Supernova (18 page)

“What
happened to Maranda?”

“Arranged
marriages aren’t recognized in the Commons, so there wasn’t an annulment to
worry about. I last saw her about five years ago, when I ran into her on a
station at random. I haven’t heard from her since.”

“And so
during that beating you—” Lily gestured with her hand.

“They
took a couple of hits. Hurt like a bitch.”

Taz
spoke the last part with his usual affable style, but it was forced. There was
a palpable negative energy around him that Lily had never seen before. What a
terrible thing to experience, especially so young.

He
polished off the last of his beer with more gusto than necessary. “Please don’t
tell anyone,” he said.

“I won’t.”

“A lot
of people in the Commons don’t like Vu’saarns,” he continued. “They think I
read their minds when they’re not looking, and I can’t do that.”

Lily
sort of understood, and sympathized with him.

He tried
to lighten the mood. “Besides, if I could read minds, I might actually have
better luck in the bars, right?”

Chapter 10

Lily was
hunched over a table in the mess, datatabs and a coffee cup spread out in front
of her. She scribbled notes on one of the datatab’s screens with a stylus in
between scrolling through information on the other. She was wearing what Rian
was starting to think of as her uniform—slim black pants and a nondescript
blouse, blue this time, another simple outfit from her excursion on Rubidge
Station. Her dark hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she kept scraping her
bangs out of her face. Aside from handwriting her notes instead of keying them
on a portable comp, she looked completely at home.

Rian
knew she was studying the Fleet pharmacy program and had an exam in two days’
time. He had tried to keep his distance the last few days in a vain attempt to
regain his professional demeanor, the call from his sister notwithstanding.

He
admitted this morning that it wasn’t working. Lily Stewart was under his skin,
invading his thoughts at inconvenient times. He couldn’t read intel reports
about Nym infiltration without thinking of her being kidnapped, nor order a
coffee at his office replicator without remembering her marvel at the devices.
When he signed off on security logs, he thought about her friendship with
Ensign Shraft, which, if he was honest with himself, he envied. The man was an
idiot by choice; the gods knew he was bright enough to manipulate long strings
of code to make a bunch of bots dance for his amusement but had shown little
interest in taking his talent with computers in a positive direction. But when
Rian thought about it, he
was
friendly with most of the crew, and now he
wished he was the one who had thought to teach Lily something about
self-defense. It would have been a perfect excuse to be with her for a little
while without raising too many suspicions. Only a few, anyway. Captains usually
didn’t teach people to shoot with a laser rifle. And hand-to-hand combat—forget
it. As soon as he touched her, he wouldn’t be able to stop, and not in a way
that involved a sleeper hold.

Rian
couldn’t believe he was jealous of Ensign Shraft, a junior officer whose
reputation for goofing off and causing mayhem was already legendary throughout
the entire Fleet. It was a new feeling, and he didn’t like it.

He
needed to see her and talk to her beyond a perfunctory “hello” in the lift or
corridor. Just to get her out of his system. That idea was what had compelled
him to look up her location and make his way to the mess.

She was
deeply engrossed in her datatab and had tucked the stylus behind her ear. When
Rian quietly cleared his throat, she jumped a little in her seat, and the
stylus clattered to the tabletop.

“Captain!”
she said. “Good God, you scared a year off my life.” She set the datatab aside.

He took
the seat across from her. “How are you?”

“Almost
through with Sanitation and Handling Protocols,” she replied. “I finished
Dispensation Procedures a couple days ago, and I’ve been reading through Fleet
history when I get bored with technical stuff.”

“It’s
required for all programs,” Rian said. “So is a module on Commons history.”

“Which
is fascinating,” Lily immediately replied.

He
stared at her skeptically. “I didn’t get where I am by believing everything I
hear,” he said, but he let a hint of a smile quirk at his mouth. “If you’re
reading the same text I had to, it’s one of the most boring trials you’ll ever
go through.”

She
sighed. “You got me. But at least I’m picking up the language differences, too,”
she said, triumph in her words. “I’m changing the
Y
’s to
I
’s and
switching
C
and
K
. It isn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I
was always worried everyone would start writing like they do in texts.”

Rian
raised an eyebrow, silently asking for an explanation.

“Text-speak,”
she clarified. “Short written messages through our phones. A lot of nonsense
short words and symbols, like using the number 2 instead of writing ‘to.’“

“Wouldn’t
that create confusion?”

“It’s
like any other form of communication. You just have to get used to it.” She
leaned back in her chair and sipped at her coffee. “So, what brings you here?
Lunch isn’t for another hour and a half.” She glanced at the large clock inset
in the mess wall.

“I’m not
needed on the bridge right now.”

Lily
cocked her head, as though she was remembering something. “When
are
you
ever on the bridge, anyway? Don’t captains actually fly ships?”

He was
amused at her naiveté. “It takes more than one person to do that,” he
explained. “I do work the consoles like the other higher-ranking officers on
the ship, but I oversee everything that happens on board.”

“So you’re
really a manager, and everyone else does the work.”

“No,” he
protested. He would have been insulted if it had been anyone other than her
saying it, and the smirk on her face told him she was trying to yank his chain.
“I’m usually on the bridge or in my office, which is off the bridge. I know
what the crew is up to.” He tossed her question back to her. “Why are
you
here?”

“My
cabin has too many distractions,” she admitted. “Taz and Mora got me into a
TV—vidshow,” she corrected herself. “
Lightning’s Luck
.” Rian was
familiar with the vidserial, a fluffy drama whose characters spent their time
on the titular starship, frequently encountering black holes and cheating on
each other.

“They
have me addicted to it, and all I’ve done in my cabin the last two days is
watch archived episodes,” she continued. “Mora is having everyone over at her
place when the new season starts next month, and I want to be caught up in
time.”

