Lovers and Lunatics (Mars Adventure Romance Series Book 2)

by Jennifer Willis

  “Right,” Gary replied without conviction. He castled his king, something he’d seen his niece do. “And they are . . . ?”

  Brett wore his incredulity plainly on his face. “The space salvage and mining company. They own the Midden. Queen to B6.”

  “Ah, so nepotism.” Gary brought his white queen forward two spaces. He didn’t imagine the CEO would have to pull too many strings to get his niece aboard. There wasn’t a glut of young people scrambling for jobs in space salvage. “Learning from the ground up?”

  Brett chuckled and advanced a new pawn. “Or from orbit down. I don’t know. But she works hard. Smart, too.”

  Gary took one of Brett’s knights with his bishop.

  Brett pushed back from the table and nodded in appreciation. “Clever.”

  Gary looked down at the board. He had been preoccupied with what to do about Hannah and then this odd conversation about Barbie, and he hadn’t been paying attention to his pieces. Was it his knight or his bishop that he’d moved? It was a wonder he could even keep track of which color he was playing.

  “You must be getting fawned over all the time, like with Barbie, right?” Brett took Gary’s bishop with his queen.

  Less than you’d think. Gary used the interruption to really see the game board for the first time. He realized his earlier mistake, guarding the bishop with his queen. He hadn’t intended to do that, and it was going to cost him. Gary advanced his remaining bishop one space. “That sort of thing loses its appeal rather quickly.”

  Brett slid his queen over one square. Gary advanced one of his untouched pawns, and Brett quickly castled his king. Gary paused. Just when he’d thought he was getting the hang of the board, he realized again that he had no idea what was going on. He advanced another pawn, and Brett brought forward one of his own to meet it.

  Gary sighed. He could tell Brett about the time Rufus’s secretary—the daughter of a major sponsor—had locked herself, naked, inside Gary’s dressing room and refused to leave without a very special autograph. Or about the fan who’d dug up Gary’s home address and installed motion-activated cameras in his bedroom. Or about how it was simply impossible for Gary to go to the store to buy a simple tube of toothpaste without someone—from barely legal babysitters to senior citizens—making an awkward attempt at propositioning the Face of Space.

  He could tell Brett how everyone at work, from the kids at Craft Services to the show runners, seemed to hate him for all the attention he was getting, when he didn’t want it anyway. And how he really hoped Hannah wasn’t one of them.

  In a fit of desperation, Gary moved his queen forward to stand toe-to-tow with Brett’s, though he wasn’t sure what he was trying to achieve. His mind was everywhere but on the board, but he didn’t want to quit.

  Brett moved his queen back to safety. Gary took one of his pawns and then waited for Brett’s next move. The pilot blew out a long, slow breath as he surveyed the board. He moved his bishop back to stack on top of his other bishop and his queen.

  Gary rested his fingertip atop a pawn and watched Brett’s reaction—the lift of his eyebrows let Gary know he was onto something. From there, spotting the move was a simple matter of tracking Brett’s eyes across the board. Gary lifted the pawn and made his move.

  “You have a terrible poker face,” Gary said.

  Brett looked up in alarm. “What?”

  “That last move. You told me what you feared the most.”

  Brett’s shoulders slumped. “That’s why Joey keeps beating me?”

  Gary was just a novice himself. Ruth would have been able to pick apart all the bone-head maneuvers on both sides of the board. And then Brett’s next move with his bishop made Gary wonder if Brett was just toying with him.

  Gary moved his knight forward, hoping to put Brett on the defensive, but Brett slid his bishop over.

  “You’re sacrificing your bishop.” Gary took the piece with his rook. Brett didn’t seem overly concerned.

  Brett brought his other bishop across the board to threaten Gary’s king. “Check.”

  Gary took the black bishop with his king.

  “Interesting,” Brett said in a voice that communicated he thought Gary’s move was anything but. “And, check.” Brett brought his knight forward to box in Gary’s king. Then he pushed away from the table and made his way to the coffee cupboard.

