Honour's Knight (10 page)

“No sir,” I said again. “I am perfectly capable of doing my job.”

The captain leaned forward again, rubbing his hands over his face. Now that the bugs were gone, or at least hidden by my cameras, I could look at the captain without distraction. What I saw was disconcerting. I was the one who’d fallen asleep randomly, but Caldswell seemed like he needed to be in the medbay more than I did. The man looked ready to fall over from exhaustion.

“There’s no shame in admitting you have a problem,” Caldswell said quietly when he finally dropped his hands. “If you want to tell me anything off the record, now would be the time.”

I went ramrod straight. “I do not have a problem,” I lied.

Caldswell looked at me for a long time after that. I was used to being under officer scrutiny, but the strange dream was still with me, and I found myself cringing under his gaze. Fortunately, the captain couldn’t see enough of my face through my visor to tell. Or, if he could, he didn’t comment. All he did was shake his head and slide off the table. “Have it your way,” he said. “But I want you to take better care of yourself. Get your full cycle of sleep and be sure to eat. I hear you’ve been off your food.”

That wasn’t strictly true. I’d been eating, just not in the lounge, because I couldn’t look at the cook without feeling ill. But that was one of the problems I was not discussing with the captain, so all I said was, “Yes sir.”

Caldswell nodded and started for the door. “We hit the gate at IoThree in four hours. After that, we have a twelve-hour jump to the Sevalis. I want you to spend it resting. Understood?”

“Yes sir,” I said again, falling into step beside him as we walked back to the bridge.

Rashid was there when we arrived, talking scanners with Nova. They were both so happy to see me out of the medbay that I felt a little guilty. Rashid offered to take over until we jumped so I could get some rest, but I told him if I didn’t get back to work I really would go crazy. It was supposed to be a joke, but Rashid didn’t seem to think it was funny, and I made a mental note to act as normally as I could around him from now on.

Despite its lonely appearance, Io5 was actually the last planet in what was otherwise a reasonably developed solar system. Its neighbor, the far more temperate Io3, was a major farming center for the Terran core worlds, and the four-hour flight to reach it was every bit as safe and uneventful as you would imagine. I spent the time going over patrol patterns with Rashid, but it was hardly necessary. The old man was a better ship guard than I was.

We made the jump without incident. Caldswell must have wanted everyone to get some sleep, because as soon as the stars outside were replaced by the dull purple-gray blankness of hyperspace, the
Fool
’s lights switched to night cycle, plunging the ship into darkness.

Even though I’d fallen asleep in my armor earlier, I didn’t actually feel that tired. I wasn’t about to disobey the captain, though, so I dutifully went to my bunk. I was half hoping I could convince Nova to play cards with me for a bit, but when I stepped into our room, I found a note from her on my pillow informing me that she would be spending the jump with Mabel so as to “ensure no disturbance to the solemnity of my needed rest time.”

My shoulders slumped. It was a sweet sentiment, but I almost went downstairs to ask her to come back. I didn’t want to be alone tonight, especially since now that my helmet was off, the glowing creatures were back.

There were three of them in the room currently, all smaller than my thumb. Two were just sitting on the ceiling, the third was crawling across the closed door. Since they didn’t show up on cameras, I wasn’t sure if they’d been here the whole time or if they’d followed me in, though considering the little critters were afraid of me, or at least unwilling to come close, following seemed out.

I finished putting my suit away and changed into my nightshirt, cutting out the light as I crawled into bed. In the dark, the glowing bugs were much brighter, shining like little ghostly lanterns. If it wasn’t for the part where seeing them probably meant I was insane, they would have been beautiful.

I closed my eyes and rolled over, burying my face in my pillow.
This
was why I hadn’t wanted to be alone. Losing my memories was bad enough, but at least that was explainable as the result of a head wound. Now, between my weird reactions to the cook, the dream, and the bugs, it was getting harder to convince myself that I wasn’t going batty. I didn’t feel insane, though. Confused, sure, and sick of things I couldn’t explain, but not
crazy
. But then, didn’t all crazy people think they were sane?

