“I’m excited to see it,” Juanita said, bouncing on her toes. “Treyjon says people go crazy in there. This totally reminds me of the Naked Time.”
“The what?” Angela asked.
“It’s one of the original Star Trek episodes where the whole crew gets infected with this disease and loses all their inhibitions. Sulu tries to take over the ship with a fencing foil! They were all passing the disease to each other through sweat, FYI. In case that helps you solve the problem. Oh, and it started in the water on a planet that was breaking up. Water turned into a complex chain of molecules that acted like alcohol and depressed the brain’s centers of judgment and self-control.” Juanita said that last sentence as if she was quoting the show from memory.
“I’ll be sure to take all of that into consideration,” Tala said. She was never quite sure if Juanita was joking or not when she cited fictional shows as examples for their real problems.
“There was a Next Generation show with a similar theme, but it was a total copycat episode, so I doubt we’d get anything out of it.”
Orion smiled fondly at Juanita. “I don’t know why Sage isn’t just tranqing everyone and letting the AI steer the ship, at least until we get to the next gate.”
“He’s worried the pursuers will follow us through,” Tala said, “and that we would be in big trouble if a ship caught up to us, and everyone was unconscious.”
Orion and Treyjon gave her curious looks.
“He confided that to you?” Orion asked.
“It wasn’t a confiding. It was a telling.”
The men’s expressions made Tala wonder if there was something strange about the captain having shared that information with her. No, of course not. She was his doctor, for all intents and purposes, right now. That was the reason he’d been sharing information with her.
“As the ship’s only doctor,” Tala said, “I need to be ready. I have to stay here in sickbay. I can’t hide in the rec room. What if someone’s hurt?”
“Sage said to round up all the women,” Orion said.
“He told me to prepare sedatives in case they’re needed.” Tala thought about mentioning the second part, that Sage thought he might be rendered unfit for command, but she doubted he would want that admission to be shared. “I can’t do that from the rec room.”
“You should at least have some protection,” Orion said. “In case men get squirrelly.”
He looked at Treyjon, who looked at Angela and the svenkar. The four-hundred-pound, leathery-skinned predator was currently standing at the foot of one of the beds and drooling on the deck, a huge brown tongue lolling out behind massive fangs.
“We can do it,” Angela said brightly, placing a hand on the creature’s back. Its back was as high as her shoulder.
The svenkar made a noise that might have been agreement, contentment, or a warning that it was contemplating dinner and that humans were tasty.
“You sure?” Orion asked, looking to Treyjon rather than Angela.
Angela frowned as she noticed that second-guessing look, and she lifted her chin. She wasn’t a big woman, being more on the wispy side in her homemade floral dress, but Tala remembered that she had been talented with the dogs at the shelter, having experience that had seemed beyond her years.
Treyjon nodded. “She’s good with the svenkars, and she’s bonded with the female.” He nodded toward the one in sickbay with them. “Lulu listens to her better than she does me.”
“Lulu?” Tala hadn’t realized the creature had a name. And such a non-ferocious name, at that.
“Lulu,” Angela said firmly.
The svenkar lifted her chin, and Angela scratched under it. The thing swished its tail, thwacking it hard against the raised bed without seeming to notice.
Tala resolved to run a quick search and make sure the animals weren’t mentioned in any of the nebula files. What if they also grew irritable and attacked others?
“Very well,” Orion said. “I’ve got to make sure the others are set up and protected. Sage ordered me to.” He curled a lip.
“He orders everybody to do things,” Treyjon said. “It’s his job.”
“Yeah, but I’m not in his command.”
“You’re his little brother, right? Aren’t you supposed to obey your elders, especially wiser family members? That is the way of things on my planet.”
“Yeah, but your planet is backward.”
Treyjon’s eyes narrowed. “Said like a man who wants his shoes munched on by a svenkar. Or perhaps his feet.”
“Juanita?” Orion asked. “Are you coming with us or staying here?”
