by A. R. Kayne
The door to her quarters slid open again mid-kiss. Pryce glared out at them with bloodshot eyes, his hair standing on end. Then the smell hit.
Jess’s nose wrinkled. “Ewww. Pryce, you stink. What have you been doing?”
“Drinking,” he said tersely.
“Should you be drinking alcohol when you’re on call? What if there was an emergency? What if you had to go to the bridge?”
Pryce growled. While staring her in the eye, he deliberately tipped the contents of a glass straight down his throat. “Aron’s on duty and we’re in the ass end of nowhere. There’s nothing out here but neutrinos and a few hydrogen atoms. You done prancing around my ship in a fancy washcloth? Or maybe you’d like to take it off and run around naked?”
“Pryce!”
Abron made a noise that was a cross between laughter and choking. When Pryce fixed a piercing eye on him, Abron tipped his head politely. “Captain. You’ll be relieved to hear that our date was pleasant but uneventful. No, um, removal of washcloths took place. Nor is it likely to.”
A silent communication passed between the two men. Pryce’s shoulders relaxed. “Yes. Thank you. I am. You should feel free to visit again.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jess
Jess hovered at the entrance of the training room and peered inside. It was filled with people, mostly hulking monoliths of men, but a few women as well. A variety of ages and skin colors were represented, but all shared a similar bulky, muscular appearance.
Weeks had passed since the argument in Pryce’s office. There’d been an odd tension between them since then. The cuddling, teasing and comfortable friendliness were gone, replaced by a stiff coldness. It hurt. She had the sense she’d done something wrong, but she didn’t know what or how to fix it.
That morning, after greeting her in the most perfunctory manner possible, Pryce had informed her that she needed to report to the ship’s security team. Before she could ask him why, he was gone, no doubt off to terrorize the people who worked in one of his mysterious command lairs. She still had no idea why she needed to needed to see security; surely they’d all gotten enough of each other when they visited her home on Draco?
With that in mind, she was cautious when she entered the training room. She silently oozed inside, inched around the group, and froze against the back wall. No one noticed her. The group chatted with each other noisily, exchanging complaints and insults.
One of the men, a bronze giant with shaven skull, paced to the door and looked outside. “She should have been here by now,” he muttered. He glanced her way and blinked, startled. “You must be Jess. How long have you been standing there?”
“Awhile.”
The room instantly went silent. Heads swiveled, all eyes trained on her, which wasn’t as uncomfortable as she’d thought it would be. She didn’t sense hostility from the group, only curiosity. The man watched her closely, assessing her, then his lips quirked. “Welcome. I’m Calnos. I’m one of the section leads.”
“Hello.”
Calnos smiled at her. She was surprised to see that the expression was filled with warmth and humor. “Come over here with me, Jess. We’d like to ask you some questions. Maybe you could start by telling us how you managed to circle all the way to the back of the room without anyone on our team seeing you.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it’s just something you learn to do if you don’t want to be eaten. I didn’t think any of you would, but it’s always best to be careful. You are awfully big.”
There was a beat of silence, then the room was filled with guffaws.
Calnos grinned. “We usually don’t eat guests, but I don’t blame you for being cautious. Thank you for coming. My team and I invited you here because we’d like to hear more about your life on Draco.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Let’s start with the basics. After the Ghul came, you had to hide from them and live off the land. How did you find water and food?”
“Just the usual way you do, I guess. There’s nothing special about it. Some of what I did is specific to the place I lived. Put me down someplace else and I wouldn’t know which plants and animals were poisonous. I’d have to assume everything was a threat at first. You’ve all been trained to do that sort of thing, haven’t you? You probably know more about it than I do.”
“Maybe. We’d still like to hear your methods. It never hurts to learn something new. When a research crew goes down to a new planet, we send a team with them. It doesn’t happen too often, thankfully, but sometimes things go bad.”
Calnos drew her out, bit by bit. The discussion stumbled until Jess realized the people on the team were kindred spirits who were genuinely interested in what she had to say. The topic of food and water was followed by the basics of building hidden shelters, then transitioned to defense and weapons.
“Weapons.” Jess sighed. “You’ve got those things that’ll let you put people to sleep and not kill them, don’t you? That’s the nicest thing, having a choice. With me, weapons come down to one thing. If I’m using them, I’m going to kill. You’ve all had to kill, right?”
There were a few nods, primarily from the older members of the group. The younger ones, particularly the men, were staring at her as though they were in a trance.
“I hate it,” she continued, “but it’s one of those things where it doesn’t matter if you want to or not. If you don’t kill, you die. Either you die because you didn’t get enough food, or you die because you went up against something and it hurt you before you could hurt it.
“I never wanted to do any of it, but I don’t know how to do fancy fighting and I’m not as big as any of you. I don’t know if killing bothers you the way it does me, but the best way I know to get through it is to be good at it. I like it to be fast. I like things to be dead before they get a chance to hurt me, and I don’t want them to be in pain any more than they have to be. There’s no joy in hurting others, even if they’re out to hurt you. There’s no good that comes of it.”
