by Enid Titan
I fall asleep to my fantasy. By my next duty shift, I can’t shake the thought of her. I need her. I enter the dome and she’s standing at her panel with Kazim hovering over her, whispering to her. Heat rises to my chest.
“Kazim,” I snap, “You’re assigned to sickbay now.”
“I am not.”
“Now you are,” I snarl.
Kazim grins, “I think he’s jealous.”
Jaen giggles. She’ll laugh for him, but scowls at me every chance she gets. I bloody hate Kazim. He touches my shoulder and smirks as he exits the dome. He knows I want her and now he’ll do everything in his power to sleep with her. My mouth dries and I focus on work.
Forget Jaen. Forget kissing her. Forget all of this. She’d rather slip into Kazim’s bed and let him ravage and use her than pay me any attention. She’s too soft. Too delicate. She’s exactly the sort Kazim wants for a toy.
Jaen points to her panel excitedly.
“Yes,” I mutter, “twin asteroids. We still have weeks to go. We pass this system every time.”
I return to my panel. I hate her. I hate her so much. It’s the only logical conclusion. She wants Kazim, so I have to make myself hate her. She taps my forearm to draw my attention to her panel again.
“What?!” I snarl.
She tenses and jumps back. I turn to her and scowl. She’s so small and fragile. She doesn’t realize how vulnerable she is. She can’t allow Kazim to use her. Doesn’t she realize that?
“All males are the same, but you have no problem with Kazim, do you? Do you believe the lies he’s spinning for you? Maybe Garth brought you on because you’re a doxy.”
She scowls. I close the distance between us. I’m close enough that I could do as Kazim suggested. Maybe if I kissed her, she’d realize I’m not like Kazim. I don’t want to use her and dispose of her. I’ve never been the type to fuck my way across the stars. I have needs, aye. I’m Odilian. But when I want a mate, I want her to be mine and only mine forever.
“Am I correct then?”
She can’t escape me now. I grab her forearm.
“Are you a doxy?”
She doesn’t stop glaring at me. Our eyes meet and I know she’s about to slap me. But she doesn’t. Her hand lunges forward but doesn’t meet my cheek. I groan as a pinprick in my abdomen turns into a sharp pang. She’s stabbed me! I gasp and touch my hand to the wound as blood spills forth.
“You stabbed me! You little… you little bitch!”
Chapter 8
Tougher Than She Looks
“Jaen. Get Xanth. Get Xanth in here right now.”
Sure, I’ve been stabbed before, but I never expected a little thing like her to stab me and where did she get a knife?
“Say sorry first,” she whispers.
“What?”
She grins.
“Say sorry.”
“For what!? You bloody stabbed me.”
“And I’ll stab you again if you don’t apologize for calling me a bitch.”
If she doesn’t get Xanth, I’ll eventually bleed out. I’m not as fragile as a human, so it won’t take minutes, but my body will paralyze me to protect me from the wound and it will take about an hour for the wound to kill me. I stagger forward, bracing myself against the panel, wondering if Jaen could watch me die. Maybe if it happened in a few minutes, she could stand back with that wicked grin on her face.
But if I writhed and moaned for an hour, crippled by an abdominal wound, I had my doubts she could stand watching me suffer for long. But my legs won’t move. And I need her to get Xanth. And damn the little creature, she’s wiping her knife on my tunic as she sheaths it.
“Apologize,” she hisses.
“Sorry… I’m sorry…”
I scowl up at her as white hair falls in front of my face.
“There. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now. Say sorry for trying to kiss me.”
I’m not sorry about that. I wanted to kiss her. Even after she’s stabbed me, I’d still try again given the chance. But next time I try to kiss her, I’ll succeed. Next time I try to kiss her, she won’t see me as a threat.
“I’m sorry. Now get Xanth.”
I grit my teeth and collapse forward. I’m conscious for a while. I think I hear her returning to her panel. My last thought before slipping into blackness is that she’d really let me lie here. Jaen Nabokov would let me die.
