Supergiant (Gigaparsec Book 2) (2 page)

“You might never have the sight,
but you might be capable of intimacy. We could revive parts of you that you
thought were dead.”

“What if I want information on the
experimental jump drive instead?”

The actress look-alike waved a hand,
and a silver armchair emerged from the silvery floor. Exhausted, Echo sank into
it. “You can have both. If you help me with ship repairs and keep me alive
until the subbasement drive is delivered to my people, I will make you coheir
of everything I possess.”

“I don’t want your money, just your
friendship.”

“The inheritance is to formalize
our bond because I cannot give details about the ship to anyone outside the
Magi race.”

“Then I accept. I want the entire
Union to know that a null brain accomplished an engineering feat none of them
could.”

“So let it be,” murmured Echo.
“Tell me what you know about the new drive.”

“For twice the fuel, you can go
from any point to any other point in space a little faster than normal jump
drives.”

“Ten times faster,” Echo corrected.

Roz’s jaw dropped as she
contemplated the magnitude of the discovery. This was bigger than atomic
energy. “This technology could enable people to leave the confines of Union
space and reach across the gap to other arms of the galaxy, perhaps even to
other galaxies.” Some of the elder races were looking for a way to escape the
Milky Way before Andromeda collided in a few million years.

“Yes, though we dare not use the
secondary drive until we fix the accuracy problem when predicting the exit
point. The present equations don’t adjust for drift in the strong undercurrents.”

At velocities near two thousand
times the speed of light, small errors could lead to enormous and possibly
fatal misjumps. Roz said, “Yeah. That would be bad.”

Roz worked harder than anyone on the six-person crew to get
the small, merchant starship up to code—two shifts a day for four weeks, with
only a couple days off. Still, she never grew tired of the inherent beauty of
the sphere’s design. Whenever she needed to perform common maintenance, she
would invariably find a recessed ring in just the right place to latch onto the
hull. Everything was so smooth and elegant.

While on the bridge, she coordinated
repairs and rebalanced mass. She corrected several safety flaws introduced when
pirates had converted the ship meant for a three-Magi crew. She stocked every
section of the ship with multi-species med kits, spare oxygen, suit patches,
food bars, and flashlights—everything they would need to return the prototype
ship safely to the academy of sages in Magi space.

Soon, Roz ordered crewmembers
around, and they listened. The entire starship became an extension of her will.
She felt invincible. She even proved her worth while discussing drive theory
with Echo. When Roz quoted a journal from a certain Bat physicist, the
astrogator read everything available by Professor Eesan Crakik, convinced he would
be able to solve their drift problem with the subbasement. Echo was so certain of
his value that she selected a long-term route to the academy that detoured
through Bat space. Echo may have decreed the quest, but Roz had to carry it
out.

During the weeks of flying toward
the first jump point, Roz passed the time examining the blueprints of every
model of Magi starship known. This alone had been worth the trip. After
studying their design principles, she could write her own ticket at any dock or
shipyard in the Union.

On the overhead screen, the
astrogator had drawn a gravity line from the nexus in this star system to the
one at their destination. Roz checked the computer-approved approach vector and
handed control over to Echo.

Like a vein in the body of the
galaxy, the star lane would carry them toward the higher-gravity star at over
150 times the speed of light. With consummate skill, Echo guided the starship under
the skin into subspace.

As a mental null, the immersion had
never affected Roz before. Normal people with a connection to the Collective
Unconscious claimed that they could sense the event like sunrise or a distant
sonic boom.

To Roz, this particular jump smacked
her in the nose like a baseball line drive. The jolt continued through to the
back of her brain. Voices clamored for attention, and a wave of dizziness swept
over her.

When Max unstrapped and floated to
her side, her breathing was erratic and she held her hands over her ears. Her
dark, bobbed hair came to points on either side of her face.

“Shiraz, talk to me. What’s wrong?”
His caring voice pulled her back to the bridge.

She could stare into those blue
eyes all day and be at peace. When she tried to convey her list of symptoms,
the words came out jumbled. Max donned a pair of smart goggles from his bag and
asked a series of inane medical questions. Talking with a man she wanted to
date about her last period was a step too far.

