He rolled his eyes. "Yes, of course they are. But did you have fun?"
"Fun, sir?" she asked, tipping her head in puzzlement.
He narrowed his eyes, folded his arms across his chest, and said in his running-out-of-patience tone, "Yes, fun. Who gave you the tour?"
"Crewman McCrae, sir."
"Crewman McCrae," he muttered with a disgusted expression. "I heard you were on a first name basis with the young man."
"With your considerable resources, Commander Task, I’m sure you don’t need to ask me for any information."
He snorted, propping his cheek on one fist as he studied her with a brooding frown. "Fine, I’ll butt out. I was just hoping that you’d made friends with him."
"Friends?" Startled, she blinked at him for a moment. "Well, I guess… Yes, I suppose we’re friends," she said, the word expanding her chest with a bubble of delighted discovery.
The commander grinned. "Excellent." Then he lunged to his feet, rounding the edge of his desk. "Let’s go eat and you can tell me all about it."
Ryelle didn’t budge, giving him her bland face again.
He heaved a long-suffering sigh. "Fine! I’ll butt out. But I’m starving, little mims."
"I don’t believe it’s appropriate," she said mildly as she rose to precede him out of the office door, "for a man of your advanced rank to whine."
"And I don’t believe it’s appropriate," he countered with a flash of humor in his eyes, "for a girl your age to talk as though she’s a hundred and ten." He paused then asked in a gentler tone, "Do you consider me your friend, Ryelle?"
"Hmm." She sent him a critical glance, keeping her expression somber and thoughtful. "Are friends supposed to be annoying?"
He laughed out loud. "Your sense of humor’s getting better, I see. Yes, friends can be annoying."
"Than we’re definitely friends."
He chuckled the rest of the way to the officer’s mess. They were joined at dinner by Chief Sheridan, but no other officers attempted to join their table. They rarely did. Ryelle wondered if it was her presence that inhibited them, or if this was usual behavior for the commander and his crew.
Ryelle withstood some gentle teasing from the two men for her extended visit to the engineering section, before they turned to business. She enjoyed her meal in peace while they discussed the ship’s daily functions, but when they shifted the topic to navigational strategies, she listened with a sharper ear.
"Detouring through the nebula will get us there faster, plus we’ll come in from an unexpected direction."
"Voidships don’t like nebulas, Sam. Abusing your flagship before she goes into battle doesn’t seem like a good tactic to me."
"You pamper her too much, Chief. The Odyssey needs a little rough play now and then to remember she’s a warship."
The Chief looked skeptical, but he conceded with a mild tilt of his head. "She will, of course, carry us through admirably. But didn’t you tell me that sector was infested with GenTecs?"
The commander nodded. "Yes, they’ve been known to camp out in that scatter field around the nebula. We’ll just have to take our chances. If we scare up a nest—"
"Why?" Ryelle interrupted.
Commander Task turned to her with eyebrows raised. "Why what?"
"Why do you have to take your chances? Why not scan for any GenTecs?"
"The scatter field’s a ring of debris pulled in by the gravity of the nebula, surrounding it kind of like a mine field. Astroids, planetoids, comet fragments, bits and pieces of every size and shape. All that matter moving in so many different directions scatters scans, makes definitive readings impossible. We wouldn’t know a ship from a ‘roid until we were on top of it."
Ryelle stared at him for a moment, wondering if he was joking with her again. It was so hard to tell—she had so little experience with humor. "And you’re not having me scan because…?"
He stared back at her. "It’s a very large sector."
"Are you testing me?" she asked with a quick frown.
He blinked and sat back as though she’d startled him. "No, I honestly didn’t think your talent could cover that much space."
"Oh," she murmured in surprise. Taking a deep breath, she said, "Well, it would probably be a good idea for you to know the limits of your telenetic before going into battle. Don’t you think?"
Chief Sheridan chuckled into his plate of food.
The commander snorted, sending the other man a wry look. "Point taken. Been treating you too gently, have I?"
