by Enid Titan
“Gav!” she calls, “Are you okay?!”
“Yes. And I’ve got it.”
“Are you crazy!? We have other tools.”
“It was instinct. I’m sorry. Can you pull me in now?”
I’m floating. And I don’t hate floating. But it’s unnerving, knowing I could die out here like this in a position that ought to feel utterly peaceful. She grunts as she pulls me up. Once my feet touch the ledge again, I’m calm.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t scare me like that.”
“You worried for me, then?”
“No,” she snaps, “But if someone’s going to get a crack at you, it’ll be me.”
“Spoken like the woman who stabbed me.”
“You deserved that.”
“For what?” I gasp.
“You… you threatened me! I don’t want to talk about that. I suppose I’m glad I didn’t kill you. Now come on. We have to work.”
This is the friendliest she’s been, so I don’t argue with her. We fix the patch and Jisoo prepares the decompression bay for us to return to. We have ten more minutes of oxygen to spare. Once we return to the bay, Jisoo asks if we’re ready.
“Aye,” I tell her. The doors close and air fills the bay again. I can hear the hum of the ship and more than my breathing and Jaen’s. She turns to me with a smile on her face.
“That was incredible,” she gushes.
I’d give anything to keep that smile plastered there. Anything. But as much as I find Jaen intriguing, I don’t understand her at all.
Chapter 11
Reassignment
We take our helmets off and gasp for breath. It feels good to breathe properly. Jaen’s smiling and I can’t help but smile back. She’s intoxicating. And impossible. And beautiful. And I want her so badly, even if my abdomen still aches from where she stabbed me. I can forgive her for that. Her hair floats around her face like a cloud of curls.
“Jaen,” I whisper, “You did well out there.”
“I saved your life.”
“Aye. Thank you.”
I lean forward and I know I shouldn’t, but I kiss her. I kiss her the way Kazim told me to, and she doesn’t stop me, but she doesn’t lean into the kiss either. Her lips move and they part when I urge them to separate and I grab her by the waist of her spacesuit and hold her body against mine and she finally touches me, her arms moving to mine. I know I ought to stop myself. I’m kissing her too long and too hard. I force myself away from her and she gasps.
“Gavriel…”
“I… Thank you,” I stumble over the words awkwardly.
“You can’t do that,” she says, “No… No, you can’t.”
“I’m sorry,” I reply, because it’s the right thing to say. I’m not sorry. Kissing her was the best thing I’d ever done. Kazim’s right. It’s been too long since I’ve been with a woman. But I’m not like him. Doxies don’t satisfy me. I need connection. I need beauty and intelligence and the untamed badass insanity that makes a woman stab you because you get on her nasty side.
“Don’t do that,” she says, “Seriously. It’s not a good idea.”
“I thought… I…”
“You thought wrong.”
The doors open and Jisoo steps into the room with a smile on her face.
“Well done! Your shift is over. Garth’s relieved you both. Gav he wants you to reassign Jaen to engineering so she can work on the problem.”
“Aye.”
Now she won’t look at me. I feel stupid and ashamed for thinking she wanted me. For thinking she was kissing me back. I guess when she saved me out there, what we went through, it made me think we’d formed a connection. When I moved past her on the ship, her breathing sped up. I thought that meant she liked me. She didn’t push me away. But she made herself clear.
It’s not a good idea. Unambiguous rejection.
“Excellent work, crewman,” I mumble and stalk off.
I hear Jisoo asking Jaen if something happened out there between us. But Jaen doesn’t answer. She doesn’t talk to anyone else. And the one person she talks to, she hates. Thank goodness I have to reassign her. I couldn’t stand another night shift with her near me. I can’t have her near me at all. I have to shake this stupid crush before I do something stupid. Again.
Why did I kiss her? What did I think would happen? Did I really think the woman who stabbed me would fall into my arms? Did I think one stupid space walk was all it took to convince her I wasn’t like the other men on this ship? Xanth is old and desperate for company. Kazim will sleep with anything that walks. I want someone who makes my heart race when she enters the room. Someone small but fierce, someone mighty but gentle.
I reassign her to another shift. I can’t stand to have her on the night shift again and have her glaring at me, or worse. I don’t see her for another three days and there’s plenty to do. The crew assigned to the engine room works hard at fixing the patch as we proceed slower through a dangerous region of space.
Garth spends hours pouring over my detailed reports, wondering who and how someone could have put such a large hole in engineering without Connie noticing. We meet in the mess hall to discuss it over pints of pumpkin beer — home brewed by Licker and the worst pumpkin beer I’ve ever tasted in my life — and plates of gravy sodden tubers.
“We don’t need to wonder how or who, but why?”
Garth rubs the tip of his finger along one of his tusks.
“Aye. But asking why would anyone do this only adds up to nothing. We’re all going to the same place.”
“A saboteur might not want us to get there.”
“Damn it, Gavriel. We all need this mission too much for it to fail.”
“Every mission has a chance of failing, Captain.”
“Aye,” growls Garth bitterly, necking back the rest of his pumpkin beer and snapping his fingers impatiently so Licker fills his glass to the brim with more frothy liquid.
