Chapter 16
Lying on his bed, eyes covered, Suvan heard her padding footsteps. He breathed the scent of her, sweet and wild.
He felt her.
Her presence tingled along the primordial senses that had warned his ancestors of gathering glass storms and lurking predators. Those senses told him she was something more dangerous.
A threat to his solitude. A glimmering thread tossed to him when his peculiarities had left him separate and secluded for so long.
If he wanted to reach for that connection.
“Chief?” Her tentative voice was even softer than her steps. “What else can I do for you?”
“Nothing. I’ve had to use the ocular balm before, and it works quite well.”
“You’ve taken so much damage for this ship.” Her breath whispered out. “And for me.”
“I should have moved everyone farther from the capacitorus,” he said. “You were the only one that close, and if the containment had broken…”
He heard her breath catch again. “You weren’t shielding me from the light? If the honeycomb had shattered, you would’ve been shredded.”
“It didn’t,” he pointed out. “I wasn’t.”
“Just blinded.” Her voice cracked.
“Temporarily.” Why did he feel the need to reassure her? “I told the captain I’ll be functional tomorrow, and I would not lie to him either.”
Lub made a grumbling sound.
“Yes, that is a nice bone,” Mariah said. “No, I don’t want it, thank you. It’s all yours.”
More grumbling.
Her socks shuffled on the deck. “Shall I read off the engine diagnostics for you?”
Suvan almost pulled off the eye coverings to look at her. “Lub doesn’t care about diagnostics unless they reveal a larf infestation.”
“I was asking you.”
She wanted to read to him in bed? “I have the datpads set to report aloud regularly or in the event of any unexpected change.”
“Oh.” She paused. “That makes sense.”
He’d all but implied she should leave.
But he hadn’t said it.
“You could…” He cast around. “Lub wouldn’t eat earlier with all the disturbance. Since you seem to be acquainted, if you could make sure the dispenser is topped off. It’s on that wall over there.” He waved in the general vicinity.
Listening to her and Lub as they stepped away felt…odd. Not left behind, but peaceful. To know that the goblhob was cared for. Because she had offered to help.
He’d taken some of the analgesics Fahrol had suggested, and the aches in his shoulder, head, and eyes were negligible.
Or maybe he was floating, just a bit, as if the gravity had failed slightly, although no alarm validated this concern. Which left him thinking about the dream.
He’d been wearing a sweater, all his quill-scales poking through, and it had come apart, stitch by stitch, until he was naked.
And the string had made mathematical symbols but in a language he didn’t know.
Except somehow he’d understood—which upon waking had given him the idea for adding the feelings button trigger to the resonark monitor.
But all that could be explained by subconscious astrophysical workings, not nocturnal mysticism.
What couldn’t be explained was dreaming of being naked with Mariah.
“Lub is eating now,” she reported. “Um, those were simulated larf guts, right?”
“Yes. Actual larfs can regenerate from segments, making them a poor choice for supper.”
“Good to know.”
As he tried to think of other interesting larf facts, she asked, “How are you feeling?”
Since he’d been trying to think of interesting larf facts, he admitted, “I feel strange. Ever since…” He reached up to touch his head.
Concern hitched in her voice. “Maybe we should have Doctor Fahrol meet us in the med bay—”
“Not that kind of strange.” He searched for words, as if he were following that dream string backward. “It’s you.”
He would never have said that, he knew, except his brain was still jumbled from the concussion and he couldn’t see her reaction and…
And the ship was racing toward the null cloud where all the mysteries of their journey would be revealed. There would be no more working together, no other late nights of questions, no chance for him to ask her again.
“Why did I dream of you?”
She was so silent, he thought she’d gone.
He reached out his hand. “Mariah?”
In the blackout under the coverings, he closed his eyes when her fingers caught his.
“I already told you,” she said, her voice lower; she must’ve knelt beside his bed. “I helped you with the ghostform.”
“It was more than that.” He tightened his grasp on her when she trembled. “Why won’t you tell me more?” Abruptly he released her. “Did I…hurt you?”
“No!” She laced her fingers through his, and he knew she was risking the prick of his quill-scales. “You would never. I know that, but…”
When she hesitated, he used his free hand, not caring about his broken shoulder, to tear off the eye covering as he rolled toward her.
“Suvan,” she objected.
“Tell me,” he demanded. “Or are you lying about whatever I did to you?”
“I’m not lying.” Though she was still a blur, the indignation in her tone reassured him. She let out a shaky breath. “If anything, I was afraid of hurting myself.”
The confession shredded him more than an exploding capacitorus would have. “Why?”
“That ‘more’ you mentioned? I wanted that.” Her laugh was even shakier than her exhalation. “And I already know I am…a lot for most people. It’s why I left Earth.”
“Mariah—”
“No. I would never make demands, but you keep asking.” Was that an edge of anger in her voice?
She tugged at her hand, and reluctantly he let her go.
“We spent a night together. In the Intergalactic Dating Agency sense of together. And you were…very accommodating.” She trailed off into awkward silence.
Cursing the damage to his eyes, he peered at her, trying to bring her into focus. “Accommodating like Lub sharing a larf bone?”
She choked out a small laugh. “I would never ask that much.”
What had happened during that night? He longed for a capacitorus full of the memory restorative. He would bathe in it, drown in it to remember.
His quill-scales rippled in distress. “But it was…not enough?”
