by Lauren Esker
"As much as it needs to." He steadied himself on the chair, blinking rapidly. The color had drained from his skin again, and Claudia thought it looked like he was on the verge of fainting, but it seemed to pass. "Bring the case. I need to do an inventory of their medbay, because they might have some things that'll come in useful."
"Can we just leave the ship floating here?" She looked over her shoulder at the viewscreen, which showed nothing but stars. "Where are we, anyway?"
"It's an asteroid field that pirates—such as myself—often use as a stopover point. It's not near a star or any major shipping lanes. Nobody is likely to bother us here." He took an experimental step away from the chair, wobbled, found his balance, and strode off as if nothing was wrong. "Case, please!"
Claudia picked it up. The thought crossed her mind that he might be too unsteady to carry it himself. That was not a comforting thought.
"So you have a plan?" she asked as she followed him into the corridor. Kriff's cabin was quiet for the moment, and Claudia wondered if he was working on escaping in there.
"Of course I have a plan. I wouldn't have left Haven without a plan. I've done this before, you know."
"How could I forget?" She leaned in the doorway of the medbay and watched him opening drawers. "So are you going to let me in on this brilliant plan? How did you do it the first time?"
"Easy," Skara said. "They're isolationists, but they still trade with the outside. I came in with a load of luxury goods to sell, and while I was setting up the deal with middlemen, I took a quick trip down to the planet and an even quicker jaunt around the symbiont sanctuary—which, now that I say it like that, sounds like it ought to have symbionts in their natural habitat for tourists to gawk at ..."
"That's it?" she said, refusing to be drawn in by whimsy at a time like this. "You just came in pretending to have stuff to sell? And they bought it?"
"Why wouldn't they? All I had to do was fake some references and pick up a few hot items I figured—rightly, as it turns out—they wouldn't be able to resist. Mostly designer-label clothes, collector's items and the like. The kind of thing you can't get in-system for any price. 'Course, the prepwork took awhile. Collecting my cargo, getting to know the right people ..."
"How long did it take you?"
A flippant grin. "The better part of a year."
"Which we don't have this time."
"No," Skara said, turning to examine the contents of the cabinets behind the medbed. "Because we're getting in a different way."
"How?"
"Okay, first of all, let me set the scene. Outsiders are only allowed on orbital stations above the planet. Our ship will dock there after we jump in. Legally, that's as far as we can go."
Claudia sighed and resigned herself to having information doled out in dribs and dabs to preserve his dramatic reveal, whatever it was. "So then we teleport down to the planet? No, wait—I can't do it without having been there first." It was already easy to get used to thinking of her newfound teleporting ability as a magic get-out-of-any-situation free card.
"I have a way around that, but we'll need to be there for it to work."
"Same way you got down before?" she asked. "How did you get there before?"
"Shifted into a local, stole some credentials, and hung around the station for awhile 'til I found a portal transport going my way. It'll be faster now that I have you."
"Okay, so there's that, but what's your big plan for getting them to let us into the system in the first place?"
He told her.
Claudia stared at him for a long moment before she said, "You're crazy."
"Brilliant, I think is the word you're going for."
"They'll never buy it."
"Why wouldn't they? All the data is going to check out. No matter what they check, it'll look true, because it is true."
"Yeah, except for the very important part where you're not a, uh, a Ru—"
"Rhuadhi. But the thing is, they'll never know that, because I'll look like one," Skara said. "Right down to the cellular level. The only thing that won't check out is my DNA, but I have some ideas to stop them from checking, in case they get the urge to."
"Of course you do," she muttered. "Where am I going to be through all of this?"
"With me, of course. Most Rhuadhi have brown skin anyway, so if we dye your hair green, you can pass for a local from out of town."
The more she thought about this, the worse this plan was, and the more things she could think of that could go wrong. "I don't have to leave the ship, do I?"
"You do if you want the symbiont taken out," Skara pointed out.
"Oh. Yes. Of course."
Skara tilted his head to the side, his intense gaze searching her face. "You know it's no guarantee that we can get it safely removed, even in a Rhuadhi sanctuary."
Claudia nodded, not trusting her voice. This would be her only chance to get it out, she reminded herself. If she didn't do it here, she'd have it for the rest of her life, all the good and bad together—the wondrous portaling ability, combined with however it was rewiring her brain. She wasn't sure if she believed Skara's reassurances that it wasn't doing anything to seriously change her underlying thought processes. She still felt like herself, but it seemed like it had to be rewriting something fundamental to give her the ability to read and understand alien languages.
And then she could go back to being plain, ordinary Claudia Webb in Seattle.
She would never fly in a spaceship again. Never see Skara again, with his mercurial moods and fascinating green eyes.
Maybe I could stay anyway, even if I could no longer make portals. I could get some of those mod things, and learn how to use cuffs and understand alien languages the way everyone else does ...
She realized that she'd zoned out while Skara was still talking.
"—more like its own self-contained city, really, but anyway, the sanctuaries float about twelve, twelve and a half kilofex above the planet's surface, mostly in a band around the—"
"Wait a minute," Claudia interrupted. "We're going to a flying city?"
