Fluency (28 page)
Ei’Brai’s voice vibrated in an effusive manner that she hadn’t heard before. “This endeavor has
proceeded more than satisfactorily, Qua’dux Jane Holloway. We work proficiently together, despite our nascent alliance. As I predicted, we comprise a union far superior to the sum of its components. An illustrious future awaits us. There will be elaborate tales woven into great tapestries of narrative about this exalted day. The female Terran, Quasador Dux Jane Holloway and the sislix Kubodera, Ei’Brai.”
Jane didn’t reply. She wasn’t in it for fame and glory on some remote planet. He knew that.
He wasn’t really either—well, not much anyway. It was just easier for him to say these kinds of things than to express gratitude for her companionship, for accepting the role he knew she didn’t really want. But she knew how he felt. It was an undercurrent in every conversation. She wasn’t ready to acknowledge it yet. It was too fresh.
She stretched and flexed within the suit, retrieving the muscle memory she needed to operate it smoothly, and turned to resume her course toward chamber 246.
* * *
Finally, Jane activated a cutting tool embedded in the armor and carefully circumscribed the outline of the hatch. There was a loud hiss as the pressure between the two environments equalized. Jane grasped the hatch and lifted it outward with exceeding slowness, so as not to alarm anyone inside.
Even with Ei’Brai’s preparation, she was shocked. Walsh was slumped in a corner, his eyes vacant and glazed over. Ajaya was perched on top of Gibbs, hammering a fist into his face, repeatedly. Gibbs pulled his knees to his chest and used them to push Ajaya off him. Ajaya picked up a piece of analytical equipment and raised it over her head when she caught sight of Jane.
Jane backed up a step. “Ajaya? It’s me, Jane, inside this suit.”
Ajaya growled. Her eyes had gone feral. She launched herself at the opening in the hatch, clambered through, and knocked Jane to the floor.
The HUD flashed several options. One of them was an anti-combatant sedative injection. That sounded like a fantastic idea. The suit calculated Ajaya’s mass and prepared the dose.
Ajaya raged on top of Jane, spittle flying,
hair whipping around her face.
Jane stayed limp and rocked in the suit until the dose was ready so she wouldn’t inadvertently hurt Ajaya.
A sound came from the capsule. It was Gibbs climbing out of the hatch. His face was bloody, contorted and swollen. Ajaya ceased beating Jane’s armored head against the floor and turned, eyes wild.
It was the perfect opportunity. Jane injected her in the stomach.
Ajaya bucked and screamed, but fell limp on top of Jane a second later.
Jane eased Ajaya to the floor and rolled to her feet. She held out a hand. “It’s me, Ron. It’s Jane.”
He shook his head slowly. He circled her in a crouch. He was like a coiled cat, ready to pounce, but warily exploring his options before deciding his next move.
Jane realized he might slip out the door into the hallway. She didn’t relish the idea of chasing him around the ship. Ei’Brai shut that door before Jane could even formulate a question.
That seemed to make the decision for Gibbs. He barreled into Jane, knocking her back into the capsule with a crash. She was ready with the sedative. It was over a second later.
Jane slipped Gibbs to the floor and staggered back to survey the scene. She felt a little weak from the emotional turmoil of the day. What would she have done if the decades-old sedative hadn’t worked? She didn’t want to contemplate that.
Ei’Brai was silent. The nanites had not been his fault. She couldn’t blame him for this. They’d taken a million different risks when they stepped aboard the Speroancora and a million more when they’d gone in without protective suits. The nanites were programed to seek out and attach themselves to humanoids. It was a small miracle that she and Alan had remained clear.
The tight quarters of the capsule must have allowed the nanites to infect all three of them and replicate rapidly. Ei’Brai had been correct when he’d dissuaded her—she wouldn’t want to be in any of their heads right now. All three of them needed some quality time in the Sanalabreum. She just hoped it would be able to reverse the damage done to them.
She slipped back into the hallway for the stretcher she’d left there and piled all three of their bodies onto it. It was undignified, but they’d never know as long as she got them all to the medical chambers as soon as possible.
She retracted the helmet as she pushed off for the nearest deck transport. The worst of this business was over. It was time to tie up the remaining loose ends from her past and look ahead.
The future seemed inscrutable, formidable, frightening, but…exciting.
She couldn’t wait.
