Kor took a deep breath and returned his pistol to its holster. There seemed to be a tremor to his hand. Adrenaline coursing through his veins? Chanda nodded understanding, having seen similar behavior from her father. If Kor had endured grisly battles in the Crimson Ops, she had no trouble guessing why he had transferred occupations and eventually left the military.
“Are you all right?” Chanda whispered and rested a hand on his arm.
“Yes.” Kor cleared his throat. “Just overreacted.”
“It happens.” Chanda couldn’t think of anything more useful to say—she’d found that just accepting him had worked better with her father than trying to fix things with words—so she squeezed Kor’s arm, then patted it before letting go.
His smile appeared bolstered, so it seemed to be the right thing.
The gray-haired man in the rumpled shirt—Commander Borage, wasn’t it?—stepped forward. “We’re still trying to find the captain’s glitch, Doc. You got that set for looking for escaped fur balls?” He pointed to the tablet.
“Yes.” Kor raised the tablet again. “We’ll take a look around.”
“Lieutenant Sparks has some frayed—maybe chewed—wires over there if you want to lick them or sniff them.”
Kor blinked. “Why would I do that?”
“I have no idea, but Tick does things like that.”
“He also chews that awful caffeinated gum. He’s an odd man.”
“Odd men are the norm on this ship,” Borage said.
“I’ve noticed.” Kor walked forward, the holographic display over his tablet showing the human life signs in the room.
Chanda, feeling superfluous, trailed after him. There wasn’t anything she could do, but Ankari had asked her to help. She just wasn’t sure how to do that.
Borage gave her a curious look—she was getting a lot of those today—but he did not, like so many of the other mercenaries, ogle her. Judging by the coffee stains and crumbs on his shirt, he was more interested in ogling food and beverages than women.
Borage walked over to join the man he had pointed out, Lieutenant Sparks. They had a panel open and were investigating circuit boards. Perhaps licking wires.
Kor stopped near the center of the room and slowly rotated his tablet around, the detector attachment making faint beeps as it scanned. Judging by the way his lips pressed together, he did not find what he hoped to find.
“Is it calibrated finely enough to find creatures as small as the quashis?” Chanda asked.
“Yes. It can detect trace quashi elements on you.”
“Elements?”
Kor looked over and plucked a blue strand of fur from her sleeve. Their skin didn’t touch, but a little tingle went up her arm regardless, making her wish she was wearing a sleeveless shirt. And that his touch had lingered.
She snorted inwardly. When had she elevated Kor from thugly mercenary to someone she wanted touching her?
“What class of scientist do you play in Nature’s Wrath?” she asked.
“Xenobiologist,” he said without hesitating. “I know the quests are easier if you pick a botanist or zoologist, someone with inherent plant and animal knowledge, but I knew where the Ring of Neo-Druidism could be found, and I wanted the difficulty bonuses.”
Chanda grinned. That was when she’d started wanting him touching her. When he’d gotten geeky on her. With her own game, no less. “That ring is amazing. I always get it for my characters.”
“What about you? What’s your favorite class?” Kor glanced at her. “Or was when you used to play.”
As if she had ever stopped playing. It was mostly beta testing, but still. She was tempted to tell him then that she’d lied earlier, that she did all the design, some of the coding, and dealt with all the financial problems, but the young man with the toolbox walked past behind them, clattering and clanking. It wasn’t the best setting for admissions.
“I’ve played most of the classes at least a little,” Chanda said, “but I actually like the viticulturist best. There are tons of grapes in the game that give you stat bonuses, and you get free wine at the bar when you go into town.”
“It’s important for you to get your virtual avatar drunk?”
“Sometimes, you get clues in the game through gossip at the bars, and the NPCs are more likely to talk freely around you if you’ve been imbibing.”
“Really?” Kor asked. “I hadn’t heard that.”
“Really. You should check all the network guides out there.”
“For someone who only played a little, you’re rather knowledgeable about the game.” He smiled down at her, his eyelashes lowering halfway.
She didn’t think the words were a judgment, but maybe he was letting her know that he was on to her earlier lie. Oh, he couldn’t guess that it was her game, but he could tell she knew it far better than she had implied. He didn’t seem to mind. Actually, those deep green eyes, the lashes curtaining them slightly, were gazing at her with warmth and… interest?
But no, he was celibate, right? All the mercenaries seemed to think so. She supposed she could ask…
The toolbox man clanked past again, and Kor broke eye contact.
“I don’t drink in real life,” Kor said, “so I’d have to think about whether I find it acceptable to let my avatar get drunk in bars.”
“It’s just a game.”
“Unfortunately.” He smiled wistfully, perhaps remembering that the goal of the game was to keep Grenavine from falling, that it was possible in the game. “I’ve spent many sleepless nights playing.”
Chanda thought of the times she’d noticed that tiredness, especially around his eyes. Simple insomnia? Or did his combat memories plague him?
She laid a hand on his arm again. He gazed down it and opened his mouth to say something.
“Seeing any oversized rats with antennae wandering through the machinery, Doc?” Borage asked.
“I’m not, no,” Kor replied, then gave Chanda a lopsided smile.
