Embarkment 2577 (14 page)

Adam looked up from his readings and
gave a slight shrug.

“Sure, but be ready to drop out.”

This time I could swear I felt the ship
accelerate. That wasn’t right; I was sure we stopped and started all the time
without my noticing. Or, was it just because I’d never been to this floor
before? Maybe the acceleration was more perceptible closer to the gravitational
well.

Jia’Lyn muttered a curse from her own
world, “Ka’hmay gon.”

Adam said, “Shut the engines down.”

I didn’t get it. Nothing changed as far
as I could see. My boyfriend made a slight grimace. “It’s more than an
adjustment problem. There’s a break somewhere in this coil, and it overloads.”

The explanation was clearly for me;
Jia’Lyn would already know. “Can you fix it?”

“No. We don’t carry a spare, and it’s
too dangerous to do it here anyway.”

Captain Blake stepped in. How did he
make it all the way down to us so quickly? “Anything?”

“We might have to go to dock and have
this entire thing replaced.”

Blake’s forehead turned into an obscene
amount of wrinkles. “We need to fulfill this mission. You both know how
important it is. Can we do it?”

How curious. It wasn’t like him to put a
job before the safety of the crew. I made a mental note to ask Adam what the
mission might be.

“We can take some smaller coils from one
of the shuttles and rig a backup system. Let’s post a technician down here, and
restrict speed to standard by six, to be on the safe side.”

Blake nodded. “Make it so.”

He sounded exactly like Captain Picard
from Star Trek back in my time. I bit the comment down just before it slipped
over my lips.

Adam put a
hand on my shoulder. “C’mon Alex, time to go scrounge for some parts. We have
to convert the engine on one of the shuttles too.”

We? As in
me
a part of an engineering effort? What a joke.

*****

Just as I
guessed my contribution was quite significant. I held Adam’s shirt and handed
him the wrong tools.

“No sweetie.
It’s right over there. It looks like a pumpkin.”

It was my
third attempt at finding the silly thing. It must be hiding on purpose. “Why
did you bring me along?”

“Why not. I’m
getting extra time with my girl.”

Good point. I
wasn’t in anyone’s way, and I might learn something. At least now I knew the
Electroseamer had a long handle and a head like a tiny pumpkin.

“What are you
doing to this shuttle, anyway?”

“We’re
converting it to function under conditions of extreme gravity.”

I put the
Electroseamer down. “Why? In case we have to flee from the ship?”

He peeked over
at me with an expression of pure surprise. “No. We’re on our way to a large planet
and I have to take a shuttle down there. I would prefer to both land and take
off.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

This
discussion was going nowhere… Probably my fault. I should have phrased the
question better. “Why do you have to go down to a very large planet?”

“Because it’s
very large.”

I smacked him
over the arm. “Stop teasing me.”

“Well, if
anyone from this ship were to go there, the person would weigh four times more
than here. I can compensate for that.”

It wasn’t
exactly what I meant; I wondered what he’d be doing there. The concept still
fascinated me. “Has any human ever been there?”

“Yes. We have
an ambassador there. He needed to have some internal organs… strengthened
before he left.”

Interesting
choice of words. “What does it look like?”

Adam looked
amused. “I’ll tell you when I’ve been there.”

Fair enough.
“Why are you taking a shuttle, anyway? Don’t we have transporter-thingies?”

Ha laughed.
“Yes, we do have transporter-thingies.” The word sounded funny in his mouth.
“I’m bringing equipment.”

Adam left for
the planet and I moped. He might not be back for days. What would I do? I hated
to be alone, and I wasn’t skilled at waiting.

I paced around
the room and grumbled, “Don’t be greedy. He’s special and you need to share him
with the world.”

Luckily, I
didn’t have too much time to fret. The radio chimed and Anya’s melodic voice
filled the room. “Hey Alex, are you busy? I could use some help.”

The ship’s
psychiatrist was a good friend, and anything would be better than just sitting
around all alone. “Okay.”

“Great. Meet
me in the banquet hall on the promenade.”

Anya waited
for me outside the lift. She was a surprisingly solid hologram who looked
exactly like a 21
^st
century rock star. When she saw me, she bounced
and clapped her hands. “Oh goodie, this will be so much fun. We have two days
to prepare an event everyone will remember.”

She made no
sense to me, but I was used to it. “For whom?”

“Visitors from
the planet, of course. We need to find some corridors with really high
ceilings. Fluid foods… Soups. Do you know any good soups?”

“Wait…
what?”

“They’re
trees, Alex. At least sort of.”

Trees? Had
something gone wrong in her programming?

“They look
like trees, but they can move around, think, and build things. They have
incredible technology.”

She hooked her
arm in mine and tugged me along through the corridor, still talking. “There has
been talk about their joining the Confederacy for years…”

Two days
later, I was certain the restaurant business wasn’t for me. We had almost
everything figured out, and planning was fun. Making it happen, not so much. I
stood balancing a number of bowls and almost dropped them all when Anya nodded
to the gigantic doorway behind me. “Look who’s back.”

I put the
porcelain down, miraculously without breaking anything, and flung myself into
Adam’s arms. “I missed you so much!”

Not counting
the days I was dead, this was the longest we had ever been apart. He usually
worked nights on the bridge, so I was used to sleeping alone, but the mornings
and evenings without him were long.

“I missed you
too.”

Anya called
out. “You two go home. I got this.”

I felt bad for
abandoning her, but he had been gone for so long. “Are you sure?”

