Patchwork

by Elle E. Ire

I suppress a shudder and follow Vick to the window counter of Pleasant Journeys Travel Unlimited.

  Under normal circumstances, we’d take a Storm shuttle, arranging our passage around some convenient mission’s flight plan. But nothing is heading for the outer rim in the next few days, and no tourist vessels going to Infinity Bay have a layover on Girard Moon Base, so we’re stuck renting a private civilian yacht.

  I don’t mind. It’s pricey, but my generous salary has let me store up quite a bit of savings over the past few years. I’m happy to foot this bill.

  From the underlying edge in Vick’s voice while she haggles with the rental agent, she is not pleased about that decision.

  “…refuel in the Fighting Storm’s hangar and then hop it over here?”

  “Civilian craft aren’t permitted to land in a military-owned facility.” The male representative’s smile shifts from friendly to feral in the span of a sentence. His too white teeth gleam in the overhead lighting.

  “You charge too much for your hexaline. I’m not paying those premiums. And we’re not owned by a governmental military. We’re independent.”

  “That’s irrelevant, ma’am. And didn’t your ‘independent’ facility have a fuel-leak fire just last night? Sure, you can refuel over there, if you want to spring for the complete-coverage insurance.” The bright smile widens.

  Vick’s muscles bunch under her uniform shirt. The clerk can’t see the gun in its holster, but if he could, he’d blanch at Vick’s fingers twitching above the grip.

  Hoping to calm her, I lay my hand over her free one where it clenches the edge of the counter in a knuckle-whitening grasp.

  Emotions flood me like a dam burst: impatience, frustration, and barely controlled rage, all tamped down behind the implants’ dampeners but obvious to me through our physical contact. I jerk my fingers away as if burned, taking an involuntary step back.

  It’s not fast enough.

  Vick’s head snaps in my direction, eyes widening in surprise, then lowering in shame. It takes me a moment to figure out what’s happened.

  While we touched, my fear transferred to her. She scared me. And she knows it.

  With a start, I realize we never did the release procedure, never purged her pent-up fears from last night’s traumatic experiences. We were so busy arguing and emotionally hurting each other, it completely slipped my mind.

  I wonder if it slipped hers, too, or if she conveniently “forgot.”

  “Vick….”

  Without looking at me, she holds up her hand, palm out, cutting me off. “Don’t.” Snatching the stylus off the counter, she scribbles her signature on every required line highlighted on the rental agent’s screen.

  The clerk grins in triumph, then passes over an access keycard and points across the hangar. “Berth seventeen, silver hull, electric blue trim, Tranquility printed on the hatch. You can’t miss her.”

  The irony of the yacht’s name is not lost on me as I follow Vick’s retreating figure stomping between double rows of parked interstellar craft.

  Not an auspicious beginning to our R & R.

  Chapter 15: Vick—Breakable Bonds?

  I AM… scaring her.

  I slam the controls to close the yacht’s outer hatch, slap the switches to seal all vents, and pound the engine startup sequence into the touch-screen interface on the console before me. Not working. This isn’t working. I’m gonna lose her.

  I’ll die without her.

  Fear rolls over me like a swift current lapping the shore to soak into the sand. I shake my head hard, the violent motion reigniting the concussion headache in a flame of pain so bright and intense it momentarily blinds me. Closing my eyes, I rest both palms on the console and breathe, just breathe.

  Another muffled rapping sounds from the far side of the cockpit door. I ignore it. Again. VC1 overrode the locking mechanism for me. Kelly isn’t getting in here until I’ve regained some semblance of control.

  I may be alone for the next thirty-six hours.

  You will not die. At VC1’s voice I sit straight up and bang both knees on the underside of the control console.

  Rubbing my kneecaps, I frown. You’re awfully chatty lately.

  Metaphors are easier on my processors, but not ideal for clarity.

