Chapter 14
14
After snatching a scant three hours of sleep, I walked, bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed, to the bistro on deck thirty for my date with Tig—that I would have absolutely slept through if Elanie hadn’t commed me to get up ! thirty minutes ago.
Designed to resemble those found along the Old Earth rue de la Paix in Paris, the bistro was quaint and quiet, with black-and-cream-checkered floor tiles and wrought-iron tables covered with crisp, white tablecloths.
“Sunny,” Tig called out, half-obscured by a tiered tray of sliced baguettes, brioche, and delicate pastries. She sat beside a window that overlooked a weather-controlled biogarden bursting with violets, lilies, and magnolias, and ringed by cherry trees in perpetual full bloom. “I was worried you might not come.”
“I’m not late, am I?” I asked, stooping to kiss her cheek.
“No, but I was still worried. I’m always worried, I guess,” she said with a brittle laugh.
“Darling, the effects last night were spectacular. And I wouldn’t miss celebrating your success with you for anything in all the worlds.” Despite my genuine enthusiasm, when I sat heavily in my chair, I did it wishing it was my bed. “Did you sleep?” I asked, scanning the bistro for a serving drone, needing caffeine more than oxygen.
“Yeah,” Tig said, slathering a flaky croissant in honeyed butter. “For a few hours, anyway. But I’m wrecked.”
Moaning in gratitude as a serving drone set a kettle of steaming water, fragrant teas, and two cups of espresso with tiny cherry blossoms worked into the foam on our table, I reached for a cup.
“You can have mine too.” Tig nodded toward the espresso. “Caffeine makes me jittery.”
Corralling both cups of espresso in front of me, I downed one in two gulps. Then I plucked a macaron from the tray and took a bite. It was crispy and sweet, filled with a buttercream that tasted like figs and almonds. “Stars, Tig. This is the most delicious thing I’ve ever had in my mouth.” The statement was, I realized, utterly false. But I always did my best to— not think about that kiss, about his soft lips and softer tongue —behave myself around Tig. Innuendo tended to make her break out in hives.
“I know, right?” Tig said, pouring hot water over a sachet of bright-green tea leaves, the sharp tang of ginger and lemongrass rising into the air. But when she brought the cup of tea to her lips, I didn’t miss the tremor in her hand. It was possible she was only tired, but she seemed more distracted than usual, her eyes darting around the bistro, her other hand clenching the napkin next to her plate.
“Is everything all right?” I asked while selecting a cream puff from the tray. “Is there something on your mind?” I popped the entire puff into my mouth, my soul briefly departing my body from its warm, soft perfection .
“I’m not sure.” Her lips twisted, her brows inching together. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“That sounds like a yes to me.”
Glancing around again, she lowered her voice. “Could be nothing. It’s probably nothing.”
“Good grief, Tig. You’re as white as a sheet. What happened?”
“Okay,” she said in a whisper, leaning halfway over the table. “But you can’t tell anyone.”
I swiped a finger across my heart. “Go on.”
“Last night, I was running an unscheduled security sweep on the ship’s data streams prior to the ball. Just a precautionary measure considering the amount of computing power all the effects required. Anyway, I found something…odd.”
“Odd?” Now I was intrigued. “How odd?”
Leaning even closer, she said, “Over the last couple of weeks, someone off-ship has been accessing our manifests, as well as our guests’ itineraries.”
“Could it be corporate?” I asked. “They do that sometimes, don’t they? The eye in the sky making sure we’re toeing the line and all that?”
“That’s the thing. It isn’t necessarily out of the norm for LunaCorp to access our manifests, although it doesn’t happen regularly. What’s odd is that while these recent breaches do have LunaCorp credentials, they’re all expired, and the origins are all wrong.”
“How so?”
She shrugged. “They’re not from Luna or the CAK or New Earth or Mars or any location that a legitimate LunaCorp access would conceivably come from.”
Tig’s concern must have been contagious, because a sudden need to look over my own shoulder gripped me. “Where are they coming from?”
“For the life of me, I can’t tell.” She ruffled the pink strands of her hair. “The origins are untraceable, and if I were to do any deeper digging, I’d quickly become…conspicuous. If you catch my drift.”
That, I understood. If a being wanted to keep their job, the last place they’d ever want to be was on LunaCorp’s radar. “Have you spoken about this with Chan? Or Rax and Morgath? The captains?”
“No. Not yet. I need more information first. That’s why I don’t want you to tell anyone. Honestly, like I said, it’s probably nothing. Just an aberration.” She took a tiny bite of her pastry, then set it back down on her plate.
“An aberration,” I repeated, icy fingers brushing across the nape of my neck. And while we found other things to talk about, neither of us ate much more after that.
I left the bistro worried, but the exhaustion pouring lead into my feet quickly gained supremacy in my list of immediate concerns. I needed sleep, otherwise I’d have to visit the med bay and beg Dr. Semson for stims just to make it through the rest of the day.
After my door slid open, I staggered into my pod, gazed at my bed like it was an oasis in the middle of a Neptune desert, and made a solemn vow to worry in full as soon as I woke up. But when I took a step, something in the middle of my floor tried to trip me.
“What the?” I said, looking down. It was a box. A gift box, to be exact. And the card tucked into its red satin ribbon had a single, eye-opening word scrawled across the front: Phoebe .