The Lazarus Particle (40 page)

Maybe all of those things.

But she couldn’t say she loved him, and she couldn’t jeopardize either of their lives—or anyone else’s, for that matter—over some dumb fling.

Slowly, she unstitched herself from his sleepy embrace. “Shit,” she muttered, feeling about the floor for her underwear. At some point in the intervening hours they had apparently gone AWOL. By the time she finally found them, Dell was starting to stir.

“Leaving so soon?” he mumbled, his words still sleep slurred as he reached over to graze his fingers along the small of her back.

“I have to go.”

“Why? Neither of us is on duty for hours.”

“Dell… we can’t do this anymore.” Almost immediately she regretted how bluntly she put it. She felt his fingers practically jump off of her as she winced.

“What do you—wait, what?”

“We had our fun, but I’m flying your wing now, Dell. You’re my commanding officer. This has to stop.”

“I don’t recall my rack having a chain of command,” he teased, the sheets shifting as he made to sit up.

Swinging around, she pinned him down upon his back, holding his arms akimbo above his head. “Alright, flyboy, try this on for size: We’re in a grinder of a dogfight and I’ve got two bogies right on my ass, but so does your wingman. They’re locked in, we’re both calling mayday, but you only have time to help one of us. Who do you choose?”

Dell blinked up at her. He started to open his mouth to answer until he realized he didn’t have one.

“Exactly,” she said, poking his chest roughly. “And now, because of that hesitation, your wingman and I are both dead. Hell, maybe you are, too. Maybe the whole damn wing gets wiped out, all because of that split second. Hesitation kills, Dell. You know it as well as I do.” She released her grip on his arms, sitting upright again. “That’s why we can’t keep doing this.”

Dell nodded, settling his hands just above the points of her hips. “Alright,” he conceded. “I get it. I do. But do you really have to go skulking off in the middle of the night? Without even so much as a goodbye? No one’s going to die just because we waited till morning to part ways.”

“With our luck lately, someone just might,” she countered, her face contorting into a scowl.

“Okay, I could have said that better. You know what I mean, though.”
 

She felt the scowl melting away as he gazed up at her with wide, searching eyes. Biting down hard on her bottom lip, she stared back down at him. “Damn you, Dell DeCoud,” she finally whispered, her voice feather soft as she leaned forward to meet his mouth.

She knew exactly what he meant.

“Someone had a long night,” Alexia observed as she plopped down across from Ohana in the galley the next morning. Her tray was piled high with scrambled eggs, biscuits and gravy, six strips of bacon, two hash browns, and half a grapefruit that seemed strangely out of place amidst the rest of all that rich fare. Sensing Ohana eyeing the caloric spread, she just shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Gotta carb up early to make it through a full shift on deck. I’ll work it all off by day’s end. Anyway, spill. What’s up?”

“With what?” Ohana asked evasively.

“Please.” Alexia tore a piece from the biscuit, swabbing it through the sausage gravy. “With my brother, obviously. You two are still keeping company, right?” Popping the gravy-saturated piece of biscuit into her mouth, she chewed expectantly while she waited for an answer.

Ohana scrunched her nose up, making a face. “We’re not really going to talk about your brother and I keeping company over breakfast, are we?”

“Fine,” she said, swallowing and rolling her eyes. “I know, let’s talk about the weather. Oh, wait, we’re on a spaceship. I know, let’s talk about where we’re going to go today. Oh, wait, we’re on a spaceship. I know, let’s talk about what—”

“Okay, okay. I get it.” Ohana sighed. There seemed to be no avoiding the subject, either in her own head or with Alexia. “It’s the wackiest thing,” she finally said. After that it all just started pouring out of her as if a switch had been flipped. “Back on Eden Prime, I figured, you know, why not have some fun? I mean, here’s this guy whose life I helped save under the most bizarre circumstances, he’s sweet and smart and doesn’t mind that I’m flirting shamelessly, we’re on this beautiful little planet with virtually no one else around and nothing better to do. So, yeah, I went for it. Besides, for all I knew, you people were one suspicious move from flushing me out the nearest airlock.”

Alexia looked up from her tray in mid-bite, her eyes wide beneath stitched brows. She was aghast at the very suggestion.

