Below (7 page)

“Son of a bitch!” Victoria yelled. “God damn those bastards to hell!”

Tuttle, she saw when she finally turned to look at her, was staring at her wide eyed. “Are we in trouble?”

It took a supreme effort to fight her temper down to a manageable level. “We don’t know.” Victoria gnawed her lower lip a moment. “Go below. The crew’s working on cleaning up the access level. Tell them to knock off for today and get these supplies stowed, then they can choose quarters and settle in. And tell the cooks to get busy and see what they can come up with to feed the crew.”

Tuttle nodded and turned to go.

“Tuttle.”

She stopped and turned back. “I’ll discuss the situation with the crew after dinner. That’s all they need to know right now.”

Again, Tuttle nodded and left Victoria and Raphael.

“At least he left the supplies,” Raphael said when Tuttle was out of ear shot.

Victoria glanced at him. “I’d have felt better if he hadn’t. At least then we’d know he was coming back.”

Raphael’s expression was grim. “Not necessarily—he could have taken off with our supplies and still had no intention of returning—but I see your point. If we had the communications tower up, we might have had a chance of calling him back. As it stands....” He shrugged.

Victoria shook her head. “He’d ignore any order I gave him, even if we could communicate with the ship. He’s been ordered back. He wouldn’t have taken off otherwise. Huggins is a company man, through and through. He would not have made this decision on his own. And, unfortunately for us, it would never occur to him to argue with any decision they made.”

“So ... what do we do now?”

Victoria turned to look at him. “Try to stay alive.”

Chapter Six

The cooks had apparently decided that the desperate situation called for extraordinary efforts on their part. They’d put together a veritable feast for the crew members who presently trooped into the dining hall, tired and anxious, but freshly scrubbed and apparently hungry.

Victoria couldn’t help but notice the crew members segregated themselves. Except for Raphael, everyone else that seated themselves at her table were top side crew members. The deep sea crew sat together, separated from her group by several empty tables.

It made Victoria uneasy. They had problems enough without being divided among themselves.

The situation between her, Roach, and Raphael was certainly not going to help matters. Roach was almost universally disliked, but it didn’t necessarily follow that that meant the top side crew members would ignore his grievance and, in any case, Roach was the sort to extend his anger to encompass the entire deep sea crew, simply because he had a personal beef with Raphael. It was highly likely that he would be picking fights with any one of them that had the misfortune to come within ‘firing’ range of his temper. And she had no doubt that he would do his utmost to incite the other ‘human’ crew members to treat the deep water crew with prejudice.

Victoria found she had little appetite.

She wished suddenly that she’d left Roach in the brig. Perhaps then Captain Huggins would have taken off with him, as he had Clancy, and that would have eliminated at least one of her problems.

A useless thought, but she couldn’t help but wonder if it would transpire that Clancy would actually be the luckiest of them all.

When everyone had finished eating, she stood and addressed them.

“I hope that everyone has settled in OK.”

“Does that mean we’re staying?” Brown asked.

“It does. The company has ... uh ... expressed their confidence in our ability to handle our current situation.”

“Meaning they’ve abandoned us to sink or swim,” Roach muttered in a perfectly audible voice.

Victoria pretended she hadn’t heard him. “Our investigation into the situation we found when we arrived is ongoing.”

“Which means they haven’t a fucking clue what happened here,” Roach said a little louder.

Victoria glared at him.

“Is that true? You still don’t know what happened?”

“Yes. We still don’t know. Which means I want everybody to stay alert and the orders I gave earlier stand. No one works alone. No one goes off alone. No crew works without at least two lookouts when outside the habitat. Tomorrow, the mining crew will concentrate on opening up the mine shaft. Top crew will test the processing plant and make sure its operational. Once we’re sure we have a go there, we’ll concentrate on the access pool. Raphael says there’s several tons of ore mined and ready to process. I expect us to be fully operational within the week, but we’re going to have to hump it if we want to see any bonuses.

