by C. Gockel
Across the ether, Noa snapped, “Xo is chasing us because he owes them money!”
“Or because we have food,” James thought.
Noa exhaled sharply … were the Ark’s stores really enough to launch an interstellar chase? She swallowed, remembering the hunger and misery at Adam’s Station. Maybe it was. “You sound confident in him,” Noa replied over the ether, her jaw remaining resolutely shut in the real world.
“I’m not,” James replied. “But sometimes … the protection of personal interests can make even an amoral individual appear heroic.”
For some reason, the reply made the hair on the back of Noa’s neck prickle.
“I can’t leave him alone up here,” Noa said. She shook her head.
“Of course not,” James replied. “Leave him with Ghost, Manuel, Gunny, Chavez, or me.”
Noa sat at the wheel, her skin cold and clammy, an echo of her adrenaline crash.
Gunny’s voice burst into the ether. “Where the hell am I?!”
Followed by Dr. Monica’s thoughts. “The patient is awake, Commander.”
“Gunny,” Noa said. “Can’t leave him alone either, apparently.” She scowled. But that was another problem she had to take care of, that she couldn’t take care of, not while she sat at the helm. It wasn’t just her job to fly this boat, it was to keep the crew together. How many crises were waiting to explode in the decks below? She restrained a sigh. The good doctor, for one, was liable not to take their real destination very well.
“Ghost,” she said. “How much sleep have you had?”
“A solid five hours,” the computer officer said. He sniffed. “I never need more.”
He said it as though anyone who did was a lesser human being. Noa did not roll her eyes. And then she swallowed. She trusted Ghost enough, because the Luddeccean Guard would never forgive him if they were captured. Was it so different with Wren?
“Ghost, lock Wren out of the ether for a moment,” Noa commanded.
“Done,” the computing officer said.
Over the ether, she said to Ghost, “You can watch Wren while he takes the helm?”
“Of course,” Ghost said. “I don’t trust him … but we have to stay at lightspeed, and I’m no pilot.” It was rare for Ghost to concede weakness; it made Noa trust him more when he did.
“Chavez—you’ll watch Ghost’s back, won’t you?” Noa said silently into the ether.
“Yes, Commander!” said Chavez.
“Alright,” Noa said aloud. “Wren … you can take the helm. Keep us on course, and keep us at lightspeed, and no questions!”
Over the ether, she said, “No answers!”
“I value my hide,” said Ghost.
“Of course not,” Chavez thought.
“Oh, my head,” Gunny said over the ether.
Unlatching the safety harness, Noa said, “I’ll see you all in …” She blinked. “… eight point five hours.” She might even get seven hours of sleep.
“Aye, Commander,” Chavez said.
Ghost nodded. “Yes,” and slid into the seat Noa had vacated.
Wren turned very briefly and gave her a thousand-watt smile. “Have a nice nap.”
Before she could scowl, he’d already turned his gaze back to the skylight. The smile was gone, and the expression on his face was earnest. He’d been a double agent during the war in System Six. It went against everything Noa believed in to trust him; but James was right. Wren’s interests aligned with hers. Noa rubbed her temples. What did that say about her?
James’s thoughts reached out to hers. “Noa?”
She looked up and found him above her, blue eyes intent on hers. He stood closer to her than any Fleet personnel would stand to their Commander. But they weren’t superior and subordinate, and she was glad. “Let’s go,” she said, stepping down the stairwell to the lift. Her eyes were starting to burn again. She sighed and over the ether said, “I need to talk to Gunny first.”
They stepped onto the lift platform and the walls rose around them and the ceiling engulfed them as they descended.
James raised an eyebrow. “I was thinking I might go down to engineering …”
“You’re not hungry?” Noa asked, smiling in surprise.
James tilted his head and looked at the floor. “Yes, I am, but you know … I think I’ll be fine in engineering.”
Noa blinked. There was something a little awkward, or off, in the way he said the words.
