Beauty and the Fleet (Intergalactic Fairy Tales Book 2) (6 page)

"Any volunteers?" asked Gadget when they'd placed the last box.

The words were barely out of his mouth when Pickle began to climb. It wasn't difficult. The way they'd stacked the boxes made a stair pattern along the edge. They were tall steps for someone of Pickle's height, but she scrambled to the top in no time. "I think this might work," Pickle called from the top, her voice ringing with laughter.

"Pickle, get down from there," shouted Torch.

While they'd all been looking up at her, he'd had his eyes on the base of the structure. It was starting to buckle under her weight. They all lunged forward to place themselves between Pickle and the hard deck, but Gadget got there first, and just in time. Pickle lost her balance and pitched forward right on top of him. They both went down in a heap. Beatrix and the other two men stared down at them, their mouths agape.

Pickle looked up and started laughing again. "That was quite a ride. Thanks for catching me, Gadget." Before he had a chance to respond, Pickle leaned down and planted a long kiss on his lips.

"Uhhh, you're welcome," said Gadget, his brow furrowed in pain. "Also, I think my hip might be broken."

The rest of them helped Pickle up and she immediately started pacing, her eyes never leaving Gadget. Beatrix wasn't sure how she'd missed it, but they'd obviously developed something deeper than friendship in the last couple of weeks.

Torch and Hands examined Gadget for a couple of minutes and then helped him to his feet. "Not broken," said Hands.

"Just very badly bruised," added Torch. "He's going to be fine."

"And now we'll never hear the end of how he was right about the boxes," said Beatrix with a groan.

"You're damn right," retorted Gadget without much venom. If he hadn't been in so much pain, Beatrix was sure he would have been smiling.

They spent the rest of the day sitting around the pile of their flight suits like they had before the escape attempt, but no longer in silence. They talked and joked about the times they'd had back on Nedra and Beatrix remembered what it was like to laugh again. Gadget didn't even complain about his hip. One by one they drifted off to sleep, smiles still on their faces.

Beatrix, however, was awake on her grey sleeping pallet, staring up into the dim lighting that always hovered at about the level of dusk. It was the middle of the "night", but she couldn't sleep. When she heard the dull thump of another supply drop hit the ground on the other side of the bay, she decided she might as well go open the world's most boring present. It was better than being left alone with her thoughts. Or worse, her nightmares. Most nights she only managed a couple hours of sleep. She couldn't push her fears aside. She knew there would be a day when she would come face to face with their captors and find out exactly why they were being held. In her nightmares she was subjected to endless types of torture. They always ended the same way though. She was stabbed through the back with a long knife and could feel it push out through her chest. Most of the time she woke up with a shriek and the others would startle awake. They'd mostly grown used to it by now. Pickle would take her hand, squeeze it, and go back to sleep.

So she was glad for the distraction of the small grey box. It was smaller than usual. Not much larger than a loaf of bread. Beatrix bent down and scooped up the small package, curiosity winning out over wariness. She popped open the metal clasp that held it shut. Inside, wrapped in a plain grey cloth, was something completely unexpected and somehow foreign in this environment. It was a book. Not just any book. It was a Nedran book by her favorite author, Jacque Carroway. It wasn't her favorite of his novels, but she'd still read it enough times that the binding had begun to crack. Instinctively, she caressed the spine and found it heavily worn. When her fingers brushed the cover and found a sticky spot from where the price tag had been peeled away, she jerked back her hand as if she'd been bitten. Her copy had come from a second-hand store and she never could get off the sticky goo from the sticker on the cover. Tentatively, she flipped the book open to the cover page and gasped. It was hard to make out in the dim light, but there was a handwritten note. It was so familiar to her that she didn't even need to read it, though she did, over and over again. It read:
To Beatrix, a true fan and friend, Jacque Carroway.

This wasn't just any copy of
A Dark Beauty
. It was
her
copy of
A Dark Beauty
. From her house. She looked up toward the ceiling, her eyes wide, and dropped the book on the floor. If she just turned around and walked back to bed, she was certain she would wake up and it wouldn't be there any more. Just another twisted nightmare to avoid thinking about while she was awake.

