by Cara Bristol
“Main meals will be served there,” the captain said, “but if you would like a refreshment, there is a NutriSup dispenser in the passenger lounge. It is also stocked with a selection of alcoholic beverages.”
“Cerinian brandy?” Brock asked.
The captain shook his head. “I don’t know the specific liquors. The steward would. I’ll have him get back to you on that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Brock said. He didn’t drink on active duty, even though his nanocytes would metabolize the alcohol and counteract any inebriation. One of the downsides of being a cyborg was that one could never get shit-faced drunk. Many a time he could have used the temporary solace found in a bottle. The real reason he didn’t indulge on the job was that drinking was convivial, social. He kept work and personal business separate. Not that he had much of a private life anymore.
“Where’s the escape pod?” Brock scanned the corridor for identifying signage. Regulations required every vessel to be equipped with a small emergency craft in the unlikely event some malfunction occurred with the main ship. Pods were programmed to land on the nearest planet capable of sustaining life and then emit a distress beacon.
Urgak stiffened. “I assure you, it will not be required. This craft is the newest in the fleet, the safest one ever built, with advanced navigation systems. The shuttle flies itself.”
Penelope glared at Brock. “My husband intended no offense. He’s a bit of a baby when it comes to flying. Space travel makes him a little nervous, that’s all.”
Baby? Baby? Brock choked. He had nerves of steel—and extensive flight training. Switch this puppy to manual, and he could pilot it backward through an asteroid belt while blindfolded.
“No offense taken,” the captain said. “An escape pod is located forward behind the bridge, port side.” He brushed ahead and proceeded down the narrow passage. “The passenger sleeping berths are here,” he said as he slid open a door. Brock and Pia peeked inside at the wide, luxuriously appointed bunks.
“Very nice.” Pia nodded. Brock doubted she’d caught on the cabin was unisex—it accommodated males and females. Protectee and agent. Or did she assume he would sleep sitting up in the lounge?
Not a chance—and it had nothing to do with comfort. He couldn’t protect her if they were in separate rooms, closed off from one another by locked doors. Not that anything would happen on the diplomatic charter. This was probably the safest place she could be on the entire trip. But one didn’t make exceptions to operating procedures because a situation appeared secure.
“ChemShowers are through that door.” The captain pointed.
“Good to know.” Pia nodded. “The flight to Xenia is three days, correct?”
“Eighty-two hours, to be exact,” he replied and strode on.
Located aft, the passenger lounge took up the entire width of the shuttle and put commercial first-class accommodations to shame. Thick spongy material covered the cabin from walls to ceiling, serving as a sound barrier as well as cushioning should any unexpected maneuvers occur while in flight. Large viewing windows located about shoulder height—well, shoulder height for Pia—ran the length of the walls on each side. Large, reclining padded armchairs faced each other for ease of conversation. Each chair had its own entertainment console.
“I hope you find this to your liking,” Urgak said.
“It’s exceptional,” Pia replied.
Brock could agree with that anyway. “Very nice,” he said, and strode to a door marked private in six languages. He had to assume it wasn’t that private since it was located in a public area. He pushed it open and peered inside.
“What is it?” Pia asked.
“It’s the head.”
“Oh,” she said. “Handy.”
“The refreshment station is there.” The captain gestured to a starboard control panel. “The steward call button is here.” He touched a green dial marked attendant. “As I mentioned, he hasn’t arrived yet, but I expect him shortly. If you hit this yellow button marked menu, you’ll get a list of codes to order whatever you’d like. The large red button is for emergencies. Is there anything else I can provide before I return to the bridge?”
“No, thank you. It all seems straightforward,” Pia said.
Brock deposited her carryall in a chair and eyed the control panel. “How do we contact the bridge?”
“The black button,” Urgak answered, rather reluctantly, Brock thought.
“I think we’re set.” Brock dismissed him.
“By your leave.” The captain nodded and exited. The door slid closed.
Pia sank into one of the chairs. “You were rather rude.” So said the woman who hadn’t uttered a single comment unladen with attitude between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. But she’d been a stupid kid then, and now she was neither stupid nor a kid.
“I don’t like him.” Brock plopped into the chair next to her.
“What’s not to like? He was professional and congenial.”
“I don’t know.” His cybersenses detected nothing amiss, but his human intuition wouldn’t rest.
“Well, you don’t have to like a person to be pleasant.”
“Spoken like a diplomat.”
She sighed. “It’s going to be a long flight if we can’t get along.”
“We’ll get along fine if you do what I tell you to do.”
“You’re not going to cut me any slack, are you?”
“None.” He grinned.
Pia stared at him like he’d grown four more eyes like an Arcanian. “You should do that more often.”
“Do what?”
“Smile. You seem more approachable.”
He scowled. “I don’t want to be approachable. My goal is to keep people at bay.”
“Ah. That’s the Brock I know and love.”
At her banter, an odd little ache settled in his chest. Having Pia as his pretend wife was the closest he’d get to a relationship. People, women in particular, considered cyborgs both supra and subhuman, so they kept their distance.
