gaian consortium 05 - the titan trap (5 page)

Her rule had always been: Never bring men back to the ship. They weren’t so thick on the ground that she had to enforce that rule very often, but she’d stuck to it. This place was her only sanctuary, and she’d never had a relationship so serious that she wanted the man in question to come with her to the
Avalon
, and that was even after her father died and she had the freighter to herself.

Now, though, Derek Tagawa seemed to fill the cramped little chamber, his head almost touching the ceiling. Strange, because he hadn’t seemed that tall before. And thank God she actually had tidied up this morning, a little ritual she practiced whenever she made planetfall, like actually putting on makeup before she ventured out into Luna City during her layovers there.

“The comm’s here,” she said, pointing at the small console, which — thank God again — was set into the wall opposite the bed, instead of above it. Her father had never adequately explained why he had a second comm system, although she guessed it was because he’d been involved in a few shady dealings before he’d somehow managed to secure the Titan contract.

That had been a long time ago, back when her mother was still around. Actually, although Owen had never given Cassidy the particulars, she had the impression that it was the very Titan contract which had broken up their marriage, that her mother had walked because she didn’t want to be an absentee wife to a man who was only around ten days out of every thirty.

Of course, that didn’t explain why she hadn’t taken Cassidy with her.

Shaking her thoughts loose from the unpleasant past, she went on, “I suppose you’ll need to be back here to monitor the comm, so I’ll just stay up in the cockpit.”

That suggestion made Derek frown. “You have to sleep sometime, don’t you?”

“Oh, I sleep in the pilot’s chair all the time,” she replied with a casual wave of one hand. “It’s no trouble.”
And I doubt I’ll sleep a wink while you’re on board my ship anyway, so it doesn’t really matter where I am, whether it’s back here or up in the cockpit.

“Even so — ”

“It’s fine. And really, it’s going to be a while before we meet up with them, so you might as well get some rest. I’ll just need to change the bedclothes for you.”

The thought of him sleeping in her bed disturbed her, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. She couldn’t move the comm, and it was no use to put him in the smaller sleeping chamber across the hall, the one that had been hers until she inherited the ship and the larger captain’s quarters — not that they were anything to write home about, being three meters square and mostly filled by the bed and the console that contained the comm.

Derek didn’t say anything for a few seconds, only watched her with narrowed eyes, as if attempting to discover what she was really up to. At length he gave the smallest of shrugs, then said, “Thank you. I’ll admit I could use some sleep. But make sure to wake me if anything changes.”

What exactly he expected to change, when they were out in the middle of the Solar System’s equivalent of nowhere, she wasn’t sure. Rather than argue, though, she replied, “Sure. Let me take care of that bed for you.”

So she knelt and pulled out one of the storage drawers under the bed, extracting a set of fresh sheets, and went to work stripping the old ones off the bed and putting on the fresh set. They really hadn’t been due for changing, as she’d swapped them out only a little more than a week ago, but no way was she going to have him lying on sheets she’d already slept on.

During this procedure he lingered in the doorway, as there really wasn’t enough space in the chamber for him to be there while she worked. “Thank you,” he said again, as she twitched the thin synth-cotton coverlet in place, then stepped away.

“It’s nothing.” She had to walk past him to get out of the room and into the equally cramped corridor, and something about being that physically close to him as she squeezed past made her want to hold her breath, as if she thought he would reach out to touch her. That was stupid, though. Except for that one admiring glance, which she’d probably imagined, he’d been completely neutral, completely correct, with her.

His mouth opened, as if he’d meant to say something else, but then he closed it again, instead giving her a nod. Once she was out in the corridor, he pushed the button to shut the door.

So much for him being hot for your body,
she chided herself, grimly taking the few strides it required for her to get back to the cockpit, after which she settled down in the captain’s chair and stared out into the darkness. Everything seemed calm and still, their speed not great enough to show the stars actually moving, although they were still traveling at many thousands of miles per hour. Realspace, of course; the
Avalon,
being an intra-system ship, wasn’t even equipped with a subspace drive. She’d often wondered what it would be like to pilot a real ship, one that could take her far away from Gaian space so she could see worlds she’d read about but had never visited: Eridani, Nova Angeles, even dry, dusty Iradia.

