Page 19 of Stellar Drift (Central Galactic Concordance)
“The farking hell I don’t! If you don’t come back right now, you may as well not come back at all. Your new duty station will be the Great Void. No, that’s too good for you. I’ll just have you committed to the mind shop for a sixty-day evaluation of your dangerous obsession.”
Houyen made himself take a deep, calming breath, even as his heart pounded in his ears. “Again, respectfully, you don’t have the authority to do that, either.”
Matsurgan actually growled. “If you’re not here on time, Ranger Albasrey, I’ll report you as dead.
Your goddamn pension and everything else you own will be frozen until you prove to CPS budget trackers that you’re alive.
It’ll take years to straighten out. I better be seeing you soon, Ranger Asshole, or good fucking luck with your life. ”
The call ended.
The only sound in the cave was the alarm beeps from the vault’s access panel.
After a long moment, Sairy cleared her throat. “Since Elkano and I have to leave anyway, we can get you to the base in time. If that’s what you want.”
“Yeah, sure.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.
That was the responsible thing to do. The comprehensive records he’d amassed would eventually prove Matsurgan had seriously overstepped his authority.
One way or another, the infinity fever data would get to the right people.
And months or years later, the CPS would act on it, and then move Houyen to another planet, where he’d start all over again doing a job that it seemed only he believed it.
A surge of anger gripped him. “I’m tired of corrupt coworkers.
I’m sick of bosses with the emotional regulation of a toddler.
I am so damn tired of losing friends just when I’m getting to know them.
” He dropped his hand and caught her eye.
“Especially you, by the way, just so you know, because I admire the hell out of you and want to get to know you, even though you’re already with someone else. All in all, my life tanks.”
He cast a baleful eye toward the access control panel, willing it to stop with the annoying beeping. Unsurprisingly, it ignored him.
“This is going to sound completely warped…” She trailed off.
“What could sound more warped than a contaminated seed vault that’s probably making people sick? Or a nonexistent treasure that’s making people crazy? Or a secret exploration starship on countdown for a launch, with or without its pilot?”
He realized he was close to raving and made himself breathe deeply, from his core, then let it out slowly. A second deep breath helped him regain control of his runaway thoughts. “Sorry. I think ‘warped’ has lost all meaning today. What were you going to say?”
“You and I both know the CPS don’t trust high-level talents. The only way they will truly let you go is if you’re dead.” She pointed to his wristcomp. “Thanks to your boss, you’re about to be.” The ghost of a smile flickered. “You even know what time you’ll die.”
That almost made him laugh. “Yeah, four and a half hours from now. Plenty of time to get my affairs in order.”
Her words sparked an outrageously warped thought of his own.
In his previous duty station, he’d spent one miserably cold winter in a remote wilderness outpost dreaming up ways he could disappear just like his incompetent boss at the time seemed to wish for.
He’d even created a new identity and figured out how to secretly move money to accounts under that name.
When he’d been transferred to Qal Corona, he’d dropped the idea.
He shook his head. “It’s a great warped idea, but they’d need an identifiable corpse. My life may tank, but I like living, and with all my body parts intact. And I’d need to be somewhere else — and be some one else — or I won’t make it past the first security checkpoint.”
Sairy crossed her arms. “I was serious about destroying this cave and the vault. It’s too dangerous.
Only chaos knows what else is brewing in there.
If your boss thinks you’re still there when I blow the top off Jalkapanga Mountain, they won’t look too hard for your body. ” She took a step closer to him.
“As to being somewhere else, you could come with me. Well, Kyala and Elkano and me. We don’t know where we’re going until we get there, but I’m willing to bet it’s better than being buried here. Are you?”
It was a wonderfully creative solution, but he had to be honest with her. “I don’t think it will work. I’ve come to have… feelings for you. Have had since the day we met. Now that I know that you’re not available, it’ll be too hard on me and not fair to you and your partner. Elkano is a lucky man.”
Siary dropped her head, looking faintly embarrassed.
“Elkano is not a man, he’s a sentient A.I.
His body is the ship, but he’s his own entity, too.
” She thumped three fingers on her upper chest. “We have an always-on closed-system connection, but he’s not in my head like a telepath.
We talk to each other just like a comms call. ”
Houyen felt his eyes widen. Could this day get any stranger? “Aren’t sentient AIs illegal?”
A corner of her mouth quirked into a smile.
“The CPS rarely lets itself be deterred by inconvenient laws and regulations. I think Elkano and the others were developed using tech stolen from the Volkssang. The CPS modified it, of course, because they think they know better about everything.” She waved a hand toward the vault.
“Considering all this suggests skullduggery of the highest order, I’m wondering if our mothership caught a terminal case of pirate-clan style freethinking. ”
“Okay, now that I’ve made an idiot of myself by assuming…
” He took a step toward her, then rocked back again.
“Oh, hell, I’m warped because I don’t want to pass up this once-in-a-lifetime chance to start over.
But I need to know if you like me well enough for us to have a chance at a relationship. More than friends.”
“I do like you. Far too much for my own good. You’re kind, sexy, and ethical as hell.
” She held out her hand to him. “Would you like to have dinner with me and Kyala this evening aboard my spacious but experimental exploration starship? I can’t promise more than mealpacks, but I’ve got a vast and astounding variety to choose from.
And I think you’ll like the hydroponics section.
I enhanced it with plants from the rainforest.”
Hope rose in his heart as he took her hand in his.
“I would be honored to accept your offer. It seems I have an interest in clever women who can fix things and fly starships. I’d very much like to invite you to share a kiss, but the timing is bad.
You have to figure out how and where to meet our ride, and I have to grab all my records and clean out my estate before my boss kills me. ”
“Let’s plan that kiss for after dinner.” She put her gloved palm against the side of his face, and he leaned into the comfort and hope it offered. Then he had to pluck the bug net out of his mouth. “Timing.”
Her smile was rueful. “In the meantime, I’ll warn Phen and Koda to get everyone off the mountain.
I’d like to send them the procedures for testing and treating infinity fever, but it would be criminally stupid to expose my unique comms signature right before an unexplained fiery explosion that almost certainly caused the tragic death of a dedicated and respected nature reserve ranger. ”
He was really doing this. “Get the data to me and I’ll store it in my CPS records and send it from my official CPS pingref.
” He gave her a sharp smile. “My unexplained death will trigger an outside audit of my dataspace. Ranger station data hypercubes are a shambles. Mine, on the other hand, are excellent. I kept everything and documented every conversation. The person with the best records wins. Matsurgan will have a very hard time justifying why he suppressed the existence of and the cure for a deadly disease. Not to mention decades of truly criminal negligence.”
“Okay, then.” She blew out a loud breath. “You prepare for your death, and I’ll prepare for our life.” She started to step away, then turned back to him. “Thank you. I didn’t think I had a future until you proved I did.”
Her words curled around his heart like tendrils of vine. “And I wasn’t looking forward to my future until I met you.”
Kyala suddenly nosed her way between them and stood, looking up at Sairy.
Sairy laughed. “Yes, he’s coming with us, and yes, that means twice the petting.”
Houyen knew there would be challenges ahead, but they’d face them together. He couldn’t wait.