“So you’re not scrapping this satellite for raw materials?” Hannah asked.
“Sure we are.” Manny stretched his long arms out to his sides and then folded his hands together behind his head. He pushed his lean body away from his station, with his feet still in the tethers, and adopted the posture of a man in a lounge chair. “But we gotta get that data first. You know, direct from the drives, through a physical link, since the satellite is dead.”
Gary shot Hannah a sharp look that she didn’t understand. He shifted slightly, his back against the wall that held Manny’s instrument panels. It was an awkward maneuver that had him bumping his head on what would have been the ceiling, before he affected an almost convincing attitude of just another casual bro shooting the breeze, in space.
“So what kind of data are you retrieving?” Gary asked. “Is that a normal part of a salvage contract?”
Hannah swallowed her groan. Gary might be a prized show host, but subtlety was apparently not part of his professional arsenal. But she let him proceed instead of interrupting and making it even more obvious that they were pumping the tech for information.
Manny wasn’t fooled by Gary’s act. “Data’s data,” he said with a shrug. “We don’t get paid to ask questions.” He released his hands from behind his head and slipped his feet out of the anchoring tethers. “But this kind of thing happens sometimes. You know, one crew poaching another crew’s contract.”
“But they didn’t take the satellite.” Hannah gestured toward Manny’s screen, where the craft in question remained firmly in the Churly Flint’s grasp. “So what’s this about?”
Manny’s grin broke wide over his face. “Captain Sid. He does this sometimes. Interferes just enough so that Captain Dana has to meet with him.” He chuckled. “He must want a date.”
“A date?” she asked.
While Hannah and Gary exchanged confused glances, Manny pushed off and flew out of the compartment and into the main corridor beyond.
“Rival salvage crews. A sabotaged satellite.” Gary laughed. “And a space date. Rufus is going to flip.”
Events unfolded more slowly in real life than on reality television, which left Gary with nearly six hours to kill while the Midden and the Churly Flint got lined up for rendezvous.
He spent the first couple of hours exploring the ship, but the Churly Flint wasn’t all that large—three crew berths and two for guests, a series of cargo holds, the galley, equipment stations, systems holds, an impressively equipped fitness compartment, and a couple of space toilets aligned on upper and lower decks of what was essentially a long cylinder with the control cabin at one end and the docking control compartment at the other.
Then he’d sequestered himself in his own berth to catch up on some reading and send a few quick emails down to his family, but his restlessness was making him itch. He couldn’t abide the thought of sitting still while his home planet spun beneath him. Maybe later in the trip he’d adopt a more jaded attitude, but not yet.
None of the crew had the time or the patience for his enthusiasm, however. Dana was still stewing about the interference in what should have been a straightforward retrieve and salvage job, and she was short on details and long on irritability when Gary tried pressing her. Manny had his hands full sussing out another way into the satellite’s data banks without a full-on breach, and Brett was occupied with docking procedures for the approaching Midden.
So he went in search of Hannah, so he could bug her.
He found her at the galley’s main table, her feet hooked into straps on the floor to give her the semblance of sitting. She was poring over her tablet computer again, going over shot lists and making notes, and taking occasional sips from a bulb of hot coffee.
Gary held himself in the doorway. “Don’t you ever take a break? You know, maybe take a look out the window? It’s quite a view.”
She didn’t bother to look up. “Gotta be ready for the incoming ship. I don’t have any information about the crew or their assignments, or anything at all. They’re not under contract to DayLite and I don’t have the wherewithal to do any kind of negotiating, so we may have to get creative about keeping any footage we shoot of them. No word yet from The Ranch on how they want us to handle it.”
“We’ll play it by ear. See how things unfold.”
She stared at the screen and sighed. “You know I didn’t sign up for this, right?”
Gary pushed himself into the galley and headed for the beverage station. At least Manny had taken a few minutes to show him how to use it before giving Gary the brush-off.
“Do you know how many people would literally kill for an assignment like this one?” Gary pulled a single-serve coffee pod from a nearby cupboard and popped it into the machine. “I have to admire your work ethic, I guess, but take care you don’t burn out in the first couple of days, yeah?”
Hannah looked up from her tablet, and Gary smiled when he saw her hazel eyes. “At least things are finally getting interesting, with the sabotaged satellite and everything. I wish Rufus would let us dig into that.”
The machine buzzed and Gary pulled a bulb of freshly brewed coffee from its drawer. “Record everything you can anyway.”
He took a tentative sip of coffee and was grateful not to burn his tongue. It wasn’t anything close to the best coffee he’d ever had, but at least the temperature was right.
Gary turned his back on the machine and was surprised to find Hannah watching him. He shrugged. “I imagine there’s a lot going on up here that Rufus can’t begin to fathom. Besides, what is it they say? It’s easier to apologize later than ask for permission first?”
Hannah laughed, just a little, but enough to make Gary smile. “You’re really not what I expected, Gary.”
He drank down a larger gulp of coffee and settled in on the other side of the table. It took a couple of tries to get both feet anchored in the tethers. “Yeah? What did you expect, then?”
She studied him for a moment. “I’m not entirely sure.”
