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“Damn it, Kichens! I told you to hold your fire! He’s one of ours!”

She turned in time to see Raphael’s head break the surface once more. He was glaring at them. Not that Victoria could blame him. She’d have been pissed, too, if somebody had just fired a laser at her.

“You OK?”

Shoving some of the debris aside, he emerged from the pool, lifting himself onto the raised edge. He was followed a moment later by several other crew members. He didn’t look at her when she spoke, but rather continued to glare at Kichens, who was staring at him open mouthed.

“Fine.”

His voice was deep, melodious and as smooth and rich as aged cognac. It sent a shiver of sensation chasing along Victoria’s spine, as tangible as a caress. He stood up at just that moment and strode toward her, however, driving all other thought from her mind.

Victoria gaped at his legs.

They were legs.

“They are.”

The words jerked her head up as if it had been attached by a string. It took her a few seconds to realize that she’d been too surprised to block her thoughts from him. “You’re not....”

“Fuck me!” Brown exclaimed.

One of the mermaids--female deep water crew members--looked him over and smiled coldly. “Not in this life time.”

He gaped at her as if she’d grown two heads.

After a moment, Victoria realized she should not have been so stunned. Galactic law prohibited genetic manipulation that created undue hardship for the recipient and/or irreversible ‘abnormalities’. Companies like NCO could create four armed—or four legged—human beings, if they had sufficient data supporting the decision, but they also had to prove that the ‘improved’ or altered human could be rehabilitated when they’d completed their assignment to blend naturally with the race—they didn’t have to prove these humans could afford to pay for normalization, or fund it themselves, only that it was possible.

She’d known the ‘mermen’ and ‘mermaids’ did not have gills. A specialized organ had been added to their internal physiology that pulled oxygen from water for them, as gills did for sea creatures—they ‘breathed’ water—and it was extra—they also had lungs for when the time came to discard the internal gills. Because of her position, she’d been fitted with a prosthesis similar to their ‘natural’ organ, so that she would be able to oversee the mining operations whenever necessary.

Their legs had appeared to be fused, however, and she’d assumed this would require a surgical reversal to allow the lower part of their body, which functioned in the same manner as a fish tail underwater, to function as legs when they no longer needed them for underwater maneuvering.

Obviously, she’d been wrong.

Raphael nodded abruptly. Victoria wasn’t certain whether that was an affirmation of her mental dialogue, or a greeting of some sort.

“The mine shafts were collapsed about twenty feet down. Most of the equipment looks operational, though. There’s probably two tons of ore, just sitting on the ocean floor—They mined it, but they never got it up. No bodies—at least not so far. Looks like what ever happened here, they managed to make it inside the rig. I’ve got some people working on clearing the mine shaft.”

“No bodies here either,” Victoria said grimly.

His dark brows rose. “Any theories?”

She shook her head.

“What do we do now?” the female crew member Victoria had named Sylvia asked.

Everyone turned to look at Victoria. “The structure seems sound enough. My guess is we’ll be ordered to proceed as planned. I’ll have to report what we’ve found to headquarters.” She shrugged. “For now, we cool our heels and wait.”

“What kind of down time are we talking here?” Brown demanded.

“Shit!” Kichens exclaimed. “Does that mean we won’t get our bonus?”

Victoria held up her hand as everybody started talking at once. “Believe me when I say I’m as anxious to get started as the rest of you. We don’t get paid for sitting on our asses. In the meanwhile, until we’ve got some idea of what the hell happened here, I want everyone on alert. Keep a weapon nearby at all times. Stay close. Preferably inside the habitat. No exploring.

“Right now, I want a crew in here to get this mess cleaned up and operational. Until you hear otherwise directly from me, make sure at least two people out of every work crew are stationed on watch at all times.”

She turned to Raphael. “Can you spare some of your crew to help in here?”

He nodded and turned to Sylvia. She studied him a moment, nodded, and returned to the pool. Diving in, she disappeared from sight.

