Chapter 3 #2
The bioluminescent patterns along my skin are still blazing despite no one being present to observe them.
When Dove meets me at the lower maintenance level access point forty-five minutes later, she’s changed into fitted work coveralls that should not be more attractive than the borrowed shirt but somehow are.
I’m doomed.
“Ready when you are,” she says, pulling her hair back into a tie that won’t last—several strands escape immediately. “What’s the access situation like?”
“Confined. The maintenance crawlway is designed for single-operator efficiency.”
“So we’ll be cramped.”
“Extremely.”
Her eyes widen slightly—awareness, heat. “Well. I’m sure we’ll manage.”
We are going to die in that maintenance crawlway. Not from system failure, but from me losing whatever remains of my control.
“The primary access is here,” I say, because professional competence is all I have left. I open the panel, revealing the narrow space beyond. “I’ll go first, establish the work area.”
I squeeze into the crawlway, immediately regretting every life choice that led to this moment. The space is warm—heat from the processing systems—and lit only by work lamps that cast strange shadows.
Dove follows, and the confined space becomes exponentially more problematic.
She has to squeeze past me to reach the sensor housing, which involves her body pressing against mine for several eternal seconds. Soft curves against my chest and arm. Her breath catching.
My claws betray me again before I force them to retract.
“Sorry,” she breathes. “Tight squeeze.”
“Yes.” My voice has dropped to harmonic registers. “The access design is... suboptimal.”
“Suboptimal. Right.” But she’s not moving away, trapped by the space constraints. “Should we make this work somehow?”
We’re going to have to remain in close proximity for the next hour minimum. Working on delicate systems that require steady hands and focused attention.
While I’m acutely aware of every breath she takes, every small movement, every accidental brush of contact.
“Proceed with the diagnostic,” I manage. “I’ll monitor the secondary systems.”
She nods, turning to examine the sensor housing. Which puts her back against my chest, and I have to reach around her to access the monitoring equipment.
This was categorically the worst idea I’ve ever had.
“Okay,” she says, her voice slightly breathless, “you were right about the coupling. See this thermal stress pattern?”
I lean closer to examine the display, which means my chest is pressed against her back, and I can feel her warmth through both our clothes, and smell vanilla even over the metallic scent of the maintenance area.
“I see it.” I barely recognize my own voice.
“We can reroute through the secondary array here—” she reaches for a connection point, her movement pressing her more firmly against me, “—and use interpolation from the tertiary sensors to maintain accuracy.”
“That violates three standard safety protocols.” The words come out automatically, but I’m not thinking about protocols.
“It’ll work though.” She glances back over her shoulder, and her face is inches from mine. “Trust me?”
Do I trust her? With my station systems? With my daughter’s happiness? With whatever is building between us that I’m failing to control?
“Yes,” I say, and mean it more comprehensively than the technical question warrants.
Her eyes widen slightly. Hold mine. “Okay then. Hand me the plasma torch?”
I reach for the tool, and the movement brings us even closer together. My arm around her to pass the torch forward. Her soft gasp.
This is torture.
Beautiful, excruciating torture.
“Got it,” she says, taking the torch. But she doesn’t move away, and neither do I, and we’re both breathing harder than the work warrants.
“Dove—”
“Yeah?”
“The thermal stress on the coupling—” I force myself to focus on the technical problem. “If we don’t sequence the reroute correctly, the feedback cascade could compromise the entire sensor network.”
“So we sequence it correctly.” Her hands are steady as she works, but I can see her pulse fluttering at her neck. “Walk me through it?”
I do, my voice low in the confined space, talking her through each connection. She follows my instructions perfectly, her competence somehow making this worse. We work in synchronized rhythm—her hands making adjustments, mine monitoring results, both of us acutely aware of every point of contact.
“There,” she says finally, completing the last connection. “That should do it. Check the readings?”
I pull up the diagnostics. Perfect. Her unorthodox solution worked exactly as she predicted.
“Excellent work.” The words emerge lower than intended. “Your field experience shows.”
“Thanks.” She’s still pressed against me, trapped by the tight space. “We should probably... the space is kind of...”
“Yes.” But I’m not moving. Neither is she.
“Cetus?” Her voice is barely a whisper.
“Yes?”
“Your markings are really bright right now.”
“Yes.” No point denying it.
“What does that pattern mean?” She asks again, and this time we both know she’s not going to accept a deflection.
“Increased physiological response to stimuli.” Not a lie, but not the whole truth.
“What kind of stimuli?”
Proximity. Heat. The scent of vanilla. The feel of your body against mine. The way you fit into my life like equations finally solved.
“Environmental factors,” I say again.
“You keep saying that.” She shifts slightly, turning to face me as much as the space allows, and now we’re front to front instead of back to front, which is infinitely worse. “But I don’t think you mean the environment.”
“Dove—”
“It’s okay.” Her hand lifts, hovering near the patterns at my neck. “Can I?”
Every self-preservation instinct I have screams that I should say no. Should maintain distance. Should remember this is temporary.
“Yes,” I hear myself say.
Her fingers touch the markings at my neck—gentle, curious, warm. The contact sends electricity through every nerve ending. Patterns flare brighter, pulsing.
“They feel warm,” she whispers. “Do they always do that?”
