Chapter 6
Moments before we reached the mess hall, I once again slipped my hand into Vaughn’s, earning another scowl. I found it curious that touching him, even in small ways, provided a slight tingle in my belly.
He had a quiet charisma that was hard to ignore. I liked his attention, especially when it was tinged with annoyance or anger. I didn’t want to think about what that meant about how fucked up I was.
“Smile. Look happy,” I instructed, glaring up at him.
“I don’t smile.”
I couldn’t stop a snorted laugh at his response, before slipping into my own mask of the dutiful and aloof new bride of the captain.
It felt like riding a bicycle, playing these different characters for each mission.
I’d played so many different people, I wondered if anyone knew the real me.
Well, Xavier had, but he was gone, so perhaps he was the only person who ever would.
Still, the more I worked, the more I found it was better to stay as close to the real me as possible, while still maintaining a healthy dissociative distance from my emotions.
As long as I never let anyone truly in, I would be safe.
I knew how much it hurt when you bared yourself to someone and they used it against you.
I wouldn’t make that same mistake again.
Because the longer you’re undercover, the closer you get to people, the harder it is to keep the mask up and to keep the feelings out.
Since it had been over three years since my final mission with IA, I had to be careful to build the walls as high as they could go.
There was too much on the line. Who I was no longer mattered. There was only the mission.
“Shouldn’t I know shit about you? What’s your favorite color? Favorite food?” I could hear the slight panic in his voice as we approached the closed door—reality setting in. I stifled a laugh at the thought of my favorite color or food even coming up in conversation.
“When would we have had time to talk about those things while we were sending secretive smutty missives back and forth and having sexy video chats?” I replied, easily explaining away the lack of information we had on each other, running my thumb along his hand suggestively.
Vaughn about choked at the thought of either type of communication, and reflexively tried to pull his hand from mine, but I refused, holding steadfast to the contact.
He opened his mouth to protest, but before he had the chance, the door slid aside, revealing the entire crew gathered together.
“SURPRISE!” they shouted in unison, followed by a sharp pop of a champagne cork.
“I said no parties, Reese,” Vaughn grumbled, giving Natalie a hard stare, who, to her credit, only preened at the admonishment.
“Explains all those times you snuck off ‘to be alone.’” A burly guy with light hair and fair skin used air quotes to punctuate the last three words before clapping a hand on Vaughn’s shoulders. “Who knew you had a side piece?”
Vaughn cleared his throat. “Lark is my exception.”
Did he just stand up for me?
The man’s gaze slid to mine, a big, toothy grin strung along his face, not at all concerned with Vaughn’s correction. “Ethan O’Malley.” He stuck out his hand for me to shake. “Security and compliance.”
“Lark—chief engineer.” I wasn’t sure if I liked this guy, but I took his hand nonetheless.
“Oh ho!” He glanced up at Vaughn while shaking my hand.
“Bagged a smart one, Captain! Didn’t know you were into that.
” His jovial laughter filled the mess hall, and the other crew members seemed amused by the interaction, except for Jordan, whose face was an unreadable mask as she observed from the back of the room, away from the others.
Finally releasing my hand, Ethan turned abruptly. “Bancroft, where’s that moonshine you’ve been making?”
Rion’s face went red, his eyes darting to the captain, then to Natalie.
Vaughn merely shook his head, as if this was all so standard. And I supposed it was, but being around this group, who clearly cared for each other, made me feel a bit of an interloper, and wasn’t I, after all?
“I was saving that.” Vaughn huffed as Natalie gave him a glass of champagne.
“For what?” She beamed. “A special day?”
Vaughn didn’t reply.
“An exception seems like a worthy cause for celebration, don’t you think?” she goaded him.
With a scoff, Vaughn released my hand to take the glass from Natalie, and then, without another word, made his way over to Jordan at the periphery of the room, likely to discuss the ship diagnostics, which I could have told him looked fantastic and ready for takeoff, at least on the engineering side.
“How are you settling in?” Natalie slid next to me, another glass of champagne raised for me.
“It’s an adjustment.” The closer I could stay to the truth, the better. I took a sip of the drink; it was sharp and crisp, albeit a little stale. But who was I to judge?
“The captain is a typical Aries. He’ll settle once we’ve departed. He always gets anxious right before takeoff—lots to check, lots that can go wrong,” she noted. I hoped she didn’t question that I didn’t know this about him already. “You seem a bit nervous.”
