Theta

by Elsa Jade

  But as he closed his eyes, he anticipated dreams of Nell falling in love with him and him destroying the consortium.

  Such sweet dreams. Almost as sweet as the pie.

  Chapter 5

  “Warning. Exterior temperature reaching critical levels. Cooling must commence immediately to avoid catastrophic hull failure. Warning.”

  Nell bolted up out of a deep sleep, bumping her head on the ceiling of the minuscule cubicle that was all the compact shuttle offered for a berth. She should be used to waking to screams. Jed had punctured most of her drugged nights at the saloon with his tirades, and the empress, both as a child and in her later adulthood, was worse. But this toneless, insistent warning of catastrophe was something new.

  She rolled out of the bunk, her bare feet hitting the floor of the main corridor as the portal opened to her.

  “Warning. Hull temperatures reaching critical.”

  “I can’t make it colder than outer space,” Nell snapped. “Shuttle, what is the nature of the malfunction?”

  The rental ship had only the cheapest data gel for its AI core, and it replied almost apologetically, “The ship is overheating and must be returned to standard operating parameters before catastrophic failure—”

  “Nell,” the Theta barked from the hold. “What’s happening?”

  She ignored him as she raced to the bridge. Flinging herself into the pilot’s chair, she called up the reports from the ship. How had it gone from letting her sleep to warning of an imminent explosion?

  Scrolling through the last minutes gave her no insight and she didn’t have time to go any farther back. As a citizen of the intergalactic community, she could fly a simple ship, but she didn’t know enough to fix one, especially not in midflight. The ship should have sent out a distress signal at the same time it alerted her, but that wouldn’t help her much if her disarticulated molecules were scattered across this small corner of the universe.

  “Hull temperature exceeding safety parameters,” the ship reminded her not helpfully.

  “Shuttle, pull up the self-help diagnostics and troubleshooting guide. Skip ahead to burning alive.”

  “Step one,” the shuttle’s simple AI read back to her. “Shut down, wait twenty minutes, and restart the ship—”

  “I can’t restart it while we’re flying,” she cried.

  “Divert the cryo component of life-support to restabilize the hull temperature.”

  That voice wasn’t the chirpy, clueless announcement from the shuttle. She swung around, staring straight down the corridor toward the hold.

  The Theta stood with his hands wrapped around the bars, staring urgently at her. “Reroute the cryo—”

  “I heard you,” she said. “But I don’t know how to do it.”

  “The ship won’t let you do it automatically because you’ll be risking life-support, but if the hull ruptures there won’t be any life anyway, not even mine. You need to manually recalibrate the internal temperature gauges—”

  “I don’t know how to do that either.” She managed to keep her voice somewhere south of a wail, but the shriek of the klaxons and the wildly blinking indicator light in the corner of her eye were making her frantic.

  “You can do this,” he said with a calm certainty that seemed entirely wrong for the situation. “Just pop open the control panel to the left…” He let his hands drop to his sides and took a step back as the hold bars parted. He scanned his gaze once around the new opening suspiciously. “Did you do that, Nell? Or are internal systems failing as well?”

  “Get over here,” she growled. “Do that cryo thing you said.”

  Still he lingered inside his cage. “You’re not gonna say I’m escaping and shoot me, are you?”

  “If I do, we both explode.”

  “Well, then that’d be the end of the start of a beautiful friendship.” He strode toward her.

  Unlike the other shroud designations she’d researched before she began her hunt, he didn’t have the same massive warrior morphology. He’d been built to infiltrate the general population of the empress’s homeworld, where he would’ve been deployed with his matrix to put down the rebellion. According to rumors about the private cybernetic fighters, the nanite pathways under his skin could be deployed to change his size, coloration, and texture to more closely resemble his host world. But he wouldn’t have needed to do much to blend in on Tartaula Secondus. Actually, if she’d been the innocent Earther he’d first called her, she would’ve never guessed he was anything but a rough Montana cowboy. Except for the luxurious long locks, of course.

  When she’d first seen him, well, she hadn’t really seen him because she’d been so focused on the laudanum, and by the time she’d started to pay attention, when he’d kissed her and breathed his nanites into her, she’d been too overwhelmed by sensation to think straight.

  Now the screaming of the shuttle wasn’t helping either, but his gliding, confident stride and his lean height as he took the copilot seat beside her set off another set of warning signals—inside her.

  Last time, she’d been too drunk and drugged to know he was dangerous. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  But they had more urgent circuits to fry right now. His long fingers danced over the controls, and when he reached behind her to flick open the panel he’d mentioned before, his arm brushed across her shoulders. A prickling sensation whispered through her. Was the problem with the overheating hull bleeding into the cabin? It certainly seemed harder to breathe.

  “You need to manually prevent the reset of the life-support systems while I reroute the cryo fluids,” he told her. “That won’t save us, but it will buy us some time to figure out what’s gone wrong.”

  “My whole life’s been wrong,” she muttered.

  He grinned at her, and from this close, the amused glint in his bright green eyes sent another feverish flutter through her veins.

  “I can show you how to chart a new course,” he said. “If we live through this.”

