MoonRush (16 page)

Inside the game room, Rob didn’t know wh
at to choose
first
—
a virtual skydiving game, a first
-
person shooter which mimicked the feeling of getting shot when you got hit in the game…minus most of the pain, and a multiplayer shootout that was something like laser tag
.
H
owever
, it was
housed in a real
-
life bouncy.

Rob decided to start off a little bit simpler with the Starflight Academy trainer, which was
based on the official training game for the U
.
S
.
Air
F
orce, which now incorporated all American interstellar ships. Or were they just hyping the military angle to sell the game?

As he strapped in and played for the first time, he decided
that
if it
was
a hoax, it was totally worth it. It wasn’t that the graphics were amazing, although they were. It wasn’t the built
-
in surround sound, although that was incredible. What really knocked his socks off was the grav field they had built into the game, so that every time he banked, the
gravitational forces
pulled at him. He walked away from the machine feeling slightly buzzed, his hands tingling.

This was almost worth the whole trip to the moon.

Rob lounged in one of the aisles, waiting for his heart rate to return to a more human level. A group of teenage girls caught his eye. They were standing around a 37
^th
generation Dance Dance Revolution, with songs
featuring
varied speeds and time signatures. It also measured where your eyes were, so you had to be looking in the right direction each time your foot landed. There was one girl playing who hadn’t missed a single step yet
.
F
rom her score
,
it looked like she had been going
at it
for a while. Her blonde hair
,
with one fuchsia streak
,
whipped around her head like some kind of psychedelic halo. Her body flowed through the moves
as though
it was made to dance.

She was smokin’ hot.

As the girls giggled at something one of them said, Rob turned to move
away
. They were like a pack of hyenas, but five times as intimidating. Their laughter beat at his back, feeling like failure. He forced himself to stop and turn back around. What was he so scared of? He had
,
like
,
the best example of how to pick up hotties ever. All Rob had to do was think of what Jarod would do
,
and he would have this gaggle of girls eating out of the palm of his hand.

Rob squared his shoulders, put on his best lopsided grin
,
and strutted over to the flock before his brain had time to stop him. One more lesson
he
learned from
U
ncle Jare.

The blonde girl finished her game and stepped down into the gang
just
as Rob arrived at the outer perimeter of their space. As one, the girls’ eyes glommed onto Rob, looking him up and down, lingering on his prosthetic legs.

And just like that, Rob wanted to sink into the arcade
’s
glowing floor. How did his uncle deal with this kind of intense scrutiny? He thought back and came up with the answer. Go on the offensive.

“Hey.” Rob gave his head a slight tip as he honed in on the blonde, her forehead still covered with a light sheen of sweat from her dancing. She looked back at him evenly, her gaze assessing.

One of the other girls, clearly the queen bee and seemingly upset that Rob was paying attention to someone else, stepped forward. “What do you want, loser? You’re one of the moon trash, aren’t you?”

“Uh…what?” This was not going the way it was supposed to.

The girl, a brunette with streaks of pink light tracing swirls on her cheeks from her subdermals, huffed out a breath that spoke of her disgust in no uncertain terms. “One of the
S
tar
D
iamond hunters? You’re dressed like one. You know…one step up from homeless?” The girls around her broke into titters at that. Rob noticed that the blonde didn’t join in. “This whole station’s gone downhill since that whole
M
oon
R
ush thingy started. This used to be the hottest place in the universe. Now they’ll let anyone in.”

Rob tried to come up with a response, but his brain was blanker than a freshly wiped hard drive. Nothing. He had nothing. What was Jarod’s default? Oh, right…the grin. Rob ratcheted up his smile another notch. The brunette was unfazed.

“And what’s up with your legs?” Again, the nervous titter
s
from the gang.

Without thinking, Rob blurted out, “They were bitten off by a shark.”

C
omplete silence amongst the girls
lasted
for the space of several heartbeats. Then
,
they burst out in derisive laughter. The brunette choked out, “Dude, if you’re going to come up with a story to impress us, it’s got to be better than that.” She turned on her heel and stalked off, the girls flowing around her and following behind, like some kind of feminine nebula cloud.

