Mission: Mistletoe

by Gemma Brocato

  “I’m afraid to ask what happened to him.” Rhayne had drawn her elbows tight into her sides as if preparing for a blow.

  Griffin laid a hand on her back and massaged circles between her shoulder blades. Her tension was palpable even through the heavy fabric of her uniform.

  Mom leaned her forearms on the table and spoke with a faraway look on her face, as if trying to distance herself from the story she had to share. “Truser sent him to the mining camp on Saturn, supposedly to harvest a fresh crop of the plant. It was typically a droid’s job. It’s dangerous work, but not as much for artificial life forms. There was a horrible accident. Something went wrong with the regulator on his habitat suit. He was too far away from the transport vehicle when he lost compression. The weight of the atmosphere crushed him.” She paused and swallowed hard. “I remember Deke talking about it. He took charge of the investigation because there were rumors that Chase’s regulator had been tampered with. He told me Chase screamed in agony for five minutes before he finally stopped. Then it took another three minutes before his life signs monitor flatlined.”

  “Oh, my Titan. It must have been horrible.” Rhayne shuddered.

  Griffin leaned forward and rested his hand over his mother’s. The idea that either of them could face an equally horrific ending because of their attempts to investigate terrified him. “This is too dangerous for you to keep pursuing. I don’t want either of you to become a victim like Chase. I don’t like it.”

  “Griffin, if we don’t continue seeking the answer, the disease will kill a lot more innocent victims,” Rhayne argued. “With Deke available to warn us if we’re becoming indiscreet, it should be safe enough. I have to find the cure. It’s important to me.”

  “I still don’t like it.”

  Rhayne gripped his other hand and gave a little squeeze. The motion speared straight to his chest and snared his heart.

  “I’ll be careful. And I’ll watch Althea’s back at the same time,” Rhayne promised with a sincere nod.

  “Hey,” Althea protested. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Yes, Mom, you can. But that isn’t going to stop me from worrying.” Griffin scrubbed a hand over his face. They would move ahead with a plan to figure this all out, with or without his support. If he wanted to watch over their safety, he’d have to work with them. “So what’s our next step?”

  “We need a better look at the records for Chase’s research,” Rhayne said as she dumped her napkin into her unfinished bowl of soup and prepared to go back to the lab. “If only there was a way around Truser’s lock-down at the end of the day. I guess I’ll just have to scan a little faster.”

  Chapter 6

  Rhayne rushed through the portal to her quarters, then turned and slapped a palm on the force-close sensor. She dropped her satchel on the floor. At her desk, she skidded to a stop then bent to press her eye against the retinal scanner. Her personal comp-sys hummed to life. She was eager to transcribe the lab notes she’d scanned. For once in her life, having a photo-synaptic memory would come in handy. She could rely on the unusual quirk of her brain to recall nearly everything her eyes had roved over.

  It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was the best she could do in light of the restrictions still enabled on her password. In essence, what she was doing could be considered theft or industrial espionage. Being found to have lab secrets, even if scribed from memory, was a criminal offense. It was a risk she was willing to take.

  There would be gaps in anything she transcribed to a docu-nimbis. Those gaps could spell failure. She’d had to scan everything so quickly she hadn’t any hope she’d retain everything. But she was a scientist. What wasn’t in the notes, she’d be able to fill in from her own experience and training. Althea could provide the rest.

  She pulled the flexible display imager from its storage tube before she stripped off her green uniform, dropping it to the floor as she walked to her personal hygiene station. She depressed the plunger to spritz syn-two-oh on her face. Today’s spray was treated with Meringiovern Plum flowers. The cloying floral aroma ranked at the top of her not-favorite list of smells. She bent to drink directly from the faucet, hoping to rinse her mouth of the taste with the rationed milliliters she’d been allotted.

  Tapping a glowing button on the chrome console, she activated the cyclonic blast. It took less than fifteen seconds to dry her hands and face in the heated air. She stepped away from the air jets before they stopped running, pulled a saffron-colored robe off the hook beside the mirror, and belted the smooth, silky material around her waist. She paused long enough to dial up a cup of her favorite licorice and peppermint tea from the small food Djinn that came standard in every crew cabin.

