Chapter 5
Thatcher
Three days was not a long time, but Ysa made the hours stretch for what seemed like forever.
She worked tirelessly, almost frantically, to figure out what was going on with the ship.
There had not been a single blackout since I’d clawed out a sample of that thing in the walls.
I might be antisocial, but I was not deaf.
People were already talking about it like it was over, like we were headed to Strewn only to meet up with the gladiators of the Vagabond.
They didn’t see what I did: Ysa slaving away in her workroom or at the many complex consoles in the engine room.
Ysa forgoing sleep night after night to find answers.
She was not the only one working hard, because Dravion came to consult with her at the oddest hours.
They’d cross-reference their findings on the samples of the black sludge, shake their heads when that didn’t bring them any closer to answers, and part ways again.
She was too damn proud for her own good, unwilling to let someone else solve the problem for her.
For us. But it was more than that; she was simply too kind-hearted and caring to absolve herself of any responsibility.
She’d dismiss her two underlings for rest or food, and though they tried, they could not get her to leave her station.
I was pretty sure she had not rebraided her hair or changed her clothes in at least forty-eight hours.
Now, we were approaching Strewn, and she was getting desperate.
Desperate and exhausted. I didn’t need sleep all that much, not when the nanobots could sustain me for periods of time.
I just needed to eat to keep going, which was why I always packed extra energy bars.
Ysa… I didn’t think she’d touched the dinner Ivo had brought her a few hours ago.
It was hard to tell because I couldn’t actually see her when I was barred from entering the engine room.
It was a hard rule she’d declared when I’d first started guarding her, and since the engine room had only one entrance, I’d kept to it.
Now, though, I was starting to get ready to break that rule.
For hours, I’d been waiting for her to come out so I could bodily haul her away from her self-appointed quest. She needed food and sleep, and I was damn well going to make sure she got it.
I’d sworn not to have her but to keep her safe, and that meant protecting her from herself if it came down to it, too.
Over the ship-wide comm system, Aramon was announcing that we were coming in to dock at Strewn.
We’d done a few stints in FTL to get here, but for the last few hours we’d been cruising quietly.
There was no need for us to strap in for a landing, because Strewn was a massive floating city in space—a shipyard of fabled proportions and skill.
Any ship that rolled out of their construction line was bound to be a beautiful piece of work, coveted by governments and shipping magnates from all over the quadrant.
I’d set foot inside it only once and turned on my heel as fast as I could.
It was a perfect excuse to escape being dragged along by Aramon on a bar crawl.
I might have liked that once, before the Shadow Unit and the torture, but I much preferred avoiding crowds and tight spaces these days.
Not because they scared me, but because I knew I couldn’t trust myself.
One wrong move and I might start a fight and kill someone.
To say I was twitchy these days was an understatement.
I heard Ysathea swear furiously in response to the announcement, and then a sound followed that I hoped I’d never hear again.
She sobbed. My bold, clever, and devoted little engineer had burst into tears at the announcement.
It was a sound so sad, so heartbroken that it screamed of pain.
I was familiar with that kind of soul ache too, and an answering ache flared inside my chest. More than ever, I wished I could fix this for her, that I was clever enough to take away the burden she carried.
I wasn’t, though; I was just a dumb grunt, a soldier.
“Enough,” I swore roughly. Her cries had gotten muffled, like she was already trying to pull herself together, and that only made me ache more.
“Ysa, get your damn ass out here right now, or I swear I’m coming in, force field or not.
” It wasn’t entirely an empty threat either.
If she did try to erect a field to keep me out, chances were I could push through.
It would hurt like a bitch, but there was something about the nanobots in my bloodstream that seemed to help with that, though only briefly—like I could make my body emit something that countered the force field’s energy.
I’d managed to slip through a few so far, but it was an ace I liked to keep up my sleeve in case of emergency. This felt like an emergency.
Ysathea didn’t respond at first, and then she fell silent.
I could not even hear her breathe, and my body moved of its own accord, stalking through the hallway until I found myself braced inside the wide-open doorway of the engine room.
It could be sealed off with bulkheads when needed, but this door was always open, just not to me, per Ysa’s rules.
I stood there, my fists balled and my body trembling with tension.
Did I go in without her permission, or did I toe that one line I’d created in my head just a little longer?
I did not have to find out the answer, though I was pretty sure I knew it anyway; for Ysa, I’d break any rule.
Even my own, or perhaps especially my own.
She shuffled out of her workroom on weary feet, head down, braid undone from its normal position around her waist. I swore loudly, because she looked far worse than when I’d last been able to lay eyes on her.
Never, not once in the two years I’d been with the Varakartoom’s crew, had I seen her with her braid hanging free.
It was so long its beaded tip dragged against the floor, and there were no jaunty, cheerful clacks like normal.
“Ysa,” I said, but to my ears it sounded like I was begging.
What had happened in the elevator a few days ago had plagued my mind and my dreams. I should never have kissed her, because now I knew I would never shake her.
