On impulse, Hannah created a new document and recorded the time stamp of Manny’s assertion that he “didn’t get paid to ask questions.” She listed the footage of Sid admitting that he’d disabled a satellite’s proprietary docking mechanism, and Dana’s statement about data encryption keys and about a possible armed conflict back on Earth. She cursed Gary for planting the idea of space piracy in her brain, but she had a queasy feeling that if she sent this new log and video to Rufus, it might magically disappear without a trace. So she wouldn’t send him this footage just yet.
Light flooded her dim cupboard as Gary pulled open the door to her makeshift quarters. “There you are!” Hannah could hear the smile in his voice as he hovered in silhouette.
“I wasn’t hiding, Gary.” Hannah closed her video editing app. “Just getting some work done, so we don’t fall behind.”
“Good thinking. Need any help?”
Hannah sent the first batch of footage down to The Ranch, then pulled open one of the drawers and slid her tablet inside. “I think I’m good, thanks.”
Before she could invent some excuse of wanting to catch up on some reading or needing a nap, just so he would go away and leave her in peace, Gary squeezed into her cupboard, and pulled the door shut behind him.
“I think we need to put our heads together on a few things.”
“Gary!” Hannah winced as her voice echoed off the close walls of the cupboard. She lowered her volume. “Don’t you have your own berth?”
“Look, you know the space salvage industry is really, really new, right? I mean, it’s almost a joke to call it an industry.”
Hannah crossed her arms over her chest, and was happy that there was room enough in her cupboard for even that act of defiance. She ignored her pounding heart and the tingling thrill of being in such close quarters with Gary. She scowled at him instead. “There are those lunar plants for breaking down the raw materials—”
“I’m talking about laws. International law hasn’t caught up to space salvage, not in a way that provides for enforceable oversight.” Gary glanced at the closed door as though someone might be hovering on the other side. He lowered his voice to a whisper and leaned in close enough that Hannah could smell tangerines. She frowned harder.
“I’d say there’s a high probability that salvage work is being done rather shoddily. Some of it, anyway,” he said. “Look at what happened on ISS-5.”
“Gary, we’ve been over this.”
“Not our problem, yeah.” He stretched his long legs out and planted his feet next to Hannah’s thighs, then braced his back against the opposite wall. The space wasn’t quite as wide as his legs were long, and he rested his hands on his bent knees. “But what if we made it our problem?”
“If you want to play space pirate or whatever on your own time, Gary, that’s fine with me.” She gestured toward the corridor, miscalculated the distance, and smacked her hand against the door. “I’m sure Barbie would be thrilled to indulge whatever you might have in mind.”
“This isn’t a game.”
Hannah studied him for a moment. If Gary was just another conspiracy crank, she didn’t want to encourage him by sharing her own thoughts. Handsome but possibly nuts, she decided privately, though she knew she was inventing excuses to keep him at bay.
“No, it’s a job, Gary, and I for one intend to keep mine,” she said. “That means following the scripts as they’re written, getting the shots that are in my shot list, and not sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
She reached over and opened the cupboard door so she could shove Gary out into the corridor, but he pulled it immediately shut again.
“You don’t get paid to ask questions,” Gary said flatly.
Hannah groaned. “No, I don’t.”
“Just like Manny. Just like the crew of the Midden, I’d expect, too.” Gary looked comfortable, wedged against the wall, smiling at her. Mocking her with that Ken-doll face. It was infuriating.
Hannah glanced around the cramped cabin for a comm button or other means of calling for help in tossing out Gary and his lean, distracting body. But there was nothing. She set her jaw and glared back at him.
“You do everything Rufus tells you to do?” he asked.
“No.”
“No, you don’t.” Gary’s smile widened, and Hannah got the feeling that maybe he wasn’t mocking her after all. “You did what you did for the people in the biodome because you knew it was the right thing.”
Hannah pressed her lips together and nodded. She felt twitchy as her pulse quickened. Even his praise was irritating. She couldn’t believe she’d ever thought about kissing him.
