Andrek
“Dani,” I called. “Would you like to leave the house for a bit and take in more of the colony?”
She walked into the office holding Pip. “Leave?”
“It occurs to me the only time you left the house since your arrival was to the medical facility.” I ran a hand through my dark hair. “If you’d like, we can go to the market. Perhaps you’d like some new clothing or to try new foods. Plus, it would be good to practice with Pip in public.”
“I’d love to!” Dani’s smile filled her face. She turned to Pip. “What do you say about heading out and seeing new things?”
Pip bounced in her arms.
“Let’s go.”
The market ran along the lower spine of the colony’s central hub, three levels of open-air stalls and covered corridors that smelled of roasting grain, engine oil and something sweet.
I knew every vendor by name, every shortcut between the stalls, and which sections Pip was and was not permitted to enter unsupervised when she became a juvenile.
Until today, I found the market unremarkable.
I was finding it difficult to see it that way now.
“Is that…” Danielle stopped walking in the middle of the main corridor. A Gelhari family moved around her without comment, accustomed to newcomers freezing in that spot, and she turned in a slow circle with her head tilted back, taking in the upper levels. “Andrek. That stall is floating.”
“The Merenni prefer elevated displays,” I said. “It signals premium goods. Watch your step, Pip.”
Pip had spotted the roasting station.
I caught her by the harness strap before she made it three paces, which earned me a look of profound moral condemnation from a creature who had, earlier that morning, attempted to eat a data cable.
She went limp in protest, a technique she developed because I couldn’t drag her when she went limp without attracting the attention I preferred not to attract.
“I’ll carry her,” Danielle said, crouching. Pip climbed into Danielle’s arms with an air of vindicated dignity and turned her face toward the roasting station with longing.
“She’s not having any,” I said. “The spice content would make her ill.”
“I know.” Danielle shifted Pip to her hip. “I’m just acknowledging her feelings.”
Hmmm.
“Andrek!” Rethis called my name from across three stalls.
He was a large man even by Torzi standards, built like a defensive structure, with the deep-banded coloring of the northern territory and had a way of moving through a crowd that spoke of military habit regardless of how many years you were out of it.
He reached us in eight paces and clapped both hands on my shoulders, which was a greeting style I endured rather than enjoyed.
“Andrek.” He stepped back and looked at me, then looked at Danielle, then looked at Pip, and his face broke into a wide smile. “Long time, no see.”
“Supply run,” I said.
He tilted his head. “We all need them.” He looked at me and winked. I knew him well enough to know he was going to say something I would find inconvenient. “You must be Danielle. He’s mentioned you.”
This was not true. I had not mentioned her. I had, on two occasions in the past month, answered direct questions from Rethis about whether I had anyone staying in my home, and I had answered those questions with the truth, but never once had I mentioned her name.
Danielle smiled. “It shouldn’t shock me. He hasn't mentioned you,” she said.
Rethis laughed. It was so loud several nearby vendors looked over. “No, he wouldn’t have.” He turned back to me. “She navigates the market well for a newcomer.”
“It’s incredible,” Danielle said. She shifted Pip to her other hip, drinking in the market.
I watched as she tilted her head, as she always did when something interested her.
“On Earth, the sectors are so rigid. You don’t move between them.
Everything is sorted.” She gestured at a nearby stall where a Drakaar, Torzi and a Merenni conducted a three-way negotiation over a crate of parts.
“This is just… wow. Everyone. All at once.”
“Frontier necessity,” Rethis said. “You cooperate, or you don’t last.” He looked at me again with a knowing expression. “Good to see you out, Andrek.”
He moved on. I watched him go and made a note to address that conversation at some future point when I had more optimism about its outcome.
“You served together?” Danielle asked.
“Yes.”
“He seems like someone who would make an excellent first officer.”
“He was my first officer.”
She looked at me. I kept my eyes on the stall ahead, where I needed to acquire some items on my list. She stared at me with a look I learned to recognize as ‘she’s going to ask a follow-up question.’
“You were a captain,” she said. Not a question.
“For eleven years.”
“Of what kind of ship?”
“A patrol carrier on frontier routes with some recovery operations.” I stopped at the stall and began examining the calibration supplies. “Rethis was with me for the last six of them."
“Including Yxia,” she said.
“Yes, including Yxia.”