  That earns a laugh—a laugh that goes on too long, becoming almost hysterical before I clamp it down. Okay, I won’t die. I can’t die. Or at least I can’t kill myself. The self-preservation programming won’t let me. And to be honest, I’m more than a little bitter about that. Not that I’m currently suicidal, but fuck, I should have some measure of determination when it comes to my own fucking life. I’ll be emotionally dead. She won’t leave the partnership. She won’t let me lose my mind. I hope. But without her love… she’s the only one who makes me happy.

  Then why do you not allow me to open the… fucking… door?

  I laugh harder, both at her attempt to mimic my speech patterns and the question. It’s such a simple suggestion, posed by a being so new to humanity that the nuances escape her. And yet in her simplicity, she’s cutting through all the crap to the core.

  Why don’t I open the door?

  When I can’t come up with an answer that doesn’t involve my own irrational fears, I rise, cross to the cockpit hatch, and raise my palm to the lock. For a moment I hesitate, listening to the yacht’s engines continuing to idle, the launch control chatter feeding through the speakers above the controls. They aren’t ready for us yet, but we’re about third in the queue. Then I slam my hand over the mechanism and allow VC1 to feel her way through the circuitry and undo the scramble job she earlier installed.

  The door slides to my left, disappearing into the metal wall. Kelly stands on the opposite side, fist raised to knock once more. She looks from her clenched fingers to my face and back again. Then, in a move quick enough to rival my own training, she punches me, hard, in the bicep.

  “Ow! Hey!” I reach to rub the sore spot, but she’s already throwing herself into my chest, this time to bury her face in my shirt, her arms wrapping around my torso in a death clench. “Okay, okay. I needed to sort out some things, okay? Come on up front with me. You can help with the preflight checks. Once we’re well on our way we can… talk.”

  That gets her attention. She leans back to look up at me, blinking away tears. “You. You actually want to talk. You.”

  I shrug. “Sometimes it’s a necessity.”

  That seems to mollify her. She follows me into the yacht’s tiny control center. We seat ourselves in the two swivel chairs bolted to a track on the deckplates. This track allows the chairs to move around the small space in order for both occupants to reach the controls on not just the front panel but the walls and even overhead in some places. When locked in their standard positions, they face the forward viewscreen that dominates the nose of the triangular-shaped vessel. They’re locked in place now. Outside, we have a clear path to what is essentially an oversized airlock.

  No matter how many times I’ve flown, it still causes the same visceral reaction as walking through the smaller locks, though the discomfort doesn’t tend to last as long. I suppress a shiver and shift lower into my seat.

  The next ten minutes are a comfortable routine of me rattling off systems to check and pointing out the relevant monitors so she can relay the data displayed on them. Kelly’s no pilot. To my knowledge she’s never taken anything except the basic emergency course the Storm requires. But she follows my instructions respectably well, and we finish in less time than it would have taken me alone. By now the engines are good and warmed up, and we’re waiting on the flight controller for the go-ahead.

  When it comes, Kelly frowns over at me. “Your headache is bleeding through your suppressors,” she complains, rubbing her own forehead. “With that concussion, you probably shouldn’t be flying this thing.”

  “I won’t be,” I say, waving her off. “Once we break orbit, I’ll turn everything over to VC1. I’m just here for emergencies.” It’s a ne
w trick, one I’ve tested out on some solo one-day missions over the past few months. But it works. VC1 can download a part of herself into almost any computer system—security, shuttle, anything run by technology. So long as I’m in reasonably close proximity, it works like any other wireless device. At first it freaked me out, but I’m used to it now.

  Which also freaks me out.

  No matter how much “better” I become, I’m also more mechanical every day.

  Kelly raises her eyebrows, but she says nothing. Anything she would say would probably hurt, anyway.

  When the console lights go green, I roll our little craft forward into the smallest of the civilian shiplocks. The three-foot-thick metal doors clang shut behind us. Outside the hull, the atmosphere is cycling out through ventilation shafts, but within the yacht we hear nothing. Then the indicators above the outer doors also flash green, and a moment later they separate, revealing the mostly barren lunar landscape. In the distance, a few structures mark the refineries and a number of smaller, more independent corporate facilities unattached to the main base. One is the Crater Ale brewery, a craft beer-maker touting that beer brewed in low gravity produces better taste. I’m inclined to agree. It’s one of my favorites. Beyond that handful of single-story buildings, the rest of the surface is empty, crater-pocked gray nothingness as far as the eye can see.

