“You are excused, trainee.” The deep, spine-tingling voice robbed me of my distraction. The kid with the monstrous shoulders bowed to us, bowed to him, and left. I glanced at the door he walked out of longingly as it closed.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Stud Man’s voice informed. “You may as well pay attention to me and what’s coming to you.”
As I sighed and turned to obey, Candy began to wheedle. “We didn’t hurt anything. We just watched.”
“A restricted area,” Stud Man replied, giving her a half-smile that promised nothing good was about to happen. “Don’t tell me you couldn’t read the sign that told you it was off-limits. You were not allowed to come into the station until Captain Wotref verified you’d all been clearly instructed to stay out of places with red signs.”
She gave him wide, sorrowful eyes. It was an appeal that could have melted an iceberg. “I only did it because I wanted to meet you, Stidmun. After what you said in the dining room, I thought you wanted to meet me too.” Tears threatened. I wondered how much of it was an act and how much real terror fed her performance.
Stud Man’s smile gentled. “I did want to meet you, Matara Candy. I’m looking forward to getting to know you better. After we deal with your trespass. You broke the rules and you must suffer the consequences of that.”
Somehow it was the reasonable way he declared it that gave me chills. It was so matter-of-fact, as if we could not possibly have an argument against his judgment. The issue was not open to debate.
Candy made another try, on my behalf. “Shalia only came along because she was afraid I’d get myself into danger. She tried to talk me out of it.”
Stud Man shrugged. “She should have tried harder. And let you go.”
I wasn’t trying to wriggle out of punishment. I had it coming. I still had to make myself abundantly clear. “Nobek Stud – uh, Stidmun. I have a baby daughter on the transport and need to return to her pretty soon. Whatever you’re planning to do to me, get it over with.”
He had been focused on Candy all the while. The big guy was definitely interested in her, though it was clear that wouldn’t factor in on whatever sentence would be passed. With my statement, he gave me his undivided attention.
Stidmun stared at me for a long beat before sniffing with little concern. “You should have considered that before you broke the rules.”
I stepped closer to him, my attitude as cold as his. “Yes, I should have. I wasn’t thinking, and that’s my fault. But I will not have my child suffer because of it. You will com Weapons Commander Oses and apprise him of my situation. Then you will take whatever pound of flesh is due for my stupidity and send me to my daughter.”
He went motionless. So did I. He stared at me and I stared at him, neither of us blinking. I felt a deadly calm fill me, which Stidmun the Stud Man couldn’t touch. I wasn’t fucking around when it came to my kid. Whether this chunk of man flesh knew it or not, I would be home with my little girl before another hour was out.
Stud Man’s gaze narrowed. He spoke slowly, as if realizing something. “Matara Candy called you Shalia.”
“That’s right. Shalia Monroe.”
His eyes widened at that. He cocked his head and looked me over – not with heat or anything remotely resembling lust, but as if sizing me up. “You are Shalia Monroe? You fought and killed a squad of Tragooms, saving the lives of dozens?”
Oh geez, had the Nobeks from my ship been running their mouths about that? I wanted to groan.
Instead I spoke through gritted teeth. “I am the only Shalia Monroe traveling on Wotref’s transport. You won’t find anyone else with that name here.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Stud Man’s mouth. “I’d better put you somewhere safe then until I decide what to do with you. I can’t have you running loose, tearing up my trainees or the station.”
I was cold with determination. “I’m not kidding about going home to my daughter, Nobek.”
All hint of humor fled. Stud Man’s attitude was as matter-of-fact as mine. “I’m sure you’re not. Come with me, please.”
He moved for the door. I exchanged a glance with Candy and shrugged. I had no idea what would happen next, but at least we were moving things along.
We walked through the station. Again we traveled myriad halls until I was convinced we were rats in a maze.
Candy shot me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. This was stupid.”
Yeah, it was. But what was done was done, and it was time to pay the piper.
Stidmun led us to the training section, the very same area we’d been in before. We didn’t go into the restricted part. Instead, we went into a room that we’d passed before sneaking through the red-signed door. Blue mats covered the floor, the kind Oses set out to safely break our falls when he trained us for hand-to-hand fighting. It smelled like years of sweat in there.
The Nobek ushered us in, but he didn’t follow. Instead he stayed at the door. “Wait here.” The door closed and I heard the telltale beep that indicated it had locked.
“Son of a bitch,” I snarled. I went to the door and fiddled with the panel when it failed to open. Stud Man had locked us in all right. “Wait here” indeed.
“Damn it.” Candy paced back and forth. “Why did I do this to us?”
“You’re a horny bitch in heat,” I said without rancor as I considered the door panel. If Stidmun believed I was cooling my heels for who knew how long, he was as stupid as he was handsome.
