The Blarmling Dilemma (Hearts in Orbit Book 1)

by S. C. Mitchell

  “You’re not Phoebe.” He turned his back to her. Even knowing, the temptation was so great he had to turn away.

  “I am not.”

  Rigel concentrated on a lingbat gliding in the branches of the Verril tree above. “Why take her form?”

  “I needed to convince you to follow me. You care for her.”

  He did care for Phoebe, on a level that surprised him. He barely knew the woman and yet . . .

  “We all care for her. You, Lart . . . me.”

  He turned back, but it was still Phoebe on the blanket. “Oolo?”

  The figure nodded. “Yes. We need to talk.”

  Rigel turned his back again. “Put some clothes on.”

  He heard Oolo/Phoebe rise. “You prefer her thus.”

  Of course he did. Any man in his right mind did. And him, quite obviously not in his right mind, wanted her ‘thus’ even more. “I prefer her thus. Not you. Put some clothes on.”

  He turned back and Oolo/Phoebe was dressed in that frumpy jumpsuit . . . and still just as desirable. Rigel closed his eyes and shook his head. If he was dead, if this was the Vestal Heavens, he could live with that.

  “You are not dead. Not yet. But you are dying and you need to fight, for Phoebe . . . for all of us.

  A bump formed in the center of the glade, growing into a hill. A cave opened in the hillside. Darkness like Rigel had never known, darker even than the inky depths of space, filled the portal. Fear radiated from the opening, chilling his heart.

  “What’s in there?”

  Oolo/Phoebe was fading away. “I do not know. But you must go through to get to the other side.”

  Rigel backed away, watching Oolo/Phoebe until she was no longer there.

  “What’s on the other side?” His question echoed around him.

  The answering whisper thundered in his ears.

  “Phoebe.”

  Chapter 18

  Phoebe set a course for Tanis Yarbia, a small settlement planet two systems away. It would take over three days to get there, but the planet was civilized and stable. They had a galactic security station and a Universal Magistrate.

  They also had fairly decent medical facilities. If Rigel survived the trip, she’d make sure he was well cared for before she turned herself over to the authorities.

  She’d lied to Oolo, which was a stupid thing to do to a creature that could read your mind. She had given up on Rigel. She’d given up on herself. Hell, she’d given up on the whole damned universe.

  Phoebe had extracted herself from Rigel’s bedside. She didn’t need to be there for the end. Oolo had gone completely silent, just staring ahead like she was in some kind of trance. Rigel never moved. The medical scanner reported his chance of survival had slid even farther. 25%.

  She just couldn’t handle watching him slip away. Rigel’s death would be on her hands. If she hadn’t . . .

  Lart ambled up, his arms crossed across his chest, looking all serious.

  “Oh, don’t start.” She waved him off. She didn’t regret saving the Blarmlings. She’d never regret that, but if only she’d taken another way, hadn’t involved the bounty hunter, hadn’t gotten involved with him . . .

  What did it matter now? What was done was done. She had to stop beating herself up and move on.

  A warning buzzer erupted and a light flashed on the control panel. Checking the scanners Phoebe found she’d managed to plot their flight path directly through a large ion storm.

  “Probably the same damn storm that got me into this situation in the first place.” She sighed in frustration, but there was a part of her that was happy for the distraction. “Not this time.”

  Double-checking the charts, she found that the storm was not on any of the predictions for this sector. “If the damned storm trackers were paid based on their dependability, they’d owe us credits.”

  Grumbling as she plotted a course around the storm, she decided to take the shortest route. The course could possibly still take them through the weakest edge of the spatial disruption, but the ship could certainly handle some shaking, and she wanted this over as fast as possible.

  Fatigue crushed her, her body heavy with the burdens of just hanging on. Beaten and frazzled, she needed to face the truth. There was no way she could get the Blarmlings back to Blarm. She had to hope her trial would produce enough sympathy for the creatures to force United Research and Technology to spare Oolo and Lart.