  Rhayne reviewed the afternoon’s activities while waiting for the fragrant tea to stream from the spigot into her mug. The trio had made plans to meet in Griffin’s quarters at 2200 hours to go over anything Rhayne uncovered during her review. When she and Althea had returned to the lab after lunch, they had been pleased to discover the liquid crystal privacy windows frosted over in Truser’s office. Althea had speculated that whatever he had going on, the director would remain sequestered for a while. As a result, the atmosphere among the other researchers had been cautiously light, bordering jovial. Her co-workers had laughed and joked about the upcoming festival. 58 had contributed to the relaxed atmosphere by projecting holographic stars and planets on the ceiling and playing holiday music. Several researchers had harmonized with the music issuing from each work-terminus.

  Rhayne had immersed herself in the logs, surfacing only when 58 had stopped by with more Athene tea and biscuits. It had placed the saucer with the cup near her right hand, but had deposited the biscuits farther out of her reach, near her holo-imager.

  Just thinking about the biscuits made her mouth water.

  The Djinn chirped as it finished dispensing her tea. Rhayne programmed up a plate of the cookies, then grabbed them and her cup from the replicator’s platform. She walked across the littered floor to her desk and set the plate and mug down on the hard, antibacterial sem-nite surface. Pushing aside a pile of her personal journals, she then swept three days worth of station briefings and docu-nimbis from her chair so she could sit.

  She loaded a blank lab report form and prepared to transcribe from memory what she’d seen when she noticed a blinking notification in the corner of the screen. Message items were queued, waiting for her.

  Daring to hope that maybe Griffin had sent her a message, she paused long enough to open the program.

  Oh, mighty Hermes! As the program opened, files started popping up, one right after the other. There had to be thirty or more new messages. The ticker showed incoming communications continued to climb. Forty, forty-five, fifty-three—still going. It finally stopped at sixty-seven messages waiting for review. Rhayne stretched her fingers toward the delete button, thinking her personal system had been hacked. This had to be what humans called spam hundreds of years ago. Centuries after the invention of personal computing systems and advances in technology, and they still hadn’t come up with a fix for annoying advertising sims.

  The subject line of one of the items caught her eye just before she struck the del-key. That couldn’t be. She shifted her fingers away, hovered over the return key, then opened the communication. Titan! This was a file she’d reviewed this afternoon. Somehow—someone—had delivered the report to her personal correspondence system. She scanned the properties to see where it came from, but no sender information was displayed. She closed the message and scanned the subject lines of the others in her inbox. Sure enough, each file Rhayne had accessed this afternoon sat there for her review.

  What the Hades?

  She opened her instant stream program and composed a message to Griffin and Althea. Can you come to my quarters immediately?

  She hit send and pulled open one of the storage cubes under the desk, rifling through it for a clean nimbis device large enough to record the entire sixty-seven messages. Some of
the files were monster-sized and would require multiple frag-vectors to copy. She sorted through the discs and selected three large ones. She pushed the first one into the port on her comp-sys and, with a few keystrikes, began copying the contents.

  Her instant stream pinged with a response stream. From Althea. On my way.

  Rhayne tapped her fingers impatiently on the hard surface of her desk while she waited for the contents of the files to migrate to the device. She watched the progress bar, mentally urging the cycle to complete faster. She also kept an eye on her streamlink, waiting for a response from Griffin. Nothing yet.

  The nimbis Full notification chirped. She ejected the first nim and inserted another. Immediately, the remaining files migrated to the new device. She left the originals in her inbox so she could easily open them when Althea and Griffin arrived. Why hadn’t he responded yet?

  * * * *

  Griffin slid to a halt at Rhayne’s portal. He’d received her instant stream, had tossed his key-reader to Jofor at Ma’Jut, and had raced to her quarters. After their lunch meeting and Deke’s warning about increased scrutiny, he was concerned at the tone of her message. It sounded—desperate. The cheerful Solstice music issuing from speakers hidden in the hallway was eerily at odds with the tension tightening the muscles on the back of his neck.