The chances of her getting to any of those places were probably a lot lower than her chances of ending up in a Consortium prison somewhere, and she sighed. Unlike Derek’s former associate back on Gaia, she certainly didn’t have friends and family in high places who could bail her out. She had no one at all.

Those were the sorts of thoughts she generally wouldn’t allow herself to entertain, as she knew they weren’t at all productive. But now, with an escaped convict sleeping in her room, and a GDF squadron hastening to intercept them — whether or not said squadron really did have members of the underground sprinkled among its ranks — she thought she’d earned some good old self-pity. Really, she still hadn’t quite determined why the universe apparently had it out for her, but even the most impartial of observers would be hard-pressed to deny that her whole life had been one spectacular run of bad luck after another.

Cassidy pulled in a breath, then another. Okay, sure, things had never been easy, but so far she’d survived everything thrown at her, and she’d survive this, too, no matter what happened. Anyway, she was sick of the Titan run, sick of the endless weeks with no company other than the “entertainment” the Consortium beamed out to every planet, station, and ship in the system. Trying to lull the population with a steady stream of carefully edited news, interplanetary sports, vapid “reality” shows, ongoing serials with plot lines so improbable she couldn’t believe anyone took them seriously? That was about the size of it. So maybe having the
Avalon
impounded would be just the kick in the pants she needed to change things, to get out of here and start over fresh.

Very brave,
she told herself.
If dumping the supply gig and hooking up with some random guy so you could get set up with a homestead on a colony far away from here is so great, why haven’t you done it before this?

Inertia. Entropy. The irrational fear that the shade of her father would rise up and chastise her for getting rid of the
Avalon,
the only thing he’d ever seemed to care about all that much?

Who knew? In the end, it really didn’t matter, because she was here now, and she would have to deal with the situation one way or another. At this point, about the most she could probably hope for was not getting vaporized when the GDF squadron finally did show up. Its pilots weren’t really known for their restraint.

She didn’t know how long she sat there, brooding, until her eyelids drooped and she fell asleep, the blackness of space and the darkness behind her eyelids blending and becoming one. All she did know was that she dreamed fitfully, nightmarish images of hands coming out of the dark and grabbing her, and behind it an incessant, low-pitched
chug-chug-chug
sound, which her mind told her was the processing plant, chewing up bodies, and the hands were reaching for her because they were going to throw her down into the blackness to be processed with all the other corpses. Their fingers were cold because they actually belonged to the dead, and she tried to scream, tried to claw herself free, but they were too strong —

“Cassidy!”

A male voice, one she didn’t recognize at first. She blinked and saw Derek Tagawa peering down at her, brow creased with concern.

“Are you all right?”

Was she? She reached up and touched a hand to her forehead, which felt clammy with cold sweat. “I — I’m fine. Just a bad dream.”

He continued to stare at her. “Now I really feel guilty for taking your bed.”

“Don’t,” she said. “I probably would’ve had bad dreams no matter where I was sleeping, after those stories you told me.” To change the subject, she went on, “Have you heard anything?”

He shook his head. “No, but it’s only been about six hours. As I said, they’re going to wait until they’re almost in range before they try reaching out.”

“Then you should’ve slept a little longer.”

“No point.” Although she hadn’t invited him, he sat down in the copilot’s chair as casually as if it belonged to him. “That’s about all I can manage on a good day anyway. But maybe you should get some real rest.”

And leave him up here unattended? No way. “I’m fine.”

Those dark eyes, such a dark brown they were almost black, scanned her face. Looking for a lie? Maybe. “I wouldn’t do anything to your ship.”

“Did I say you would?”

