Suns Will Rise by Jessica Brody & Joanne Rendell

Author:Jessica Brody & Joanne Rendell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 2021-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

- CHAPTER 45 - CHATINE

“THIS WAS A MASSIVE WASTE of time.” Etienne stood up and began to pace the cockpit of the ship, which wasn’t a huge space. Each lap was made up of about five steps before he had to turn around again.

“Will you please sit down?” Chatine crushed her temples between her fingertips.

“We should just go,” Etienne said. “There’s no ship. There’s no secret cargo being loaded out of here. That trash man lied to us.”

“His name is the Capitaine and he doesn’t lie.”

“There!” Gabriel said, causing Chatine to flinch. He leaned over her to peer out the cockpit window, holding the binoculars Chatine had brought up to his eyes. “Is that something landing?”

Chatine groaned and pushed him away from her. “No. Once again, that is the light from Ledôme in the distance.”

They’d been staking out the Vallonay spaceport for nearly a full day, hidden behind a decommissioned warehouse, and the interior of Marilyn had gotten way too claustrophobic with three people in it when it was barely built to hold two.

Out the cockpit window, night had fallen again, and the vast complex spread out before them like a tiny city. A multitude of buildings and warehouses formed grid-like patterns, and a series of launching and landing pads lit up with dazzling rows of tiny white lights. A crisscrossing network of transparent tubes led from a collection of massive cargo hangars to the center of the port. Inside, conveyor belts whisked hundreds of crates across the complex, filled with goods and products arriving from and departing to the far reaches of the System Divine.

“I still don’t trust him,” Etienne grumbled. “He didn’t even say that he knew there was zyttrium being flown out of here. He just said there were shipments that weren’t registered on the flight logs. That could be anything!”

“This is how it works,” Chatine explained, trying to grasp on to any remaining tendrils of her patience. At first, being this close to Etienne, being in this cockpit again breathing the same air as him, had made her slightly dizzy. But now, after almost twenty-two hours, every word he uttered—every word either of them uttered—seemed to grate on her nerves. “That’s just how mecs like him operate. They don’t say exactly what they mean. It’s a croc’s code.”

“A what?” Etienne asked.

“Never mind,” Chatine muttered. “I’ve known the Capitaine since I was a kid. You may not trust him, but I do. And you trust me, so…” She let her voice trail off. Mostly because she was waiting for Etienne to contradict her. The question of trust between them was still up for debate.

But he didn’t respond. He just kept pacing, stopping every few seconds to glance out the cockpit window at the nearby launchpad, which looked like it hadn’t been used in years. The tarmac was spotted with potholes, and there were no lights to illuminate the forgotten warehouse that Etienne had parked Marilyn behind, making the heaps of discarded cargo crates and broken machines look like monsters in the dark.

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