“No. I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but I can’t abandon you. So don’t even ask.”

“I won’t, but…” I let out a breath. But I couldn’t abandon him either. I kept pacing, trying to sort out my thoughts.

I wasn’t sure what Declan had in store for Roan and his family, but it had to be better than lucole mining. I understood Roan’s reasoning, but it was foolish and pointless.

But there were too many steps. We needed more money than I had stashed in my go-bag to get us off planet. I’d never be able to get a job since SpaceTech knew my face. The only way Roan could make enough money was…no. I couldn’t really be thinking about letting him sign up. It was so wrong.

Abaddon was the worst planet in the known galaxy. It was named after the Angel of Death for a reason. Its surface was covered in active volcanoes, spewing ash and sulfur into the air. Without a suit, a human would boil to death in seconds. The fact that SpaceTech had a base there at all was insane, but Abaddon’s moon, Apollyon, was the only place that lucole existed. The moon would’ve been a safer place to put the base but refining lucole required an intense amount of heat, which was why SpaceTech had gone to the trouble of building a base on the lava planet. The crystal was refined on the base, and then shipped all over the galaxy. It powered their rockets, ships, cities, you name it, but mining lucole couldn’t be easy.

Why else would they give a monstrous sum of money, plus housing and land on Tellus 5, to anyone who could get five full loads of lucole in the five trips to Apollyon and back? We couldn’t be that desperate or foolish yet.

“Listen to me.” Roan’s voice snapped me from my thoughts. “If you stay here in the dead zone and hide out in one of the cars with the bones, then you have a shot. They won’t search them. No human wants to step foot in here. We can make a dummy from the bones here, put it on my bike, and I’ll draw them away from you. When it’s safe, I’ll ditch the dummy and the bike, sign up for mining runs, and I’ll have Jorge drop off supplies to you here. It won’t be fun, and maybe you’re right. It might take me a few weeks, but I’ve been doing the sim runs and—”

I knew where he was going with this, and I was ending it. “I don’t care how good your sim runs have gotten, you’ll die on Abaddon.” I didn’t leave any room for negotiation in my tone.