“I get a choice?” Juanita’s bright brown eyes lit up.
“Well, if I lock you in the rec room with the others when you don’t want to be there, I imagine you’ll escape. To perform your ritual selfies.” He smirked at her as they shared some inside joke.
She grinned back at him. “Yes, inevitably.”
“Juanita and Lulu and I can all stay with Tala,” Angela said. “To make sure nobody bothers her.”
Tala had a feeling the two—three—of them would be more likely to bother her, especially if she was trying to gather data for research, than anyone else. She imagined drool short-circuiting the jet injectors she’d already loaded with sedatives. As a backup, she’d also figured out how to make a gaseous version that could be distributed ship-wide through the ventilation system, but since that would affect everyone while delivering an imprecise and possibly dangerous dosage, she would save it as a last resort.
“All right,” Orion said, and left the doorway to wrap his bare, muscular arms around Juanita. They seemed like such an unlikely match, her with her blue-tipped dark hair and geek tendencies and him with his bad-boy bounty-hunter style. “Be careful, and comm me if you need me. Even if I’m crazy from some disease, I’ll come protect you. From anyone else who is crazy.”
“I believe you,” Juanita said.
They engaged in a heated kiss, and Tala looked away. She made the mistake of looking toward Treyjon and Angela, who had stepped together into a tight embrace of their own, lips locking as they gripped each other tightly, as if the thought of a single molecule of air between them was painfully distasteful.
Looking away from them as well, Tala found herself meeting the svenkar’s black eyes. Maybe it was her imagination, or a case of transference, but the beast seemed to wear a long-suffering expression.
Usually, Tala would have no trouble ignoring public displays of affection, and they certainly wouldn’t make her think sexual thoughts of her own, but for some reason, she experienced a twinge of some vague emotion that she couldn’t identify. Envy? That they all had someone and she didn’t? No, she didn’t think that was it. Loneliness? That she was far from people she knew, far from the familiar? Maybe that was some of it.
Since the not-so-chaste kisses didn’t look like they would end soon, Tala headed back into the office. She set her hand on the back of the chair, intending to sit down and run a comparison of male and female brain chemistry, but paused, remembering how Sage had stood in almost the same spot as he collected the former doctor’s belongings and listened to her blather on about her life and her problems. She also remembered the brief haunted expression that had been in his eyes as he looked at the pictures of his friend’s family. His dead friend’s family.
Abruptly, she felt foolish for all that she had shared and also for worrying that he would use it against her somehow. How many of his crew, people he liked and might have considered friends, had he lost over the years? Instead of considering that, she’d whined about her career problems. She’d known life and death aplenty over the years, but she’d never had to operate on someone she knew well and cared about. She’d lost her dad when she’d been a teen, but nobody had been sad to see him go. She knew her mom had secretly been relieved. What Sage had to deal with, no doubt making decisions every day that could result in the deaths of people he cared about, surely superseded her own problems. Instead of complain
ing to him, she should have put a hand on his shoulder and tried to offer him comfort for his loss.
“One minute to gate,” Sage said over the intercom. “Buckle in.”
Tala slid into the seat, finding the belt and fastening it this time. She heard Angela and Juanita speaking in the main room and hoped they were doing the same, that they weren’t still kissing their new boyfriends.
That was her last thought before the world exploded in purple confetti.
She expected to survive the experience, and wake soon after, but the confetti dissolved into a memory of something that had happened a few days earlier.
Treyjon had been shot by those slavers, and he lay on an exam table as Tala worked on him with the assistance of the medical robots. She used the tools she was slowly becoming accustomed to in order to stop the flow of blood long enough for the nanobots to be programmed to rush in and repair tissue. She’d also, under the guidance of the ship’s AI, applied cell matrixes kept in a refrigerator, like slabs of meat leftover from lunch, laying them against his exposed muscle and bone so the nanobots could use the nutrients from the raw material to rebuild his damaged chest.