  He slapped his palm against the visitor identification panel and heard the wooden sounds of the alert chime inside the cabin. “Rhayne! Are you okay? Open up,” he shouted, pressing his ear against the heavy steel door. Griffin rapped his knuckles impatiently against the barrier, breaking skin with the force of his blow. He heard the weighty thud of something heavy hitting the floor. “Rhayne!”

  The door slid open, revealing a perplexed-looking Rhayne. Griffin scanned her for injuries for a scant second before he leaped across the threshold and pulled her into the safety of his embrace. She squealed at the force of the hug as he tightened, then immediately loosened his arms and shoved her behind him.

  “What the—” Rhayne sputtered, pushing ineffectually against his hips to escape from the trap created by his broad back and the hard surface behind her. “For Titan’s sake, Griffin. What the Hades is wrong with you?”

  Griffin surveyed the room for a long moment before he eased his stance and stepped away from her. The space was a shambles. It looked to him like someone had rampaged through the compartment in search for something. His heart slammed like a rock against his ribs as he turned and grasped her shoulders in a firm grip. “What happened? Did you see who did this?”

  A confused look crossed Rhayne’s face as she peered past him to the destruction in her quarters. Embarrassment replaced bewilderment in her eyes, a vivid red blush crept from the plunging neckline of her saffron robe to the roots of her hair, the two colors clashing harshly in the artificial lighting.

  “Oh, Titan,” she said, her tone defensive. “I’m a little messy. So sue me.”

  “Are you saying this is normal? No one broke in and did this?” Griffin cringed at the surprise in his voice. Way to earn points with a beautiful woman. Make sure she knows you think she’s a slob.

  “Yes, Griffin. This is normal for me.”

  Rhayne pushed against Griffin’s shoulders, forcing him backward. A deep rumbling sound worked its way up from his belly, erupting as loud, relieved laughter. He collapsed against the wall behind him, unable to catch his breath from laughing so hard. Looking thoroughly disgusted and embarrassed, Rhayne straightened her robe and walked to her desk. She picked up the litter by her chair.

  He swiped at his eyes and laughed harder when he realized the thudding sound he’d heard while he waited anxiously for Rhayne to open the door came from a pile of scientific journal nims that had cascaded to the floor. She’d probably tripped as she’d walked over them.

  From across the room, Rhayne stopped tidying and glared at him over her shoulder until he regained his composure. She stood with a stack of comp storage devices in her hand and faced him.

  Griffin held his hands up as he tried unsuccessfully to stop laughing. “I’m sorry, but it is funny.”

  As he watched Rhayne’s expressive face, he was pleased to see a smile spread across her lips and hear her sexy chuckle. The smoky sound of her laughter speared right to his gut, sobering him instantly. He shifted and pushed away from the wall as desire spiked through his body. He was tense again, but for a completely different reason. Oh Hades, what a woman! Smart and clumsy and messy. And damned appealing, even with the pink blush clashing with the yellow of her robe.

  “You’re okay? Your stream sounded…I don’t know… It sounded like you were in trouble.” Desire thickened his voice as he explained. He crossed the room, stopping along the way to pick up several articles of clothing. “When I walked in and saw the…disarray…I was concerned someone had broken in.”

  “Your mom thought the same thing the other day.”

  He tossed the clothing he’d collected on the aircushion, his gaze lingering on the bed. Rhayne stepped toward him, dropping the disks in her hands to the floor as he moved in her direction. He dipped his head, holding her eyes the entire way, watching for any sign she might not welcome this change in their relationship. Seeing none, he let his lips finish the arc toward hers. His mouth brushed hers with the gentlest touch before her eyelids drifted shut. He moved his hands to either side of her face, shut his eyes, and changed his angle to deepen the kiss.

  The watery sounding wooden chimes clanged.

  Holy Hades! Of all times for an intrusion. Rhayne slipped from his arms, another blush spreading across her cheeks. Griffin sucked his breath in sharply as he watched the robe twitch around Rhayne’s legs when she crossed the room toward the door. As the portal slid open to reveal his mother on the other side, only his clenched teeth held back a groan. Yeah, definitely not the best time for a doorbell.