"Yeah?" Skara said, in a tone that implied this was no big deal.
"How high up, exactly? How much is a kilofex?"
"This is a fex." Skara held his hands in the air about two feet apart. "A kilofex is a thousand of those."
Good flippin' pancakes. Twelve thousand of those. At a rough mental conversation, that would be something like four or five miles up. Almost as high as the top of Everest.
"What holds them up?"
"How should I know? They just float."
A flying city. She wasn't sure why that was extra cool when she'd already flown in spaceships and learned to shoot laser guns, but ... flying cities. "This is going to be awesome."
"Glad you're on board," Skara said with a grin. He closed the cabinet and picked up her bag. "Want to find a place to put this?"
They decided on the unused storage cabin as the least unpleasant of the available sleeping options, and moved boxes around until they'd unearthed an unmade but clean-looking bed. Skara found bedding in a storage drawer, while Claudia dug clean clothes out of her bag.
She tried to remember the last time she'd had a proper shower. Two days? Three? Goodness. She'd been kidnapped, stranded in the jungle, stunned, and held prisoner on an alien world. The past few days were starting to run together into a giant blur.
"Is there a shower here? Or some way to get clean?"
"Yeah, sure." Skara tapped what looked like a solid wall, and it slid open to reveal a closetlike bathroom within. The toilet, sink, and shower enclosure were all similar enough to Earth fixtures that she could, at least, recognize them. Skara showed her how to use the shower controls, and demonstrated a soap dispenser built into the wall, then left her alone.
She had a twinge of regret about that. Then again, the shower enclosure was barely big enough for one person, let alone two.
And she still had no idea where they stood, relationship-wise. All s
he knew was that apparently she was willing to run halfway around the galaxy with him to help him pull off a heist. And right now, it was just too much to deal with. She sighed and tipped her head back, letting the hot water course over her.
She came out of the bathroom feeling a little more relaxed and less stressed. Skara was just coming in, his hair in tousled, damp curls. "Used the shower in the other cabin," he explained. "You need anything? Food?"
Claudia shook her head and sat on the bed. "I think ... I just need to stop for a little while. Things have been ... kind of a lot."
"I don't blame you." He sat beside her and twiddled a green packet between his fingers. "I should've given this to you earlier. Well, you can use it before we jump out. It's quick-drying."
She took the packet. Looking at the writing on it made her head hurt; she didn't feel like figuring out what it said. "What is it?"
"Dye. With green hair, you should pass for a local easily, if a slightly short one."
"Oh. Right." And that brought it all crashing back down: the sheer magnitude of everything that had happened to her, and everything they were about to do.
"Claudia. Hey." Skara took the packed from her gently, laid it on top of a box. "Are you okay? Are you sick?"
"No, just ... overwhelmed."
Her teeth were chattering. She wasn't sure why it had hit her so hard or so suddenly, but when Skara laid her down on the bed, she went willingly. He pulled a blanket over her and then lay down carefully beside her and put an arm over her.
He was clean and warm and smelled nice. She had to smile a little. This was a nice turnaround; by necessity, she'd been taking care of him a lot, but it was very nice to feel taken care of for a change.
"You can back out," he said quietly, rubbing her shoulder. "I can jump somewhere else instead. Take you back to Earth."
She wondered how many jumps he even had left in him. She was willing to lay odds that he couldn't get her back to Earth and come back here before his time ran out. But it meant a lot that he was willing to try.
"No, I don't want to go back to Earth. It'll be all right. I just need a few minutes to adjust, that's all."
He kept rubbing her shoulder lightly, and she began to relax, leaning into him.
Why couldn't things just be simple, without bounty hunters and spaceships and teleporting symbionts? If she'd just run into Skara as a nice normal guy on Earth ...
But if he was a nice normal guy on Earth, he wouldn't be Skara.
Her thoughts drifted. It was good to have a little downtime to let the frantic pace ease so she could start processing everything that had happened to her over the last few days. Skara, space, Haven, dragons and flying women ... the realization that the universe was full of intelligent life, and Earth was only one small part of it ...
But an important part, from what Skara had told her.
This made her think back on some of the other things Skara had told her. "Hey ... Skara?"
"Mmm?" He made a sleepy noise, still rubbing her shoulder, stroking his hand up and down her arm.
"Your friend Selinn ... the Rhuadhi one? Why isn't she helping?"
She realized as soon as the words had left her mouth what the likely answer was, and wished she could call them back. Skara was quiet for a minute.
"Selinn's gone," he said eventually. "Not ... like you're probably thinking. She's just gone. She vanished on her last trip to pull out one of our siblings. She was going to try to retrieve Rook, Kite's biological brother. That was about a year ago. And we haven't seen either of them since."
"Do you think ..." She hesitated, not wanting to voice it.
"That they're dead?" Skara asked bluntly. "I'm honestly not sure." His voice turned contemplative. "It's certainly the most likely option. And I can't sense them, which makes it a lot more likely. Even slave collars don't suppress my imprinting ability. I should be able to find either of them, no matter where they've gone. And I can't."