The panel was different from what we had on the ship. Door controls on the Pussy ‘Porter were bolted into the wall. A special tool was required to get those things off in order to remove the panel cover. There were no bolts on this particular cover.
“Did you happen to wear your knife today?” I asked Candy. I needed to pry that control panel loose.
“Of course not, you maniac. I wasn’t planning on slashing personnel on a friendly station within empire space,” she responded in a snarky tone. Maybe she was mad at me for calling her a horny bitch. “What are you up to?”
“Busting out,” I answered. “I warned your sweetheart I wasn’t waiting. He should have taken me seriously.”
“I got the idea he did.” Candy wore a slight smile. “I guess he’s not aware of how renegade commando you can be.”
“What are you laughing at?” I checked the room over. I needed a tool to access the door controls.
“When the chips are down, you’re at your best. Do you have any notion how badass you are when you have to be? I don’t believe you do.”
I snorted. “What I know is that even with dozens of people willing to babysit Anrel, she’s my responsibility. I promised I’d be back within a certain time frame, and I will.”
“Okay, so let’s open that door.” Candy returned to her typical cheerful demeanor.
We moved in opposite directions, searching for the closets that were often hidden in the walls. I pressed a panel experimentally and moved on to the next when it failed to slide open. “You’re not going to hang around and wait for Nobek Stud Man?”
Candy giggled. “He’ll find me more interesting if I escape. Now that I’ve thrown myself at him, I’m due to play hard to get.”
“Devious,” I opined, smiling broadly. I couldn’t help it. With the vengeance of escaping smug Stud Man on my mind, I was starting to have fun. Candy’s plan to attract him through evasion only added to the attempt.
I’d gone through two closet/cabinet units when Candy crowed with success. I swiveled to discover her holding a slender, flat metal bar the length of her arm. It had a handle. “I can’t say what this might be, but I’m calling it a crowbar,” she beamed.
“Perfect,” I breathed. I joined her at the control panel.
Kalquorians build with a lot of abuse in mind, I’ve noticed. The control panel was no different. Even once we’d gauged enough space to fit the end of Candy’s crowbar between the covering and the wall, it took both of us heaving on the handle to pop it off. We cheered our
success before peering into the guts of the panel with all its components.
“Sensor, power module, command module ... that might be the locking mechanism,” Candy mused over the processor and mechanical doodads we’d exposed. “Most of it goes into the doorframe. If one of us has small enough fingers, we can try tripping it manually.”
“Let me hold that.” I tugged the crowbar from her. She handed it over. I aimed the handle at the control panel and began smashing the stuff inside it.
“Or we could do that,” Candy shouted over the sounds of breakage.
There was a hissing buzz, and the panels of the door slid apart a couple of inches. Yay for blunt force trauma to inanimate objects.
All my abuse couldn’t convince the door to open further though. What was left inside the panel was wrecked.
“It’s a start,” Candy said. “We can each grab onto a door and pull them apart.”
She stood on one side and I got on the other. We grabbed our respective panels, set our feet, and pulled with all our might. I felt my door shift a tad, but it moved no further into the wall.
“Anything?” I huffed to Candy when she paused in her efforts. I saw no discernable difference in the opening.
“The slightest sensation that it wanted to move,” she said between deep breaths.
“Maybe we can concentrate on just one panel and slide it open.”
“That’s worth a try.”
She grabbed the edge of her door again. I put my palms against the exposed edge and prepared to push it into the wall. “On three. One ... two ... three!”
We strained against the panel like Atlas holding up the Earth. At first, I thought it wouldn’t relent, but it began to reluctantly give. Bit by bit, it slid into the wall.
I shoved and Candy pulled until we couldn’t anymore. We stopped, gasping for air and eyeing the widened opening we’d made.
“Can we fit?” I wondered.
“Let’s try.” Candy stepped into the opening and started to worm through. She did a lot of grunting and cursing as she worked to slide through the door.
“Too much ass and boobies,” I remarked as I watched her fight out of our cell.
“Are you saying my ass is big?” she mock-snarled. She popped out on the other side and gave a breathless cheer. “Okay, Ms. Broad-beam. Bring your wide load on through.”
“Hallelujah.” I shoved my ass out too, and we whooped our success.
The noise we made brought curious Nobeks to the doors of other training rooms. They peered at us with confusion that changed to appreciation when they realized it was a couple of women making all the racket.
Waving grandly to them as if she were royalty, Candy walked down the hall that led to the main concourse of the station. “Work hard, boys. Give Trainer Stidmun our regards.”
I followed after her, laughing as I imagined the Nobek’s expression when he saw we’d escaped. A minute later, I didn’t have to imagine.
We were almost out of the promenade, inches from the door that would take us to the umbilical passage that led to the Pussy ‘Porter, when Oses’s familiar call stopped us in our tracks. “Shalia. Candy.”
