by C. Gockel
He made her sit in a stateroom on the lower drop-leaf bed. He gave her an infraheat pack to hold on her ribs while he sprayed dermaknit on her various burns and abrasions. He used a wound pack on the through-and-through hole in her lower calf before spraying it, too. On her head wound, he applied dermaknit paste, which hurt more than the burns because he had to press it in. She gritted her teeth against the pain and resisted flinching, using the delicious clean scent of him to distract herself. She could shut pain off when she had to, but it was better to heed her body’s warnings when she could.
When it was his turn, he sat patiently still but swore under his breath while she applied dermaknit and liquid skin sealant to his thigh. She was beginning to recognize the individual Icelandic curse words.
He carefully pulled on the pair of stained, loose cargo pants. She was glad he'd found them, since the ship felt cold even to her.
He dug in the med kit for painkillers and found both jets and orals. She shook her head when he offered them to her.
“Are you really allergic to pain meds?” he asked. He dry-swallowed a pill.
“No, they’re just pointless. My high metabolism and body chemistry burn them out in minutes. The vasodilator you gave me earlier probably lasted ten minutes at the most. If I’m really hurt, a healer can help, but…”
“…it’s not safe,” he finished when she trailed off, tenderly stroking the side of her face, avoiding the scrape along her jawline.
He slid back in the bed until his back was against the wall, then pulled her gently into his arms, her back to his chest. His arms and legs cocooned hers. She leaned her head back on his good shoulder and closed her eyes. His head dropped back to the wall. Despite her stinging pains and bone-deep aches, it was the most comforted she’d ever been in her life. A peaceful lassitude stole over her, and she drifted into a blissful, hazy doze.
And because the universe hated her, they were interrupted only four minutes later.
“We’ve got company,” announced Haberville over the shipcomm, “and someone needs to get her skinny ass up here and be ready to handle the jacked laser.”
Luka’s deep groan expressed Mairwen’s feelings exactly. She reluctantly slid off the bunk.
He stood and leaned in for a quick kiss. “If we live through this, I swear I’m going to pop that woman.”
Mairwen caressed the side of his entirely handsome face. His rebellious hair was already starting to go its own way, in spite of having been determinedly slicked back. “Ignoring her works better,” she said.
“I’m not as good at that as you are.” He pushed a stray lock of her hair away from her eyes.
“You’re a nice human being. I’m not.”
He kissed her forehead. “Just because you were created by monsters doesn’t make you one. Need anything?”
“Socks and a jacket, or a blanket.” She put a hand on his broad chest, feeling his warmth through the ragged sweater. “I’m cold without you.”
The smile he gave her took her breath away. “And here I thought I was the only one,” he said, his voice low and intimate. He rubbed her arms up and down twice, then let her go.
21 * Interstellar: “Beehive” Ship Day 01 * GDAT 3237.044 *
IN THE NAV pod, situated in the top center of the ship, Haberville had several holo displays going at once. She wasn’t jacked in to the navcomp, probably because she didn’t trust it. Considering what had happened on the Berjalan, Mairwen didn’t blame her. Haberville hadn’t had a chance to shower, so she was more than a bit rank. Mairwen cut off her awareness of the smell.
“Krishna’s flute, what did you do, volunteer for target practice?” She was staring at Mairwen’s various bandages.
Mairwen shrugged, not bothering to comment. None of them would win the company good health bonus for a while.
Haberville gave Mairwen a shipcomm earwire from a drawer full of them, then had her sit in the co-pilot chair and gave her a brief explanation of how she’d modified the co-pilot interface to direct the lasers.
“I don’t have space combat experience,” said Mairwen.
“Really?” asked Haberville, her disbelief evident. Mairwen gave her a bland look. Haberville rolled her eyes. “Fine. Let the navcomp find the targeting solution. Use your brain for strategy and tactics.”
“Understood,” Mairwen said. She began decluttering and reorganizing the interface to be more manageable.
