Chapter 3 – Sweater Weather #3
I felt myself preen a little, pleased to be back on somewhat familiar territory. "I'm glad you came," I said. "Although I was a little disappointed when you turned me down."
The way his black eyes widened, and the sudden stiffness in his shoulders, told me that I was yet again hurtling myself into territory I had no business poking around in.
Okay, so he'd flirt – that had been flirting, I was sure – but on his own terms and at his own pace.
God grant me strength: after a decade in the den, I could barely breathe without flirting.
But I was nothing if not adaptable, so instead I shot him a friendly smile without a scrap of heat, and added, "I love learning about different cultures.
Maybe if there's some time when we're back on your ship, you could tell me more.
And if you ever want to know anything about the weird cult I grew up in, I'm an open book.
" I was not; I was a closed and locked book that had been shoved into a chest and then summarily kicked into the deepest part of the ocean.
I hated talking about Seraphim, but I was good at making shit up that was less awful than reality.
Then, belatedly, "I'll stop bothering you though.
I've got a few things loaded up on my wristband.
You just let me know if I can help with anything. "
He was quiet behind me and when I glanced, I could see that he was still flushed that rosy pink, and I resigned myself to keeping quiet for the rest of the flight. This was a small shuttle to be in if you kept blundering your way into making an alien embarrassed.
It was going to be a long six hours.
It wasn't a long six hours. And it took us way longer than that to actually get to Creche Thiel's ship.
As I was in the middle of rifling through some very boring articles about an abayan trade delegation that had been in the news recently – the writer kept focusing on the refined minerals that were the subject of the negotiations, not the important stuff like how to avoid offending cute and easily flustered delegates – and Araxis was back near the small engine room, a chime sounded on the dashboard.
I looked up at the display, which had a softly glowing projection of our shuttle and a trajectory line tracing a route past a number of planetary bodies, presumably on its way to the ship.
Also on the screen, however, was a pulsing yellow light, off in the lower corner.
Given how the screen had changed in the past hour or so, I presumed that light was somewhere in the vicinity of Yellow Fin Station.
Araxis craned his neck out of the engine room as the display chimed again. And then he hissed something under his breath in an unfamiliar language, striding quickly to the pilot's seat and dropping down.
"Something wrong?" I asked.
Araxis tapped at the interface and grabbed the manual controls as he flicked the map so that the projection of space whirled around in front of us.
"It's fine," he said. "Just – an unfortunate coincidence.
" And then he tugged on the controls and the shuttle slipped off its charted course, arcing instead toward an asteroid spinning in the distance.
I was quiet, keeping an eye on him. His jaw was tense, eyes pinched.
The shuttle dipped around a few minor pieces of debris, Araxis's pale hands steady and certain on the controls while the display pulsed with sequences of numbers and long strings of letters in an alphabet I hadn't seen before.
I carefully tapped my wristband display off and clipped myself into my harness.
He shot a quick look at me as the shuttle dove beneath a thread of loose rocks being tugged along in the asteroid's wake. "We'll be anchoring in a moment. You don't need to clip in."
I rested my hands in my lap. "Okay," I said.
"And we're anchoring here because?" Was this where he confessed to being on the run for murder?
Were the intergalactic guards after him, and I'd gotten caught in his web?
Although Alet Trident would have known any of that – she knew everything – and she wouldn't have sent him my way if that was the case. Probably.
We nudged in close to the edge of the asteroid, its pock-marked surface gleaming as the shuttle's lights skimmed over it, catching on veins of minerals and shards of surface ice.
Some mechanism deep in the shuttle's belly whined and squealed and then, with a little shudder, it settled down on the surface.
Araxis reached for the console and tapped quickly through a series of screens, and then the lights in the cabin dropped out, one by one, the display blinking out last. There was a moment of perfect, absolute blackness – I sucked in a sharp breath, startled despite the loud part of my brain that was screaming that I needed to play it cool – and then a strip of dim pink lights flicked on overhead.