  We continue to roll forward onto the runway extending out from the shiplock and the only flat surface in sight. On a world with stronger gravity, I could rotate the engines and do a straight uplift launch, but that requires more fuel. Here on the moon, it’s not necessary. Pressing the throttle forward, I increase power until we’re hurtling along at blurring speeds. Then the front and rear wheels leave the ground and we’re on our way.

  It’s as smooth a takeoff as any I’ve performed, but when I glance to my right, Kelly’s digging her nails into the armrests of her chair, her eyes squeezed shut. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” she says through gritted teeth. “Will there be turbulence?” She cracks open one eye.

  I tilt my head toward the forward viewscreen where the stars already fill the field of vision. “Not unless we encounter a rogue asteroid or some such. VC1’s on it. She’s tapped into the yacht’s proximity detectors. We’ll know about anything within a hundred kilometers before we ever cross paths. And this thing’s got decent shielding for a civilian craft.” I kick the underside of the console with one boot. “No weapons, though, just some defensive lasers for clearing space debris. I’m not thrilled about that.”

  “No, you wouldn’t be,” she mutters, not loud enough for normal human hearing to make out, but my enhanced aural sensors decipher her words with ease.

  Sometimes she forgets what I’m capable of. That should make me happy, and it does in a way, but I want her to know me. Really know all of me. And that means every inhuman piece.

  Kelly undoes her safety restraints—I never bothered with mine—and pads out of the cockpit in those impractical sandals. She’s back within a minute, a portable medkit slung over one shoulder and her hand extending a hypodermic out to me. I shake my head, but she presses the casing into my palm.

  “Take your medicine, Vick. It’s going to be hard enough to facilitate your release with everything else going on in your head. I don’t need the full-blown migraine as well.”

  I’m tempted to argue, but she’s right that I need the release, and I’m out of excuses. There’s no one to see me here, no source of embarrassment. She’s also right in that I don’t want to hurt her any more than the process normally will. I insert the needle into my arm and press the plunger home.

  The painkiller spreads an icy chill through my veins, the smart-chem knowing the source of the discomfort and making a direct path to the nerve endings in my forehead and at the back of my neck. The headache numbs, pressure and a painless throbbing reminding me that it isn’t gone, just buried, and that if I do anything overly exertive, I’ll cancel out the chemicals and the migraine will return.

  “One problem solved,” Kelly says, eyeing me. She can read my pain both through the bond and via colors, like an aura around me, or so she says. I have to admit, that ability would be cool to have.

  I figure she’s going to retake her seat and slide it along its track to face mine. Instead, she straddles my legs and seats herself on my lap, facing me. She’s so close, her breasts brush mine. It’s a pleasant distraction, but when she raises her fingers toward my temples, I catch her wrists in my hands.

  Her squeak of surprise tells me just how fast I must have moved. And that I’ve scared her again. I swallow a sigh. “It’s bad, Kel,” I whisper. “Like gonna-put-you-in-emotion-shock bad. I have complete faith in your skills,” I hasten to add at her frown, “but really, I think I’ve been through hell and back in the last twenty-four hours.” More than even she knows, what with the sudden reappearance of my ex, Dr. Peg Alkins, and all the lovely memories that’s brought on.

  “So I’ll ease in and bleed off the emotional backlog gradually.” She tugs a little, and though I’m doubtful, I let her go.

  My implants flash me an image of myself caught between a huge boulder and a brick wall. Yep, between a rock and a hard place. That’s me. Continue protesting and I insult her. Let her do as she wants and I risk hurting her. There’s no winning, so I swallow hard and hope for the best.

  Chapter 16: Kelly—Pleasant Distractions

  VICK IS a time bomb.

  Vick’s got me nervous, that’s for certain. Her concern for me, along with her issues with intimacy, have always been problematic when it comes to her releases, more so since the Rodwell experience.

