Chapter 4 #2
He narrowed his eyes. “I accept your terms, kelarris.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“Captain,” He met her eyes without blinking. “It means captain.”
She held his gaze for a long beat for a moment, and he had to consider the possibility that she did actually speak Latharian. So he let her look and gave her nothing but the stone face mask he’d always used for press conferences after a loss.
Finally, she nodded.
“Okay.” She let out a breath, her shoulders dropping half an inch. “Okay. Fred, stand down to yellow alert. Monitor only.”
The hum faded. It didn’t disappear, just dropped back to a low, wary thrum in the background. The red lighting clicked off.
Monitor only.
So Fred was watching. Always watching and probably judging his posture as well, while he was at it.
She stepped away from the wall. The set of her shoulders had changed… the tension bleeding out, leaving something that looked a lot like exhaustion.
“Don’t make me regret this.”
“You won’t.”
She nodded toward his arm. "Medkit. Galley, bottom locker. Patch yourself up before you ruin my decking."
She half turned away, then paused and looked back over her shoulder at him. Just for a second, and there was something in her eyes… confusion, maybe? Or just the sheer absurdity of the situation catching up to her.
He watched her go, standing still even when the door closed behind her, and he found himself looking at the back of a metal bulkhead door.
Then he rubbed a hand over his face. He needed a plan, a stiff drink, and about fourteen things he wasn't going to get on a three-day run to Vess’tra.
Most of all, he needed to figure out why he was so bothered about Fred.
Fred. Gods, he hated that name.
Pushing off the wall, he headed down the corridor in the other direction.
He had no idea where the hell he was going.
“Carry on down the corridor,” the female said, her voice issuing over the ship’s comm. “It widens out to a sleeping area.”
He kept walking. The corridor didn’t change, just stretched on in a blur of gunmetal grey and humming conduits. When he finally hit the sleeping area, he stopped and just stared.
It was a hole. A pathetic, cramped little slice of a room that made the closet he’d had back home look like a palace.
Everything was hard edges and cold, utilitarian metal that smelled faintly of ozone and old sweat.
He’d initially mistaken the fold-down bunk for a storage shelf, it was that thin, and opposite that was a door leading to a washroom that was basically a glorified bucket with a drain. Draanthing luxury.
Right.
So here he was.
He dropped onto the bunk. The cold of the metal bit through his pants and had all the comfort of a storage crate. It was too narrow for his shoulders and too short for his legs; if he actually tried to stretch out, he’d just slide right off the damn thing.
Just like an oversized bit of luggage. Don’t you feel special now?
He let his head thunk back against the bulkhead and sighed. Prison planet to luggage rack, what an upgrade.
Click.
He froze, staring at the ceiling. Counting to three, he shifted his left foot two inches to the right, just to see.
Click.
Yeah, good old Fred was still tracking him.
Great, just great.
Three days to Vess'tra. Wrong direction. Wrong sector. Wrong draanthing everything.
He’d run the math twice already, because surely it couldn’t be that bad the first time. Same answer both times. Which meant the math was fine and the problem was his life.
He’d been down by worse. Down by twelve with six minutes left and a whole stadium already composing his obituary.
He just needed a play, and he didn’t have one yet.
What he had was a fold-down bench, a female who looked like she’d drown in her own flight suit, and someone apparently getting off on red lighting.
Great start. Really draanthing great.
Movement at the end of the corridor pulled his gaze up.
The pilot came back through, eyes on a comp unit. She didn’t so much as glance at him. Just kept moving.
“Where is he?” Raaze asked.
She stopped at a panel three meters away and keyed in a sequence. “Who?”
“Fred. The invisible one.” He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Does he come out, or does he just hide in the walls all day?”
She went still and looked at him. Her head tipped a fraction to one side, attention sliding somewhere that definitely wasn’t the corridor.
“He’s busy.”
“Busy.” He tipped his head back to look at the hidden mount in the ceiling. “What’s the matter? He ugly? Or just afraid I’ll make him look bad?”
