by D. Brumbley
Mercury nodded and sat in her chair, since she clearly had nothing else to say. She wasn’t involved, she’d told him as much, and the only thing that was suspect was the timing. It was unfortunate that the timing made them look like they were part of a mass murder, but she was glad to still be alive.
They made her sit in the room for an hour without any kind of further information, but eventually she was brushed out of the law station with a warning not to leave Three without registering herself by the port authority. Her luggage had obviously been thoroughly violated, but it appeared otherwise intact. The third person she asked finally relented and took her to another separate law station several decks away, where Orion had apparently been taken to be questioned in the presence of his superior officer.
She was still organizing her things after they had been torn through when Orion made an appearance. Some of her clothes were literally torn as she went through them, though she had no idea what purpose that served except that she figured the officers wanted to show her how serious they were about being rough. Mercury didn’t feel particularly frightened. Her innocence was obvious and it would keep her safe, even if people didn’t act like they believed she was innocent. She closed her suitcase when he stepped up to her, then gave him a weak smile. “Apparently the officers here have an issue with my wardrobe.”
Orion shook his head as he looked down at her suitcase, and picked it up for her. They were at only a third of Earth-norm gravity, so it wasn’t as if any of it was heavy. “Officers here love thinking they’re heroes and tough guys. Tend to act more like thugs with guns.” Obviously he had been released as well, though, so there was nothing for them to hold him on. “I might have to file charges on them myself. Ripping your clothes is my job, not theirs.”
“I’m sure they didn’t believe me, though I’m also certain if they do all the digging they threatened to do, they’re going to be very bored. I rarely leave the hospital to even go home, let alone plan some elaborate scheme to murder thousands of people.” She reached out for Orion’s arm and held onto him before they started to move away. “I’m glad to see you again. It’s nice to see someone I recognize. Even if we just met earlier today, I feel like we’ve already gone through a lot together.”
“Could be you feel that way because we have.” He gave her a weak smile, and squeezed her arm against him as they walked down the corridor. Once they were out of sight of the law station, he stopped against a wall that had once had some kind of poster plastered to it and ripped down badly. He pressed her against it and kissed her gently, just as glad to be back with her as she was to be back with him. “You were talking earlier about getting a bath and relaxing. How about we get to that?”
“Is your home far?” She said as she attempted to recover from his kiss, since it had set her heart racing.
“Hop, skip, and a jump.” He smiled and kissed her again before pulling away to pull her with him down the corridor. “Military quarters are kept near the docks, especially pilots. My room is at about .4 gravity. I hope that doesn’t bother you too much.” Most people who lived in space had gotten accustomed long since to the fluctuations in gravity that were a reality of their lives, but some people were still more sensitive to them than others. “It has a killer view, though.”
“I was trained to handle changes in gravity, so I think I will be okay.” She felt like his kisses were affecting her more and more, and she had to wonder if the shared experience of the horror on station Nine had made her feel closer to him. “All I care about is spending time with you right now. Unless they intend to send me home.”
“Nobody’s sending you anywhere without me.” He told her with a grin and a squeeze of her hand, before he turned his attention back to the hallway to lead the way.
Not only was Station Three itself very different from her experience, but the people who lived there were incredibly different from most of those she had served and worked with her entire life. People weren’t in uniform, for one thing. Anyone in Station Seven or Nine could have been identified by the uniform they were wearing and the position inscribed on it. Some of those in Three had that to define them, but most of them were dressed casually, sometimes even scandalously. The docks were surrounded on all sides by bars and clubs, with people flowing in and out steadily as she and Orion made their way through.
A few times, as they walked, Orion actually picked her up to carry her past a broken section of corridor. Once, in not-quite-zero gravity, he grabbed their luggage in one hand and grabbed her in the other, then took a running jump that carried them over an entire open shopping plaza that opened beneath them. There were no guideposts, no directional columns to catch people in mid-air, and it was a testament to Orion’s own kinetic awareness that they actually landed at the other corridor entrance more than a hundred meters away.
He was still laughing as he carried her around another corner and hopped down several flights of steps to a much more cozy-looking corridor that was obviously made up of residences. “Is your heart back in your chest yet?” He said as he set her on her feet so that he could have a hand free to key the door. They had returned to almost half of normal gravity, but it had been an interesting ride to get there. “I did warn you that there was jumping involved.”
“I don’t think the warning was sufficient.” She said as she looked at him with a glare that was as playful as she could manage, though she definitely felt like her heart was in her throat. “I’ve never seen things in such disrepair like that. Why would your station allow that? That’s a hazard.”
“Structure over cosmetics.” He said with a teasing smile, then pushed open the door to his unit to let her go in first, to get a look around at the incredible luxury that he did not live in.