Adam murmured,
“She’s sure. I need to talk to you.”

He ushered me
towards the door. My conscience claimed I should stay and continue working even
though I was pretty bad at it, but my willpower was low.

When we
reached the lift, I peeked up at him. Something wasn’t right. He had little
wrinkles around his eyes, and squinted. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was
tired, but that wasn’t possible. Could he be low on energy?

“I wonder if
could build you an antigravity suit.”

“Huh?” What
was he talking about?

“The planet is
beautiful. You’d like it. It has big purple forests and green oceans.”

“Are you
okay?”

“Of course.”

I lifted an
eyebrow and he gave a slight shrug. “But… maybe diplomacy should be left to
the diplomats.”

“Are the trees
difficult?”

“No, they’re
really not. They’re great.”

If it wasn’t
the trees, then who?

We walked in
silence to my rooms, where Adam sank down on the sofa and pulled me onto his
lap. “Can you stay?”

He rested his
head against mine. “At least until tomorrow.”

Good. If he
wanted to tell me he found love with a gorgeous young willow, he probably
wouldn’t hold me, or plan to stay the night.

“What did you
want to talk about?”

“Remember I
told you about the ambassador?”

I nodded. The
man was of no interest to me.

“He’s coming
aboard tomorrow, with the visitors from the planet. He doesn’t like you.”

That made me
sit up straight. “What? Why? I never did anything to him, I don’t even know who
he is.”

“I know. I
know. I still need you to be careful around him.”

“But…”

Adam brushed a lock of my hair away from
my face. “He has been working on this planet’s entry to the Confederacy for a
long time. Years. They never trusted him, and they haven’t trusted any of us.”

“Maybe he’s
incompetent. That’s not my fault.”

“Maybe he is.
Anyway, they’ve always had problems with the Logg. They heard about you and
they want to meet you. For the first time they want to join forces with us,
it’s because of you. I think he hates you.”

This was the
dumbest thing I’d heard for a long time. And what difference did it make if the
man liked me or not? I played with Adam’s hair, and when he smiled, I chanted,
“Bed, bed, bed, bed, bed…”

I woke in Adam’s arms the next morning.
An unexpected treat; I could barely remember the last time it happened. I
snuggled my head down even more comfortably on his shoulder. Maybe we could
stay in bed at least until lunchtime. That would be great.

He touched my cheek and ruined the
illusion. “You have a big day today. Want me to get you some breakfast?”

“No. I want you to stay right here all
day.”

“I’m flattered. But this is your first
official assignment, so you should probably go.”

Objecting wouldn’t do me any good, but I
still tried. “Do we have to?”

His answer left no room for further
debate. “Yes. We took the risk of travelling all the way here with a broken
ship so you could meet these people. You’re going.”

Wow, no pressure. This
would
be a
long day…

I pretended as if his words didn’t make
me nervous at all. After discarding most of my food and changing outfits five
times, it was probably clear anyway. Adam seized my hands as I was about to
pull the last shirt off. “You look fine. Stop worrying.”

“How can I stop worrying? You said
everyone’s counting on me and the ambassador
hates
me.”

“You’ll do fine.”

I didn’t share his confidence, but I
nodded anyway. It was hard to be too worried next to the embodiment of
tranquility. I held his hand in the lift and through the corridors, hoping his
composure would rub off on me.

All the video in the
world couldn’t do the guests justice. It took all my constraint not to stare
when the tall, slender birches spoke and walked towards me. They bowed, bending
their stiff bodies with surprising agility.

“Alexandra, princess
of freedom.” Their voices sounded like the wind. I didn’t know what to say, so
I bowed too.

A soft whoosh like a
summer breeze sounded through the room. Adam whispered, “I think they’re
fascinated with your hair.”

“My hair? You can
touch it, if you want.”

Long and slender
fingers ran through it. It tickled, and I giggled.

Behind the birches a
man stepped off the transporter pad. He was shorter than Adam, but taller than
me. Living on the high gravity planet made him extremely muscular, and he
looked like he could crack a coconut open with his bare hands.

One of the trees
whispered, “This is Ambassador Enoch.” The other filled in, “Ambassador Enoch,
meet Princess Alexandra.”

“I’m not a
princess.”

Adam smirked. This
wasn’t a nickname I would lose easily.

Enoch had a round
face crowned with a mop of black hair. On another day I might have found him
handsome, but with pure hatred flaring from his eyes, not so much. Adam’s
warning made sense; I should stay away from this man.

Adam said, “This
way, please.” I followed him down the corridor with trees flanking me and
holding my hands.

Anya and I put a lot
of planning into finding corridors and rooms tall enough to accommodate the
guests. It was only a short stroll from the transporters to the nearest
conference room, and I left them there in the care of Enoch and Adam.

*****

During the past couple of days Anya and
I researched our guest’s eating habits. They mostly dipped their branchy
fingers in an energy solution, but we still found several interesting courses
from different regions of the large planet.

Enlisting all the chefs from the
promenade, we planned a buffet that mixed foods from their planet, Earth, and most
of the other species residing on the Bell. By the time people streamed into the
great hall, everything was ready.

Anya flashed her billion dollar smile
and whispered, “Isn’t this exciting?”

It was. We were breaking new ground, and
I was part of it.

Adam entered with the trees. They stared
in fascination when he walked up to me and kissed my cheek. Anya whispered,
“They’ve never seen anything like it.”