by Mason, Jolie
***#***
The auxiliary lights flashed high yellow on and off, on and off. Luca felt her head swim when she attempted to lift it from her chest. Beyond the lights, there was only silence. She tried to move again.
Her head began to pound, assuring her she was alive at least. Trying to talk, she croaked out a small sound, closing her eyes. She heard her name.
“Luca”, he said from the dim.
“Here”, she forced herself to respond. He sounded frantic. A hand grasped her leg, then her hip. Then, he was there.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded, unsure if he could see her. “Good. Fine”, she croaked out.
She felt the heavy weight of his head on her chest, and then his mouth found hers and she couldn't breathe again. He kissed her like he was dying, like he'd never see her again. He slowly released her to check her for injuries.
To be honest, she wasn't feeling very intelligent. She suspected she'd hit her head again on the wall of the pod. She raised a hand to test the skin where it hurt, and she flinched.
“What' s wrong?” He reached for the spot where her hand had been. “You hit your head.”
“Yeah, did it work? Did we get the son of a bitch?”
“I don't know. I just came to”, he answered trying to look at her pupils.
She pushed him off as gently as she could. “We have to check the pod, run diagnostics. I'll scan behind us.” Luca thought about all the pods that might not have gotten far enough out, all the helpless crew trapped by the blast. She knew they had to try and destroy that ship. It would have been at Havoc Station and the kids within hours. They'd done what they had to do, yet, she still felt this weight on her chest pressing hard, like she had killed those people. Some of them had to have perished.
She pulled herself up. “I bet the main panel is over there”, she pointed toward the tall, double door storage hatch. “Start on the diagnostics. Let's make sure we aren't about to leak air into space or something, then you can kiss me stupid.”
“You promise?”
She laughed softly, standing shakily. She stumbled toward what was supposed to act as the main controls for the pod. Comms would be there, along with environmental controls.
Luca took a minute. She spotted the comm by it's design, then assured herself the distress beacon was fully functional and broadcasting strongly. She then ran the scan of the area of space that was, surprisingly, far behind them now.
“Emery, how long on that diagnostic?”
He said, “Couple standard minutes for the quick scan. You found something?”
“Yeah, I found nothing.” She worried her bottom lip. “We're not within the expected debris field. We're really far out. “
“How far out?”
She looked at him. “I can't ping a relay.”
Every solar relay maintained a rescue crew and a long range spacer for just this eventuality. If there were no relays, there were no rescue crews. They'd have to rely on the kindness of strangers, if there were any of those left to be found.
“You're sure the comm isn't damaged?”
“First thing I checked, Em. We're stranded in Rim space.” Luca swallowed hard. “There may be a planet in the sweet spot, if I'm reading the data correctly. I don't know if it's a low tech planet. Hell, the thing could have dinosaurs on it for all we can see in this dinky pod.”
He gripped her shoulder and squeezed. “Let's worry about the ship first, then we'll worry about where we are.”
He looked at her, and, apparently, he spotted her panic rising to the surface because he pulled her to his chest in a hug one might reserve for a child. He whispered in her ear. “I've got you.” Over and over, he said the words till she believed them. He did have her. They'd known today was likely to be the end of the road, more than once, and they were still here. She took a deep breath.
“Right. What's the pod like?”
He pulled the console flat over to where he sat in a copilot's bench next to her main console chair, and he didn't let her shoulder go. “Seals are all fine. Food stores are sealed and fully stocked. Water tank is undamaged. Oh, hey, there's an FDU. Luck, finally.”
The food dispensing unit meant they could survive out here for as long as they had air. It formed certain kinds of provisions at the molecular level. It never tasted good, but it would keep them fed. And coffee. The most basic FDU made coffee.
She watched Emery inventory their supplies and diagnose the various systems on the pod one at a time. She checked the beacon's reach three times as they continued to hurtle a straight path away from the Havoc system, the borders of civilization. Emery produced a datapad and scrib from the stores, so Luca spent a bit of time, until her jaw cracked with a loud yawn, building a star chart to do basic calculations based on their position.
“We should slow down in about 8 standard hours, at this position.” She handed the pad over to Emery who'd finally sat down to drink coffee. He lifted the cup to his lips as he looked at her work.
“Not much out here, is there?”
“Unless there's a low tech planet or a research station I've missed. No. Our best news of the day is that we will stop on the direct trade route to Paradiso Prime.”
He sighed. “So, what you're really saying is we've done everything we can do today.” Emery leaned back along the padded dark green seat that ran the circular wall of the room. It would double as a sleeping place, until such time as they got a very lucky rescue. One column ran floor to ceiling in the center of the circle of strap in benches.
She stood leaning on the column with her head pounding. He reached a hand out and gestured for her to come to him.
“Did you take a pain blocker?”
She shook her head. He sighed again, heavily. “Oh, shut up”, she said closing her eyes and leaning into his firm shoulder. His lips brushed her temple.
