To do that, she needed to get Electra’s coordinates from the rep. Then she’d hope that they were tru and wouldn’t send the Astra into a black hole. There had been tales about that too. She frowned at that paranoid fear and tried to dismiss it. Hopefully Vahn and his rep had vetted them first. The old man certainly wanted to live long enough to find the asteroid and he thought the tell he had was tru. That would have to be enough for all of them for now.
A quick check of the ship’s secur cams on her comm and TiCara directed her path toward the Bridge. Sherin was there talking to Erol when TiCara climbed quietly up the narrow ladder. The pilot paused on the upper rungs to watch them for a moment; the rep was clearly more comfortable speaking with her Second than she was with her and the sight cheered TiCara immensely.
Indifference would have been jarring, harder to overcome. The rep’s hair was down now, freed from its clip and flowing over her shoulders in a stylish ebony wave. Looking at it was almost enough to make TiCara miss her own hair, though not as much as it made her want to run her fingers through that silky mass.
Of course, she didn’t stop with just looking at Sherin’s hair. It would impossible not to notice the stunning symmetry of her face and the curves of her body, defying her blacksuit’s efforts to curb them. There was something enticing about the way she stood, casually leaning against the edge of a console board as she spoke with Erol. She gestured gracefully with one long-fingered brown hand and Erol gave her a reluctant smile.
Then Sherin realized that she was being watched and her body shifted. When she looked over to meet TiCara’s eyes, she turned corp rep cold in an instant, all expression shut down and her body going stiff and still. It made TiCara smother a laugh; the rep must be responding to her very strongly to be exerting this much control. She felt a warm haze of anticipation fill her at the thought. It might only take a little persuasion to seduce the other woman.
But they needed to get out past the asteroid belt and well on their way before she could put the ship on autopilot and find out. TiCara swung onto the Bridge floor, meeting Sherin’s blank expression with one of her own. Coordinates? She made her tone disinterested, not letting her voice telegraph what she was feeling.
Sherin hesitated before producing a chip from an inner pocket and handing it over. I’ll want that back. She didn’t meet TiCara’s eyes again but she went on standing next to the pilot’s chair, as if she was waiting for something.
All the groundies want to see how medusas work TiCara thought, stopping her hand before she made a dismissive gesture to clear the Bridge. This might prove useful later. Well, let’s see how she likes it.
She sat upright in her chair and felt the hood settle down over her head and face. The visor and hood were clear so Sherin could watch as her medusa cables rose gently and fit themselves into the hood’s sockets. Once plugged in, TiCara melded with the ship, preparing to maneuver as close to the speed of thought as the technology could get.
With the part of her brain not starting up the ship’s functions and getting clearance to leave the port, she surprised a desperate look of longing or perhaps, repulsion, on Sherin’s face before the rep realized she was watching and turned away. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to let her stay. But then, she had hoped the rep would
prove more sophisticated.
It was hard to predict how groundies would react to medusa pilots. After the Wars, the pilots were the victors, the reason that your corp succeeded. They were viewed with awe and fear in all the spaceports. Hostility or envy or repulsion were seldom expressed openly, except in the galaxy’s backwaters. Now that the Wars were a fading memory, medusa pilots were less beloved or feared, at least from what she’d seen in the ports they had visited.
But then, she spent more time with spacers than groundies. Perhaps she had lost her ability to read them and their reactions were unchanged. She stifled a sigh. From where she sat, the rep looked neither intrigued nor aroused, the two responses that she’d been hoping for. Maybe she could startle Sherin out of whatever she was feeling. This isn’t all they’re good for, she leered at the other woman.
Sherin turned on her heel and bolted for the gangway ladder to the lower level, tension clear in the set of her shoulders. TiCara caught the twitch of Erol’s lips as he looked quickly away and restrained herself from smacking her head. She’d mishandled the rep once again, possibly beyond fixing, but there was no time to worry about that now. The Astra needed her, needed her focused.