  She snorted. “If? Don’t make me doubt you now.”

  “Never.” He punched some sort of sequence into the control panel and grabbed her hand, putting her finger over one indicator. “When I say so, toggle this.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” she told him. “And it usually leads to a mini explosion of the biological kind.”

  He snorted back at her. “Hold that thought.” He turned back to his controls. “Ready?”

  She swallowed hard and nodded.

  “On my mark, disengage safety. Cueing reroute and…mark.”

  Quickly, she flicked over the indicator. The life-support gauge blinked once before all the klaxons died.

  The last sound was her gust of exhalation. “It worked?”

  “So it seems. But I’ve never actually done it before.” He quickly ran through the rest of the diagnostic she’d started. “You’ve probably been on more spacefaring ships than me, so I’m relying on what’s in this shuttle database and my own, both of which are limited.” He pointed out some line on the diagnostic that meant nothing to her. “Looks like you had the mimic shield running for awhile back on Earth.”

  “I didn’t want to be seen by planetary security. Or you.”

  “Fair enough. But that’s a huge energy draw for a modest ship like this.” He frowned at her. “You’re fortunate you didn’t lose structural integrity during your initial descent.”

  She flushed at the scolding. “Not like I had a choice. I couldn’t expose Earth to extraterrestrials.”

  But…had anyone on Earth ever cared if she exploded?

  She couldn’t think of a single person.

  Not that Troy Lehigh was a person. He was very specifically an imperson—not quite a robot, but not a being with full rights in the intergalactic community since he was the manufactured property of the consortium. One of the reasons shrouds were considered illegal and immoral was because no one was quite sure what to do with them.

  But as with his comments about the bonds of
gravity and relationships, she wasn’t interested in discussing ethical quandaries. She had her own problems. One of which was not blowing up with a dangerous shroud loose on her ship.

  He was still poking at the controls. “The hull is stable. For now. But we can’t keep routing power from life-support or we won’t have breathable air or sustainable temperatures in the cabin. We could redirect power from the propulsion system, but it’s all a closed system—what we take from one place will hurt us in another.” He glanced at her, his brow furrowed. “How long until we meet with the empress’s barge?”

  Nell bit her lip. “Three jumps. And we can’t rely on her to send a rescue team. I’m just not that important to her.”

  “Am I?”

  A chill wormed through her as she studied him. She’d struggled with jealousy many a time—coveting another girl’s prettier hair ribbons, watching others in the empress’s entourage getting drunk on pixberry wine when her nanites prevented even a relaxing buzz, looking out at a starscape and longing for that freedom—but never once had she been jealous of a man.

  The Theta was no more a man than he was a person, but a very long lifetime of knowing that she was worth only as much as someone was willing to pay for her made her suddenly loath to give him up. As long as she had him, she had something that other people would want. It was a feeling of power she’d never had before.

  “She would come for you,” Nell admitted with a grimace. “But she doesn’t know I have you.”

  He smirked. “Oh, I’m a surprise, am I? Well, shrouds usually are, especially Thetas. We’ll just send a message and she can come retrieve us—”

  “No.” The rejection burst out almost as reluctantly as conceding his value. “I have to bring you to her. She can’t see that I failed.”

  He eyed her for a moment. “Ah. As gifts go, if she has to pick me out herself, it doesn’t have quite the same effect, does it?”

  Nell huffed under her breath. “The anniversary of her grandfather’s demise is coming up. His passage is marked by feasting and mourning. The royals tell themselves that if he hadn’t died, they would’ve defeated the rebellion and kept their homeworld system under their rule. I want to present you as a gift in the emperor’s name on the final night of the gala.”

  “I can see how the symbolism of returning one of the missing shrouds that lost them their planet might be enough to move the empress, in front of her remaining people, to grant you your freedom.” As if being that symbol meant nothing to him, he summoned up a course map that showed the shuttle and location of the royal barge. “We don’t have the power to limp that far, not under the circumstances. But maybe…”

  She waited a moment before prodding, “Maybe what?”

  “If we can put down on a planet, I can physically reroute powerlines from the engines to the hull stabilizers without risking life-support. But I can’t open those systems in flight.” He sat back in the copilot seat, watching her.

  The skeletal structure of the pilot’s chair was uncomfortable enough, but his expectant expression somehow made the blunt edges of the frame even harder against her body. “What’s that look for?” she asked peevishly.

  “Waiting for you to make a decision. I’m just the prisoner, after all.”

  Too bad she couldn’t shoot him again. But she wouldn’t waste the specialized charges in her blaster, especially not if she had to oversee him while he repaired the ship. Should she trust him that far? Did she have a choice?

  Well, making a decision had always been easier when she had no choices. She stared at the star chart. “What’s the closest planet?”

  “We need something with a breathable atmosphere so I can take life-support off-line.” He leaned forward again to scroll through their options. “Ideally it’ll have lower gravity since I’ll be moving heavy panels and you have my nanites on lockdown.”