Around us, the shuttle was very quiet. Weirdly quiet.
"I apologize," Araxis said, turning to look at me; his eyes were endless black except for the faint gleam of pink from the lights overhead.
"There is a ship that just left Yellow Fin and is now headed on a similar trajectory as our own.
It would be best if they did not know that Creche Thiel is in the area.
We'll need to anchor here for several hours, and we can resume our route once they pass. "
"Cool," I said, because what else did you say when you'd been given a free ride? Araxis didn’t owe me an explanation.
I was curious, but it wasn't any of my business; besides, Alet Trident wasn't around to give me a little bonus for passing interesting gossip her way, which meant I was going to be easy and friendly and not ask leading questions. "So we'll just wait here for awhile."
Araxis jerked his chin down in an efficient nod. His long fingers drummed against the dead console.
I mean, I did have to ask though. I'd seen too many broadcast dramas not to. "So… are you a smuggler? A vigilante on the run from the law? A space pirate?"
A sharp, surprised sound fluted from his nose. "No, Sashen, I am not a pirate."
"Huh." I narrowed my eyes, tilting my head as I examined him with mock seriousness. "That's exactly the kind of thing a space pirate would say."
For a moment, Araxis just stared at me, those pretty black eyes wide, lips parted in shock.
But then his mouth curled into a smile and he shook his head while I grinned back at him.
It was always a gamble cracking a joke about criminal activity, particularly when you were stranded on an asteroid in the literal middle of nowhere, but I was pretty confident in my ability to read people, and there was nothing about Araxis of Creche Thiel that made me feel unsafe.
"Do you think that's true?" he asked. "I would imagine most pirates are eager to brag. They're very popular on broadcast."
"Yeah, but you didn't need to admit to being a pirate to get me on your shuttle," I drawled. "So maybe you're maintaining an air of mystery. I like mystery."
I knew the minute I said it that I'd pushed too hard, yet again.
Araxis stiffened next to me, blinking rapidly, and glancing back at the dark console.
An awkward beat passed, and I was just about to open my mouth to apologize when he cleared his throat.
"I've – turned off primary power systems so that we don't draw notice.
The temperature will drop. You should be aware that it will be cold. You may find it uncomfortable."
"Oh." And, look, I heard it: It's going to be so cold here.
I wonder if there's any way we might be able to warm each other up…
I waited a beat, and then saw it dawn on Araxis as well.
His eyes went wide and startled, and even in the dim light it was clear that his cheeks had darkened. He looked away quickly, tense.
I was really and truly trying to be mindful with the not flirting – insofar as I was being mindful about how spectacularly I was failing.
It felt like it was a cosmic challenge designed for me in particular.
But I knew how to be around other people without angling for them pay me for sex, right?
I had social skills beyond the ones that were important for dancers working in a marn den. I had to have them.
That was another one of those bleak thoughts I didn't particularly want to entertain, so I folded it away and tucked it somewhere deep inside.
There was a box where I liked to put things that were particularly troublesome, deep down in a corner of my soul that no light ever reached.
I had started to build quite the collection.
But my collection of sad thoughts and feelings would be space dust soon too, so what was another worry to add to the pile?
"How about you quiz me on the people in your creche?
" I suggested, picking idly at a loose thread on the seam of my jumpsuit and trying not to shoot so much as a flirtatious look in Araxis's direction, in case he decided I was more bother than I was worth.
"We can probably do some stuff on our wristbands without being very noticeable. "
"Yes, a fine idea," Araxis said. So he pulled up the photos of each of his creche-mates and looked absolutely delighted when I got them all right on the first go.
I managed to bait him into a couple of games I had loaded onto my wristband, even if he looked at me nervously the whole time, like I might pounce on him at any moment.
As the temperature did start to drop, I went back to my pack and hauled on two of my worn sweaters before settling back into the plush seat.
Araxis took that as his cue to leave, heading back to the engine room again with a muttered explanation about monitoring some sort of venting system, and he left me alone in the dim cockpit.