Chapter 14 #2
Rearing up on stubby hind legs, Lub sloped around the top of the cart with its long tongue but couldn’t quite reach. So it settled for snaring the loose thread and pulling the ball to the deck.
The ball rolled away into the darkness, Lub in pursuit.
Suvan followed Mariah.
She had the med kit open when he stepped up behind her. How had she known where it was?
“Sit there.” She gestured at the stool by the fabricator interface. “Take your meds while I prep this.”
He searched through the bag for the flask Fahrol had said would help his rattled brain. The card partly activated when he nudged it aside. “Love,” it piped.
“Everyone signed the card.” He hadn’t meant to say that aloud either.
But Mariah nodded, turning toward him with a gauze pad smeared with cleanser. “Best chief engineer,” she reminded him.
“They don’t really know that.” He looked down at the small weeping hole in his chest. “They don’t know me.”
“Why’s that?”
Though high on his pectoral, the entry wound was tidy enough and readily accessible; he could care for it himself, even with only one hand.
But he didn’t stop her when she pressed the pad lightly against his skin, holding it in place while the cleanser softened the dried blood and absorbed the fresh trickle.
“Because no one comes here,” he said. “Except you.”
“And you don’t leave.” She peered under the gauze.
“This was supposed to be a three-sunset tour. I’d have had no reason to leave except for…” He faltered.
“Except for the resonark.”
When he started to agree, something stopped him. “Not just that.” He felt as if he were grasping at the edges of a knot, trying to make sense of the mess. “Watch out for my quill-scales. Some are stingers, and I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Thank you, Chief.” She patted the gauze around the wound, then prepped a second pad. “You know, technically you left the ship to install the ghostform.”
He held himself unmoving when she wiped a little harder. “I’ve reviewed the specs and functioning of the GASM, but I…don’t remember how it came to be.”
Her fingers shook almost imperceptibly. “But you remember the name?”
“There were actually several versions, as if I hadn’t settled on one.” He stared at her. “Your name is on the design as well. The Juraszczyk ghostform.”
Her gaze flew up. “Your pronunciation is perfect. Even people on my planet get it wrong.”
“Are they not conscientious of such things on your world?”
“Not like a Szauralithyn chief engineer.”
Despite his efforts to remain still, his quill-scales prickled with agitation. “A chief engineer must be able to leave the ship—in port or in space—without panicking.”
She drew back, clutching the stained gauze. “You remember that?”
He snarled soundlessly. “So I did lose control. But you told me it was an accident—”
“You were hit by a meteoroid,” she interrupted. “So your risk assessment was not faulty. But you went out to do the job anyway.”
“I wasn’t afraid of rocks,” he grated. “I was afraid of…the nothing.”
Silence pulsed between them for a long moment, and he felt strung up, awaiting judgment.
“I know you don’t remember,” she said, “but you told me once that your people adapted to underground dwelling to avoid storms and evolved your armor against predators. No wonder wide open space—especially actual space—feels dangerously exposed to you.”
Had he told her that when they’d been working together on the ship’s mask? Had they been side by side at the console where he’d found the notes he’d left?
A sharp yearning for that forgotten moment pierced him. “Did I also tell you how the captain and I were attacked by pirates on our last ship? How I was almost sucked out into space—without an EVA suit?”
Her eyes widened. “You didn’t mention that, no.”
Part of him wished he hadn’t now either. But another part was glad he could share something with her that he hadn’t forgotten.
“I never told the captain,” he mused. “He would’ve blamed himself. We were the only crew on a long-haul freighter when we crossed a distress beacon signal. It was an isolated route so we had to respond.”
“Sounds like a trap.”
He straightened in surprise. “Yes, exactly as I told Nehivar. If only you’d been the captain.”
“Did the pirates breach your ship?”
With a grimace, he looked away. “I did. They had us trapped with their grappler, and I had a plan to use one of our magnetized welders… It doesn’t matter, because I lost control of it. The welder blew off their near nacelle.”
