Supergiant (Gigaparsec Book 2) (8 page)

On the third morning, Max rode
shotgun, alone with her for the first time since their hotel stay. She had just
about worked up the nerve to talk to him when Prairie Tower contacted the ship.
“We’re trying to track shuttle two-niner-I. Did you happen to run into her out
there,
Inner
Eye
?”

Max took the call. “Negative,
tower. I haven’t seen her since we paid at your counter for the last load. The
pilot may be joyriding or moonlighting. He’s been written up for both before.”

Roz wrinkled her forehead. His
eagerness and wording felt contrived. He was probably covering for Deke. She
was a terrible liar, so she kept her mouth shut. The tower signed off.

Nearly two hours later, the tower
called back. “
Inner Eye
, our security logs show that the pilot badged
back into our hangar, but we show no activity on the station since. His room is
empty. Vern says you offered Deke a job.”

Max casually reached up and
switched off the ship’s transponder.

Roz jerked up in her seat. “What
are you doing? We’ll need that if rescue teams have to locate us.”

Over the ship’s intercom, Max
broadcast, “Run silent, run deep.”

The lights on the bridge and the
common room below winked out. Deke reported in. “On our way up now, sir.”

“What the hell is going on?” Roz
asked.

“Unclip,” Max replied.

“Why?”

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Head to the kitchen and start
dinner. We’ll all testify you had nothing to do with this,” Max said.

“Testify?”

Deke shot up the ladder onto the
bridge. “Chief, let me fly in case they fire a missile.”

Dazed, she unstrapped and let the
combat expert take over. Deke immediately juked the ship onto a “hypothetical”
alternate course he had plotted on an earlier shift. Then he switched off the
Icarus fields so no one would be able to target them at such a distance.

She remembered the last-minute
added mass. “His blade. You
stole
the shuttle?”

Max waggled his hand. “Debatable.
I’m a registered bounty hunter. By Bat law, that shuttle was someone else’s
property, and I’m reclaiming it.”

“You’re endangering that sweet,
retired couple!” Roz said.

“Actually, Herb was the one who
helped us spoof the station access points. Turns out his wife is on parole.”

Roz tried to speak, but too many surprised
objections collided to jam her mouth.

Kesh stepped out of the elevator
onto the bridge. “You’re relieved, Roz. I’ll stall the tower until we jump.”

Ivy emerged from the elevator
behind Kesh. The room held too many people. “Alyssa was some sort of interstellar
con artist. Herb was the detective who finally arrested her. Then he got a job
on Prairie and waited for her until she served her sentence. He’d watched and
studied her for so long that he fell in love. Now that’s romantic.”

“She cooked for the railroad
construction crews for years,” Kesh said. “The pastry-chef thing was supposed
to be rehabilitation. She can talk to a person for a couple minutes and know
their favorite breakfast sweet. It’s eerie.”

The conversation kept getting more
surreal. Roz said, “I will not be a party to piracy.”

“Told you,” Max said to Kesh.

“Max filed all the necessary
paperwork for repossession and informed the nearest Bat Embassy.” Kesh fiddled
with the communications panel. “Prairie Station will go after the Galactic Cup
race association for the balance of the debt because they’re the real thieves.
The interstellar incident will all blow over in the few decades it will take
for us to return to Human space.”

“Decades?” Roz echoed.

Max placed an arm around her and
led her to the elevator. “Do you really think what happened to Deke was
justice?”

“No, but—”

“Justice helps those who help
themselves.”

“No fair paraphrasing me,” Roz
muttered.

“Look,” Max said, “the rest of us
voted to do this unanimously. If you really don’t feel comfortable with this,
I’ll take the escape pod with you and explain to the authorities that you’re
innocent.”

“They’d arrest you,” Roz said.

Max shrugged. “For a while. Some
government would pressure them into releasing me. Prairie isn’t exactly Anodyne
when it comes to political weight. I’d give them a year before I escape on my
own.”

He’d do that for me?
She
imagined herself taking a job on Prairie, like Herb had, to wait for Max to get
out of prison. “I couldn’t let that happen. How are you going to dock at
Phoenix without getting all of us arrested?”

