Chapter 14
Nehivar paced the far end of the room, giving them some privacy, while the Graveri physician examined the readout embedded in the med-mesh wrapped around Suvan’s shoulder.
“The skeletal and dermal menders are progressing well,” Farhol said. “How’s your head? You took a hard blow.”
“He has a harder head,” Nehivar growled.
Suvan looked at his captain while Lub grumbled back from under his firmly clamped arm. “That’s why you keep me in your engines.”
Nehivar’s whiskers swept forward. “I’m glad you finally found your way out. Even if you were half crushed in the process.”
“Not even a quarter crushed,” Farhol said cheerfully as he rose to step away. “And you seem alert and oriented.”
Suvan tightened his hand, the one that had held her wrist.
Mariah.
“I can’t remember the accident,” he admitted. “And I think some time prior is…jumbled.”
“To be expected.” The Graveri rummaged through the bag he’d brought. “This might help.” He pulled out a small med flask.
Suvan narrowed his eyes. Why had he thought the bag would hold a ball of string?
“Take this until empty, a sip at a time.” Fahrol set the flask on the bedside table. “It’ll unwind your thoughts.”
Suvan glared at the flask. “I need to get back to my engines.”
Nehivar stalked to the foot of the bed, where he stopped when Lub huffed. “We’re on course at full power plus, thanks to your adjustments. You have some time to recuperate before we reach the null cloud.”
Vaguely, Suvan remembered fretting over calculations, annoyed how the anomalous energy that had seized control had also improved efficiency in plasma conversion through the drive coils. He’d wanted to study the anomaly, so he’d gone to the Starlit Salon and saw it there, shining and beautiful…
No, it hadn’t been the resonark he’d been looking at, had it?
His head ached, so he took a drink from the flask. The cool, bubbly liquid reminded him of…
When he lay back with a muttered curse, he realized he was alone again except for Lub.
The way he always was.
So why did he feel so hollow?
+ + +
He slept on and off, restlessly, only Lub’s snoring weight keeping him in place. When he was awake, the passenger cabin felt strange and wrong. Why was it so lackluster? The finishes were luxe enough, the bed large and the bedding lavish. But there should be more…
Rainbows?
The absurdity of that thought—especially when he knew his private corner of the engine module was even more ascetic—finally drove him out from underneath the complaining goblhob.
In the bathing chamber, he peeled back the med-mesh stretching across his head and peered into the mirror.
The adjustable reflection revealed three broken quill-scales lower on his crest, a casualty of the bashing and bruising that encircled half his skull.
Shocked at the damage, he realized he was fortunate to have any memories at all…or even his head.
Since the med-mesh readout on his shoulder showed good healing markers but the bones were not completely set, he left the bandage in place while he showered. The hydrophobic breathable fabric let water in and then wicked it away, calming the stifled sensation underneath.
Such fibers might be woven into a lovely cloak for ambling on a rainy evening beneath soft, heavy skies…
Aghast at this irrefutable evidence of brain injury, he fabricated a fresh uniform and went to gather Lub’s blanket.
As the goblhob fought him grimly for possession, his gaze fell on a bag behind the chair next to his bed. Letting Lub win for the moment, he reached into the bag and withdrew a ball wound of thread.
The ball shimmered in his hand with delicate polychromes. This must be Mariah’s? He wavered on his feet.
With a chitter of excitement, Lub jumped for the ball, knocking it from Suvan’s hand.
He let the goblhob gnaw at the ball while he stuffed the discarded larf blanket into the tote to hide it. But when he went to the door, Lub just stared at him, the glimmering ball trapped between two fangs.
“Are you coming with me?” he asked the goblhob.
Of course he was talking to Lub. There was never anyone else to talk to. He didn’t want to talk to anyone else.
He swayed again, a wave of not-quite-memory sweeping over him. Talking to someone wasn’t awkward or annoying when…
“Stay if you’d rather,” he growled.
Gripping the doorframe, he guided himself out into the corridor. The lowered ambient lighting indicated fourth-shift, and the halls were quiet.
Was he the ghost in the machine?
Lub lumbered after him, grumbling, its bobble dark and drooping.
“We don’t need a room like this,” he said. “We were fine without…”
He had to stop to grab the wall. Unfortunately, he tried to reach with his bandaged arm strapped to his side. He would’ve collapsed if not for the sturdy goblhob wedging him up from behind.
“As I said,” he groaned. “We’re fine with each other.”