“I told her to pull a half a dozen people off the mines and bring them to help clear up the debris below that’s blocking docking access to the pool. When they’re done, they’re to come in and help finish up in here.”

“Good.” She allowed her gaze to move over him fleetingly. “Remind them of the company dress code. While working outside or in the mines, you may do as you please. Anyone working within the habitat is expected to conform to company policy regarding dress. They can find uniforms in the commissary, either here in the habitat or on the ship.” She turned to Brown and Kichens. “You two go ahead and get started here.... Just do whatever you can till you have some more help. Stay alert, but watch your itchy trigger fingers. I don’t want any more accidents. We’ve already got one crew member down. With the ground crew we were supposed to join missing, we’re short handed enough as it is.”

Brown and Kichens exchanged a look, but turned and began half-heartedly shifting the debris around. After a couple of moments, the two deep water crew members who’d emerged from the pool with Raphael and Sylvia began helping them sift through the debris and sort ‘recoverable’ from ‘unusable’.

Raphael studied them for several moments. “Robert--Jeremy, you heard the boss. Uniforms first. Commissary’s on level six. Grab some for the rest of the crew while you’re there.”

Victoria glanced at Raphael. “I need you to come with me. It’ll be best, I think, if you give your report on the mines directly. They’ll want details.”

Raphael gestured toward the elevator. “After you.”

“The elevator’s out. We discovered it was blocked on the second level. We’ll have to take the stairs,” she said, starting back toward the stairwell.

Robert and Jeremy proceeded them, jogging up the stairs at an astonishing pace. Despite that, their bare feet pounding against the treads produced surprisingly little noise.

“They didn’t tell you.”

Victoria glanced back at him over her shoulder as she started up the stairs. His gaze, she discovered, was resting upon her rear. He glanced up at her face as she turned. To her surprise, he neither gave her a suggestive look, nor appeared the least discomfited that she’d caught him in the act. “They didn’t know. Communications have been out for several months, apparently. We’ll have to transmit from the ship.”

“I meant about us.”

“Oh.” Self conscious now, certain she could feel his gaze upon her ass, she tried to ignore it, resisted the urge to brush the seat of her trousers to see if she’d sat in anything. “They have a way of leaving out important little details like that.”

“Does it make you uncomfortable?”

“Not nearly as uncomfortable as your preoccupation with my ass.” She glanced back at him again as she reached the first landing. Despite the sarcasm in her voice, one corner of his lips curled up faintly.

“Was I—preoccupied?”

“Weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

She paused, looked back at him challengingly. “What? Have I got something on the seat of my pants?”

He frowned, leaned forward, lifted a hand, then slid it lightly, slowly over her rump. It was, unmistakably, a caress, not a brush. After that leisurely examination, he dropped his hand to his side once more. The frown vanished. His eyes glinted. “No.”

She felt a blush rising that was only partially irritation and immediately returned her attention to the stairs she was climbing.

No. Just like that. No pretense that it was anything beyond an interest in her ass. He’d initiated ‘the ritual’. She could take it up—or not. She decided to ignore the opening he’d provided.

“I suppose, if I’d given it any thought, I would have wondered at their reasoning,” she continued with the previous subject after an uncomfortable pause. “It’s certainly helpful having a deep water mining crew, but they only chose six topside crew members—not nearly enough to man the station once the occupying ground crew departed. I’d wondered how they expected us to process the ore with three miners to every one processor. Is it uncomfortable for you?”

“In what way?”

Victoria shrugged. “The transition, from water to air—the difference in pressure.”

“It takes a little while to acclimatize.”

Victoria sent him a wry smile over her shoulder. “I’ve got a feeling that’s an understatement. I was fitted with a prosthesis similar to what you use to extract oxygen from water--to make it easier for me to keep an eye on the mining operations. It works, but I found ‘acclimatizing’ to breathing underwater a singularly unpleasant experience.”

