“They teach you that in the Fleet?”
“Not in as many words, but yeah.”
“Okay.” She saw his point. “I’ll give you the passwords to my primaries, and you can see what you can do.”
Chapter Six
Kai woke up at seven hundred hours the next morning and swore softly to himself. His leg and wrist throbbed. He hobbled out of bed and dug a couple of pain patches from his duffel and cursed the transport unit on the Fleet shuttle as he stuck them to his leg. After a moment, the pain subsided enough for him to limp out of his bedroom and take a quick shower. The stall’s showerhead spit out a few drops of water before it groaned and switched into the backup laser mode. As he dressed, he thought about ways to fix it.
Brya was already wide awake in the cockpit, expertly guiding the Rapture through a sleepy asteroid field. Music blared from the computer where she had read the instructions, something loud and angry that wouldn’t have been out of place in the kind of clubs Kai used to frequent. “Good morning,” she said without turning her head. “We’ll be out of here in about fifteen minutes, and then I’ll see what I can dig up for breakfast. There’s some instant coffee packets and a kettle in the galley, if you want some.”
So, she hadn’t tried out the replicator yet. He had tweaked it enough last night to produce a few basic dishes that tasted decent and were far more nutritious than the stuff in packets she had in her galley. “I’ll wait.” He wanted to surprise her.
He sat down in the unused copilot’s seat and stole a glance at her. Her hair was pinned back with a few sparkly combs, and she wore black pants and jacket over a purple tank top that fit better than the clothes he found her in at Karys Station. “I didn’t hear any alarms,” he said. “When did you get up?”
“I had the autopilot set to stop the ship twenty minutes out from the asteroid belt,” she said. “I set my alarm for when I thought we’d hit it, and I was right.” An asteroid drifted dead ahead of them, and she cleanly steered around it.
“You don’t get worried in asteroid belts?”
She shook her head. “Not the ones I have to deal with. The star lanes freighters use exist because they’re safe. I know the Rapture’s limitations.”
He watched as the asteroids became smaller and more spaced apart until they disappeared. He stole glances at her and was heartened to see the fear that had glazed her eyes yesterday had disappeared, revealing a serene and confident pilot. He took in the curve of her cheek as a small smile played across her lips at the sight of the starfield beyond, the way her eyes lit up.
She was happy.
Her fingers danced over a few controls as she turned the ship back over to autopilot. She stood up. “Let’s see what I can dig up for breakfast.”
“Let’s see what your replicator can dig up,” Kai said as he followed her. “I fixed it.”
She turned around, astonished. Kai halted and nearly stumbled into her. “Already?” she asked.
Any reply he would have voiced evaporated. His breath caught in his throat. She was standing about a hand’s width away from him, her mouth turned up in surprise. He caught the faint scent of perfume, something delicate, citrusy, and familiar, the same scent she had used when they were kids. And then he was a weak-kneed teenager again, awestruck in her presence and too intimidated to do anything about it. It would be so easy for him to lean forward and kiss her, something he had wanted to do since he saw her again at Karys Station.
It would be even easier for her to push him away.
Concern replaced the delight on her face. “Kai?” she said. “Are you okay?”
He mentally shook himself. “Yeah.”
In the galley, Kai demonstrated the mostly-restored replicator. “The whole unit will need to be replaced in the next couple of years,” he said. “You probably already knew that. But it can make a few meals now, and better than the stuff you were eating before.”
Brya tapped at the cracked menu screen and read the selections. They weren’t nearly as vast as something a new replicator could offer, but she didn’t seem to care. “What do you want?” she asked. “You pick the first meal.”
He keyed in a request for eggs and toast, and she followed suit. She set the plates at the small table locked to the deck and ordered some coffee.
The look on her face was blissful as she tasted her breakfast. “Perfect,” she breathed. “Thank you. How did you get that fixed?”
