by J. C. Hay
He took a long drink from the bottle, careful to keep his teeth together as a crude strainer against the largest pieces of lichen. The fire ripped down his throat, leaving an aftertaste of birch and earth and forcing him to breathe out in a slow exhale. No label adorned it, and no customs stamp covered the cap. That meant this came from a personal collection, brewed and distilled by someone who appreciated it. Obviously something she picked up when raiding another yacht.
Then why was she keeping it chilled, waiting in her mess? Another enigma to add to the multitude that seemed to surround her. Mysteries piled up and topped with a pair of sage-colored eyes that would have shamed the stars. He laughed bitterly and raised the bottle in salute to the empty room, whispering, “You’re missing the best joke ever, old friend.”
Jonas would have been hysterical. Galen, the serious one, who only had time for the cause, couldn’t stop thinking about a woman.
It was madness dwelling on it. Assuming they had accurate intel on the lighthouse, the chance of them both surviving the mission made sand grains look huge. Even if they did, she’d drop him off at the next starport. She seemed like a woman who didn’t form attachments.
Except for whomever had this lichen vodka brought on board.
He took another drink of the vodka, then capped it again. Just enough to dull the paranoia that gnawed at him. He didn’t want to get tipsy. Couldn’t afford the loss of control; the temptation to lose himself in her thoughts for a time was too strong as it was. Gods. That’s all he needed. Bad enough that she wandered around with her emotions cranked to maximum volume all the time.
Then again, that was what was so enticing about her—the complete openness. He’d never seen its like before. On Hamunaptra he had stayed among people who shared his talent. Such lack of control would be considered rude among psions, not that he was about to correct her.
Because then she might change her behavior, guard herself a little better.
His stomach twisted a little, either from the booze or the niggling sense of guilt from his voyeuristic rides through her emotions. Galen carefully returned the bottle to its lock in the chiller unit, snapping the bottle into place so it wouldn’t come free in an emergency.
He should tell her. If he respected her at all, she should know that he could hear her thoughts through no effort of his own. It was the right thing to do.
“Bree? Where is she?”
“Captain Davout is in her quarters.”
“You’ll have to help me out. Where’s that?”
“I—” The AI was really well programmed. Galen couldn’t help but be impressed. The machine even seemed to carry nervousness and hesitation in its repertoire of voice-emotions.
“Never mind. I’ll find it myself.” He stepped out into the corridor. The ship wasn’t that large. Finding her should be easy. After all, ninety percent of the ship seemed to be cargo space. There were precious few places one could even put quarters. Worst-case scenario, he could just reach out and let her mind guide him to her.
And then he would tell her. As soon as he allowed himself a few minutes in the hall to remember her by. No one could begrudge him that, right?
“Captain? I thought you should know that the passenger is approaching your quarters.”
Syna rubbed the rough towel into her scalp and looked towards the door, jaw tense. “How close is—?” The call bell at her door cut her off. “You’ve got to get better at telling me where he is, Bree.” She pulled the flannel of her robe around her and cinched the belt tight. When she opened the door, he looked surprised. She watched his eyes dip, take in the robe and what might be beneath it in a single quick glance. Men. No one had to be a mind reader to tell what they were thinking. Better to get this over with. She leaned against the bulkhead, feeling the comforting presence of the ship along her spine. “Yes? Can I help you?”
His cheeks darkened, and she realized he was blushing. He hadn’t expected her to be fresh from the shower. Which hadn’t stopped him checking her out, she remembered. “I… I… You hadn’t assigned me to quarters yet.”
She looked at him. “Bree couldn’t take care of that? She knows the door-codes for all the rooms.”
“Sorry. I’m just not used to—”
“A woman captain?”
“An AI,” he covered quickly. “We don’t use them much on Hamunaptra. And the ones we do have aren’t nearly as advanced as your model.”
“Bree’s top of the line. Brighton Environmental Engineering. She’s—” Syna let the obvious answer hang in the air, but he filled it in anyway.