“You left,” she said simply. “After we talked and kissed, you made me feel…amazing. I hoped there would be more. I wanted much more with you.”
He struggled to grasp what she was saying, and yet he wanted it all. He needed to remember as much as he needed his next breath.
When he reached for her, he hesitated because he knew his aim was off. “Couldn’t you…remind me?”
She leaned in, enough that the spines on his knuckles tangled in her hair, and her dark, wide eyes finally came into focus.
Her mouth on his was soft and yielding, temperature and texture and an ephemeral sense-memory teasing him…before she pulled back, tugging his eye covering into place as she did so.
“You’ll remember, Chief,” she murmured.
If he didn’t, he wasn’t going to let that stop him. “Will you stay with me tonight? Just…together?”
He held his breath, as if by listening harder he could hear the answer he wanted.
“All right.”
He edged back against the bulkhead wall, gritting his teeth as the motion dragged at his shoulder. “It’s not much in terms of…accommodating,” he said apologetically.
He barely felt her weight on the cot, but the warmth of her filtered through his tension. His uniform was tough enough to protect her from most of his quill-scales, but he tugged Lub’s blanket up between them to cover his arms.
“I can’t hold you without hurting you.” His voice was rough.
“You can. You have.”
So close to him, the whisper of her breath danced across his lips. Like the flashcord burning to life, the sensation ignited a desperate need in him: to ask her to elaborate, to remember why she believed in him, to pull her closer and find out anew.
“But it’s late,” she continued, “and you are hurt. You need to be ready for whatever we find in the null cloud. Repair and recalibrate, Chief.”
Her kiss this time was on his forehead. A tender brush, but it shattered something in him in the gentlest way. He sighed as she curled against his chest. And though he didn’t reach for her, the sweetness and soft sounds of her surrounded him as he fell asleep.
+ + +
Mariah had coffee and gulab jamun ready when he woke.
“Rise and shine,” she murmured as she wafted the delectable scents under his nose.
He peeled back the eye coverings. After the imposed darkness, she seemed to shine, her dark hair and eyes rich with deep, subtle hues, her skin luminous in the glow of Lub’s lure where the goblhob sat patiently beside her.
As he levered himself upright, Suvan took one of the pillowy round pastries. He swung his bare feet to the deck to make room for her on the cot.
She settled beside him and handed over a mug. “How’s your shoulder?”
He rolled both shoulders back. “Better.”
“And your eyes?”
Taking the opportunity to gaze at her, he murmured, “Much better.”
Lashes fluttering, she took a sip of her coffee.
This was…nice. A morning shared, the warmth of the coffee wafting around them, a drooling goblhob at their feet.
Was this what he’d missed when he’d left her after their forgotten night together? Never again.
As they deconstructed the sweet treats—which she informed her were a dessert from their homeworld made by Anouska—he checked the engine diagnostics and all the downstream power loads. Much, much better than he would’ve anticipated.
He showed her the readouts. “Patterning our engines after the resonark’s waveform has vastly improved our power, speed, efficiency, stability, emissions conversion—every metric I monitor.”
“That’s great.” She hovered one finger—subtly glistening with sweetener—over the datpad. “And this one?”
“It’s a real-time rebalancing analytic. Engines are living systems, in some ways.
They do best with constant managing and maintenance.
But watch this.” He toggled through the historical data.
“See these jagged lines? That’s me, changing the throughputs, the latencies and loads, trying to maximize coherence.
Here, where it smooths out to a perfect wave? ”
“After the giant spike?”
“That’s where our power surge initially hit the engines. But after, that’s the mirrored tesselation, dynamically balancing. It’s like the ship has become its own engineer.”
“That’s amazing.” She looked up at him. “Um. How do you feel about that?”
He tilted his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It is amazing.”
“I thought maybe you’d worry about where you fit in now.”
She was watching him so anxiously, he had to consider her words. “I’ve made engines my work.” He knew he wouldn’t hedge with her. “And my life. Perhaps too much. I could use some help sometimes.”
Her dark eyes gleamed in the datpad light. “And I suppose it’s not a chief engineer.”
Was she teasing him or humoring him? But she wouldn’t do that. Even though he’d tried to reverse-engineer her wild designs with no luck or logic, he knew she spoke her beliefs with a clarity and conviction that rivaled any precision diagnostic. And she wanted to share that trust with him.
When he found himself tilting toward her, as if his own internal supports were buckling, she met him halfway. And the kiss was sweeter than ever.
His datpad chimed an interruption.
“Um,” she whispered against his lips.
“Leave it,” he whispered back. “The engines are fine.”
“That’s your captain.”
“He’s probably fine too.” If not, the chime would’ve been louder. Still, Suvan slanted a glance at the device. “He says Delphine reports we will reach the null cloud’s outer corona before the next mid-shift.” He let out a hard breath. “Mariah—”
She put a sweetened fingertip over his lips. “I understand. Your ship might be faster now, but you are still its chief.” With a quick kiss, she released him. “Have a good day at work. Don’t strain your shoulder or your eyes. I’ll see you later.”
Rising, she looked around for their discarded dishes. “I think Lub ate the last donut and drank all the coffee.”
“Goblhobs also eat larfs and diodes,” he said as he messaged an acknowledgment to Nehivar along with the status update for his engines and himself. “It’ll be fine.”
He would make sure of it. Because it was no longer enough to be alone in the depths of the ship.
He wanted more.