27
The Squid said Jane was in the captain’s quarters—the Qua’dux’s quarters. Whatever. She’d taken up residence there, called it home, apparently, and that’s where she was. Bergen was pacing the corridor just outside her door, attempting to minimize his limp, and rehearsing what he hoped to say to her
…if he could just get it to come out right.
Where are we?
Where do we stand, Jane?
Or
….
Where do I stand, in your life?
Do we have a future?
Do you want one?
What do you want?
Is it
…my leg?
Ugh. No.
He looked down at the leg, disguised inside a fresh flight suit.
Don’t say anything about the goddamn leg. Just relax. Smile. Be charming as all fuck and it should be fine.
Everything was going great until the damn Squid messed ev
erything up. Alan wasn’t aware of all the details, since he’d been on an extended stay in Jello-land, but the squid got what he wanted from Jane, it seemed, and she hadn’t been the same since.
He shook his head. They’d survived. He guessed that’s all that really mattered. All six of them would make it back alive, if not completely intact. A normal life was within their grasp, for most of them, anyway. He still wasn’t sure about Walsh.
Bergen wondered if Varma had included in her mission report the incident that happened a few days prior when they’d attempted to take Walsh out of the tank prematurely in preparation for the upcoming meeting today. Walsh had been disoriented, narcoleptic, then suffered a grand mal seizure, so they’d hurriedly plopped him back in to marinate a while longer.
It hadn’t been pretty. The reprobate nanites clearly inflicted some pretty extensive damage to Walsh’s central nervous system. However, Compton had been infected the longest and he was fine now, so theoretically Walsh should be the same eventually. While things hadn’t turned out as Walsh predicted, the irony of him po
ssibly being the only one left with a serious deficiency wasn’t lost on Berg.
They were so close to home, now. Jane could have them home in a matter of hours. He could almost taste the
french fries. They were going to be heroes when they got back. Not only that, they’d be bringing home the most exciting piece of technology man had ever known. He was going to savor every moment of dismantling this ship and learning its every nook and cranny. He was already picking out teams of engineers in his head, along with their initial assignments.
He turned on his heel and decided he’d gimped back and forth long enough. If he didn’t get on with it, the Squid might tell her he was out there, assuming he hadn’t already.
Alan had decided to exclude the Squid from his thoughts as much as possible, as soon as he got out of the tank. It was too disorienting to have all that extra shit going on all the time. It was advantageous for problem solving in a crisis, but a nuisance otherwise. It was simply another form of communication and vocal speech worked just fine, thank you very much.
He knew he could get used to it eventually, but he just didn’t feel like it. It was a bit of false advertising. It hadn’t brought him any closer to Jane at all. Quite the opposite, it seemed.
Maybe he was being petty or childish or stupid. He probably was. He didn’t fucking care.
It was actually fun, there for a while—studying the alien tech, solving the puzzle, proposing a solution—being right. That was the kind of stuff he lived for. Then, while he healed and the cybernetic leg was being installed, there’d been the long conversations with Ei’Brai about technology, theoretical physics, astronomy—all the stuff that just geeked him the fuck out. That probably kept him from going nuts in there.
The concept of anipraxia, alone, blew his mind. It wasn’t some paranormal mumbo jumbo. It wasn’t magic. It was fucking quantum entanglement!
On a quantum scale, particles inside organelles located in Ei’Brai’s brain reached a singlet state with particles of comparable organelles within the mind of whomever he was anipraxing with—allowing communication far more instantaneous and comprehe
nsive than speech. It shouldn’t be possible, but the Squid said the human grasp on quantum mechanics was in its infancy. And there were realms beyond that humans hadn’t even glimpsed yet.
But the guy’s arrogance
…his possessive attitude about Jane…his smug surety about everything was too much to take. Bergen knew damn well they had a lot in common. Maybe that’s what it was all about. Jane didn’t need him anymore because she had the Squid. He felt useless. Completely emasculated.
Fuck
.
Alan opened the hand that was about to knock on her door and splayed it out across the door’s surface. His forehead joined it there and he closed his eyes.
Jane
. He hardly knew her. All the softness had gone out of her. There was a stern set to her mouth now that never went away and she rarely smiled these days.
But they were going home. They could have
their happily ever after. As long as he didn’t screw it up.
Jane was playing close to the vest. He’d tried over the last few weeks to get closer to her, to rekindle something between them, but she was cool and preoccupied, so he’d reluctantly left her alone.