He laughed. She smiled some more, and Gary felt a pleasant tingling in his chest. “So, what do you think is behind this thing between the ships’ crews?”
“Beyond poaching contracts and space dates? Isn’t that enough?”
Gary gestured around the cozy galley. “I imagine it gets a little lonely, even boring, up here for long stretches. Did you know these crews are in orbit for up to a year at a time? Then a couple of months back home to build up muscle and bone in gravity again before their next shift.”
“Someone did his background reading.”
“Well, think about all the people in your life. Your co-workers. Your family and friends. You and I, we’re surrounded by other people pretty much all the time at The Ranch.”
Hannah stretched her arms over her head and yawned while her tablet floated above the table. “That’s the one positive of this assignment, getting to take a break from everybody’s drama and short tempers.”
Gary nodded along. He had similar feelings about their workplace, but while Hannah had a habit of picking fights with her superiors, Gary made stupid jokes and smiled when he felt like screaming. It felt good to find some common ground with this woman. Maybe in another day or two he’d get around to telling her how much he respected her strength of character, because he was afraid of the fight and was always the first to back down. And maybe he’d work in some praise of the refreshing beauty of her disheveled hair and her unplucked eyebrows, in a way that didn’t sound ridiculous coming out of his commercially crafted mouth.
“Okay, but what if instead you were stuck in a can with only two other people, day in and day out,” he said. “I mean, the crew I guess could have some extracurricular fun, but if you’re the captain, you’d have an immediate morale problem if you get involved with one but not the other.”
“So your best option for ‘extracurricular fun,’ as you put it, would be another captain.” She took hold of her tablet and tucked it under her arm. “Space dates.” S
he shook her head and almost groaned. “I have a bad feeling we’ve got another reality show coming on. Rufus probably already has someone designing logos.”
Gary sucked down the rest of his coffee. “I don’t know. What if someone could find true love up here? You’d think it’s hard enough on Earth, with billions of potential mates on every side, and then something like Mars Ho comes along and whisks you off to another planet with a dramatically smaller pool of potential partners.”
He crushed the empty bulb in his fist and looked around for the waste receptacle. Then he remembered that he couldn’t just toss it in like a free-throw shot. He shoved the bulb into one of his pockets.
“What’s your point?”
He was startled by the question. “I’m not really sure. I guess I’m just wondering how you’d go about romancing someone in orbit.”
Hannah’s frown was immediate and hard as she stared at him from across the table. Gary’s stomach trembled, and when had his hands started sweating?
“Wait, no. No,” he stammered. “I don’t mean anything crass, like the mechanical challenges of microgravity.” He chuckled, but that just made it worse. Now Hannah had her arms crossed as she leaned away from the table, still scowling at him.
“No, come on. I meant, like, how do you take someone out to dinner, when all you have is freeze-dried meatloaf? And you can’t exactly send someone flowers or a singing gorilla with balloons, now can you?”
“A gorilla with balloons, sure.” Her face softened a little, but she was still regarding him with enough distrust and disgust to make him uneasy.
He wasn’t sure why she’d reacted so negatively and so quickly. He smiled and spread his hands wide. “Not every interaction has to be like what’s on that awful tape with Rufus.”
Hannah stiffened as though struck by a live wire. She was up and away from the table and practically out in the corridor before Gary knew what was happening.
“Hannah? What’s wrong? What did I say?”
She hovered in the galley doorway without turning to look at him. “I think you’re right. We should get as much footage of both crews as possible, which means I’ve got some planning to do. And you should rest that precious face of yours.”
Gary’s jaw dropped as he watched her float away.
Gary floated toward the ship’s docking control module at the far end of the ship. He smacked face-first into only a single bulkhead on his way up from the tight, lower-deck berth he’d been assigned as his personal quarters aboard the Churly Flint, and he considered this to be real progress.
His space sickness hadn’t made a reappearance, so it was wins all around—except for the weird interaction with Hannah in the galley. He’d tried a little flirting of his own while speculating on the difficulties of flirting in orbit and had inadvertently proven his own point.
But he and Hannah were stuck aboard the same ship, and they still had work to do together. He hoped the fruit he’d smuggled aboard in his bag would smooth things over.
Mindful of the tangerines in his jumpsuit pockets, he navigated past three more compartments. Each segment of the ship looked much like the rest of the craft, vaguely sterile and dingy gray. He wondered how long it would be before Rufus had teams of exuberant decorator divas moving from one salvage craft to the next on a Pimp My Spaceship show.
When Gary found Hannah, she was futzing with her equipment, mounting cameras and mics, and reviewing notes on her tablet. He paused just inside the docking module’s threshold, where she was unlikely to notice him, and he studied her movements as she made second and third adjustments on a camera mount. Was it his imagination, or did she seem distracted? She certainly looked angry, and the downward turn on her soft mouth deepened the pang in Gary’s gut. Maybe their encounter—or argument, or whatever that was—was weighing on her, too. That at least put a smile on his face.
“Help you with something?” Hannah asked without looking up.
Okay, so maybe she did know he was hovering in the doorway, contemplating.