I groaned and burrowed deeper under the covers. This was going nowhere. The responsible thing would be to go back to Caldswell and take him up on his offer. He played the hardass act to a T, but I was reasonably certain the captain would work with me. He couldn’t trade to save his life, but otherwise Caldswell was a practical man. He didn’t want to replace another security officer. I knew I should just get up and go talk to him, but when I thought about walking downstairs and knocking on his door, all I could picture was him standing in that dark bunker, handing his gun to the cook while I bled to death on the floor at their feet.

It was
really
insane to be afraid of someone for a thing they’d done in a dream, but I just couldn’t seem to get over it. It didn’t help that the stupid nightmare wasn’t fading. A normal dream would have been long gone by now, but I could still remember every second of what I’d seen in the bunker like it had really happened. Just thinking about it was enough to make my fingers ache where Ren had squeezed them.

I balled my throbbing hand into a fist. This was getting ridiculous. I had enough to be afraid of in the real world, like hell was I going to lie here and be scared of a dream. That stupid thing had already messed up my life enough, making me look like an idiot in front of Rashid and Hyrek. I was not going to let it keep me awake when my captain had ordered me to sleep.

Forcing the whole mess out of my brain, I put my pillow over my head to block out the bugs’ light and shut my eyes tight, focusing on my breaths. It was an old merc trick, and it worked like a charm. One lungful at a time, I breathed slower and slower until my body was still and my mind was empty. And finally, in the emptiness, I fell asleep.

Not surprisingly, I had bad dreams.

In most of them, I saw Cotter. He was back in his stupid yellow armor, firing his gun at something that looked like a human but was armored like a xith’cal. Sometimes I was firing too, but whoever was doing the shooting, it did no good. No matter how many bullets we put in it, the black thing wouldn’t go down.

Cotter always died in those dreams. Sometimes I did, too. Once the black monster bit me through the shoulder, an impressive feat considering it had no mouth. Another time it ripped my head off while I was pinned on my back. My least favorite was when it stuck its hand in my stomach and I could feel its black claws closing inside my gut. But it wasn’t the pain that made the dreams so awful, it was the confusion, because the black monster wasn’t always my enemy. Sometimes he was dear to me. Sometimes, the worst times, he was both at once, stabbing me in the stomach even as he whispered my name in a soft, accented voice that made me want to cry.

I woke up in a blind panic, scrambling out of bed and into a crouch before I knew what I was doing. My body was soaked in sweat and charged to attack, but there was nothing to fight. I was alone in my dark bunk with only my fear and a single glowing bug for company.

I slumped to the floor, panting as I tried to calm my thundering heart back down to a reasonable pace. According to the clock on the dresser, I’d only been asleep for five hours, but there was no way I was going back to bed. Not with my whole body stuck in fight or flight.

When my pulse still hadn’t calmed down after a minute of sitting still, I decided it was time to take a walk. Something repetitive and nonstrenuous would drive off the panic, and if I was quick, I could get another couple hours of rest in before the jump ended. That sounded good enough to me, so I heaved myself off the floor and slipped into the hall.

The
Fool
was dark and silent. Since there was nothing to do in hyperspace, it was one of the only times everyone on the ship could be asleep at once. I crept past the other bunks, my bare feet silent on the rubber mats. My idea was to go down to the cargo bay and run some laps where I wouldn’t bother anyone, but when I reached the lounge, I was surprised to see a light shining under the closed door. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep.

I opened the door and stuck my head in, but I didn’t see anyone. The lounge was dark except for the runner lights and the lamp over the kitchen counter, the light I’d seen. Hopes for company dashed, I walked into the kitchen to cut the light off. But as my fingers landed on the switch, I caught something out of the corner of my eye.

Normally, it takes a bit more than a glimpse to send me into battle mode, but I was already jacked up, and I whirled around, hand going for the pistol that wasn’t there. Good thing, too, because it wasn’t the black-scaled creature from my nightmares waiting for me in the dark. It was the cook.