Humans did not mate for life, but I knew, I knew that Ysa was my one and only.
Too bad I was too broken to be any good to her.
I feared that what I’d done had also broken something irreparable between us, but her exhausted expression held neither fear nor judgment.
“What, Thatch? What do you want now? I thought you didn’t talk to me?” she snapped, far from her usual upbeat self. That was the sleep deprivation talking; Ulinial couldn’t handle it much better than humans could. My nanobots had no issue negating the side effects, I was fine, but she was not.
She had paused at least ten feet away, too far for me to reach out and snatch her up.
My fingers flexed, my body shifting as I contemplated lunging in and doing it anyway.
So what if she hated me, feared me? What did it matter if, in the end, she got what she needed?
Food, rest, safety. I was not here to seduce her, to make her mine, as badly as I wanted that to be different.
I was just here to keep her safe, even if that meant protecting her from herself.
Tilting my head, I forced myself to stay behind the invisible line.
Should I answer? Should I speak again and let myself get drawn further into her world?
It was too late already, anyway, a voice at the back of my head warned me.
A voice of reason, or a voice of desperate hope.
My brief moment of indecision solved the problem for me in the end.
Ysa stepped across that invisible line with tired, shuffling feet.
Her face tilted up, tears still drying on her cheeks.
Her expression was a combination of “Solve this, Thatcher,” and “What now? Can’t you see I’m tired? ”
I swept her into my arms, feeling not an ounce of guilt when she screamed in fright.
I had not crossed the line; she’d come to me.
Cradled against my chest, she squirmed anyway, but only weakly because she was so tired.
My pace picked up as her struggles faded, and my worry spiked.
She was exhausted, and I should have intervened sooner.
Where were her males? The pair of engineers she’d adopted into her family should have been here to take care of her.
Swearing under my breath, I accessed the processor embedded in my brain.
I rarely did this because it always left me feeling uncomfortable.
Once, it had been a feature I readily used in service of the Shadow Unit and the UAR.
But the United Alliance of Races had not been worthy of my loyalty, and using the technology they had installed in my head felt wrong now—like I was suddenly back on a mission that furthered the goals of the rich and powerful while betraying the people I’d signed on to protect.
Through the processor, I could access my comm with a thought and send out a message.
When Ysa needed help, time was of the essence, and I didn’t even care.
In fact, I barely noticed the hateful itch of dislike at the back of my mind.
Brace would show up with food, because while impressive, the massive Hoxiam was more scared of me than I was of him.
Reaching my bunk room, I skidded to a halt and slammed through the door with my precious cargo in my arms. Of the three grunts I shared the quarters with, only one was present.
Raukesh was lying on the top bunk that belonged to him, one wing draped over the side.
He jerked upright when he spotted us, paled, as far as a gray-skinned Tarkan could grow pale, and leaped from his bed.
“Ah, I’m ah… needed on the bridge,” he muttered, and he scampered from the room like his tufted tail was on fire.
The bunk room was sparse, with only limited space for each of us.
Since I hardly ever spent time here, my bunk was neatly made and empty.
Raukesh had left his blankets in disarray, but his space, which was above mine, was also neat as a pin.
A’varon had made a mess of his corner, though, and I bared my teeth at the sight.
That bastard needed a few whacks on the head as a reminder to clean up his shit.
I placed Ysa on my bunk very carefully. She wasn’t fighting, but she crossed her arms over her chest and gave me a mutinous expression.
It wasn’t quite a glare, but it was definitely a warning.
Behave, or else. I went to my knees beside her, my left knee groaning as the bionics engaged.
The joint was probably the only part of my body that protested against my lack of sleep.
It needed to go into standby mode to do a maintenance cycle.
I said nothing as I reached for her boots and began undoing the fasteners.
She kicked against my hand, probably not intentionally, just in her effort to get away.
It was easy to pin both legs down so I could resume the task.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Thatch, what are you doing? I’m too tired for this, damn it!
” I leveled her with a look that I hoped conveyed that this was exactly my point.
If she would not take care of herself, then I would. Plain and simple.
She did not protest again when I freed her small feet from her boots.
I set her footwear carefully aside because I knew she was very fond of it.
Then I pressed her to the mattress and stood up to locate a blanket.
I didn’t sleep with one, if I even slept at all.
Lately, I’d only used the room to wash up and change my clothes.
When I turned back to her with a blanket in hand, I discovered that she’d scooted to the edge of the bunk and was reaching for her boots again.
“No,” I growled, fed up. “You are taking a break.” It was the dumbest thing I’d ever done, besides, perhaps, kissing her the other day.
Grabbing her small, bare, and exotically blue feet, I pushed them back onto the bed.
Ah hell, she was soft even on the soles of her feet—and ticklish too, because she twitched in my hands and let out an involuntary giggle, followed by a rather indignant squeak.
Yeah, screw the rules, there was no coming back from this.
Wrong as it was, I was going to make her mine.