  In any case, she wouldn’t be turning them over to the authorities. She’d find a safe place to hide Rigel’s ship, and leave the Blarmlings onboard. They’d have to fend for themselves, but they were becoming pretty good at that.

  Phoebe turned the controls back to autopilot, then swiveled in the command chair to watch Lart, who was playing with the food extractor. Pulling herself to her feet, she watched him punch in codes, and extract a small sample. He’d then taste it, shake his head from side to side, and try another code. Whatever taste or consistency he was looking for, he couldn’t seem to find it.

  After six attempts he appeared to be getting frustrated. She stood and walked over to him, running her hand through the silver fur on his head, trying to calm him. “What food are you trying to replicate?”

  “Vrrrll.” There was that word again. So it was food. Perhaps something Oolo had been craving? The creature was pregnant after all. Phoebe wondered how closely the creatures’ reproductive process was to human. Was Vrrrll something they wanted or needed?

  Lart squealed and nodded.

  At the same moment, the ship bucked and Phoebe had to fight to keep her feet under her. Either she had flown them closer to the ion storm than she thought, or the thing had taken an unexpected turn. It was always a bit dangerous maneuvering around the unpredictable space storms, especially on the tight vector Phoebe had chosen.

  She made her way back to the command chair and checked the charts. Sure enough, the ion storm had shifted from the path she’d projected. Obviously she was no better than the storm trackers. She switched to manual override and took as wide a vector as she could, hoping to minimize the jostling.

  As she fought the storm, her mind wandered to Rigel. Would this bumping around hasten his death? Wouldn’t that be a blessing in the long run?

  Her chest tightened and her stomach wrenched.

  The darkness was complete. The inky blackness was so pervasive he barely remembered light. Rigel had to glide his hands along the wall of the cave to continue on.

  “Rigel?”

  The voice was familiar and drew him on. “Mom?”

  Rigel hadn’t seen his mother since he’d left the Theiler system over a decade ago.

  “I’ll come back and take you away from here.” Now it was his voice, though younger, higher pitched. It was what he’d told his mother the day he left her, a brash fifteen year old he barely remembered.

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, young man,” she’d admonished him. “Live your life and forget about me. My life is here now.”

  His mother’s voice echoed around him, throughout the cavern. Oolo/Phoebe had said he was trapped in his mind, so maybe they were one and the same. Maybe this cave represented the darkest reaches of his psyche. How was he to navigate that?

  The floor of the cave changed, from rock to wood. The feel was familiar in his soft-soled boots. A platform. With his toes he felt ahead, and found the edge.

  “Come on, Rigel. You can walk this with your eyes closed.” Markus’s voice whispered from behind him.

  “Is that all this is? Just memories?” Rigel shouted to the darkness, but it didn’t respond. He found the high wire with his foot and stepped out into the darkness, balancing easily. Ahead, a pinpoint of something. A reflection or flicker of light, in the inky nothingness around him.

  “And now,
the Greatest Show in the Galaxy presents . . . in his final show ever . . . the great Rigeletto!” Rotund’s voice filled the air, echoing as if the small tunnel had suddenly expanded into something much larger. Light erupted, blinding him and filling a cavernous void. He had to struggle to retain his balance. As his vision cleared, he saw a huge, faceless crowd, seated around the outside of a full, three ring circus big top. The cavern walls were painted the familiar green and white stripes, but remained jagged stone. As if the enormous, tent-shaped cavern had been quickly and roughly hewn from the solid rock.

  The high wire extended ahead to a second platform, but beyond that the cave stretched on as before.

  Rigel strode forward confidently on the wire, wanting only to reach the end and continue down the hallway.

  “A trick, Rigelitto. Show us a trick,” Rotund begged. “Something for the universe to remember you by.”

