Devon led their passengers into the central chamber and gestured at the table. He’d set the plates out because it had seemed like the normal thing to do. His family normally ate standing up, surrounding the table and discussing upgrades or plans for the next stop. They rarely used plates, preferring to eat out of the aluminum bags that heated the food. Less clean up, less water and energy waste, as his mother would put it.

In fact, the only thing that couldn’t be recycled were the cylindrical heater cells that cooked the food in their bags, but Devon doubted their guests would appreciate the energy saving corners he was used to cutting. They seemed like the typical sit-around-the-table sorts and he wanted to make their journey as painless as possible.

The three stepped to the table and sat down on swivel stools Zephyr normally kept stored underfoot. He watched them for a moment, uncertain of what to do next. Mr. Kelly looked at him, smiled kindly, and gestured to the empty seat beside the youngest girl.

“Oh, right,” he said, moving to sit down. “I’m Devon, by the way.”

“The Captain’s son. Yes, we know,” Mr. Kelly said. “You can call me Paul.”

“And I’m Zoe,” the little girl beamed up at him. Her smile was infectious, full of happiness and trust, and it made her cheeks bubble up. She had pale bluish-green eyes that reminded him of a nebula, unapologetically pretty and without guile.

“It’s nice to meet you, Zoe,” Devon said.

He looked up at the elder sister, but she was pointedly grabbing a bag of steamed rice, ignoring him. A moment later he heard a thump under the table and she hissed in sudden pain. She looked up at Zoe and scowled. Zoe, in turn, jerked her head in his direction and Devon forced himself not to laugh. He smiled at the older sister awkwardly, understanding that she didn’t seem to like her current situation.

He thought that might have something to do with what she was leaving behind. There’d been a time in his youth when he’d wanted nothing more than to stay on one planet like any normal family. At the time he thought public school with other children would solve his underlying loneliness, but he’d discovered that many students his age felt lonely regardless of where they went to school. And he hadn’t wanted Seach or Jorry to be gone for months at a time, doing the hauling thing while he was left behind, so he’d opted to stick to homeschool on the ship.

Still, he sometimes wondered what life might have been like if he had a home planet. He didn’t think he would like to leave it behind.

“I’m Kenzie,” the older sister said at last.

“Well,” Devon groped for something appropriate to say. “Welcome aboard.”

“Yeah,” Kenzie said dryly. “Your mother already gave us our welcome.”

“Kenzie,” Paul said, sounding embarrassed.

Devon flinched. Sometimes he wondered if Jorry deliberately set out to alienate people. Smiling apologetically, he took a bag of steamed zucchini and put a portion on his plate.

“It’s alright, Mr. Kelly. My mother is … well … difficult.”

He passed his bag to Zoe, who wrinkled her nose and passed it on to Paul. Devon chuckled and reached for the spinach, which made Zoe’s face scrunch up in displeasure. He bypassed the spinach and grabbed the potatoes instead, earning himself a bright smile as Zoe perked up.

Well at least the younger sister likes me, he thought. sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ Find_Nøvel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“Generally,” Kenzie said as she took the zucchini from Paul, “anyone who has to deal with Uncle Movax is unpleasant.”

“Who’s Movax?” Devon asked.

“He’s our Uncle,” Zoe told him. “Father always said he was the black sheep of the family.”

Devon glanced at Paul, who was studiously working on the spinach bag and turning an interesting shade of pink. He thought of Seach and the ominous warning that this group had to be hiding something if they were headed for Mars, but with Zoe it was hard to imagine Paul being able to keep anything a secret. The girl was too trusting and bubbly and Devon found himself relaxing.

Maybe his mother had known what she was doing after all.

“Why is that?” He asked.

“Because he deals in the black market,” Kenzie said, clearly annoyed that they were having this discussion.

Devon frowned and glanced at the corridor leading to the pilot’s nest. It would make sense that Jorry and Seach were connected to the black market if they were running from the Consulate. Just because he’d never seen them smuggle anything didn’t mean they hadn’t done it in the past. Maybe his parents were pirates after all.

He looked back to Kenzie, who was watching him with a smirk. She had a light peppering of freckles across her nose and a puckered mouth that reminded him of an Asian doll he’d seen once. She was uncomfortably pretty, the kind of beautiful that caught attention, and he wasn’t quite sure how to talk to her.

“I take it your Uncle deals with unsavory sorts,” he said and picked up his fork.

“Loads of them,” Kenzie said.