The entry was small, as was standard for residential units in order to enable security measures in a crisis. Past that, she saw in quick succession the main room off to one side, and a small kitchen area to the other with a tiny two-chair table folded up against the wall to make more room. A hallway beyond went only a few steps back to a bathroom and a bedroom. The main room was taken up with a single incredibly-long couch that was bolted to the floor and wall, but he hadn’t been kidding about the view. One full side of his living room was open to what looked like bare space at first glance, the Earth barely starting to come into view with the rotation of the station along the bottom of the window. They were out on the end of the entire station, with a completely unobstructed look out at the universe, which was a rare enough thing on a station like Seven, let alone a monster like Three.
In one corner of the room, adding hilarity to the majestic image of the world below them, there was a floor-to-ceiling cage, with two incredibly excited animals jumping up and down in the bars and making noise at their appearance. The ferrets were clearly well-accustomed to lower gravity, since they were leaping from the ceiling to the floor with ease to show their excitement, which made Orion laugh behind her.
On the floor in front of the couch, between Mercury and the far corner with the ferrets, was a low coffee table, holding a deep red vase of water, with a dozen blood-red roses in full bloom. There was a box on the coffee table in front of the flowers that was easily nicer than anything else in the room, since it clearly contained some kind of jewelry and had been polished accordingly.
She looked at the animals and then over to the flowers, since both were equally shocking in her eyes. The flowers were a safer bet to touch, though, so she walked slowly toward them and reached out and ran her fingertips against the silky petals. “These must have cost you a fortune. I’ve only ever seen real roses once, and they were from my father to my mother. They’re incredible.”
“I’m glad you like them.” He set their luggage down just past the entry with a smile. He closed and locked the door behind them, setting his handprint on the door and affirming that they were not to be disturbed for any but emergency reasons. “The box is for you too.”
“But how did you get them, and so quickly? You didn�
��t know that we would like each other so much, did you?” She looked back at him but she didn’t reach out to grab the box. “I didn’t get any gifts for you. I feel bad.”
He just smiled, and walked up to her to run a hand over her waist. “You’re in my house. I get the gifts. You receive them. My rules.” He chuckled and kissed her again. “I told you. On Three, if you know the right people, you can get whatever you have in mind. I didn’t know you at all, so I thought flowers would be a fairly safe bet. And, I might not have known we were going to like each other this much, but I did go into this wanting you to know that I’m in this all the way. That includes the privilege of getting you expensive presents when possible.”
Mercury actually blushed and she kissed him back several times before she gave any sort of reply. “You’re so very different than the life I am accustomed to. It confuses and excites me at the same time.”
“I think I’m comfortable with that.” He grinned against her lips, and kissed her slowly, returning to the moments they had shared hours before on Nine, except for the fact that they were upright. On their feet, Mercury had to tilt her head back completely in order to kiss him, and it left the rest of her vulnerable to him, wandering hands and all, roaming over her to spread the fire his lips had started in her body. “You’re nothing like I’m used to either. I imagine I’ll have my share of confused when it comes to things between us, but right now, I’m gonna go with excited.”
She gasped between kisses whenever his hands wandered to places that had seen very little action, and soon enough her cheeks were burning. Mercury kissed him back the best she knew how, though she had little experience to know if she was a good kisser or not. It was crazy, but the longer he kissed her and touched her, the further away her mind wandered from reality. After the terrible things they had witnessed that day, it was a good thing. “I can’t think when you’re touching me. It’s so strange.”
“I read an interesting essay on that topic the other day.” His kisses moved down her jawline to her neck, his hands roaming over her hips to press her against him. “It talked about how new sensations short-circuit the brain, confuse your neurons too much for the old faithful pathways to work properly because they’re too busy making new ones. So if someone’s doing something to you that’s never been done before…” his hand ran over the skirt of her dress to play between her thighs on its way up over her waist. “Just means your brain is busy. Which is the way I think I plan to keep you.”
Her face burned some more, but the spot between her legs that he was teasing became more needy and achy by the minute. “I’ve had sex. I’ve been touched.” Just apparently not by the right man. Greg and Eddie never produced this kind of reaction in her. It was incredible. “You read medical journals?”
“Why, don’t you?” He teased with a grin. “I don’t normally have company like you on long flights between stations. I read a lot of things.” He leaned down to kiss along her collarbone, then came back up holding the small box from the table in his hand between them. “The second part of your ‘welcome-to-my-home’ present. I would say it’s the second half, but now that I’ve known you for about six hours, I know I’ve got another good one for you later.”
Mercury laughed softly and eventually reached out to take the gift from him. “This is all very kind. Thank you.” She hadn’t even opened the gift, but she already felt overwhelmed.
When she opened it, there was an artfully worked pendant inside, made mostly out of silver, but edged in burnished metal and a few gemstones that made it look like fire frozen in place. It was on such a thin fiber it would be invisible against her skin, and on the reverse, it had the symbol for the planet Mercury worked into the metal. “I realize it’s a little on the nose, but I figured it would go with your hair.”
She ran her fingertips over it slowly and smiled as she stared at it. “It is so beautiful, thank you.” Mercury had a few pieces of jewelry, but it wasn’t practical to wear them as a doctor, so she kept them stored away in a small box that her mother gave her. She held it back out to him, then turned around and pulled up her hair. Mercury was still wearing her green dress, so she knew the pendant would sit nicely against her chest. “Will you put it on me?”