She shrugged.
“Fred doesn’t feel the need.” She snapped the panel shut and turned to face him. Tiredness sat under her eyes like bruising. “And he says your ego is taking up too much mass on the sensors as it is.”
“Funny guy.” Raaze didn’t smile. “Tell him to come out. I don’t like talking to walls.”
“Then stop talking.”
She turned and started away again.
Raaze got to his feet.
Whirrrr… click.
The sound in the walls was really getting on his nerves now.
“Sit down,” she said without looking back, continuing toward the cargo bay access.
“We need to talk about the route.” He stepped away from the bench and into the center of the corridor. The targeting system gave a high, needling whine, but he ignored it. “Vess'tra doesn’t work for me.”
“The terms were clear.”
“The terms were made under duress while Fred had a targeting lock on me. Situations change.” He followed her. “I checked the charts. Vess'tra is the wrong way. I need to go toward the center of the Empire. We can adjust the trajectory at the gravity well—”
“No.”
She reached a console near the engine housing and started punching in a diagnostic. Grease smudged one side of her jaw, and a rigid line of tension sat across her shoulders that hadn’t been there in the airlock.
“It’s a small adjustment,” he said. “Adds six hours to your trip. I’ll pay for the fuel.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“Everyone wants money. Or are you running a charity for wayward fugitives?”
“I’m running a business.” She hit a key hard enough to make the panel clack. “And right now, that business is already operating at a loss because I had to burn emergency fuel to get your ass off the ground. I have a schedule. I have a contract.”
“Screw the contract.”
She spun fast enough that a loose strand of red hair whipped across her face. She swiped it away with an irritated movement.
“I missed my window because of you,” she said. “I missed the primary slot at Vess'tra, which means I lost the bonus. I am not losing the secondary pickup.”
“Secondary pickup?” He went still. “You’re stopping before Vess'tra?”
“Yeah, freight pickup. Standard run.”
“I can’t do a pickup.”
“You aren’t doing anything. You’re sitting on a bench.”
“Rhenn, listen to me.” He took another step toward her. The wall near his ear gave a high, needy whine. “I am a fugitive. If you dock with a commercial freighter—”
“We aren’t docking. It’s a mag-pickup. Automated.” She shrugged, then stopped mid-stride. “Why did you call me Rhenn?”
He blinked, his brow furrowing. “I thought that was your name.”
“It is,” she said, sounding like he’d just asked why the sky was black. “It’s my surname.”
He stared at her, the word sliding around his head without catching. Surname. Then it clicked… it wasn’t a personal name, but a clan marker.
“Right,” he muttered, feeling a flicker of annoyance at the confusion. “Whatever. The mag-pickup’ll still ping the local net and register the ship’s ID. If they scan the life signs—”
“Then they’ll see a registered pilot and a passenger. I logged you as transport.”
He just stared at her.
“You what?”
“I logged you. ‘Unruly cargo transport.’ It’s a sub-clause for bounty transfers.
Keeps the inspectors from asking why the passenger is locked in the corridor.
” She turned back to the screen. “You took my ship. You kidnapped me. You don’t get to pick the itinerary.
I’m stopping at the pickup, I’m loading the crates, and then I’m dumping you at Vess'tra. “
“The terms,” Raaze said, his voice dropping into a growl, “are going to get us both arrested.”
“The terms,” she said as she kept typing, fingers flying over the keys. “were clear.”
He stood there a moment, breathing in recycled air, warm metal, ozone, and the copper tang of his own blood. The back of her neck showed where her hair had been dragged into a messy knot.
Vulnerable.
One move, a quick snap to close the distance and grab her, and he could force the authorization.
Click.
He let out a short breath.
“Fine,” he said. “Do your pickup.”
He turned and slogged back to the bench, dropping onto the metal and stretching his legs out as far as the cramped space allowed with his arms folded tight across his chest.