Fortunately, a short blonde arrived
in the elevator to provide a distraction. The jumpsuit she had borrowed looked
usable with the sleeves rolled up, but it fit too snugly around the chest and
hips. Ivy had been her best friend for the last year on Eden. They were
roommates again and did yoga together every morning, but the betrayal still
stung. Okay, betrayal was too strong a term, although her actions had been a
definite violation of trust. Ivy had spied on her for a foreign government,
used Roz’s connections at the Eden Space Station to gather more information,
and fiddled with her brain. On the other hand, none of those actions had been
hostile. In fact, Ivy’s extended family, the Llewellyns, had funded Roz’s
university scholarship, and Ivy had opened her home as a friend. Roz could
never stay angry at the pert hairdresser for long.

Concerned, Ivy said, “Echo told me
to hurry. What happened?”

Max wrapped a medical scanner
around Roz’s arm and read results on his goggles. “It’s not anemia this time.
Fatigue played a part—”

Roz sat up straighter. “I’m right
here.”

He ignored her outburst and slapped
another scanner strip on her forehead. “Temperature and intracranial pressure
are normal. No tumors. I’ll start running tests for other causes of auditory
hallucinations.”

The only thing that stopped Roz from
ripping him a new asshole was how concerned he looked. She brushed the curl of
hair near her mouth behind her right ear.

Ivy gripped her hand. “Her brain
shows evidence of psi stimulation.”

“Wasn’t me. I’m mute,” Max said. He
had been the only other person on the bridge during the maneuver.

“Maybe the therapy sessions with Echo
have been working, and she’s healing the brain damage,” Ivy said.

He tore the armband off. “Maybe.
Hopefully. Until I find a cause, she’s off duty.”

“I have too much to do,” Roz
objected.

Ivy prevented her from standing.
“We have almost sixteen days until we leave subspace. You don’t have to be back
in the chair until then.”

Max rubbed her temples. “Does that
hurt?”

“Feels kind of nice.” Roz’s eyes
closed.

“Get her in bed,” the doctor
ordered. “If she tries to leave your room in the next eight hours, I’ll tie her
to her bunk.”

“Prove it,” Ivy whispered.

Roz elbowed her friend and asked the
doctor, “You’re saying I’m just tired?”

He avoided her gaze, contacting the
Saurian captain on the comm. “Kesh, start looking through the personnel at
Prairie station.” There were many environs on the planet, but the major cities
surrounded the central grassland plateau. These cities only reached a hundred
thousand souls each. The hundreds of little towns outside these enclaves were
stuck at 1800s Earth levels until the delicate technology ladder infrastructure
could trickle down. “Once we’re back to normal space, radio the planet if you
need to. We’re hiring a cook, copilot, and a grease monkey to take some of the
load off Roz. Otherwise, she’s going to kill herself and take us with her.”

Ivy soothed her. “Think of this as
a promotion.”

Max nodded. “Our mission is a
marathon, not a sprint. It could take years for us to locate this Bat physicist,
Crakik, who Echo expects to solve the prototype’s problem.”

“Nobody can replace me in the
subbasement drive tubes. We can’t risk anyone outside the team seeing the
quantum capacitors.” Roz refused to be squeezed out of a historic project,
especially after all her work.

“Right.” Max punched up another comm
link. “Reuben, paint radiation biohazard warnings on the tube entrance and fit
them with your best locks. Don’t give anyone a key until I say so.”

Roz began to bluster until Ivy
asked, “So you think she has radiation poisoning of some sort?”

Crap
. Roz had been in that
tube three times more often than anyone else on board. She had even slept there
a couple nights by accident.

“I don’t know.” Max took off his
goggles and wiped a hand over his face. “I’m not a specialist. I patch people
together on the battlefield. I’m sure the ship’s designers never planned for
people to climb inside the active prototype. The Saurian pirates who stole this
craft stripped out or walled off anything they didn’t understand. Maybe they damaged
a safety feature.”

“The designers probably also didn’t
plan for the quantum capacitors to stay charged more than a few seconds,” Roz
guessed. “Am I going to die?”

Max grabbed her other hand. “Not if
I have anything to do with it. Stop taking your cortical meds, and don’t touch
Reuben. His talent can boost mental abilities in a woman. We need to lower the
number of variables.”

“When he touched Ivy during the drive
meltdown, she saw visual overlays.”

“It was an advanced form of aura
sight where I could see your personal representation over time as a sort of
cloud of choices,” Ivy said.

“Have you seen anything since?” Max
asked.

Ivy smiled. “We haven’t had the
time or the energy for more experiments involving prolonged skin-to-skin
contact. Dictator Mendez keeps us pretty busy.”

Max opened the elevator door. “Get
some rest, and we’ll run some tests tomorrow.”