“Whoever did this wants us to fail. That’s the beginning of a why. We need to figure out the rest.”
Garth grunts.
“Is there a chance it’s the new girl?”
“Who? Yara Bent?”
“No. Jaen Nabokov.”
“No,” Garth answers quickly, “Never. Not Jaen.”
“How well do you know her?”
“What is it to you?”
“It’s nothing at all to me. I’ve worked the night shift with her. We did a space walk. She doesn’t talk to anyone.”
“She has good reason for that,” Garth grumbles.
He talks like he knows her. But he can’t, possibly. Where would Garth Moray meet a slip of a human like that on Helios of all places?
“Perhaps she has good reason to sabotage the ship.”
“Damn it, Gavriel. It’s not her. Look somewhere else for your saboteur.”
“Fine. Maybe it was Connie.”
“If Connie wanted to sabotage the ship, she’d make it someone else’s problem. Tighten the guard around engineering and keep an eye out.”
“Aye,” I answer him, finishing my beer and digging into my bowl of gravy.
“And Gavriel, don’t tell anyone what we discussed. It’s hard enough to maintain privacy on a ship this small. I don’t want the crew feeling… mutinous.”
“Aye, Captain.”
He’s right. The only thing worse than sabotage would be mutiny.
Chapter 12
And Then There’s Blackness
I’m better off on the night shift alone. I don’t care for Jaen’s side glances or her impenetrable silence. I can spend half my shift lying on the dome floor staring at space and get up every few minutes to check sensors. I prop my head up on my arms, avoiding the points of my horns and flicking my ears so white hair falls away from my face.
We fly beneath a large nebula with green clouds of gas dancing from its gravity center. The clouds remind me of Jaen’s hair. Thick. Fluffy. Soft. I suppose nebulae aren’t soft. But I bet Jaen’s hair is.
Kissing her was amazing — the best thing I’d done in ages. Her lips softened and parted for mine. Her stiff posture weakened in the grasp of my firm hand on her waist. Kissing her felt so good I’d tricked myself into believing she could have feelings for me.
I couldn’t blame Kazim for his horrible advice. I hadn’t kissed her because of Kazim’s advice. I kissed Jaen Nabokov because I want her. I want her more than I want the treasure. I nearly lose myself in wanting before my panel erupts in alarming beeping sounds. Shit.
I rise and brush off my trousers before I diagnose the beeps and decide whether they’re any cause for alarm. Annabel’s voice emerges on the intercom.
“Everything swell down there, Gavriel?”
Her voice squeaks even when she’s sounding tough.
“Aye. It’s only a meteor cloud. 700,000 kilometers away. We’re on a different heading.”
“Anything interesting on the sensors?”
“Nothing at all. We have empty space ahead. No signs of wake from any confederate space craft. If there are any out there, they’re doing a good job of not being found.”
“If we see any solo ships, I’m recommending a raid to Garth.”
“Aye. I’m in agreement.”
“Annabel, out.”
I run my hands over the panel that would have been Jaen’s. I had to move her from the night shift. I couldn’t face her again so soon after what I’d done. I couldn’t confess to her I hadn’t kissed her out of a desire for conquest but because she reminded me of feelings I’d killed off before my first salvage. Feelings that had died on the homeworld. Feelings that died when I realized all the pretty girls sold their souls and their bodies to the confederacy and the only way to find love in our sector of space was to pay for it.
I’ve always been a cynic. I thought the feeling permanent. I’ve had women — plenty of women, but not as many as Kazim — and I never thought of any of them the way I thought of Jaen. Constantly. Perpetually.
Then there was the uncomfortable truth I avoided thinking about. Jaen might be the saboteur. Connie interrupted my musings on the intercom.
“Gavriel!”
“Aye, Connie. What can I do for you?”
“Send crewmen down here immediately. There’s a fissure in a part of the patch and we’re going too fast. We only have an hour before this place — holy shit mother fucking cock sucking lint fucker —
I silence my intercom. I get the point. I assign two of the night crew to Connie and evening events settle. We follow the same clock as the confederacy — 24 hours — because it makes navigation easier. But I only need to sleep every 30 hours, so I don’t mind late nights. And tonight I’ve had too much thinking. If I want Jaen, I must take action.
In my homeworld’s history, there’s one way males have won the affection of females. Verse. I can only write and read shorthand, but I can construct a verse in my head without understanding the loops and symbols.
Jaen… beautiful flower. No, that sounds stupid. Every man compares women to flowers. We want them to be soft and to fall apart in our hands when we touch them. Women are more like trees. But I suppose no woman wants men to compare her thickness to a trunk. Damn, I’m horrible this. I hear footsteps entering the dome.
“Hello?”
I turn around, half-expecting Jaen to be there, but there’s no one. I swore the door opened.
“I’m losing my mind finally,” I murmur, “I’d better tell Garth.”
I examine the panel for a sensor issue. When you’re working ships like ours, problems like that are bound to crop up. Nothing wrong with the sensors. I hear footsteps again and whirl around. Maybe it’s someone playing a prank. Kazim walks silently, and he finds scaring the hell out of anyone amusing.