Haberville scowled at her. “No test firing. So far, our two little friends don’t know we’re here.”
Mairwen let Haberville’s unnecessary admonition slide. “What are they?”
“One’s a glorified bus like ours, but the other is a surplus military corvette, probably with aftermarket armament.” She gave Mairwen a wolfish grin. “They think they’re on a wild goose chase, so they’re active-scanning all over the place. Even their comms are in the clear. Not the sharpest knives in the drawer.”
Mairwen gave Haberville a small smile in return. Whoever hired this merc company had obviously selected based on price instead of performance. Perhaps even deep-pocket pharma companies had budget pressures.
Haberville manipulated her interface to enlarge one of the holos. “Here’s us, in green, hiding among this big cluster of rocks, tucked into the shadow of an icy chunk with an iron core.” Two more moving icons appeared, each with labels. “And here are our little friends. The transport like ours is designated Blue One, the corvette is Blue Two.”
Mairwen may not have known much about space combat, but she had a lot of experience analyzing and evading search patterns. After a few moments of reviewing the recent movements, she said, “The transport won’t go in the asteroid belt. The corvette believes asteroids aren’t a threat.”
“Noticed that, did you?” said Haberville. “I bet he’s up-armored with a shield generator, making him feel invincible. If I had even a single mass driver, I’d send that corvette our icy chunk with its heavy iron core. That would take him down a peg or two.”
“Would thermolytics do? There may be some in cargo.” She remembered them from a merc conversation she'd overheard during her scouting reconnaissance of the base.
“Nah, too uncontrolled, but they might make a nice diversion.” Haberville keyed the shipcomm. “Hey, boys, when you get a minute, check the cargo area for anything fun our merc jerks might have left for us to play with, like things that can go boom in space.”
After a long moment, Luka’s voice came through the console speaker. “Jerzi’s gone to look. I’m coming up with soup in about five minutes.”
“Oh thank the billion gods of the multiverse,” said Haberville. “My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.” She released the shipcomm key and began muttering unintelligibly to herself.
Mairwen ignored her and considered non-suicidal strategies for luring the corvette into laser range. There weren’t many.
Luka was a welcome diversion, and the soup was hot and satisfying. He also brought a scrounged scarf and overcoat and insisted on helping her into them, careful of her cracked ribs. The overcoat was entirely too wide for her and smelled like a smokehouse, but it was long and warm. She gave him a soft, amused smile as he pulled the overcoat’s collar closed over the scarf and buttoned it, like he was bundling a child up for a walk in the dead of Etonver’s winter.
Haberville gave a loud, obnoxious sigh. Mairwen ignored her and focused on Luka, willing him to do the same. He tried, but the tension in his shoulders gave him away. He gave her a brief, rueful smile and turned to go, but stepped back to her side again when Jerzi arrived carrying a tray with four steaming mugs.
“Coffee for us, homemade Nuevalle hot chocolate for Mairwen. No caffeine.” He handed out the mugs.
Mairwen nodded her thanks, then took a tiny trial sip. Sweet, smoky, creamy chocolate flavors danced across her tongue. She was sorry she hadn’t tried it before. She savored more sips as Jerzi reported what he’d found in cargo.
“About twenty thermobaric shape charges and sixty self-co
ntained thermolytics, all det-value five Gs, a hundred packaged KemX cubes, and enough timed detonators for the bicentennial fireworks show. Even better, we’ve got at least four wrapped pallets of lab supplies and a huge cold unit with what looks like thousands of samples from the planet. If we can save them, there’s no way Loyduk can explain them away. Oh, and I also moved our packs and stuff to the big sealable hold closest to the lifts. They got scattered during takeoff.”
“Is the cold unit tied down?” asked Haberville.
“Built in. It’s not going anywhere.”
Mairwen noticed Luka watching her as she drank, so she concluded he was responsible for the hot chocolate.
“Good?” he asked quietly. He was looking pleased with himself.
“Yes.” She flashed him a quick smile to let him know she was charmed by his quest to expand her gastronomic horizons.