“She’s liberated. Or at least gray-market goods.” There wasn’t any condemnation in the words, just acceptance of fact. A sense of understanding.
“She can also hear you. So be careful, she’s sensitive. I don’t want you to hurt her feelings.”
“Her…feelings.” Syna heard the disbelief in his voice and glared at him. He quirked an eyebrow and she glanced at the wall-mounted comm in what she hoped was a clear message. He pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly, drew another. Syna could smell Anbjorn’s lichen-infused vodka on his breath and wondered how much it had taken him to work up the courage to come to her quarters. She gave a little smile. It was almost cute, his timidity. Nothing like Anbjorn, who always knew what he wanted. Made no bones about laying claim to what he felt he deserved.
In that, like so many things, they’d been a perfect match.
Galen blinked and she realized she’d been looking in his eyes. She immediately stared at the floorboards, and her brain started to conjure up matrices of numbers. A hollow emptiness flooded into her gut as the urge to flee tightened her legs. No. She would not let this bastard force her to be afraid on her own ship. He’d made a promise, she would trust him. And keep her pistol handy just in case. With an effort she brought her face back up to meet his and found a sad concern in those too-inviting eyes.
“Who was he?”
She tensed, felt the anger flare in her chest. “Who was whom?”
“The man on the ship before me. Someone brought the lichen alcohol on board, knew how to store it. And no offense, but you don’t look Vanyari.”
“Neither do you.” She regretted the suspicion that dripped off her words, regretted more that her fléchette pistol was hanging in its belt by her bed. After all, his explanation sounded plausible. He didn’t have to ransack her thoughts to put two and two together.
“No, I suppose I don’t. But I know the customs. My mother was an ambassador to Siggurdsheim for ten years. I know when I’m drinking the good stuff.”
A drink sounded good, actually. Something to put in her hands and calm her nerves. Syna stepped back from the door, crossed to the molded nightstand by her bed and tugged an amber bottle out of a makeshift lock. “I can’t stand the stuff myself. Tastes like a bog.” She took a drink from the bottle and let the liquor’s heat diffuse through her.
“So what’s your drink?”
She raised the bottle. “Rum.”
“Rum and piracy. I wouldn’t have expected you to be such a traditionalist.”
“Pirates and musicals go together too, but I’m not about to burst into song, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Gods, did she actually just flirt with him? Was he bantering with her? Warmth flooded her cheeks in a way that had nothing to do with the alcohol. She let anger rush back in to cover her embarrassment. “You still didn’t say what you wanted.”
He didn’t look at her, focusing instead on his hands. “I— We— Look, psions don’t have to look into your eyes to sense your thoughts.” The syllables picked up speed as he rushed through them, until they came out as one long word at the end.
It took her a second to parse through the sounds and make sense of them. Once she did, the hollowness in her stomach returned. “So you know what I’m thinking right now?”
“No. I’d have to dive in to get your actual thoughts, and I promised you I wouldn’t. But your emotions. What you’re feeling. You, uh, are very loud.
Emotionally. It’s hard to miss.”
She took another pull from the bottle and wondered how he’d react if she kissed him, wondered if he’d see it coming before it happened. His embarrassment had a certain endearing quality to it, and the idea of flustering him brought a smile to her mouth.
“What?” He looked concerned, unsure of how to gauge her reaction.
A cloud passed over her. How much had he heard of her internal monologue? How much of what she felt sat there for him to ruffle through like old data files? She only had his word that he wasn’t planting thoughts in her head in the first place. How much of her thought process was real, and how much some kind of struggle against implanted emotions? She put the bottle down too hard, re-tied the belt of her robe and cinched it until it was painful.
“What?” he asked again. The confusion was plain in his tone. Maybe she’d misjudged him. Or he was a consummate actor. The distrust kept muddling her thoughts. The sooner she could get him off her ship, the better. Then her mind could be her own again.