  She glowered at him. “If you think I’m going to return all your strength to you—”

  He flashed her a crooked grin. “I’ve survived two fiery crashes and barely rebuilt myself. Third time would not be the charm. No way would I take that risk again by fighting you for control of this ship. Especially since it would leave me weakened against other scavengers looking to reclaim me.” He shook his head. “No offense, Nell, but you’re not exactly some relentless bounty hunter and you still found me. There are worse scavengers than you out there, and now that the universe knows an unclaimed shroud is available for the taking, I think my only choice is to accept a keyholder who isn’t too awful. And your empress sounds relatively harmless. There are worse fates for a killer robot than floating around the galaxies on a royal barge, misremembering the glory days that might’ve been if only the rebellious peasants had been properly quashed.”

  Pausing on one planet, he zoomed in. “Here. It’s an uninhabited moon halfway through a development project. No amenities yet, but we just need a place where we can open the hatch without being sucked out or overcome by gases or eaten by local fauna. There might even be an emergency beacon we can access if I’m wrong about all this and you can’t get home under your own power.”

  The little worm of jealousy at his smooth competence widened into a deeper furrow of uncertainty. Twice before, she’d tried to make her own way in the world, seeking her own fortune. The first time, she’d thought a job in the booming cow towns of the West would let her escape the monotonous farm life she’d been born into. Instead, smallpox had left her fit only for work where no one had to look in her face. When a rough cowboy with secrets in his green eyes and larceny in his heart had given her diamonds in exchange for silence, that had seemed like everything she could ask for. Until aliens had homed in on what he’d surreptitiously given her and taken her away from the only world she knew.

  She should’ve known that trying to catch a shroud would end as badly for her as everything else she’d ever done. Probably she should be grateful she hadn’t spontaneously exploded as soon as she even thought of winning her own freedom.

  She ground her teeth down on the defeatist thoughts, gritty and bitter as chunks of raw carbon. If she’d ever given up before, she’d be long dead in a prairie town on the oblivious Earth.

  She still had a shot, and she’d take it until the blaster was empty and her blood had gone cold.

  “Show me how to set the course and pilot,” she ordered. “I can fly on automatic, but I want to do it by hand.”

  Instead of arguing, as she thought he might, he gestured her toward the controls. “My nanites should make that easier for you. Even if you don’t have the necessary cybernetic interfaces to let you control them consciously, you have at least some shroud instincts, so take advantage of those.”

  He walked her through the steps of charting a course and setting the jump points manually.

  “I’d let you practice, but that will take power we can’t spare. I’m going to throttle all systems to their lowest settings and you won’t be able to control the ship at those levels.” His grin this time seemed a little forced. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to control it either. But if I can repair the shuttle, you can fly us out. Fair?”

  Even worse than knowing she’d failed at her own path was letting someone else guide her instead. But she’d watched him lay in the course, so she trusted that part at least was verifiable. She’d be able to tell if he tried to change their route and flee his fate.

  Stiffly, she rose from the pilot’s chair and waved him into her place. As they swapped seats, she eyed the panels that had been blinking wildly just moments ago. “The hull temp seems be holding. That’s good at least.”

  “Yeah, very good,” he said distractedly. “For our descent, I’ll be saving all power for maneuvering, minimum life-support, and structural integrity. It might get bumpy so use the restraint harness.”

  She did as he suggested although her fingers twitched at the feeling of confinement. She’d be much too slow against any shroud who might suddenly decide to mutiny and take over her ship. A broken ship though. No wonder
he sounded tense with the memories of previous crashes in his head. She had nightmares of her own, but none involved being smeared across the upper levels of an incomplete atmosphere.

  She’d definitely be leaving an unfavorable review for the ship rental company if they were immolated in a fireball over this half-terraformed moon.

  The star chart was nothing more than an X-marks-the-spot point on the low-resolution map and the shuttle’s data gel was silent, which Nell supposed meant everything was off-line except what Troy needed to land the ship.

  “According to my calculations, this should work,” he muttered. “But just in case it doesn’t…”

  He turned toward her. Half boosting out of his seat, he wrapped one hand at the back of her neck and swooped in for a kiss.

  In the last moment before his lips touched hers, he froze. At this intimate range, the flickers of silver in his green eyes glittered like the sequins on a party dress she could never afford. “I can’t kiss you, not for luck, not as a last hurrah.”

  She blinked up at him, trapped by the restraint harness—and even more caught by a strange yearning. “Why not?”

  “Maybe you don’t want to be kissed.” His glittering gaze dropped to her mouth.

  Of course she couldn’t help but lick her lower lip in anticipation. “Maybe I do.”

  “I should at least ask.”

  “Go ahead and kiss me, just in case we fall.”

  He half closed his eyes, and his smile was strangely sad. “Oh, we’ll most definitely fall.”

  His hadn’t been her last kiss since she left Earth. The shroud reclamation team that had found her instead hadn’t come immediately, and Jed James had worked her harder to make up for the missing contents of his hidden safe. But Troy’s kiss had lingered in a way no one else’s ever had. Partly because he’d left his nanites with her, of course, but also because that was all he’d taken. Which left her wondering what else he was holding back.