He shrugged. “I had some codes in my datapad saved for just this occasion. I used to tweak the replicator in my cabin on the first ship I was posted to so I could order food I actually liked. I played around with your hardware a little, too. The big problem was a damaged sensor, and I replaced that.”
“You keep spare sensors in your luggage?”
“You never know when they’ll come in handy.” He took a swallow of coffee. “I’m going to take a look at your water system, too.” He held up a hand when she opened her mouth to argue. “It’s not just you I’m doing this for. I don’t like laser cleansers. And if I’m busy doing that kind of thing, I won’t have time to be a backseat pilot.” Or stare at her like an infatuated teenager, but he didn’t mention that. It wasn’t like he could act on that, anyway. Even in his younger and stupider days he wouldn’t have dreamed of starting something with someone under his protection, or as vulnerable as Brya was right now.
Still, he was going to do his best to repair faulty water lines in space if it meant seeing that look of delight on her face again.
****
Brya had taken the longest shower she ever had since she bought the Rapture when Kai gave up tinkering with the ship’s hardware that evening. She had relished the entire six minutes of hot water, and dismissed Kai’s apologies for not having it fully functional. The taps at the sink worked, and it was much easier to brush her teeth with water than one of the laser wands built into the ship.
She and Kai shared a dinner of meat stew in the evening: Hot, fragrant, and tasting far better than something reconstituted from a packet. She had checked the ship’s progress along the Landen lane before she went to bed, and guessed they would have about six hours before she needed to be back at the controls.
Brya had hoped to fall into a quiet, dreamless sleep, something that had eluded her for years. She felt fairly safe now that she was back in the serene familiarity of deep space, and because she had another person on board. No, not just another person. Kai made her feel safe.
Being Ra’lanian without telepathic or empathic talents meant she wasn’t subjected to visions or other peoples’ dreams and nightmares, a trait that now made her grateful to be a regular person. Her nightmares were strictly her own: violent re-imaginings of her life with Dav and Wethmore, of abuse, fear, and outright war in space on unarmed vessels. She did know when she was sleeping during a dream, and from her years in the Alliance knew that wasn’t normal among other humanoids. They had decreased in frequency since she moved to the Rapture, but not intensity.
Now she was back on Wethmore’s freighter, loaded with a questionable weapons array and an outright illegal shield that hid their identification from Fleet patrol ships. She tried to force the dream away, hoping to will herself into remembering playing with Kai when they were little. It wasn’t going to happen.
She smelled the smoke that had permeated throughout the ship after the fire that killed Dav, still hanging thickly in the ship’s air. Another crew member had been bitching about docking at a station to let it air out properly, and Wethmore had yelled at him to shut up, they couldn’t dock until they had delivered the remains of the second shipment in the other starboard cargo bay, and the rest of the ship hadn’t taken much structural damage. Brya had spent the two days after the accident in a state of shock and worry, terrified that the vessel keeping them alive in the vacuum of space would fall apart. She was always nauseated from the smell, and there was nowhere on board that it hadn’t leached. It was a mix of burned fuel, metal, and beneath that, the horrifying stench of roasted fles
h. She hadn’t protested when Wethmore opened up the cargo bay doors and let everything inside be sucked into space, not caring that Dav hadn’t received a proper interment. She didn’t know if a spineless, mean-spirited pirate like her husband deserved that dignity, anyway.
And you do? She had been sickened and ashamed at that thought. No, she didn’t either.
The scene unfolded like it had so many nights over the last two years.
“When we get to the next spaceport, I want to leave,” she told Wethmore.
His nose wrinkled into distaste beneath his shaggy, unkempt mop of black hair, like he had just noticed that his ship smelled like death. His dark eyes narrowed. “Where the fuck would you go?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I can’t do this anymore. You do your thing, I do mine.”
Wethmore had regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, and the ball of dread that had formed in Brya’s stomach moved to her throat. “I won’t say anything,” she said, her voice stuttering over the words, and forced a laugh. “Who would believe me? I just—I want my own life now.”