“I need to be alone. Look. I’m exhausted. It’s been a long day. Tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow. Okay?” She started towards the door.
His face cycled through expressions, settling on what she took to be hurt-but-unsurprised. “Yeah. See you in the morning.”
“Bree will let you into your room. It’s the one by the cargo bay.” That last bit she added for the AI’s benefit, certain the machine was listening somewhere.
“Look, I didn’t mean to offend you. I just felt you—”
“Good night, Galen. We’re both tired. Get some sleep.” She triggered the door before he could redouble his protest.
Chapter Three
“Captain, there’s a priority message waiting for you.” The AI’s soft voice penetrated through the haze of sleep. Syna curled tighter around the pillow in her arms and wished the persistent computer would go away. The importance of the phrase took several seconds to percolate through to her brain. When it did, she sat up and rubbed her eyes.
“Bree, are we still in null?”
“Of course, Captain. I would have alerted you had we dropped into normal space.”
“I thought you said there was a message for me.”
“There is a priority-one message, yes. It was sent via nullwave communications.”
Syna blinked again. Communicating with ships in null was out of the reach of all but the most ludicrously wealthy. The entire message had to be relayed by Hegemony lighthouses, the only system capable of reaching a ship in the black nothingness outside of normal space-time. She made a quick mental list of all of her friends who had Hegemony contacts and owned their own planets—the number was zero. “Can you patch it to me here?”
“There is a video component to the message.”
She looked over at the dead monitor by her bedside and the snarl of wiring that hung out of its open back. Fixing it had been a low-priority item, a fact she suddenly regretted. Syna didn’t want to risk going out into the corridors of the ship and bumping into Galen, and the Quarry was too small to avoid him. The memories of last night came back, and she buried her face in her pillow. Gods, he must think I’m psychotic. She had cycled through a dozen different emotions in ten minutes, behavior that couldn’t possibly have looked normal to him. Worse, she’d culminated it all by slamming the door on him. Not exactly the best way to look cool and in control.
So what? Why do I care what he thinks of me?
“Because he’s sexy, gods damn him.” She said it out loud, expecting to be angrier at the admission than she ended up. There was nothing wrong with finding him attractive, just not now. Had it been a random meeting some other place, she might even have indulged her interests—but not these circumstances. He was a fugitive, a criminal, an employer hiring her for a suicide run, a psion, and gone as soon as he had what he wanted. She couldn’t imagine a worse combination that didn’t involve him actually being Tse.
She slipped the rum bottle back into the bottle-lock so it wouldn’t shift around, and threw on a loose-fitting jumpsuit. Maybe if she dressed frumpy he’d keep his eyes to himself. Not that it was a bad look he gave me—like he actually was taken aback, instead of taking me for granted. Anbjorn’s glances had always been appreciative, but he eyed her like tribute. Whatever beauty he saw in her, she knew, had been a testament to his own prowess rather than on any merit of her own. At the same time, it had made her feel sexy, knowing that he considered her worthy of him. Gods. She wondered what Galen would think of her if he caught that particular emotional failing.
Syna shook her head but it refused to clear. Anbjorn was dead. No sense regretting actions in her past. After all, she could think of at least a dozen things she had lined up in her future to regret. Assuming you live long enough, old girl. She walked towards the door. “Bree, queue the message up at my station. I’ll take it there.”
She flopped into the captain’s chair on the bridge less than two minutes later, pleased that she hadn’t run into Galen anywhere in the corridor. She flipped the switch to seal off the bridge and heard the door shut behind her with a whine of hydraulics. Another repair to add to the list. Fortunately, small, dark and empathic had promised her enough money to see all of the repairs finished and keep the Quarry aloft for a long time in the future. Maybe even enough to go legitimate.
“Okay, Bree, replay message.”
The screen in front of her went gray, and the hiss of a live recording popped and crackled from the comm panel. Syna glanced over at the astrogation station to verify that they were still on course. Null space was instrument-only flight. With no features to judge from, there was nothing to help visual navigation. Only the lighthouses, developed by the Hegemony to serve as beacons, had any ability to create something traceable in the otherwise trackless wastes of null.