Haberville whistled to get their attention. “The engine pod’s available if you two want to be alone for a quick hot-connect.”
Luka sighed and started to respond. Jerzi beat him to it.
“What are you, five years old? Quit being an asshole.” His normally genial face showed deep irritation.
Haberville’s look of smartass challenge faded under his uncompromising stare. She turned and concentrated on the nav interface.
“Fine. Go make as many twenty-G thermo packages as you can,” she said, not looking at anyone. Jerzi and Luka exchanged a silent look, then left together.
Mairwen shifted her attention to monitoring the two merc ships as they bumbled their way along a search pattern. Wargaming children could have done a better job.
Underneath, she wondered how much longer it would take for La Plata to realize something had gone wrong and call Concordance Command. Even if none of the distress messages had made it out, Zheer should have taken action when Luka didn’t report in on schedule. Regardless of Haberville’s considerable skill and the merc company’s considerable incompetence, the longer they were forced to stay in-system, the more their odds of staying safe deteriorated. They needed to leave.
“What’s wrong with the navcomp?”
Haberville snorted. “Whoever piloted this piece of shit was a tweaker.” She said the last word with the loathing usually reserved for discussing rotting fish.
Mairwen shook her head, not familiar with the term.
“Tweakers reprogram the navcomp because they think they can do transits better than hundreds of years of experience, all so they can make faster jumps or exit closer in-system. There are no old tweakers.” She gave Mairwen a pointed look. “Not even among jack crews.”
Mairwen gave her an expressionless look. Haberville frowned in irritation, then scratched under her shirt and winced.
“Lord Buddha, I think even my bruises have bruises. At least I’m not coughing any more.” She stretched in her chair. “What I wouldn’t give for a long, hot bath. Preferably with several hard-bodied attendants to help me relax.” Haberville winked, then rolled her eyes when Mairwen didn’t respond.
Mairwen checked the location of the two merc ships, which were distant and moving slowly on a vector that took them away from the icy chunk below. “I can pilot long enough for you to take a shower.”
Haberville gave her a startled look, then narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Where’d you get your training?”
Mairwen kept her face bland. “I can keep us near the asteroid. I’ll ping if something changes.”
Haberville was patently torn between displeasure at Mairwen’s non-answer and the strong desire to get clean. She gave Mairwen a long, assessing look, then agreed. She spent the next few minutes providing instructions on the ship’s systems, the telltales she’d set up, and how to recognize changes in the passive scan results. Then she left, and the nav pod fell pleasantly quiet.
Mairwen spent a few moments closing drawers and cabinets in the nav pod that Haberville had left open and in disarray. The smelly borrowed overcoat felt awkward and heavy, reminding her to increase the ambient temperature in the living areas to a more comfortable level. Fortunately, the ringing in her ears had finally started to fade. She rather liked using her extraordinary hearing instead of suppressing it as she had for so long.
She heard Luka’s footsteps as he approached the nav pod a few minutes later. As always, he smiled when he saw her, and as always, it made her heart skip. She was relieved to see he wasn’t limping. The anesthetic in the dermaknit and the painkiller he took must be working.
He leaned against the doorway. “I don’t know how long it will take for help to arrive, so we need to talk about pilot shifts. Eve says her limit is twelve hours before she needs rest or stims, assuming the med kit has the right kind. What about you?”
“My ‘jack crew’ experience doesn’t include big ships. I can keep us out of trouble, but we need Haberville if trouble comes looking for us.”
“How about I tell Eve to sleep for a couple of hours now? Assuming our pursuit hasn’t changed.”
“It hasn't changed. You can give her four hours if you bring me socks.” She’d been sitting cross-legged in the chair to keep her feet warm.
He smiled more broadly that time. “I can do better than that. Our clothes are done.”
