Page 13 of A Mate for Vasek (Tallean Mercenaries #11)

Dawn

Dawn had never been so confused by someone before. For one thing, her fight or flight—or in this case, freeze—response had burnt itself out. That intense, uncontrollable fear she’d had of him before she’d stormed off now seemed almost silly.

Yes, he looked terrifying. Yes, he’d murdered people right in front of her. And yes, he’d gone after her like she was prey, but he hadn’t really hurt her. Maybe she was wrong about being wrong about him.

Ugh! See, totally confusing.

Her anger at losing the chance to be on that ship tomorrow had also fizzled out. She was still upset and disappointed, but there was nothing she could do about it now. No amount of trying to break things was going to make it any better.

Also, it was nearly impossible to stay terrified or angry with Vasek when he’d just offered her an olive branch in the form of a slice of pizza.

Where the hell had he gotten it anyway?

She’d noticed the food replicator on the ship. Kotch didn’t have one because the Fiete girls took turns cooking, but the Dominion captain had one in his quarters, and she’d been taught to use it. But that machine couldn’t make Earth-style dishes. Vasek had also called it pizza.

She stared at it. It looked like pizza from afar, but upon closer inspection, she saw that it wasn’t a slice out of a round pie, but a triangular piece of flatbread with toppings.

Close enough. She recognized the crumbled meat that was a replicator staple.

In this case, it was used to simulate sausage crumbles.

Dawn knew that Reka 5 now produced tomato sauce from real tomatoes, and pouches of it were readily available all over the outer planets.

Kotch had been curious about the savory sauce made from the red fruit and had asked her once to make a meal with it.

She’d made pasta with Tallean-style noodles they’d had on hand, and ground meat from the market.

It had come out close enough, though the noodle texture had been different. Too bouncy.

She sniffed the flatbread. It smelled like pizza.

Kind of. She didn’t know what the “cheese” was made of.

Maybe a creamy sauce of some kind? Talleans had that in their many types of cuisines.

Did some of their cultures have cheese too?

There were, after all, as many cooking styles as there were habitable planets.

That was one thing Dawn had realized about these aliens. They weren’t just one broad homogenous group, but an amalgamation of many, many different people, with varying cultures.

The shuttle rumbled to life, and Dawn grabbed the platter before the whole thing went flying.

Alarm filled her briefly until she realized they were lifting off.

Vasek had meant it when he’d said they were leaving right away.

It was probably the best thing to do since there were currently several dead Talleans in the area.

It would be a matter of time before someone came looking for them.

There was still the other half of the group.

And of course, Morad was free, so he’d be coming back with reinforcements.

There were also the wild animals and scavengers that the dead bodies would call in. She had caught a glimpse of the giant land-bound birds that they’d passed on their way back to the shuttle. Imagine if a shoebill stork mated with a cassowary, then mixed in a dash of hellhound.

Shudder.

She didn’t want any of those poking around the shuttle. Just because they liked to eat carrion didn’t mean they only ate carrion. She was pretty damn sure that if they were hungry enough, they would find her a decent meal as well.

After several long minutes, the shuttle stabilized, and she dug into her pizza look-alike.

And hey, what do you know! It was actually pretty freaking good.

It wasn’t exactly like pizza as she remembered it, but all the flavors were there, and it hit the spot. The cheese was a little richer and creamier than she was used to, and the meat crumbles weren’t quite pepperoni, but this was the closest thing to home she’d had in years.

She had thought she’d never taste something like that again.

Pizza hadn’t even been something she liked when she lived on Earth, but the way the cheese melted and got all ooey and gooey and stringy, the pepperoni-like flavoring they’d added to the meat bits, and the real, honest-to-goodness tomato sauce was the best thing she’d ever tasted.

The spices and the sauce weren’t even the same, but they were close enough, and dared she say, better?

She was sure that if she compared this side by side with pizza from Earth, she would find it lacking, but all she had were her memories. And according to those and her taste buds, this was a close enough facsimile.