“Even though it could have gotten you fired. Or worse.”
Hannah nearly laughed. Wasn’t this already worse? Jammed in a salvage ship closet with the Face of Space? Breathing in his musky, citrus scent and hovering on the verge of angry tears as her mind warred with her body over what to do with him?
But Gary was right. She’d followed her conscience, even when it got her in trouble. And it was kind of nice to be acknowledged for that, even by Gary.
He cocked his head to one side. “I wasn’t too sure about you when Rufus told me you’d be my producer up here.”
Hannah felt a sharp prickling at the back of her neck. After paying her that compliment, now he was questioning her work? Maybe he was angry that she wasn’t throwing herself at him like Barbie—or like pretty much every intern, male or female, who had come through DayLite Syndicate.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hannah straightened her spine and bumped her head on the top wall of her cupboard. At least she and Gary were both pointed in the same direction. She didn’t want to think about how disorienting it would be to fight with Gary while they were face-to-feet or nose-to-elbow.
Gary laughed. “I said, I wasn’t too sure about you at first.”
“That’s not what you said.”
“That’s what I was beginning to say, then.” He paused, giving her room to object, but Hannah remained silent. “And, well, I guess I’m still not really convinced—”
“How is that any better?”
Gary laughed again. “I suppose it’s not. Sorry. I’m not going about this the right way.”
Hannah felt her hackles starting to rise again. Rufus had warned her that Gary was self-absorbed and manipulative. No, that’s not what he’d said. Gary was distracting her—with his shiny smile, his strong shoulders, and a rich voice that wrapped her up in a warm blanket. Hannah hadn’t thought anything could look good in that awful radioactive yellow-green color, but Gary Nelson made his jumpsuit look very good indeed. She couldn’t remember Rufus’s exact words now, and that disturbed her just as much as having the plastic reality host barely a meter away.
In her quarters. Her very tight quarters. Hannah’s stomach felt uneasy, but it wasn’t space sickness. This was fluttery and disruptive and it kept her from thinking clearly. It was all she could do to keep from cursing under her breath. Then her face and neck flushed hot when she realized he was watching her again.
“I think maybe we can help each other up here, to make a difference.”
“Help each other how?” She was more curious than suspicious, especially since Gary kept revealing new depths she hadn’t anticipated. Knowledge of space dynamics, check. Ability to quote Shakespeare—and as a means of demeaning his own profession—check. Good looks and smelling pleasantly of citrus, check—no, wait, she was getting distracted again. And now a nose for investigative journalism. In space. Because apparently this was her life now.
“The contracts.” He adjusted his position, his face falling into shadow. She breathed a sigh of relief that for the moment he couldn’t dazzle her with that smile. But she was left instead with the smooth tones of his professionally trained voice, and she wondered if that was even worse.
“The competition between the crews,” Gary continued. “That should keep things interesting enough for Rufus while we go after the meat.
”
He paused while Manny, apparently talking with someone over his headset, passed by on the other side of the door.
The meat. Hannah shook the thought away.
“The sensitive satellite data.” Gary met Hannah’s gaze. “Of course, that could be completely legitimate work, helping countries prevent their tech and their data from falling into the wrong hands.”
“But Dana mentioned the possibility of war.”
Gary shifted back into the light as a glimmer of a smile touched his lips, and Hannah had to blink her thoughts back into focus. “That she did. And I’ve done some digging of my own.”
Hannah laughed. “I’m sorry. The Face of Space is breaking news now?”
Gary winced. “I never liked that moniker.”
“Sorry.”
Gary waved off her apology. “Did you know crews sometimes go after satellites that aren’t actually dead yet.” His mouth twisted into an embarrassed smile. “Some people, they like to talk. You know how sometimes fans will send letters to celebrities, spilling intimate details of their personal struggles, confessions of wrongdoing . . .”