She smiled back, acknowledging that this wasn’t the best place for them to get to know each other.
A clank came from within a bank of computers, and the lights went out.
“Not again,” Sparks groaned.
* * *
The holographic display above Kor’s tablet continued to glow, and a few indicators shed light from the walls, but that was it. Darkness filled Engineering.
Borage sighed. “Check those cables again, Sparks.”
“I just replaced them, sir. They can’t be bad again.”
“Just check. The captain’ll be comming down any second.”
Kor looked down at Chanda, her skin aglow from the blueish light of his display. She was standing close to him, her shoulder almost brushing his arm. It crossed his mind that if he turned off his display and kissed her, nobody else would see it.
What would she think? Would she object? Or would she enjoy it? They had only just met so it was presumptuous, but he hadn’t met many women who knew about the Ring of Neo-Druidism. Her familiarity with Nature’s Wrath, and games in general, definitely made him want to spend time with her. Maybe she would like to come to his cabin so they could play together? But she’d said she wasn’t into the game anymore. Had that been the truth? Or had she simply not wanted to admit that she enjoyed such things?
He wouldn’t have guessed the glow of the tablet light could make anyone’s skin appealing, but he found his gaze snagging on her lips, her eyes, the fine lines of her nose and jaw. He told himself he should ask her on a date, not to presume to kiss her in Engineering—especially since they weren’t alone. Besides, he was rusty at kissing. He hadn’t had any opportunities to do it among the all-male monk population of the temple. Maybe he would miss her lips in the dark and end up sucking on her nose.
Kor snorted and looked away, closing the tablet so the light disappeared.
“What?” Chanda whispered.
He had been looking at her when he’d issued that snort. Since she wasn’t privy to his t
houghts, maybe she thought he’d seen some flaw in her face and that had prompted the response. Hardly that.
“I was thinking of asking you back to my cabin when the quashis have all been wrangled,” he said, though that wasn’t all he’d been thinking, “to play Nature’s Wrath. Then I remembered you don’t play anymore.”
Without the light from the tablet display, he couldn’t see her features, her reaction. Was she interested? Insulted? She certainly hadn’t warmed to Striker’s advances, but what woman did? Hell, Striker was lucky any men talked to him.
“I could probably make a new character,” Chanda said quietly, ignoring the clanks and thunks from the engineers working and shining flashlights into dark nooks behind panels. “If you don’t mind hanging out in the newbie zones with me.”
“You could show me how to get drunk in the bars.”
“Just the kind of things my parents hoped I’d be able to do after they paid for my expensive education.”
Kor grinned. “The fleet paid for mine. I’m not sure if it was a good deal or not. I was theirs for years after that.”
He tried not to think about all the battles he’d seen during that time. He grimaced, reminded of his reaction—his overreaction—to that toolbox falling. It could have been worse. It had been before. Fortunately, she hadn’t seemed alarmed.
Chanda brushed his hand in the dark, her fingers wrapping lightly around his. He held his breath. The gentle touch sent a shiver of electricity through his body. It had been a long time since a woman had held his hand. A woman who shared his passion for games had never held his hand.
Until that moment, he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed female companionship—and the presence of people with common interests. Even though he and Mandrake had similar backgrounds, Kor didn’t think they shared many passions. Nor did he feel that he fit in on the ship, at least not yet. Besides, he didn’t want to hold any of the men’s hands.
Kor, realizing Chanda might worry that she was being presumptuous, returned her gentle clasp, running his thumb over the back of her hand. He shifted to face her in the dark, wondering if anyone would notice if they did more than hand holding.
Another light came on off to the side, a bright one. It was directed into the open panel, and Kor could make out Sparks and Borage, their heads bent close. He could also make out Chanda’s face, gazing up at him, her lips parted slightly. Kor didn’t know where the lieutenant with the toolbox had gone but didn’t see him around. Even if he was, so what? Kor was the ship’s chief doctor and outside of the chain of command for the most part. It wasn’t as if anyone here could berate him for kissing someone during duty hours.
Of course, she was a new assistant and younger than he. She didn’t have any power on the ship, and Mandrake or someone else might think he was taking advantage of her. Kor had already seen men here eager to paw her over. Did she need a protector? Or to be left alone to become comfortable with the environment and her role here before being asked on dates? Or back to men’s cabins…
A clank-thunk sounded, and the lights came back on.
Chanda stepped back, releasing her grip as the engineers drew back from their panel. Borage looked over at them, and Kor clasped his hands behind his back.
“You’re sure you haven’t detected any animals in here, Doc?” Borage asked.
“Nothing except for the people in here showed up on the life-signs detector.”
Borage and Sparks exchanged long looks.
“Why do you ask?” Kor asked.
Sparks stood up, more cables gripped in his hand. Once again, they had been chewed through.
“We’ve got auxiliary power on now,” Borage said, “but I’m going to have to replace these. The power should have switched over to auxiliary automatically, so I need to check on that. Something fishy is going on.”
“Ratty, more like,” Sparks muttered.
“The quashi aren’t related to either,” Kor said. “Or to any species from Old Earth.”
“Do they have teeth?” Sparks asked.
