by D. Brumbley
“I’m more of a brain-man, really, but tits are a pretty close second.” There was a vibration that came out of nowhere against her leg from a pocket on his own, and he grinned at the way it made her jump, then went to retrieve his communicator to see what had caused it. As he looked at the screen, though, his teasing smile changed to a deep look of serious concern, and his eyes flicked up quickly to look around the passenger space once he was done reading. “Interesting.” He almost growled as he looked past her across the space to where Mercury and Logan were going around checking people for nausea troubles. “They’re smarter than I gave them credit for.”
Jessie turned her attention to the Orbital doctor and Logan beside her. She raised her eyebrows before she looked back at Gordon in confusion. “They’re smart to go around and give people medication to stop the puking madness? Yeah, I’d say that was pretty smart. And necessary.”
“They’re checking for stowaways.” Gordon said as he pulled out the data core she had seen him use earlier, anchoring it as best he could between his leg and the side of his chair so that it could emit its holographic interface. “Here, get comfortable.” He put one hand on her back and pulled her down so that her face was resting against his shoulder. It put the two of them much closer together, and also blocked any sight of the small interface from being seen by Logan and Mercury as they made their way through the rest of the population.
Jessie wasn’t sure how she felt with her face against him, not to mention the rest of her, but she was trying not to dwell on it he was using her to cover him, that was all. She lowered her voice as she looked at the different bits of light moving faster than she could follow in front of her face. “Are you a stowaway?” She didn’t previously think she was befriending someone illegal, just someone who knew too much.
“Not exactly.” Gordon’s fingers moved quickly through the interface, but he had to pause and do some detail work when he got to something that looked like a projection of DNA structures. As she watched, she saw letters come up on the screen from someone apparently named Jeffrey.
What do I do? Are you handling it? Stop messing with that bitch and answer me!
Gordon’s chest heaved in a sigh as he pointedly ignored the message that had come through. “Poor Jeffrey. He never could quite understand priorities.” He made no move to hurry the message off the screen or keep her from seeing it, just continued to work, now with two genetic sequences. From his gestures and the few nuggets of code she could see as he worked, it appeared that he removed one string of DNA and inserted a different one. As he cycled through the information, the name Gordon White came up with Gordon’s picture on it for identification. At that, he seemed satisfied, and dismissed most of the program, to access Jeffrey’s message and reply. Tell them whatever you want when they detain you, Jeffrey. By the time you finish reading this, your communicator will be fried. Have some dignity, and remember, you are on the right side of this, even if they can’t understand that. Gordon finished the message and sent it off, then pulled up another program that Jessie could follow easily, navigating through some of the technical components of the ship all around them until he isolated the communicator that appeared to belong to Jeffrey. A few pokes at the hologram and she could see the device’s status turn from green to red to black under some kind of programmed assault that rendered it useless.
Jessie wasn’t sure what she had just witnessed, and she was trying to piece it together in her head, which just meant she was lingering against him even longer and not really even thinking about it. “Do you know who attacked those security people?” She whispered when she looked up, but part of her was also wondering what he meant by Jeffrey and priorities. In no way, if she was dealing with some kind of fugitive, did that make her a priority, but it almost sounded like he’d meant it to sound that way.
“Difficult as this may be to believe, no, I actually don’t.” Gordon said with a brief chuckle, even though he realized it would take a specific kind of psychopath to chuckle at the fact that someone had just died. “I saw him approach Johnson with the bat, saw her begin to engage, and decided the distraction was a good opportunity to unload the actual bag I wanted to bring with me from my vehicle in the lot, but Jeffrey and I were on the shuttle before things really escalated. I have no idea why he had such a bone to pick with the Consortium. All I can really say is that he didn’t plan ahead very well. He should have brought a gun, at the very least, if he wanted to do any real damage.”
Jessie leaned back slightly, but then she realized that she might expose him with his data core, so she leaned back in sharply, and bumped her nose against his face. “Am I going to get kicked out of the Initiative or worse for being with…for being friends with you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was invited.” He pointed to the hologram with a grin. “See? Got a letter and everything. I was just, you know, being considerate. Making sure the Initiative’s data on my DNA matched what was actually in my veins.” He finished with what he was doing and put away the data core, though as he reached up to put it back inside his shirt, it put his hand quite close to her own chest, and he wasn’t careful about keeping himself from brushing the front of her flight suit in the process. “No, the Initiative won’t do anything to you for being with me.” He said without correcting himself as she had. “So long as they don’t know who I am. Which they won’t for a long time, if I have my way with it.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and then pulled back as soon as he had put away his data core, since there was no other reason to remain close if she wasn’t helping him be secretive. She didn’t need to tease herself or tease him, since as soon as they got to Station Nine, they would be matched with some random people they’d never met. And she wasn’t even sure she liked him. Did she? “I don’t know why you’re trusting me.” She pulled away a little bit more. “But I won’t tell. Just be careful. And don’t leave me out of the loop if something serious happens.”
“I’ll do my best. It’s a big damn loop.” He smiled up at her, but pulled her in closer as Logan and Mercury finally got closer to them to include them in their sweep.