It was time to do what she loved more than anything else. She looked first at the coordinates, verifying that the destination they were headed to was a sixty machron hour flight away, as Vahn had mentioned. Then she lost herself in the ship, extending herself through the network and circuitry until her body and the ship were one giant organism. She loved the power of that merging, letting it sweep through her mind with a rush. Her body felt alive with electrical pulses and signals, every nerve end sparking until she was nearly on fire with it.
It was also highly sensual, when everything went well. When she first plugged in, she was always aroused, on the brink of joining her ship in liftoff. While that would fade quickly, for the next few cycles, there would be no Sherin or Elia or even Zig on her mind, just her and the Astra and their glorious connection.
She maneuvered them out past Kyrin’s security satellites and corps battle cruisers, then through the mob of smaller merchant and transport vessels that crowded close to the planet’s surface. The Astra fed all the navigational images directly into her brain: asteroids, other ships, the planets and the moons of Kyrin’s solar system. But beyond that, it showed her the stars and freedom, the boundless space of black velvet filled with distant lights.
For a wild moment, she wanted to just keep going, to vanish into the distant stars far beyond the corps and their Ears and Eyes. This was the freedom she dreamt of when she first got the Astra, the freedom she dreamt of with every job she took. The impulse filled her, then just as quickly ebbed away. There were too many things that she wanted from the corps to leave them all behind. Not yet, anyway.
She let out the breath she was holding and used Sherin’s chip to enter the asteroid’s coordinates into the nav system. After a moment, she recognized the Gathwaite System as the star map filled her visor. Pirates. She winced; pirates were as bad as Ears, maybe worse. The Astra would be outgunned: there was no question about that. Any pirate ship out there would be heavily armed. But at least that extra weight would make it harder for them to catch her ship, not at the speed that she knew Astra was capable of. She imagined herself patting the engine with a thought and nearly laughed out loud at the image.
Her mood turned more somber as she turned over their options; perhaps she should be looking for a way out of this job instead of fantasizing about surviving it. If the Astra were malfunctioning, she would be aware of it moments after she plugged in. And if that malfunction was severe enough to require docking at another port, compelling her passengers to find a new ship, that wasn’t that unusual. It could even happen long before they got to Gathwaite.
TiCara imagined apologizing to Vahn and Sherin, then putting them on some trusted acquaintance’s ship and sending them off on their quest for Electra. Then, she imagined all those lovely credits flowing out of her account. And Sherin walking away, likely never to return.
There was also her reputation to consider. While ship malfunctions could happen to anyone, her ship seldom had them. Whatever else this trip might bring, she couldn’t deny that she was intrigued, and that she wanted to see if the asteroid existed.
That made her decision for her: lust and pride and fear roiled together in a powerful cocktail, one that was too much for even her implants to sooth. TiCara ran her fingers under her face shield, rubbing her cheeks. She was committed now. The Astra would just have to be fast enough, her pilot brave enough to deal with any pirates or other dangers that came their way.
Her thoughts turned back to Electra and the rumors that eddied and flowed
around it. She found herself
remembering Elia’s story about the cured pilot with a shudder. If there was any possibility of being ‘healed’ of her medusas, she would have to be very careful. If there was anything to the story, of course. Spacer tales were notoriously tall.
She surprised herself by taking the chip out of the nav system and putting it aside for Erol to return to Sherin, now that the coordinates entered. At first, she had considered using it to lure Sherin to her temporary quarters to retrieve it. Now that notion seemed foolish, especially after seeing the other woman’s reaction to her when she left the Bridge. TiCara acknowledged that she might have misread it, but if not, that look suggested that the rep was more squeamish than she had hoped.