The lift reached the med bay level, and James reached out and touched her arm—meeting her eyes for just a moment, freezing her in her tracks as heat raced through her. Through the ether he sent a vision of a ball of orange light. Spinning in her mind, it made her body flush from head to toe and her breath catch. She licked her lips. The heat between them wasn’t awkward at all, even if she was missing pieces, and he was missing memories, and neither of them had time.
She backed out of the lift with a tiny nod to him, the glowing ball of light burning in her visual cortex and keeping her whole body warm and alive even in the cold hallway as the lift door shut.
* * *
“I’m sorry, Commander,” Gunny was saying, slipping on a boot. “I don’t know what came over me.”
Noa was sitting on a chair she’d rolled over from Monica’s station. She’d sent the doctor away. “I think I do,” Noa said.
Gunny froze.
“You’re an alcoholic, Gunny,” Noa said, the comment early the other morning, just before the tick attack, sticking in her mind. Does the ship have alcohol? She sighed. Gunny was a good man. That he would so easily become fall-down drunk while on a “mission” meant that the drug had real talons in him.
“Pssshhhh …” Gunny said. “Nah … I have a drink occasionally.”
“You can’t have a drink on my ship,” Noa said. She had a sinking suspicion he had a stash in his cabin. A real alcoholic would. Leaning forward, she rested her elbows on her knees and added a little guilt to the direct order. “You’ve got to get rid of any you have in your cabin.”
Gunny looked away.
“I need you too much, Gunny.”
Gunny met her eyes, and for the first time, looked guilty.
Noa smiled sadly. “More than ever … Wren is at the helm right now, and I need help keeping an eye on him.”
Gunny sat up straight, his eyes wide. “That double crossing, untrustworthy—”
“We need him,” Noa said, sitting back in her chair. “So I can manage other ship business.” She let “like this” be implied.
Gunny looked away again.
“I know alcohol can be like a friend …” Noa said. “Hard to give up, always there for you …” It had almost become her best friend, after Tim died. Her little brother Kenji had been the first to notice, the first to worry, and warn her, No amount of drinking will bring him back. Her brother was usually so poor at understanding others’ motivations, but he’d understood that. Why? Because in his own cold analytical way he knew her better than anyone? Because he loved her as much as Tim had, in a way that was more pure … no lust, just the bond of kinship. She bit her lower lip. Oh, Kenji, why did you turn me in? She knew the answer to that was the same. Because he loved her.
“Friend, yeah, it is a friend! Kept me from being rounded up by the Luddy Guard, it did.”
Noa’s eyes jerked up to the sergeant. He was fastening a boot strap. Intent on the task, he said, “Had been out drinkin’ the night before Manuel came to pick me up. If I hadn’t spent the night in my neighbor’s ditch, they woulda picked me up with the other poor sods and shipped me God knows where … waking up with a mouth full of vomit wasn’t bad as that.”
He put his hands through his hair, pushing back the unruly bangs. He met her eyes.
Sitting still as a statue, Noa didn’t say anything. She let his own words hang in the air. She heard him gulp and knew she had reached him.
Despite her own brief dance with alcohol when Tim died, Noa hadn’t indulged long enough for her affair with
the drug to become a physical need. Gunny would have a harder time leaving his partner behind; he needed a habit to replace the one he’d found himself stuck in. She reached for something that every Luddeccean shared, The Three Books.
“Your book was the Koran,” Noa said. “This isn’t you, Gunny.” The colony had been settled by adherents of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Although, Three Books was its own religion in a way. Its adherents all claimed origin from one of the three. It was one faith with three sects.
He put a hand behind his head and looked away. “Luddy nonsense. Religion is a tool of the weak.”
How often had she heard that on Earth when she talked about her Luddeccean upbringing? “That’s Earther talk,” Noa said. “We know that religion is a tool of the strong.” It was the standard Luddeccean spiel, what frustrated priests of the Three Books would say to those members of their flock that they’d all but given up on—not an appeal to truth, but to utility.
