by Lynn Rae
“So you’ve seen something like this before?”
“Yes.” Del was quiet, avoiding his gaze. She clearly had some expertise with salvaging military castoffs and Lazlo was again grateful she had agreed to help him. It was a relief to know that his instincts had been accurate about her. His other, more personal instincts about her were something he would consider later, when they were finished with this assignment.
“So what have you found in them?” Lazlo asked, curious about what sort of salvage might be lying around. So far they hadn’t discovered anything of note and he wanted some cheering anecdotes.
Shaking her head, Del obviously tried to divert him. “I never said I found anything.”
“I don’t care what you salvaged. I’m not going to arrest you or anything. According to Congressional code, surface finds of materials more than fifty years old are permitted on territorial worlds. You don’t need to declare anything under the estimated value of one thousand marks. Of course, you have to declare anything sold as income for taxation purposes.” Lazlo concluded his little speech with a smile, wondering if she was impressed.
“You looked all of that up.” Del shot back, looking far from amazed. He figured it had been worth a try. She was a cagey individual.
“Of course I did. I had to be prepared. I’m just curious about the sorts of things you find out here. How you do what you do.”
Del entered the cave and scuffed her boots along the floor as she checked the ceiling and corners carefully. “My father and I, we have found some equipment—tristeel bars, tire rims, crates of corro decking. Buckets of dried-up synthboard. Unexciting things like that. Debris too heavy and cheap for the military to bother hauling away.”
“Did you and your father haul it away?”
“As quick as we could,” she replied with a grin and Lazlo smiled back. He really liked this woman. She was sharp and funny and completely natural. “It was hard work, but we made some marks.”
Lazlo wanted to ask her about her father and why he wasn’t still exploring with her, but she knelt and rubbed her hands along the rock floor of the chamber, handlight beam directed downward.
“What are you looking for?”
“Sometimes these clever military types put in trapdoors. Let’s see if we can find one.”
“If we find some tires, do I get half the salvage?” Lazlo teased her and was rewarded with a small grin as she kept brushing her hands along the stone floor.
“Only if you haul them out,” Del replied with a tone as dry as the sand they’d trudged through.
They searched for a while, running their fingers along the gritty surface, trying to detect an edge or angle that might lead somewhere.
Reaching the farthest corner, Lazlo was almost ready to turn back when his fingers hit something straight. He called out for Del and she scuttled over, leaning close as she brushed the sand dust away. Soon there was a meter and a half square revealed, its surface carefully constructed to resemble the rock it sat in.
Before he could ask how to open it, Del had her rock hammer out and was wedging the chisel end along the seam, working it in, making a tiny gap for Lazlo to slide his knife blade into. The trapdoor wasn’t too heavy and he lifted it easily once he could get his fingers around the edge. Del raised her eyebrows as he set it to the side, cool air gusting up from below.
“What?”
“It would have taken me half an hour to get that thing wedged up and out of the way safely,” Del admitted.
“Glad to be useful.”
She grunted and looked back into the hole, handlight flickering. “Smells musty.”
Lazlo agreed. There was a vaguely organic aroma seeping out of the hole. He hoped there wasn’t a dead body down there. Del stretched out full length on the floor and he quite deliberately did not look at her rear end as she wriggled into position. Lowering her head in the hole, Del beckoned to him.
“Get down here and take a look.” Her voice echoed out. Lowering himself to her side and being careful not to touch any part of her, Lazlo peered down into the murk, his handlight illuminating much more of the chamber than hers.
“You need to charge your handlight,” Lazlo mentioned and Del huffed out a cynical laugh.
“No, mine’s at full power. Not everyone gets to carry military-grade equipment.”
The room below was smaller and filled with mysterious coils of pipe and metallic containers on collapsed tables. The more Lazlo saw, the more confused he got. Del began to giggle then laugh next to him. It was disconcerting to have a female lying next to him and laughing. It made him think of beds and sex and teasing, which wasn’t at all what he should be imagining.