“Well, I know you wouldn’t do that
now
! But, c’mon, at the time I had no idea what was going to happen to me. Anyway, your brother was there for me and he made me feel good—really good—but I figured that’s where it would stop. Except it hasn’t. I know in my head I shouldn’t let it keep happening, but my body refuses to listen. Like last night. I woke up and he was sleeping, and it hit me that I’d just—” Here Ohana took a quick glance around, pitching her voice lower than it already was. “—that I’d just slept with my new commanding officer. So I go to make a break for it, but I can’t find my underwear. By the time I finally do, he’s awake. I try to be distant and withdrawn, to separate myself from my feelings, and still somehow I let him talk me into staying until morning.” Ohana shook her head incredulously. She stabbed at a piece of melon with her fork. “If he hadn’t flung my damn panties halfway across the room when we were undressing each other I could have made a clean break.”

By the time she finished, Alexia was reduced to clamping both hands over her mouth to hold back the string of giggles desperately trying to become public knowledge. When at last she composed herself, she unconsciously mimicked Ohana’s head shake of moments earlier. “Wow. Who would have guessed my baby brother would turn out to be such a ladykiller?”

Ohana narrowed her eyes at her friend’s choice of words.

“Sorry,” Alexia said sheepishly. “Point taken.”
 

“No, it’s okay. I just… I don’t understand it, is all. I’ve always been able to compartmentalize this sort of thing before. It’s like something about Dell short-circuits the rational part of my brain.”

“It’s the pilot in you. Both of you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ohana asked, unsure whether she should be offended.

“Oh, c’mon. No offense, but you’d have to be at least a little bit insane to want to be a pilot. Everything about what you do goes against the grain and yet you choose to do it anyway. You
thrive
on it. That’s you and Dell in a nutshell, right there. You know you shouldn’t, but that’s part of the allure. Especially now that you’re serving together. The fact that he’s your CO only makes it worse. Rationally, you know you don’t want any part of the consequences of that. Physically, your body couldn’t care less about what your rational mind wants.”

“You might have something of a point there,” she had to admit.

“Maybe. Or I could be totally full of shit. We deck rats have a lot of time to philosophize while we’re nursing your wounded birds back to health, which is to say we tend to do a lot of talking out of our asses.” When Ohana laughed, she practically beamed in response. “Yes! There it is! I knew if I kept at it long enough I’d get a chuckle out of you eventually.”

“Thanks, Alexia. I needed that this morning. I really did.”

“No prob.”

“They’re looking a lot better lately, by the way,” she said. Alexia looked at her a bit quizzically and she quickly added, “The bruises, I mean.”

“Oh! Yeah, I barely even notice them now. Thanks, though. For a while I was really self-conscious about them but Torrey’s been so great. Anytime I mention them he just says, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I see is your beautiful face.’” She ducked her head a little to hide the sudden flush infusing her cheeks.

“Torrey’s a great guy.”

“The best. Can I just say I’m really glad you decided to join up, though? We’ve needed some new blood in the wings for a while now, even before what happened back at Eden Prime, and Dell raves about you virtually every chance he gets.”

In spite of herself, Ohana felt a touch of heat creeping into her own cheeks. That was definitely news to her. “He does?”

“Yup! Which is why I’m going to be taking care of your bird personally.”

“Oh, Alexia, no,” she said, trying to refuse as politely as she knew how. “I couldn’t ask you to do that. You already do so much—”

Alexia raised her hand in a manner suggesting she would brook no further argument on the subject. “You didn’t ask. I offered. And, unlike a traditional offer, it’s not up for discussion. Weird, I know, but that’s kind of just how we do things for the people we care about around here. Got it?”

Smiling wider, she nodded. “Got it. And thank you. Again. I know I keep saying that, but I really appreciate you looking out for me like this.”

“My pleasure, Wingman First Class.” Alexia took one last bite, then stood and collected her tray. “Well, it’s about time I head down to the deck. But look, don’t stress too hard over this whole Dell situation, okay? You’ll work it out. And hey, if you don’t, it wouldn’t be the first time people around here politely looked the other way.” Winking playfully, she left Ohana to her thoughts and her fruit cup.

It was only then that Ohana realized Alexia had eaten every last bite of the heaping mound of food on her tray. The girl was a human food processor, apparently.