  “Crap.” Gary plucked his forgotten coffee bulb out of the air. He took a sip and was surprised that it was still hot.

  Brett smiled. “Yeah, it doesn’t cool down too fast up here. The design of the bulb, or something.” He pulled a coffee pod from the cupboard and slid it into the machine. He crossed his arms over his chest while he waited. “So, you were saying that having a bunch of pretty girls throw themselves at you isn’t all that fun.”

  Gary laughed. “Not exactly what I said, but yes. It gets tiresome. Oppressive, even.” He slid his king back to safety.

  “Not me, man.” A broad smile lit up his face. “I mean, if I could be a real hero or something, you know, show everybody at home how the work we’re doing makes a real difference? Maybe come to the rescue, just in the nick of time? That would be something.”

  The machine beeped and Brett retrieved his bulb of hot coffee. After a quick sip, he returned to the chess board and executed a quick and deceptively casual move, aggressively advancing his queen. “So, you’re not married? No kids?”

  Gary frowned at the board and shifted a new pawn. “Not my kids, no.”

  Brett laughed and brought his queen forward. “Somebody else’s kids, then? Oh, and check.”

  “Two nieces, two nephews.” Gary kept his gaze on the board, scrambling for a way to protect his king. Nothing was jumping out at him. “My sister’s kids.”

  “You spend much time with them?” Brett sipped his coffee and watched Gary.

  “As much as I can.” Gary made a hasty, forced move with his king. He winced when he saw the look of triumph on Brett’s face. “Not as much as I’d like.”

  Brett savored long swallows of coffee before he reached for his queen and moved in for the kill. “That’s too bad. And, checkmate.”

  Gary lifted his hands in surrender. “That’s three out of three.”

  “So what are you doing up here, instead of hanging out with your sister’s kids?”

  “I go where they send me, do what I’m told to do, say what I’m told to say.” Gary pushed away from the table, sucked down the remainder of his coffee, and started rummaging through the cupboards for fruit snacks.

  Brett started setting up the board again. “Entrees in the extreme lower left cupboard, but I wouldn’t touch those, since neither of us is crew on this ship.”

  Gary pulled open a drawer of snack pouches and chose one labeled “granola snack, 1 serving.” The generic labeling was a relief after all the branded logos splashed across everything from slippers to condiments at The Ranch. He tore open the pouch, mindful of letting any of the crunchy cubes escape, and popped one into his mouth. It was strangely chewy, almost gelatinous.

  “Good pay?” Brett asked.

  “Hmm?” Gary swallowed the snack cube and went to the coffee cupboard.

  “Your job.”

  Gary slid a new pod into the machine. “Yeah. It put Ruth through medical school. And Freddie’s a Ph.D now, chemical engineer. Scott’s a junior at Cornell, and Liz is headed to UCLA in the fall.”

  Brett let out a low whistle. “I’d think you be buying sports cars and super models and stuff.”

  Gary laughed. “I don’t think you can buy super models.” The machine’s bell rang and he retrieved his second bulb of coffee, just as a perfect as the first. He made a mental note to see if he could find the same make and model back on the ground.

  “So you’re hooking up with your producer, then. Hannah.”

  Gary choked on his coffee and felt a moment of panic when some of the hot caffeine squirted up his nose.

  “You don’t have anybody at home, and you don’t want
Barbie.” Brett stared at him and practically gave him a once-over. “And I’m pretty sure you’re not gay. So, you’re sleeping with Hannah.”

  Still feeling the burning sting in his sinuses, Gary shook his head. “I’m not, no.” His voice was raspy, and he coughed a few times.

  “So, she’s available? Is she any fun?” Brett asked with a hopeful grin.

  Gary stared at him. He didn’t try to disguise his shock at the sudden turn in the conversation, not that his plastic face would reveal his disquiet.

  Brett took another long draw from his bulb. “Up here, we just don’t get many opportunities to, you know, fraternize with someone new.”

  “What about Barbie?” Gary asked.

  Brett shook his head. “Sid’s real protective of her.” He gestured at the board, trying to start up a new game, but Gary waved him off. “So, Hannah?”