"I am your greatest weapon, sir," she said to her own plate, feeling her face warm with embarrassment. She shouldn’t have said anything in front of another officer.
"That you are. And I suppose it’s time the rest of the crew understood that as well. We’ll close on the scatter field at oh six hundred. Meet me on the command deck then, and we’ll see if we can’t find your limits."
"But…the observation deck would—" she tried, but he cut through her weak protest.
"Where no one gets to see you work? Not this time, little mims. As you just pointed out, knowing what you can and can’t do is critical. Not just for me, but for the entire crew." He paused to smirk at her. "Stage fright?"
She hadn’t worked up the nerve yet to tell him, but she was pretty sure his sense of humor was atrocious. She settled for giving him a sour look. "I thought you wanted me to get to know the crew, not scare them silly."
He chuckled. "Come now, this is a seasoned battle crew. You can’t scare them." He paused, studying her for a second, then grinned. "Okay, maybe just a little," he said, holding his thumb and forefinger a half inch apart.
The Chief snickered then smiled benignly at her when she turned the sour look in his direction. "The chicken was delicious, don’t you think? I believe rosemary is my favorite seasoning." For some reason, that made the commander chuckle again.
"Yes, your wife has a true culinary gift," Ryelle answered him automatically, mind still fixed on the crew. "She makes synthetic protein taste real. It’s not stage fright," she denied to her commander. "I just don’t like to be on display."
"That’s unfortunate, since telenetics are almost always on display. Fruit stick?"
"No, thank you," she muttered.
"Cheer up—remember that only so many people can fit on deck. Of course, I’ll be broadcasting the event throughout the ship."
He was gnawing on a fruit stick with a sly grin on his spare face. She pressed her lips together on the undiplomatic comment that she wanted to make and gave him her best stony look.
"Still friends?" he asked with a twinkle in his eyes.
"Still annoyed," she responded tartly.
Of course, he laughed. Mind numbingly atrocious.
When she stepped onto the command deck the next morning, Ryelle nearly stumbled to a halt at the vast amount of bodies crowding the space. Only her training kept the shock and dismay from showing on her face. What were all these people doing here?
Chief Sheridan ambled up next to her and gave her a serene smile. "Good morning, Ryelle. Did you sleep well?"
Over his shoulder, she caught sight of his engineering crew, including Declan, who gave her a shy smile. She bit her lip in consternation. He was the last person she wanted to witness her abilities. Her distress made her a bit less diplomatic than usual. "Chief, did you leave anyone down there to watch the engines?"
His only reaction to her disgruntled tone was a slight widening of his smile. "Those engines run so smoothly, we’re just window dressing. Besides, we didn’t want to miss the show."
"Not you, too," she groaned under her breath. If the Chief was joining the commander’s campaign to tease her into madness, she was in serious trouble.
Thankfully, the commander was in a formal mood this morning, greeting her with somber respect and authority. She responded with grateful gravity and listened to his request.
"As you can see, Telenetic Soliere, we’ve arrived at a scatter field. I plan to take the Odyssey through
it and the nebula beyond. However, there may be enemy hiding in this debris. Can you find them for us?"
"I believe I can," she responded with solemn confidence, folding her hands demurely at her waist.
"What exactly will you be scanning for?"
She blinked at him. Was he asking her that to teach his crew about telenetics or to teach her about his standard protocol? Each ship’s captain had their own way of working with their telenetics and the commander and Ryelle hadn’t had much practice yet. Maybe he always grilled his telenetics before any new action.
"Telenetics interact with molecular mass, so when I scan an area, I can feel all types of molecules and amount of matter in that area. In this case, I will be able to sense the difference between a natural asteroid, a synthetic ship’s hull, and a human body. I will also be able to tell you the size of ship and quantity of bodies. May I begin?"
His expression lightened to an almost smile as he inclined his head. "Please do."