  Rotund hadn’t been the only one to tell Rigel he was the best aerialist they’d ever seen. He had been good, perhaps one of the best. The accident had taken it all from him, but here . . . wherever here was . . . he had one more chance to soar.

  Just one . . . for the crowd.

  He somersaulted forward, tucking and rolling along the wire, then bouncing back to his feet. The cheering of the crowd below thundered through the great cavern. Rigel had only taken his eyes off the tunnel ahead for a few seconds during the roll, but as he returned to his feet he noted figures now populated the cavern hallway.

  A petite woman with a golden spill of hair stood with her back to him—her hands shackled, her head bowed.

  “Phoebe!” Rigel called, racing ahead on the tight rope toward her. She turned. Her tired eyes spoke volumes of sadness and regret.

  A portly galactic marshal stood next to her, greasy red hair falling to his shoulders. “Come on, Callista, time to face the music.” O’Callaghan tugged the rope tied to Phoebe’s shackles and pulled her along the tunnel. “You too, ya little runts.”

  Shambling behind, also bound, were Oolo and Lart.

  Rigel followed as fast as he could. Reaching the platform at the other side of the tightrope, he left the booing circus crowd behind and sprinted down the hallway toward Phoebe, O’Callaghan, and the Blarmlings. Though they were slowly shuffling, and he was sprinting his fastest, Rigel could not catch them.

  With a suddenness that had him backpedaling, the cavern ended. Phoebe and the others were gone. He stood alone in a dead ended corridor.

  “This isn’t real. It’s in my mind.” He tried to quell his rising fears. Phoebe and the Blarmlings, captured? Had it already happened?

  Either way, they needed him. He couldn’t stay here, trapped in his mind.

  He put both hands on the rough stone wall ahead of him and pushed with everything he had left. Slowly, the rock began to move, and the cavern around him began to rumble and quake.

  The final shockwave rolled through The Blarmlings’ Hope, then the ship evened out in the calmness of dead space. Phoebe relaxed her grip on the controls. No damage, but the ship had been tossed a bit. Sighing, she turned in the chair to face the doorway to Rigel’s quarters. She should go see how he was. If he was still . . .

  She pulled herself from the command chair and shuffled toward the door, the chill in the pit of her stomach causing her feet to drag. She’d almost felt thankful for the storm, as a distraction from the reality she knew she’d eventually have to face.

  Phoebe sensed the difference the moment she crossed the threshold. Oolo sat on the edge of the bed, her legs swinging easily, with a smug expression in her glowing purple eyes. She didn’t need to understand Blarm to interpret the creature’s tweets and chirps as “I told you so.”

  Rigel slept easily, the monitor next to his bed quietly blipping a strong pulse rate. His chances of survival now standing at 87%.

  “I don’t know what you did, but thank you.” She hugged Oolo, as her eyes moistened. Rigel was going to make it.

  Phoebe realized then she had deep feelings for him, deeper than she’d ever imagined.

  She released Oolo, and the Blarmling hopped to the floor and tottered off, leaving Phoebe alone at Rigel’s bedside. She sat on the bed and smoothed his tangled hair, running her hand down the side of his head. What was it about him, over every other guy she’d ever met, that caused her heart to clench each time she saw him?

  Honor, tenacity, that rugged sexiness . . . and so much more.

  Rigel’s deep blue eyes flickered open. A slight smile creased the corners of his mouth.

  “Oolo was right.” His voice was forced, whispered, and raspy. His face was drawn, his eyes sunken, and his hair matted and greasy. Phoebe had never seen anything that looked so good.

  “Gods, I thought I’d lost you.”

  She wanted to hug him, kiss him, but he seemed so frail. Locking down the emotions that threatened to boil over, she sniffed back her tears. His needs came first. He was under nourished, dehydrated, and probably in great pain.

  “Do you need anything?” Water probably first, then some food. The med blanket could administer pain meds, but she could adjust that if he needed more.