“Where did you get weapons?” someone asked.
“Weapons are easy.” She shrugged. “Bring me a pile of anything and I can make you a weapon of some kind. Of course, some kill faster and easier than others. But if nothing else, you can sneak up on something and bash it on the head with a rock.”
Calnos grinned at her. “Really? You can make weapons out of anything?” He turned to his team. “That sounds like a challenge. Who’d like to take her up on it?”
There was a chorus of approving hoots.
“What do you think, Jess, can you meet with us again tomorrow?”
“Sure.” Jess wasn’t sure what she’d gotten herself into, but it would be a nice change from sitting in her quarters puzzling out geometry.
“Before you go, there’s someone who’d like to see you. This is the head of our group, Dane Magnusson. He’s in charge of all of us.”
Jess swiveled. She had to crane her head back to look at the man’s face, which was pleasantly craggy and topped by a precisely trimmed crest of blond hair. His eyes were surrounded by the early beginnings of lines, but the effect wasn’t displeasing. She was surprised to realize that he was almost as handsome as Pryce.
She frowned at him and nodded, as though Dane’s presence confirmed something she’d privately suspected. “You’re another giant, aren’t you? You’d think I’d be used to it by now, from being around Pryce and meeting a whole group of you just now. Is there a planet where you’re all grown?”
He chuckled and took her hand. “Hello, Jess. You may not remember me; we met a few months ago at Pryce’s meeting.” His eyes moved back and forth across her features and he looked a little sad. Why? Had she done something wrong? Even after months on the ship, she sometimes found other people’s reactions confusing.
“Yes.” She risked a smile. “I guess I should apologize for damaging a few of your people down on Draco.”
“It’s quite alright. The damage wasn’t pe
rmanent and it’s something that comes with the job. I don’t like being woken up by people with guns either.”
She laughed softly. “Pryce mentioned that you’re friends. I’ve been on the ship for months. How come you haven’t come by our quarters?”
Dane’s smile was strained. “Things have just been busy, I guess. Maybe at some point they’ll settle down. But no matter what, I’ll always be his friend.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jess
The second day Jess visited the security team, she found a table loaded with a massive pile of junk. A few people hovered beside it, shuffling and looking a trifle anxious. While Jess didn’t understand why they were nervous, her instincts told her that she should be kind.
“Oh, my!” She picked up a few pieces and admired them. “Look at all these things you found for me. This is some good stuff. I really could’ve used things like this on Draco.” The team members beamed. “Let’s see what we can make. This piece of metal will take a nice sharp edge. This other thing has a good sharp tip you can put a poison on.”
“I found that,” volunteered a red-bearded giant.
“It’s very nice. I’ll bet we could kill a bunch of things with it.”
He beamed and the others crowded around, showing her their contributions.
In short order, she’d made a spear and a snare – “The snare will let you catch food but save your strength” – then she’d moved on to making a blowgun, a bow and arrow, and weapons for bashing and stabbing.
“Some materials are more durable than others, but in an emergency you can use all sorts of things,” she advised. “Let’s talk about ways to make and sharpen blades and such, then you can try making your own weapons.”
The people separated into groups. She walked around the tables, admiring their work, and hefted one of the homemade knives to test its balance.
“I like this one a lot. It has potential for throwing. I do prefer things I can use at a distance, although knives aren’t the best for that; once you throw a knife, it’s gone until you retrieve it. But sometimes you have to get up close, and you never know when that’ll happen. You always have to be prepared, even when you’re asleep. But you all know that. There’s probably not a blessed thing I can tell any of you that you don’t already know.”
She handed the knife back to its creator and looked around the room. Her eyes settled on a rugged blond man who’d been on the team to fetch Ro so many months ago. “You there. I feel like I should know your name. After all, I did stab you once. Didn’t manage to kill you, though. That practically makes us friends.”
He chuckled. “Liam. The others you stabbed were Katie and Norris.”
“Right. Liam, Katie, and Norris. You’re my stabbing friends. Liam, can you come over here and help me?”
Liam folded his arms and shook his head decisively. “No fucking way. The last time I got near you, you put me in medical. And that was when you were half asleep.”
Jess nodded understandingly and smirked at the group. In the next breath, she had a knife at the jugular of the man standing to the left of her. In the breath after that, she’d flicked it past another man’s head and it was quivering in the wall behind him. The team froze.
“Do me a favor and don’t tell Pryce about that,” she said chattily. “He gets grumpy with me sometimes. He thinks I should spend my life painting my toenails and jamming flowers in vases.”
They eyed her warily as she circled around them and retrieved her knife. Had they learned something? If so, good. It was time to drive her point home.
She went on tiptoes and pulled her knife from the wall. “Life on this ship is pretty good, but I’ve learned that good can go to shit in a heartbeat and then you or people you love are dead. Now, I’m going to ask all of you a couple of questions. The first is how many of you knew I had a knife before I drew it. The second is how many more weapons I’m carrying right now and where I have them stashed.”
Their lead’s gaze sharpened, interested. “You carry them on the ship?”
