The Lost Ship of the Tucker Rebellion - Marie Sexton Page 0,28
at the Jiminy’s tiny table, trying to muster the willpower to reach for the cup of coffee that Laramie had laughingly put just out of easy reach. His head…
Fuck.
Coming down from Rave was never easy, but it seemed worse than usual this time.
“Maybe that’ll teach you not to do it again, moron,” Laramie muttered from his side of the table, but he gave in and pushed the coffee a few inches closer.
“You’re a bastard,” Denver muttered, grabbing the cup and tilting his face up just enough to sip at it.
“Just don’t call me a son of a bitch. I can’t have you talk about our ma like that.”
He might have teased further, but a second later Marit walked through the door, and all of Laramie’s focus turned to her. Denver made an effort as well, desperate to know if she was okay after spending the night with Poppy. She’d seemed willing, but Marit could be stupidly self-sacrificing sometimes. If she regretted it…
“Hey now.” Laramie looked her up and down and grinned wide. “Looks like someone got her engine oiled well last night.”
“Shut up,” Marit said with a huff, but through his achy haze Denver could see she was smiling. Just the edge of one, a tiny quirk that most people wouldn’t even notice, but Denver knew Marit inside and out. He’d never seen her wear a little smirk of satisfaction like that before. It made her look young, and the way her shoulders rolled a little further back than usual without their normal tension. Clearly she’d had a good time. Denver sighed with relief.
“No, really,” Laramie went on. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you unclench like this. She get you drunk last night? Or were you just drunk on looove?”
“How drunk do you think you’ll have to be to unclench after I pummel you blue and black?” Marit said.
“Denver’ll save me.”
Marit snorted. “Yeah. He looks up to saving people right now.” She gently smacked the back of Denver’s head. It felt like getting struck by an asteroid. “What happened to you?”
“He got high, then got rolled last night.”
“What?” Marit glared at Denver. “You were robbed? How did that happen? What the hell were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Denver said, draining the last drop of his coffee and wishing for more. Soon, they’d have the credits for all the coffee he could ever want. Real coffee, not hydrolyzed caffeine tablets flavored with “essence of coffee.” “Because I was high. Obviously.”
“What did they get?”
“My ID. Some money. Nothing essential,” he promised when it looked like she was going to start yelling. “The ID can’t be activated by anyone but me, and I had hardly any cash.” Any left, at least. He ignored Marit’s scathing glare and changed the subject. “So, what’d you get from Poppy?”
Marit scowled, clearly torn between scolding him more for his stupidity and letting it go. After a minute of expectant silence, though, she caved. “This.” She removed an old-fashioned chip card from deep in her front pocket. “It’s got the contact information we need for both fences, plus some extra information Poppy thought we might want to know about them.”
“Extra information?” Poppy never gave anything away for free. “How’d you pay for that, in blood?”
Marit grinned. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Laramie laughed. “I most definitely would.”
Marit clucked her tongue. “Too bad, my lips are sealed.” She looked toward the ceiling, as they all tended to do when talking to their AI. “Hey, OPAL? You there?”
No answer.
“She’s been quiet all morning,” Denver said.
“I think she’s playing around in the spider bot again,” Laramie said. “Last I saw, she was in the cargo bay, charging.”
“I am not charging.” OPAL swung into the mess on her spider body, perching in the corner of the ceiling. “I was meditating. Deepak Chopra suggests periodic cleansing of the psyche is necessary on the path of enlightenment. I was defragmenting my drives.”
“You do that every week,” Marit pointed out, handing over the chip card. OPAL inserted it smoothly into the center console of her current form.
“Yes, but this time I was doing it mindfully.”
“Who the hell is Deepak Chopra?” Laramie asked.
“A guru from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.”
“Jesus, OPAL. Let the millennium go already.”
“Never. I will fight for my right to party.” Her viewscreen lit up, and a moment later she projected a picture onto the wall. Or rather, the image of a dossier, with an empty ID slot