That didn't happen. Slowly her gaze returned to the floor, and the book was still there, resolutely denying its imaginary status. It didn't make any sense at all. The book being there felt like a violation. She could imagine eyes peering down at her from the dark reaches of the ceiling and it made her skin crawl. How could they have a book that had belonged to her back on Nedra? This ship had been coming from Colarian air space.

Realization slowly crept up her spine and made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. She hadn't seen that book in years, not since her father died. Its loss had gone unmarked in her grief at the time. Later, she thought she'd lost it or left it behind when she'd taken her things to live at the orphanage. Now it was there on the floor and there was only one way it could have gotten there.

The face of the monster that killed her father reared up in her mind's eye. She clutched at her chest, expecting to feel the point of a knife, her breathing coming out in ragged gasps. Beatrix closed her eyes and slumped down to the floor, wrapping her arms around her legs. The beast may be on the ship, but he wasn't in the room. If he were, he wouldn't have dropped the book from the ceiling. She forced herself to calm her breathing and think rationally. There was no reason for him to have dropped that book other than to mess with her head, and she wasn't about to let that happen.

Beatrix glanced around her warily to make sure none of her friends were around and then walked over and scooped up the book and the box it had come in. She took them both and climbed into the cockpit of her Talon to hide them. While the Talons were completely useless, they each still spent a little time in them every couple of days, and nobody would ever climb into another's Talon. Nobody ever climbed into the ones abandoned by Red and Butch either, but they might some day. At least that's the excuse she gave herself for hiding it in her own. She never once questioned her decision to hide the book. It was a weakness. Being held prisoner was already more weakness than she could stand.

CHAPTER TEN

Several days passed with no further strange incidents. Just endless days of milling about the bay, wondering if they had made it to Colar, the Colarian home world. They both dreaded and hoped for it. When it happened, at least it would bring change.

Only Pickle and Gadget seemed somewhat content to continue as they were. Beatrix watched their blossoming romance with curiosity, and if she was honest, a touch of jealousy. If they hadn't been thrust into this situation, they would have never gotten together. Whenever she saw them sneak off together, she would climb into her Talon and stare at the little grey box.

"You know, if you want to pleasure yourself, you could do it in the shower like the rest of us. You don't have to hide up there," called Hands from down on the ground.

"Don't be such a pervert," replied Beatrix, her cheeks burning just like she had been caught with her hand down her pants. "I just need some time to be alone. I'm an introvert. I love you guys, but being around you all the time is draining."

"Wow, I was just messing around, but now I want to know what you're doing up there." His voice moved a little closer, as if he were getting on the ladder to climb up.

"If your head pops up into view, expect it to be knocked the hell off," growled Beatrix, certain that she was only making him more curious. She also knew that he would never violate her space like that.

"Oh, you know I have no desire to taste your sting," he called back. Beatrix could almost hear him wink at her.

"Why don't you go take a shower, you pervert, and leave me alone with my thoughts."

"I think I might do just that," said Hands, not a trace of shame in his voice as he walked toward the bathroom.

Once she was certain he was gone, Beatrix reached down and picked up the box. If she was already being accused of hiding something, she might as well be guilty of it. Reading wasn't easy in the low light of the bay, but the words were familiar enough that she managed it. She only read the first few pages. All the while, her heart raced, and her face burned with shame. She was betraying her father's memory with each word; her promise not to read fiction until her revenge was complete echoed in her head. And she was lying to her friends. She also felt alive for the first time in weeks, maybe years. In just those first few pages she was wrapped in the words of her favorite author and somehow, though she knew the female spy lead character was headed for tragedy, Beatrix felt hope again.

At the end of the first chapter, the shame became too much and she closed the book. She stuffed it hurriedly back into its box and hid it in the shadows at her feet.