Did I?
“I’ll be fine, once I’m through the ‘questioning all my life choices up to this moment’ stage,” I joked.
But neither Natalie nor I laughed.
“Have you met Chad yet?” she thankfully changed the subject.
“It’s Chadwick,” an annoyed voice sounded from directly behind us, causing me to spill some of the liquid from my glass as I spun around to face the young man who had spoken.
“Right. Sorry, Chadwick.” Natalie smiled between us, but her demeanor was slightly off. “Lark, this is Chadwick Rothschild, our junior officer on board.”
Rothschild, I knew that name—one of the C-suite execs from Starlane. And then Natalie’s icier facade made sense.
“Nice to meet you.” Like the others, we shook hands. The clamminess of his was off-putting, but I’d interacted with worse. “I’m glad I’m not the only new crew member.” He looked every bit the son of an executive, with a well-groomed appearance and an entitled disposition.
“Me too,” I returned the sentiment.
“Chadwick actually applied for the chief engineer position, but didn’t have enough experience under his belt yet to qualify, so I’m sure he’ll want to shadow you to learn more.
” Natalie’s expression was amused, although her tone was serious.
“He’ll be helping us keep the ship clean and stocked, so let him know if you need anything. ”
Chadwick’s jaw clenched. It appeared he wasn’t pleased with the position, or the work required, but even nepo babies had to start somewhere, and your last name meant nothing if you couldn’t do the work.
“Alright, listen up.” Vaughn’s commanding voice filled the room, and he immediately had the attention of his entire crew from where he stood at the back of the mess hall, Jordan stationed primly at his right.
“This is a standard cargo run. Two stops. Three legs. First leg to Port Vesta is scheduled to take just under twenty days, but we get a bonus if we cut below eighteen.”
I nearly choked on a sip of the stale champagne. I knew this was a newer ship, but from what I’d seen of the engineering capabilities, even twenty days seemed ludicrous, let alone eighteen.
“Vesta to Ganymede is another twenty-four days, with a bonus if we shave off three. You all know how I like our bonuses, and that they are distributed evenly when met.” Vaughn’s gaze landed on mine, as if he could see my incredulity at the pacing.
“We’ve never missed a bonus in the fifteen months the Radiant has been running, and I don’t expect we’ll miss them this time.
” His eyes narrowed, the message clearly meant for me and me alone.
“Final leg returning back to Phobos is estimated at thirty-one days. We need to hit our alignment optimized windows, or Starlane docks our commission. No excuses. No exceptions.”
“Except for yours, right, Cap?” O’Malley nudged Vaughn, drawing everyone’s attention to me.
Vaughn ignored him. “Takeoff is in one hour. Officer Reese has your duty schedules. Report to your departure stations.”
I was a ball of nerves during takeoff, as it had been a while since I’d run a ship this large. Thankfully, I was alone in the engineering bay, so none of the crew could see my nerves on full display. Once we were cruising, with Phobos behind us, I finally felt like I could take a breath.
While takeoff went smoothly, the same couldn’t be said for Vaughn’s extremely aggressive delivery schedule. I’d been running the numbers for hours, and I couldn’t figure out how on earth he thought we could manage to get the bonus, let alone meet the minimum requirements.
What’s worse was that when I tried to ping him on the bridge, he hung up on me when I said it wasn’t an emergency. Repeated calls went unanswered.
“Natalie, what jackass was running engineering before me?” I asked through my comm.
“Oh, Sully? He was this ancient guy Vaughn met through the service. Refused to talk to anyone but Vaughn, but he sure did love Rion’s ship wine.” Her melodic giggle filtered through the device. She must have been referring to the moonshine that Ethan mentioned at the debrief.
“I don’t understand how he managed to keep up with the captain’s schedule,” I told her.
“Well, he was very unorthodox, from what I could tell. Sully was a Pisces sun and Sagittarius rising, if you can believe it, which is a particularly chaotic combination, so I did my best to leave him to his own devices. He never allowed anyone but Vaughn into the engineering bay, but I do have access to a lot of the ship systems, and I’d never seen anyone jerry-rig a code like he did.
After he left, we were required to do a hard system reset, per Starlane protocols, to clear out any backdoors that might have been coded in,” she prattled.