Dazed, Roz let Ivy lead her away.
I
can’t die yet. We’re all going to be famous.

****

Roz dreamed of her father lowering her into the jammed
combine by her ankles. She could feel the blood rushing to her brain and see
her pigtails dangling. She saw herself as a child grabbing a thick vine that
had wedged itself in the gears. She tugged until her adult common sense told
her to stop, trying to change the outcome of her biggest mistake. Freezing the
scene, she analyzed the scenario in the confined space. If it hadn’t been for her
pigtail getting caught, she might have pulled back in time. That was why she
had always worn her hair short since. She had no desire to relive the pain as
the rotating bar cracked her skull and broke her right arm.

The nightmare transitioned to her
dangling upside down in
The Inner Eye’s
quantum capacitor tubes, hair
standing on end. She held a power coupler in one hand, debating whether she
should plug it in and restore the prototype star drive. She experienced a surge
of panic when she realized Ivy hadn’t trimmed her hair in five weeks.

How could she stay safe with long
hair?

Roz spent her first day off sunbathing in her one-piece
swimsuit on a chair in the desert biozone, listening to a novel on her wrist
computer. Though the ship’s biozones were less than 200 meters across, they
provided luxurious recreational space for the crew. “I swear you have more
freckles on your shoulders today.”

Ivy basked on a blanket beside her.
The sun made her golden ringlets lighter as it made her skin darker. “Yeah.
Some of us have to work to get a skin tone like yours. What are you going to do
for fun on Prairie?”

“I saw a brochure with velocipedes—those
three wheelers with huge front tires.”

“This is your only vacation in
months and your first visit to a new world. Why would you pick tricycles?”

Roz blinked. Was Ivy implying she
didn’t have imagination? The insult stung. “You have a better idea?”

Ivy shrugged. “I hear wind wagons
are a wild ride.
That
sounds more your speed.”

The vehicles were based on an Earth
legend about covered wagons that crossed the vast open prairie using sails. Now
Ivy painted her as adventurous and fast. “It does sound fun. Will you be
joining me?”

“I might break a nail, which would
endanger my new cover,” Ivy said. “I’m going to be Kesh’s secretary when we’re
in port, a dumb blonde who files her nails a lot. You’d be surprised how much
people reveal in waiting rooms or while they’re hitting on you.”

“Is your cover identity going to be
sleeping with the boss?” Roz asked with a snort.

The gay Saurian accountant was
posing as his dead brother, the previous captain and pilot of the ship. Aside
from a fondness for skirting the law, the two couldn’t have been less alike.
Despite his scales, Kesh behaved like one of the girls at a spa. They had
buried him up to his frilled, brown neck between them in the hot, relaxing sand.
His head resembled a stuffed wall mounting of a young dragon. To shield his beady,
black eyes from the sun, they had covered his face with a straw hat from Eden.

“No, but I can talk up Kesh’s virility
and Max’s reputation for violence.”

Reuben, unnoticed at the edges of the
biozone until now, protested, “Max is trying to escape that image.”

Ivy, who had her bra undone in
order to tan without lines, resnapped in a hurry.

In coveralls and boots, Reuben
could have passed for an ardent twenty-year-old Human with wooly, black hair
and a broad nose. The abundant hair on the back on his hands didn’t bother Roz;
however, his slotted Goat pupils gave her the willies. “He doesn’t want more
people pressuring him into wet work.”

“
More
people pressuring him?”
asked Roz. “How often does that happen in a normal day?”

“I’m sworn to secrecy on most of
this, but boss left the Trout because she got excited by the fact he killed
without leaving any evidence.”

Roz pulled her knees to her chest.
She felt small compared to the infamous Lisa Troutwine. A little network
research had shown that the woman had worked her way through college as a model.

Ivy asked, “Did Max ever mention
who was behind the assassin school he wiped out?”

“Nah, and he told me not to ask
questions that might draw attention.” Reuben hovered near the door.

“Clearly a Human with a lot of
money who wants to profit from lessons learned during the war. No shortage of
those. Why are you disturbing my harmony?” asked Kesh.

Reuben jumped when the hat on the
sand dune spoke. “I just wanted to tell the ladies that I sent sensor bots
through the capacitor tubes last night. Air quality is fine. No radiation, leaks,
or contaminants. Just this thing embedded in the wall from the explosion. I had
to seal the hole remotely.”

He handed Roz a large diamond from
a broken tennis bracelet. “Thanks. I’ll give the stone back to Max. You spent
all night on this?”