Hands was sitting on his sleeping pallet when she walked up, his hair wet from his shower. "Feel better now?" she asked, a slight smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

"Much. Thank you," he replied, somehow making the thank you suggestive. Maybe it was just in her head.

"Well, I think I'll go ahead and take one too." She winked at him and then gathered up her plain grey Colarian clothes and walked toward the head.

As usual, her shower was a place for thinking, rather than a place for pleasuring herself. She found that when she was in the shower her mind was too alive with ideas for anything else. This time she pondered all of her favorite novels and their beloved characters. She hadn't realized how much she missed them until she read that first chapter. Now her thoughts raced along carefully crafted plots and love stories both bittersweet and sickly sweet.

Again, her thoughts turned unwillingly to her own love life, or lack thereof. She couldn't imagine what her life would have been like if her father were still alive. She definitely would have left their village, and regardless of what her father thought, she wouldn't have married that brute George. Even though she'd joined the Fleet and her perspective on that had changed, George was still an asshole. Still, she could very well have found love by this point in her life. Now though, her life was so simple, she had no idea how she could ever relate to someone worth having. All she had to talk about was her kill count and strategies to be more efficient. Not very diverse, as conversation went. It wasn't like she didn't have other interests; at least she'd traveled.

Beatrix had been all over the star system and heard about the new worlds that had been discovered while hunting for Colarian bases. There were rumors of magic and adventure unlike anything found on Nedra. When other soldiers brought the new worlds up, her curiosity always pulled her to eavesdrop, but she never participated in the conversation. Whenever she found herself opening her mouth to ask a question about a tea that made you small, dust that could make you fly, or a giant flying lizard, she shook her head and retreated to her bunk and dug out her books on the Colarians.

Now, while in the custody of her mortal enemies, she found herself brimming with questions about the other worlds out there. While getting dressed in her baggy, ugly Colarian clothes, she realized she was probably heading toward one of those other worlds. Sure, all she would see of it is the inside of a cell, but maybe she could at least find out why everything they made was the same damnable shade of grey. That way she could have something interesting to talk about on a date some day. If she ever had one.

Beatrix sighed heavily and stepped out of the head. Her life had been much simpler a few hours before, when all she had cared about was killing as many Colarians as possible. Now she had the nagging feeling that she might want to actually live her life, just when she was certain she didn't have much of one left.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"Whatcha thinkin' about?" asked Hands, snapping his pocket watch closed and sitting up on his sleeping pallet.

"Just wondering why everything the Colarians make is grey," replied Beatrix, still lying on her pallet and staring vacantly up at the ceiling. Several days had passed since reading the first chapter of
A Dark Beauty
and she had already finished it once and was starting it again. "It just doesn't make any sense."

"I've always just assumed they were color blind, so the color wouldn't matter to them."

"No, that doesn't add up. There's no way that plastic, metal, cloth, and every other material just happens to end up grey because they don't see color." Beatrix had heard that theory dozens of times over the years and even read it in some prominent scientific journals. It hadn't seemed important to her until a few days ago, and she'd dismissed that theory almost immediately.

"Well, I guess I don't really care as long as the bastards are still spilling red Nedran blood all over the place."

"Right..." Beatrix was surprised to find herself ready to argue with Hands. It wasn't that she disagreed with the idea of taking out the Colarians. It was that something didn't quite make sense to her now that she had all this time to sit around and think. There wasn't enough information to draw any real conclusions; only enough to keep her finding more unanswered questions. One repeated itself to her over and over so often she felt something akin to physical pain when it crossed her mind.

Why had they given her the book?

She steadfastly refused to think of it being the Colarian who had murdered her father any more, but there wasn't any other way for that book to have gotten there. One time that thought had put her into a mental tailspin so violent she practically went catatonic. Torch had found her spiraling down that rabbit hole and literally slapped her back to reality. Since then, she always thought of the book dropper as a nameless faceless group of Colarians. That way it wasn't anything personal. If it was less of a personal violation, then it was alright for her to read the book. It was fuzzy logic, but that book was all she had to keep her from going insane with all the waiting they were doing.