“I'm still not over it, you know”, he said. There was that hard edge to his voice again. She was getting that a lot lately.
“Over what?” She said it tiredly. Her mind winding down from adrenaline.
“The fact that you intended to trick me into a pod and die on that ship.”
“Someone was going to have to, Emery. There was no choice.”
“Yes, there was. “
“Okay, there was no choice I was willing to consider.”
“You seem to have missed a thing or two along the way. I wasn't willing to consider your death either.”
“What? So we die together? No. You would have done just what I intended to do. I just got there first.”
Luca smiled as she burrowed closer into his strong arms wrapped tightly around her body. He was practical. He'd follow the thought. She knew in her soul she was right. He would have done the same for her, had he been in her place.
Luca smiled a lot lately, she thought. She'd been his target, his crew mate, his boss, his friend, and then his lover. However, she'd been something else these last few days, certain.
It was as if something inside her was connected to him. Whatever he had been, he was hers now. For the first time, her capacity for commitment seemed infinite, as long as Emery Charles was the subject of said commitment. She wasn't certain how he felt, but she was home. Not for the first time, she hoped it wasn't a heartbreak waiting to happen.
She hummed a small sound when he said her name. He moved her in his arms until they were lying back on the bench at its' straightest point, her, draped across his chest. She heard him in her ear. “Lighting to dim”.
The pod obeyed. She sighed happily. “Night, Emery”, she whispered softly. “Love you.” The last words slurred with her fatigue. It had been such a long, draining kind of day.
His arms tightened about her a moment before he whispered, “I love you, too.” Just like that, the pieces snapped together in a perfect fit. Whatever else happened, she had this, and it was all hers. This man in her arms was hers.
So much had been taken from her, spirited away in the dark of night by thi
eves, and she'd felt so empty without a past of her own. So often, she'd felt the absence of it. Especially, sitting among the crew, even with Ra'dan and Ari, she'd felt that empty space as a kind of deficiency, as if she'd been an almost non-person. Not knowing who she was or what her past looked like had meant she could be anyone. She supposed the truth had been just that; she could be anyone.
Lying in the arms of the man she loved, lost in space, Luca felt more at home than ever. She sighed again, curling her hand up into his hair at the nape of his neck. Within moments, she drifted off into a sleep that needed no better dream than one of rescue. She had everything else she wanted in the Universe right here.
7
Luca munched on the protein roll she'd just produced as she stared at the chart before her. They had landed right where she'd thought they might smack in the middle of the shipping lane two days ago. So far, she hadn't gotten a nibble on the beacon, but she had pulled up a newsfeed off some backwater planet called Dorenda.
The alien vessel blown to pieces, Imperials were descending upon it to dig out the tech and cover up the truth that aliens were among us. Instead they were quoted as saying, “This was a distant offshoot of humanity that had simply gone wild in space.”
That ship was no product of wild, space men. It was an advanced civilization that saw us as poachers. She shook her head at the thought. They didn't want a widespread panic. She understood that, but these lies were ridiculous. For one thing, the debris field would belie the whole story.
A clank, clank interrupted her thoughts. “Having trouble?” she called.
Emery had discovered the lower deck of the pod where the propulsion and reclamation systems could be accessed, and he'd determined they needed to try and modify the propulsion, just in case.
He swore as something fell. “I'm fine”, he said testily. She smiled.
“Do you need me to hold something?” She said it suggestively, trying to tease him out of his foul humor.
His dark head popped up over the open circle of the ladder hatchway. “What?”
She chuckled softly. “I'm between projects. There is, literally, nothing else for me to do. Can I help you?”
He stared at her in disbelief. “We're in a dangerous predicament here.”
She fixed her eyes on his face. “I know. And you can't fix everything.”
Dropping to her knees, she crawled to hold the handrails that circled the opening, looking down at him. Her hand fell to play in the dark waves on his head. “What are you trying to accomplish?”
He sighed, then rested his hands on the floor deck in front of her and rested his chin on them. “I'm trying to cross wire the rudimentary navset system to the propulsion system, in order to gain directional thrust capability.“
“To get us to the low tech planet out there.”
He nodded and looked up.
“All right.” She pulled his nose playfully. “Get down there. Ill be in in a second.”
He nodded and climbed down without arguing with her. He trusted her knowledge of ship systems, she knew that, and it made her feel less helpless. There was a lot about their current situation that could drive one insane with helplessness. They were drifting.
If they could drift toward a degrading orbit of the planet, they could at least get out of the ship. Of course, there was no guarantee the ship could survive the re-entry. They could break up, but she thought they might be able to boost the pods shielding. It was a shot.
Not a great shot.
Her boots clomped loudly as she descended the ladder into the smallish maintenance deck of the pod. It wasn't roomy, but there was space enough for the four consoles connected to the four main systems of the pod itself. It was a simple design. Elegant.
The silvered walls looked as if they'd never been touched by tools or dust. The pod had never been ejected before, so the systems were beautifully new and exquisitely maintained. She made her way to the open navset panel. He'd been trying to trace the main navlines. She smiled.