She was busy. She methodically went through all the decks swarming with critters and blasted all that shit to oblivion. Then she began repairs—not how you might expect, though. She collected freshly made nanites and distributed them by hand to critical places all over the ship—the engine room, life support, and all the last known locations that were critically damaged by the slimy monsters. It was time-consuming and she worked around the clock. He tried to help, once he got out of the damn Jello-bath, but he just felt like he was in the way.
She didn’t need him wielding a wrench. That stung. He tried not to dwell on it. He wasn’t a damn whiner.
It was a lot. He knew that. He wasn’t stupid. He just didn’t think she needed to go through it all alone. It wouldn’t be weak to lean on him, just a little, when no one was looking. He hated that the only person she was leaning on was a goddamn telepathic space-squid.
If he could just break through whatever barrier was between them. If he could just get things back to the way they were—the playful banter, the warm looks, the smiles that made her eyes glow and his loins throb.
He banged his forehead against the door then panicked when he realized he’d just knocked and covered it by pounding on the door loudly and taking a few steps back.
She came to the door looking confused. “Alan? It’s almost
time for the teleconference. Are you ready?”
He glanced at his watch and blanched internally. He’d just pr
ocrastinated away all his time. He’d meant to come sooner, have a long heart-to-heart with her.
He’d fucked up. Again.
He faked a smile and a relaxed posture. “Yeah. Yeah. I was just hoping to have a word with you before it begins.”
Her eyebrows drew together. “A new batch of squillae was just manufactured. I was about to walk down there and dump them into the electrical system before heading to the bridge. Walk with me?”
He smiled genuinely this time. It was cool to watch those shimmering, swarming masses of nanites spread out and disappear before their eyes, off to do their invisible work. But a knot had formed in his belly. This was not going how he’d imagined. “Sure. Of course.”
He gave her an appreciative, sidelong appraisal. She’d scrounged up some
exotic-looking, alien uniform made of thick, creamy fabric. The asymmetrical, tunic-length jacket had a high, stiff collar that wound around her throat and seemed to force her chin up and out into an almost defensive position. One of the overlapping fronts of the jacket was heavily embroidered with a non-contrasting thread. It was cut into three uneven sections that each split off to wrap around her torso in a different way.
One section went over her chest and up around her neck. A
nother wound under her breasts. The third swathed her hips. The embroidery continued down long, narrow ties that wrapped around her body, culminating in ornate knots on the opposite-front side. Rather than being loose like a robe, it hugged her body, accentuating her feminine curves. It was an impressive and commanding outfit—if he didn’t think too much about its resemblance to a straight jacket.
They walked in silence for a bit, the soft whirring and clacking of his leg the only sound audible in the empty hallway. As usual, she was tight-lipped. He longed to reach for her hand, but was afraid to. Suddenly he blurted out, “Did I do something that pissed you off?”
Shit. That’s not what I meant to ask.
She stopped walking, a quizzical expression on her face.
Bergen could almost feel the Squid’s tentacles insinuating themselves inside his brain. He concentrated on keeping him locked out, but it might have been too late.
Her face had gone pale. Was she feeling guilty? “Alan? I h
aven’t meant to hurt you—”
His teeth clenched. He made his lips form words. They soun
ded angry to his ears and he didn’t know why. “You haven’t hurt me! Goddamn it!”
“It’s not that I don’t want
…there’s a lot on my plate. This transition has been difficult. I thought you understood that. I’m trying to adjust. I’m trying to make important decisions. This isn’t just about us.”
He stared at her, trying to process her words, her tone, but he was seething with feelings.
“You’re shutting me out.” He flinched. Why did that just sound like an accusation?
She shook her head. Her tone turned plaintive. “No. Never. You shut me out and you know it.”
He took a step back from her, his heart hammering painfully against his ribcage. “I shut the Squid out. Isn’t there a difference, Jane?”
She looked hurt and he regretted the words instantly.
Her expression hardened. “I don’t have the energy for this, right now. Your timing couldn’t be worse—”
Was it his imagination? Had she just swallowed down the words, “as usual?” Or had the squid jumped in and subtly fed the suggestion of them to him to start shit? Did it matter?
His heart screamed,
Grab her! Kiss her! Tell her—we can have it all!
He nodded and worked his jaw. “Right. Never mind.”
“Alan, please try to understand. Now…just might not be…our time.”
He stared at her pained expression a moment longer, then turned and walked away, alone.