“No.” My voice is barely functional. “That pattern indicates... elevated response.”
“To what?”
You. Everything about you.
“To various factors,” I manage.
“Cetus.” She says my name like a reprimand, like a caress. “What does this pattern mean?”
I should lie. Should deflect.
“It means I’m failing spectacularly at maintaining professional distance,” I say instead, honest in a way I didn’t intend.
Her breath catches. “Oh.”
“We should—” I start to pull back.
Her hand on my markings stops me. “What if I don’t want professional distance either?”
The world narrows to this moment. This cramped maintenance crawlway where I can’t escape her proximity or her question or the way my entire biology is insisting yes.
“The storm will clear,” I say, which is not an answer. “You’ll leave. Tavia will—”
“I know.” Her hand drops, but she doesn’t move away. “I know it’s temporary. I know I’m leaving. But that doesn’t mean this—” she gestures between us, “—isn’t real. Right now.”
Right now. This moment. This unexpected connection that’s already taken root deeper than it should have in less than twenty-four hours.
“Right now,” I echo.
“So maybe we see what happens? While I’m here?”
It’s a terrible idea. Guaranteed to hurt. Will make her departure exponentially more difficult.
“Yes,” I say anyway.
Her smile makes everything worth it.
“Good.” She pats my chest. “Now we should probably get out of this crawlspace before Pickles starts providing running commentary on our biometrics.”
“He’s already been documenting them.”
“Of course he has.” She laughs. “He’s probably preparing a comprehensive presentation.”
“He mentioned 612 slides.”
“That sounds exactly right.”
We extract ourselves from the crawlway into the larger maintenance area, and the loss of necessary proximity feels like a physical ache.
“Well,” she says, brushing dust off her coveralls. “That was productive.”
“The sensor array is functioning optimally.”
“Right. The sensors.” Her smile is knowing. “Very professional work.”
“Extremely professional.”
We’re both lying, and we both know it.
When we return to the residential pod, we find Tavia and Pickles engaged in collaborative scheme planning.
“—and then when they’re both in the hydroponics bay, I could say I need help with something urgent—” Tavia is saying.
“An excellent tactical distraction,” Pickles approves. “Though I calculate a 73% probability they’re already aware of each other’s interest. The biometric data is quite conclusive.”
“They’re being slow about it. Adults are weird.”
“Agreed. Perhaps we should—oh. Hello, Captain. Terraforming Specialist. Your return is... timely.”
Tavia spins around, patterns brightening with glee. “Papa! You’re back! Did you fix the sensors? Was Dove helpful? Did you talk about things that aren’t work?”
“We addressed the technical malfunction,” I say firmly.
“Papa’s marks are really bright,” Tavia observes with devastating accuracy. “They only do that when he’s really happy about something!”
“I’m happy the sensors are repaired.”
“Sure, Papa. The sensors.” She exchanges a look with Pickles’s speaker unit. “Do you want to help me with the hydroponics bay? I’m doing a science project.”
“That sounds suspiciously like an excuse to leave your father and me alone,” Dove says.
“No it doesn’t! It’s a real project! But also you should probably talk about things while I do my project. Adult things. Like feelings.”
“You’re eight years old.”
“Eight and three-quarters. And I’m very emotionally intelligent.” She grabs her data pad. “Pickles, you’ll help me document the plant growth patterns, right?”
“It would be my honor, small human.”
They disappear toward the hydroponics bay, leaving Dove and me alone in the suddenly very quiet residential pod.
“Your daughter is terrifying,” Dove says.
“She gets it from her mother.”
“I like her.” Dove moves closer, and without the excuse of confined spaces, it’s a deliberate choice. “The question is, Terraforming Specialist Storm, what do we do now?”
What do we do now? With the sensor arrays repaired and several days of storm remaining and a connection building between us that’s already deeper than it should be?
“I have no idea,” I admit. “I’m a terraformer. I’m accustomed to processes that take decades to resolve.”
“And this is?”
“Happening significantly faster than I know how to process.”
“Yeah.” She reaches out, her fingers finding my markings again like she has every right to touch me. “Me too.”
My hand covers hers against my neck. “The storm will clear eventually.”
“I know.”
“You’ll leave.”
“I know that too.”
“And until then?”
“Until then,” she says softly, “maybe we take it one day at a time?”
One day at a time. The terraformer’s philosophy. Work the problem in front of you.
Except the problem isn’t a problem at all—it’s a curvy courier who makes my daughter laugh and my control disintegrate and my carefully ordered life feel less like existence and more like actually living.
“Yes,” I say, pulling her closer, my other hand finding her waist. “One day at a time.”
Her smile could terraform entire planets.
From the hydroponics bay, I hear Tavia’s delighted whisper: “Pickles! Papa’s doing the thing! The romantic thing!”
“Excellent,” Pickles responds at equal volume. “Operation Family Completion is proceeding according to projections.”
“They named their matchmaking scheme,” Dove says, laughing against my chest.
“Apparently.”
“We’re being aggressively managed by an eight-year-old and a sarcastic AI.”
“It appears so.”
“You okay with that?”
I look down at her—warm and real and fitting perfectly into my arms. Think about Tavia’s happiness. The way our life has felt more alive in one day than it has in three years.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m okay with that.”
For however many days we have.
I’ll take it.