His gaze, she saw when she glanced back, was once more on her ass. She misjudged the distance to the next tread and almost tripped. It wasn’t a stumble. She barely scraped the bottom of her shoe, but it was a close enough call to make her heart skip a couple of beats and to cause a color fluctuation in her cheeks. She wondered uncomfortably if he’d noticed. Her hair was closer to brown than red, but her complexion was very fair. When she blushed, it was hideously noticeable and the back of her neck felt hot. She’d twisted her hair into a knot low on the back of her head, however. Surely between that and the collar he hadn’t noticed from his position below her?

“Careful. Watch your step.”

“It’s easier coming down than going back up,” she responded a little stiffly.

“You sound a little winded.”

She gritted her teeth, suspecting he knew very well that the climb was only part of the problem. She glanced upward. “Only a few more levels. I think I can make it.”

They met Robert and Jeremy coming down again when they reached level six. Jeremy tossed Raphael a uniform from the stack Robert was carrying. Victoria continued the climb while he stopped to dress. He caught up with her again before she’d reached the next level, however, and proceeded to follow her the rest of the way up.

She’d thought she wouldn’t feel quite as uncomfortable once he was dressed.

She’d thought wrong. It didn’t raise her comfort level at all, particularly when she was almost certain he continued to study her backside all the way up.

Captain Huggins met them on the gang plank. “What’s the prognosis?”

“Not good. The ground crew’s gone,” Victoria said grimly.

Huggins came upright, paling. “Dead? All of them? What the hell happened here?”

“Probably ... Missing, presumed dead, at any rate. We found nothing. No survivors, no bodies, no sign of a fight. They’ve just vanished. And so far we haven’t found much in the way of clues that might help us figure it out.” Victoria strode past him.

“The company’s not going to like this,” Huggins commented, following Victoria and Raphael up the gangplank and into the ship.

Victoria’s lips tightened. “I feel sure the missing ground crew weren’t too happy about it either.”

“Any ideas? Theories?”

“None, unfortunately. It’s not likely, considering it looks as if everyone must have barricaded themselves into the lowest level when they were attacked, but I suppose it’s possible we might find some clues in the work log, assuming we can find it.”

“They’re not going to like that either.”

Victoria sent him an impatient glance over her shoulder, but she knew he was right. The company didn’t give a damn about facts, or even logic when disaster struck. They just wanted somebody to blame. They were not going to be happy she wasn’t prepared to hand them some names.

They were not going to be pleased that they had no one to come down on, and no one to use as scapegoat when the media got wind of it.

They couldn’t just brush it under the rug, however. Most of those who were missing had had friends, family. It was going to be one hell of a mess.

Huggins parted company with them when they reached the control deck.

“See if Grant can get me a secure channel, will you? And have her patch it through to my quarters.”

Huggins nodded.

Victoria hadn’t realized until Raphael followed her into her quarters just how cramped the space was. She looked around and finally gestured toward her bunk. “Sorry. Only one chair. Have a seat.”

Raphael glanced at the bunk and then gave Victoria an inscrutable look. “I’m fine.”

“Would you feel more comfortable with the chair?”

He shook his head infinitesimally, leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms over his chest.

She shrugged. “Suit yourself. It might take a while.... If Grant can even get through to them. Kay’s atmosphere is like soup—in case you didn’t notice during the climb up.”

After a brief inner debate, she chose the bunk herself. She’d spent months in hyber-sleep. Racing around the habitat with a gun, to say nothing of pounding up and down that many flights of stairs, was more of a workout than she’d anticipated immediately after debarkation. Propping her pillow against the bulkhead, she sat at the head of her bed, pushed her shoes off and stretched her legs out on the bed before her.

Raphael studied her for several moments, then stood away from the door frame and began to prowl the cramped quarters restlessly, examining her few personal belongings with his gaze, though he touched nothing.

“Any thoughts?”

His brows rose, but he didn’t mistake the comment as an invitation. “Whoever did this clearly wasn’t after the ore. Otherwise, we’d have had a reception committee when we arrived.”

Victoria drew her legs up and began massaging her aching feet absently. “That’s the biggest—or one of the biggest problems I have with the situation. No apparent motive. There’s some damage, but nothing, except the crew, taken.”