With Lub under his good hand, he staggered through the ship to the lower corridor. It was dark and quiet, except for the thrum of the engines, cycling hard but true.
And yet as he let them into the module, so familiar, something about it felt as wrong and oppressive as the neutral cabin walls, like the bandage still throttling him.
Lurching around the capacitorus, he propped himself against a workbench and took a cutter to his uniform and then the bandage, baring his chest. Rippling the quill-scales over his shoulders, he sucked in a hard breath when he was finally free.
If he stayed with his engines, he didn’t really need a uniform any more than he required a stateroom.
Somehow, he’d wandered too far from his position, but this was where he belonged: following logical laws of thermodynamics and combustion chemistry that spoke his language with no need of translation.
His job was exact equations and calibrated computations, not the emotional entanglements of the Intergalactic Dating Agency—promises without proof—that had tricked them into this risky voyage.
But Nehivar would no doubt stop by to yell at him for leaving his bed too soon, so he left his pants on.
Going slowly, he made a full circuit of his station monitors.
He told himself he was not disgruntled to find every system nominal or better.
Patterning his engine modifications based on the anomalous waveform had increased their cruising speed by seventeen point three percent while improving efficiencies by exactly nine percent.
And maybe better if he got the resonark to—
Already anticipating, he turned to find her there, standing by the disengaged capacitorus. A dim pool of light surrounded her from the downturned datpad in her hand.
His pulse leaped. Startlement, he assumed. But his heart kept hammering, hard enough he could not ignore it. “Mariah.”
Maybe he wasn’t as healed as he wanted to be.
She held out a knitted bag decorated with a white crescent; a depiction of a partly shadowed moon, he decided.
But the moon had a face, and it was…smiling?
“You forgot your meds,” she said. “Ikaryo’s tonic too.”
He didn’t move. “How did you know I’d be here?”
“Where else would you be?”
She knew him. Was that why she’d been chosen for his caretaker?
He stalked toward her and took the bag. “I neglected to thank you for watching over me,” he said stiffly.
“I wanted to. But you’re welcome.”
Lub bounded over to them, the ball of glowing threads glinting between snaggled fangs. One delicately gleaming filament trailed behind the goblhob back into the darkness.
It dropped the ball at Mariah’s stockinged feet.
“Thank you, Lub,” she said. “I wondered where that went.”
Tucking the lighted datpad in her pocket, she bent to scoop up the ball and began winding the filament back onto the ball.
Suvan watched the methodical twist of her fingers smoothing the strand into perfect spherical alignment with each rotation.
“Your card is in there too,” she said.
“My card?” He peered into the bag.
When he excavated the thin square of parchment, a small hologram of a simplistic spaceship blasted off and then burst into fantastical floral shapes. “To the best chief engineer on the Love Boat I,” it chirped. “Get repaired and recalibrated soon.”
Many names were written on the parchment, although he didn’t read them all, peering instead at Mariah.
“I am the only chief engineer on this ship,” he noted.
“Which is why you’re the best.”
That did make sense. He grunted an acknowledgment as he shoved the card back into the smiling moon bag.
She was still winding the ball, her head bent though clearly she had no trouble with performing the task by touch alone. When she was done, she would go.
His already accelerated pulse ratcheted higher.
“I have not remembered everything,” he blurted. As soon as the words emerged, he regretted them. Why had he shared that? “I don’t mean the engines,” he said, to reassure her in case she thought a bumbler was now lurking in his place.
“That’s good,” she murmured at the twinkling ball.
He stared at her braided locks, captivated by the beams of light shining up along the intricate weaving. His fingers tingled at the texture he could almost feel, the way the ribbon at the end would slide free into his hand…
When he clenched his fists, pain shot through his shoulder, and he hissed out a breath.
That brought her gaze up, brown eyes wide then narrowing. “What happened to your med-mesh?”
She couldn’t see well in this light, he realized. Reaching for the nearest console, he raised the ambient light in the module. “It was choking me. So I took it off.”
She let out a breath almost as harsh as his own. “You’re bleeding again.”
He craned his neck to look down at his shoulder. “That’s where the physician embedded the bone mender.”
“Do you want purple blood all over your precious engines?”
He tilted his head. “It would burn off instantly.”
She huffed another breath. Maybe she was feeling lightheaded too. “Come on. Let’s fix you up.”
She set the thread ball on a hovercart next to the capacitorus and walked away.