The Goat computer tech nodded. “My
team was at risk. I couldn’t sleep knowing Ivy might …
we
might have
been exposed to something.”

Ivy grinned. “Anything other than
diligence prompt this visit?”

“I just wanted to let you ladies
know that if you get too hot, all you have to do is walk down the hall to our
pond.”

“I didn’t bring a swimsuit,” Ivy
said.

“Never use one myself,” Reuben replied.

Ivy pretended indifference. “There
are other ways to cool down. Right now, I’d kill for a pi
ñ
a colada.”

After the kid brought them a
frozen, fruity, alcoholic concoction, Ivy decided to reward him with a game of
“if you catch me, you can have me.”

Thankfully, the whooping and giggling
lovers left earshot soon after. However, the cacti and the basking Saurian next
to her seemed less scenic without a friend.

Roz put on her skirt wrap and went
looking for Max. Recent discussions about possible tumors and degenerative
brain disorders gave her the bravery to take the initiative. Preferring
gravity, she stuck to the inner ring that held the staterooms, galley, and
elevator. The tunnels were round and smooth, perfectly balanced and safe, with
no sharp edges. The six airlock doors were round and padded, for insulation and
to prevent scratches that led to leaks. The six doors provided access to each
of the pie-shaped wedges on this level. Multi-story cargo areas alternated with
three biozones.

She found Max in the high-value
cargo area, shuffling crates with a hand dolly and grav panels. His chest was
still bandaged, leading her eyes to how well-defined his abs and arms were
without his shirt. He had acquired numerous bruises defending her, as well as
the splinted fingers on his right hand. The spear scar in his side caused her to
stop in mid stride. Reuben had mentioned that nearly all of Max’s scars were
acquired protecting patients in combat zones.

He gritted his teeth as he tugged a
stack of crates left-handed. Even with modern tools, mass still took work to
move.

She held up the diamond. “I have
something for you.”

Distracted, Max halted and turned.
The load kept coasting. Catching sight of her swimsuit, he asked, “Pardon?”

“Brakes!”

He cursed as the heavy crate pinned
his back against a large cryptid fossil that took up a quarter of the wall. Max
cried out in pain.

Roz rushed over. She tugged the
floater gently while lowering the power. He had neglected the dead-man-switch
safety feature.

Freed, he collapsed onto his side.
“Ribs. Back.”

She knew she couldn’t carry him
alone. Instead, she signaled for help on her comm immediately and tried to cover
him with her wrap to prevent shock. Roz liked his earthy scent of sweat with a
subtle undertone of liniment. Her father would rub such ointments into aching
muscles.

He pushed the clothing away. “M’okay.”

“What the hell did you think you
were doing?”

Max grunted. “Someone has to
rearrange this. Kesh shoveled things into the bay in the order they arrived.
I’m trying to put the things that leave first up front and the long-term items
in back.”

“A man after my own heart,” she
joked. She could see the geodes being valuable for art and jewelry, and the
price per kilogram was solid. The crates of wine near the garage-style exit
door, next to the mailbags, confused her. “Why would the farmers on Prairie care
about wine? They make their own.”

“Ah. This is
imported
from the
estate of Eden’s former governor,” said Max, shifting to find a less agonizing
position. “Rich ranchers want to give the appearance of style and
sophistication. Of course, none of them will know wine the way you do. Maybe
you can sell a few of them with your fancy descriptions.”

“Sure.” She licked her lips.
“Should we haul you to the sunroom? The heated sand might feel good on your
aches.”

“Sand gets everywhere, and I’d have
to clean it out of the filters on the bridge. I’ll use a heat pack.”

Reuben dashed into the room, naked
and dripping wet. “What hurts most, boss?”

A glimpse of his llama-like split
feet and shaggy legs caused Roz to avert her gaze. She handed him her wrap to
block other hairy things she did not want to know about.

“My pride, followed by my jaw, and
the back injury from Vegas.”

Reuben accepted the covering as he
explained, “Max grinds his teeth under stress, and he has an old back injury
that never healed right. Took out a Phib gangster—”

“Don’t like the word old,” Max
mumbled.

Fragile male ego or guarded
against sharing his past?
Roz said, “We’ll schedule a dentist appointment
for him on Prairie. In the meantime, we’ll make a stretcher out of these boards
and drag him to bed.”

****

Once Max was settled and the pain meds had time to kick in, Roz
brought a food tray to his bedroom. Minder, the ship’s AI, had never revoked
her access, but she wanted to be respectful. She tapped and waited for his
response.

