Page 85 of Sway’s Peace (Delivery Service #2)

Sway

Grace passed the vial of Loyalty’s blood off to Garnet, who took it up into the upper bridge.

Sway imagined that Alred’s core was hidden up there somewhere.

Though, why he was putting the vial near his core was confusing to him.

If he wanted to study it, wouldn’t it be better to have it in the med bay where all their bio safe scanners were?

But Alred kept neatly dodging and outright ignoring any questions people asked about it, so Sway was just going to accept that he wasn’t going to find out. At least, not anytime soon.

So, with that mystery hanging in the air, and Vytln still going through the ship, trying and failing to find whatever pest he insisted was invisibly moving in the walls, things began to turn to a new normal.

A normal that now included his pretty mate working beside him.

And work she did.

Alred – the one who currently did all the admin work – showed her what he was doing and how and gave her all the permissions and tools she needed to take over. That took half a day. And apparently horrified Grace by just how inefficient it all was.

The next planet they headed towards had a large shipment of extremely delicate glassworks meant to be delivered, with haste, to a private collector in a far away galaxy.

It wasn’t a dangerous job, but no one wanted to do it because the glass was so fragile, they couldn’t guarantee it to arrive safely, all unbroken.

Sometimes, the things they delivered were refused just because they were hard.

It was a job Tanin had arranged before he picked Sway and Grace back up.

However, as they were completing that job, Grace set up her first job.

She took it with Tanin’s permission, of course, but she’s the one who arranged all the logistics and details of the delivery.

She also started looking into the payment schedule for the crew as well as the inventory Alred kept for all their supplies.

She may not enjoy administrative work, but she was good at it. More than that, she learned quickly and adapted well.

And when they reached both planets on the glass delivery – pick up and drop off – Sway went down in the shuttle with her to have their own little adventure on the surface while Tanin and Rok worked.

She had a long list of things she wanted to do. It would probably take the rest of their lives to complete, if they ever even could. He imagined it was the kind of list that would only keep growing as they checked more things off of it.

But he liked that. He liked that she was so excited and thrilled with the cosmos. He hadn’t had a chance to see it either, but the part of him that would have once marveled at the beautiful sights had long been killed. He could only feel its ghost through the joy Grace found in those things.

Meanwhile, his joy came from her. Through her. Because of her.

He took her to his room each night, eager to hold and fuck her, and then worked beside her all day, content sometimes just to watch her.

She got into such a smooth and easy flow of her work, he wondered if she noticed that the heel of her shoe was hanging off as she bounced her foot while talking to someone, or the way she clicked her tongue softly when she was trying to figure something out, or how she worked just a bit faster as she got closer to finishing a task.

Dozens of little things that absolutely enchanted him for the singular reason that she was doing them.

And while he watched her, though he wasn’t doing anything else or keeping busy, he wasn’t hearing the screams of his past. He wasn’t haunted by memories of his own guilt. He wasn’t lonely from being fully outcast from his own people.

He was just at peace.

It was a strange but wonderful feeling.

The job Grace arranged for them was actually fairly safe.

They were just taking a load of specialized food supplies to a factory planet.

It was specialized for their health because of the conditions of the planet they lived and worked on.

The crew wouldn’t be able to land on the planet, but that was fine since they didn’t need to.

They just had to bring the food to low orbit, and the factory employees would come get it.

They wouldn’t be exposed to anything dangerous, and they weren’t likely to run into pirates on the run.

But the factory owners were wiling to pay a stupid amount of credz for immediate and fast delivery because of a mess up on inventory orders at the last shipment.

They were already rationing food and the Humble Delivery Service was willing to make the trip without needing to go through a bunch of safety checks and unnecessary sanitation stops.

The planet had a nasty virus on it that immediately infected anything living on the planet, but it wasn’t deadly, it didn’t cause any negative symptoms. It pretty much just harmlessly lived and reproduced in your body.