He paused when Mariah let out a sound of relief. “It was an accident,” he reminded her. “Not part of my strategy. The explosion also buckled the external hatch in the bay where I was working. I breathed space…until I couldn’t breathe at all.”
Her clasped hands crept up to her throat, as if choking on his memory. “That must’ve been terrifying.”
“I stayed conscious long enough to get partly into a suit.” He looked down at his own hands, flexed into fists. “In the vacuum, venom was bubbling from my quill-scales. But empty space was not a threat I could fight.”
“How did you fix it?” Her expression was so sure of him.
He crossed his arms over his chest, as if he could hide the strain—or hold the heat of life that had leached from him.
“I didn’t,” he said flatly. “I saw it on our monitors later. Flying plasteel fragments from a secondary explosion triggered our freighter’s temp docking bay.
The inflatable shaft expanded between the two ships.
It sheared off their damaged nacelle and detached their grappler. ”
“Your ship punched the other ship?”
It had rather looked like that, now that she said it.
“And a break in the bay’s polymer collar released the expansion sealant which stoppered the broken hatch enough for me to escape.
” He let out a breath almost as hard as the one he’d released when the inner bulkhead door had closed behind him, locking out the emptiness.
“It wasn’t anything I did. Just…random chance. ”
“Sometimes all we need is a chance,” she murmured.
He stiffened. “That’s not good enough. If I can’t fix a problem, why am I even…”
Hearing the arrogance in the complaint, he stopped himself.
But obviously she heard the rest. Slowly, she reached out to touch his taut forearm. The bristling quill-scales at his elbow brushed her inner wrist, but she seemed oblivious to the vulnerability.
“I’m glad you’re still here,” she said. “Whether by fate or by fabrication. And everyone who signed that card is especially glad you saved our ship despite your fear.”
He didn’t respond, because how could he? Was he supposed to yield to chaos? Even the atomic fusion of his mighty engines had to be controlled—unless they wanted the shortest speed-dating cruise ever.
When he stood unmoving, she gave him a long, searching look. With a last gentle squeeze of his arm, she released him.
His skin tingled where her fingers had rested.
She turned back to the kit to grab the curative salve and a smaller med-mesh, which she applied precisely. “There. Now leave it alone.”
When she stepped back, he traced the edges of the bandage. She was so deft; she’d covered the wound without touching him skin to skin again. “I thought I was alone. But your name was in my notes. Why?”
Her lips pursed in a way he didn’t quite understand, but he watched closely, as close as he’d track the oscillations of the plasma injectors.
“I helped you,” she said. “Maybe you’ll remember that eventually.”
Her tone was not accusing, but still, he bristled. “I want to remember now. Tell me about this missing time.”
She looked away. “What’s important will come back to you.”
“Mariah…”
But he had nothing except her name.
At a screech behind them, they both swung around. Perched on top of the capacitorus, Lub dropped the lighted ball.
There wasn’t much left, just a glimmering strand that unraveled down the faceted surface of the containment unit and stopped before touching the ground. The opalescent filament looped over one of the goblhob’s fangs, twisted back between its horns, and spooled out into the shadows of the room.
Mariah let out a little laugh. “Who needs a sweater anyway, right, Lub?”
Before Suvan could offer to gather up the ball, she was gone.
In her absence, the engines sounded too loud. Though he made another circuit of the monitors, all systems were nominal.
Except his own.
His chest ached where she hadn’t touched him. He checked under the bandage she’d told him to leave alone, but the wound wasn’t bleeding.
Restless and annoyed with it, he drank the restorative tonic. When he tossed the empty back in the smiling moon bag, it clanked against the other flask.
To unwind his thoughts, the physician had said.
Suvan drank that too.
Then, with one goblhob very much not helping, he began to rewind the shining thread. It took too long, and since Lub obviously believed this was the chance to play the unraveling game again, he had to lock away the misshapen ball.
With nothing else to do, a strange lassitude crept over him, and he stumbled back to his bed in the corner. Lub curled at his feet as he tugged the pretend larf pelt over them both.
And he dreamed of a sweater.