“You didn’t have to.” He leaned forward then, staring into the darkness. Why, she wasn’t sure, as there wasn’t anything to be seen out there. Just millions of miles of empty space. Somewhere in that space was a squadron of GDF fighters hastening toward them, but those ships weren’t all that big — the sensors would pick them up long before they could be detected by the naked eye. Then he turned back toward her. “What do you do to keep yourself amused out here?”

She blinked at him. That wasn’t some kind of oblique come-on, was it? No, of course it wasn’t. With a shrug, she replied, “Watch vids. Read. There’s not much else to do. Well, yoga.”

“Yoga?” he repeated, one eyebrow going up in apparent amusement.

“What’s so funny about that?” she said with some asperity. “I have to do something to stay in shape, and you might have noticed that there really isn’t room for a track or a weight room in here.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that you don’t seem much like the ‘inner peace’ type.”

Was it that obvious? Probably. She doubted she came off as very zen to anyone who met her. “I’m not. To tell the truth, I probably couldn’t even name the positions correctly, since I learned them from watching vids. But the exercises are very effective.”

“True.”

Her imagination must have decided to play with her mind a bit more, because she could have sworn that his gaze traveled swiftly over her, as if seeing the shape of her body under the baggy coveralls she was wearing. But that, she thought, was flattering herself. She looked like complete ass right now, and she knew it. Her meager wardrobe did contain a few nice gowns and one tailored skirt suit for when she had to do something official, like go to the Consortium’s Division of Shipping to renew her transport license, but she certainly wasn’t going to waste time getting dolled up when she was only sitting on her ship with no one to look at her.

Well, there was someone here now. And she was almost positive he
had
been looking at her, although his attention flicked back to the window quickly enough as her own gaze sharpened on him.

“Anyway,” she said, deciding to let it go for now, “there’s an entertainment console in the smaller bedroom. I use it as my study now. All the books are on my handheld, and I’d rather not loan that out, if you don’t mind.”

“No, of course not,” he told her. It was never polite to point-blank ask to use someone’s handheld, as they generally contained a good deal of personal information. “I’ll check out the console.”

She realized then that his clothes were sleep-rumpled, his hair mussed. Since they had plenty of time, he might as well take the opportunity to freshen up a bit. “Go ahead and take a shower. It’s steam only, but it’s better than nothing. And there’s still some of my dad’s old stuff folded away under the bed in the second bedchamber. He was about the same height as you, so it’ll kind of fit, although it’ll probably be baggy. But at least it’s clean.”

“Thank you,” Derek said, and it sounded like he meant it. Well, he was probably aching for a chance to wash the dirt of that prison off his body.

And she’d just have to do her best not to think about what that body might look like, once it was out of its baggy prison garb….

CHAPTER FOUR

A steam bath was still heaven compared to the luke-cold two-minute showers he’d been allowed once a week back on Titan. Derek stood in the tiny compartment, so cramped he could feel his bare ass touch one metal wall, and let the hot steam scrub off the stink of the MaxSec, a mixture of male sweat, greasy hair, and desperation. Even here he couldn’t luxuriate for as long as he liked, since the shower unit had a timer set to a precise seven and a half minutes, but it was worlds better than anything else he’d had in years.

When he was done, he took one of the thin towels from its rack on the wall and wrapped it around himself, then shot a quick glance down the corridor. The back of Cassidy’s head was to him; it appeared that she was looking down at something on the console, so it seemed safe enough to slip out of the shower unit and into the second bedroom. This one was even smaller than the one he’d slept in, just a narrow bed with more storage drawers underneath it, and, as she had said, a screen built into the wall opposite the bed. The remote was still sitting there on top of the thin blue coverlet, so he picked it up and turned on the vid.

He’d never had much time for watching shows, so most of what he scrolled through as he flipped past the channels would have been foreign to him anyway. But it seemed even more alien and strange after being away from Gaia for so long, after seeing only the faces of the guards and his fellow prisoners. The clothing seemed overly structured and uncomfortable, the women’s faces so painted they didn’t quite appear human anymore. Was that a new fashion, or had they always looked like that?