Outrageous Fortune-Errant Freight Book One

Chapter 39

"I hear...singing?" Ysabel's head turned up to the bay door.

Jagati tuned her ears upwards, from which a soft alto emerged.

"...deep in the lea 'neath a lonely sun..."

"Sounds like Jinna." She tightened her grip on Ysabel. "You owe me twenty," she added, hoping the smug covered the tremors. Cold, bleeding, and fought out, she was more than ready to be back aboard.

The line jerked and slipped down a few feet.

"... to gather honey for my love..."

"Hey! Watch it!" she yelled up to the door.

"Sorry," John called down.

"But the meadow it was parched..."

"What he said," Rory added as the line jerked up again.

"There are two of you," Jagati complained upon reaching the lower edge of the door. "How hard can this be?"

With one last, long heave, Rory and John pulled both women up and inside, and she saw how hard it could be, for John's right arm was bleeding, as was Rory's left hand, and the mechanic's thumb sat at a bad angle.

"...no flowers grew..."

She started to ask what happened, but the expression on John's face had her breath catching in her throat before it erupted in a hiss of pain because she could feel a bruise forming under his grip on her arm. "Hey." She poked his shoulder. "It's good. I'm good. We're all good."

"What?" He looked down. "Right. Ahh... Right," he said, and with a long, slow exhalation eased his fingers away from her bicep.

Freed, Jagati turned to assess the rest of the crew, but found Ysabel blocking her view and wearing a deadpan expression.

She was also holding out two ten stars, which Jagati took with much less enthusiasm than she'd anticipated.

Looking past Ysabel's shoulder, she found Colin and Mary both locked in the port side D-ring that had first held John and Jagati.

Colin looked dazed and Mary, while awake, was sporting a swollen eye and a disgusted expression, both of which made Jagati's heart go pitty-pat and her lip curl in satisfaction.

Then her gaze swept amidships, past the water pallet—it was missing its post which, she assumed, explained the falling cask from earlier—to starboard. There Eitan stood, arms crossed tightly over his chest, staring down at the deck where Jinna knelt next to an unmoving Galileo.

She was still singing, a dirge of Earth's ending.

"...they fell by the score, to gather no more..."

"Is he..." Jagati looked up at John, then at Eitan. "Did you..."

"No," John said, slamming the jump door closed. "He's just not..."

"He is not here," Eitan, still staring at Galileo's inert form, finished the sentence for John, who trailed off with a helpless gesture.

* * *

"Then don't," John said to Eitan, holding his hands out wide. An invitation. A choice. "Be the man you chose to be. Not the man they made you." He watched as a small war took place in Eitan's eyes, and John had no idea which side was going to win, not until Eitan raised the staff.

"Go on," Galileo prompted, his voice thick with tears and blood. "Finish it. Don't listen to him," he said as he jerked his chin towards John. "Don't play the coward now, love."