Gunny exhaled. It may have been Noa’s imagination, but she thought he trembled a bit at the thought of giving up his booze stash, or the power of his upbringing weighing upon him. You couldn’t escape the Three Books when you were from Luddeccea … Noa hadn’t realized it until she’d joined the Fleet. She’d thought she was borderline atheist but realized she was religious by tradition, if not belief. It did make her strong, didn’t it? Or maybe it just made a community strong? When she’d been tried for “borrowing” the Luddeccean Guard’s antigrav bike when she was a kid, she’d had to put her hand on her family’s book, the Bible. She couldn’t have lied. Even if she didn’t believe the Bible word for word, it stood for something she couldn’t dishonor or shake. Maybe Gunny’s religion could steer him down the more difficult path—and help keep them all safe.
“We need you, Gunny, any way we can get you back,” she said.
He nodded.
“Get a shower,” she said, “and report for duty.”
“Yes, Commander, thank you, Commander,” he said, standing at attention, giving an earnest salute, and then making his way to the door. For a moment she was alone, and she shivered in the medbay. And then she remembered she didn’t have to be alone anymore. Through the ether she reached for James.
Chapter Thirteen
James clasped the wrench-like tool in his hands. The tool connected to a specialized bolt that was an emergency release valve for the hot de-radiated steam from the reactor. The steam circulated through various pipes, heating the ship and cooling for its return trip to the reactor. Holding the manual valve steady was an activity that put stress on every muscle in his body. Steam shot past him and hung in the air around him in a heated cloud, but even as his body was occupied, a tiny part of him wandered with Noa. She was a bright light blinking in his mind. He watched the light that was her go to the galley-turned cafe, and then to her cabin. He watched the light that was her move to her bed … and stay there, motionless for so long she had to have fallen asleep. He could be there with her …
The steam abruptly cut off. Manuel’s thoughts flooded the ether. “We’ve got it!” James heard some sounds of relief, though he couldn’t see where they originated from through the cloud of water vapor. “James, tighten her up, and we’re done here.”
James tightened the bolt until Manuel said over the ether, “Pressure is at acceptable levels.” Lowering the wrench, James felt as though every muscle in his arms and back were uncoiling. The mist began to dissipate. He heard a door open, blinked in that direction, and saw Manuel, Kuin, Jun, and Kara emerging from an access tunnel.
“It’s hotter than a lizzar’s balls in here,” Kuin said.
“Ewww ...” said Kara.
Rubbing the back of his neck, Manuel looked at James, his brow furrowed. “It is hot … hotter than I expected. James, are you alright?”
“I’m fine.” Better than fine. Perfect, like he could go back to Noa’s cabin and roll between the sheets for hours.
“I think I would have passed out in here,” Manuel said.
“Lizzar dung, I know I would have,” said Jun.
James glanced at them, the nanos in his mind firing, as though anticipating attack. But Jun was wiping sweat from his forehead, Kuin was peering down his own shirt and sticking out his tongue, Kara was fanning her face with a hand, and Manuel was trying to blow his bangs out of his eyes, but they were firmly plastered to his forehead.
“Lucky for us you’re augmented,” Manuel said. “Why don’t you go get cleaned up?”
James nodded, anxious to get away, feeling the light in his mind that was Noa calling him like a beacon.
“Cool tats,” said Kuin, and James’s gaze snapped down.
He’d rolled up his sleeves when he’d begun the job, and his tattoos had unfurled across his arms like black feathers. He rolled his sleeves down, gave another tight nod to Manuel, and headed out the exit. Moments later, he was at the lift. His finger was poised to press the button to Noa’s level when he caught himself. He closed his eyes, remembering a scene: rain falling against a window in London, hovers streaking by in a blur outside. His eyes were on a woman, Deirdre. Her back had been to him as she gazed out the window. He’d just told her they needed to break up. She’d told him she loved him, and he’d said he didn’t fall in love. Moments later, she’d spun around, slapped him, and called him inhuman.