There had been much less for her to do than in a typical surgery, but it had been harrowing, nonetheless, her unfamiliarity stealing much of her typical confidence that she knew what was best and could save her patient.
When she’d stepped back from the operating table, wiping sweat from her brow, Sage had been there, standing at the foot of the table. Since she’d been focusing and hadn’t seen him come in, his presence startled her. He’d given her a nod and asked after Treyjon’s status, with her and Eridanus both replying.
“Good,” he said. “A moment, Doctor?” He tilted his head toward the sickbay office.
They walked past Angela, Juanita, and Orion, who’d also gathered around while she was focused on the operation.
“I shouldn’t leave him for long,” Tala said, her stomach doing a nervous flip. She wasn’t sure why, but she worried she’d done something ineptly and that Sage would chastise her for it.
“I know.” He waved at a panel, and the door closed behind him. “I only wish you to know it pleases me when you help my people.”
His brown eyes closed partway, his lashes dropping over them, and her stomach flipped a few more times, but for different reasons. It had been a while since someone had given her a look like that, and even longer since she’d wanted someone to give her such a look, but she didn’t think she was misreading it.
“Kiss me,” he ordered, as if he fully expected to be obeyed.
Tala stepped forward, almost obeying before she had time to think about it, but she halted and planted a hand on his chest. “You’re not in charge of me, Captain. If I pleased you with my healing skills, then you owe me one. You can damn well kiss me.”
His eyes widened, flaring with intensity. With satisfaction. And she realized that she hadn’t truly told him off.
“Where?” he asked, his gaze sliding from her eyes to run down her form.
Her entire body heated up, burning away the crystals of ice that had encased it for so long, that had made her forget what it was to be attracted to a man, to get hot when one touched her, or even looked at her.
Since he seemed amenable to the idea, even suggestive of it, she reached for the button of her jeans. But her cheeks flushed as she imagined what would happen if her invitation was accepted. She thought about chickening out and simply lifting her shirt, baring her stomach. But his sharp eyes followed her every move, hungry and bold. They made her feel bold, and she went for her fly.
Tala woke with a start, the dream scattering into fragments, but not so quickly that she didn’t recall some of it. Enough to heat her cheeks and make her glad she was alone in the office. That was not what had happened the day of Treyjon’s surgery.
“Tala?” Juanita poked her head into the office.
Tala spun around, her cheeks on fire. “Uh, yes?”
“You all right?”
“Yes, I just didn’t realize—it seems you can dream during those gate jumps.”
“Oh yeah, that happened to me on the one before this one.” Juanita’s gaze shifted toward the wall. “Wow, look at that. It’s beautiful.”
Tala looked toward the view screen. The gate was gone, as was the typical black star-filled space they’d been flying through. A hazy purplish-pink cloud filled the sky now, with the pricks of a few stars barely visible out there.
“That’s our nebula,” Tala murmured, hoping she had the medical knowhow to handle any problems that arose as they traveled through it.
6
On the bridge, Sage kept his face composed as he watched the sensors and the view screen as the Falcon 8 soared into the Cronos System. With more crew than Zakota on the bridge now, he felt he had to maintain his command presence, the unflappable calm that the crew expected from him.
He’d brought Lieutenant Ku in to run the weapons station, more because he wanted to keep an eye on the man than because he thought they would need to engage in battle while in the nebula. But it was always possible they would come across smugglers or hostile aliens in here. The Scyllans themselves never left their system, so he wasn’t too worried about finding them in here or about running into any trouble at their gate, but if he was wrong, he couldn’t think of anyone better than “Killer” Ku to have at the weapons.
