11. Silk #3
Parr’s Anchor in the middle distance. Rust-colored hull plating, a docking ring patched in seven configurations across forty years of independent operation.
Rethlor’s SRS-issue Tier 3 hauler is on the board.
We will dock with an hour at the top end and as little as twelve minutes at the bottom, and he will not be punctual; Rethlor was the Tier 3 who pushed his pre-flight checks to the last twenty minutes. I am betting on the ulcers.
Natalie has not spoken for two hours. The silence is not empty. The silence is the galley, still running under both of us.
JINX, low: “Tael. Your tail.”
I look down.
My tail, has been wrapped around the bottom of the co-pilot’s seat for the last hour, has uncurled a foot and a half toward her chair.
The reach is involuntary. It is also incomplete; three and a half feet of prehensile muscle has deployed eighteen inches and stopped six short of the leg of her chair.
The eighteen inches are a tell. The tell is I want my tail on her calf again the way it was in the corridor. The tell is that my body has stopped asking permission.
I retract it and wind it around my own ankle. Natalie’s eyes, which had been on the scope, have moved. Her eyes are on my tail. Her eyes have seen the reach. The pulse climbs four beats. The scent-shift is small and sharp and I file it under she saw and she did not look away fast enough.
She does not speak. She unbuckles. “I’m changing for the op.”
“Copy.”
She walks past my chair with four inches between her hip and my shoulder and does not slow down. Four inches of air that still smell like her. My hands stay on the yoke.
The bunk door does not seal properly when Helia’s Reach has been at hard burn, and I have not fixed the seal in years because I have not been operating Helia’s Reach with a female on board who was going to need it. She is going to need it. It is not going to do its job.
I hear her drop the duffel on the bunk. I hear the zipper.
I hear — I am a Tier 2 Draelith tracker at peak operational awareness, I will not inventory this audio — the soft sound of a cardigan being removed and folded, the small rustle of cotton over a human-female arm, the unhurried sound of a soft pant leg being pulled past a hipbone, the tactical kit being unfolded from the other side of the duffel, the sound of — The question hits before I can stop it.
Did she put the silk on? Is she standing in my bunk in the thing she packed for me?
Is the bow at her sternum right now, two meters down the corridor, while I sit here pretending to fly an autopilot?
JINX. Override the cabin audio. Block the bunk frequency.
“Tael.”
“Do it.”
“Done. The log will reflect an unspecified maintenance test. I am very impressed with you.”
“Quietly, JINX.”
The bunk audio cuts. I stare at the scope.
I stare at it for ninety seconds and do not allow my brain to produce the question it has, in those ninety seconds, produced approximately forty times.
Did she put it on now, or is she saving it?
My mouth is refusing to ask, because it understands that asking would be the last act of restraint my career would ever require of itself.
I am, in this minute, the most disciplined male in the Velarkis sector.
The discipline is costing me. The cost is sitting hard between my legs and I will not adjust it.
The bunk door opens.
Tactical kit. Black under-layer. Fitted pant in place of the soft. Field jacket over the cardigan, sleeves rolled. Hair re-pinned. Sidearm at her hip. The configuration of a Head of Station Security walking into an operation she is going to win.
I do not look at her chest. I do not look at her thighs. I look at her face. I look at her face because if I look anywhere else I am going to read the line of the under-layer for the shape of a bow, and if I find the bow, I am going to lose the next four hours before we even dock.
She catches the not-looking. The corner of her mouth, and this is the kill, this is going to make the next four hours of operational conduct the hardest of my professional life, does the millimeter twitch I have calibrated to read as I see you trying, Vosk, and I am going to let you keep trying.
She knows I am wondering. She is letting me wonder. The smug from the galley has transferred. It looks better on her.
She walks past me to the airlock.
JINX, private, dry: “Personal record: held.”
“Quietly, JINX.”
In the airlock, one hand on the cycle:
“Operational mode Vosk. We get Rethlor. We get the intel. We come back to the ship. We do not, on this ship, refer to the events of the galley.”
“Copy.”
“After the intel is logged and the case is moving, we may revisit the events of the galley if I, I, decide we are revisiting them.”
“Copy, sweetheart.”
A small silence. Her pulse, on my overlay, spikes once at the sweetheart and does not fully come back down. I let her see that I heard it.
“Cycle the airlock, Vosk.”
I cycle it. She walks through without looking back.
Her pulse, on my overlay, is at one hundred and six.
Mine is at ninety-eight. The half-grin is the only thing on my face that the next four hours are going to have to work around.
The silk is still on my fingertip. Whether she is wearing it is still unanswered and will sit under every operational second of Parr’s Anchor like a second pulse.
We walk into Parr’s Anchor.