Until you tried to leave the atmosphere which contained a specific chemical mixture the virus needed to survive.

Then it would turn deadly. It took a few days being off planet, just long enough that they couldn’t leave to get their own supplies, but not so long that they couldn’t fetch them from orbit.

That also meant the virus was completely inert off planet. It couldn’t survive without that precise air mixture, so even if they breathed it in on their ship, it wouldn’t be able to replicate and therefore infect their bodies. It was completely safe.

But their normal delivery partner had started their deliveries before that was figured out, and now they had all these redundant safety procedures in place that they were too scared to abandon after adhering to them for so long.

But the Humble Delivery Service didn’t. They were just fine going on the delivery, and more they were willing to be given a small stipend to be summoned again at any time in case another such emergency happened, and they needed immediate delivery.

All of that, Grace worked out completely on her own. The delivery, the unnecessary safety precautions, the stipend, the contract – everything.

When she came to Tanin with everything for final approval, he’d been surprised and pleased. They had some repeat customers, but they were more on a case-by-case basis. They’d never actually created a contract with any of them. It was a good deal, and Grace did it just like that.

Sway made sure to reward her that night. Thoroughly. Repeatedly. Until she could no longer scream those pretty songs that made him so desperate for her.

The station they were picking up the delivery at was also a good chance for them to resupply the ship themselves.

They’d gone through a lot more nutrition powder than usual.

The new food synthesizer worked really well, and now that their food wasn’t all tainted by that very obvious synth flavor anymore, everyone was more willing to eat.

The machine was getting a lot more use, and they also had a whole other mouth to feed as well that they hadn’t before.

The station they stopped at – Tsik-Voll – was a popular and well-traveled one.

While it wasn’t anything special or themed like some other stations, it did a great job as being a stopping point for vessels on long journeys.

They had food and entertainment, inns and spas, supplies, even a single repair dock for quick, simple fixes.

While stations weren’t mentioned in Grace’s list of places she wanted to see and visit, he recognized that excitement on her face as the docking tunnel came out to meet them.

It didn’t matter that it wasn’t a beach that glowed like starlight or a mountain covered in purple snow – it was a new little adventure for her, and she was excited.

Sway, who usually spent his leave time on the Humility, happily followed her out with the rest of the crew, only Alred left behind. Not like he could leave if he wanted anyway, so he was fine with staying and watching the ship.

Tanin and Garnet went off together with Goldie.

The sisters were going to spend time together for a while with the captain watching over them.

Rok went shopping for some new shoes as he’d worn right through his.

Vytln, grumbling, went off in search of some new type of scanner or trap to get the pest Sway was starting to think might only be in his head.

The twins, Sorbet and Tebros, went off on their own, though Sway didn’t actually know what they did on station leave.

Trove, as he was wont to do, went off to find the nearest brothel.

Even with his newfound appreciation for sex, Sway could still not understand why he liked those places, but they clearly liked him because every time he left in the morning, it was with the farewells of a bunch of happy sex workers.

It was nice but strange to follow along with the others onto the station. Grace immediately took his hand and pulled him into the busy thoroughfare, getting lost among the abundance of shops that were all set up around the docks for the weary ship workers who would come passing by.

Sway thought that Tsik-Voll was a safe station. While not the most wealthy, it was a good place for the common person to get some leave time. They had their share of crime, of course, as any place would, but he wouldn’t consider it dangerous.

But he’d never walked a station with a human female before.

He was acutely aware of the number of male gazes she caught just by sheer virtue of how beautiful she was as she moved around, looking at everything.

Sway didn’t realize his crest had gone up in a territorial display until Grace turned and her eyes immediately darted to it. She smiled sassily, giving him a look.

“Is that for me?”

He smirked, putting his arm around her. “You’re too lovely for your own good. Stay by me.”

She giggled, calling him silly, but she happily put her arm around him as they continued together through the street.