“Just watching you work.”
She glanced at him quickly, frowned at the rounded lumps in his pockets, and then went back to her tablet screen. “You want to join me? Working, that is.”
He pushed off the wall and headed toward her. He slowed his momentum with a gentle grazing of his fingers along the wall and came to a stop with a sharp twist, and then frowned when Hannah didn’t even notice his graceful maneuver.
“I, uh, brought you something,” he said.
She eyed him suspiciously as he reached into his bulging hip pockets and pulled out a pair of tangerines. He held them out to her. “Peace offering.”
“Do I want to know where those have been?”
“Stashed in my personal effects, just before launch,” Gary mock-whispered. “But don’t tell anybody, unless you want your citrus confiscated.”
With unveiled annoyance, Hannah grabbed the tangerines and stashed them inside her gear bag. “You can’t have any weird bulges when you’re on camera. Viewers will think you’ve caught some kind of space plague.”
Gary reached for a strap on the wall over Hannah’s shoulder and pulled himself closer to her—just close enough to detect the faint scent of strawberries. He doubted the ship’s zero-g shower came equipped with botanical soaps. He also doubted Hannah was wearing a special perfume just for him—and not just because colognes were forbidden on orbital craft, for fear of triggering allergic reactions and migraines in one’s shipmates.
He cleared his throat and located his courage. “So, listen, um, I wanted to talk to you, about before . . .”
Hannah looked at him sharply, letting him know in a single glance that she was all business and had no intention of getting sidetracked.
Gary held up his free hand in mock surrender and quickly changed tactics. “I mean, about the satellite and the data retrieval.”
He was less than flattered by the wave of relief that washed over Hannah’s face.
“Go on.” She rested her fingers on the edge of her tablet and gave him her full attention.
“Doesn’t it seem a little fishy to you?” When she didn’t respond, he pressed on. “This was supposed to be a retrieval of a dead climate satellite, right?”
Again, Hannah gave no response.
“Well, what if it’s something more than that? Like a spy satellite?”
Hannah’s brow crinkled in disappointment, and she looked back at her tablet to scroll through another shot list. “Really, Gary? You’re so determined to turn this assignment into a grand, world-shaking adventure that you’d invent a bunch of cloak-and-dagger space pirate nonsense?”
Gary tried to laugh, even as his heart sank. “Space pirate. I kind of like that. Do you think I should start wearing an eye patch? A peg leg might be a little awkward in zero-g.”
“I’m not listening to you, Gary.”
“Okay, but remember what Manny said? ‘We don’t get paid to ask questions’?”
As if on cue, Manny burst into the compartment, followed by Dana a few seconds later.
“Really don’t have time for your speculative intrigue right now, Gary.” Hannah adjusted one of the wall-mounted cameras toward the compartment’s airlock just as a loud sschunk resonated from the meter-wide hatch.
Hannah raised her voice. “So, to be clear, this is the Midden that has just docked with the Churly Flint, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, the Midden.” Manny waved his hand vaguely in Hannah’s direction as a means of acknowledging her. “They should get frequent docking points.”
“Is there such a thing?” Gary asked. Everyone ignored him.
“So, what’s the relationship like between the crews?” Hannah cast a quick glance at her screen. “Friendly?”
Gary pressed back against one wall to watch her work. She’d need him in the shot before too long, and then he’d be able to get some of his concerns and ideas on camera. And maybe after that, he’d be able to get to the bottom of why Hannah had turned so prickl
y.
Manny laughed. “Sure. Friendly. That’s one way of putting it.” He turned to face the camera and waggled his eyebrows for effect.
“That’s enough, Manny.” Dana waited directly opposite the circular hatch. “Let’s get this over with. Open it up.”
Manny rotated a thick lever—the same drab gray as everything else in the compartment—and slowly pulled the hatch door open.
Gary and Hannah both peeked around the sluggish door, and Gary did an honest-to-goodness double-take when he caught sight of the handsome, smiling face of the captain of the Midden. The man was, quite simply, one of the best-looking human beings Gary had ever seen.
In contrast to the polished, perfect visage that met Gary in the mirror every morning, this captain’s face was rough with several days of blond beard stubble—just enough to convey an alluring disregard for his own appeal. It was also readily apparent that the man spent a good bit of time engaged in physical labor or working out in a gym somewhere, though neither activity in microgravity was likely to produce the toned, muscular physique that was obvious through the man’s navy blue coveralls.
Gary was beginning to feel a little self-conscious about taking such detailed notice of another man, but a quick survey of the compartment revealed similar expressions of appraisal on the faces of Hannah and even Manny.
Something warm and urgent surged in Gary’s chest. Was it protectiveness? Jealousy? He wasn’t sure, but he felt compelled to position himself between Hannah and this newcomer. He resisted, and held his place.
Dana, however, hung back, her arms crossed sternly over her chest. But her eyes sparkled as the new arrival floated through the doorway connecting the two ships and righted himself to face her.
“Dana.” The captain of the Midden mirrored her closed posture, even as he flashed her an intimate smile.
Lovers and Lunatics (Mars Adventure Romance Series Book 2) Page 6