  “Yes,” he groaned, his voice still rasping, but his sunken eyes held a mischievous glint. “I need a kiss.”

  Phoebe melted inside.

  Chapter 19

  Hunger rumbled in his gut and thirst parched his throat, but those needs paled when compared to his desire for Phoebe’s lips on his. Rigel drank in her kiss, light at first . . . cautious. But he deepened it as much as he could, his dry tongue piercing the moistness of her mouth. Sweeter than Felbar honey. More refreshing than the icy springs of Solentide.

  Oolo had been right. At the end of his long, dark tunnel of madness, Phoebe had been waiting, and he wasn’t about to let her slip away.

  Gentle hands stroked his cheek, and it was sweet agony when she broke off the kiss. “You need hydration . . . and food.”

  “All I need is you,” he managed to croak out. He tried to raise his hand, touch her, but the pain of just that simple movement made his head swim.

  Phoebe tucked his arm back under the med blanket. “You’re in no shape to fool around, Rigel Antares.” Her eyes were mischievous . . . playful.

  Rigel would have laughed, but his throat was raw. “I’m going to be such a pain in the ass, you know.”

  She stood, brushing a stray lock of her golden hair behind her ear. “Sick men always are.”

  Phoebe smiled, tears glistening in the corners of her eyes. Then she left, creating a void in the room. Rigel took a deep breath and sighed. Pain lanced across his body and hunger gnawed at his bones. Still, he was alive and that was something. He’d never been a religious man, but he took a moment to thank the galactic Gods for giving him his life back . . . and for Phoebe.

  Still, something niggled at the back of his thoughts. There was something that needed to be addressed quickly, but his mind was jumbled. He couldn’t put his finger on it.

  Phoebe returned bringing brightness and warmth back to his room. She held a deep bowl in her hands.

  “I don’t suppose that’s a Gormulan flat steak?” he managed to say, his throat still as dry as the Morly Desert Worlds.

  Phoebe smiled and the chamber brightened. “Just mock chicken soup. Sorry.”

  Rigel rolled his eyes. Mock chicken was a galactic joke. There was an old Earth custom of identifying any unknown protein based food product as ‘tasting like chicken.’ Even after the avian extinctions of the late twenty-first century, the phrase persisted. After the invention of food replicators, amateur edibles programmers dove in to fill the gap, creating a range of food creation settings, each called ‘mock chicken.’ Rigel often wondered if any of them tasted even remotely like the real substance.

  “Whose mock chicken?” he asked, as Phoebe sat on the bedside
and prepared to feed him the thin broth. Everyone had their favorite program setting for the flavor, of course. Rigel’s was created by a dietician named Borges.

  “Mine,” Phoebe answered, shoving the spoon into his mouth.

  The flavor was amazing. Rich, salty, savory. Very suddenly, Borges slipped to number two on Rigel’s list of favorite mock chicken programs.

  He looked into Phoebe’s incredible green eyes, remembering only recently seeing those same eyes shrouded in sorrow and regret. Her hands shackled, being led down a shadowed hallway . . . by O’Callaghan.

  Then he remembered.

  “There’s a bug on the ship.” He tried to rise, but didn’t have the strength. “O’Callaghan can track us.”

  Phoebe’s smiling face grew grim. “I wondered how he found me so fast. Damn it, Rigel, that’s illegal!”

  Of all the nerve. And O’Callaghan had called her a criminal?

  Phoebe seethed, her stomach knotted, as she went over the list of laws the ‘lawman’ had broken recently. She started a general ship scan, but didn’t expect to find the bug that way. O’Callaghan was cleverer than that. Still, it was the first step in discovering any anomalies on the ship. She’d already compensated for the hidden compartment in the cargo bay, and the other cobbled systems, now she just had to find that one little thing, a slight bit out of sync that was hiding the bug.

  She opened the life support system access panel and slid in on her back to do a visual scan of the oxygen recycler.