Chapter 3 #2
“You are human,” Tanin said, his voice echoing in Trove’s scrambled brain.
“I am,” Chee nodded, and her voice sounded even more lovely now that it was no longer muffled and filtered through her helmet. “Hyde said that was important for this mission.”
“And why is that?”
“Because your crew has already mated humans.”
Finally, Tanin showed a reaction. His eyes narrowed and his quills began to lift.
Not obviously. It was a subtle change, but meaningful.
The fact that Tanin and two others in their crew had mated humans was not really a secret, but the choice of sending Chee to talk to them was enough to make him more suspicious.
And probably angry. Like this Hyde person must assume they’d have a weakness for human females and so had sent one deliberately.
There was no way he could know that the weakness was much worse than he thought.
Because Trove still couldn’t bring his arm up again.
He couldn’t aim a weapon at her. Worse, he was now angry at the captain for that subtle shift in his quills.
That tiny hint of a threat made him want to defend this unknown female against a male that he held to the highest respect and regard.
No, Hyde could not possibly have known exactly how badly Chee would affect him, but it was a masterful stroke against them.
The subtle changes in Tanin’s expression, luckily, did not go unnoticed by Chee. She once again raised her hands, though not very far, attempting to show her harmlessness.
“Hyde and I don’t mean your crew any harm. Like I said, he has a mission for you. He’s willing to pay you very well to complete it.”
“And what is it that he wants delivered that’s so important he was willing to track us all the way out here and send you to offer us this job?” Tanin asked, voice sharp and cutting.
Chee remained unphased as she said simply, “A cup.”
Tanin blinked once, a wealth of emotion in that one movement. “A cup?”
She nodded. “Yes. A cup. It’s a very old and fancy cup. It’s currently owned by a private collector. He wants you to obtain the cup from her and bring it to him.”
“That rather seems like a job any delivery service could do. What is so different about this cup that he can’t hire a regular delivery company?”
“Well, first, he wants complete discretion. He wants you to obtain the cup and bring it to him without anyone knowing. Not about the cup or about him. He’s a very private person.
He is willing to meet you upon completion of this job, but he wants no one else to know he’s hired you, that you know his name, or that you know what you brought him.
Your company is known very well for its discretion. That’s what he wants from you.”
Tanin didn’t even flinch, just nodded once. “That’s one reason. What’s the next?”
“Well, the thing is, the person who currently owns the cup has no intention of giving it up. So, he needs you to convince them to do so. He’s given me control of however much we need to offer her to do it, but right now, the cup isn’t actually for sale.”
Tanin shook his head. “No. We’re a delivery company only. We bring things from one place to another. That’s it. We don’t fetch them, we don’t hunt them down, we don’t go searching. Either the cup is ready for pick up or it’s not.”
“He’s willing to pay extra.”
“I don’t-”
“Seventy-five thousand credz.”
The number she dropped so casually made all three males freeze. It even surprised Trove, who was sure he was beyond surprise at this time.
That much? Just to deliver a cup and keep quiet about it? That wasn’t a good deal; it was a suspicious one.
Chee just stared at them. Waiting for them to recover. Tanin was the first one to do so.
“That’s absurd for a cup,” he said. “Even if he expects us to arrange to get it ourselves.”
She shrugged. “It must mean that much to him, I guess. The amount he’s willing to pay the current owner is completely separate from what he’s paying you.
You will get your payment regardless of what he has to trade for it.
Furthermore, if this job is done well, he says that he has other jobs for you already lined up that he’s also willing to pay handsomely for. ”
Trove’s fingers twitched at the idea of getting his hands on that much money. Even once the operating costs were taken out and the profits were divided equally amongst all of them, that was still a lot for each person…
However, Tanin still hesitated. His reticence didn’t go unnoticed either, because Chee said-
“Hyde also said that he has a vital part for you that you’re going to need if you want to make a replacement ship out of this recycling facility.”
Again, the three of them froze. How did he know…
“And what part is that?” Tanin asked, his voice calm despite the surprise.
“I don’t really know what it is,” Chee admitted. “But he said to tell you that it’s called a core connection, and you’d know what that meant.”
