I woke in my cabin aboard the Bucket. The lights were set to dim. The first thing I did was look to the hatchling’s pad. A dark form was curled up there, still asleep, the sheet in disarray beneath it.

  There was a glass of water in the cupholder by my bed, half-empty and lukewarm. It was the greatest thing I’d ever tasted. If I’d had a painkiller to go with it, I’d have been ecstatic.

  My head felt like a discarded hull in a ship scrapper, being crushed and ground into pellets. At least it wasn’t about to explode. My ears were still buzzing. My gut had an enormous bruise, blue going on black when I looked beneath my shirt.

  My leather jacket hung over the edge of my bunk, singed and stinking of burnt skin. When I gripped the front, pieces of ceramic armor rained out from various holes. Shattered wards and broken plates. The plate over the stomach had pulverized, only its rear lining holding it together, stuck with shards of a large, soft-nosed bullet. No wonder Baylen’s shot had knocked me down.

  I realized the buzzing sound was external. Someone was in the Bucket, using a welding torch or heat drill. I tried to sit up, cursed my non-complying stomach muscles, and, groaning, clumsily rolled out of bed in a way that would make an octogenarian look spry. Luckily, nobody saw. It would have ruined my reputation.

  I was alive. My Hurmer, sans power pack, leaned against the bunk. My Chimer lay beside it, together with a spare magazine. The hatchling had a fresh bowl of kibble waiting for him when he woke up. I had a number of spray-skin bandages covering my burns and cuts, a rip-stitch patch where a fragment of Baylen’s bullet had torn through my skin.

  The spare magazine was full, copper bullets poking their noses out of brass casings. I picked up the Chimer, slid in the magazine, and put the gun in my rear holster. No sense being completely senseless. Someone well-intentioned had brought me home, but well-intentioned could turn otherwise, fast. Besides, the weight of the Chimer felt good, like it belonged there.

  The com realized I was awake and increased the ventilation, filling my cabin with the lightning-strike smell of ozone, the tang of hot metal, and a bit of scorched biopolymer. Just what I’d always wanted to wake up to.

  Better find whoever was responsible for the smell and get them to stop before they set fire to the Bucket.

  Tomlin was waiting outside my cabin, squatting with his back against the far wall. He was reading, an actual physical book. The cover was torn, one of the corners missing. It featured a spaceship, with blazing guns and a dragon curling around it. Interesting what you found in distant ports.

  “Hey,” he said, hiding away his book in a back pocket. “How do you feel?”

  “Alive,” I said. “How’s your ma?”

  “Alive, too,” he said, giving me a lopsided smile. “Thanks to you.”

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  “The Baylens?”

  “Dead,” he said, with a barely suppressed grin. Maybe the Jacksonians had a taboo against enjoying your enemies’ deaths. Made sense in a small settlement. Guns and tight families made vendettas a real danger.

  “Who’s welding?” I asked. The buzzing traveled through the deck plates, up my bones, and drilled into my aching head.

  “Hao,” Tomlin said. “Mostly. The Vincentes twins are helping her, as is Second-Daughter Rusmanov and a bunch of the Vi-Luongs. But they’re mostly muscle.”

  Muscle didn’t sound very good. I fingered my Chimer.

  “What does she need muscle for?” I said.

  “To haul the engines into place,” Tomlin said.

  “She messed with my engines?” I said. That was bad. No engines meant no way off Jackson. I started limping toward the cargo bay.

  The nacelles were gone. Tall and skinny Jacksonians in breathing masks and protective gear were struggling to fit a complete engine, housing and all, into the empty space. I didn’t recognize the design, but the warpstone chamber was large, larger than it should be.

  “Baylen’s Rexards,” Hao said beside me. She was sitting in a tiny mech, little more than a chair with six articulated legs, her own right leg in a cloning cast. Where that last bullet had hit. Must have shredded a chunk of her muscle. “They’re bigger than your originals, but dual stones mean more power, and you’re getting four extra warpstones.”

  “Four stones?” I said, fighting a wave of vertigo. I was getting four full stones?

  “One goes into your original center engine,” Hao said. “The remaining three are spares. Da Baylen did a good job sourcing his frigate. The stones are almost new.”

  The stones weren’t for the Rexards. That took a moment to filter through my pounding head.

  “I’m getting eight warpstones?” I said. “Why?”

  “Smile,” Hao said, “you’re the hero of Jackson Depot. Ma Tomlin and Ol’ Vincentes both agree on that, so everyone else does too. And they’re all very happy that you took out the Baylens. Also, there might be a bit of guilt involved, on account of them breaking into your ship.”

  I watched a team of Jacksonians haul the left Rexard into place. A rain of white sparks filled the cargo bay as the electric welders fixed it to the hull.

  “How did they do that?” I said, turning to Tomlin.

  He looked down, stabbing the toe of his work boot into the steel deck plates.

  “Ma had an old breaking ward Da had gotten from Granda,” he said. “Said it was very powerful.”

  “Must have been,” I said, “to disrupt my wards.”

  I hadn’t thought it would have been possible for him to look more guilty. I was wrong. His feet must have been very fascinating indeed. If he hung his head any more, it’d fall off.

  “Hey, kid,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Not your fault. Was it?”

  He shook his head. “Ma thought you could take down the Baylens’ mage. That’s why she broke in.”

  “And the engines are my payment for the job,” I said.

  “Well…” Tomlin trailed off, his face red. The guilt practically oozed from him. Poor kid, getting a grown man’s job of giving the gunman the bad news. Then again, after what he’d been through with us, he was a man grown.

  “They want you to go pick up your foil,” Hao said. “It’s been eating its way into the tunnel, pulverizing the surrounding rock. Also, they want to get rid of us.”

  “How come?” I said. “Aren’t we supposed to be the heroes of Jackson Depot?”

  “Baylen got word out,” Hao said, and a wall of ice ran down my spine.

  “You sure?” I asked.

  “I checked the tower logs. Coded message, large enough to contain a vid-feed, to Rorden Station.”

  Meaning every Syndicate bounty hunter and wannabe would be heading for Jackson. Rorden was forty light-years away. A blockade runner or fast attack frigate could cover that in two weeks. No wonder the Jackson families wanted us gone. Nobody wants a war on their threshold.

  “How long was I out?” I asked.

  “Almost a day.”

  I started running, or rather limping fast, for the airlock.

  “I’m going for my foil,” I shouted over my shoulder. “Whip them to work faster!”

  “Already am,” Hao called back.