  Rhayne stepped back to allow her new visitor to enter. Althea grimaced as she surveyed the mess in Rhayne’s living quarters but said nothing. She nodded in Griffin’s direction and asked bluntly, “So what’s the emergency?”

  “Thank goodness you’re here. I haven’t had a chance to fill Griffin in yet,” Rhayne responded as she released the closing mechanism on the door, then crossed to her desk. “When I got home tonight, I’d planned to transcribe what I remembered from my file search today. When I stopped long enough to scan my incoming mail, I had over sixty messages waiting. I assumed I’d been hacked. But once I read the subject lines, I realized I have some kind of fairy godmother.”

  The excitement in Rhayne’s voice had him and his mother crowding behind her as her fingers flew over the heatsense keys on her workstation. The command she selected began opening the files in her inbox. She loaded them on the imager then leaned out of the way. Griffin didn’t bother to look at the screen, certain he wouldn’t understand. He preferred to study Rhayne while she waited for his mother’s reaction.

  Neither had to wait long. A smile widened Rhayne’s lush lips as his mother let out a shriek. “Oh, my Titan!”

  “What?” Griffin demanded. Dammit, he hated not having the scientific know-how his mother and Rhayne possessed.

  “Rhayne, how…where…Holy Hades, I don’t know what question to ask first.” Mom stared at the monitor, her mouth open in a perfect O.

  “Please let the non-science member of this little party in on the secret.” Crap, he sounded like a petulant, spoiled child.

  Mom threw her arms around him and laughed. “This just got so much easier. These files are the lab reports from Greg Chase’s research. We don’t have to recreate anything. It’s all there.” She waved toward the imager then clapped her hands together. “But how? I have looked for years and have never figured out a way to get any files out of the lab.”

  Rhayne shook her head as she handed one of the nims she’d copied to his mother. “I didn’t do it. They just appeared.”

  “Stuff like this doesn’t just appear.” Griffin shook his head skeptically. “They came from somewhere. I don�
�t like it, especially since Deke warned Mom about increased scrutiny.”

  “Do you think someone is setting me up?” Rhayne asked, her voice raspy, as if afraid.

  “It’s possible.” He paused, seeking a way to assuage her fear. “Or, we’ve got a friend on the inside.”

  “I prefer that scenario. But who?” Althea asked. Her attention remained focused on the opening files.

  “And how?” Rhayne added.

  He stepped over to Rhayne and skimmed his hands up her arms to her shoulders, hoping to relieve some of her anxiety. He grinned at her then glanced at his mother. “You two can leave that to me. I think I’ll pay a visit to our pal, Deke Slater. How much time do you need to go through the files to find some answers?”

  “Between the two of us, I’d say about three hours. We know what time frame we need to focus on,” Mom said. “But wouldn’t you rather I go speak to Deke?”

  Griffin shook his head. “If I could help at all with interpreting those lab reports, I’d leave him to you. We know there’s no love lost between us,” he responded, dropping a hand on his mom’s shoulder. “No, I’m better off facing down that particular demon. Who knows, maybe he’ll be too distracted by the Solstice revelers to give my line of questioning any significant thought.” He smiled at Rhayne and let his gaze rove over her body for a moment. She pulled the lapels of the garment closer together, but returned his smile, her even white teeth peeking out between the soft rose of her lips.

  Althea slipped into the seat at the comp-sys, her attention drawn by something on the image screen. Griffin grabbed Rhayne’s wrist and tugged her toward the door, which slid open at their approach. She tripped on a book in the middle of the floor and he reached out to steady her. “There’s my Grace,” he said with a chuckle.

  Griffin paused, put his own hands on the neck of her robe, and pulled her toward him. He dropped a quick kiss on her mouth. “I have to get back and do an inventory on the ingredients for the Solstice punch. We took a big shipment today from the latest transport. With what Earth Supplies sent, it will be a very potent punch. I’ll contact Slater when I’m done and we’ll still meet in my quarters at twenty-two hundred hours.” Casting a glance over her shoulder at her quarters, he grinned. “I’m a permanent res, so I have larger, distinctly less messy quarters.”