Even if a woman didn’t reject him when she discovered he was half machine didn’t mean he could allow her into his life. He would never, ever harm a woman, directly or indirectly, and his job was too hazardous for him to have a wife and children. They would be a point of vulnerability he couldn’t protect. He had accepted he would spend his life alone.
“Is there anybody you love for real, Pia?” he asked. “Do you have a man waiting for you on Terra?”
She rested an elbow on the arm of her chair and leaned closer. “Tell you what. You answer my questions, and I’ll answer yours.”
“Fair enough.” He had no qualms about lying.
“No.” She settled back.
Wasn’t it like a woman do a one eighty? He glowered. “This was your idea.”
“No, is the answer to your question. No, I haven’t been in love and no, there is no one waiting for me on Terra.”
“You’re a beautiful woman. Men must follow you around like lapdogs. Why isn’t there anyone waiting for you?”
“That’s another question,” she said.
Brock shrugged.
Pia sighed. “I was engaged once. I thought I was in love, that he loved me, but I found out he desired my connections, not me. He wanted what being married to me could provide him. Usually men hesitate to approach me at all because my mother is the ex-president and I am an ambassador.”
“They’re idiots,” he said.
She blinked. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
It was. A couple of hours ago, he would have advised any man contemplating getting involved with Penelope Aaron to run like hell.
“So what about you?” she asked. “Is there a Mrs. Mann?”
“No. There’s nobody. What made you decide to become an ambassador?”
“Public service is familiar to me. It sounds idealistic, but I wanted to do something that might have a lasting positive impact.” She glanced at her folded h
ands then at him. “What did you do after you left the CPO?”
“I went to work for another organization.”
“That tells me nothing. That could be a garden club, a corporation, or a covert intelligence outfit.”
Damn, she’d come close. She always had been too smart for her own good. For his good. “You don’t think I like flowers?” Funny she should mention gardening. If he didn’t give her something, she’d keep digging to uproot the truth. “My job is classified,” he said. “You know what that means. Let’s say, after my stint with the Central Protection Office, I went to work for an organization. I was injured in an incident.” Incident meaning attacked by Lamis-Odg. The other four men in his unit had died. Carter had rescued him and altered the course of his life forever. “After that, I changed jobs again.” Had been recruited by Cy-Ops.
She parted her lips. “You were hurt? How badly?”
He didn’t need her sympathy. Why the hell had he told her anything? He never should have relaxed his guard. “Not so badly that I didn’t recover.” Brock leaped to his feet. “I’ll check if the steward has arrived. We should be launching soon.”
He stalked out of the lounge before Pia could drag any more information out of him.
Chapter Five
Penelope stared at the vacant chair. Had something upset him? Had their discussion triggered a stress response to the trauma he’d suffered? Despite whatever had happened to him, he appeared fitter than any man had a right to be. And huge. She still couldn’t get over his musculature. Perhaps he’d undergone physical rehab that enhanced his physique?
Arcanians were smaller than humans; the two who’d robbed her had only come up to her shoulder. But they weren’t that little, and Brock had shaken the one like a dog toy.
And in the next breath complained about how heavy her duffel was. Men! She hadn’t asked him to carry her bag. She twisted her mouth with amusement. He hadn’t been far from wrong about the rocks, though.
Penelope reached into the duffel and pulled out the uncut geode. Brock could balance it in one of his hands, but she needed both to hold it. She planned to surprise the Xenians by allowing them to crack it open. Plain and rather ugly on the outside, the spherical brownish rock was filled with quartz crystals. She’d had it scanned to be sure. She’d thought long and hard about what kind of diplomatic gift would best represent her planet. While quartz was common on Terra, Xenia didn’t have that mineral at all. A gift from the Terran earth seemed symbolic.
She set the rock in Brock’s vacated chair and pulled out one of her two sets of civvies, eager to change out of her travel uniform. The Interplanetary Shuttle Port didn’t require the unitards; only Terra did. She’d save her other set of spare clothing for her arrival on Xenia.
Tucking the clothing roll under her arm, she scooted into the cabin marked private. To her delight she found a liquid hand-washing basin. ChemShowers were the norm on vessels and space stations, but they left her skin coated with a sticky, yet powdery residue. On Terra, due to water conservation rules, most people took ChemShowers.
She’d read that hundreds of years ago, water baths and showers were the norm, and that some people filled huge basins outside and swam around in them for fun.
Penelope washed her face, neck, hands, and arms up to the elbows. Then she removed her unitard and donned her tunic and trousers, wishing she’d remembered to dig out her hairbrush. She rolled up her travel suit and left the lavatory to retrieve her brush.
As it always happened, the item she sought had disappeared inside the bag. She fished around for her hairbrush, shoving items out of the way. When she finally latched onto it and pulled it out, a small metallic object was snagged in the bristles.
About the size of a man’s thumbnail, and perhaps a half-centimeter thick, it resembled the translator she’d wear when she met with the Xenians, but this one wasn’t hers. She hefted it in her palm, and it seemed to vibrate, which would be annoying if inserted in one’s ear. If it would fit. The rectangular shape didn’t seem like it would conform to auricular whorls. Heavier, too, than a standard-issue translator.