The thought of Gary and Barbie together leapt into Hannah’s thoughts, and the burning sensation rose in her chest again. “You didn’t.”
“I didn’t do anything. I just swung by the galley over on the Midden and—”
“Are we even allowed over there?”
Gary frowned. “Allowed? I didn’t pass through a security checkpoint or anything.”
“But we don’t have a contract with—”
“Will you relax for one second about the contracts? If we need anyone to sign anything, you can be sure Rufus will have his suits get right on that.” Gary blew out an irritated sigh, and Hannah felt the muscles in her shoulders bunching up.
She swallowed hard and tried to forget again about Rufus’s emails, and about how Barbie would happily volunteer for duty if Gary wanted to explore the mechanics of physical romance in orbit.
“I was bored. Came across Joey in the galley. He offered some coffee. The next thing I knew Barbie was at my side, clutching my sleeve, and telling me all about the jobs they’ve done the past three months. This wasn’t the first satellite they’ve tampered with. She told me about another crew that regularly disables active satellites, then lets another ship under the same parent company scoop up the salvage contract.”
“You’re sure she wasn’t just trying to impress you?”
“No, I’m not. But the look on Joey’s face told me she was revealing details that should have been kept quiet. I don’t think he’s too worried about it, though.”
Hannah knew he was waiting for her to ask him why. She indulged him.
He spread his arms, almost touching the walls on either side. “Because the Face of Space is just a pretty smile and no brain, right?”
Hannah felt a genuine pang for Gary. This wasn’t the fragile ego of a television personality whose hobby might have been planning new cosmetic surgery procedures while still recovering from the last one. Gary Nelson was proving to be considerably more complex. Was he asking her to tell him the truth?
“That’s the image,” Hannah said.
“Yes.”
“But you can use that.” Hannah felt herself mirroring his smile, with her lips cracked from dehydration and her not-quite-perfect teeth. She felt suddenly self-conscious about her appearance. It was the first time she’d compared her normal looks to his Hollywood gloss, and she tried not to wince as the dim light glinted off his veneers—each one probably worth more than her beat-up car.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Gary said. “We can start checking out the jobs Barbie told me about. See if there’s anything to it.”
Hannah reached for the drawer where she’d stashed her tablet. “I’ll ask Olivia for help, see if she can look up a few things. I’ll just have to figure out how to ask in a way that doesn’t get her in trouble.”
“Throw it in with a bunch of irrelevant research requests,” he suggested. “Ask about space toilet designs, and about the Kama Sutra of the next frontier. Rufus will love that.”
Hannah bristled. The mention of space sex had her thinking again about Gary and Barbie together, or recalling the wolf she’d been warned about beneath his shiny exterior. She was stupid to have any attraction to the Face of Space. If Olivia found out, Hannah would never live it down.
She turned on her tablet and made a face at the backlog of new messages from Rufus. The most recent message was titled “Make it less boring, please.” A terse command to delve into the private lives of the crew, get as much gossip as possible, and even stir up strife and sexual tension if she could.
“Catch them in the act,” his message ordered. “The more compromising the position, the better. Set them up if you have to. They’re getting paid for this.”
The text concluded, “Do this, or don’t bother coming back.”
“Hannah?” Gary touched her elbow, and she felt a thrilling electricity run up her arm. She pulled back.
“Rufus wants more sex and intrigue.” She looked up at Gary. “And probably not the kind of intrigue you’ve been talking about.” She paused. “Don’t you think it’s odd that Rufus would take such a hands-on interest? To the point of sending production notes himself instead of farming it out to one of the show runners?”
“He is the show runner now,” Gary replied. “For everything. That’s the scuttlebutt. Whether it’s budget cuts or a god complex, I couldn’t tell you. But if we start feeding him footage more along the lines of what he’s asking for, maybe it will make it easier for Olivia to send us some files.”
Light flooded into Hannah’s snug cabin as her door was pulled open again.
