by Elsa Jade
“Synonyms for paragon, like this galaxy’s name.” She thumped his knee. “Clever.”
He grinned. “I thought so, at least until I sobered up. But then I realized…” He converted the poem to its numerical values. “It all fit.”
“The accented syllables represent individual stars, and the meter and rhyme pattern gave you distance and speed so you could project into three dimensions to create the map. Okay, that’s not just clever, it’s brilliant.” She kissed his temple.
Her interest and approval touched a part of him that he suddenly realized he never appreciated. While he had the respect of his colleagues and the credits from his employers to prove his value, he’d never given any conscious consideration to his ability. Maybe because the skills had come naturally, or maybe because he’d internalized the message from his own kind that nothing mattered if it didn’t come with flames and roaring.
Well, his mathing was getting him all the action and adventure they could want now, but Amy was also curious about the puzzle, just like he was. She really was the perfect teammate for him.
He cleared his throat, forcing himself to focus on the poem as she was doing. “The problem is, the second stanza isn’t working the same. I’ve reviewed the numbers but it doesn’t fit at all.”
She pinched the screen to convert the map back to the Old Runic. “Read it to me.”
“This is the stanza about the second gem of the diadem,” he said.
“Hidden, the Body’s Hunger, silenced in the forgotten abyss,
For the blacksmith’s touch was all she needed, and his kiss.”
She shivered. “The Heart’s Flame. The Body’s Hunger. When you read it, I can hear how much they loved each other.”
He nodded. “I think one of the reasons draklings adore the poem is that it’s so unlike us. We love our treasure above all else, but she gave it up for him.”
Amy made a thoughtful noise in the back of her throat. “Gave it up? She didn’t need it anymore, because she had her blacksmith.”
He inclined his head. “Maybe, since we recite the poem at our mating ceremonies, it shows we aren’t the greedy, violent beasts the universe thinks we are.” He snorted. “Or at least not just that.”
“I think whatever happens with this race, you’ve proven it,” she said.
He let out a derisive cough. “The universe is still very much about winning.”
“True,” she drawled. “Okay then, with that in mind… Your initial calculations got us this far, so what changed in the next stanza?” She peered at the screen. “The first gem was about the heart. The second one is about the body. What’s different about the gems?”
He frowned thoughtfully. “In older poems, the Heart’s Flame was depicted as a red-orange teardrop, and the Body’s Hunger was described as a trapezoidal-cut yellow-green gem, a reference to the first rush of spring growth in the drakling deserts.”
She toyed with the results on the screen, shrinking, enlarging, rotating. “Yellow-green trapezoid,” she mused. “The body in springtime.” She leaned forward abruptly, almost tipping herself off his lap. Only a quick snaking of his arm around her waist kept her off the floor, but she didn’t seem to notice as she tapped the screen. “The queen’s diadem is a prism, right? I was terrible at science, but prisms refract light so we can see what it’s made of, more or less. Yellow and green are in the center of the rainbow, so can you adjust the map toward the middle of the visible light spectrum?”
He leaned forward with her, catching her excitement as he saw where she was going. “I never thought of that. Draklings tend toward the infrared range.” He color-shifted the screen.
She chuckled. “Draklings and their flames.”
He grinned at her. “We do like it hot. But I see what you mean by the balance of the body.”
As the map recalculated, she twined her fingers through his. “Don’t hate me if this doesn’t work.”
He gave her hand a tug so she tumbled closer to him. “I won’t hate you,” he promised.
Because he rather suspected he was sliding past toward the other end of that particular spectrum…
The map pinged as it finished recalibrating, and they both leaned forward.
“The Jessup Void,” he said slowly. “That doesn’t sound welcoming.”
“Sounds like an abyss.” She pointed out the word in the second stanza. “And the stars aligned.” She smiled at him excitedly.
His stars had aligned. With her. Did he dare press his dubious luck after their last near debacle?
He threaded his fingers through her long hair, delighting in the delicate, silky texture, so different from a drakling’s fire or an accountant’s cold interfaces. “This changes things, Amy,” he said carefully. “The Jessup Void is known throughout the universe for its perils. And now that we know Octiron is willing to sacrifice us for the ratings, I can’t ask you to keep going.”
She raised one eyebrow. “You’re not asking,” she pointed out. “I was abducted by other aliens, not you, and then I chose to keep going. No asking.”
“That was different,” he said. “That was when we still thought it was a game.”
Her dark gaze was steady. “It hasn’t been a game for me for awhile now.”
It hadn’t even been that long. But he understood her point: She’d been taken from her closed world, thrown into this race madness, nearly squashed and dissolved, not to mention fucked an alien—of course it wasn’t mere entertainment to her, no matter what the viewers at home might think.
“It’s not a game to me either.” He slid his hand down to grip the back of her neck. “And the win doesn’t matter to me as much as you do.”
She gazed up at him, her skin luminous as a golden moon in the light of the color-shifted map. “I’ve gotten a lot of participation ribbons in my life. But you already said it: The universe is very much about winning.”
