Chapter 5
Trove
Chee kept to herself. According to Alred, she only emerged from her room to get food.
She’d get a tray, return to her room, eat, then come out to return the tray, and go right back.
She didn’t interact with anyone. She didn’t try to mingle with them.
She didn’t interfere with the last of the work they were doing to get ready for takeoff.
She was just there.
Trove’s job was to finish setting up the last of the gun turret houses.
All the starships stored in the facility had weapons stripped before storage.
Just like none of them had subspace crystals or food synthesizers or anything else useful like that.
They stole the food synthesizer from the kitchen of the facility itself, so that wasn’t a problem, but there were no munitions to load, so right now they just had the casings for them.
Since Trove was in charge of weapons, he was in charge of making sure all of those casings and houses were ready for takeoff from the surface.
That would be the most stress the ship would ever be put under, so they had to be careful, but once they were off, they were set for whatever else might come.
Honestly, the work was a relief. While he was working, Trove could pretend he was able to ignore that itch under his skin that demanded he be next to Chee, that he learn more about her, that he fight her.
She didn’t have any family here to act as her protector for him to fight, but that didn’t mean anything to his instincts.
That just meant she was her own protector, and he wanted to fight her instead.
It was clear, however, that she was not feeling the same pull towards him. And he wanted to both despair and celebrate that fact. He wasn’t sure if he would be able to tolerate it if she came after him seeking to flirt or fuck.
But she didn’t. She never made a single indication that she wanted anything to do with him. And that hurt just as badly. There was no scenario that would make him happy, it seemed.
Trove didn’t see her again until the day Tanin announced that they were taking off.
Garnet, Goldie, and Grace were all put in the safe room that was built under the nursery.
It was highly reinforced and made specifically to protect them in case of catastrophe.
The bridge was also decently strong, but not nearly so much.
Since the takeoff was the most dangerous part of this process, Tanin wanted all of them as safe as they could be.
For the females, that was in the safe room.
For the males – and Haven – that was on the bridge so that, if things did start going wrong, they would be able to respond immediately and try to mitigate or stop any potential disasters.
Haven wasn’t hide while the ship she built was taking off.
She insisted on standing right there beside her mate, watching everything with bright, excited eyes.
Chee was not one of them, so she was not given access to the safe room. But Tanin wasn’t so heartless that he wouldn’t let her in the safety of the bridge.
Trove wished he could argue for her to be in the safe room. But he also wasn’t unhappy to have her in the safety of the bridge under his watchful eye. Though, he didn’t like how she stood back, away from everyone.
She knew she wasn’t one of them, and he felt that separation acutely looking at her now.
She wasn’t wearing the envirosuit anymore.
He recognized the clothing style she had on as the same type that Garnet and Goldie had been wearing when they first joined their crew.
Dark blue pants that were just a bit baggy, sagging over the chunky, tied on purple shoes she wore on her feet.
The creamy sweater she wore wasn’t thick, but it was baggy and looked terrible on her.
It did nothing to flatter her figure. But it didn’t appear that looking good was her aim.
If anything, it appeared like she was trying to hide in her clothes.
He found it interesting that she hid her body, but not the scar on her face.
That she displayed almost proudly, her hair pulled back in a messy bun behind her head, only a few stray, frizzy strands sticking out around her face.
And while his people valued scars as beautiful and honorable, he knew that most other species didn’t see them that way.
He knew humans specifically didn’t. So, why did she display her scar but not herself?
Trove was trying not to stare as blatantly as he had before, but he knew he wasn’t succeeding.
Despite everything going on, despite the way the rest of the crew were moving around, preparing for takeoff, he always kept looking back at his little human mate-to-be, standing away in the corner, doing her best to look out the window and pointedly not at him.
Honestly, there wasn’t much for Trove to do here.
He was on this crew because of his experience with weapons.
He helped with deliveries sometimes, he assisted around the ship where he could, back before the females joined them, he often did the cleaning, talking to clients, or whatever other job the others couldn’t or wouldn’t do.
But his experience in weapons and combat could do nothing for them now. He didn’t know how to pilot a ship, he didn’t know how to operate these machines, and he could only help in small, basic ways where indicated as the others worked.
Sway, their pilot, was in his seat, moving around the console as he and Alred worked together to get the ship up and moving.
Vytln was at Grace’s workstation. He wasn’t sitting in her chair – there was no way his big body could fit – but he was using the ship to communicate to the recycling facility.
He was getting all the machines out of the way and, most importantly, putting in the commands that would open the ceiling.
It was a slow process, but an incredible one.
After so many years of abandonment and neglect, there was a lot of sand piled up on top of the roof of the ship storage space.
They’d attempted to move some of it off before, but it was honestly a pointless endeavor, and not one that really made much of a difference.
They didn’t care about flooding this place with sand.
So, at Tanin’s order, Vytln had the ceiling pull apart.
There were multiple panels, many lining the roof down the entire length of the storage room.
Many or few could be opened at once, depending on the size of the ship coming down.
Vytln opened the ones to either side of them, letting sand and sunlight come pouring in around their ship first before moving the ones right overhead, reducing the amount of sand that cascaded over them.
Some ships were too large to come planetside, even for recycling, and had to be taken apart in space.
This facility serviced all those smaller than that.
The Vainglory was built around the same size and had been designed with the ability to reach escape velocity in mind, but it only needed to do it the one time and it would thereafter spend the rest of its life in space.
Because of that, it was not quick to fight against gravity as Sway, Alred, and Tanin worked together to get the ship up and moving. The gravity generators were currently off so all power could be diverted to the thrusters, so they felt all the wobbling as they slowly started to rise.
The steps Trove took towards Chee were involuntary, but he didn’t want to stay away.
He was suddenly concerned about her falling.
Trove was well aware of how delicate his human sisters were.
Even before two of them became noticeably pregnant and began waddling around in the most adorably concerning way, they were soft. So fragile. So small.
And now this one was his. And sure, she stood with confidence, gaining her balance easily by widening her stance and adjusting to the new motions of the ship as it rose. Sure, she didn’t look to any of them for help. But he had to be nearby, just in case.
Her eyes darted briefly to him then back to the window. She wasn’t exactly happy to see him, but nor did she seem disgusted.
How did she feel for him? He didn’t know.
He wasn’t sure how he wanted her to feel.
Humans were similar to domini in that sight was how their mate bonds were triggered.
But unlike the domini, humans were notoriously bad at recognizing their bond, and they also weren’t bound to that first sight being the one that triggered the bond.
It could happen even years after knowing someone.
She could feel absolutely nothing for him.
He hoped she did.
It would be better if she did.
“We’re clear of the hanger,” Vytln announced, his rock-like voice grinding out in the room.
“Let’s start building up speed,” Tanin ordered. Sway’s hands were already moving across the ship controls pushing them forward. The golden expanse of the desert world stretching endlessly before them. It was such an empty place, devoid of life. Trove wasn’t unhappy to see it go.
Maybe, away from here, he could bury himself between the thighs of another female and forget everything. Drown it all out in her screams.
What he hated was that the female he pictured, no matter how hard he tried, was Chee.
And it made his stomach turn.
She was frowning slightly, her head cocked to the side.
“Are you confused?” Trove found himself asking before he even gave himself permission to speak to her.
She looked at him again, though it wasn’t brief this time. She regarded him for a long moment before nodding.
“I guess I am. Where are we going? Aren’t we supposed to be going up?”
“We are going up.”
“I think it looks more like we’re going forward,” she pointed out, looking again out the window where the hard packed desert had turned into loose, rolling dunes. It was harder to tell since those could be quite tall, but they were going up.