He undid the small clasp and settled it in place on her skin before he adjusted the clasp for her at the back of her neck. For a big man, his fingers had no difficulty working nimbly at the tiny catches of it, and he reached over her shoulder to settle it in place just above the cleavage her dress was showing.
Once it was on, he started stepping backward away from the table with his hands on her waist, walking her backward with him as far as the corner past the living room. The bathroom was on the other side of the wall, and the light inside turned on as soon as it saw motion from them. There wasn’t much space to stand or do anything else with the sink and the toilet taking up most of the available space, but the tub itself was actually square and fairly large. All of it was pristinely clean, since he had obviously prepared for her arrival. The mirror directly above the sink in front of her showed the image of her with the necklace on, and gave her the first glimpse of what she and Orion looked like together. He stood behind her smiling, with a hand on her waist and his uniform every bit as crisp as her dress was soft.
Mercury looked at their reflection and she smiled brighter, since they looked good together and happy, even though they had only been together less than a day. “We should take a photo.”
“We should.” He leaned down to kiss the side of her neck before he turned away enough to go pick up his communicator. He set it by the mirror and stepped away to pull her back against him tightly. It took several pictures of them as they stood there smiling, and he leaned down to kiss her cheek for one of them before it finished. “I wonder how many people take match pictures on the first day.”
Instead of looking at his communicator afterward, she continued to look at them in the mirror, and she smiled again. “We look good together. You look good. Amazing, actually.” Somehow he was more and more attractive, and it put some downright dirty thoughts into her mind. That hadn’t ever happened before either.
“You’re one to talk.” One of his arms was resting across her chest, and his thumb reached up along the neckline of her dress to tuck itself inside, running in a slow caress down the slope of her breasts. “You’re beautiful, Mercury. And in the interests of full disclosure, I have to tell you, I feel a very strong urge to finish off your tour of my unit and show you the bedroom.”
Mercury shivered as he touched any part of her breasts, and she wanted him to do more than tease her. She turned around slowly so that she could face him, since she wanted to look directly into his eyes. “That would be alright with me.”
He stepped back out of the bathroom, tugging her with him by the hand. It was only a few steps around a corner to his bedroom, since the entire place was designed to be compact, after all. The bedroom had the same view of space and Earth that the living room had, but it was completely unobstructed, open floor to ceiling without interruption or decoration, allowing for a view of the Earth below that lit up his entire room. The bed took up all of the remaining space, massive as it was. There were shelves high up on the walls that stored his clothes and a few other possessions, and a row of books that was secured to the wall with bars. A standing closet bracketed to the wall held all of his uniforms behind a plastic seal.
The bed itself was nothing more than a plain black sheet with a few blankets folded neatly off to one side and tethered with a thin string so they wouldn’t float away in times of lower gravity. A long pillow ran the length of the headboard and came close to stretching the entire distance from one wall to the window. Designs of flight paths and a live map of Earth relative to the station’s current position adorned his walls, along with a long, strange-looking tube of tightly-packed wire that it took her a moment to realize stretched all the way to the cage in the front room. He saw her eyes trace it back through the open doorway of his room and chuckled.
“Don’t worry, it’s shut off. I usually let them run, but I decided they’d be better off in their living room while I was away for the day.”
Mercury sat down at the edge of his bed, though he hadn’t given her permission to do so. She hoped he wouldn’t mind. “I can’t believe they let you have any pets at all. The only animals they allow on Seven are for medical research. How did you get permission?”
“They were actually management’s idea.” He smiled as he told the story, and went to one side of his room to take off his boots and leave them with the rest of his uniform materials. “About twenty years ago, there was a mix-up at a research lab a few partitions over. Few hundred mice got loose. They rounded up most of them, but what they didn’t know was that they got into the greenhouses. Bunch of food, no real means of control, within two years there was a massive population explosion. Huge. Still a problem that’s not completely gone in some parts of the station. Kinda hard to be sure.” He finished with his boots, then went back over to Mercury, but he didn’t sit down on the bed with her. Instead, he knelt on the floor in front of her and started working at sliding off the heels she’d worn to meet him, slowly, without looking away from her eyes until he could start working them off her feet one at a time. “Somebody had the bright idea to bring up a limited number of ferrets from Earthside, tag them so they could be tracked, and let them loose to deal with the problem. Made sure to track them so they wouldn’t have kids without anyone knowing about it, tagged the kids, kept on with the process. When the problem went away, a bunch of people got to adopt the leftover ferrets as pets, myself included.”
She was mesmerized by his storytelling since she enjoyed listening to him talk. That hadn’t happened with Greg either. Mercury only looked away from him when he stopped talking, glancing in the general direction of the ferrets. “You’re not going to let them loose without warning me, are you?”
That made him laugh as he tossed her second heel aside, running his hands up over her calves once they were bare. “They don’t bite. And they mostly play with each other, not with anyone else in the room. But yes, I’ll tell you before I let them out.”