I wake up in sickbay. Xanth runs a probe over my stomach and I wake up with a groan.
“What the hell is happening to me?”
“You’re in sickbay. Apparently, you accidentally injured yourself.”
Is that what the little minx told him? Humph. She’s clever, isn’t she? She must have played on Xanth’s sentiments effectively to get him to buy her little story.
“I suppose.”
“It’s lucky Jaen called me when she did. Odilians have tough physiology, but you can’t afford to walk around with a wound like that. Confederates could attack at any time.”
“Aye.”
I flop back, hair falling between my horns, my chest throbbing as Xanth runs a laser probe over the wound to seal it. I’m covered in sweat and nauseous with pain by the time he’s finished.
“My stitching is perfect.”
I prop my weight up on my elbows and glance down at my abdomen.
“You bastard… did you cut a little ‘X’ into my bloody flesh?”
“I got the brilliant idea to sign my work.”
I understand why someone cut Xanth’s eye with a blade several years ago. He’s the most infuriating narcissist on this ship.
“Thanks,” I mutter sarcastically, though I suppose I ought to thank him in earnest for saving my life.
I lean upright properly and notice Jaen at the foot of the bed, standing there with wide open dark brown eyes staring at me. Damn her. I could wring her little neck and now she’s standing here watching me with mock concern on her face. She tugs on Xanth’s sleeve and flashes her brown eyes at him with all the worldly innocence and genuine concern on her face.
Xanth’s cheeks redden and he speaks to her with the hushed, dulcet voice of a tender father. Bastard.
“Don’t worry, Jaen. He’ll be on his feet in minutes. You ought to return to your post and relieve the crewman standing in.”
Jaen nods. Xanth unceremoniously stabs a syringe into my arm. I wince and nearly snap at him but one glance at Jaen and I suddenly don’t want her to know it’s possible for me to feel pain over something so small. Xanth’s painkiller works fast.
“Get back to your shift with her, Gavriel. And try not to have any accidents.”
“Aye.”
The doctor doesn’t have to worry about me having any accidents. But he ought to worry about his precious Jaen Nabokov. She might have fooled him with her wide brown eyes and her silent softness. She plays the innocent well. But I won’t let her get away with stabbing me in the gut. I’ll teach her a lesson she won’t easily forget.
Chapter 9
We Have A Saboteur
Xanth clears his throat before I can make it out the door. He’s changed his mind about letting me go without a lecture.
“I wish to make my intentions clear, Gavriel. I plan to woo Jaen Nabokov. I’d appreciate if you and that madman Kazim could keep your hands off her. She’s the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen.”
I sneer at him, “Do what you will. But if she stabs you in the gut, we have no replacement medic.”
Xanth chuckles.
“Run along.”
Damn him. And damn Jaen. She’s attracted the attention of every male on this ship, and she’s downright clueless or outright hostile to most of us. All males are the same, eh? I enter the dome and she glances over at me before tapping furiously at her panel. Humph. The ship lurches forward and we both gasp as we brace ourselves on the panel.
“What was that?”
“There’s nothing wrong here. No gases, nothing that should have caused us to —
We l
urch forward again. There’s a loud rumbling noise, and then the hum of the ship’s engines ceases. It’s white noise, so quiet in the background that you don’t notice it until it’s gone.
“Engines are off. We have a problem.”
Jaen sends a message to Connie.
“You’re right. Connie wants us to report down there.”
“Damn. I’d better contact Poke.”
I hit the screen.
“Annabel, what the hell is going on?”
“I wanted to ask you the same question. Did we hit something? We’re dead in the water and unless we get this fixed, a confederate ship could show up and blast us into the next dimension.”
“No. We hit nothing. Jaen’s patching in Connie.”
Connie’s voice comes crackling in.