Vess'tra was three days out. The pickup was what, a few hours? If it was really an orbital mag-drop, then the scan would be cursory. But if the garrison had thrown out a sector-wide alert with his bio-signature attached, cursory wouldn’t matter worth shit.
They’d be scanning for a Latharian male, and “unruly cargo transport” wasn’t going to save this rust bucket when the net lit up, and somebody noticed exactly who was aboard.
He needed another angle.
His gaze tracked her as she moved through the corridor.
She just ignored him. Not the performative type of ignoring, either, where she looked out of the corner of her eye at him. She just straight-up ignored that he was there.
That really didn’t sit right.
He’d known females who couldn’t look at him without their pulse giving them away. Sponsors who practiced their smiles in reflective surfaces before coming near him. Every room he’d ever entered had shifted around him. People noticed. People adjusted.
This little human female didn’t. Instead, she moved from panel to panel as though he wasn’t even there.
“Fred, give me the pressure variance on the port thruster,” she muttered.
Silence stretched out before she nodded. “Okay. Compensate with the secondary intake. Keep it below the red line. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s inefficient. Just do it.”
Pulling a panel off the wall, she reached within, fingers twisting at something buried in hydraulic tubing. Effort tightened her mouth. When she wiped sweat away with the back of her hand, she only succeeded in smearing grease higher up her cheek.
“You’re running rich on the fuel mix,” he said.
She didn’t even look up. “I know.”
“It’ll foul the injectors.”
“It keeps the core temp down. Unless you want to pay for a new cooling unit, we run rich.”
“I can fix the cooling unit.”
She paused and turned her head slowly to look at him, her look measuring. “You’re a mechanic now?”
He inclined his head. “I know engines.” It had been a special interest when he couldn’t train and had nothing better to do.
“Good for you.” She looked back into the panel, dismissing him. “Touch my engine, and Fred removes your hand.”
“Just trying to help.”
“Help by staying on the bench.”
He drummed his fingers against his bicep. “What’s the cargo?”
“None of your business.”
“If I’m ‘unruly transport,’ I should know what I’m bunking with.”
“Machine parts. Inert and boring.” She slapped the panel back into place with the heel of her hand. “Nothing you can eat, steal, or use as a weapon.”
“And the route?” He aimed for casual. “Any flexibility on the approach vector? Maybe swing wide around the patrol lanes?”
She looked at him, wiping her hands down her thighs. “No.”
“You’re stubborn,” he said. “Dangerous trait in a pilot.”
“Keeps me alive.” She walked past him to the console and checked a streaming wall of green text. “Fred, log the diagnostic. We’re green across the board.”
A voice answered from the corridor speakers. “Acknowledged. Fuel consumption is fourteen percent above nominal. Recommend reduced velocity.”
“Denied,” she said. “Maintain current velocity. I want to be at the drop point on schedule.”
“Noted. Logging objection.”
Raaze tipped his head, analyzing the voice. Male, human, and older. Definitely older than Cait. “Cheery guy.”
“He’s a realist,” she said.
She keyed in one last command, and the screen blinked dark. Around them, the ship hummed in a steady rhythm as the engines settled into the long run.
Her pace shifted after that, not stopping exactly but just easing off, like an engine finally cooling down from a hard run.
She drifted through one last sequence of chores—checking the corridor, snapping the cargo seals, locking the nav—all of it muscle memory, the same boring order she probably used every damn time. Just putting the ship to bed.
He watched her finish.
At the junction where the corridor met the crew section, she stopped. She didn’t bother turning all the way around, just a half-turn that let the red light catch the edge of her profile.
“Stay put,” she said.
“Where are you going?”
“To sleep.”
“Leave me alone with your homicidal partner’s finger on the trigger?”
“Fred won’t kill you unless you move.” She looked straight at him. “So don’t move.”
He gave her a slow, mocking salute. “I’ll try to behave.”
She didn’t answer, stepping through the door, and it slid shut behind her with a soft hiss. Then he was alone. Leaning his head back against the bulkhead, he closed his eyes with a sigh.
All he could do was wait it out.