Untitled (3 page)

   Gabriel winced. "It's fine."

   "I share your feelings of anger for this weapon," Jhuun said. He laid his fingertips against Gabriel's bare arm, lightly, as though fearing to offend. "I've lost family in this war. Some things can never be forgotten."

   "I'm sorry to hear that." Gabriel wished there was something more appropriate to say, but he never did have a knack with words, and he'd shared so much sympathy with people about the death and destruction that it was starting to sound hollow.

   And then, even though he couldn't understand why he was sharing such things with this alien he'd just met, even if the alien in question
was
touching him in a way that felt awfully comforting, Gabriel said, "I just lost someone I loved not so long ago. It's still hard. Marcus was part of the emergency rescue team on my old station. They got called out to help a wrecked ship, and…the Maedrom showed up, destroyed their ship. Marcus didn't make it."

   Jhuun bowed his head. "You must have loved her very much."

   "Yeah, uh…Marcus is a man's name. You know, male."

   No reaction at first. Then the hand came off his arm as though burned and Jhuun turned to stare at the M-Alpha, fiddling with the laser spanner. "Ah."

   Damn it. The Wreeth never openly spoke of sexuality, a taboo subject in their rather conservative culture. The Human inhabitants had been told to keep things discreet. Gabriel had seen the occasional Wreeth couple on the station, but never any same-sex couples, leading him to believe it was not done, or not accepted in their society. He had no idea what was proper in Eunnoian society. He should have been more tactful. Had he just offended his new companion?

   "Anyway," Gabriel said after a few moments of silence. "If you have been reading my reports, you'll see that I left off while trying to write up schematics of the M-Alpha. You can help me finish them."

   "Agreed," Jhuun said. "I will retrieve your work to date from the database."

   The alien gracefully rose to his feet, going to the nearby desk and switching on the broadcast screen. Now left with a small measure of privacy, Gabriel heaved a strained breath that had nothing to do with the temperature. The last thing he wanted right now was an assistant, he thought, but despite himself, he touched the skin of his arm, where Jhuun had held him moments before, and damned if it hadn't felt nice…up until the alien had withdrawn.

   Damn it.

   "…someone decided to call this place the
Idea
Room,"
Kurt said. "I hear it's a literal translation from what the Eunnoians call a lounge. We tend to call it the Roo
m with a View of Shit.
Very soothing."

   Gabriel smiled, following Kurt into the large socalled Idea Room. There was an oversized viewport that covered most of the far wall, and indeed it offered a fetching view of the ship's repair yard. They'd had a similar room back on Section 14—most of the stations did, though they just called theirs the Lounge.

   The war and the related duties on the stations didn't offer many pleasures, and so the idea behind these social rooms was a sound one, offering a space with tables, chairs, couches and whatever games, books and videos had been brought in and shared by the station's inhabitants. Connected to the room was a Specialty shop, a small store that sold candy and offered video games and movies to rent.

   "And that pretty much concludes the grand tour," Kurt said. "Come on, let's go grab that empty couch."

   The Idea Room was half-full at the moment, with Humans and Eunnoians alike sitting, mingling, talking, laughing, pretending the war wasn't going on. At the other end of the room, a broadcast screen was active, playing an old Human movie, with subtitles in looping script, for a small crowd of rapt Humans and Eunnoians.

   Kurt led them to a couch by the viewport and they sat down. There was a table full of Eunnoians within a few paces of the couch, two males and three females, as much as Gabriel could tell. He'd had time to sit down and properly read the information on Eunnoian culture and was slowly beginning to recognize the differences between the sexes, though he owed that part to simply observing the people around him.

   The males were taller—Jhuun had at least a foot and a half on Gabriel—and slimmer than the females, their skin in darker tones. The females had no breasts, he'd observed, and comfortably walked around with little more than their bottom halves clothed. Judging by the reactions of the other Eunnoians and Humans, there was nothing scandalous at all about it—and Gabriel admitted that it led to speculation on his part about
other
aspects of Eunnoian physiology. He'd noticed also that both genders sported the same fluttering ridges along their collarbones and ribs.

   "So how's your first week on the station?" Kurt asked, perching himself on the armrest of the couch. He popped open a small bag of dried fruits, a rare treat, and fished out a dried apricot. "How's work coming along?"

   "I'm afraid that's—"

   "Classified, right, I get it. How do you like your new boss?"

   "She's fine," Gabriel said. He was distracted momentarily as a Human couple walked past, a young man and woman, their fingers interlaced. He watched as they ambled through the Idea Room and disappeared into the Specialty shop, feeling an odd pang of jealousy at the sight. "They assigned me an assistant, a Eunnoian. His name is Jhuun."

   "I don't think I've met him," Kurt said, handing the bag of fruit to Gabriel. "You two get along all right?"

   "Well enough," Gabriel said. Truth be told, they had gotten along rather well, once Gabriel had gotten over his overprotection of the M-Alpha. Jhuun had an intuitive aptitude for machinery and they'd been able to complete the schematics sooner than Gabriel had expected. If the trend continued, they would have a very decent shot at figuring out the M-Alpha before not too long. Hopefully, before another station suffered.

   Gabriel shook the thought away and picked a raisin from the bag. "By the way, the man who was brought to the medical wing on the escape ship—do you know how he's doing?"

   "Oh, him," Kurt said grimly. "His name was Lawrence. I wasn't part of the team taking care of him, but I read the report this morning. Sub-dural hemorrhage, late last night. He didn't make it."