But again, there’s nobody. I check the panels again. Something has to be wrong. My fingers fly furiously over the different ship system diagnostics. I open an intercom link.
“Connie?”
“What the bloody hell do you want Gavriel?” she snaps before catching herself and clearing her throat, “I mean… what can I do for you quartermaster?”
“There’s something odd happening with the sensors here.”
“Like what? I’m knee deep in shit down here!”
Connie’s always knee deep in shit if you ask her.
“I’m hearing the door open, but there’s no one else in here.”
“Gavriel. Do not bother me until we’re safely out of this — shit balls sucking horse fucker — part of space.”
“Thanks for the help, Connie.”
I close the link. Connie’s idea of an emergency is limited to whatever happens in her engine room. But this engineering problem might be related to the hole in the hull. A diagnostic can’t hurt. I initialize the diagnostic and I hear it again. The door opens. There are footsteps. I turn around, but there’s nobody there and then I feel it, a hard thwack on the back of my head. I’m too stunned to speak and I don’t feel the pain until I hit the ground, as if it happened to someone else.
There’s the sound of it, a thud at the base of my skull. And then there’s blackness.
Chapter 13
Insurrection
“Jaen…” I murmur as my eyes flutter open.
I smelled her hair before my eyes struggled open. Xanth leaned over her, guiding her arm on how to use the metal probe on me. I groaned and flopped back down. Bastard. Did he need to lean his entire body into hers to show her how to use a simple medical probe? My mouth is dry. Too dry. And the back of my head throbs.
“Dose him with 600 milligrams. Go ahead.”
I wince as a sharp pinch in my arm sends painkillers shooting into my bloodstream. My head doesn’t cease its incessant drum throb.
“Xanth,” I croak, “What the hell happened?”
“Someone attacked you,” he says calmly.
“What?!”
I sit up too fast and groan as I feel color draining from my face and I land on my back, hitting my horns too hard and sending a reverberating jolt of pain through my skull. I groan.
“He needs more painkillers,” Xanth explains to Jaen, “200 milligrams more.”
She injects me again and I swear if he had anyone except Jaen assigned to him, I’d try to break their arm for giving a shot of painkillers that hurt so badly. This is pure madness.
I groan again and wait a few minutes for the initial nausea to wash over me.
“Who attacked me?”
“We don’t know,” Xanth answers, “Poke will wake Garth and once I determine you’re well, he’ll meet with you.”
“I’m fine now.”
“No, you’re not,” Xanth insists.
“Jaen, tell him I’m fine.”
Xanth scoffs, “I haven’t heard my new assistant say a single word. Good luck getting one out of her.”
Jaen presses her finger to her lips before Xanth turns around. I want to smile at her devious nature, but I can’t move that much without sending pain shooting through my head.
“What happened while I was knocked out?”
“My job is to treat you, not to recount every event on this ship. Jaen, come here I need you to update his chart.”
I take her hand before she scurries off, and she quickly snaps it away from me. Damn it. I don’t want to suspect her, but she knew I’d be on shift alone. Xanth might now have had his eyes on her the entire time. And she’s already stabbed me. I want to know if she could have done this. Could she have hit me in the back of the head?
I fall asleep again and the next time I wake up, Garth stands over me, a scowl on his big green mug.
“We need to talk about what happened. Alone.”
“Aye.”
I swing my legs over the bed. Xanth hurries over, “Captain! I cannot allow you to take Gav out of here. He’s not well, and he needs rest.”
“How much painkiller is he on?”
“Well over 2000 milligrams. Odilian physiology resists our normal doses. There may be unforeseen side effects.”
/> “I’ll only keep him a minute.”
“Talk to him in here.”
“Damn it, Xanth. We’re a pirate ship, not a luxury cruiser.”
“You need Gavriel alive to make it to the salvage. We all do!”
“Xanth. I’m fine.”
“You’re making a huge mistake.”
“I promise I’ll come back.”
Garth flashes me a grateful glance, and I follow him to his office off the helm and sit. My head throbs.
“You don’t look well.”
“I’m not. I lied to Xanth because we have a problem. What did they do in the dome?”
“Someone used your access codes and downloaded our flight map and data about our usual routes.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“I know. Whoever did was invisible on the ship’s sensors, and it couldn’t have been you because you were unconscious. And because I trust you with my life, Gavriel.”
Garth rarely expresses himself with such open sentimentality, and I have to act like that doesn’t scare me.
“Who could have done such a thing?”
“It’s time we open an investigation. This is the quartermaster’s domain, but I think we ought to work together.”
“Question everyone? Including Poke, Jisoo, Kazim, and Connie?”
Garth grimaces as he strokes his exposed tooth.
“Believe me, I don’t relish the thought of interviewing people I’ve trusted with my life for years and accusing them of the worst crime a pirate can commit after mutiny. But there’s someone skulking about this ship, and we need to find out who it is before they make things much worse here.”
“What about Jaen?”
Garth shakes his head.
“I don’t want to consider the thought. After what I’ve done for her… after what she’s been through… But you’re right. I ought to consider it objectively. Draw up a list. Word will spread soon enough about what we’re doing and the saboteur will get more careful.”