  When my fingertips are inches from her temples, a tremor takes up residence in my hands. I will them to stillness, hoping she didn’t notice, but her deeper frown tells me she did. Enhanced eyesight. Sometimes I forget her peripheral vision is wider than that of the average human being.

  It takes only a brush of my skin against hers and the roiling lava of her emotions envelops me in a miasma of fear, exhaustion, frustration, and drug-muffled pain. Forcing myself to move slowly, I ease away, breaking the contact, returning fully to myself.

  I school my expression into a semblance of calm, but my panting breath gives me away.

  “Told you so,” Vick mumbles, not meeting my eyes.

  “Yes,” I admit. “You did. Hmm.” I scan her from her head to her waist. “Okay, let’s take a different approach. Look at me.” The quiet iron in my tone draws her gaze to mine. “Good. I’m going to distract you, but you need to focus on my face and my voice. I don’t want you dropping into a memory flash.”

  Vick grits her teeth. “Not sure I can control that.”

  “We’re supposed to keep trying,” I remind her. The equipment around us beeps softly for a count of five before she makes the connection.

  “Oh. That kind of distraction.” Her shoulders slump in the pilot’s chair.

  I smirk at her. “Don’t sound so thrilled about it.”

  “Kel….”

  “Stop being so pessimistic. I’ve got some ideas on different things we can try. But you’ve got to be open-minded and give them, and me, a chance.” My fingers find her chin, holding her face lightly. “Will you?” I hold my breath. It’s a risky question, one that leaves her an out that I’m not sure I can survive should she choose to take it.

  “You can have all the chances you want, until you give up,” she says.

  “Oh no. I’m never giving up on you. Not again. I made that mistake once. It almost destroyed me. I’ve got you back and I’m never letting you go.” I don’t have the full channel open between us, but we are in physical contact, skin to skin, and I feel a portion of her anxiety drain away like water through a sieve. So. That’s one of the sources of her stress? She’s afraid I’ll try to leave her? Or ask to go back to a nonromantic partnership? Fat chance. I lean in closer, careful to allow her freedom of movement. My breath disturbs several strands of hair beside her ear. “You. Are. Mine,” I whisper
.

  Vick shivers beneath me. The good kind. Perfect.

  Shifting so she meets my eyes again, I lower my mouth to hers. I’m almost cross-eyed by the time our lips meet, but I feel that I have her full and undivided attention. She trembles at the darting touch of my tongue, then parts her lips to let it slip inside and dance with her own. I’m so lost in sensation, I almost forget my other goal.

  Reaching up, I press my fingers against her temples once more. Colors swirl and blend in my second sight, representing the emotions I need to bleed off. I choose the remaining pain first, my empathic force grasping the tightly wound red threads and tugging them apart one by one until they fray, then dissipate. Vick sighs into my mouth, blissful relief swamping her in a rush. Another shiver passes through her.

  With reluctance, I give her lips one last, teasing lick, then lean back. “Still okay?” I ask. I know, through my file-digging, that Vick experiences low-level pain almost constantly, buried beneath the implants’ machinations to the point where my gift can’t detect it. But additional pain beyond that, I can deal with for her.

  Her hooded gaze is slightly unfocused. “Yeah. I’m good,” she manages, low and breathy.

  My spine tingles with a shiver of my own. It’s been so long. Too long. We both need this to work. “Excellent.”

  “I thought you weren’t allowed to take pain away. The ‘human experience’ and all that.”

  Empaths aren’t supposed to interfere with normal human emotions unless it’s a matter of life or death. I’m allowed to do what I do because Vick’s emotions aren’t normal. “I’m fudging a little,” I admit. “You’ve already had pain-reducing drugs. I’m not denying you the right to feel human pain. You felt it. You took something for it. I’m just trying to keep it from coming back.”

  I fumble behind her until I find the tight bun at the back of her head. With great care, I unfasten it and toss the tie aside. Her thick dark hair tumbles to fall in waves around her shoulders, and I run my fingers through it, then begin a gentle massage at the nape of her neck, working my way up her scalp.