“Our focus is going to be on getting the mine and processing plant operational so that we can begin making some money, people. Anything non-essential to our project here can wait until we get around to it, or wait for the next crew.”

“What about the communications tower?” someone near the back asked.

Briefly, a sense of satisfaction touched her. At least they were willing to participate in group discussions. It was more important than ever that they work as a group. Their survival might depend upon it. “That’s essential. I’ll have the schedule posted in the morning. Check it and see who’s been assigned to what duties. I’ll be assigning a rotating crew to go topside and evaluate the situation with the tower and get to work on repairs. We need that operational as soon as possible.”

Everyone seemed to take that as a dismissal. They began a general exodus from the dining hall and into the rec room.

Victoria glanced at Raphael. “I need to get the schedules worked out,” she muttered, half to herself.

Raphael nodded. “I’ll show you our room.”

The words sent a shock wave of sensations and emotions through Victoria, but she resolutely ignored it. “I don’t suppose Huggins had the grace to leave any of my personal effects while he and Grant were busy pitching our supplies out on the deck?”

“Oh, he was a thorough son-of-a-bitch. I’m just surprised he didn’t park Clancy on the tarp before take-off,” Raphael replied, rising. Sliding a hand beneath one of her elbows, he urged her toward the door.

Uncomfortable with the ‘escort’, Victoria straightened her arm abruptly, whereupon Raphael simply slid his hand along the back of her arm and grasped her hand. Victoria frowned. “Public displays....”

Raphael nodded. “Are forbidden.”

He released her hand and grasped her arm just above the wrist.

The urge to remove her arm from his grasp was strong, but Victoria decided after a very little thought that that was likely to attract more attention than pretending she was unaware of his touch. Sharing sexual favors freely was encouraged. Emotional attachments were not. Emotional attachments were prone to create ripples of discord throughout a group and the company was against anything that might interfere with work.

“This is considered a show of affection?”

Victoria took a deep breath and decided to ignore the fact that he was reading her thoughts, as well. “Any touch that’s more than casual can be construed as a display of affection.”

“This is more than casual?”

Victoria’s lips tightened. There was amusement in his voice. If she’d doubted before that he was being deliberately obtuse, she no longer did. “Since I’m perfectly capable of walking without assistance, yes.”

“Good.”

Victoria glanced at him quickly, but since they had entered the rec room and were in full view of everyone who’d remained to look for a little entertainment before retiring for the night, she said nothing, merely quickening her step purposefully. For all that, she didn’t manage to ‘out run’ him. He matched her step for step, guiding her toward the room he’d chosen for them. It was no great distance, being situated about half way down one side of the rec room, but Victoria found her nerves were jumping long before they reached the privacy of the room.

Raphael, Victoria saw when she flicked a glance at him, was studying her with a mixture of amusement and barely concealed heat. Feeling the blood rise in her cheeks, Victoria looked away quickly and made her way to the desk in one corner of the room.

“There’s no need to be so nervous,” Raphael said quietly.

Victoria didn’t turn to look at him. She was busy searching the drawers for pen and paper. “I’m not,” she lied.

“You are.”

Victoria drew in a deep, sustaining breath, trying to calm her jitters. “If I am, it’s because of our situation,” she said tightly.

“Partly.”

Victoria set the materials down and turned in her chair to look at him. She was more than a little disconcerted to see that he’d sprawled out on the bed and was lying with his head propped on one hand, studying her. “Don’t be shy,” she said dryly. “Just tell me what’s on your mind.”

“You.”

She hadn’t expected him to be quite that forthcoming. Blood flooded her cheeks. She opened her mouth to speak but discovered she couldn’t think of a thing to say. Turning away abruptly, she did her best to concentrate on the schedule, starting with a list of names. Her concentration was in shambles, however, and she discovered it was impossible to put names with faces, and abilities and specialties together with hardly any of the crew members.

“I could help.”

