Page 3 of Last Chance to Save the World (Chaotic Orbits #3)

3

T he landing strips are roughly fifty kilometers from the island. There are two—a large one for cruisers carrying tourists and rich people, and a much smaller one for locals with residency or transports carrying cargo for delivery. The large strip has passenger boarding bridges that go up to the cruisers, letting guests get off in an enclosed, air-conditioned tube that deposits them in a luxurious building at the end of the dock that connects directly to the ferry that transports people from the strips to Malta. Not a single drop of sunlight gets through either the bridge or the building, although they’re lined with vid screens displaying immaculate blue waves and clear skies at all times.

The residency strip doesn’t bother lying. When Rian and I step out onto the main dock, the sun beats down on us, and the stench of the gray water fills our nostrils.

“Ada Lamarr!” a voice calls down the strip. I whirl around.

“Bruna?”

A large woman strides toward me, wrapping me up in an enormous hug. “Where you been?” she says, the words so deep I can feel them vibrating from her chest to mine.

I push her back, laughing. “It’s been forever!” And then I glance at her uniform. “ You’re the port boss?”

She beams at me, then notices Rian hanging back awkwardly. “And who is this?”

Before I can say anything, Rian steps forward, hand out, and introduces himself. Bruna shakes it earnestly, then looks at me, eyebrows raised. “Lover?”

Rian gapes at her.

“No, but only because he’s an idiot,” I say.

“I am not!”

I give him a look that clearly says, We had a week, and you didn’t make a single move.

“Okay, maybe I’m an idiot,” Rian grumbles.

Bruna laughs.

“We were in university together,” I tell Rian.

“But you didn’t graduate.” The words slip past his lips before he thinks to stop them, and I can tell that he didn’t mean to say it like that, like an insult.

It would sting, but that’s an old wound. The nerves are long dead.

Bruna slings an arm around my shoulders. “Not because she wasn’t smart enough! They should have given her the diploma.”

I shrug, and Bruna takes the hint, dropping her hold on me. Bruna knows why I gave up on higher education, because she was right there beside me until the end. And Rian knows because he snooped in my history. A bit of a criminal record following a spot of hacking and vandalism after her father’s untimely death due to climate sickness can throw a girl off track in her education and make the university withhold credits due to “unbefitting behavior for a student.” Turns out admin frowns on using the skills they teach you for anything fun.

“Anyway,” I say, desperate to change the subject. Maybe there is still a little pain left in that scar.

“Your mother pinged before you landed,” Bruna says.

Fuck.

Rian’s head snaps up at that. I know he knew about my father, but he definitely didn’t note much about my mother. And that was by extremely careful design.

Shut your gob, Bruna, I think.

Bruna does not, in fact, shut her gob. Instead, she says, “She told me to tell you to come straight by for a visit.”

Shit.

Shit, shit, triple shit.

“Don’t glare at me,” Bruna protests, throwing up her hands. “I’m only delivering the message.”

“Well, deliver another message for me, will ya? Tell Mom I don’t have time for a visit this round.”

“Tell her yourself. I’m not getting in the middle of it. Besides, you have to go.”

I blink. “ Have to?”

“All residents have to ping their geolocation at their place of residence within three hours of landing at the Maltese strip,” Rian says, likes he’s reading the words out of a codex.

Fucking hell, this rule reeks of the kind of shit someone from Rigel-Earth would force into regulation. Someone like Rian Fucking White.

“Why?” I grind out.

Bruna shrugs. “Something, something security and ensuring people are actually residents if they come through on that code. Big thing happening in New Venice tomorrow.”

“Oh, really?” I ask innocently, knowing full well that the “big thing” is what I’m aiming to fuck up.

Bruna shrugs. “Apparently.” She nods toward the other nearby dock, the one for people with money. “They’re not even allowing most cruisers. That’s the last for the next three days.”

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll go to the place listed as Glory ’s residency, ping the geo-tracker, and then come back. Rian, you stay here—”

I stop because both Rian and Bruna look as if I’ve suggested the impossible.

“ Everyone on board a ship claiming residency has to ping the tracker,” Bruna says.

“Come on,” I object. “I can hide him in the ship.”

“I’m not hiding in the ship,” Rian offers.

“It’s not up to me!” Bruna protests. “You know I’d turn a blind eye, Ada, but this shit is tracked.”

She holds up a data pad that displays a small chart, pointing to Glory ’s registry number, already filled in on one side. Two codes are listed beside it—one is my ident sequence, and the other must be Rian’s. Beside each of our numbers is a little timer, currently flashing yellow.

Our identities are already being tracked by the government, just for using a government-controlled landing strip.

“This is absolutely the kind of shit that belongs on Rigel-Earth, not here,” I say, glaring at Rian, who at least has the sense to look a little guilty.

I force myself to take regular breaths. I should have factored all this in, but I’m so used to operating on outposts and stations that aren’t as strict. I haven’t been back here in years, and it shows.

It’s fine. This is fine. I can make it work.

I have to.

“Are you going to the square after?” Bruna’s tone is light, casual, and so opposite of the panic screaming in my head that it shakes me out of my spiral.

“They planning a party?” I ask. She’s talking about Triumph Square, the large courtyard just outside of Central Gardens. Rallies, markets, and celebrations are all held there.

I’ve been so focused on the mission—changing the code inside the nanobots being released tomorrow—that I forgot the way it’s an interplanetary event. A cause for celebration.

“Gonna be huge,” she says.

I eye Rian. “Yeah, maybe we’ll go.” If we succeed.

“Well, I better let you get on,” Bruna says, flashing the screen at us again. My eyes linger on the timer ticking away the seconds before we need to ping our location to the government.