We spotted our weapons commander a few feet away, walking toward us. Stud Man was beside him.
The expression I’d imagined he’d wear? Not nearly as stunned as the look he wore for real. I almost couldn’t stop myself from laughing, but I managed not to. Some small notion of self-preservation told me humor at Stud Man’s expense might not go over too well.
“Hi Oses,” I answered as he and Stud neared. “I guess you heard we landed in some trouble.”
“I was also informed you’d been sequestered in a locked room awaiting your punishment.” He looked at Stud Man, his brow crooked upward.
“The punishment was expected. The waiting part was a bit much. I need to get back to Anrel,” I answered breezily. I gave Stud Man a cold stare. “I warned you not to keep me from my child. Now you have a broken door to deal with.”
Candy chimed in, giving her would-be beau her sweetest smile. “Yeah, we were a little destructive. Have fun with that.”
Stidmun looked at us, then our weapons commander in obvious confusion. Oses wiped his smirk off in time to avoid his fellow Nobek seeing it.
“Question, Nobek Stidmun?” he asked in a dry tone.
“Well, they did go in a restricted area—” the trainer began.
“Yes, and may I say, Shalia and Candy, how very disappointed I am in you for getting caught. I thought I trained you better than that. Shameful, shameful. You certainly did deserve punishment.”
I fought not to laugh. Oses reminded me of a disappointed dad whose kid had given him a bad report card.
“However, you did manage to escape a locked room. It’s a skill any six-year-old Nobek could accomplish, but as we have not yet covered that in our exercises, I commend you for figuring it out for yourselves. It will offset the mistake you made. You are dismissed to the ship.”
With that, Oses bowed to Stud Man. Before the confused commander could return the gesture of respect, Oses headed for the drinking area.
Candy and I were off the hook. The rush of relief I felt betrayed how worried I had been. I gave my friend a grin as we started toward the ship.
“Um, Matara Candy?” Stud Man’s uncertain voice followed us.
We both turned. I noted how blasé Candy’s expression was as she confronted the man she’d gotten us into so much trouble over. “Yes?”
“I thought maybe, if we could put this episode behind us, if you’d consider ... well, I was doing my job and ... you said you wished to get to know me...” His voice died off as the right words refused to come.
“I’ll think about it.” Candy sounded bored, but her eyes gleamed.
She’d hooked the handsome man her heart – or whatever body part it was – had set itself on. She’d reel Stud Man in when she was ready.
September 9
We’re leaving the space station. On to our next stop: Haven Colony. The Pussy ‘Porter is still a mess, and Rel didn’t have all the components it required to safely finish its journey.
Based on Betra’s suggestion, I mentioned to Katrina it might be worth having her clanning ceremony during our layover on Haven. She considered it.
“It’s either that or Kalquor,” she said. “I wanted to check Haven out in any case. I can make a recommendation to my daughter on whether or not she should push Matthew to settle there.”
“If he brings his family into empire space, you have a better chance of him accepting your choices,” I mused.
“That’s the plan. I’ll take a look at what Haven has to offer before we arrive and find out what my clan says about it.”
“Make up your mind soon,” I advised. “If this ceremony is happening on Haven, we’ll have to pull it together fast. We’re only days away.”
Katrina sighed. “Tell me again why I’m doing this to myself? Why I’m not simply happy with Wotref filing the paperwork and calling it good?”
I gave her a hug. “Because it’s a big deal and you should celebrate. Besides, Candy will never let you hear the end of it if you don’t have an actual ceremony.”
Candy’s immersed in her own love story. She and Stud Man hit it off once she relented and let him take her out. Every moment he wasn’t training the troops, he spent with her. Now she’s starry-eyed. It’s all Stidmun, Stidmun, Stidmun. She can’t talk about anything else except for the occasional word about Katrina’s upcoming ceremony.
I smell trouble heading her direction. There had been easy affection for her lovers Mihi and Ama, but this is different. Because I worried about her, I tried to talk some sense into her yesterday during dinner. We sat in the station’s mess hall, waiting for Stud Man’s glorious appearance.
“Ah, Candy? Is he clanned?”
“No.” Her gaze was far off as she twirled a lock of hair around her finger. “He’s been concentrating on his career and isn’t even sure he wants a Dramok and Imdiko.”
“So ... he’s not in the market for a Matara.”
“There haven’t been any for him to shop for,” she grinned. “But here come us Earther girls, so his chances are vastly improved.”
“Not if he doesn’t clan with a Dramok and Imdiko,” I pointed out.
“Hmm.” Candy didn’t act worried about the matter. “I suppose that’s true if he wanted to make us official.”
My suspicions grew. “You’re going to Kalquor to join a clan.”
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