He moved a step closer to her, and involuntarily she stepped back. She tried another tactic. “I’m useless to you without Dav. He’s the reason you’ve kept me around so long. I can’t lift heavy things, I can’t fix the computers.”
“You’re a good pilot,” he pointed out. “You’re an excellent navigator.”
She didn’t know how to answer that. “Thank you, I guess.”
Wethmore threw his hands up. “Okay, Brya. You win. We’ll be docking at Crystal Station in twelve days, and you can leave then.”
She couldn’t believe she had bought her freedom so easily. “Really?”
“Really. But I have a couple of conditions,” he said
The nausea returned, full force. “What are they?”
“I want everything of Dav’s. I’ll leave you enough for a ticket to wherever you need to go, but I gave him everything. I didn’t give it to you. I want it back.”
Brya almost laughed out of relief. She had been expecting something much worse. “Of course,” she said.
She should have known that wasn’t the end of it.
Wethmore wrenched her out of bed in the middle of the night a few days before they made the station. “What the hell?” she said sleepily as the cabin lights sputtered, then cycled on. She tried to pull her arm out of his grip, but he wouldn’t let go.
“Get up,” he said, his voice a growl. “Get your ass in the lounge.” She reached for a sweater to throw over her pajamas, but he shoved her forward. “Go!”
Heart pounding, she padded in bare feet to the lounge. A few crew members milled around, drinking coffee from the replicator and quietly complaining at having to get up in the middle of the night. They straightened when Wethmore stalked into the room and pointed to the long communal table in the centre. “Sit.” His voice brooked no argument.
Brya obliged and took her usual seat near the end. Wethmore sat across from her.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “What have I done now?”
“You know damn well. You didn’t think I’d just let you waltz off this ship, did you?”
“No,” she said, feeling like an idiot. She should have known Wethmore wouldn’t just let her go. “But you’re taking everything of mine and Dav’s. What more is there?”
“Not much more, I promise,” Wethmore said. “After this, I won’t have to bother you again, and you’ll know never to fuck with someone like me.”
“I already know that,” Brya told him, keeping her voice even. What was he planning?
“Give me your hands,” he said. A few of the crew exchanged glances, like they knew what was coming.
“Why?”
“Just do it, or this’ll be a lot worse.”
Tentatively, she laid both hands on the low tabletop. His calloused fingers picked up each and examined them, like she was showing off some fine gems to sell and he thought they were fakes.
“Captain, what are you doing?”
He let her left hand drop to the table, and stood up. “Stay still.” He turned to the navigator. “Hold it.” The navigator obliged, and he pressed a meaty paw onto her wrist, pinning her hand to the table.
“What are you doing?” She couldn’t keep the panic out of her voice.
Wethmore produced a laser scalpel from the pocket of his flight pants, and she screamed. “Don’t! Not my hand! I told you I wouldn’t say anything!”
“Relax, I’m not taking your hand,” Wethmore said, boredom creeping into his voice. Brya tried to pull away from the navigator’s grip. His hand pressed harder into hers, and she shrieked again. “But if you don’t keep quiet, I might.”
The scalpel’s laser hovered over her hand, and Brya cried out at its heat above her hand. Wethmore deliberated over her fingers before cleanly slicing off the tops of the last two.
Her body thrashed in pain, and the navigator let her go. She tumbled to the floor clutching her hand, and it didn’t register for a few seconds that the inhuman screams bouncing off the lounge walls were her own. Blood seeped through her fingers and spilled to the floor.
She saw Wethmore’s boots on the decking, and he swept something off the table. The tips of her fingers! She screamed again, tears pouring down her face. The captain wrenched her to her feet, but she didn’t let go of her hand.
“Gods, they weren’t even the whole fingers. Fucking hell, I don’t know why Dav put up with you.” He held out an antibiotic patch and slapped it on the back of her uninjured hand. “Don’t take that off, you don’t want to get an infection.”