She hadn’t heard him cross the room. When he spoke, directly beside her, she jumped and dropped the pen from suddenly nerveless fingers. He knelt, picked up the pen and handed it to her, but he did not rise. Instead, he placed a hand on her knee. Victoria felt as if it was a firebrand, burning through the thin fabric of her uniform trousers.

“You’re anxious, frightened. You’ve no need to be.”

Victoria knew he wasn’t referring to their precarious situation on Kay, but she wasn’t ready to meet him head on on a personal level. “Of course, I’m anxious ... and scared. We’ve been abandoned on this God forsaken rock with no clue of what happened to the personnel that was here.”

Raphael shook his head slowly from side to side. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

Victoria studied him, trying to decide how best to handle the situation she found herself in, but nothing came immediately to mind. She was accustomed to handling a variety of work related problems. She was even, somewhat, used to managing men and women seeking sexual favors. The latter created the least problems at all, for she had merely to point out that the was heterosexual and they usually gracefully withdrew. Men had rarely been a problem for her, as far as that went. In general, her demeanor alone was enough to keep them at a distance and even those who were attracted by the challenge of dominating a dominate female could be routed without a great deal of fuss simply by using her position in the hierarchy and assigning them to work as far away from her as possible.

“It won’t work.”

She discovered that Raphael was looking at her with amusement. “What?” she asked cautiously.

“Trying to avoid me.”

Victoria sighed. “It carries no weight with you at all that I’ve expressly forbidden you to read my mind, does it?”

He frowned slightly. “I find it difficult not to. We are mind melded, you and I.”

It was Victoria’s turn to frown. “You said that before. I still don’t understand.”

His look was wry. “You are not telepathic. We should not have been able to meld at all.”

Irritation surfaced. “That explains it so much better.”

He chuckled. “You have a quick temper.”

“I am perfectly even tempered,” Victoria said stiffly.

His eyes gleamed with suppressed amusement, but in a moment, he leaned toward her. Victoria knew he meant to kiss her. She put a restraining hand on his chest, leaning away. “Don’t do that! I’ll become a mindless mass of quivering jelly and I won’t get anything done!”

Instead of looking insulted that she’d pulled away, Raphael laughed outright. “That’s what I’ve always loved about you, Victoria. There is no subterfuge in you.”

Conflicting emotions collided inside of her—doubt, pleasure and confusion—and Victoria felt her face turning red. “This is your way of saying, I suppose, that I’m not a woman of mystery.”

“You are a complex woman, but you and I are linked—we melded when I emerged from the incubation chamber. No matter where you are, how far away, I know what you are feeling. I feel what you are feeling.” His expression became wry. “I don’t always understand it, or why you feel as you do, but I feel when you are distressed, angry—everything that you feel.”

Victoria wasn’t certain she liked the sound of that. It sounded almost as if he was saying they were fused into one being. She found it hard to accept as a possibility. She found it even more difficult to accept in the sense of losing her individuality. Outwardly, she was a conformist, because she knew that was expected, and because advancement hinged on conformity. Secretly, she preferred to think of herself as completely unique. She wasn’t at all certain she could share her inner self. She was pretty certain, though, that she didn’t want to.

Raphael frowned. After a moment, he rose and moved away, pacing the room. “Quinton and Albert are programmed machinists. They would probably be best suited to work on the communications tower.”

Victoria blinked. It took her a moment to realize he’d changed the subject completely. Finally, she nodded and turned to the schedule, writing their names down. “Any others?”

“None specifically programmed to work on communications, but Caroline and Barbara both know electronics and Xavier is an electrician.”

Victoria added the names to her list, then frowned, set her pen down and flipped through the files on her crew. “We’re hopelessly understaffed without the crew that we were supposed to be joining, but I’ve worked with Brown and Tuttle before. They know their way around a processor. It shouldn’t take them long to figure out the setup here. We’ll need some welders to repair the access cover ... and I’d like to beef it up. I think we’re going to have to assume that whatever happened here, it’s something we’re going to have to contend with, as well.”