  “You’ll have to ask her.” Gary tucked the bag of granola cubes into his pocket and started for the corridor that would lead him back to the Churly Flint and the peace and quiet of his own quarters, assuming Barbie hadn’t broken in to lie in wait for him.

  Was everyone in space perpetually horny? Sex was the first thing Sid asked Dana for as soon as the ships docked, and Barbie had immediately thrown herself at him, too. Now Gary wondered if the chess games were simply Brett’s way of warming up to asking about Hannah.

  He had an unwelcome flashback to that late night in Rufus’s office during the first Mars Ho, when Rufus was drunk and making increasingly lewd comments about the desirability of each of the female contestants and even the production staff—Hannah included—all while trying to goad Gary into sexualized banter, too. The next morning Rufus had sent him an audio recording of the conversation, like the lascivious prick had been proud of his behavior.

  Gary reached his cupboard-cabin and shut himself away in the dark. He really wished he hadn’t told Brett to approach Hannah. Should he have stood up for her? Did he think he stood a chance with her himself? He closed his eyes and earnestly wished he hadn’t just downed enough strong coffee to keep him awake and alert for the next ten hours.

  5

  Hannah was outside Gary’s cabin, banging on the door and calling his name. She’d been at it for at least thirty seconds with no response.

  “Gary! Will you wake up already?” Her mouth was close enough to the door that she wondered how long it had been since the surface had gotten a decent cleaning. “Gary! We’ve got a new assignment, and we’ve got to start right now! Gary!”

  She lifted her hand to bang on the door again just as Gary pulled the door open, and she narrowly avoided punching her star in the face.

  “A swing and a miss,” he said jovially.

  Hannah studied his appearance, judging his camera-readiness and trying to discern what part was the face he’d been born with and what was cosmetic enhancement. Even with the overnight stubble and his thick hair pointing every which way, his face was a masterpiece. His procedures were probably worth every penny of Rufus’s money.

  Gary yawned, and Hannah backed away.

  “You got any mouthwash in there?” she asked.

  “I wish.” He ran a hand over his face. “You said we’ve got work to do right now? Do I have time for a shave?”

  “Barely. I’ll fill you in on the details while you get ready.”

  He grabbed his toiletry kit from one of the drawers mounted in the cabin wall and followed her into the corridor.

  She tried not to listen while he was using the microgravity toilet—more of a sanitary suction hose than a traditional commode. She kept having to repeat the assignment details to him from outside the thin door and then wait to see if he’d heard her.

  The man was certainly pretty in the morning—all the time, really—but he was not the brightest bulb before his morning caffeine.

  “It’s called the Klondike,” she told him for at least the fourth time, shouting to be heard over the sound of the vacuum engaging. “The Klondike-3.”

  “Like the Klondike Gold Rush?” Gary shouted back.

  “Exactly!”

  The vacuum shut off inside the toilet closet, and Gary’s electric razor buzzed to life. “That all happened up in the Yukon, you know. Late 1800s. Clever name for an asteroid prospector.”

  “Don’t need the history lesson, Gary,” Hannah muttered as she glanced at her tablet to reference the details DayLite had sent up from the ground. “It’s on its way back from the asteroid Haris . . . Hariasa. That’s one of the Amor asteroids, and the prospector—”

  “You know, the Amor asteroids are pretty interesting,” Gary interrupted, his voice reverberating with the electric razor. “They have Mars-crossing orbits, instead of Earth-crossing, and—”

  “Save it for the camera, Gary!” Hannah replied, though she knew any know-it-all comments from the host on the cosmic origins of the universe would end up in the digital trash.

  He pulled open the folding door looking like a freshly shellacked Ken doll. “Where do you want me?”

  They made their way quickly to the Churly Flint cockpit, where Hannah thought the domed windows framing the turning planet below would make for an excellent backdrop. But the cabin was a crowded ruckus with Dana and her crew monitoring the signal coming from Klondike-3 and mapping out the best routes for capture and transport.