“Something’s fucking wrong with the engine! I don’t know which cock sucking monkey diddling mother fucker got their hands on this but six of the exhaust pipes are blasted to fuck and there’s a hole in the engine room hull that you can only patch from the outside. But I can’t get to it because I’m making sure this entire fucking ship doesn’t blow up!”
Poke responds to Connie’s definitive panic with a calm, collected voice. She’d make an excellent Captain.
“This is worth waking Garth. I’ll send Izzie for him. Jaen, do you have experience with hull mechanics?”
“She’s nodding,” I answer.
She still doesn’t say a word, even when asked directly. If she weren’t Garth’s pet project, Poke might have chewed her out by now.
“Take her to the hull. Get your spacesuits, get two kits from Connie, and get out there before someone comes with weapons. Use tethers. We can’t afford to lose anymore crew before we get to the expanse.”
“Aye.”
I shut down intercom.
“We’d better get suited up. This is a horrible place to come to a dead stop.”
I have to put my plans for revenge on hold. There’s no way we can survive heading into space together if we hate each other. We need each other to survive out there. I wonder if Jaen realizes that. She follows me to the cargo bay.
“How many space walks have you done?”
She holds up two fingers. Shit. She’s not experienced.
“Follow my lead. Listen to me and you have to communicate. Got it?”
She nods.
We find two space suits and Jisoo meets us there. She’s there to make sure everything goes smoothly from our decompression to walking along the curved outer rim on the saucer’s base.
“You two ready? Poke wants me to let you know she’s contacted Garth. He’ll lead the mission from helm. Connie’s diagnosed the problem, but it’s strange. She thinks someone damaged the hull on purpose.”
“Isn’t it more likely we had accidental damage during the confederate attack?”
Jisoo nods.
“Far more likely. But you know Connie. She’s paranoid.”
We lock our helmets on. I tap the intercom.
“Jaen? Can you hear me?”
She nods.
“Head into the decompression bay then. Let me know when you’re ready. I’ll give you a few minutes to debrief the new kid. I’ll let you know when Garth gives the order.”
“Aye. Keep an eye on us out there.”
“Keep an eye on each other. Don’t let the new girl float into space.”
Jaen goes pale suddenly. I laugh and walk awkwardly in the suit towards the decompression bay. Jaen follows. Once the door shuts behind us, I ask her, “Are you nervous?”
She nods.
“It’s terrifying, isn’t it? But beautiful.”
“Only terrifying,” she murmurs.
“My first space walk I was thirteen.”
“Wow.”
“You get used to it,” I explain, “You see the beauty in dangling precariously between life and death.”
“I’m fine staying alive,” Jaen murmurs.
“We need to stick together. Lock the tether in.”
She locks the tether in. I can tell she’s still scared. Humans scare easily.
“I won’t let anything happen to you out there.”
“I don’t need you to protect me.”
“Listen, we need to rely on each other out there. I can’t stop you from despising me, but I need to know you won’t let me get sucked out into space.”
“I might,” she mutters.
I grab her hand, squeezing it through the suit.
“If you trust me, I’ll trust you.”
She exhales, a cloud of her breath obscuring the view of her face through the helmet.
“Okay.”
Jisoo’s voice comes in on the intercom.
“Garth is ready and in position.”
“We’re ready,” I tell her.
“Hang on tight for decompression.”
We lock arms with the decompression holds as Jisoo slowly decompresses. Jaen’s eyes are wild behind her helmet. Before long, we’re ready to move. I slide the tether onto the hook and move forward, pulling Jaen along until we get to the edge of the ship. We’ll be walking along the underside of the ship towards the engine room, searching for the hull breach. My kit’s clipped to my belt.
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s move.”
We drift along the outside of the ship. I can hear my breathing and my heart racing. There’s no sound except what’s inside my suit. I can hear Jaen’s breathing through the intercom, quick rabbit breaths.
“Take it easy. We’re nearly there.”
