and the same heart-shaped face as her brother. She seemed perfectly happy ignoring both Denver and her brother while making her monster’s tentacles fight each other.
“What’s her name?”
Spence grinned at him. “You could ask her. She doesn’t bite.”
Denver laughed, feeling slightly chastised. He moved closer to where she sat on the trunks. “What’s your name, honey?”
The girl looked up, blushed, and promptly shoved her monster in front of her face. She touched one little hand to the ferocious-looking fangs in the center of all the tentacles. “Princess Treesa the Seventh.”
“The seventh, huh?”
“Yes,” the monster said. “Because I’m seven.”
“Wow. Very impressive. Who’s your friend?”
“He’s my bodyguard, and his name is Mister Grabby.”
Denver nodded. “That makes sense. He looks like a pretty good bodyguard.” He took in the slightly pained expression on Spence’s face and decided to speed things up. “How long do you reckon we have before station security shows up with a sweeper bot?”
Spence smiled. “‘Reckon’?”
“Yeah. Why?”
He shook his head, grinning. “You say the cutest things.” But his expression suddenly turned serious. “I reckon we have a couple of hours, max. And station security isn’t the only thing we need to worry about.”
Denver lowered his voice, even though the delivery men were gone and there was nobody around to hear. “You know something I don’t, Spence?”
“Nothing solid, but word’s going around that Mars isn’t happy about the way Titan X is being run. My little stunt with the collision alert might have caused more problems than it solved. All the security forces are worried it’s going to provoke a central authority inspection. There’s a chance ships are already on their way here.”
“Even if they launched this morning, it’ll still take close to a month to get here.”
“From Mars, sure. But there are closer outposts. If they’re coming from one of the Jupiter stations, like Europa? They could be here in less than a week. And I’m not sure if my contact can sit on the Tucker file for that long, so the sooner we’re out of here, the better.”
“Well, shit.”
Spence forced a smile. “You have a talent for understatement.” He glanced back at his sister and their trunks. “Listen, I don’t want to make things all awkward or anything, but I noticed there isn’t a fourth bedroom on board.”
“Uh…” Denver had known this conversation was unavoidable, but that didn’t make it any easier to have. “I wasn’t sure if—”
Spence held up a hand. “I’ll need to be by Treesa, no matter what, so I figured we’d just make room in the cargo bay for now.”
Denver wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved, but Treesa didn’t give him time to figure it out. She tugged at Spence’s hand, and he turned his attention to her. “What’s up, Treesa?”
“Princess Treesa.”
“Sorry. What’s up, Princess Treesa?”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she whispered.
“Right.” He glanced at Denver. “Where…?”
“To the right of the mess. Only one of those for all of us, so get used to being fast,” he added. “Meanwhile, I’ll get us ready to go. Just in case.”
“Just in case,” Spence agreed.
Chapter Ten
Denver was just finishing cramming food into kitchen cabinets when Marit walked in, OPAL perched on her head like a shiny bot hat. “Good news?” he asked.
Marit could be tough to read, but there was a tightness around her eyes that hinted at tension. “We’re good to go. OPAL’s got the directives downloaded. Samsen came through fast. Good thing too, because I hear Mars is coming.”
“That’s what Spence said.”
She looked over toward the door into the living quarters as OPAL climbed the wall behind her. “He’s here?”
“Him and his sister, Treesa. Well, Princess Treesa.”
“Cute.” She moved a little closer and lowered her voice. “You still feel good about this deal?”
“I do.” It was a lot of faith to put in a person he barely knew, but Denver felt surprisingly comfortable with it. “I really do.”
Marit nodded. “Good. And I noticed the cargo bay’s nearly full?”
“Spence says there’s just a bit of room to spare.”
“As long as we have enough to last us to the Kuiper Belt, we should be good.”
The Kuiper Belt—an enormous band of space beyond the orbit of Neptune, home to the dwarf planets and millions of other icy, dangerous objects hurtling through the void.
“Are we talking within reach of Umbriel Crater Station?”
Marit rolled her eyes. “Of all the stupid moons to colonize, honestly. Titania and Oberon are so much bigger.”
“Yeah, but they don’t have the rare minerals. And I notice you didn’t answer the question.”
She sighed,