She turned toward the viewer. "Here goes," she murmured, grateful that she’d left her snood in her quarters and didn’t have to put on even more of a show. Taking a step forward, Ryelle closed her eyes and unleashed her talent. It uncoiled from her in long, luxurious waves, and she couldn’t hold in a deep sigh of relief. She kept her body still, but mentally she stretched like a cat, glorying in the freedom and the ache of release, like a muscle clenched too tight for too long suddenly loosened again.
Mindful of her duties, she didn’t enjoy the sensation for long, disciplining her talent to form a wall in front of her, which she pushed out to scan the field before the ship. She performed her duty more slowly than she really had to, but the commander hadn’t given her a time limit and she could say that she was just trying to be thorough if the Institute questioned her. Of course, what she was doing instead was delighting in the use of a power she had been taught to fear.
They wanted her to be afraid and she was, but not of her telenetic talent. How could she be afraid of something so intimately a part of her, like a limb? She was only afraid of how they would react to it, afraid of how they would restrict her further.
The wall stretched on and on, growing and lengthening out from her in a rush of nearly effortless power. She smiled and whispered, "Two ships, forty crew a piece, that direction." She pointed her finger without opening her eyes. "NavSen?"
"Here," the commander said and she opened her eyes to see him holding a navigational sensor pad out for her. She touched her finger to the vessels’ location.
"They are not—quite—human," she said in a very soft voice, meeting the commander’s gaze soberly.
He nodded, glanced down at the pad, and began to turn away. "Thank you, Mims Soliere—"
"Wait, I’m not done." He made a sound as if in surprise, but she’d already closed her eyes again and continued to scan. After a moment, she said, "Mm, I’m not sensing any more ships between us and the nebula. Did you want me to scan the nebula, too, or do GenTecs not normally go there?"
Silence.
Ryelle opened her eyes to see the commander staring at her. She lifted her eyebrows at him. He was the one who had wanted to test her, to find out her limits.
"You’ve scanned all the way to the nebula?" he asked in a careful tone.
"Yes, though I haven’t scanned the entire field, just a wide margin to either side of the ship."
"How wide?" he asked, holding out the pad to her again.
She traced the swath that she had scanned and looked up at him in time to catch his swift, indrawn breath. There was a rustle of movement and hushed voices as the pad transmitted the information to the navigational screens for everyone to see. The commander was still staring at the pad with a faint crease in his brow and Ryelle sighed softly. Back to being a monster, she supposed.
"Ryelle," he began in a strange tone, glancing up at her with an expression that she couldn’t read. "Could you move some rock for us?"
"Um…"
"This is a big ship," he said then waved at the view of the scatter field. "That’s a lot of debris. We use the energy shield to prevent the smaller pieces from damaging the hull, which uses valuable resources, and we still have to maneuver around the large chunks. Could you clear a path, ease our way?"
"Oh. Sure," she responded, sucking her scanning wall back into herself in an instant. Unraveling her talent again, she closed her eyes and focused on the job at hand. The difficulty lay in the size of the debris and precision of the work, since the smallest pieces were microscopic. The larger debris she moved out of the way, and then focused on sucking all the small molecules together, forming larger chunks that she could place in line with the bigger ones.
Concentrating on her work, she didn’t notice the stunned silence until it was broken. "Stop!"
Jumping a little, Ryelle opened her eyes to see the commander staring at the screen, face frozen and eyes a little wild. She took a quick glance around to see all of the crew staring at the screen with varying degrees of shock and dismay. She glanced at the screen, but only saw the result of her work, a tunnel of debris that stretched out as far as the eye could see, though she hadn’t even gotten halfway to the nebula.
"I’m not quite done yet," she said in a diffident tone.
The commander turned an incredulous look upon her and let out a small laugh. "That’s incredible. Ryelle…do you have limits?"
"Yes," she answered immediately, because she didn’t want to think about what a negative answer would mean. "I just…haven’t found them yet." He stared at her with that frozen expression again and she cleared her throat, unable to stand the silence. "Do you want me to continue?"
He was still for a moment longer, before taking a deep, slow breath and looking back at the screen. "No, I think the GenTecs might notice that. Let’s take care of them first. Flight leader, prepare stealth fighters and eliminate those targets."