Chuckles dying away, Del rolled onto her back and heaved out a contented sigh. He stopped looking in the secret chamber and rolled to his side to watch her. And not her breasts moving under her tank with each hitching breath she took.
“This is amusing you in a way that has escaped me.”
“Oh Lazlo, well…” She grinned at him, her gray eyes dark and shining. He had the strangest feeling that she’d looked at him like that before, or was going to again. The memory or premonition sent a chill over his warm and dusty skin and he shivered.
“It’s funny because I was hoping to find your weapons and get this over with and instead we found this,” Del huffed out with a knowing grin.
Lazlo nodded, still confused. “I agree, I was hoping to find the weapons, but what have we found instead?”
“It’s an old still. Someone was out here making alcohol about forty years ago, by the look of it.”
“A still for alcohol?” Lazlo stopped looking at Del and took another look down at the debris. Once he started to look at it piece by piece, it made sense. The coils of tubing, large tanks, even a crate of empty bottles in one corner that would never be filled.
“Yes, a secret inside another secret.” Del wriggled closer to him and looked down. Lazlo tried not to notice how nice she smelled. Stars, this assignment was growing complicated.
“The commander mentioned there is a problem with illegal distilling, so I shouldn’t be surprised.” Letting out a sigh of disappointment, Lazlo rolled onto his back and tried to accept defeat, at least for today. He listened to Del breathe and felt calmer. “So are we done?”
“Definitely done. But I’m going to document this place. There’s lots of good copper and ceramic down there.” She pulled her paper maps out of her pack and made a few notes. He’d taken a look at them earlier and couldn’t decipher the code she was using, but her handwriting wasn’t what he’d expected. It was loose and freeform, the complete opposite of her stern persona.
“Do you want some help with the salvage?” Lazlo asked and Del peered over at him. He couldn’t imagine how she was going to lift those bulky pieces out of the cave and then down the cliff.
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.” Lazlo did mean it and now he knew he was just looking for an excuse to spend more time with this woman in dusty clothes who made him laugh.
“We’ll see. It might not bring in enough marks to be worth the trouble. Let’s just not get hurt on our way down.” She sounded tense as she stowed her papers back in her mended pack.
“Are you afraid of heights?” Lazlo knew he was prying. Del was so fearless about thermal vents and hiking around dangerous terrain that it had to be a phobia making her so agitated.
“Now. I wasn’t always.” Del sucked in a breath and compressed her lips into a firm line.
“What happened?”
Del sighed and shifted, then sat up, which made Lazlo wish he hadn’t asked anything so she would have stayed lying next to him for a little longer. And wasn’t that entirely pathetic?
“My pa was hurt out here in this section. A couple of kilometers from here when he fell. I was watching from the ground. He broke his femur and ankle.”
That explained her solitary trips and her reluctance to take on this job. Lazlo felt sympathy for the Browens. By outward appea
rances like the outdated and repaired equipment and Del’s meager lunches, Lazlo had realized her family was just getting by. It must have been hard on all of them when Nige Browen was injured and out of commission.
“How did you get him back?” The terrain in this area was so impassible. Lazlo couldn’t imagine how a smallish person like Del had managed it.
“I braced his injuries, made a sled and started pulling.” Del stood and held out a hand to help him up. Her fingers were thin and he was impressed she had managed to save her father. “But the injuries were bad enough that he couldn’t come back out here anymore, so I’m on my own now with the prospecting. It’s mostly all right, but I have to stay safe, not take risks.”
“I see,” Lazlo agreed, not wanting to say more. He felt bad enough bringing up such a sensitive topic. Change the conversation. “Where should we go for dinner tonight?”
Expression shifting from melancholy to confused, Del frowned at him. “Are you joking? You want to go out again?”
“Yes, again.” Lazlo decided to tease her. “I’m beginning to think you don’t want to be seen with me.”