Meanwhile, Ohana had barely touched her fruit cup.

“Yeah,” she said once she was alone again. “Don’t stress too hard.”

40 • HOMECOMING

In lieu of sleep, Fenton took to working at night. Of course, the concept of night in space was something of a relative one. More accurately, he took to working during third shift, when activity aboard the ship was at its lightest. Roon didn’t seem to mind. She slept fitfully anyway and often brought him coffee when nightmares troubled her sleep. She liked to watch him work, saying it helped soothe her.

“Is that your way of telling me that watching me work puts you to sleep?” he'd asked, laughing the first time she told him that.

“I meant it as the highest form of compliment.”

“Then that’s how I choose to take it."

He was close. Tantalizingly close. At this point, all it really came down to was the programming. It was grueling. Trillions-of-line grueling. It was the most intricate, delicate code he’d ever embarked upon, and programming wasn’t even his primary field. Much of the groundwork was adapted from the findings of his former research team; much of the rest was repetitive and could be done rote by memory. Still, it took time, even with the new team he was assigned. Someone had to work when at last sleep inevitably claimed him, after all.

It was during one of those rare moments—having fallen asleep at his desk, appropriately enough—that Fenton awoke to one of his young, fresh-faced assistants jostling his shoulder. “What?” he groaned, blinking back fatigue. “What is it?”

“I think we did it, Major Wilkes,” the young man—what the hell was his name again? Banks?—said enthusiastically. “The simulation is holding.”

Fenton was on his feet immediately, torn between irritation and excitement as he shook the last lingering remnants of sleep from his arms. “You ran the simulation?” Five times they had tried; five times it had collapsed within as many minutes. “When? For how long?”

“Yes, sir. We finished tweaking the programming about ten minutes ago and ran it through on a whim and, well, it’s holding.”

“Show me.”

“Is it still holding?” Banks asked as he led Fenton over.

“It’s actually getting stronger!”

“What?!” Fenton pushed in close, eyes rapidly scanning back and forth as he processed the ever-updating list of parameters scrolling upward across the screen. They were green across the board, stable or better. “I don’t believe it…”

Within an hour, he no longer had a choice. And that was just fine by him.

“We need to get down to the command module.”

“Shouldn’t we celebrate, sir?” another of his new assistants asked.

“No. Well, not yet. Right now, I need you to go down to the deck and find Specialist Alexia DeCoud. If she’s not on duty, have the ranking NCO wake her.” She was the only one he trusted to deliver the specially designed nanite pods. He looked to another young assistant. “I need you to go down to weapons and find Lieutenant Trelleck. He should be on duty, but again, if he’s not, ranking officer, et cetera, et cetera. Trelleck knows what order the pods should go out in, where to send them, and how long in between. You.” He pointed to Banks, smiling. “With me.”

“What for, sir?”

“We’re executing the launch. Right now.”

“Now?” Banks gaped as he hustled after Fenton. He was so excited he was practically jogging to the lift. “Shouldn’t we wait for Commandant Soroya, sir?”

“No,” Fenton said as they stepped into the lift. “You saw what happened on Eden Prime. There’s no time to just sit around, not anymore. The simulation held for over an hour. That’s good enough for me. Besides, if for some reason it fails, we try again, but at least we’ve started the process. There’s no reason to conceal the objective anymore.”

Fenton could tell that beneath his apprehension he too was bristling with excitement. “Alright, sir. I’m with you.”

“Good. Thank you, Banks.”

Arriving at the command module, Fenton was glad to see that Captain Weller was on duty as the commanding officer.

“Major,” Weller observed with a cock of his head as the lift doors swished closed behind Fenton and Banks. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“I’m relieving you of command, Captain.”

“Sir?” Weller seemed to hesitate. “I… I’m not sure you’re—”

“Are you disobeying an order from a superior officer, Captain?” Despite his disdain for military culture, Fenton had picked up on the lingo and its utility quite quickly, finding it had a surprising way of expediting certain requests and requisitions even from his superiors. If they wanted to fete him with more authority than he felt he deserved, then so be it.

“Sir, no, sir.” Weller straightened and saluted stiffly. “Absolutely not. The command module is yours, Major.”