Ryelle jerked, suddenly faced with the wartime consequences of her talent. She had just pinpointed the location of the enemy—because of her, pilots were going out to fight them. Because of her, someone was going to die. "Oh," she murmured very low and pressed a hand to her roiling stomach.
She’d known intellectually the impact she would have on battles, had known it would come to this, but she hadn’t realized how deeply it would affect her. Oh god, how much worse was it going to be when she had to be the one to fight, to take lives? Nausea surged up in her like a tide.
"Mims Soliere, would you care for some refreshment? I don’t believe I’ll need your services for a while."
She looked up into the commander’s faintly frowning face and realized that the note of anxiety in his voice was for her. He was concerned for her again. A wave of relieved gratitude almost swept her feet out from under her. "Thank you," she whispered, because she couldn’t get her voice any louder and because she was so deeply in debt to this man. He kept surprising her, kept treating her like a human being instead of the horrible creature she expected him to see.
He nodded, not looking any less concerned. "Chief, would you mind escorting Telenetic Soliere?"
"Not at all," the Chief said as he appeared by her side again. "Would you walk with me, my dear? I confess I’m becoming addicted to your delightful company. My wife has threatened to poison me if I say your name one more time without having invited you to our quarters. She plans on feeding you until you burst. I wonder if you would do me the kindness of joining us for breakfast?"
His sedate speech carried them away from the commander and off the deck before he’d finished, and Ryelle had to fight tears when she realized he was watching her with the same concern as the commander had shown.
"Thank you, I’m—" she began, but had to stop and clear the thick tears from her voice. "Yes, please," she finished, because she could barely speak and because she couldn’t say no to him. What she wanted most in the universe was to be alone right now, but how could she tell him that when he was being so kind? How could she even think it, when he wasn’t treating her like a
pariah or a dangerous beast that would ravage him at any moment?
"Ryelle!" a familiar voice called and she stiffened. Oh, no, she couldn’t. She could not face Declan, not after having held his hand and not shown him the whole truth. He knew what she was now and she was so certain he’d be horrified. Repulsed. Sickened by what she was and what she’d done to those people. She closed her eyes and shuddered to a halt.
"Ryelle, Chief," Declan’s voice came closer until she could feel him standing next to her. "Can I join you?" he asked, slightly breathless.
"Of course, Dec," the Chief answered in his complacent tone. "Unless Ryelle has an objection?"
She couldn’t move, couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t imagine why he wanted to come, unless it was to rail at her for lying to him by omission.
"Ryelle?" he said softly, his honey voice driving a wedge of pain through her. "Are you okay?"
She felt something brush her sleeve and her eyes popped open. Was that…? Yes, she hadn’t imagined it. Declan had touched her again. Voluntarily. She looked up into his face with reluctant hope. He didn’t look horrified or repulsed. He looked anxious, and there was a strange light in his eyes as he watched her.
"You look a little peaky. Does your stomach hurt?" he asked, glancing down to where she had both hands pressed against her abdomen. There were low voices and sounds of movement behind them, and Declan jerked his head up to look over her shoulder. "We better get you somewhere you can sit down," he said in a low voice, touching her elbow and urging her forward.
Her feet moved of their own volition, while she stared up at him in mute astonishment. Once she began to move, he dropped his hand from her elbow, walking close by her side. He glanced behind them and then ahead again, looking as though he was gauging their escape margin from the crowd she heard at their backs. After a moment he caught her eye and smiled down at her, not his full sunshine smile, but close. "You were amazing!" he whispered fervently, flashing a quick glance at the Chief. "I’ve never seen anything so blaze in my life. Aren’t you tired?"
Her knees went weak with relief and she stumbled. Declan caught her elbow again and didn’t let go. His smile disappeared, but she was just as grateful for the worry in his eyes. He didn’t hate her. He thought she was amazing. She could feel the gentle strength of his fingers around her elbow and she wished with all her heart that he would never let go.
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