“Oh, one more thing,” Bruna says, snapping her fingers at the memory. “Jane told me to tell you specifically—”

“Jane?” Rian’s voice cracks like a whip, so sharp that Bruna’s eyes widen. I know exactly what he’s thinking: the code word Jane Irwin . Let me nip that in the bud.

“Jane Lamarr, the woman who birthed me and gave me my middle name,” I remind him in a deadpan voice. “It’s only one of the most common names on the planet.”

He has the grace to look a little embarrassed by that.

Bruna cocks an eyebrow at me, gaze flicking between us. Rian doesn’t know it, but Bruna is definitely aware of “Jane Irwin,” and I’m realizing now that it was no accident she came to me personally to deliver this message.

“Jane told me to tell you she fully expects you to spend the night.”

I groan.

I don’t like this; I hate this. I can feel Rian getting more interested in this conversation by the minute.

Why— why —would my mother interfere right now?

Bruna snorts. “When was the last time you brought a lover home to your mother?”

“Not since you, in the before times,” I say, sticking my tongue out at her.

“Hey, we’re not lovers!” Rian protests.

“Not yet,” I say, and Bruna gives me an obnoxiously loud high five.

Despite my smile, I’m fuming inside. I didn’t even want Rian to know that I can land on a residency strip at Malta. I don’t like him knowing I have a place with permanence.

I don’t like the way this narrows the world around me, the way he can cage me here, pin me down.

But what I don’t like even more?

Him meeting my mother.

Bruna waves farewell as we return to Glory to gather supplies. Since I know that message means we’re not going back to the ship any time soon, I grab a bag and start packing.

Rian doesn’t have much in the way of luggage, a side effect of being kidnapped. But because I’m so considerate, he does have a spare set of nondescript standard-issue that’s mostly in his size. I had to eyeball it when I was preparing. For the kidnapping. As one does. He stuffs everything into a spare rucksack I graciously donated to the cause while I prep a few of my own essentials.

“You travel light,” he comments as I drop my bag on the floor.

The one thing I didn’t get right was his shoes. Rian’s still wearing his fancy kicks.

“You good to walk in those?” I ask.

“Mostly.”

Lucky he didn’t have useless silver heels at the gala I kidnapped him from.

I grab two sun shields from inside a storage locker and toss one to him. “You’re gonna want that.”

He starts to put it in his rucksack, but I shake my head. “You’re going to want it now.”

Rian looks about to protest, but then I take my shirt off. His mouth shuts as his eyes drop.

Sun shields come in a variety of styles—some are more like robes, some are body suits. The ones I’ve got are gossamer-thin, long-sleeved, and hooded. They work best when next to the skin, so I pull the shield over my bra and then replace my shirt over that.

Rian copies me. Once he’s fully dressed again, I cross the short space between us and reach behind him, lifting up the thinner-than-paper hood and covering his head. After I adjust it, I realize that his gaze is zeroed in on me.

For the first time since I met him, Rian’s eyes are soft, not razor-sharp.

Soft.

Because he’s looking at me.

Somehow, this action—pulling his hood up—feels more intimate than when we were both half-naked a moment before. Alarm bells ring in my head.

I step back.

And I note the disappointed look on Rian’s face.

As much as I wished we’d spent our days and nights in the portal with more enjoyable activities, it’s game time now. I might have gotten a good romp out of him if we’d been able to stay on Glory , but now?

Now it’s time to visit my mother.

Fuck this timing.

I take another step back and reach into my bag. “Also these,” I say, plucking two pills from a bottle in the side pocket.

“Radiation preventative?” Rian asks, swallowing the tablet when I nod. A few minutes on the dock with Bruna isn’t much, but if we’re traipsing around the island, we’ll need more.

Rian smacks his mouth against the metallic taste of the pills. I know he’s not used to this. Cruisers and tours minimize the effects of radiation and other by-products of a polluted world.

I think it makes it easier for the other worlds to pretend that Earth’s not as bad off as it is, when only the locals have to take pills and precautions just to live.

We head out, straight to the end of the dock. A few people are already on the transfer ferry—a heavy-duty boat with a trash-breaker spike up front to slice through the murky water.

I catch Rian scowling at the sea.

“We’re going to fix it,” I tell him gently. It won’t be immediately, but once we have the nanobots out in the world’s water cycle—with the right code—Earth is going to get better.

I hope.

Rian nods, his mouth a grim line as he finds a place to sit on the benches under the protection shields. The local ferry isn’t like the cruiser transport; it doesn’t try to hide reality. I scoot closer to him as the ferry waits for more people, resting my head on his shoulder as if we were lovers, my mouth close enough to his ear that no one can eavesdrop.

“What are the chances of you being spotted and stopped?” I ask. “Your friends gonna arrest me on sight?”

“You? The paragon of innocence?” Rian chuckles.

“Well, you know I’m harmless,” I say, “but what about your team?”

“Relax.” Rian nudges me, which does not at all make me relax. “They all saw us together at the gala. They probably assume...well...”

Phoebe does not assume that. She’s on Rian’s team, but she’s on my side. Or, at least, my client’s side. She knows the nanobots aren’t coded well, and she won’t stand in my way. But any of Rian’s people who even suspect he didn’t come on my ship willingly will cause some trouble.

And I desperately don’t want any eyes on me.

My only saving grace is that no one from Rian’s team will actually be in Fetor’s offices for the launch of the nanobots. That’s the whole reason why my client needed me to acquire Rian; he has the clearance. But they could cause trouble on the outside.

“We’ll get in,” Rian says.

“Why are you so confident about that?” I ask.

“Because that’s the part of the plan I came up with.”

And that’s the very reason I’m concerned.