And she clearly thought his parents were “unsavory” by association with her Uncle. It was written on her face like the information scrolling on Zephyr’s walls.

The thought occurred to him that she could be right.

He went to take a bite but Zoe stopped him. “No, no, Devon,” she said primly. “We haven’t said grace.”

“Grace?” He lowered his fork and looked to Paul.

Paul squirmed in his seat and flushed a bright red, glancing at Kenzie as though in panic. Confused, Devon waited for an explanation.

“To thank God for the provisions he’s given,” Zoe said.

Devon looked up at Kenzie, who had gone pale. She locked eyes with him and he could see the depth of her horror. Devon blinked once, slowly, as the pieces fell into place. He remembered his father insisting that these passengers were hiding something, the sharp tension between his parents when he’d stumbled onto them near the nest. He hadn’t noticed before but he could tell by Kenzie’s frayed white coat that she wasn’t rich. And Zoe had a yellow ribbon that was the worse for wear.

If they weren’t rich and they weren’t military, why were they travelling all the way to Mars?

The answer was very simple; Mars was the nearest planet outside the jurisdiction of the Inter-Galactic Consulate. Zoe, Kenzie, and Paul were refugees.

“Zoe,” Paul said gently. “This is not our home. You can pray quietly, but not out loud.”

Devon tore his gaze away from Kenzie and set his fork down. He felt suddenly ill.

“Excuse me,” he said and stood up.

Paul flinched, which only seemed to solidify Devon’s suspicions. Devon turned and hurried toward the pilot’s nest, leaving the group at the table to stare after him. He had no idea what he would say to his mother when he got there, but he had to say something.

What was she thinking?

Refugees were almost always religious offenders, people who could not live by the simple rule to keep religion private. The Consulate tended to harass refugees, stripping them of their funds, forcing them into menial labor for years before allowing them to leave Consulate space. A full blown offender, someone who publically spoke against the religious laws, would be hunted down and sent to one of the Consulate work camps.

If his mother knew this then they were all in danger. And he was almost certain she knew, she had to have seen the same things he did. Knowingly harboring an offender could mean a lifelong sentence in a work camp.

There would be no University for him, no more space travel, just the monotony of factory work on some remote satellite.

“Devon!” Kenzie said from behind him. “Devon wait!”

He half turned but kept walking. “No,” he said. “Go back to the table. I don’t want to hear it.”

“Please!” She caught up with him and grabbed his elbow, forcing them both to stop. “Please listen. It’s not what you think.”

Devon jerked his arm out of her grasp. “You have no idea what I think.”

“I have a pretty good idea, actually,” she panted.

“It doesn’t matter what you say, I have to tell my mother,” Devon said.

“Tell her what?” Kenzie asked. “That we’re Offenders? That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

Devon looked away from her.

“Well, we’re not.” She said. “We’re Christians, but we never spoke of it outside the house. Mom and Dad made certain we obeyed every Consulate law.”

“And yet you’re running to Mars.”

“We don’t have a choice!”

The desperation in her voice made him turn back to her. He knew he shouldn’t. He should just keep walking and leave her grouchy, green-eyed butt standing in the corridor, but instead he faced her. He crossed his arms over his chest and tried to give her his most passive expression. It must have worked too, because she blushed and averted her gaze.

“You have five seconds,” he said.

Good lord, he was beginning to sound like his mother.

“Three months ago Grey Men came to our house and took my parents,” she said. “There was no warning. They gave no reason. My father signed us over to Paul and asked him to take us someplace safe.”

“Grey Men?” Devon scoffed. “Grey Men aren’t real.”

Grey Men were horror stories told to keep kids in line, some sort of Consulate experiment gone wrong, or so one of the legends went. There were all sorts of conspiracy theories surrounding the legends but most of it equated to Big Foot sightings back on Earth. Only the very deranged tended to speak about them. Devon was surprised and saddened to hear Kenzie trying to explain away her flight from the Consulate through such a tall tale.

“Grey Men are very real!” Kenzie’s eyes flashed with anger. “They almost leveled my house.”

“And why would they take your parents?”

“I don’t know. All I know is Paul has to get us out of Consulate space. Fast.”

“And Movax?”

“Movax really is our uncle. He agreed to find us passage to Mars, but nothing more.” Kenzie shrugged. “He’s not really … Well, he never visited on holidays or anything like that. I think Paul went to him as a last resort.”

Devon frowned. He didn’t believe the Grey Man story for a minute but she did look terrified. He turned to face her, shaking his head because he couldn’t believe he was having this discussion. Seach had been right, these three should never have been allowed on board Zephyr.