Garth’s voice comes to us on the intercom, “You two notice any other damaged spots? Is it possible this was weapons’ fire damage we didn’t pick up?”
“There’s nothing,” I tell him, “No signs that confederates did this.”
“It seems Connie was right then. We have a saboteur.”
“I wouldn’t say that yet,” I respond.
Jaen stumbles a little, nearly falling off the ledge along the side of the ship. I grab onto her arm.
“Careful.”
She nods.
“We’re nearly there. Don’t worry.”
She grasps the side of the hull, and we keep moving towards the damaged section.
Chapter 10
Jaen’s Idea
We make it to the puncture in the hull. I’ve handled all manner of weaponfire, but this doesn’t look like an accident or what you’d expect from battle.
“A weapon didn’t cause this,” Jaen points out.
She’s right.
“We can’t do a simple alloy patch either,” She adds.
I don’t know how she knows so much about hull mechanics, but I have to admit I’m impressed.
“Right. I’ll link Garth.”
“Captain?” I say into the intercom.
“Damage report, Gavriel?”
“It’s a large hole, around 6 feet by four feet. If it weren’t for our exterior shields, we’d have explosions in the engine room by now. We can’t indulge in higher speeds, and the damage is too extensive for an alloy patch.”
Garth brings in Connie.
“What do you recommend, Connie?”
“We’ll be here at least twelve hours if they have to do more than a patch. Do we need an entire replacement sheet, Gav?”
“Perhaps.”
“We can’t afford to use our resources on an entire sheet. This mission has to be profitable.”
“Aye,” I murmur, “Perhaps there’s another way.”
“You have ten minutes, Gav.”
Garth severs our communication link. Jaen whispers into the intercom.
“Gavriel? I think I have an idea.”
I’ve never heard her say my name before. And it’s the wrong time to think about how my name sounds on her lips. Her voice is soft, and she’s still too shy to talk to anyone else. Funny that. I’m the only one good enough to talk to and the only one good enough to stab.
“What’s your idea?”
&
nbsp; “We don’t have to waste resources to create an entire metal sheet. There’s this engineering technique for stretching out alloy. But we’ll need a titanium blend. It can’t be pure. We can create a weak patch on the outside, which should be enough to get us moving at low speeds. We can fix the rest from inside engineering and reinforce it from within. That way we can move sooner.”
It’s a smart idea. I reopen the link with Garth and give him the good news.
“Get to work. You have two hours to get this finished.”
“And only seventy-five more minutes of oxygen,” I point out.
“Good, then. Hurry.”
The link shuts down again, and we’re alone. I can’t help but look at the expanse through my helmet and listen to the sound of my breath for a few moments. Even with time ticking away until our oxygen runs out, it’s worth it to appreciate the immense beauty of space.
“Look at it, Jaen.”
She can’t help looking either. She turns to look away from the ship. Black in every direction.
“It’s beautiful,” She whispers.
“It has a hold on you,” I murmur, “A nagging voice in the back of my head tells me to unhook that tether and become one with it.”
“Let’s hope you don’t listen to that voice,” she grumbles.
“Aye. But it tempts me. Here, open that compartment for the patch strips. Do you have the device to melt it?”
She opens her kit and pulls out the tool we’ll use to soften the patch and stretch it.
“Hold still.”
I need to move around her. I grab her waist as I move along the ledge.
“Sorry for the intrusion.”
Her breathing gets faster. As I touch her through the spacesuit, I feel I’m invading her space, but I wish we didn’t have the synthetic fabric between us because I would give anything to touch Jaen with my bare hands.
“Careful,” she whispers, her breathing getting heavier over our link, “Don’t slip.”
“I won’t.”
I just make it past her, when she loses her grip on the tool we need to stretch the alloy.
“Shit!” she yells as it falls. I reach out for it and foolishly, I slip. And I yell out as the thin rope holding us together yanks taut. I’m connected to her, and she’s connected to the ship.
