed her lips and looked at Jupiter’s hands. “The shaking will wear off in due time. At one point in Abukesh, it took three days for the shakes to stop. I felt as though I’d never be warm again. May I?”
“What? Oh, um. Okay.” Jupiter held her hands out, frowning as the other woman stepped forward and took them in her own, studying them.
“Nobody has seen to these?”
“They’re not that bad. I’ve hurt myself worse scrubbing toilets.”
It was amazing just how much Captain Tsing could convey with a single lift of an eyebrow. Jupiter, who’d learned the same trick sitting at her mother’s knee, couldn’t help but admire a good eyebrow lift. She liked Captain Tsing, she decided. She liked the no-nonsense attitude, the spit and polish, and more than all of that, she liked that underneath all of it beat a deep compassion very much unlike the condescension and contempt she’d experienced at the hands of the Abrasaxes.
She watched Captain Tsing cross to a cabinet off to the side and remove a kit. “No need for unnecessary pain. Stoicism at times can only be a burden on the soul.”
“No worries there,” Jupiter said. “I can complain with the best of them.”
“You’d get along with Nesh very well, then, I suspect.” Captain Tsing placed the kit on a table and jerked her head, indicating that Jupiter should stand across from her. When Jupiter turned her hands over to reveal the blistered palms, she only shook her head. “If you’ve had worse scrubbing toilets, I fear your waste receptacles on Earth.”
“Some of them get pretty bad.” Jupiter couldn’t stop her smile. “You should see the Harrisons’ place after their son’s college friends visit. Seriously toxic. I needed a HAZMAT suit. Also—it was incredibly rude.”
“You have a great deal more toilet scrubbing stories than I would expect from somebody of your status.”
“Well, we can’t all be soul-sucking vampire queens who prey on innocent home worlds, I guess. Some of us have to work for a living.” Jupiter watched with almost detached interest as Captain Tsing spread some kind of gel goop over her palms. She expected it to sting, but instead all she felt was coolness and relief. Though the smell of hollandaise sauce was a little weird. She looked down at the sigil on her arm, since she’d discarded the jacket that Gemma Chatterjee had given her in what she supposed were now her private quarters on the ship. They were still en route to Earth, and it felt strange to know that her family slept below, in complete stasis.
They would wake up with no memory of any of this, while Jupiter would be left with the entire planet.
“Your hands have stopped shaking,” Captain Tsing said, breaking Jupiter from her thoughts. “I was correct.”
“Yeah, planet ownership doesn’t scare me as much as it should.” Jupiter flexed her fingers and pushed down the desire to wipe her hands off on the Aegis uniform pants she wore. “Thank you for your help with…” She waved her hands a bit helplessly. “And for continually pulling me out of every stupid wreck I found myself in with Kalique and with Titus and with…”
She couldn’t say Balem’s name yet, she realized. Yes, she was going to be pissed at him for a long time for coming after her family that way. Asshole.
“It was our honor,” Captain Tsing said, giving her a courtly nod.
“I hope your crew’s not judging too much for, well, everything.”
Captain Tsing took her time putting away the medkit, but Jupiter could tell she was debating internally. Finally, she turned. “I wouldn’t waste my time on humiliation if I were you,” she said. The implants crossing her cheekbone twitched as she almost smiled. “The House Abrasax has stood for millennia. It is not that they operate on another level from ‘commoners’ like you and me, it is that once you lose sight of your own mortality, your humanity becomes lost to you as well.”
“Whoa,” Jupiter said. “That’s pretty deep.”
“Not terribly. I received it in a—I believe you earthlings would compare it to a fortune cookie.” Now Captain Tsing smiled for real, and Jupiter blinked. The woman’s face was actually breathtaking when she grinned like that. “This is not the first brush my crew has had with the likes of the Abrasax clan. You’ll find we have been and will continue to remain entirely in your corner every step of the way.”
“But why?” Jupiter asked.
“Stinger vouched for you.” Captain Tsing hit the panel to open the door and stepped into the doorway. “But really, the galaxy has such a dearth of good, honest people, Miss Jones. We’d like to protect the few we have left.”
If she’d been anywhere else and any less shaken from having died nearly, like, seventeen times in the last day, Jupiter probably would have picked that moment to make a smart-ass comment, or at least ask if the Captain was flirting with her. But now she was so tired and relieved from the fact that her hands had stopped hurting that she only gave the woman a smile back. “Thanks,” she said.
Another nod, another eyebrow raise, and Captain Tsing swiveled, about to head on her way.
“Hey, Captain?” Jupiter asked before she could.
“Yes?”
“If you’re ever near Earth, hit me up or something. We can have a drink, I can scare you with more toilet scrubbing stories.”
Captain Tsing actually laughed this time, and it was a delightful sound. “I’d like that,” she said.
Jupiter felt much lighter as she left the rec room and headed back to her quarters, where Caine was still passed out cold on the room’s single bed. As she looked out the porthole at Earth—her home, and now her responsibility—she thought of her family, of the oily trickery of the Abrasax siblings, of Stinger’s betrayal and redemption, of Captain Tsing’s smile. Would this day seem like a long-lost memory or perhaps a dream tomorrow? She had no idea, save that the sigil continued to glow softly on her forearm.
In her lap, her hands remained completely still.