God, what would they do if the Consulate boarded the ship? How would Jorry and Seach keep from being noticed?

For half a second he considered strangling his mother, and then he forced himself to focus on Kenzie.

“What does your uncle do? Really?”

Kenzie looked uncomfortable for a minute. He thought for a moment she wasn’t going to answer, but then she sighed and bit her lower lip.

“The better question is what doesn’t he do,” she said. “We were there for four and a half weeks and I saw everything from gamblers to smugglers come through his office. There was even a companionship Madame that tried to convince him to sell us off to her ‘establishment’, as she put it. Paul put a quick end to that.”

Devon wasn’t certain what shocked him more; the idea of Kenzie working in a whore house or the fact that his mother had dealings with a slime-ball who would consider it.

“Look,” Kenzie said. “Your mother doesn’t know and we need to keep it that way. It’s the only way we’ll all be safe.”

Safety, Devon thought. Everyone on this blasted ship was way too concerned with safety. He considered telling Kenzie that his mother probably already knew, but couldn’t. The way she was looking at him, big-eyed and depending on him, made his chest go tight.

He nodded once and Kenzie breathed in relief. She gripped his forearm for a moment, smiled shakily up at him and left for the dinner table. Devon watched her go, torn between a strange sense of pleasure that she’d trusted him, and the realization that he’d just promised to hide something from his mother.

Jorry probably already knows, he thought. For that matter, his father probably knew, too. Why else would they fight so hard over it?

If they knew, then his secrecy wouldn’t matter. And if they didn’t know … Well, maybe it was time he had his own secrets.

He glanced back at the pilot’s nest and turned to go eat his dinner.

~*~*~

Jorry watched Devon leave the corridor and exhaled tensely. The security footage showed him returning to the central chamber, which relieved and hurt her at the same time. He should have come to her straight away with this information. Frowning at the hypocrisy of her own thoughts, she turned back to the task of upgrading the flight consoles.

Every jump left the consoles a little worn – overloaded from the sudden burst of ionic energy – and it took her the first few days to fix them. She crouched under the console and tried to concentrate on her job, but the words “Grey Men” kept pestering her.

Contrary to what she’d taught Devon to believe, Grey Men were very real. They were also people she and Seach knew very well. Quasi-people, her mind corrected. After undergoing the so-called “final tap” the men and women of Tapped Division had lost everything that made them human. Jorry still thought the title Grey Men was some twisted kind of epitaph to the soldiers they used to be and she mourned every single one of them.

Two of the wires she’d exposed zapped her. Jorry yelped and dropped her splicing tool.

“Are you all right, Captain?”

“Yes, Zephyr.” Jorry muttered and sucked on her singed finger.

She sighed and stared at the wires in front of her, momentarily distracted by the glow of green and blue pulsing through them. It looked so intricate and pretty, all those wires crossing and twining together. Apart from each other they had little meaning but put together they all became equally important, dependent on each other for things to run smoothly.

Not unlike a crew or a team of soldiers, she thought; or a family.

“You sound distressed,” Zephyr said.

“My son is making goo-goo eyes at Miss Kenzie, Seach won’t talk to me, and I’m harboring Offenders. Yes, I’m a little distressed.”

“Their parents are accused Offenders, Captain. They themselves profess not to be.”

Jorry groaned and rubbed her forehead. “That does not make the situation any better, Zephyr.”

“I am sorry, Captain. If you wish, I can restrain them all for you.”

Sometimes she loved her ship’s proclivity toward restraints.

“No thank you, Zephyr. Let’s just get back to work.”

She worked in silence for several minutes, her attention fixed on the circuits and wires in front of her. She managed to drown out her fears for Devon, her annoyance of the passengers, and her hurt over Seach’s attitude with the complexities of the ship’s internal wiring. She’d been there quite some time when the proximity light flashed red and she had to squint up at the security feed on the wall.

Seach was in the corridor, heading her way. She tried to read his body language, but couldn’t figure out whether he was still angry or just determined to speak with her. Either way she assumed it wasn’t going to be pretty and returned her gaze to the wiring.

When he came in he closed the door behind him, which was another bad sign. Then he moved to sit in the pilot’s chair directly in front of her. Jorry sat cross-legged on the other side of the consoles, but if she lifted her head she could see him clearly. She spotted him leaning forward, saw him put his elbows on his knees and hang his head.