James touched his cheek at the memory. Now he felt love or obsession, he wasn't sure which. It was outside of his realm of experience. Maybe it was the situation that had changed him? Had the extreme adversity he’d shared with Noa forged this intense bond? Opening his eyes, he rocked on his feet. Apart from being the target of prejudice for being a throwback, he hadn’t faced real adversity in his previous life. He had been a spoiled Earther; now he was running for his life … and Noa’s. He hit the button and the lift ascended, but as it did, the light in his mind that was Noa rose from her bed, exited her cabin, and moved down the hall. She stopped short, turned abruptly, and began descending the ladder shaft faster than he was ascending in the lift.
“Noa,” he called across the ether, feeling a darkness at the edge of his vision, and a sudden dread that she might be sleepwalking again. “What are you doing?”
“I hear Carl Sagan in the ladder shaft …” The blinking light that was her came to a stop. “Oh, here he is, he’s stuck in some adhesive putty.”
The elevator came to a halt, and James stepped out to the sound of frantic werfle squeaking. Noa had left the door to the ladder shaft open. He peered down and saw the top of her head. She’d braced her back against the wall and was using both hands to extricate the ten-legged creature from some purple putty. Carl Sagan gave a squeal as she slipped him free, wrapped him around her neck, began to climb up … and slipped on the ladder. “Nebulas,” she whispered.
“Noa?” James said, putting a hand on a rung, preparing to come down after her.
She blinked up at him and he noticed how bloodshot her eyes were. “Oh, hey,” she said, and began climbing very carefully.
“Is something wrong?” James asked across the ether.
“Nah,” said Noa, reaching his level. James stepped back from the door and she exited the tunnel, stumbling slightly. It wasn’t like her at all. He felt a weight, like a shift in gravity, on his shoulders. “Noa, how long has it been since you slept?” He remembered her being in her bed a few minutes earlier. “Really slept,” he added.
She stroked Carl Sagan’s tail. “Plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead,” she said, but she headed back to her cabin. She put her hand on the button for the door, turned, and gazed back at him, her eyes deep and liquid. It was like being on top of the Xinshii gorge again, knowing gravity was about to kick in, but this time he wanted to fall. She didn’t have to say anything for him to follow.
As soon as the door shut behind them, Carl Sagan slid down Noa’s body and hopped away. Noa turned and put her arms around James’s neck. James wrapped his arms around her waist, tugged their bodies together, and slid his nose along hers, b
reathing against her lips, hoping it would suffice for the kiss that he couldn’t give.
Her body shook against his. “What’s wrong?” he whispered.
She shook her head.
And his mind pieced together her stagger and red-rimmed eyes. “You were asleep, and you had nightmares and they woke you up,” James guessed. And then she’d left her cabin … to find him.
Noa dropped her head against his chest. “They’re still so clear in my mind.”
Heat flared beneath his skin and a desire that was as powerful as lust. “Let me into your head,” he whispered. “I’ll keep them away.” The words were startling. He remembered Deirdre again. She’d been depressed … it had been so inconvenient. He had never wanted to fight a woman’s demons before.
Noa’s body went still against him, and then she said, “I’d like that. Has to be a hard-link, with Ghost in the ether.”
James dropped a hand to his back pocket and pulled out the tight coil of cord they’d used before. He plugged it into the side of Noa’s head as she leaned against him, and then into his. As the electrical flow pulsed between them, she gasped. There were no demons in her mind at the moment … just lust. In his mind he laughed with happiness and shared desire. Noa laughed in the real world, too, and then everything fell away to a brilliant, blinding white. In the real world he turned around and dropped into the bed with her on top of him. In the real world they were still clothed, but in the white light of their minds their clothing melted away. In the mindscape, Noa held up a hand to touch his face and she had five fingers. In the mindscape, he kissed the pad of every single one, and then their lips crushed together. He could kiss in his mind, and in their minds, their bodies were one. It was the most exquisite foreplay he could imagine.
And then it went terribly wrong.
* * *
Noa was lying on top of James, there was no space between them, he was heat and she was light. His eyes were sparkling in his too-perfect face—and he was smiling—like he never did in real life. Noa laughed, her limbs sliding against his, her heart bursting. The light around them pulsated white, yellow, and then red … and then came a knock at the door.