She said nothing. I found the calibration cells I needed, handed them to the vendor and paid without bartering. Pip reached out from Danielle’s arms and touched one of the display items with one careful claw. Danielle caught her hand and said ‘no’ gently, and Pip stopped.
We moved through the market for another hour.
I knew where everything was; Danielle knew nothing and was interested in all of it, which meant we took longer than I had planned, and I found, to my total surprise, that I didn’t mind.
Her questions visibly startled vendors, who were unused to them because most long-term colony residents had stopped seeing the specifics of what they sold years ago.
She negotiated, poorly but with great enthusiasm, over a piece of colored glass she wanted for her window and eventually got within fifteen percent of a reasonable price, which I considered a reasonable outcome for a first attempt.
Pip fell asleep between the textile section and the food stalls, boneless and snoring.
Danielle carried her with a careful adjustment of her arms that she’d worked out without my help.
Old Sethara who said what I had yet to voice.
She ran the seed stall at the end of the eastern corridor, had run it for thirty years by her account, and she knew people.
She’d watched me come through the market alone for all seven years I’d lived here.
Today, her face rearranged into something luminous as the three of us approached her stall.
Danielle with Pip sleeping on her shoulder, me with the supply bags, both of us walked closer than strangers.
“Captain,” she said, and then, before I could respond, “What a beautiful family you have.”
Danielle stilled.
I turned back to Sethara.
I had a correction available, but reading between the lines, I could see where it would go in the conversation, and how Sethara would nod and apologize.
I took a second glance at Sethara’s joyous expression and my correction flew out the proverbial window.
“Thank you, Sethara,” I said.
Danielle remained quiet.
I bought my seeds.
We walked to the end of the eastern corridor and out into the docking bay where I’d left the shuttle, and neither of us addressed the word, ‘family.’
As we lifted off, the hub of the colony fell away below us. Through the viewscreen, the lights of the market district organized themselves into patterns, and then the patterns became part of the larger pattern of the colony’s structure, and then we were in the transit corridor.
Danielle had her face turned toward the side view port.
I kept my eyes on the route. The autopilot could manage this transit without my attention, but I forced my hands to remain on the console.
Over the past weeks, I found it useful to have something to do with my hands when I was in proximity to Dani.
If they didn’t keep busy, I wasn’t sure I could keep my hands off her.
“Sethara seemed kind,” Danielle said, to the viewport.
“She’s been at that stall since before the colony’s second expansion,” I said.
“Mmm.” A pause. “You didn’t correct her.”
“No.”
“Andrek.”
“Yes”
She turned from the view port. I kept my eyes on the console.
“Thank you,” she said. “For today. All of it.”
“You needed supplies,” I said. “And Pip benefits from the stimulation.”
“That’s not the entire reason you took us, is it?”
I looked at the console. The autopilot’s course was correct. The time was eleven minutes to the house; the journey home proceeding as planned.
“No,” I said. “It’s not.”
She nodded once, but didn’t answer.
I don’t know which of us moved first. One moment, I was by myself; the next her hand rested on the console beside mine, the outer edge of her smallest finger pressed against the outer edge of mine.
Her breath shifted. I watched the stars through the viewscreen, and I did not move my hand, and she did not move hers. Pip slept in the cargo section.
Every cell in my body screamed to touch her.I had not been in this kind of difficulty in a very long time, and I had believed that I would not be in it again.
I looked at her hand next to mine, and made a conscious choice to take her much smaller one in mine, interlacing our fingers.
All too soon, we docked. Pip woke up in the cargo section and began demanding an accounting of what she’d missed.
The cabin filled with her sounds and the ordinary chaos of disembarking.
Danielle laughed at something Pip did, unbuckled her harness, and the moment in the shuttle between the two of us became the past.
A beautiful family, Sethara had said.
I had not corrected her.
I stood at the window, staring into the night for a long time, replaying the day in my mind.
In the next room, Danielle’s voice fell soft and then stopped, and I knew because of the bond Pip had fallen asleep.
Danielle would tuck the small blanket around her the way she’d learned Pip preferred, and she would close the door.
Then Dani would pause for a moment in the corridor outside my door.
Her footsteps faded, and I turned from the window and went to bed.
I lay in the dark and replayed the day in my head.
Instead of my hand covering hers on the console, I imagined her hand wrapped around my cock as she took even strokes with her soft palm.
My breath came in harsh pants as I stroked my engorged cock, wishing it were Danielle instead of my hand.