Chapter 5
Employment Opportunities
It probably wouldn’t pass for gourmet to anyone else, but the bowl Davik cobbled together for her was the most delicious thing she had ever set her eyes, fork, or tongue to.
It was a mix of something he called “pseudo-egg”, rice, a greenish vegetable, and some sort of tinned meat that he had roasted and cubed.
She had tried to get up to help him in the scullery, but he insisted on working in there by himself. Every time she offered, he rebuffed her attempts with over-dramatic wails about how she had tarnished his honor by letting him subject her to such inhospitality.
The glowing smile on his face when she had scraped the second bowl clean nearly made her forget the reason he was plying her with comfort food. It didn’t cure the ache of realizing how stranded she was, but it helped.
“Davik, you are being too kind. There is no way I can pay you back for all of this,” she said after finishing the last morsel before her. “I did not bring any funds with me, and I do not know if any of my crew will be able to repay you when I find them.”
If there is anyone left to be found.
Her stomach clenched at the intrusive and hopeless thought. It was the likely outcome, but she didn’t want to ruminate on that just yet. Logic already told her what her answer was, but facing it head-on would send her into a spiral. She couldn’t risk it while she was still finding her footing.
“Well, we can help you get your bearings and find your people. I want something good to come from this mess I’ve made.
” He sat up and put his elbows on the table, his fingers steepled.
“I’ll have to, uh, establish a few things first. How opposed are you to being an accessory to misdemeanors and the transport of illicit goods? ”
“I reserve my judgment,” Fia said as she matched his posture, tapping her fingers together. “Though I do not think I know what half of these laws would be. The Federation of Sol was not the governing body where I came from.”
“True, true. From the Rim, yeah? TC gets refugees fleeing the forsaken frontier for greener pastures pretty often.” He let out a puff of air. “Wild to think of this place as being the better alternative.”
Espionage, subtlety, and manipulation were not her strong suits.
There was a reason her role on the Fleet was to infiltrate datastreams remotely, far from enemies who could see her bumbling attempts at forming a lie.
Because never in a million years would she have conjured a better cover story than what he had laid before her.
“It is hard to compare. I have only seen the inside of your ship,” she said, gesturing around the room. “But it seems quite pleasant so far by comparison.”
“Alright, alright, enough flattery,” he said, shaking his head and smiling. “I mean it. This is a legitimate question. Because if you’re averse to legal gray zones, this is your last chance to have plausible deniability.”
Rather than looking nervous, he seemed to enjoy whatever mischief he was revealing. She mulled over the possibility that he was just a playful creature, even in less than playful situations. A playful creature with an infectious smile that made it hard for her to remember what he was asking.
“Do you usually confess to being a hardened criminal over dinner with strangers?”
“Fia,” he said with an incredulous stare. “You’re an unbound Icthian from the Rim. We pulled you out of a damn prison. I think it’s fair to assume you are not a law-abiding citizen.”
She pursed her lips to keep that infectious smile at bay, opting to take a lengthy sip of her drink rather than offer him a reply.
He leaned forward to catch her eye line, and she continued actively and obviously avoiding it, which was met by more and more exaggerated attempts to capture her gaze.
It was a frivolous and obvious deflection, but it was fun to watch him scramble.
“Oh, now that is mean.” He clasped his hands over his heart. “I confess my sins, and you can’t even give me a little crumb? A morsel?”
She shook her head in protest and held her chin up high.
“You absolute demon, you temptress! I have to know now. What foul mischief were you up to? Piracy? Fraud? Ship-jacking? Jack-shipping?”
She leaned back, stretching her arms out and feigning a yawn. “Would you look at the time…”
“Don’t you dare,” he said, grinning wildly and failing to keep the laughter out of his voice.
“Come on, indulge me a little. If I am smuggling the princess of a crime cartel on my ship, it is very important that I know. It’d do wonders for my ego.
” He clasped his hands together and shook them in a begging motion, doing his best to put on a gratuitous pout.
He was failing to sway her, but it was a sight that made her cool demeanor crack.
“Huh. Dead girl is a princess?”
The unfamiliar voice jarred her out of the comfortable banter and into immediate alert. Her tendrils crackled with energy as she whipped about to view the source of the sound, letting her vision slip away to focus on the electrical impulses around her.