He was
pleased to hear that she was making friends besides Ensign Shraft and finding
acceptance among the crew. But then, she was the kind of person people
gravitated towards. She was, as he told Nalia, bright and warm with a sense of
humor. It was hard not to like her.

Which he
did. Very much so.

“Actually,
I was worried you might be mad at me,” Lily said. “You’ve been avoiding me
since we left the station.”

“I haven’t
been avoiding you,” he countered. That would mean he didn’t want to see her. He
did, he just wasn’t sure about doing so.

Rian
Marska, acting captain of the
Defiant
, who had graduated at the top of
his class and steered a shuttle out of the maw of a vortex as a mere lieutenant,
who had become the second youngest executive officer in Fleet’s history, was
flummoxed in dealing with Lily, pharmacy student and time traveler.

“Lily, I
want to see you,” he began. She smiled in return. “But...” Her smile faded.
Damn!
“This is a very unusual situation we’re in.”

“No
shit. Especially my part of it.”

“I know.”
He groped for an explanation. “Which is why I haven’t been more...aggressive
when it comes to you.”

“Rian,
what are you saying?” She kept her voice low.

“I like
you,” he faltered. “A lot.” Gods, answering to the admirals over his treatment
of her was easier than this.

“I like
you, too, so what’s the problem?”

His
heart flip-flopped. He tried to form an answer that wouldn’t give her the wrong
idea, but she wasn’t finished.

“I know
you’re worried about me having psychological trauma and a bunch of other
issues,” she said. “And you would be right. I’m in a new place in a new time
and I’m going to be adjusting to that for a while yet.” Her voice dropped to a
throaty purr—consciously or not, Rian couldn’t tell, but it affected him. “But
that has nothing to do with the fact that I like you. A lot,” she added,
echoing his earlier declaration. “And while I’m still learning how this society
works, I don’t appreciate anyone presuming how I feel or explaining away my
feelings with psychobabble.” She leaned forward, challenging him.

His
mouth went dry, and he cursed his having to go back to the bridge. It took
every ounce of his self-control to not take her by the hand and run to his
cabin. He tried to form a sentence, ask her what she wanted, but she broke the
silence first.

“So
where do we go from here?” she asked. “And don’t ask me to dinner. The mess
doesn’t have the same ambiance as that place on Rubidge.”

Rian
found his voice again. “There’s not much else to do on the
Defiant
. We’re
nowhere near a spaceport or station.” If they were, he would have asked her to
go climbing. It was an activity he missed.

“What
about a vidshow?”

“This
ship isn’t like newer vessels. We don’t have much in the way of entertainment
on board. We don’t even have a big vid or holoscreen for the mess. The crew
would be much more amiable if they could see a zero-g fight occasionally.”

“What
about your cabin?” she suggested brightly. He felt his eyes widen in amazement,
even though he knew he shouldn’t be surprised. He knew already that she didn’t
hesitate to speak her mind, and he liked that about her. “It’s homier than
mine, otherwise I’d invite you over. I would even cook, but I can’t here.” She
held out her hands innocently. “I’ll have to get my hands on a cookbook and
learn what people eat these days. I can’t believe tomatoes don’t exist anymore.”

“They
probably do, but they wouldn’t be called ‘tomatoes’ anymore,” Rian explained.
He tried to steer their conversation back to the issue at hand. “I’d like to
invite you over,” he continued carefully. “I’d prefer to do more than that.”
She tilted her head to the side expectantly, and he caught himself. “Not—well,
I’d—oh, damn.”

“Please
continue,” she said smoothly.

“What I
mean is, I’d rather do things properly,” he said hastily. “I’m a little more
traditional that way.”

“Usually
I am, too, but we’re on a spaceship. There’s not a lot in the way of date
venues.”

Rian
wasn’t very good at relationships, but he desperately wanted to start something
with Lily. He also wanted to keep his job, and he knew that Fleet would give
him a hard time about that balancing act. “There isn’t,” he conceded. “But you
know the positions we’re both in.” His voice dropped to just above a whisper,
and she leaned closer. She nodded, and he saw the disappointment in her eyes.
He wanted to kick himself. “But we could still see each other here,” he added
hastily, eyes darting around the mess. A few of the crew had noticed he was
sitting with her but didn’t appear to care. “I know it’s not much, but...” He
trailed off and held out his hands helplessly. He hated feeling helpless. It
frustrated him that he had finally met a woman who fascinated him like no one
else had, and she turned out to be from another era and assigned to him for
protection. It was just his luck.

“I know,
and I know you’re not saying any of these things to spare my feelings,” she
sighed. “It’s not like you’re trying to let me down.” She stared at him. “Is
it?”

“Gods,
no.”

“So
until everything settles down, we’ll keep meeting like this,” she confirmed.
She sighed again. “This is just like high school all over again. Sitting in the
cafeteria studying for an exam and getting distracted by a boy I like.”

He felt
his eyes widen at the cavalier way she spoke, and an unfamiliar warmth spread
through his chest. “You have your first examination soon, don’t you?”

“You’ve
been checking up on me,” she teased. “It’s the day after tomorrow, 1400 hours.
Dr. Ashford’s proctoring it and transmitting it to Fleet. And tomorrow I have a
check-up. Apparently I need vaccinations.”

He
nodded. Commons citizens were required to be vaccinated against Coll
particles—invisible motes that gave off artificial life support systems and
caused a perpetual flu. There was also an immune system booster than encouraged
better absorption of nutrients, and a Fleet-mandated immunization against
venereal disease. There was also an optional contraceptive implant, and he
wondered if she had come across that little piece of information in her studies
yet.