Months after the liberation of the Red Palace, freed prisoner Max Murphy is still there, hoping for the return of his stolen ship and trying to forget the day he lost everything. Meanwhile, ex-Li pilot Jiang Tai is keeping his head down and wishing he could forget the secrets he carries. Or just forget anything at all. When the station is blockaded Max and Tai are sent off on a desperate mission to end the siege.
Spending weeks on an awkwardly small ship with a weird, sleep-obsessed, former pirate of the most fanatical sort is not Max’s idea of a good time -- even if Tai is kind of cute. Tai never reckoned on a long trip with a hot mess like Max, who doesn’t even maintain a regular bed time. But the time they spend together helps both of them start to put their bad memories in the past. In the end they’ll lay the ghosts of their memories by doing something worth remembering together.
An hour later Max was lounging on the bed, wearing one of Li’s kimonos like a robe, and Tai was wandering around the room draped in a couple of long silk scarves, holding a glass. They’d finished a second bottle of wine, and were splitting a box of chocolates between them.
“You’re free now,” Tai was saying, “But not me. I’m still a prisoner. Of my routines, I mean. Right now my mind’s telling me to go to bed, can’t be late going to bed. Like I’m a fucking child.” He took a slug of wine. “Well fuck that. I’m a man, and I don’t work for her any more. I’ll stay up as late as I like. I’ll stay up all night if I want to.”
Max rather suspected he’d be asleep in no more than an hour, though it wouldn’t be the healthy refreshing sleep he was so keen on.
“More wine,” Tai said, looking at his empty glass.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have too much more,” Max suggested. “You’re not used to it.”
“Okay,” Tai said. “No more wine.” He rummaged in the cupboard and turned around with another bottle and a big grin. “Brandy instead.”
“Oh bloody hell, if you insist.”
There were probably brandy glasses somewhere, but Tai poured it into their wine glasses.
“Do not neck this,” Max told Tai sternly, as Tai was leaning over him, filling his glass. “I mean it. We don’t have time to divert to some station with a hospital to treat you for alcohol poisoning.”
“Fine, fine.” Tai sat on the other side of the bed from Max, and took a chocolate. It had a foil wrapper, which he balled up and tossed across the room. Max had seen this kind of thing before. A tightly wound guy like Tai had a lot of unraveling to do when something suppressed his inhibitions. Max, with a stronger head for drink was only slightly sozzled. He had his wits about him. Or at least within easy reach.
“You know your ship,” Tai said. “The Hot Mess, I mean.”
“I have a vivid memory of it, yes,” Max said.
“What happened to the rest of the crew?”
Max wondered what had made him think of that.
“There were only two of us,” he said. He wondered how fast he could make Tai sober up if he told him the truth. “Me and my partner, David.”
“What happened to him?”
“He’s dead.”
“Ah ... I’m sorry. When the ship was attacked?”
“No. Later. While we were prisoners.”
Tai looked horrified. Damn, Max wished he hadn’t started this. He almost wanted to check the environmental controls, as it felt as if someone had sucked all the air out of the room.
“Can we toast him?” Tai said.
“Ah, sure,” Max said, as this was not what he’d expected in response. He raised his glass. “To David Ransom. Gone ahead to the bar to get the first round in.” It was a toast he and David used to use for friends whose deaths they heard about in their travels. It was the first time he’d toasted David that way. They clinked glasses and sipped the brandy. It was astonishingly good, even being as badly treated as they were treating it.
“Seems right,” Tai said. “Using Li’s stolen brandy to toast a man her people killed.”
“Her people?”
“Not my people,” Tai said, “Not any more. Not even then.”
“Whatever you say.” Max took a couple of sips of brandy. “It wasn’t ... They didn’t kill him in so many words. I mean, they didn’t shoot him or something.”
Tai leaned back on an elbow, so he was closer to Max. “So what happened?”
“We, a bunch of us prisoners I mean, were making an escape attempt. Trying to get to the docks. We were climbing a lift shaft we’d interrupted the power to. The power came back before all of us got out of the shaft, and a lift car came down.” He gulped and his eyes were hot. He would not think about the screams, the rush of air at his back as the lift car descended. “Three men were still in the shaft. One of them was David.” He took a big gulp of brandy, closing his eyes to shut out the look of pity in Tai’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Tai said. “They still killed him. Even if they didn’t shoot him. He wouldn’t have been there.”
“Yeah, I won’t argue with that.”
“Was he your lover?” Tai asked. His penchant for straightforward questions was not diminished by being drunk, that was for sure. “You keep saying partner, and I assume he was your business partner, but was he --”
“Yes,” Max said. “He was my partner in every sense. Can we talk about something else, please?”
“All right.” Tai sipped his brandy. “What are you going to do after this mission is over?”
“Probably what I was doing before,” Max said, with a shrug.
“I bet the station managers would let us keep this ship.”
“Us?”
“Then we could go and look for the Hot Mess ourselves. I like that name, it’s funny.”
“And what do we do if we find it?” Max asked, still thinking about us and we.
“Hijack it!”
“Sure. You come up with a plan for that, Tai.”
“I will.” He ate another chocolate, looking thoughtful. “Can I ask you something else?”
“I don’t think any power in the galaxy could stop you.”
“Would you like to go to bed with me?”