He was sitting on the couch in the corner, which was why I hadn’t seen him from the door. He was hunched over with a glass cupped between his hands like an offering, and there was a freshly opened bottle of whiskey on the low table in front of him that, even in the dark, I could see was mostly empty. It was that more than anything that made me pause, because for some reason, I had the very distinct impression that the cook did not drink.

The memory of the weird immunity I’d had in my dream must have stuck with me, because I looked straight at him without thinking. But I was back in the real world now, and the revulsion hit me with a vengeance. I spun away at once, pushing my hands into my stomach. I was still fighting the nausea when I heard the soft whisper of movement behind me as the cook started to get up.

“Don’t,” I said. “I mean, don’t leave on my account. I’m just passing through.”

The movement stilled, and then I heard the couch creak as the cook sat back down. I let out the breath I’d been holding and started for the cargo bay stairs, eager to get out of this awkward situation. But after the first step, my feet stopped.

I couldn’t begin to explain why. The cook was the last man in the universe I wanted to spend time with. Not only was I apparently allergic to his face, my brain had picked him out of everyone to be my dream executioner back in the bunker. That had to mean something, but I just couldn’t make myself leave. The image of the nearly empty whiskey bottle was stuck in my head like a hook, and I just couldn’t shake the feeling that the cook drinking alone was wrong. Very wrong. And I needed to do something about it.

“Need” was too light a word, actually. This was more like a compulsion. Maybe it was just another sign that I was going nuts, but whatever the reason, I was too tired to fight it.

Feeling like a complete moron, I turned and walked into the kitchen to grab a tumbler off the rack. Glass in hand, I crossed the lounge again and sat down on the couch beside the cook. When I was settled, I leaned over and snatched the bottle off the table.

“What are you doing?”

His voice was a whisper, but the words were remarkably crisp for a man who’d consumed most of a fifth of whiskey.

“Taking a shot for you,” I answered, emptying the last of the liquor into my cup. “King’s health.”

I tossed the drink back before he could reply. It was a pretty big slug, even for me. There’d been enough whiskey left in the bottle to fill my glass almost to the brim, and it took me four swallows to get the whole thing down. The whiskey burned my throat as it went, and by the time I’d drunk the glass dry, I could feel the fire all the way to my toes.

I lowered my empty glass with a deep breath, blinking against the sudden spinning feeling that always followed a serious shot. I was still recovering when I heard the cook’s sigh very close, and then his hand reached out to take the empty glass from me. “What was that about?”

The sound of his accented voice speaking softly in the dark sent my whole body rigid. “Solidarity,” I choked out at last. “Now you’re not drinking alone.”

His hand stilled on the rim of the glass. I held my breath, terrified he was about to try and make me explain something I didn’t understand myself. How did you explain to a man whose name you couldn’t even keep in your head that the idea of him drinking alone was so awful you felt morally compelled to butt in? Fortunately, I didn’t have to, because the cook didn’t say anything else. He just sat there with his hand resting on the edge of my empty tumbler. And then, slowly, his fingers slid down the glass to touch mine.

It was such a small thing. His fingertips couldn’t have been brushing more than a square inch of my skin, but we might have been tangled naked considering the effect it had on me. All at once, my heart was pounding, putting my whole body right back on edge, but not for a fight this time. What his touch brought was lust, pure and strong and completely inexplicable. How I could want a man I couldn’t even look at without feeling sick I had no idea, but my body didn’t care about the details. All it cared about was touching more of him.

The full cup of whiskey must have been hitting my brain right then, because I flipped my hand over to grab his without a thought, dropping the glass in the process. He caught it instantly, snatching the glass out of the air with his free hand. It was the most amazing catch I’d ever seen. Any other time I’d have made him do it again. Now, though, I barely noticed. My entire focus was locked on the place where our skin touched.

Maybe it was the drink, but his fingers were noticeably warmer than mine. His whole body was. I could actually feel the heat of him radiating across the few inches that separated us, and I desperately wanted to get closer, to wrap myself around that warmth. But I wasn’t that far gone just yet, so I settled for pulling his hand toward me so I could study his fingers, the only part of his body it seemed I could look at directly without feeling nauseous.