The voice from the comm pulled her out of her reverie. “Hello, babe.”
Cold sweat coated her palms as the air rushed out of her lungs. On the monitor, Anbjorn smiled back at her. His hair had been tamed—braided informal queues from each temple while the rest spilled over the back of his uniform. Uniform! The standard regalia of a Tse military officer stretched across his massive torso. His wolf-skin cloak, tribute to his Vanyari heritage, had been tossed over his shoulders like an afterthought.
The look in his ice-blue eyes was uncharacteristically apologetic. “Look, I hadn’t wanted you to find out this way—hadn’t wanted you to find out at all, really—but circumstances have moved past my wants and desires.” He held up his hands in the “what can you do?” gesture that she had found endearing, then annoying, and back around to endearing while they’d been together. She risked a glance to the bridge door to make certain it was still closed. “As you’ve no doubt figured out, I’m not dead. I feel guilty about having lied to you, but it was the only way I could return to the Tse and tell them what I’d learned about the patrols of the various pirates we encountered. I was assigned to do deep-cover work on the frontier. Working with you seemed the easiest way.”
For a moment, she forgot that instant, two-way communication was impossible from null. “And you couldn’t comm? You couldn’t let me know you were still alive?” As soon as she said the words, she knew he could not. For precisely the reason raging through her blood. She wanted to find him, and then either kiss him or kill him—she hadn’t decided on that point yet.
“Word has come down that you may have picked up an exceedingly dangerous passenger.” An old, black-and-white image of Galen appeared, along with several blurry stills from surveillance cameras. “Galen Fash is a known threat to the Hegemony. The Tse are offering a substantial reward for his capture, as he’s responsible for leading a number of terrorist cells on Hamunaptra. Forty-seven thousand credits. Replay and listen to that number again, because I know you don’t think you heard it right. I’m calling because I can sweeten the deal. Turn in Fash to us, and in addition to the money, I can pull a few strings and get you a commission in the merchant navy. You could be legiti
mate, like you’d always talked about. When my commission is finished, I could join you. It’d be like old times again, the way we’d always said it would be.”
She checked the time-stamp on the message. It had been sent during the night. The data signatures seemed valid as well. Everything with the message seemed to be on the up and up.
“All you need to do, if you’ve got him on your ship, is activate the distress beacon. Bree can even mock up a bit of a leak for you, make it look urgent enough that he’d not be suspicious. There are ships out now looking for your transponder signal—they’ll find you as soon as you turn on the alert. I can’t wait to see you again, babe. It’ll be just like old times, I promise. Message end.” The screen went gray, then faded to black as the signal died.
Babe, he’d said. Like nothing had happened. Like he’d popped off to the corner for a beer and just wandered back. And hearing him say it melted you, just like it always did. She slammed her fists down on the console. Gods damn him for knowing her too well. Gods damn me for falling for it. She looked at the blank screen, tears threatening to well from her eyes, and she couldn’t decide if they were born of frustration or longing.
Galen set the speed on the treadmill at just outside his capability and launched into a hard run. Good that Syna had converted part of the cargo space into a makeshift gym—the tendency to lie fallow was high during spaceflight, especially in null where the ship handled almost everything and needed only occasional checks. Part of him wondered whether it had been her idea to install the treadmill and weights or if it had come from whoever was on the ship—he got the impression that it was an old boyfriend, just from the way her emotions clouded and went muddy when he had asked about the vodka. The Vanyari were notorious for their body worship. He’d suffered a lot of teasing on Siggurdsheim for his dark features and small frame, and he had taken up endurance running with the express interest in shaming the fair-featured giants into silence. It hadn’t worked, of course. Children have a vast capacity for casual cruelty, and they simply shifted their focus. By then it was too late, and he had grown to enjoy his long, hard runs as a way to focus his thoughts.