He stiffened, her words sharper than a shard of aquari crystal. “So I’m not worth it even as a consolation prize.”
She lifted her hand to touch his cheek, but he jerked his head back, releasing her, and she lowered it with a hurt look. “You know that’s not what I meant. But I’ve come too far—I went through a trans-dimensional transfer!—to turn around now. I…I can’t even turn around, because I can’t go home until we reach the end.” She fisted her hand in her lap—a fist smaller than it should’ve been with her missing finger. “To you, this is a just bragging rights at a wedding reception. For me, it really might be my last chance to…to finally make something of myself.”
Deliberately, he lifted her from his lap and set her in the copilot seat before turning to face the controls.
“Luc,” she said softly.
“Setting our course for the Jessup Void,” he said curtly. “I need a moment.”
But he wanted more than that.
He wanted forever.
And to win that—win her—it seemed the only way was into the abyss.
Chapter 13
She’d hurt him. Not that she’d meant too. Amy’s stomach clenched around the splash of fruity tea. She’d never been in a position to hurt someone before, and she didn’t like it any more than she’d want a blaster in her pocket with no safety catch. He was the first person in her life to try to excuse her from expectations she probably couldn’t deliver anyway, and apparently she didn’t like that either.
She’d told him she was finally making something of herself, but…who was she becoming?
After he finished poking silently—and angrily, she suspected—at the ship’s course, he rose from his seat and muttered something about being hungry as he stalked out of the cockpit.
Somehow, the small space felt even more cramped without him in it.
With a silent sigh of her own, she turned to the computer. “Show me the Jessup Void.”
Without a single objection that she was too wimpy to even think she should go there, the screen obligingly lit up. As the soft voice read off the text about the unoccupied
region, the words—both written and spoken—shifted from Mandarin to English and back again. Her universal translator was trying to interpret for her, but even that super-advanced technology was confused about who she was. She sighed again.
“An ancient supernova at the center of what is now called the Jessup Void decimated the vicinity, leaving only extinguished stars and the debris of broken planets,” the computer intoned. “The region around the remaining nebula is considered a no-go zone since a freighter captained by Antil Jessup vanished while attempting to chart a shortcut across the Void.”
“An abyss where the Body’s Hunger is hidden,” Amy muttered. “Sounds like my love life.”
Except for last night, of course, with Luc. But she’d ruined that in pursuit of this adventure.
“Local legend,” the computer continued, making her perk up, “shared at nearby space stations blames an anomaly at the center of the nebula for the loss of contact with numerous ships since Jessup’s initial disappearance. Those reports have never been verified. Perhaps because…” The computer paused, as if it had a sense for the dramatic. “No ship has ever returned.”
Eesh. “Somebody needs to rethink their travelogue,” Amy muttered.
She studied Luc’s recalibrated map. Surprise, surprise, the coordinates indicated that the second gem was smack dab in the middle of the Void. This Octiron Corp really went for the drama. Well, she’d said this was what she wanted.
The course indicated it would take some time to get to the coordinates. Even with all their advanced technology, space was a very big, empty place. Even emptier with Luc apparently ignoring her now. They could’ve spent these intervening hours doing something more fun… She pushed the thought out of her head even though it sounded like something an infamous interstellar explorer would think. Maybe she didn’t want to be that if it meant putting the adventure ahead of everything else.
It was hard enough pursuing something tangible; how was she supposed to win something as nebulous as—dare she say it?—love?
While the course indicator showed its countdown, she and Luc danced awkwardly around each other in the small confines of the Blissed. He muttered something about preparing EVA exosuits for their next search, and she nodded curtly as if she understood any of what he was talking about. She took some comfort in the knowledge that no matter how estranged they were at the moment, the race had them on an inevitable collision course. Somewhere in the middle of the Jessup Void.
But now that she’d had a taste of him, her nerves prickled with longing whenever she passed him—which was frequent in the small ship. All her fingers, even the missing one, tingled with the need to reach for him, draw him close, hold him still, and explain again why she needed the race as much as she wanted him. But it was as if their universal translators were no longer so universal.
She feared it would take an anomaly to get them talking again.
When he said her name from the doorway of the cockpit where she’d been watching the last ticks of distance disappear between them and the mapped marker, she almost jumped out of her skin.
His jade gaze was hooded. “We need to check your suit,” he said stiffly. “If you still insist on going. This is your last chance…” He swallowed hard. “I’m asking you, Amy, please stay in the ship.”
She opened her mouth to agree, to give in as she always did so he wouldn’t be disappointed in her.
“No,” is what she actually said. “I’m going with you.”
His shoulders sagged, but he stepped back without further comment and gestured toward the hatch.
As she followed him, she said, “You’re probably mad enough to space me now, hmm?”
“Not without a suit.” He glanced back at her. “That’s what you want, right? To go out there with me.”
She’d wanted many things and never made good on any of them.
The spacesuit was bulkier than she’d expected and yet still felt too insubstantial when Luc sealed her in and she imagined stepping out into the abyss. The suit had obviously been intended for the more statuesque woman left behind on Earth, so it was too big even when Luc tightened the joints. But at least it had the right number of limbs even if one of the fingers in the left glove flapped.