As he’d promised Dr. Tala, he’d also brought Lieutenant Coric onto the bridge. In addition to being a competent combat officer, she had a knack for cryptography and linguistics. Zakota had once joked that she could out-translate the translation chips. Sage might not believe that, but he’d seen her crack more than a few codes being used by criminal organizations. He didn’t think there was anything to communicate with out here, but the system was largely unexplored, at least by humans, and he couldn’t be certain there wasn’t an intelligence of some sort in the nebula. There were stranger things in the galaxy than he could grasp.
In addition to all that, Coric probably wouldn’t be as affected by the nebula. He’d already told her to comm Tala if any of the bridge crew became unreliable. He hadn’t mentioned himself specifically. Admitting his weaknesses to his crew—he felt that was something a commander shouldn’t do. As he’d come up through the ranks, the commanders he’d respected, including his own father, had been stern, smart, and unflappable. They’d instilled great confidence in the men and women under their command.
Sage trusted Coric would figure it out for herself if he started behaving irrationally. He hoped they would get to the Scyllan gate before that happened.
The last time he’d been here, his ship had patrolled the entire system, looking for Zi’i hiding places. They’d spent nearly two days exposed to the nebula before getting out. All it would take to reach the gate was a few hours.
“I am gathering particulate matter for analysis and studying energy phenomena in the system,” Commander Korta, the other officer on the bridge, announced from the forensics and science station. His voice, which came out of a speaker on his boulder-like chest, sounded like rocks grating on rocks, but the excitement still came through. Forensics might be his specialty, but he loved all science, and since those of his race weren’t explorers, there were no Alabaster science ships he could have served on. “The sun is not the only energy source. Fascinating.”
“If any data could be useful to Dr. Tala—Matapang—” Sage corrected, remembering her surname, “—forward it to her.”
“Yes, sir. Shall I also forward interesting information to your logostec?”
Sage was more interested in reaching that gate and fulfilling the mission he’d given himself than being distracted by nebula data, but he knew Korta would be disappointed in him if he said no. Besides, he did enjoy reading science and technical journals during those rare instances when he had time to relax. “Yes, thank you.”
“The captain does know how to say thank you,” Zakota said to Ku.
Ku gave him a flat why-are-you-
talking-to-me look.
“Though I suppose please was the word that Dr. Tala missed him using.”
“Focus on your task, helmsman,” Sage said, then frowned when he noticed a tiny blip of light on the sensor display floating in the air between the two men. “What is that? Korta? Are the energy sources you mentioned near the Scyllan gate?”
“No, Captain. I was curious about some geothermal activity and what appears to be natural radiation coming from planet X—”
“Look at the gate, Commander.” Sage left his chair, gripping the backs of Ku’s and Zakota’s seats as he studied the sensor display. There were more blips. Ships? No, these weren’t that large.
“Ah, yes, I see them,” Korta said. “Examining.”
“Quit looking at me like that,” Zakota growled.
Sage blinked, thinking the order for him. He was ready to deliver a reprimand, but Zakota’s gaze was on the stone-faced Ku.
“Your stupid carvings are bumping against my station,” Ku replied, leveling a dark glare at Zakota.
“They’re nowhere near the station. That’s the captain touching your stuff.”
“The nebula,” Sage said, realizing it must already be affecting his men. Ku didn’t have the sunniest of dispositions under any circumstances, but laid-back Zakota never picked fights. He’d much rather sell his talismans to people than brawl with them. “It’s affecting us. Keep your calm.”
Ku’s frown turned introspective, and he returned his focus to the sensor display.
“Yes, sir,” Zakota said, but there was still a surly curl to his lip as he manned his controls.
Sage tried to analyze his own mind, but he couldn’t tell if he felt more irritable yet. There was a faint headache starting to build behind his right eye.
“Raise shields, Ku,” he said, though he knew from past experience that the Falcon 8’s shields, which were excellent at repelling enemy fire, would do nothing to stop the nebula’s effects.
“Yes, sir.”
“Ah, Captain?” Korta’s gravelly voice had raised an octave, a sign of concern from him.
“Yes?”
Sagitta: Star Guardians, Book 3 Page 6