“Yes.”
“Then that makes them ratty.”
“You also have teeth,” Kor pointed out.
“Not that I use to nibble on cables.”
“They don’t smell like apples, by chance, do they?” Chanda walked toward Sparks and held out her hand.
“Apples?” Sparks asked. “Yeah, we always order the apple-scented electrical cables when we get parts for Engineering. Gives it a nice smell in here.”
Despite his sarcasm, he handed her the chewed cable to inspect. Kor waited to see if she would sniff it or lick it. She did lift it to her nose, then squinted along the length.
“They do look like teeth marks,” she admitted, showing the damaged cable to Kor.
He nodded. “I don’t disagree, but since nothing’s showing up on the detector, the only alternative is to crawl behind the machinery and do a visual quashi inspection.”
“You volunteering, Doc?” Borage looked hopeful.
“Ah, no. We already did that in the grow room.” Besides, Kor doubted he would fit behind any machinery. They would need to find someone small for the task.
“Engineering isn’t much different from the grow room.” Borage shifted his gaze to Chanda, as if he wanted to stuff her into ducts and behind machines.
“You said it doesn’t smell like apples,” Chanda said.
“It smells like machinery,” Sparks said. “That’s better.”
Borage pointed at him. “Check the auxiliary changeover, and get Howler, Todds, and Damaskus down here to help with that visual inspection. See if you can snag some pilots too. The ship’s flying in a straight line right now. It’s not like they’re doing anything.”
“I’m sure Commander Thatcher will enjoy crawling around on his hands and knees,” Sparks said.
“I doubt he’ll come. Though perhaps if you asked him some challenging navigational math problems while he was crawling, he would be amenable to it.”
Kor touched Chanda’s arm and nodded toward the exit. They stepped into the corridor together, and she looked expectantly up at him.
“I just wanted to get you out of there before they put you to work,” he explained.
“Ah. I thought you might have wanted to talk. In private.” Her brow creased slightly, but he couldn’t guess at her thoughts.
Did she realize he’d been thinking of kissing her? Was she alarmed if she did? Or maybe she expected him to reiterate his invitation back to his cabin.
“No,” Kor said. “I better let you get back to the work you were actually hired to do.”
“I’m not sure what that is yet.”
“Maybe one of your employers will tell you one day.”
“Maybe.”
Feeling awkward, and like he had missed something—he wasn’t sure what—he patted her on the shoulder and headed back to sickbay. He also had work he’d been hired to do.
6
Two mornings later, Chanda entered the shuttle bay and headed for the pink cylindrical craft gleaming under the lights. She wondered if anything new had happened with the missing quashi while she’d slept. As far as she’d heard, it hadn’t caused any more major damage the day before, but it had continued to elude the men looking for it, and the rumors spoke of a couple more minor malfunctions in Engineering.
She was early for her shift, but the hatch was already open with voices drifting out from inside. She had expected Ankari to put her back to work formatting virtual brochures for distribution to clinics around the system—her task from the day before—but as Chanda walked up the ramp, Captain Mandrake came into sight. He leaned against a bulkhead while talking to Ankari. A social call? Or some new problem that would interrupt work as usual?
Or had they spent the night here together? Chanda’s step faltered at the thought. She didn’t want to walk in on some private moment between lovers.
But they were both fully clothed, and the way Mandrake stood with his meaty arms crossed over his chest, he
didn’t look like he had sex in mind. Ankari was poking at a tablet display while he watched and hadn’t noticed Chanda yet.
“It could be anything,” Ankari said.
“It’s one of your furry not-rats. It has to be.”
“Quashis.”
“Uh-huh. My engineers have set traps full of apple slices but haven’t been able to get it to come out. It’s back in the ductwork—when it’s not finding impossible ways through panels and into machinery where it can chew things off circuit boards.”
“I understand your consternation, but I don’t know what I can do.”
“Something clever. Scheming and being clever is your job.”
“When the goal is to make money or escape the brig of thugly mercenaries, yes.” Ankari smiled at him and thwacked him in the chest with her hand.
“Thugly?”
“You can’t deny it.”
“I deny that thugly is a word.”
“Thuggish? Brutish? Loutish?”
The captain looked out the ramp to where Chanda had stopped and tilted his head toward her. He must have known she’d been there all along. “You probably shouldn’t be sharing your pet names for me in front of your employees,” he told Ankari.
“Ha ha.” Ankari didn’t seem to mind that Chanda had been listening in. She waved her over. “Do you have any ideas on how to lure a quashi out of Engineering? It seems the missing one is continuing to be a pest.”
“More than a pest,” Mandrake said.
A few trills came from the curtained area, as if the caged creatures knew they were talking about them. Or one of their brethren. Chanda imagined she could pick out Roberta’s expressive trill. That was the name she’d finally given the female that she had taken on that inadvertent tour of the ship. Yesterday, Chanda had taken her out during work breaks, finding that petting a quashi was soothing. She could tell Roberta apart from the others by the shade of her fur and also the fact that she sensed whenever Chanda approached and came forward in her cage to get some personal attention.
Mandrake Company- The Complete Series Page 178