"But?" Claudia prompted after a moment. She sensed a "but" there.
"But they don't quite feel gone. Our sister Haiva died. I know she's dead; she's definitely gone. But she's the only one out of our training group who really feels gone. I feel like Rook and Selinn are still out there somewhere. It's just such a near thing, like I can almost get a fix on them but not quite. Like something is blocking me."
"Is that possible?"
"I didn't realize it was. On the other hand ..." He shrugged, rippling against her. "The Rhuadhi have portal-blocking tech, and no one else in the galaxy seems to have developed it yet. Maybe somewhere there's something, either technology or a natural phenomenon, that can block my people's finding ability."
Claudia didn't think she could keep having this conversation without being able to see his face, so she rolled over to face him, twisting around in his arms. Now they were twined together face-to-face. He didn't look terribly distressed, just wistful and a little sad, which in its way was almost worse.
"Skara?"
"Hmm?"
"You look like you need a hug," Claudia said, and suited action to words, cuddling up and tucking his face against her neck.
He let out a sigh, and relaxed, sagging into her. She pressed her lips to his ear, and he turned his head, and then they were kissing.
It was like they'd never stopped. Like coming home to his mouth, to his arms.
And she thought: What the hell.
They were flying into unknown dangers. Anything could happen just a few hours from now.
"Did I ever tell you about a saying we have on my planet?" she murmured against his cheek. "Carpe diem. It means seize the day."
"Does that mean what I think it means?"
"Depends on what you think it means"
"Mmm." His lips found hers again. "I hope it means I get to deflower you again."
"Say what, now?"
"Did I say it wrong?"
"No, it's just ... deflowering ... you can only do it once," Claudia said. "It's a euphemism for losing your virginity."
"Oh. I thought it meant sex."
"Not unless sex works very differently for you that for us. Which," she added, "it might."
A little while and much shedding of clothing later, she pulled away to ask, "Do we have time for this?"
"The jump drive still needs to finish recharging. It'll take the time it takes. We can't go anywhere yet anyway."
"Well, in that case ..."
"Carpe diem," he murmured.
"Exactly."
A few minutes later ...
"Skara?"
"Mmm? Little distracted right now."
"Does your species always—er—have two of those?"
He looked down his naked body and heaved a sigh. The extra penis disappeared.
"Oh, thank goodness," Claudia sighed. "I was a little worried where that was going to go."
"Hate it when that happens." He nibbled at the curve of her breast. "Got a little too excited. Very embarrassing."
"Just shut up and get back to what you were doing a minute ago."
Eighteen
A little sleep and another shower later, they were back on the bridge, with Skara using the computer to bring up maps and schematics.
"We've got rough maps of the city, but none at all of the sanctuary itself. We'll just have to wing it once we're inside."
"You've been in one before, though," Claudia pointed out.
"Yes, but I don't know how different they are. I can make you a rough diagram."
"That'd be nice."
Skara bent to the computer controls. He looked better than earlier, and certainly more relaxed, with his hair straggling in shower-damp curls on his neck and a brightness in his eyes that was anticipation rather than their earlier fever-glitter. Still, he had stopped by the medbay on their way up to the bridge. Claudia had still been in the bathroom and hadn't seen what he had done there; she had just been in time to catch up with him as he came out.
She poked at her hair. She hadn't been able to stop s
taring at it in the bathroom mirror, and even now she kept wanting to pull down the springy curls to stare at their bright green color. She'd never dyed her hair in her life. She didn't even like straightening it. Usually she kept it cut fairly short and held back out of her way with a scarf or a clip.
"Do I want to know why green hair dye is something someone would just keep around?" she asked.
"It's not actually meant for hair. It's for clothes." Skara swiveled his seat away from the computer console and held out his arm. "Here, take a look."
The schematic materialized in softly glowing lines above his cuff. Claudia was distracted from wondering what the hell she'd just done to her hair with laundry chemicals when he used his other hand to twist and rotate the schematic, tweaking something here, pulling out another bit there.
"You can use these to paint with light!" she exclaimed, delighted.
"Uh, I guess so? That function is mainly used for—are you paying attention?"
Claudia trailed her arm through the air. It took some concentration, because she was trying so hard not to accidentally laser the wall, but suddenly she found the right mental tweak, and her wrist began trailing soft golden-green light.
"This is so cool!" She got the other one to produce orange, then violet, and floated her hands through the air in front of her body. The light-trails faded in seconds, but as she constantly renewed them, the effect made her think of slo-mo glowsticks at a concert.
Skara laughed and got up. Claudia guiltily dropped her arms.
"I know this situation is serious and we don't have time for—"
"No, I want to show you something we used to do as kids."
He banished the schematic with a wave of his hand, and cupped his hands. A purple ball of light formed between them.
"It's been so long I had forgotten we used to do this." Skara's grin was the bright, open smile of the child he used to be. "Catch!"
He batted the purple ball of light at her. Claudia flung her hands in front of her face through sheer reflex, then peeked through her fingers to see it vanish before it hit.
"You're supposed to catch it," Skara said, laughing.