Rob just stood there, shell
-
shocked. That was, by far,
one of
the worst experience
s
of his life. Worse than having a shark actually bite off your legs. This felt like his soul had been chewed up and spit out. He would never, ever approach a girl again as long as he lived.

Then the blonde, who
trail
ed
behind the rest of the group, turned around and met Rob
’s
eyes. She gave him a small half smile and a wave.

Oh
,
yeah. He
would have to thank Uncle Jare.

* * *

Jarod chased the retreating figure of the Asian woman as she headed toward the casino bar. It couldn’t be
a
coincidence that they kept running into one another. This was fate all the way, baby.

He
watched
her
as she planted herself at the bar, waving down a bartender to order a drink.
H
is
observational
skills would pay off
here
. He watched as she let her gaze drift toward the huge observatory window. Out in the cold vacuum of space,
he could see
a veritable traffic jam. Ship after ship pour
ed
out into space from good ol’ Mother Earth, and all of them were stopping here. There wasn’t even close to enough room to accommodate them all, so most found themselves in a never-ending holding pattern, looping around the station like moths to a hungry flame.

What does that say about those of us
who
managed to make our way in
? Jarod wondered for a brief moment before putting on his game face. He caught the woman’s eye and began speaking before the sour look on her face could turn into even tarter words. He’d been here before with her. He gestured to the growing mess outside the window. “Starting to look like O’Hare out there.” He motioned to the bartender. “
We’ll
take two of whatever the lady is having.” Now that the drinks were ordered, Jarod could get down to serious business. He angled his body toward the young woman and opened his mouth to speak.

Before any actual words could
come
forth, the Asian looked him up and down once, quite thoroughly. She pulled a black device out of her purse
.
It
looked like a small wand with a readout screen. Passing the wand around his head, she waited until there was a loud beep. A long moment passed while she peered at the tiny screen. Her expression changed to one of…surprise? Shock? Something.

“Yeah, that wasn’t weird at all.” Jarod had no idea what had just happened, but he was willing to overlook some eccentricities on this woman’s behalf.

She spoke, her words precise and sharp, each a tiny razor. “Do the names Tadema or Rauli mean anything to you?”

Jarod had to admit, he had not seen that one coming. He leaned back, nonplussed. “Um… did they pitch in the World Series?” He grinned, looking to relocate his missing game. When in doubt, charm.

The grin seemed to bounce right off the woman with zero effect. “They were prominent classical painters.” She cocked an eyebrow at Jarod, causing his blood pressure to skyrocket and plummet somehow all at once. “How about Marmor or Orzain?”

Never had Jarod wished more that he had paid attention during his Art Appreciation 101 course in college. He f
l
oundered, stuttering. Jarod could feel himself going down in flames. Seriously, what was up with this chick? “Classical…style painters?” he proffered. He upped the wattage on his smile. More charm.

Nothing. “Pioneering psychiatrists.” She looked down her lovely nose at Jarod, no easy task, as he was standing above her. “So, as you can see, we have absolutely nothing in common and no longer need to converse. She flowed with infinite grace from the seat next to Jarod to one several meters away.

Jarod wasn’t sure which was worse. That he had just gotten turned down, hard? Or that the recipient of his attentions was so clearly unfazed by the entire encounter? He could at least get under women’s skin most of the time. He had
flipped
around worse turndowns than this just by irritating the woman and then letting the drink do the rest of the work. Irritated was one small step from turned on.

But this girl might as well be staying out where the ships were hovering
,
for all the warmth he could generate in her. Jarod found himself intrigued. And completely baffled. He had no idea how to continue.

He turned back to the bar to regroup. The barkeep sidled up to him, his face studiously blank. “Take it you’ll be having just one cinnamon-ginger-tini?”

Jarod let out a long groan and pounded his head against the bar. “I’ll take a Scotch,” he muttered somewhere at the vicinity of his feet.

Two hours to refuel? That was sta
rting to feel like an eternity.

* * *

Mia played with her necklace while working on her ginger-tini. She had never been more grateful for her skin tone than she had been while talking to that insufferable hotshot. Mia had no desire to let him or anyone know just how much he had gotten to her. She had met his type before, of course
—
too many times to count. But this one? He had somehow managed to piss her off and intrigue her at the same time.