Del shook her head and closed her eyes. “No, that’s not true. You’re quite, quite…”
“Quite what?” Lazlo continued pressing her. Del scrunched up her face as if she were in pain, her eyes squinted and her pretty mouth clamped tight. Why was this so hard for her?
“Presentable, which I am not. I’m tired and dirty.”
“I am too, but we’ll feel better after a shower and some clean clothes.”
“Right, but something quick, maybe that place that serves the soup—”
“I know that place, over in the Bow Section. It’s good, but I was thinking that we could get some takeout after we drop off our things at technical to get them recalibrated.”
Lazlo planned the remainder of the day. His priorities, in chronological order, were to safely descend the cliff and return to the cart, check their scanners when they returned to port, clean up, eat and sleep. He imagined that Del’s were the same. The fact that he’d get to do most of them with her was an added bonus.
Chapter Seven
Millicent “Trixie” Rupti grabbed the department scanners with a soft cry and immediately placed them under a fume hood within seconds of Del and Lazlo entering the room. Closing the scuffed lexan cover, the technician activated suction and watched as the vacuum pulled away all the dust and spores coating the devices.
Del wasn’t sure where to stand in the cramped tech lab of the security station. She had enough dirt on her clothes to ruin anything she might brush up against. Lazlo had cheerfully claimed that their attire didn’t matter and that he wanted to catch Trixie on her shift so she could check their equipment.
The tech officer turned back to them and smiled hugely at Lazlo, looking as if she’d been waiting for him to show up and rescue her from a gang of pirates. Trixie was pretty and clean. Del sighed and tried not to compare herself to her.
“Trixie, this is Del Browen,” Lazlo introduced them and Del held out her hand, but withdrew it when she saw how dirty it was. Trixie didn’t notice—she was too busy staring at Lazlo, who was appealing in a rakish way with his dusty boots, odd bits of gear hanging from a low-slung belt and shirtsleeves rolled up. He could have easily stood in for the hero of an action entertainment.
“Where have you been, Lieutenant Casta? I haven’t seen you around the station in three days.” Trixie reached for some leads and a small distributor on a workbench crowded with tools and cracked-open electronic devices.
“Del and I have been out exploring. The major wanted me to run some tests on these things.” Lazlo leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms. He seemed to have some extra muscles in his forearms. Del gave Lazlo a fierce look to warn him not to say more and he shrugged at her, trying to look innocent.
“In the Outlands? No wonder the scanners are a wreck!” Trixie said while popping open the fume hood and pulling the now-clean handhelds out to her cluttered workbench. “Tell me how they performed while I realign them.” She attached the leads and began to work through some sort of cycle. Del couldn’t see much and was content to be quiet next to Lazlo and wait.
“They worked well at first, but then we lost the signal. Del thought we might have had another pole reversal,” Lazlo offered as he rolled his shoulders and brushed an arm against Del.
Trixie peered at her closely and nodded. “We did, at roughly fourteen hundred hours. I’ve been debugging all afternoon.”
“Thanks for taking our stuff in,” Lazlo said as Trixie shook her head, her curly hair bobbing.
“Our commander said to provide whatever you need, whenever you need it.” Trixie smiled at Lazlo again. “And you know I would do any favor you asked, Lieutenant.”
Yes, Trixie was flirting hard with Lazlo, and Del felt like poking him in his ticklish ribs. The tech officer was attractive in a quirky way. Her uniform was a bit disheveled under her smock and her dark-brown hair was barely restrained in a clip, but her skin was pretty and she was obviously intelligent. They would make a nice-looking couple.
“Would you like me to synch your datpad too? I can do yours as well, Citizen Browen,” Trixie offered politely and they handed over their personal devices with thanks. The tech quickly docked Lazlo’s on a long bar filled with other small pieces of equipment, all of them blinking green, yellow and blue in sleepy rhythms.
“I haven’t seen one this old in years!” Trixie exclaimed as she looked over Del’s recycled datpad.