They were actually easily identified if you spent time in a ship's bowels. The bright yellow wire covers denoted the navset system. She double checked that the system remained disconnected from the power. Then she carefully pulled out the sheer tool and slit the yellow cover neatly, easing it down. She cut the wires and spread them like a fan. Allowing the wires to hang there inert, she pulled out the propulsion controls resting in large drawer near the floor. This was the touchy part.
She located the thinking portion of the propulsion system, the core. Here, she isolated the computer, in order to attach the now inert Navset system to the computer controls of what was essentially a basic steerage. It had been designed to follow programming, not answer to a pilot. When she finally got it done without shocking herself, she let out a long breath.
“Now”, she said. “This will either work or kill us both.” Without waiting, she pulled the power lever to reinitialize the propulsion system. It flared electricity a second, but then fired up smoothly with it's usual soft hum.
“The giant jackpot question will now be answered.” She pulled up the virtual console and pushed the thrust control slightly right, toward the planet. She held it only a second. The pod shifted beneath their feet shoving her into Emery's body, and Emery into the wall. He caught her with solid arms around her back and waist.
Smiling up at him, she made a happy sound. “It worked.”
“Of course, it worked.”
His expression showed everything. She noticed his expressions, all of them, while they'd been trapped on this boat for two days, or was it three? She read him more easily, as if he'd stopped filtering every gesture, every word. He was an open book, mostly.
Right now, her heart jumped in her chest. He beamed pride.
Her hand moved to the side of his face, down his neck, without any second's hesitation. Where she might have paused and thought it out before, now she fell into affection with him. And, she suddenly felt a keen awareness of his firm muscles gleaming in work lights from above them. His bare chest lay beneath her right hand. She couldn't stop the soft, teasing touches brushing over his skin.
He ran his thumb over the hem of her white tank top. “You have very clever hands”, he said, even as his eyes dropped to where her hand rested, being clever.
“Hmm. I try.”
Luca tried to be an optimistic person, but she also wasn't a fool. When they decided they'd waited for help long enough, they would use the thrusters to attempt making it to the planet, and the chances of this pod making it through atmo were slim to none. Effectively, she and Emery could be in their last moments. She knew how she intended to spend them.
Luca leaned forward, tentatively, to lick the salty flesh of his neck. He exhaled. “So”, she said between the explorations of her tongue. “I guess we have to talk.”
His hand curled at the nape of her neck, tightly. “Talk. We probably should.” His voice low and gravelly, he grunted as her teeth grabbed his ear, none too gently. “Satera, Luca.”
She laughed. “I didn't realize you had a deity. Have I helped you find inner peace?” She joked.
He tugged, nailing her with a look that said clearly, yes. “You are peace. Yes. Do you believe me?”
She nodded, realizing that to Emery this suddenly was no joke. He felt something for her, something profound. Something like she felt for him?
“Luca, you need to understand.” He rested his forehead on hers. “I don't know how to tell you this.” He made a small sound of disgust. “I used to be able to tell any kind of lie, and I can't get out this one truth.”
“Just say it”, she said.
“I don't know if I've loved anyone but you. I have vague memories of my mother. There was a foster mother in Imperial City. She was soft and smelled like cookies. I was so young I can't remember her name. That's as close to love as I've ever been, till you.”
Her hand gripped his arm, flexing with the emotions rushing through her at his confession. She pulled him in by that arm.
“How can you know? I don't even know who I am. Emery, I'm this made up person.”
He swung her right and plastered her against the only smooth wall in the sub deck. She gasped at the feel of his hard body pressing into her. “You know who you are. Just like I know you.”
“You don't know me. I'm a program. Someone Morgan invented.”
Clutching at her blonde curls, he sighed into her skin. “They might have given you the knowledge to fly, but they couldn't make you love it. Your weren't programmed to seduce the first operative they sent after you. You weren't told to collect family and make friends. That's not how operatives are trained and it's not an automaton. You are just you.”
They stood body pressed to body breathing each other in for a long time. She pondered the words, tested them in her mind, until she finally asked. “Do you really believe that?”
He shifted, putting both hands beside her head on the cool metal wall. “I don't lie to you, Luca.”
“A test, then. Are we going to make it?”
He leaned back, a disbelieving look crossing his face. “You are a difficult woman. I don't know. We could. It's a long shot.”
She knew that. She just wanted to see if he'd say that. Her hands hooked behind his neck. “So, in honor of the fact that soon we're gonna push those buttons over there and possibly doom ourselves to certain death, I have a request.”
She saw the desire to protest her assessment of their situation flicker and die in his eyes. Instead, he appeared to resign himself. “Name it.”
“Kiss me.” She didn't wait for the response. Her mouth found his, taking what she wanted, telling him what words couldn't. Nothing she could say would sufficiently describe her feelings for him. There wasn't a song that expressed it. The best she could do was say it with her body.