“Oh look, two people who aren’t puking. How refreshing.” Logan said with a teasing grin at the two of them. “You two look like you’re adjusting fairly well.”
“Yeah, I really thought it would bother me, but I hardly notice. It’s easier when you stay strapped in, I feel like.” Gordon said amicably, one hand still bunched in Jessie’s suit to keep her on his lap, even if she wasn’t exactly snuggling any more.
“I took the smart route and got the meds before even leaving the ground, right Doc?” Jessie said to the redheaded woman who just smiled back at her.
“Yes, I remember. Jessica, right? Rogers?” Mercury scanned Jessie and then nodded as she looked over the dosage that she’d given the woman. “Still feel like enough? I can give one more dose if you need it.”
Jessie shook her head. “Nope, I’m good.” She looked over at Logan and raised an eyebrow. “Got appointed to bodyguard already, huh? Is the pilot afraid someone is going to hit on his wife?”
“We’re down a couple security personnel, in case you didn’t notice.” Logan said without sounding angry about it, and actually gave Jessie a smile. “Just taking precautions.”
“The kind of precautions that involve drafting the farm-boy.” Gordon agreed as he turned his face to help accommodate Mercury’s ID scan. “I don’t need any nausea meds, Doctor, but thank you. How are the two who were attacked in the parking lot? Were you able to stabilize them?”
“They’re stabilized for now. But it’s not exactly a short trip from the surface to Station Nine, so let’s just hope they stay that way.” Mercury looked over her scan and then looked past Gordon and Jessica. “I better keep moving. You know where to find me if you need more medication.”
“We do. You and your bodyguard stand out just a little.” Gordon said with a final smile, waving at them as they started away. Jessie could see his
eyes settle on a man farther up the section from them, who was looking back at Gordon with panic in his eyes, but with a resolute set to his jaw. It would be a while until Mercury and Logan reached him, but from the looks of things, the man was already feeling the countdown deeply.
Jessie leaned in close again so she could whisper in Gordon’s ear. “Why is he going to get caught but you didn’t? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“He came to get caught.” Gordon said almost sadly, holding Jessie close even as he watched Jeffrey sweat out the moments before Logan and Mercury got to him. “That’s his whole reason for being here. I know he was hoping it would happen later instead of right here at the beginning, but it’s really for the best. He was useful on Earth, but he’s too unstable.” Gordon shook his head and sighed quietly, then turned to speak more closely to Jessie’s own ear. “The Consortium took his father six years ago, seized his research, destroyed his lab, all of it. He was getting close. Jeff has been waiting ever since to get nabbed by them and see if he’ll have a chance to find his father, or at least find out what happened to him. He was a good colleague to have back in the mountains. Revenge is a solid motivator, so long as it lasts.”
“The mountains? You’re really full of secrets, aren’t you?” Jessie found she didn’t mind being close to him even though she knew it was a waste of time to entertain the thought. “I find myself more and more attracted to you. Probably because you showed me all of those other men and proved you are intelligent or because you’re so mysterious. I can’t explain it.”
“The human race has a love for secrets and the people who carry them. I’m not sure I can explain it either.” That made him laugh, and his hands got bold about the way they were holding her, moving down over her back and running up her thigh to her hips to hold her close. “But the ones who don’t really have secrets are the ones that act like they do, and the ones who really do have secrets are usually the ones that act like they don’t. I’ve got plenty to hide, but you’ll see it all eventually, if you decide you really want to.”
“Really? Why me?” She shivered a little when his hands went over her thighs, but at least he wasn’t disgusted by her and her curves. “What about your match? Won’t she be jealous that you’re confiding in someone else?”
“Oh, absolutely.” He laughed as his hand continued its caress, though not much by way of intimacy was possible while wearing the flight suits. “I hope that she’s a deeply jealous woman who goes into fits whenever I so much as look at another creature. I have a habit of choosing intensely possessive women. It tends to backfire if the relationship goes badly, but it’s great fun while it lasts.”
Jessie furrowed her brows at that and then she pulled back again. Clearly she had hoped for a different kind of answer, but she barely knew the man. He was very cavalier. “I’m not really interested in sharing anyone with someone else again. I didn’t come on this journey to make another woman want to kill me.” She pulled out of his lap completely and moved back toward her own seat, but it was slow going in the null gravity.
“No. You came on this journey to have a new life.” He grinned a little brighter as he watched her get back in her seat, then unbuckled himself and arched his back to slide into mid-air deftly, one hand still resting on the arm of his chair to anchor him as he spun easily to face her. “And I’m gonna really enjoy watching the look on your face when you get it.” He moved in against her just as she got settled, and anchored his hands on the sides of her flight suit to hold himself close in the kiss that followed.
His lips tasted like something sharp enough to draw blood, a kind of tart mint that was difficult to place at first taste. He wasn’t shy about the kiss and clearly wasn’t trying to hide it from any of the other two hundred people in the room, but as intense as it was, it lasted just barely long enough for the more conservative passengers around them to clearly start getting uncomfortable before he pulled away. “I need to go check some of the bags I brought on board. I’ll be back soon.”