   "Ah, hell," Gabriel muttered.

   "Yeah, I'm sorry. Apparently he has a wife working on another station. One of the other docs was supposed to contact her today."

   Gabriel sighed, running a hand over his eyes. His heart went out to the woman. "Damn. I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of that call. Never again."

   "Come on," Kurt said. He waited a moment as the three Eunnoian females from the next table departed from the group, walking past their couch. "These things are awful, and they hurt, but you can't just shut down. Lawrence's wife will survive. So will you."

   "Want to bet?" Gabriel said. "Once was enough. With everything that's going on right now, any one of us could die at any time. I can't go through what I went through with losing Marcus. Not again."

   As he spoke, Gabriel's gaze was drawn to the two remaining Eunnoians at the nearby table. With their companions gone, the two males leaned closer to one another, whispering a conversation in what must have been Eunnoian.

   "You're not doing yourself any favors," Kurt said. He slid down from his position on the armrest to sit by Gabriel. "If anything, now's the best time to start a relationship. You just said we could all die at any time. Well, I don't know if I believe that, but I do believe that right now, we need all the love and support we can find."

   "Not for me," Gabriel said, his gaze still on the Eunnoians. They had stopped speaking, and one of them, with skin of dark green and a smile as wide as Jhuun's, reached over to gently and lovingly stroke the other's throat with his fingertips. The touch struck Gabriel as remarkably intimate, and he suddenly felt as though he was intruding, to be watching this. They were a couple, there was no mistaking it. Far across the stars, some things were universal, and he halfconsciously noted that Eunnoians did not seem to frown on same-sex couples.

   Gabriel swallowed hard, purposely looking away from the couple, staring out into the messy repair yard. "Not for me, and not again," he said. "It's just not worth it."

   "Of course it is," Kurt said with a shake of his head. "If you had the choice, would you erase all the time you spent with Marcus? All the good memories? Even if you knew how it was going to end? Do you think Lawrence's wife would do that?"

   "Of course not," Gabriel said tersely. "Hindsight is 20/20 and all that. But that doesn't mean I want to go through all of that again, for the better and for the worse."

   "If you ask me, that's
exactly
what it
should

mean."

   "If you say so," Gabriel said, and he rose from the couch. "Listen, I've got a shift in half an hour, I have to get going."

   "Gabe—"

   "Thanks for the fruit. I'll see you later," he said, striding out of the Idea Room.

   He quickly jogged past the table with the Eunnoian couple, pointedly avoiding laying his eyes on any other lovers that may have been relaxing in the room. Though he still couldn't shake the image of the Eunnoian gently stroking his companion's throat, and before he realized what he was doing, Gabriel reached for his bare arm, to feel the spot that Jhuun had touched a few days ago.

   The engineering workshop was rapidly becoming a sacred sanctuary. Working on the MAlpha, despite the gravity of the task, was a focusing experience, making it easy to block out everything else about the war. A blessed relief, as the conversation with Kurt a few days prior still gnawed at him whenever he gave it some thought.

   At least the conversations with Jhuun were refreshing. And, Gabriel had to admit, the alien's presence was making the job a whole lot simpler.

   Xhani had not been exaggerating when she said Jhuun was their most skilled engineer. Within a few days of tinkering with the M-Alpha, he had come to the same conclusions that had taken

Gabriel weeks to reach.

   "Our knowledge so far is limited," Jhuun acknowledged, his long body bent over the MAlpha as he prodded at the delicate circuitry. He gently extracted a thick brown cable, they had been trying to hook up the weapon to a generator, to power it up and attempt further testing. "When activated at full power, it fires a devastating particle burst which causes a violent reaction in our power systems. Instant destruction."

   "Yeah, that's a problem," Gabriel said, holding the power generator. He blinked as he watched his companion working on the weapon. Jhuun was wearing little more than a dark pair of shorts that barely went down to mid-calf. Eunnoians certainly did have long elegant legs.

   Shaking his head, Gabriel sighed and wiped sweat from his brow. He was still adapting to the heat and humidity. "This thing is cutting through our shields like they aren't even there. We've got no protection. It doesn't even run like the rest of Maedrom technology—I bet the bastards bought it off one of those damn marauding groups. So everything we know about them so far is useless. It's like we're starting at square one all over again."

   "Agreed," Jhuun said, pulling out another cable. "I worked with the team assigned to understand the workings of their shields, just over four years ago. It was very difficult work."

   "You said it," Gabriel said. He brought the

generator close to the M-Alpha, using a small tool to help the ends of the cables connect into it.

   "I had just left the homeworld," Jhuun said. He pressed a finger to his temple as he watched Gabriel work—a gesture that Gabriel took to mean he was lost in thought. "Just a short time after the Maedrom came and attacked us. They wanted no negotiations, no diplomacy. They wanted only our space, our planet, devouring like a famished beast. They didn't have the M-Alpha back then, but they were vicious." He turned his eyes from the MAlpha, as though disgusted. "Five years this war has lasted. Can you believe such a thing?"

   "I try not to think about it," Gabriel said. The cables connected, he placed the power generator on the ground and turned it on, keeping the power at its lowest setting. The M-Alpha hummed to life, slowly, weakly, but enough for their tests. "I try to avoid watching the broadcasts, if I can. Or reading the reports about what's happening at the front lines."