Chapter 12 #2
“Your route is due for review,” she says.
“I’ve been considering a restructure. More frequent Junction stops.
Operational efficiency.” She says this with a perfectly straight face.
“The restructuring would coincidentally align with Ms. Vance’s training rotations.
Your freight capacity is unaffected; the scheduling adjusts, the cargo volume doesn’t.
Ms. Vance’s salary is drawn from the OOPS operational support budget, not your route income.
I have already filed the budget amendment.
” She pauses. “I trust that is acceptable.”
“That’s acceptable.”
“I’m sure it is.” She picks up the coffee mug.
“Now. There is also the matter of a formal complaint. Filed by one Vresh, Bay Thirteen cargo hauler, against —” She checks the pad.
Her mouth thins. “— the human vermin who contaminated my bay with her incompetent species-specific stench. His words.” She sets the pad down.
“I have informed Vresh that anti-species language is a docking violation and that his next complaint will be reviewed by the diversity tribunal. He was not pleased. I do not care. He has submitted fourteen complaints in the last twenty-four hours. A station record. I have denied them all. If he bothers you, Vance, you will tell me, and I will make his docking fees a matter of public record. Are we clear?”
“Clear,” Lorri says. She is trying not to laugh. She is failing.
“Good. Get out of my office. Both of you. I have actual work.”
We stand. We turn toward the door.
“And Vance.”
“Director Morrison.”
“It’s Mother. Everyone calls me Mother. You work for me now, so you call me Mother.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Good. Now get out.”
The corridor outside Morrison’s office. The ring star casts a long golden light through the observation panels.
She stops. I stop.
She looks at me. The hazel eyes, the borrowed shirt, the gauze on her temple and the brave set of her shoulders.
“Courier support,” she says.
“Courier support.”
“On your ship.”
“On my ship.”
“With HORATIO.”
“HORATIO is going to be insufferable about this.”
“HORATIO is going to set two places and compose a symphony about it.”
“He is absolutely going to compose a symphony about it.”
She laughs. The real one. The bright, startled, full laugh that I first heard in the galley and that hits me in the sternum every time and that I am going to hear every day on the route.
“I have one more run,” I say. “The current route. Nine days. I need to complete it before the restructuring kicks in.”
“Nine days.” She looks at me. The almost-smile becomes the thing underneath the almost-smile — the warm, brave, certain thing.
“I can read a lot of manuals in nine days,” she says.
The sound that comes out of me is not a laugh and not a groan.
It is the sound of a male who is going to spend nine days on his route thinking about a woman reading about Skiveth pair-bonding in her quarters on Junction One.
Nine days of tasting her on the recycled air of a ship where she sat in the copilot’s seat.
Nine days of the blanket smelling like both of us.
Nine days of the hum-sense reaching for her across the belt and finding only distance.
Nine days of knowing she is reading about what it means when a Skiveth male claims his mate.
What happens to his body? What happens to hers?
The bond. The permanence. The forever. She is going to read all of it and she is going to sit with it and when I dock at Junction One in nine days she is either going to look at me and say yes or she is going to look at me and say I need more time and both of those are her right and I will wait for either.
But if she says yes —
If she says yes I am going to chase her through every room on the station.
I am going to find her. I am going to pin her against the nearest wall and I am going to claim her with my teeth and my tongue and both of everything I have and the claiming will be permanent and the claiming will be forever and I will taste her on the air from three levels away for the rest of my life and the tasting will never stop and I will never want it to stop.
“Nine days, Ereux,” she says. Using my surname. The way a colleague would. The way someone who is going to be on my ship would.
“Nine days, Vance.”
She reaches for my hand. Cool against warm. The temperature difference pooling between our palms. Her fingers thread through mine and the threading is — it is the route finding its heading. It is the ship finding the dock. It is the nebula finding the window.
“Read it all,” I say. Low. The register. “Every page. Every footnote. Every clinical section you skimmed past because the chase section was more interesting. And when I dock in nine days — when you know what it means — we’ll talk.”
“Talk.” Her mouth twitches. “Is that what we’ll do?”
“Among other things.”
She holds my hand. The ring star is in her hair.
The station is loud and bright and full of people and I am standing in the middle of it holding hands with a woman I met yesterday and I am not pretending to be fine.
I am not pretending anything. I am exactly where the instinct said I would be, which is next to her.
Nine days.
I can do this.
I will not survive nine days.
She squeezes my hand. Once. The warmth of it travels through me.
“Go do your run, Ereux. I’ll be here when you get back.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll be here and I’ll have read every page.”
The laugh that comes out of me is the real one. The one she found in the galley. The one that belongs to her.
“I’m counting on it,” I say.
She lets go of my hand. The absence of her warmth is immediate and total and the hum-sense says there, still there, right there, and I hold onto the there like a heading on the nav screen.
She walks toward the domestic wing. My shirt on her shoulders. The ring star in her hair.
I watch her go. She looks back. The full smile. Over her shoulder.
I am going to survive nine days.
Probably.
The ship is on the dock. The route is waiting. The copilot’s seat is going to smell like her.
“Captain.” HORATIO. From my datapad speaker. Very quiet. “Shall I queue the music for the return trip?”
“Yeah, HORATIO. Queue the music.”
“Captain. For what it is worth, the copilot’s seat suits her.”
“Yeah.” I watch her walk. My shirt. Her shoulders. The light. “It does.”
I turn toward the ship. Nine days. One run. Then home.
Home is wherever she is.