“What?” Max snapped.

The door slid open automatically.
Inside, he lay flat on his back with a pillow tucked under his knees. The room
was immaculate for a bachelor’s. Every time Max left, his pet mimic made the
bed and rearranged everything to look the same as the night of its escape from
the Saurian hunters.

She put the tray on his nightstand
and closed the door. “Do you need me to feed you or bring anything over to the
bed?”

“Not hungry. Don’t want chopped
fruit.”

She rolled her eyes. He claimed he
wanted to try a vegetarian lifestyle, but then he would refuse to eat anything
wholesome.

She pulled up a chair and placed
the bowl of mixed fruit cubes on her lap. “I didn’t bring the fruit for you. I
brought it for Jeeves.” As soon as she said his name, the blue-gray blankets on
the top shelf of the shallow stateroom closet rustled. The wrinkled four-legged
creature thumped to the floor in its excitement. “Momma has yummies,” she
cooed, and the creature scampered over to her lap and buried its stomach-mouth
in the bowl.

“Careful. He’s shy and doesn’t like
when people—”

Roz ran her hand over the soft
pelt, which gradually changed colors to match the tan shorts she had pulled on
over her suit. The beady eyes closed in pleasure, and it grunted. “Jeeves is
just a toddler. All toddlers like to be held and loved.”

Max just stared in disbelief.

Once the mimic finished the bowl of
fruit, it shambled to her shoulder, taking the aspect of a shawl the same
navy-blue as her one-piece.

“He’s warmer now,” Roz whispered.
“Probably asleep.”

Awkwardly, Max said, “Thanks for
the rescue. Sorry I’m not a very good host today. I should be healed up by the
time we make port.”

“This
is
the third time I’ve
saved your bacon. You could make it up to me by racing wind wagons with me on
my time off.”

“No way.”

“Too strenuous for someone your
age?” she teased.

“I’m only a couple years older than
you. If I threw my back out in the field, I couldn’t protect you. The mission
would be finished.”

The mission.
She changed tactics.
“Fine. The others will be handling cargo and station bargaining, so it’s up to
the two of us to hire my three replacements.”

“Right.”

“I’ve looked over the list of
qualified sous chefs and narrowed it down to twenty restaurants from the
tourist guidebooks. My mom was a cook for our camp, so I know the basics of
food processing. All the women in our family were good cooks, a baby in one hand
and a stirring spoon in the other.” That was the last time she had felt close
to her mother, as they had so little in common. “You could help me screen them.
We could visit two restaurants a day while we searched for the mechanic and
copilot.”
Romantic dinners for
ten days. Not a bad compromise.

“Sure,” Max said. “Why not head
chefs?”

“Because they’re tied down running
their own restaurants. The sous does all the work for no glory. We could find
someone with useful secondary skills willing to work for passage to a corporate
world where chefs are in demand.”

He nodded. “If we like the guy—”

She held up a finger. “Or gal.”

“Right. We sweeten the deal a
little so they stay.”

“We could offer to bankroll a new
restaurant for them when we return from Bat and Magi space.”

“That could take years,” Max said.

Roz shrugged. “Still a more
promising career path than a small pond like Prairie.”

“We’ll pose as wine sellers and
take a few suitcases of the good stuff to pedal to people who frequent high-end
restaurants. To those interested, we’ll hand out invitations to Kesh’s
exclusive auction.” When she seemed puzzled, he explained, “You need a cover
story so you can ask people questions without raising suspicions. No one will
tell you the truth about a worker if they know you’re out to steal them.”

“Sure, and we’ll bring Eden
table-wine samples for the lower-end restaurants.” Roz stood, lifting the
sleeping mimic. She walked the meter to the closet opposite the bathroom door. Stretching
on her tiptoes, she placed Jeeves gently on top of its normal blanket roost,
and it snuggled back in. When she turned her head, she caught Max staring at
her legs and behind, which flustered her.
He must be groggy from the drugs.
“I
should go,” she whispered.

“No. You made me realize something.
We’re both barred from duty, but there’s no reason we can’t spend the time
together, working on a personal goal—one we could both enjoy.”

The room felt too warm. His voice
hypnotized her. She couldn’t run. She could barely breathe. “Hmm?”

“It would help Jeeves, too.”

She blinked, totally lost.

Max reached under his mattress and pulled
out something thick. “I think it’s time to share this with you and let you take
some of the weight off me.”