Lazlo shifted next to her and Del tried to suppress her embarrassment as she held out her hand to take the datpad back. “If you can’t synch it, that’s fine. I’ll do it tonight when I get home.”
“Of course I can synch it! I just need to find the right adapter,” Trixie promised, turning to dig around in a drawer, oblivious to Del’s discomfort. She hated it when people noticed her family’s borderline poverty. Lazlo looked over at her and she stared at the floor rather than look back.
“Thanks for giving Trixie a challenge, Del. She’s so good at this stuff that she lords it over the rest of us.”
“Oh Lieutenant Casta, I’m not that good,” Trixie shot back after decisively plugging in Del’s device, then smiling at Lazlo again, obviously pleased by his compliment.
“You are. How are you doing on upgrading those new drones?”
“Terribly bad. I still can’t get them to track with surface features and with the few operational satellites we have, they get lost and hover aimlessly waiting for signals. I’ve misplaced one this week and crashed another but found most of the parts. I think I can repair it. We could go out sometime to try one farther from the port, since you know where to go out there.” Trixie gestured at a fragile-looking cylinder on another workbench and Del stepped over to take a look. She was uninterested in interrupting Trixie’s play for Lazlo. The woman looked as if she hadn’t been outside in a few years, so Lazlo would have his hands full managing her out on the cliffs.
The drone looked like a folded fish—slim solar blades and a tapered body colored bright orange and green. One of the stabilizers had sheared away from the body and the other two were crumpled like used paper. Del wanted to touch it but held her hands behind her back instead, sure Trixie would be mightily upset if she got any grime on the precious machine.
Lazlo was at her side, whispering, “Go ahead, I dare you.”
“You dare me what?” Del hissed back.
“Touch it,” Lazlo teased, his brown eyes bright as he grinned at her. Del shook her head at how easy it would be to take his statement the wrong way.
“No. Your friend Trixie would likely stun me if I got my filthy fingers on it.” And that was true in another way as well.
“You aren’t that dirty,” Lazlo assured her.
Del shook her head and glanced over her shoulder at the tech worker, distracted by some displays whizzing data on an enormous wall screen. “Dirty enough.”
“What do you think?�
� Nudging her arm with his elbow, Lazlo wiggled his eyebrows at her.
“About what?” Del wasn’t quite sure what they had been talking about anymore because there were so many permutations of the word “dirty” floating around in her head.
“What do you think about taking one of these out tomorrow and messing around with it?” Lazlo stopped looking at her to stare at the drone with an acquisitive gleam in his eye.
“We have a job already,” Del reminded him and nudged one of his long-fingered hands away from the drone’s fin. Trixie might notice. Messing around, indeed.
“Yes, but this would be fun. We could work on it when we take a break,” Lazlo wheedled and leaned even closer to the drone, his nose centimeters from it now. He was enthralled by the piece of machinery.
“I think your friend wants to go with you,” Del reminded him, glancing back at the tech officer, who still seemed to be engrossed in her electronic menagerie.
Lazlo shook his head. “Trixie out there? She’d be dehydrated and disoriented in about ten minutes. No, we’re going to be there already. She won’t mind.”
“Lazlo, she would mind quite a bit.”
The man looked perplexed and Del realized Lazlo had no idea the tech officer was interested in him. How could a man that attractive not have a better sense of women? Trixie spoke up and they spun around to face her. Del felt guilty of something, but she wasn’t sure what.
“The scanners are set. For how long, I don’t know—this crazy planet pops itself all the time.” Del liked how volatile Sayre was. It kept things interesting. From a geological perspective, that is.
Trixie handed the scanners back after she’d encased them in some shrink wrap, then returned their datpads. “So, Lazlo, do you have plans this evening? I’ve wanted to go to that new nodule on the Lower. I heard they have some great audionooks. Really cozy.”
Lazlo nodded. “That sounds like fun. Del, do you want to stop by there after dinner?”