He studied her critically. “It’s a bad fit.”
“Story of my life,” she quipped, her voice echoing a little hollowly in the helmet.
His jaw flexed. “I meant the suit.”
Too bad it applied to everything else too.
She watched wordlessly as he donned his own suit, which of course fit perfectly across his broad shoulders and lean hips and somehow even managed to emphasize the hard muscles in his sexy butt as he bent to check something in their packs.
He straightened abruptly. “Is your suit air compressor working properly?” His voice came through her helmet intimately in her ear, sending a shiver down her spine.
She grimaced. “How would I know?”
“You are breathing erratically.”
“Just, uh, getting used to the feel of it.” She could’ve gotten used to the feel of him too, if he hadn’t felt the need to get all protective.
And geez, it was so wrong that his possessiveness made her melty inside.
He stepped toward her, reaching for her shoulders.
Uh oh. Had he realized she was panting over him? It was going to be really awkward kissing in these bulky helmets…
He pushed her back a step, and the shoulders of her suit clicked into a frame holding the booster system that would move them through space without the Blissed.
So much for kissing.
He clicked into his own booster and attached his pack then hers to their frames. “The ionized gas from the nebula is too strong and inconsistent for the Blissed’s sensors to find something as small as a gemstone, even if we were right on top of it. We’re going to have to scan by hand out there. We can’t stay out there too long or the radiation will broil us, but the calculations indicate the Body’s Hunger should be right here.” He shook his helmeted head. “Mining for stones without a tunnel or any earth at all.”
“No mites either,” she pointed out. “So that’s a plus.”
But as they stepped into the airlock, she suddenly decided she’d rather be fleeing a collapsing mine than about to step into nothingness.
To think she’d naively asked him to space her!
“Brace yourself,” he warned. “I’m going to vent the atmosphere.”
They’d reviewed their plan during their travel to the coordinates, but still she couldn’t hold back a gasp as the small pocket of air with them was sucked into space through the opening hatch. The moisture froze instantly into a shower of tiny stars, quickly lost in the vastness around them. But her gaze was already being drawn to the swirling gases of the nebula hanging above them.
“It’s so beautiful,” she breathed, still clinging to the handhold in the airlock. “I can’t believe I’m seeing this in the flesh.”
“Well, really, your visor is amalgamating multiple wavelengths of light and selectively assigning color to various chemical compositions in order to give you an approximation of what the nebula looks like—”
“Luc?”
He was silent a moment. “Yes?”
“Don’t ruin this moment with reality.”
After another longer moment, his voice sounded wistfully in her ear. “It is beautiful, isn’t it? And you found it. Or at least got us this far.”
She screwed her eyes closed at the reminder. What if she’d been wrong? This crazy spacewalk would be her fault. And color shifting the coordinates was just a wild guess.
But she’d wanted to be more wild.
She opened her eyes and let go of the handhold.
With Luc beside her, she drifted out the open hatch. He’d explained earlier that they’d be tethered via retractable lines to each other and to the Blissed. And the boosters on their backs were programmed to carry them back to the ship with a simple voice command, a physically activat
ed trigger on the control panel built into the arm of the suit, or automatically if their bio-readings exceeded certain baseline parameters. Basically, their spacewalk was as safe as he could make it.
With the obvious exception of them being adrift in a bottomless abyss, of course.
Bottomless? Inadvertently, she glanced at her feet. Where there was nothing below her. Or topless? Or sideless? Her brain spun, or maybe it was her body spinning…
“Amy, you have to breathe. Amy?” Luc grabbed her hand. “Not breathing is as bad as breathing too fast,” he warned. “I’m triggering the suit to take you back to the ship—”
“No.” She clenched her fingers around his, and even through the dulling gloves, the steadiness of him calmed her. “I’m…okay.”
“Focus on the nebula,” he said. “It’ll help your balance.”
Actually, the swirling tendrils of glowing gas made her feel drunk as a drakling on coffee, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. “I got it.”
He spun slowly to face her, as if they were dancing. Through the visor, his jade gaze was intent. “It’s kind of strange that the stone associated with the carnal body is out here in the nothingness.”
“Like the flame gem was buried in the dark.” Thinking of the poem was a good diversion, and she took a deep breath. “I’m glad we can bring them out of obscurity, even if the queen’s legend isn’t real.”
He tightened his fingers on hers. “Ready to scan?”
She nodded and released him. The control panel on the arm of her suit included a scanner, and Luc had calibrated it for the drakling homeworld molecular signature. Since they had to deal with more area to cover and the interference of the nebula’s gas clouds, they were deploying their scans in a reinforcing grid, hoping to sensitize the signal.
With a nudge, he sent her floating away from him, away from the Blissed, while he went the other direction. With enough space—so much space!—between them to scan, they’d be able to zero in on the one nugget of rock they actually wanted in all this dead zone. Hopefully.
But there was just so. Much. Empty. Space.