How had it ended up in her bag? Did it belong to Brock?
She slipped the object into her trouser pocket so she’d remember to ask him and then shoved her travel uniform and the geode into the bag. After smoothing her hair, she grabbed her PerComm to study more of the Xenian protocols and customs.
* * * *
Brock could deal with Pia’s nudity. That he could see her naked body through her travel uniform was distracting, but he could handle it. Mind over matter. Willpower over lust. And as soon as he dumped her safely back on Terra, he’d haul ass to Darius 4 and let the sex droids work him over.
But, in the span of a short conversation, he’d allowed Pia to get under his skin in a different way. She’d planted ideas in his head. Diplomatic service? Shit. She’d missed her calling. She should have gone into advertising. She’d sowed a seed of need where none had existed previously. Before he’d become a cyborg, marriage hadn’t been on his tracking screen. He’d had all the time in the world to marry. Now she’d made him wonder what it would be like to come home to a wife.
Crazy shit. An impossible dream for someone like him.
He’d get over these yearnings and forget Pia the way he got over everything—by focusing on the mission, concentrating on one task at a time, starting with an inspection to identify potential vulnerabilities, strongholds, and escape routes. Being grounded presented one set of circumstances; after launch, everything shifted.
He located two gangways: one forward port side and a smaller one at the starboard stern. Midship, he spied a VT. Through the vacuum tube, refuse could be shot into space. Although waste-recovery drones patrolled the galaxy scooping up debris, they could never collect all of it, so an interplanetary treaty banned the expulsion of trash into space. That didn’t mean everyone obeyed the rules—especially when a craft’s holding tank edged close to full.
Brock checked the various cabins the captain had pointed out on the fifty-credit tour. He palmed all the entry scanners and discovered he couldn’t secure any of the portals, including the one for the sleeping cabin. Nor could his hand swipe open any of the locked areas, like the crew quarters, engine room, supply cabinets—or the entry to the escape pod.
If he activated his wireless, he could hack into the computer and override the presets, so it wasn’t an insurmountable problem, but the lack of access concerned him. It stood to reason the crew would want to bar inebriated and/or rowdy passengers from accessing the escape pod, but what if shuttle personnel became incapacitated? How would passengers get off in an emergency? Brock’s duty was to ensure Pia’s safety.
He activated his internal wireless and palmed the scanner pad outside the escape-pod bay.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Brock turned to face Urgak. “Inspecting the escape pod.”
“Why?”
“To verify it’s operational.”
“I assure you, it is. I also assure you that there will be no need for it. You are perfectly safe.”
“That’s the thing about emergencies,” Brock said. “You can’t predict when one will occur.”
“In the unlikely event of an emergency, a crew member will assist passengers in boarding and releasing the escape pod.”
“But there are only two crew members, correct? What if you or the steward become incapacitated?” Brock narrowed his eyes. “And shouldn’t there be a first officer?”
“I must ask you to return to the lounge and buckle in. We’ll be launching soon.”
“Then the steward has arrived?”
“Regrettably, he has fallen ill.”
“So you’re the entire crew?” His computer and his human brain signaled him with warning messages.
The captain fixed a hard gaze on Brock’s face. “You’re asking a lot of questions. I’ll be happy to answer them later, but we are about to launch, and for your own safety, I must insist—”
/>
“Brock?” Pia appeared from around the corner. “What’s going on? You’ve been gone a long time.”
“We’re getting off now.” He moved toward her, computing the best egress. The doors would be sealed, the gangways retracted. He had a hunch a simple hand swipe would not open either exit; he’d have to hack in.
The aft exit was farthest away.
The forward gangway was closest, but the captain barred their passage. Brock didn’t have a problem taking him out if the Malodonian attempted to stop them, but he hesitated to kill him in front of Pia.
“What are you talking about?” She gaped. “We can’t leave! I have to go to Xenia.”
“Not on this shuttle. Move!” He hustled her toward the stern.
“Are you crazy? I don’t even have my bag. My PerComm.”
“Passengers, please take your seats,” announced the shuttle’s computer. “Prepare for launch. Please take your seats. Prepare for launch.”
The entire floor vibrated as the engines fired up.
Fuck!
Brock glanced behind him to see Urgak disappear around the corner.
With the launch in process, they couldn’t disembark. “Change of plans,” he barked.
“Launch to commence in ten seconds…nine…”
They ran down the corridor.
“Eight…seven…”
They burst into the lounge and flung themselves into their seats at the count of three. Automatic restraints snapped into place. Pia grabbed her PerComm.
“Two…one!”
Rockets fired, and the shuttle took off. Since they were leaving from a space station port and not from a planet with strong gravity, the craft didn’t require the tremendous thrust, but even so, the force of blastoff would have knocked them on their asses if they’d been standing when the craft launched.
“Tell me what’s going on!” Pia demanded after the craft cleared the port and their seat restraints released. He’d half expected them not to retract. Were he and Pia passengers—or hostages?