Once again, for the third time in so many sentences, they were all left stunned.
It was one thing to track them down out here.
That was highly unlikely, but not altogether impossible with enough credz, recourses, and connections.
And it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that, being resourceful themselves, they’d try to make their own ship out of the broken down starships that were left to decay here when the facility was abandoned.
But to know about Alred…
Their ship AI was a fully technological being, just as real in his personhood as any of them.
He was an undroitt recall, a member of an extinct species that existed only in data storage.
He was once the AI that operated this facility, but that was decades ago now.
Records of Alred didn’t exist anymore. There was no one aside from them who knew what happened to him after this facility was abandoned.
No one, including Alred, knew exactly how he ended up on Rik-Vane, and absolutely no one knew that he was acting, illegally, as their ship’s AI.
Or he had been, when they still had a ship.
They were cannibalizing the old, broken down starships left in this abandoned facility to build a new ship to get off this planet.
They had everything they needed to build a functioning ship, but what they didn’t have was the specialized cord needed to attach Alred into the ship.
They were planning on getting one once they were out of here, probably by trying to find their old cord if it was still intact and functioning in the debris of their old ship, but if not, they’d have to try to buy one.
But that cord was extremely rare. It was only used for the cores of the undroitt recalls. Their old one had been the one they stole out of Rik-Vane from where Alred had been hooked up before. They didn’t even know where to start looking for one.
For this Hyde person to not only know about Alred, to know about the cord, and to have the ability to obtain one…
Who was this person? How did he know them so well? More than that, what exactly did he want from them? There was no way this was just about a cup.
“I’ll talk to my crew,” Tanin finally said, his voice remarkably even. Trove was glad he wasn’t the one speaking, because he didn’t think he’d be able to maintain his composure half as well. “You will wait here until I come to a decision.”
Chee nodded, like she expected as much and remained sitting as Tanin gestured with his head to Trove and Rok. The four armed giant followed their captain easily, but it was much harder for Trove to tear his eyes away from the lovely human.
Looking at her was so exquisitely painful. He hated the sight of her. He craved the sight of her. He never wanted to look away; he wished desperately that he’d never seen her at all.
“Trove,” Tanin called, the sharp bite of his voice reminding him of his place. That his captain had essentially given him an order.
Still, as much as it hurt to look at her, it hurt more to look away. Especially those stormy eyes of hers. She blinked and when her eyes opened, she was looking directly at him. Her gaze cut through his heart like a hot steel blade.
That actually made it easier to whip his head around, breaking that connection between them. And that hurt too. Looking at her, looking away – there was no answer that offered him relief. Not from this sudden surge of hormones and drive and despair.
But looking away did allow him to follow after his captain. Though each step was heavy, and each breath a struggle to pull in. His difficulties did not go unnoticed by Tanin who, although he looked at him, said nothing as Trove exited the room.
The door sealed shut, locking her in, and Tanin turned to Rok. “Get the others. We’ll meet in the mess hall.”
“Aye, captain,” Rok, oblivious to Trove’s torment, just nodded and lumbered off to do as he was bidden. Only once he was gone did Tanin look at him.
He said nothing. The silence, the weight of his gaze, made Trove wince.
“I’m sorry,” Trove said, almost meek. Tanin was shorter than Trove, but he was menacing. He was powerful. And of course, he had Trove’s total respect. Disobeying his captain was an affront he would not normally have committed, even accidentally.
“What happened?” Tanin asked, no anger or judgement in his voice. Just calm control. Because he knew something was different, and he needed to account for that variable.
“I saw her,” Trove started before clenching his jaw and his eyes shut. He had to turn away before admitting. “She’s my mate, captain. I… I don’t know how… I just… I do know. I do. But I don’t know how I could…”
His words sputtered out, unable to form a complete thought.
“I see,” Tanin said simply, and maybe he did. Tanin knew of his past. He knew of his present. He knew everything Trove had gone through, and probably even what he was going through now. “What an interesting coincidence.”
Not expecting those words or that tone to be the first out of Tanin’s mouth, Trove was able to focus back on his captain again.
“What do you mean?”
“You domini know your mates by sight, yes?”