It reminded her of all the evenings she’d ordered in with her best friend and roommate when they’d been too lazy to cook. It reminded her of the pizza lunches at school when she was a kid.

Then suddenly she was crying. Yep, crying. Again! God, what was wrong with her? She’d managed to hold off the tears for years, and today she was making up for it by crying buckets.

She had to pull it together. There was no space for sentimentality out here.

She could only blame having a stressful day so many times before it started sounding like an excuse even to her.

She quickly wiped the tears up with the back of her hand and prayed that her sobs had been quiet enough that Vasek hadn’t heard any of the sniffles.

The last thing she needed was for him to think she was even weaker than he already did.

She ate every last bite even though she was so stuffed by the end of it that she wasn’t sure she could ever move again, which was fine because she planned on hiding out here for as long as she possibly could.

She wasn’t sure Vasek would trust her with a personal computer again, and there really wasn’t much to do.

If he found a job for her, he could come in here and ask her himself.

And not to mention, it was spacious and comfortable enough for her to sleep in here.

They wouldn’t need to share the bed if they didn’t have to.

She didn’t want to wake up to find herself climbing him like a tree again and invading his personal space.

Vasek

Dawn sat on the floor of his shuttle, wearing another of his favorite shirts, sorting through his equipment and supplies. It had taken her a while to come out of the transport after they started their journey to Vosthea.

She’d been staying there for most of the trip and sleeping there as well, since she could lie down in the transport’s seats quite comfortably.

A good thing too, because in his haste to leave the planet after the violent run-in with Morad, Vasek had failed to return to port to grab another mat.

That was the thing about leaving from the wilds: there was no waiting for port officials to give the go-ahead.

But it meant he was down one mat, and one canister of olfactinull.

He was going to have to get the almost-empty can to last until Vosthea.

Dawn staying in the shuttle had helped, since he’d only needed to respray the shuttle once after she’d snuck out of the transport in the middle of the galactic night cycle to use the facilities.

After using the facilities and returning the used “pee-zah” platter to the food replicator, she’d scurried back inside.

He’d elected to use a less direct path between the two planets that looped around one of the moons.

It would take longer, but this path was less traveled, and he’d be able to set a proximity alert and let the shuttle fly on its own.

If he did that on one of the regular routes, the alert would be going off constantly.

In the past few years, travel between the major ports and planets in the outer planets had increased quite a bit, and he didn’t want any trouble on the way.

It was midway through the second day of the trip when Dawn wandered back out, probably from boredom.

She saw him struggling to find something in the mess he called his supply cabinet, and offered to reorganize it for him.

It had been their first interaction since she’d answered his question before they took off.

When Vasek told her that she didn’t need to do anything for him, she replied that she wanted to. Realizing she must be bored out of her mind, he let her. It was strange having someone in his ship and touching his personal stuff, but an organized supply cabinet would make his life so much easier.

His collection of equipment and supplies had long outgrown his space.

When he’d worked for the Dominion, they ordered supplies when things got low, and new stuff came in just as old stuff went out.

But working alone was different. Manufacturers sold things like robotic arms in sets, and Vasek often only needed parts of it.

Take Morad for example. Vasek used a full ocular enhancement set for him, but due to extensive damage to his nerves, he’d had to “borrow” an extra ocular nerve from another set to extend the first one so he could have feeling in his face.

So now he had an eyeball with no nerve to go with it.

It was a good eyeball too! He’d have to take the nerve from somewhere else when the time came to use it.

Shortly after taking over his cabinet, Dawn had shooed him away, claiming that there wasn’t enough space for them both.

She’d assured him that she was a professional at organizing and running offices and businesses.

She’d turned Kotch’s arms dealership into a well-oiled machine.

And she’d been an executive assistant at a real estate development company back on Earth.

The shuttle was suddenly filled with feminine, mirthful giggles. Vasek turned to see Dawn with a drawstring sack open in her lap. She was holding up a prosthetic penis. He’d forgotten he’d had those in there.