Sherin had always been coldly professional when they’d met before, but TiCara had thought that she was sure that she recognized steaming hot desire under that icy veneer. Sherin probably had no idea how long TiCara had wanted her. TiCara closed her eyes, remembering the first time she saw Sherin sing at one of the bars. Her sultry voice combined with her beauty made her all that TiCara could think about when she was in port, at least for a while. But she was always surrounded by fans and TiCara had nothing to offer her, not back then.
But things were different now. Or at least that was what TiCara told herself. Sherin wanted her now, when she let her guard down. But if she was right about that, why was the rep playing games? Wanting a medusa pilot meant wanting the wires; everyone knew that.
There were few sexual taboos among spacers, apart from those around consent, and spacers were the dominant culture in most stations and ports. Corp personnel tended to follow their lead, with the exception of the conservatives who thought that modified humans like the medusa pilots were an abomination.
It was possible that Sherin shared their beliefs. The thought sent an icy chill through her.
TiCara went back through her memories, looking for clues that Sherin was repulsed by her. It was not all starshine. Even she had to admit that it was possible.
But maybe Sherin was just worried about getting involved with another one of Vahn’s employees, even a temporary one, and fighting her attraction. That was something TiCara thought she could fix, given enough time, on this trip. The idea made her feel optimistic again and she hummed as she flew.
She was smiling again when Erol came to relieve her at the end of her shift. She loved the thrill of the chase, the power of seduction, winning a chance at nova sex. Those were skills that she had honed when she was working in the bars, trying to earn creds for her pilot’s indenture and her medusas. She had loved stealing clients from the other bar workers, loved making them feel good enough that they came back to her again and again. She could do that again now, as long as Sherin reciprocated.
She stood up and stretched sinuously as her medusas slid loose from the pilot sockets. For an instant, she wondered, as she did sometimes at shift changes, if Erol wished that he was wired, too. How could you not want the rush of those moments when your brain and your ship were one?
Erol always said he didn’t want them, but part of her wanted to delve further, to try and convince him. As it was, he would be flying the old way, using the instruments and navigation equipment to monitor the ship until they were ready to make the short jump to the next system on autopilot. Every time she saw him sit in the second chair, she wanted to talk him into getting wired. But not this time. She gave her Second a cheery wave as she moved toward the ladder.
Erol cleared his throat, his expression suggesting that he’d just eaten something unpleasant. But he didn’t say anything, instead sitting down in the second pilot’s chair and setting the controls, his movements fidgety and scattered. TiCara stopped and frowned, making an impatient gesture. Out with it, Second. Tru tell me what’s dragging a comet’s tail through your head. I’m no mind reader.
About our passengers, Captain…, he paused, his normally slow speech bogging down even further as he obviously hunted for words. His dark eyes looked out the porthole past her, like he didn’t want to see her reaction. I think they are not what they appear to be. Or at least the woman isn’t.
TiCara tilted her head to one side and gave him a considering look, a slight chill spreading through her. What had Sherin done that she had missed? Erol had never given her reason to distrust his opinion. Maybe her lust was blinding her. Tell me. What did you see?
When you were in the port, thought I saw her talking to an Ear. They were in the shadows, back near the storage tunnels so I’m speccing. Could be wrong, but I’m cert it was her or her clone, if she has one, he shrugged, the gesture reminiscent of one of the Old Earth vids he liked to watch. Be careful, Captain.
TiCara frowned at him, then made a sideways jerk of her head by way of acknowledgment. The elation she had felt earlier at the possibility of seducing Sherin ebbed away, and a memory of Elia’s face rose unbidden before her eyes. Maybe she was oblivious to a lot of things.
But they were away from Kyrin and if she wanted an excuse to leave the rep planetside, she would need Vahn’s buy-in now. And a lot more than just her Second’s hunch for evidence. So she would need to watch Sherin more closely, oh so much more closely, until she saw what she was up to, one way or another.
Perhaps the rep could be confined to quarters. Her quarters. A flash of heat replaced the chill and she bit back a laugh at her own expense. Especially when she paused to think about her current quarters, only recently converted from a storage unit. Hardly an ideal spot for seduction or romantic fantasies.