“There you are!” Barbie exclaimed with a half-petulant squeal, her eyes on Gary. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” She glanced at Hannah with a visible pout. “The very last place I thought you’d be.”
“Production meeting,” Gary said with a smile. Hannah was impressed how easily he turned on the charm. “What can I do for you, Miss Goggle-Belver?”
Barbie’s face blossomed into a flirtatious smile that made her look genuinely pretty. “Oh, god! Don’t call me that.”
Barbie smacked Gary lightly on the arm. Hannah looked away and tried not to roll her eyes. If this weren’t happening inside her own cabin, she would have fled the scene with all haste.
“You were looking for me?” Gary asked, and Hannah smiled at the edge of impatience she heard in his voice, though that might have been wishful thinking on her part.
Barbie looked furtively at Hannah and then smiled at Gary, a near replay of her awestruck fan routine from the docking bay. “It’s just that I overheard that message that came in, you know, from your producer. Rufus?”
Gary’s face froze in a mask of bemusement, but Hannah turned on Barbie. “You overheard an encrypted, text-based message?”
Barbie’s cheeks flushed deep red. “Well, I intercepted it.”
“Intercepted,” Hannah replied flatly. “And then actively decoded.”
Barbie pressed her lips together in a straight line.
“That’s quite a skill, Barbie,” Gary said, though the smile had left his face.
Still, Barbie took his interest as encouragement. “I’ve learned how to hack into the Churly Flint’s communications.” Her smile brightened. “Rufus wants better footage. Sexier.”
She paused a moment and regarded Gary crowded into Hannah’s close quarters, then reached for the main zipper of her navy coveralls and pulled downward just enough to offer a healthy glimpse of her free-floating cleavage. “I’d like to help.”
“No, uh,” Gary stammered, his hands raised to block his view of Barbie. “That really won’t be necessary.”
“I’m out.” Clutching her tablet, Hannah wriggled past Gary and pushed her way out into the corridor. She was too tired and too annoyed to stand her ground.
Gary kept protesting, but all Hannah heard as she fled her
berth were Barbie’s giggles.
The next several hours were a major chore. Even though Gary declined Barbie’s offer, as graciously as possible, her blatant overture had definitely damaged the fragile trust he’d started to build with Hannah.
And so his producer reverted to her all-business approach. She ordered Gary into various compartments of the Churly Flint and whipped through the new list of shots Rufus had ordered—all the segments that were by-the-book, at least. If Rufus expected them to sneak into the captain’s quarters to record what Dana and Sid were getting up to, he was going to be disappointed.
Gary sucked down another plastic bulb of water between takes as Hannah set up for the next item on her list.
She’d already had him record a few takes of several Space Junkers promotions inside their launch capsule, then framed him against the domed windows of the Churly Flint’s control cabin to record a couple of Mars Ho candidate eliminations. He was far out of the loop on the current Mars Ho season and had no clue as to what competitive challenges called “egg mcguffin,” “soap crisis,” and “alien artisanal” might entail. He also had little idea who the candidates were for this second round, though he imagined audiences at home crying out in shock and triumph as Kimball Flynn was removed from the Mars Ho Candidate Habitat after the “compost cutie” challenge.
Then Hannah had him don a borrowed EVA helmet to pre-record his appearance on the That’s So Real awards show—the people’s choice awards for international reality television programming. He’d been tapped to announce the winner in the Best Spanish-Language Reality Programming, Technology category, and also the coveted Best Villain, Cross-Genre, award.
Now he was in the Churly Flint’s galley, looking over the teleprompter text for the next segment, the introduction to a Mars Ho chemistry challenge—extracting water from Martian soil. Gary assumed the producers were hoping for some explosive results, on camera, for that particular elimination exercise.
Hannah got the camera angle she was looking for, and Gary got ready to turn on the charm. He stored the empty water bulb in the top of his sock so as not to rumple the lines of his jumpsuit. Hannah noticed the nod to vanity.
Lovers and Lunatics (Mars Adventure Romance Series Book 2) Page 8