  Hannah and Gary hovered in the control cabin’s entryway for a few minutes to record different angles of the crew’s activity, before a sharp look from Dana let them know that they were impeding her crew’s efforts. Hannah did a quick check on the cameras she’d mounted to the walls earlier, and then left the ship’s crew to their work.

  Gary seemed reluctant to do any recording in or near the docking bay—he kept pushing for the galley, despite Hannah’s protests that Earth-based viewers were more likely to be impressed by the big hatch door of the docking station than the microgravity coffee machine. He finally relented and seemed relieved when they found the docking bay unoccupied.

  Hannah started setting up her gear while Gary floated in the middle of the compartment, glancing about warily.

  “We’re not going to be in anybody’s way,” she reassured him. “Both crews are working on how to go after the prospector.”

  “Both crews?”

  “It’s a high profile target, too valuable not to have a backup for capture.”

  “But don’t these ships belong to competing companies?”

  Hannah smiled. “That’s why we’ve got to get this done. As soon as the crews are ready to disengage, we’re splitting up. Rival ships going after the same prize. Who will get there first?” Her grin widened. “See? This is exciting. You were right.”

  Gary looked genuinely alarmed, and Hannah wondered if he might be suffering from separation anxiety, like Olivia’s cocker spaniel.

  “But the Midden doesn’t have a Space Junkers contract,” he protested.

  “They do now.” Hannah mounted the spare tablet and its equipment arm to the wall to serve as a teleprompter. “Rufus and his lawyers took care of it.” She adjusted the tablet to face Gary. “Ready?”

  Gary didn’t look remotely ready. He might have been trying to frown, but she couldn’t tell underneath all the work he’d had done. His appearance remained attractively placid. But his hands were balled into fists and the tendons were sticking out in his neck. It wasn’t a good look for him.

  “Gary!” Hannah snapped, and she was surprised when he flinched. She softened her voice. “I need you to focus. We don’t have a whole lot of time to get this recorded and transmitted back home before we head out after Klondike.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” Gary faced the camera and turned on his familiar smile, but Hannah could see the strain. He looked out of focus, fuzzy around the edges. His eyes were dim and distracted, his mind clearly somewhere else. Hannah worried he might be coming down with some kind of space flu.

  “Here we go.” She hovered behind the camera, monitoring the picture and the sound as Gary launched into his cold r
ead of the teleprompter text. He was amazingly good at his job, even in his current state.

  “. . . Making its way back toward Earth with significant stores of gold and tungsten mined from the Hariasa asteroid,” he read, his voice rising and falling in perfect announcer cadence. “Unfortunately, Klondike-3 expended more fuel than expected when lifting off from the asteroid with its payload and beginning its return trip home. Now the craft is coasting Earthward, its reserves spent and with no way to enter a stable orbit. Without help, Klondike-3, and its payload, will just drift right by or maybe even crash into the moon.”

  Gary paused and frowned, and Hannah half-way hoped he would launch into one of his rants about the barely literate pseudo-science behind the writing, or a spontaneous lesson on asteroids. But he didn’t. He simply took a breath and pushed forward with the script that had been sent up from The Ranch.

  “This kind of extra-planetary mining is still very much in its infancy, which makes the successful capture and return of Klondike-3 all the more urgent.” He took another breath, his smile unwavering. He paused, allowing a break in the dialog that would give the production editors room for cuts.

  To Hannah’s trained eye, Gary was obviously exhausted but he kept himself in frame, maintained a facial expression that was simultaneously polished and engaging, and delivered his lines with an appealing gravity that had been his trademark during the first round of Mars Ho. And he was doing it all cold, on his first run-through. They wouldn’t need a second take.

  Hannah was still irritated by Gary’s interactions with Barbie, and she had stayed up half the night deliberately reinforcing her dislike of the Face of Space—even after she realized she was doing it mostly to keep some distance from him. The few times she’d caught herself feeling drawn to him had distracted her from her work and made her think too hard about her relationship with DayLite Syndicate—and about how her media school roommate, Valerie, was off producing documentaries about genital mutilation and making a real difference in the world while Hannah struggled to find her own value.