She shrugged. “I always have weapons of some kind, even when I’m asleep. Maybe especially when I’m asleep. I never really feel safe. Not ever. Not since the Ghul came. In the course of one day, my family got slaughtered and I ended up bashing kae on the head and eating them raw. Most people are decent, but you just never know when things will go bad. Sometimes you even wake up and find strangers attacking you in your home. No offense intended, Liam.”
“None taken.”
Calnos nodded understandingly. “Would you like to go on a training exercise when we reach our next research destination? We’ll be going planetside for a few days.”
She stretched, amused when every eye in the room stayed on the knife she’d palmed. Maybe she’d had something to teach these overmuscled warriors after all. “Sure, why not? Getting off the ship awhile would be nice. I don’t like killing, but a walk and fresh air are always good. If you can take care of any killing and find food, I’ll help you fix it up. Maybe we can even try making some poisons.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Pryce
“Do you have a minute?”
Pryce looked up and saw Dane hovering at the entrance to the bridge. “What is it?”
“I recorded the training sessions with Jess. You should see them.”
They adjourned to Pryce’s ready room. While he watched the videos, he cycled between gasping and laughing.
“Shit, look at that guy’s face!” he chortled, “He almost pissed himself!”
Dane paced, his hands clasped behind his back.
“Yeah, she caught a bunch of them off guard, even the women. Almost none of them expected her to draw a weapon. After I finished laughing, I bashed in some heads. Fucking idiots. What if she’d been a hostile? Half of them would have been dead before they realized what was happening.
“All it took was a soft little woman with big eyes, a bunch of hair, and a pink shipsuit smiling at them and half of them forgot their training. And that was after they’d been briefed on her history and she’d spent several hours chatting about her methods. Hell, her patter about always being prepared and killing up close should have been a big fat clue. Notice that Liam wouldn’t go anywhere near her. Neither would any of the rest of the team who pulled her off Draco.”
Pryce rubbed a hand over her face. “I hadn’t seen her in action before. I’d hate to see her when she’s angry or afraid. Can you scroll back to when she pulled the knife? Do you know where she had it stashed?”
Dane scrolled through the last video. “There’s a moment when she bent over to scratch her leg. It’s only about one frame. I think she got it out of an ankle holster and palmed it. Right … there. It happened so fast you almost can’t see it. But I’m sure she had others. Did you know she was carrying?”
“No. I could take her weapons away, but I have a feeling she’d just make more.” Pryce realized his friend was laughing. “Sorry. I think she’s mostly harmless and I’m trying not to push her too hard. Living on the ship has required major adjustments.”
There would be even more once he claimed her, Pryce thought. The first would be her adjusting to being in his bed. He had a primal need for her and several months’ worth of it to work off. He hadn’t gone so long without sex since childhood. Seeing her startle his security team hadn’t reduced his desire for her one whit; quite the reverse.
“Half of my staff are in love with her now,” said Dane. “Apparently having a knife sail past your head makes your dick hard. Who knew? Now the kids spend all their spare time throwing knives at the wall and making weapons out of spoons and snotwads.”
“Was it good having her visit?” Pryce watched Dane’s face closely. He was relieved to see nothing more than professional interest. Perhaps he’d fretted over nothing.
“Yes. Aside from the retrieval on Draco, everyone’s had soft duty for awhile. Let’s face it; we’re primarily a research vessel, so the worst we usually see is people getting drunk and throwing
punches at each other. We need to stay sharp, though. She’s right that good can go to shit in a heartbeat. I’d like to have her down more often; she’s a natural instructor. She did more to wake up my team than a dozen lectures.”
“She does has a way of doing that.” Pryce shook his head ruefully. “I still haven’t recovered from her crawling around in the ceiling.”
Dane clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll let you get back to work. Watch out for sharp objects.”
Pryce stared out the door after his friend left. So Dane himself wanted Jess to spend more time in his section. Now that the no contact order had been lifted, there was nothing to stop anyone on the team from asking her out. No doubt many of them would. So far her dates had been innocent, the likes of outings with Abron, who seemed to understand the situation and sympathize with him, or coffee dates with callow kids barely out of the Academy. But that would soon change.
It was time to step up his efforts. He’d tamped down his advances toward Jess from the very beginning, despite his instincts and desires. She’d had a rough life on Draco and moving to the ship had been frightening. She’d needed time to adjust. He’d just assumed that once she did, his attraction to her would be obvious and would be reciprocated.
Instead, she’d pranced off on a series of dates that left him despairing and pacing their quarters. It hurt seeing her dress for other men and go off giggling in a cloud of lace and scent. He’d been told to stand back and let her do it, so he had, but it always felt wrong. Wrong and, in retrospect, foolish. If he wasn’t careful, someone else would swoop in and carry her away first.
But letting her see other men didn’t mean he couldn’t approach her himself, did it? Why should others get to woo her and not him? Everything was new to her. How was she supposed to understand what she was feeling and experiencing? How could she be expected to fall in love with him, her life match, if he didn’t put out some effort?