“Jo,” he said after a minute. “I need to apologize.”

That startled her enough to make her look at him directly but he was gazing at the floor so she couldn’t catch his eye. “Apologize?”

“I understand why you did this. I don’t like it, but I understand it.”

“Oh,” Jorry said, relaxing a bit. She wasn’t certain where this conversation was going but at least he wasn’t raging at her anymore.

“The truth is I’ve been on edge for weeks now. And while I’m still pissed that you’d run off and put yourself in danger without telling me first … I’ll admit that I may have overreacted.” Seach frowned and shook his head. “This is just more difficult than I thought it would be, you know?”

“What is?” She asked, quickly trying to process his statement.

He’d been angry because he thought she’d put herself in danger?

Apparently they’d been away from the battlefield too long. She could count on both hands the number of times he had taken an unnecessary risk to get the job done.

He looked up at her. “Letting go,” he said.

Her heart pinched. She forgot the war and their passengers and was suddenly confronted by a far darker prospect; Devon was growing up.

He ran his hands through his hair and chuckled ruefully. “I didn’t want to keep him, remember?”

“I remember.”

Heavens, did she remember. She remembered hours in an interrogation room, half expecting to be caught at any moment because the passengers they’d picked up turned out to be liars. She remembered the look on Seach’s face when they’d finally been released and the near crippling relief she’d felt as they departed from Europa Jumper Station. And then, of course, there’d been Devon, hidden away in a crate padded with extra blankets and clothes.

She’d stared for a full thirty seconds after discovering the bundled baby, her mind almost unable to register what she was seeing. In all her life she had never seen anything more beautiful than his little form sound asleep on her ship.

“That first week he was here I tried to avoid him at all costs. I wanted to toss him at the first orphanage we could find.” Seach smiled, almost to himself, and gazed out the viewport. “But then … I don’t know. Something happened. He would smile at me and my heart would just … And then, when he was a little older, he would trail me around the ship, trying to mimic me in any way possible.”

Jorry smiled at a wayward memory of Devon in diapers, holding a pair of calipers in his hand and declaring he was going to fix Zephyr. He couldn’t pronounce the ship’s name back then and the word came out “zipper.”

“I’ve tried so hard to remind myself that I’m not his father,” Seach said quietly. “But it doesn’t work. I love that boy like he really is my own, Jo.”

“So do I.”

Seach smiled sadly at her. “If you want to convince me that he doesn’t need to know the truth, I’ll listen.”

Her throat closed and she shut her eyes, fighting down a surge of pain so acute it was nearly physical. They could lie. They could tell Devon about their taps and omit everything else, but then what? Devon would go on assuming they were his parents and one day, when the Consulate caught up with them, he would be embroiled in the same danger.

No, it was safer for him to know the truth. He would need that distance between them in the end.

“He’s smart, Seach. And he loves us, too.” She opened her eyes and forced herself back to work. “Who knows? Maybe it will all be better in the end.”

“Maybe,” Seach said. “But he’s going to be pissed.”

“Young men are almost always pissed,” Jorry said, trying not to flinch. “He’ll understand eventually.”

Seach stood up and sighed. She watched him stretch, watched him rub his face and frown at the security feed. “I hope so,” he said.

Jorry exhaled through her teeth. “Yeah, me too.”

She thought about apologizing to him. He deserved that much from her and he needed to know about the threat of Grey Men. But she’d just gotten him to talk to her again and she didn’t want to give him another excuse to be angry.

This was her mess and she would handle it. She’d agreed to Movax’s terms. Somehow, she would manage to get everyone out of Consulate space safely.

“Oh, and our passengers are still a disaster waiting to happen,” he said.

Jorry breathed a soft laugh as he moved to the door, opened it and left. Her eyes caught on the security feed and her smile faded. In the central chamber Paul, Kenzie, Zoe and Devon were all laughing at something and while the picture might have looked merry, Jo felt dread well up in her chest.

Grey Men.

She stared at the feed, not seeing the happy group anymore but rather a blip of video from thirty years ago. The video from Johnny, his face panicked in the black and white image. Even now she could feel the urgency of that moment and her heart broke at what she could read in Relo’s dark eyes.

“Run, Jo. You have to run.”

Jorry pushed the memory away. It should hurt more than this, she thought as she refocused on the console. It used to hurt all the time, thinking of the way he had sacrificed himself for them. But things were different now. She had Devon and Seach, a new little family. An illegal family, but it was hers just the same. She prayed Relo would be happy for her.

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