Then she added a shrug of her own. She needed to prove to herself that Sherin wasn’t planning to betray them all to a fiery doom before anything more interesting could happen in fantasy or reality. For that, she needed more intel.
Erol turned back to the instruments with a nod. He would signal her if there was trouble, like he always did whenever anything went wrong. Like he just had.
TiCara reminded herself that she had passengers to check on, not just Sherin. She swept off the Bridge, heading to Vahn’s quarters. Space travel was hard, especially on someone as fragile as he seemed to be. A personal visit would keep him sweetened up or so she hoped, and that couldn’t hurt, no matter what happened.
Contemplating Vahn’s health reminded her of Elia again. Regular injections of Eternayouth could go on until a human body began to reject them. How many doses became too many varied from spacer to spacer, depending on your metabolism. Elia had thought she was getting close to her limit, or at least that’s what she told TiCara when she stopped taking the drug.
Now, she wondered. Maybe the former pilot had found something else and her body had started rejecting it? It hurt to wonder if she knew so little about her ex-lover that she couldn’t be sure if she was taking a new drug, one that might be killing her. But there was nothing she could do right now, even if her suspicion was correct. She paused to collect her thoughts outside Vahn’s room before she hit the buzzer.
When she went in, he looked even more ancient than he had on Kyrin, his hooded narrow eyes reminding her of a tortoise she had seen once in a clone zoo. The cabin smelled musty, like dust and old human, and she reminded herself to check the vents and circulation after she left.
For all his appearance of infirmity, Vahn gave her a shrewd look, like he was reading her thoughts. Pilot-Captain TiCara, it is good to see you. Coming to check on an old man when your duties summon you elsewhere honors me. You are welcome and I appreciate your extra care. He smiled and bowed slightly without getting up. Are we clear of Kyrin yet?
She nodded and smiled back. We’re not out of the system yet, but we’ll make the jump soon. There will be an alert to sling before we do that. Are you comfortable? Is there anything you need?
There is nothing that I need at present, Pilot-Captain, He smiled a polite dismissal. She realized, after a moment’s hesitation, that he actually needed to sleep. It was fascinating. She never failed to reach for a stimul when she felt that way, given the opportunity. She slept only when her
medusas told her she had to. They were better at monitoring her body than she was.
TiCara let the door slide shut behind her and began walking down the narrow corridor. After a few strides, she realized she was walking toward the room she’d given Sherin. She forced herself to stop and check the air filters on Vahn’s quarters and verify the hallway air controls, getting both thoughts and medusas under control.
The filters seemed clean enough, though one of the monitors needed resetting. The mundane task slowed her down enough to think beyond impulse and to absorb what Erol had said about Sherin and the Ear. Perhaps the Ear was just an old friend of Sherin’s, just like an Ear was an old friend of Elia’s.
Or maybe that was one coincidence too many. A cold chill settled into her stomach. Suspicion overrode lust and she looked down the corridor toward the rep’s quarters with narrowed eyes. The fact that the rep had private quarters on the Astra meant that anything she might be planning could already be in motion. There were no security cams in that room.
TiCara paused for a moment and checked for the throwing knives in her boots and plucked one from its sheath to slip up her sleeve. She had left her lazer in her quarters, something she’d have to change for this trip, but she didn’t feel like going to fetch it, not yet. She was as secure as she could make herself for the moment. She
shrugged. Now she would just have find the rep and let whatever game they were playing spin out to its conclusion.
Chapter 6
Sherin wasn’t in her quarters, as far as TiCara could tell from the limited room sensors. She leaned hard against the old-fashioned button again, to make certain. When there was no response, she walked down the corridor and opened the hidden security consoles in one of the walls. Once she entered her code, the ship’s secur cam footage displayed the Astra’s common areas on the small screen.
Medusa's Touch Page 6