Luka looked at a wall display to see it had been three hours since he’d delivered Mairwen’s clothes and armor. It felt longer, maybe because his body clock said it was close to midnight and he was running out of energy, despite the nap he’d managed to squeeze in earlier. He thought he would have slept better if Mairwen had been with him, remembering their two nights together on a suspended tarp. Sleeping with her just felt right.
Having finished staging the thermolytic packages in the launch bays, he and Jerzi were investigating the biological samples in the cold unit. Jerzi was wearing nothing but a T-shirt and pants as he crouched on the threshold of the cold unit’s door, examining trays of tiny boxes.
“Assuming the first two numbers indicate the base of origin, then we’ve got the samples from five of them,” said Jerzi.
Luka stood to the side, reading from a portable display that showed the inventory he’d found in the shipcomp. He tried not to shiver. “Should be six. Maybe the last set was still in the building when it blew.”
“I’ll count the boxes from the zero-five group and see if that matches.” Jerzi may as well have been part polar bear for all the cold bothered him.
“Okay, I’ll see if I can find better records.” Luka moved to get away from the blasts of frigid air. It was warmer in the rest of the ship, finally. His flexin armor wasn’t designed to be warm, the flexitape holding his shredded pant leg together felt cold, and his feet felt clammy. He and Jerzi had found a way to clean out the worst of the blood and dirt in their boots as well as Mairwen’s, so at least they weren’t gory, but they were unpleasantly damp.
He heard a lift door open and was surprised but pleased when Mairwen appeared. He went to meet her. Under her burned and beat-up armor, she was wearing her black pants and long-sleeved knit shirt, both of which she’d patched with blue fibret tape. She probably thought it slightly odd that he was always smiling at her, but he couldn’t help it. He was in love with her, and she was gorgeous. Even though she still looked like she’d recently been in a war. They all did.
She handed him an earwire and took one to Jerzi. “Now we’ll all hear alerts from the nav and shipcomps. In case something happens to Haberville. She relieved me early.”
Jerzi accepted his and absently pressed it into place along his jawline, still engrossed in counting.
Luka put his on, but gave Mairwen a speculative look. His intuition and his talent, which had been dormant while he’d been fighting for his life, flared.
“I’m going with Mairwen to the kitchen,” he told Jerzi, then headed for the lifts, and Mairwen obligingly followed. Instead of stepping into one, however, he walked farther to a shallow alcove just beyond. He drew her into the corner and brushed his lips over hers, for the benefit of any nosy pilots with acces
s to monitoring cameras.
“Why don’t you trust Eve?” he asked quietly.
He reveled in the feel of her arms sliding around his neck. He needed her touch like he needed oxygen.
“The merc pilot wasn’t a tweaker.” She explained the term, then said she’d found no evidence of it in the navcomp. “I think Haberville wants to stay in-system.”
“Why?” He skimmed his hands down her back and lower to her hips, subtly pulling her toward him. The feel of her chest and pelvis against his was derailing his thought processes, overwhelming them with memories of her beautifully sleek, wet, and naked body in the shower, her velvety moon-pale skin a sensuous contrast to his own light brown.
“No idea. I follow brilliant men, I don’t lead them.” Her breathing was irregular, and her raspy voice was like a caress.
“You’ll have to introduce me to those other men you keep mentioning. I’d like to know who my competition is.” He kissed her again, this time with open, raw passion, to let her know how badly he wanted her. She arched into him with a low moan.
“Luka, we can’t...” she entreated, her breath shallow.
She was right, of course. He gave himself a mental shake to throw off the drugging effects of her and took a deep breath. “Which alerts will we hear?” His voice sounded as husky as hers.
“Launches, significant movements, ship system changes, outgoing comms, anything I could think of.”
“Can’t she just delete them?”
“Yes, if she can find them. I learned from whoever hid the air-mix virus in the Berjalan’s shipcomp.” She stroked the side of his face where he’d attached the earwire. “I customized these. If you subvocalize, only I will hear it. I can make Jerzi’s do same, if you trust him enough to tell him.”
“You don’t?”
“I trust your talent. I trust you.”