Jessie was stunned into silence after a kiss that intense, and it was almost instinct for her to reach and grab his arm before he could get too far out of her reach. She hauled him back for another kiss, since no one had kissed her like that in her entire life and she wanted at least one more.
He had no problem with being hauled back, but she could feel him smiling under the touch. His hands gripped her thighs to keep himself stable as he kissed her, and his fingers digging into the stiff fabric of the flight suit were just a tease for what his fingers might feel like digging into the rest of her. “Like I said,” he finally said quietly, once the kiss ended momentarily, “I like my women possessive.” He tightened his grip on her suit by way of illustration, chuckling once against her lips.
“I’m already jealous of whoever she is.” She admitted just as quietly before she dared to look into his eyes again. “No one has ever kissed me like that.”
“Which just means I’ll have to help you make up for lost time.” The tone of his voice was a promise on its own, but the genuine intensity in his eyes might as well have been swearing on something holy. There was nothing inherently striking about the man except his eyes, and the contradiction in him only became more apparent the longer she spent with him.
As he pulled away, she got another good look at him in his flight suit. Nothing to be too excited about, more of a uniformed stick figure than anything else, shaggy hair in a halo around his head in zero gravity and flowing back from his face as he moved as if he was swimming rather than floating. His features weren’t unfortunate, by any means, but there were easily a dozen men more objectively attractive within a dozen paces of where she sat. Everything about him was in the eyes or behind them. Everything that seemed to matter, anyway.
Even after Mercury scanned someone that didn’t show up in the database, she acted as though nothing was wrong and moved down the rest of the row treating patients until she could pull Logan aside. He had seen the screen when she scanned the man. He knew. “How do we prevent a scene? Is that possible?”
“Not forever.” Logan said with a sidelong look back into the passenger compartment, not looking directly at the man, but pretending to be very intent on someone a few rows away from him, in case the man was watching to see if he’d been discovered. “What we need to decide is if we make a scene now or we make a scene later. If we make a scene now…I’ve never fought somebody in zero gravity before. This guy might have. So there’s no guarantees on that. If we do it later, that gives him the opportunity to do something else while he’s still on board. We can watch him, but we can’t watch every single thing he does. Without knowing what he’s planning, it’s hard to know what we need to prevent.”
“If you think you can detain him somehow, I have plenty of sedatives I can use to keep him from causing any more trouble. We can’t give him any more chances to hurt anyone.”
Logan clearly agreed, and looked back over the rest of the passengers with a sigh. “Alright, let’s hit the row across from him, let him think we’re going about business. If I get a chance to see that he’s distracted or just relaxing, I’ll grab him. Just have something ready to stick him with in your kit when I do. We’ve only got the two rows left to do, so once we’re sure he’s the only one we’re worried about, I’ll bag him.” Logan allowed himself to look directly at the man again, who wasn’t small or weak-looking, even if he was nothing particularly impressive either. Once he’d gotten a chance to size the man up with a solid glance, he looked back at Mercury. “Don’t step in until I tell you. Keep your distance.”
Mercury nodded as she looked at Logan, since she was grateful that he was going to help her. Orion had enough to worry about with piloting the ship, and the farm-hand next to her looked as though he could handle himself well enough. “Thank you for helping me with this. You don’t know me and I don’t know you, but I’m grateful that we at least have one thing in common. We want this project to succeed and to get to Jannah. I doubt you would be so willing to thr
ow yourself at this man otherwise.”
Logan shrugged without taking his eyes off the passenger compartment at first, but then turned his stormy grey eyes back on her. “We’ve both got a lot to lose if this project fails, and a hell of a lot to gain if it succeeds. If throwing myself at somebody is gonna help with that, then that’s not a problem.”
“I’ve spent my whole life working toward getting to Jannah and spending my life there. Especially now that I have someone I love and I want to build a family with. Jannah has never meant so much to me as it does now. I know you want the same thing with your wife. We’re on the same team.” Mercury gave him a resolute nod and then turned her attention to her kit. “I’ll be ready when you are.”
Checking through the rest of the passengers went about as easily as the first part of their task had, though they still had to stop and clean up a few messes from people who hadn’t quite adjusted to their lack of orientation. When they finally got to the end of the row again, they settled in talking with a pair of sisters who were fawning over Mercury and asking where she dyed her hair to get it to look that color, to the amusement of all. Logan was legitimately entertained by the entire exchange, mostly because Mercury seemed so confused and taken aback by it, but the entire cabin was set at ease one laugh at a time.
Keeping “Jeffrey” in his peripheral vision was fairly easy during the conversation, and it was similarly easy to anchor himself on the edge of one unoccupied seat, rocking to gauge the momentum he would need to get to the imposter before being spotted doing so. Mid-laugh, he launched himself in the man’s direction and managed to barrel into him hard with his shoulder while simultaneously grabbing the man’s forearms. To his credit, “Jeffrey” recovered quickly, head-butting Logan as he attempted to move the fight out of the seat and into mid-air where things would be more confused.