There was a figure in the entryway. A human, with a significant amount of augmentation threading from spine to fingertip.
A human, bristling with Federation energy signatures.
I let my guard down. I let my guard down in hostile territory over a good meal and a smile.
She allowed herself a moment to decide her next move. Her vertiblade was sheathed, and getting it freed from its hiding place in this exquisitely comfortable jacket would be a nightmare. Then, there was the matter of engaging in close-quarters combat when she was still reeling from cryo.
Something touched her shoulder. A warm, steadying hand that dulled the edge of her panic.
“It’s okay,” Davik said, his voice soft and reassuring. “That’s Carissa. You’re alright, don’t let her spook you. She’s more bark than bite.”
Fia pulled back from her examination of the data lines.
This was the pilot, the one he had warned her about.
When the terrifying array of Federation-tagged augmentations wasn’t all she could see, the silhouette was a slightly less formidable figure.
A sturdy-framed human with short-cropped straight blonde hair, light pinkish skin, and piercing green eyes.
“Yeah, I’m Carissa. Who the hell are you?”
“Our guest here is Fia,” Davik answered. “And she’s been on ice so long that she thinks my jokes are hilarious, so there’s clearly some part of her brain still frozen. Give her some grace.”
He pulled his hand away from her shoulder, but the warmth it had spread into her bones lingered for a heartbeat more than it should. And then it faded, and she was alone in her senses once again. Her place in the world suddenly seemed so small, so insignificant.
There were no other Icthians here. No empathic Chorus around her to offer the comfort of solidarity. It was a constant throughout her whole life that she had taken for granted. Never before had she considered that the lack of it would render her so vulnerable.
Her urge to curl in on herself and scream would have to be satisfied another time. If she wanted to fill that silence, she would have to find her people. And she would not find her people by dwelling on her poor reflexes and lack of battle-readiness. Not tonight, at least.
“Fia, this is my sister-in-law,” he said, gesturing to the woman in the doorway. “She’s this sector’s best pilot and dungeon master. She’s the, uh, ‘commander’ that I mentioned earlier.”
Carissa rolled her eyes before joining them at the table. Despite her prickly demeanor, her posture seemed more exhausted than hostile. Fia felt a twinge of sympathy. She herself was also quite prickly, confused, and exhausted.
“Okay, Fia,” the woman said, crossing her arms in front of her chest as she settled into her seat. “How the fuck did you end up in my husband’s cryopod?”
Straight and to the point. A stark departure from the warm and meandering small talk Davik had been spoiling her with.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Fia said, gesturing to herself. “This is not when or where I expected to wake.”
“And what exactly were you expecting?”
“I had few details. There was a very nice doctor with sedatives and a cryopod. I did not have time to ask for the specifics. I was expecting to wake up amongst friends.”
“Ah. Rim refugee avoiding the Feds and fees at the gate?” Carissa asked, looking between Fia and Davik with a somewhat knowing glance.
Fia offered a nod and noticed he was nodding along as well. The lie had taken root, and she already had an unknowing co-conspirator.
“So you took the scenic route, got scooped by the Fed, and now I have you on my ship. And not my husband. Lovely.” Carissa rubbed the bridge of her nose with the tips of her middle fingers, sighing out a long breath. “Do you have any idea where your friends are supposed to be?”
“Uh, C,” Davik interjected, and Fia spied him making an odd gesture with his hand at his neck while he shook his head.
Ah, he assumes they are all dead. A logical assumption. But I know the resilience of my people. There is still a chance.
“Saints below and above, give me strength.” Carissa exhaled a word that Fia couldn’t quite place, but it had the cadence and emphasis of an expletive. “Okay. Well, shit. We can’t just dump you on a doorstep somewhere.”
“I am resourceful. I will manage,” Fia stated with a nod.
She would not stay where she was not welcome, especially on a ship with an irritated human equipped with at least twelve pounds of Federation-issue augmentation embedded in her flesh.
“Absolutely not!” Davik interjected, tapping the table with an insistent finger.
“We’re not kicking you out,” he paused, giving Carissa a side-eye before he continued.
“At the very least, we’ll give you a safe place to get your bearings.
There are some refugee shelters out there we can set you up with, I’m sure. ”