Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
Amelia
Amelia had gotten used to walking on a forty-five-degree angle.
It wasn’t so bad once you stopped feeling like you were about to fall over all the time.
The ship was a genuine wonder. Taron was right about that.
He had to help her pry open that door, which led to a hallway.
There, only one door would open, and he left her alone to search it.
While Taron worked on the spacecraft, Amelia set about searching the large stateroom. It was dark in there, so she moved by touch. There was also a bitter, musty smell that made her eyes water. She wished she could open a window and air it out.
She searched through the compartments for anything useful.
She could hear Taron cursing as he clanked and banged around in the hangar, and it made her smile.
She puzzled over a find that was a glass cylinder with a crank on the side of it.
Cranking it made a mechanism inside send a handful of small, chunky balls whirling around the inside of the glass.
They began to glow brightly. Amelia laughed in delight. She now had light.
Looking around, she could get a sense of the room she was in.
It may have been the captain’s quarters, given the size.
It was huge, with a giant bed and a lot of storage compartments to rummage through.
The colors were overwhelmingly neutral, or rather, they had been.
A film of gray mold covered everything, and the room smelled strongly of it.
She continued her search. She found a simple metal chest of emergency rations.
Several packets of a clear liquid that looked like IV bags.
Hopefully, they were water. Along with them, there were some tubes that she assumed were food.
The markings on them made no sense to her, but maybe they would to Taron.
She found the former occupant’s wardrobe.
The clothing was musty, like everything else, but whoever lived here was roughly human-shaped.
Anything was better than the disintegrating flight suit she wore.
She took out a white uniform. It had a top and pants and both felt thick, but stretchy, like neoprene, the material wetsuits were made of.
The compartment contained dozens of them and nothing else.
Apparently the dress code on this ship had been very strict.
Amelia stripped off the flight suit and pulled on the top.
Whoever these people were, they were narrow and very tall.
Amelia’s five-foot-four frame would look tiny next to whoever had once worn this.
The sleeves went way longer than her hands.
The top fit like a second skin. The fastenings, which ran down the front and sealed with just a touch, were old and felt brittle from being in storage for so long.
She looked down dubiously, unsure if the resealable seam would hold her breasts.
The being who wore this did not have them.
The pants, well, they were not going to happen. She had an athletic build, but was by no means supermodel skinny and that was required to make the pants work. However, the tunic was so long it stretched nearly to her knees. She decided to just wear it as a dress and be done with it.
She folded up the too-long sleeves and went back out to the small hangar.
Taron had taken off his T-shirt. His muscles gleamed with sweat as they strained and flexed.
He looked so hot, she could jump him right now.
She stayed in the shadows and took a moment to just admire him.
There was a lot to admire, even if he drove her crazy sometimes.
Okay, fine, she drove him crazy, too. It was a decent arrangement.
No, it was a pretty damn good one.
Despite how harrowing and dangerous their past few days had been, they had worked together well. They hadn’t argued or butted heads. They’d been a team.
If he could get this ship working, they would be off this planet soon. She wasn’t sure what would happen next, but she knew she wanted more of him. How much more, she couldn’t say. His life was so very different from hers. Was she willing to give up everything to bang around the galaxy with him?
She could not imagine him settling on Earth with her—even if he could.
Virilians were not authorized to stay longer than brief periods.
Even if by some means he was permitted to stay on the surface, they wouldn’t have a normal life there.
He would be the subject of such overwhelming scrutiny, it would suffocate them both.
Talk about getting ahead of yourself. They had never, ever discussed making this thing between them permanent.
As far as she knew, this was just a fling to him.
It might be smart if she thought of it that way, too.
There was no point in setting herself up for disappointment.
He was a Virilian, she was a human, and neither of them were part of the match program.
With a sigh, she stepped out from the shadows. “I found some stuff,” she said.
He looked up and wiped the hair from his eyes with his forearm. “Stars, are you trying to kill me?”
She stopped short. “What?”
“That dress-thing.” He waved a metal instrument of some sort in her direction. “You’re so sexy all I can think about is tearing it off you.”
Her cheeks warmed. “It’s all I could find in the stateroom.”
“I’m not complaining, Amelia.”
God, she loved the way he said her name. “Look. I found a light. And some food, I think.”
He was absolutely thrilled with the light, which could take the place of the dimming sensor device. He then took the packets and tubes that she hoped were food and water.
“They sell these at different supply posts,” he explained.