“Why?” The word came out in a strangled sob. Her throat felt raw from screaming.
He forced her back into her seat, and she felt sticky wetness seep through her pajamas. There was blood everywhere. How could a couple of fingers produce so much?
He didn’t answer her question. “Give me your hand.”
“No!”
“Do you want an infection?” he said. He wrenched her hands apart and held out a cauterizing laser. The fucker wasn’t even going to use an anaesthetic.
The sear of the laser brought another scream to her throat, and everything went black.
She woke up as she always did from this dream, crying and thrashing in her sheets. But this time she couldn’t move, and she thought wildly that Wethmore had found her and was on board her ship. She screamed again and she was let go, falling back on the pillows.
“Brya,” said a soft voice.
She opened her eyes and tried to focus in the dim light of her cabin. Kai crouched beside her bed. She sat up and scrubbed at her wet eyes.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. It was just a bad dream.” She sucked in a deep lungful of air. “I’m fine.”
He settled on the edge of the bed. “You’re sure?”
“They happens sometimes,” she confessed. “I’m sorry I woke you up. I didn’t know I screamed that loud.”
Kai raised an eyebrow in mock suggestion, and she couldn’t help but giggle through her tears. She hadn’t forgotten his ability to make her smile when she felt like shit.
“It wasn’t just that,” he said. His expression darkened. “I felt it.”
Her eyes widened as she took in the implication. “You saw it,” she said flatly.
“No,” he corrected. “I felt your panic, and I woke up.”
“Like a telepath.”
“No, then I think I would have seen it. I told you I can sense extreme emotions. It started about a year after I signed up with the Fleet. I’m a very half-assed empath.”
“Does that happen to Ra’lanians?” She didn’t want to talk about her nightmare, and Kai seemed to pick up on that.
He shrugged in the darkness. “I don’t know. I don’t have anyone to ask about that. Sometimes I think that the stress of leaving Ra’lani triggered it.”
“If we had known, maybe you wouldn’t have had to lose your inheritance and leave.”
/>
“I would’ve lost my inheritance anyway,” he said. “You have to a complete telepath to take a seat on the council. Empaths are just as looked down upon.”
“It’s my fault you had to leave Ra’lani at all,” she said softly and looked away. She fisted her hands in the bedsheets.
His next words were careful, as though he didn’t want to offend her. Brya didn’t see why he was being considerate, she didn’t deserve it. “Everything that happened,” he began, and paused. “I don’t know why. Things haven’t turned out like either of us planned.”
“I deserved everything I got for what I did to you,” she said in a rush. He stiffened. “I should’ve grown up and not kept up my relationship with Dav. It’s my fault everything went to hell. I’m the reason we had to leave. And now I’m in trouble, and you’ve shown up and helped me and repaired things on my ship and you shouldn’t have, not after what I’ve done.”
He paused, carefully parsing out his words. “I wasn’t mad about Dav,” he said.
“You should have been! We were married!”
“We were kids,” he said. “And I wanted you to be happy. I knew what we were getting into. It was an arranged marriage, Brya. No one’s ever happy or even faithful in those things on Ra’lani. We were both embarrassments to our family, and it was the easiest way to keep us out of sight. Things worked out for us better than most arranged couples. I didn’t want my personal feelings to get in the way of that.”
“Personal feelings?”
He started a little. Brya thumbed on the light switch beside her bed to the lowest setting. The illumination panels set near the floor flickered on. She breathed in sharply when she saw he was shirtless, the dim light playing over lean muscles. There was a fading scar on his wrist from the accident on his ship. She was temporarily struck dumb at the sight, but she regained her voice. “What feelings?” she repeated.
He had a look on his face like he had just been tricked into selling Fleet secrets to the enemy. “It was nothing,” he said.
“Tell me,” she said softly, and added, “Please.” She was almost afraid to hear where he was going with this.
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