Chapter 5: Cold Heart | page 7

An hour later, Gripper delivered the items Coldhand had requested. He handed the hunter a faded gray shirt with a starscape stenciled in cracking white paint. Coldhand pulled the shirt over his head. It fit loosely, clearly cut for a much larger man. It probably belonged to Myles.

Trembling so badly that he dropped it several times, Gripper handed his prisoner a worn datadex with a stylus set into a narrow recess along the side. The Still Wind, an old Prian classic, had been pulled up on the screen and was scrolled perhaps halfway through. The screen was scuffed and scratched, almost illegible, but Coldhand didn’t care. He turned it over in his hands, illonium fingers clicking on the plastic. The pad was an older, heavier model, almost too thick for his needs. But it would do.

“Do you uh… do you need anything else, Freezer?” Gripper asked in a quavering voice. He took a step back, flinching as Coldhand turned to answer him.

“How many people are on this ship?”

“Um, five,” Gripper told him. “Me, Claws, Smoke, Silver and Shimmer. Uh, that would be me, the captain, Maeve, Xia and Duaal. I don’t use their other names, you know?”

“No.”

“Wait, what? No?” Gripper yelped, confused and afraid.

“No, I don’t know,” Coldhand said flatly. “Why the nicknames?”

“I… we… Arborans don’t use formal names unless it’s really, really important. You get named when you’re born, but that’s before anyone knows anything about you. I mean, Anandrou? That doesn’t say anything about me, you know? But Gripper…”  He brandished his massive hand for emphasis. “I never let go of something once I’m on it. Not a hold or job. I never give up, right? Like once…”

“Why do you call Cavainna Smoke?” Coldhand interrupted the Arboran’s rambling.

“It seemed right, you know? She’s bright and hot.” Gripper blushed, realizing too late what he had said. “Not like that, see? She’s really small compared to an Arboran girl. But she’s really volatile. Smoke’s a real temper. Real destructive, too, like fire.”

“Then why not call her that?” Coldhand said.

“Because fire’s still pretty. Super destructive, yeah, but beautiful. Smoke isn’t,” he said. The hunter arched a pale brow at that, but he rushed on. “No, really. And I don’t mean just because she’s so small or the wings or anything. Smoke’s a mess. I worry about her a lot. Smoke stinks and makes you cough. Just… ruins of something, this grey ghostly part. And uh… she flies. Like smoke. Makes sense, yeah?”

Gripper made a ridiculous fluttering motion, approximating Cavainna’s wings, and then fell awkwardly silent. Coldhand nodded. It made a juvenile sort of sense, but told him nothing of use. He picked up the datadex, keying down The Still Wind. Gripper stood awkwardly in the door for a moment, then turned on his knuckles and squeezed sideways out into the hallway. It locked behind him with a beep and a muffled clunk.

Once Gripper was gone, Coldhand crouched beside the door and slipped the corner of the pad into the dimpled wall under the access panel. He worked it carefully back and forth, and was rewarded with a quiet click as the panel swung open. Behind, the space between the bulkheads was filled with dusty circuit boards and bundles of coiled wires. Coldhand was not an engineer. Rewiring the door would take some time and a great deal of trial and error, but the unbroken paneling would let him conceal his work from his captors. He had time.

Coldhand tugged on a length of red-sheathed wire. Five people on this bird, he thought as he began. Who was Orphia, then? More importantly, would she be a problem?

- End Chapter 5 -