“They’re a nutrient boost made for emergency situations.
The tubes are too. There are varieties for different life-forms. We shouldn’t eat them without knowing who they’re meant for.
The wrong type could kill us.” He grimaced at the markings on them.
“I can’t read this with my English chip in.
” He reached back and removed the chip. His eyes blinked rapidly, then focused again.
When he looked at her, a crooked smile curved his lips. “Un cal-kial gar yu pernirow.”
She raised one eyebrow. “You better be saying something nice, Taron.” Of course, he couldn’t understand her any more than she could understand him.
He smiled and shook his head. His hand came up and his thumb brushed over her cheek. “Nillah,” he said in a soft voice.
Whatever that word meant, it was something nice. His eyes had softened. His lips, when he said the word, had curved into a gentle smile.
“Thank you,” she said with a smile of her own. He examined the wrappings, muttered to himself, then put the chip back in his head.
She waited a moment, as he blinked, adjusted, and shook his head. “What are they?” she asked.
“The packets are not pure water,” he said, “but we can drink them. They are old, but still acceptable to ingest, and they are appropriate for our bodies.”
“We won’t die if we ingest any of this?”
“No.” He eyed them with distaste. “But I know what these taste like. Personally, I won’t eat one of these ration tubes unless I’m starving.”
“That bad?”
He dumped the pile back in her arms with a shake of his head. “If they’re anything like what I remember, yes.”
“Does the liquid taste as bad?”
“It’s very sweet. You may find it unsettles your stomach a little, but it will give you energy and sustain you.”
She nodded. “Hey, Taron?”
“Yeah?”
“What did you say to me in your language?”
He went perfectly still. “I said you were beautiful.”
“Nillah means beautiful?”
He shrugged. “Yes.”
“That’s so sweet,” she said, her heart pounding faster against her ribs. “What was the thing you said before that?”
“Huh?”
She rolled her eyes. “You know, before you said ‘nillah,’ you said something else. What was it?”
He waved a hand. “I don’t know. The English chip overrides everything. I think I said seeing you in that dress makes my nuts ache.”
“You’re a sweet talker, Taron Bando.”
His eyes glinted in the light of the weird lantern. “And you have no idea how appealing you are, Amelia Ward.”
Over the next few hours, Taron brought up the needed parts of the ground skimmer. He was making progress on adjusting the power source of the small ship to run on a different type of fuel cell.
Amelia felt a bit useless. She searched through the cabin again, debated lying down on the bed, but decided against it when just one touch came away thick with mold. She went back out and asked if she could help him.
He gave her a tired smile. “Why don’t you just sit with me?” he asked. “You don’t always have to be doing something.”
“I guess that’s true.” She sat down on the tilted floor.
He explained a little of what he was doing. Then, out of the blue, came the question: “Have you given any more thought to what you’re planning when we get out of here?”
Amelia had been thinking of this same thing just a short time ago.
She didn’t have an answer then, not really.
She didn’t have a good one now. “Well, I want to let my family know that I’m not dead.
” She swallowed hard at the thought. “God, they probably had a funeral for me and everything. I hate knowing they went through that.”
“I’m just going to ask: Are you planning to return to Earth permanently?” He kept his gaze on his work. A frown edged between his brows. His jaw was hard.
Amelia stared at him, trying to puzzle him out.
Did he want her to stay with him? Was he hoping that she didn’t want to stay with him?
Was he just trying to get an uncomfortable conversation out of the way?
“Where else would I go?” It was the only way she could think of—on the fly—to gauge his intentions.
“Were you thinking of staying with me?”
“We had sex, Taron,” she said, trying to defuse things before they got embarrassing. “It doesn’t mean we are suddenly in a committed relationship. It doesn’t work that way for humans.” Her gaze flew to his. “Is it like that for Virilians?”
He paused and looked her in the eye. “No. All I know is that I’m not done with you.”
She let out a shaky laugh. “I’m not done with you, either.”
He nodded. “Okay. Fine.” His attention went back to his work. “That’s settled.”
Amelia sent him a sidelong look and bit her bottom lip.
She wasn’t sure what, exactly, was “settled,” but her emotions were stretched enough and no part of her wanted to prolong this conversation.
His tone of voice sounded resolute, as though a clear choice had been made.
Whatever it was, he seemed quite satisfied with it.
Whatever they were, relationship-wise, they would figure it out later. First, they had to get off this planet.