NOMAD Episode 11: Caught

Story by KAYE THORNBRUGH

Illustrated by KAMI THORNBRUGH

The cafe was busier than usual, half full of travelers killing time before their next transport arrived or departed, so Delphine didn’t notice right away when the bell above the door chimed and a Jed walked in.

She caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye: a tall, blue-skinned humanoid.

“Kerav,” she said—glad, suddenly, that there was a counter between her and the patrons. “It’s been a while.”

Kerav usually put on at least some pretense of friendliness. But this time, he only hummed in acknowledgement, striding across the room to fold his arms across the top of the bar and peer at her. One set of his eyelids blinked, and then the other.

Delphine cleared her throat. “If you’re not going to buy something—”

“I’ve got business,” Kerav replied, the words sharp. “You heard about that robbery two days ago?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“A whole shipment of cargo disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” Delphine asked. “Just like that? Did it sprout legs and walk away?”

She realized as soon the words left her mouth that she’d said too much. That was—revealing. She busied herself wiping down the bar with a cloth, trying not to look at Kerav too closely.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Kerav said. “You know, I heard your new employee was hanging around the port that day.”

Delphine swallowed. “I wouldn’t know. What she does on her time off is no business of mine.”

She could feel Kerav’s gaze. “All the same,” he said, “I’d like to talk to her. Find out if she saw anything.”

Delphine opened her mouth to utter some half-formed excuse for why he couldn’t speak to Mik when she heard the door open behind her, making her heart stumble. There were five people currently sleeping in the back—only until the next cycle, when a passenger vessel was scheduled to depart from NOMAD Station.

Delphine had used most of the cafe’s meager profits from this quarter to secure their passage, as well as similar accommodations for the other humans Mik had smuggled out of the cargo hold of a slave ship. It would leave her in a potentially ruinous position, financially, but she saw no other option. She liked to think that Hakem would approve, if he were alive to see it.

Mik stepped out of the back room, letting the door swing shut behind her. “He bothering you?” she asked as she nodded toward Kerav.

“Just the human I was looking for,” Kerav said, pronouncing “human” like it was a foul word.

“If you want to talk,” Mik said, wiping her hands on her apron with a deceptive kind of disinterest, “we can do that outside.”

Delphine wanted to tell her not to go. But the words wouldn’t come.

Instead, she said, “You’re on the clock. I need you here.”

It was a reminder to come back safely—and it was truer than Delphine wanted to admit. She thought of the day they’d met, when Mik defended her from Kerav. Already, she was used to Mik’s companionship. It felt normal to have her around.

For a second, Mik just looked at her. Then she replied, “I know.”

***

Mik walked stiffly after Kerav—outside the cafe and into a narrow lane around the corner. She could feel her pulse pounding in her throat, but she tried not to let it show on her face. She only had to get through another cycle, and then the last of the humans she’d smuggled out of the port would be on their way to another world, somewhere far from NOMAD Station.

Kerav wasted no time in cutting to the chase.

“You really think nobody noticed?” he asked, moving closer, crowding her against the darkened front window of a shuttered shop. He was almost a head taller than Mik. “You think they couldn’t smell your human sweat as soon as you got on board that ship?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mik said. She felt the window behind her back, cold and breakable.

He kicked lightly at her ankle, which sent a little jolt shooting up her bad leg. “This is kind of distinctive, you know,” he said.

It hit Mik then that the crew member she’d incapacitated with a bolt cutter must have survived—and he must’ve noticed her limp. In the early days on NOMAD Station, she’d limped all over, looking for work, showing her face.

Mik sucked in a breath. “Whatever you’re dealing with—it has nothing to do with me,” she said, through her teeth.

She pushed past him, heading toward the main boulevard, which teemed with people.

She only made it a few steps before pain exploded in her skull like a silver spike, white-hot, blinding.

Mik felt herself pitch forward.

She threw her hands out, instinctively, but her limbs weren’t doing what she told them to do.

She fell, with nothing to catch her.

***

Mik came to slowly, like rising through dark water. The world swam into focus in front of her: racks of tools hanging from metal walls, oil-stained concrete floor. A garage.

The inside of her mouth tasted sour. Her head was throbbing, and so was her bad leg, in time with her pulse. The lights here were too bright, stinging her eyes.

She was tied to a chair.

Stars preserve her.

Mik was testing her bonds—plastic ties, biting into her wrists and ankles—when a door opened behind her. She heard boots on the concrete before she saw the person who had entered: not Kerav, but another xeno, presumably also a member of the Jed.

Three-eyed and stocky, he carried a wrench in one hand. That was never a good sign.

“We’re missing some cargo,” he said, by way of greeting. “I have it on good authority that you know where it went.”

Mik was silent, watching him adjust his grip on the wrench.

“If you help me get it back, things will go easier for you,” he went on.

She sincerely doubted that.

Not that it mattered. Most of the “cargo” was long gone—on a ship bound for another system, with fresh idents that they could use to get through checkpoints and find work. But she couldn’t reveal even that much, not while Delphine was waiting to get the last of the humans on a transport in the morning.

Stars, she hoped Delphine was safe.

“I have nothing to say to you,” Mik told him.

The Jed sighed through his slitted nose. “I couldn’t help but notice that mark on your neck,” he commented, with a kind of force lightness. “I’m guessing you know how this works.”

Mik swallowed. At some point when she was unconscious, he saw the tattoo inked into her skin, which branded her forever as one of the Blue Moons. Even if he didn’t recognize the specific gang symbol, he got the bigger implication. She was like him. She had lived this life, too.

“Yeah,” she said, lifting her chin. “I do.”

The first blow caught her across the cheek, hard enough to snap her head to one side, making suns explode in her field of vision.

Before she could suck in a breath, he hit her again with a closed fist. Mik tasted blood, flowing from the inside of her lip, which had been cut by her teeth.

“Got anything to say?” he asked.

For a second, all Mik could do was breathe raggedly, letting her head droop. Gathering herself.

Then she spat a mouthful of blood onto the concrete. “Yeah,” she said, lifting her face.

“I’ve been hit harder than that.”