“We’re going to arrive a few days
earlier than the flight plan, with a new name. We’re changing from the Saurian
Inner
Eye
to the original Magi registry
Sphere of Influence
. Reuben has
already changed all the internal indicators and given us a fake electronic
backstory. No one will raise an eyebrow at a Magi ship buying power gems.”
Mahdra crystals were the foundation of most of their technology. “We brought
decals for the new external labels, and Grady can help apply them.”

“This is semantics. We’ll be
outlaws.” Roz examined all of her friends. None seemed repentant.

Ivy grinned. “Yeah. My sisters are
freaking out, too.” She pulled Max’s dart pistol out. “I need to lock you in
our room until we jump—doctor’s orders. You might suffer another episode, and
we need to study you under sedation until we know you’re safe.”

Roz turned to Max. “You wouldn’t do
that to me.”

“Which is why
I’m
holding
the pistol,” Ivy explained. “I’d pull the trigger so you’d sleep through the
night. Your tossing and turning keeps me awake almost as much as your snoring.”

“I don’t snore,” Roz snapped
immediately, glancing nervously at Max. “She likes to tease.”

Max couldn’t meet her gaze. Kesh
said, “You need to leave now, Chief Engineer. Your choice how that happens.”

Surprising everyone, Roz floated to
the elevator. “I want to talk to Echo about this. She’s the owner. If she’s
okay with the heist …”

“That’s my girl,” said Ivy,
following her.

Max stopped Ivy by extending his
arm. “No. Everyone faces Echo alone.”

Roz briefly considered taking over
the ship from below decks, but Max radiated so much support and trust that she
couldn’t.
That’s what I get for falling for the bad boy.
She sighed as
the elevator doors closed. Her last visit to Echo had given her a headache for
days.

This time when Roz entered the mirrored sphere, equations
decorated every wall and some floated in midair. Echo stood at the center,
completely absorbed in the problem. Roz managed to sneak to within two meters
of the astrogator’s back before Echo jolted.

“Sorry for startling you,” Roz
said. “Were you planning the next jump to subspace?”

“No. These were the matrices I
wanted to discuss with you.”

Roz scanned the constellation of
math from this point of view and noted it did resemble a three-dimensional grid
of smaller puzzles. “How does this relate to the professor’s theories?” she
asked, distracted from the chaos on the bridge.

Echo pointed to a corner. “Those
cells along the diagonal.”

“I’ll be glad to examine them in
detail once we’re in subspace, but I’ve never seen half these symbols before.”
Roz considered any given cell difficult enough to be worthy of a doctoral
dissertation. The overall pattern reminded her of something, but the impression
was fleeting.

“This is the subbasement equation.
I anticipate that your gift, the one you just used to sneak up on me, will be
instrumental in resolving it.”

“Sorry. I should have called ahead.
It’s just Max—” Roz didn’t know where to begin on this knotted skein.

“Have you come here because Max
asked you to do something disturbing?” Echo lifted her hands, and furniture
rose from the floor near them.

“Yes. He acted totally out of
character. I think the others pressured him into it. I wanted to get your
opinion first.”

“Though you and I have spent little
time together, I would judge you a suitable marriage partner.”

Flabbergasted, Roz fell back into
the sofa. “Excuse me?”

“With all the time he has spent
alone with you, I thought …”

“You can’t even finish that
sentence, and you’re not meeting my eyes. Are you trying to
lie
?” The
idea of a Magi doing such a thing was unheard of. Was she a criminal, too?

“No. I could never do so to a
perspective mate.”

“You and me married? Is there
something I should know?”

Echo sat down beside her, and Roz
scooted a half-cushion away. “After the misjump on our maiden voyage, my
partners died.”

“The collision with the asteroid
minefield probably had more to do with the deaths.”

Echo nodded. “Without triad members
to affirm my identity, my matrix has begun to disintegrate. The good doctor
believes that with hormone treatments and therapy, he can preserve me until we
reach my people with the results of the star-drive experiment, but only if our
… team has the right composition.”

“Max is trying to save you?” Roz
asked.

“Yes. In turn, I can aid him. In
addition to nerve damage, he suffers from what you would term Post Traumatic
Stress.”

“You can fix that? That would be
amazing.”

“Together, we can.”

“All three of us?” Roz asked, her
mind spinning.

Echo paused for a moment. “You
wanted to know all the secrets of this ship. If we were united in marriage,
both you and Max would be honorary Magi.”

Roz sat on the edge of her seat,
ready to spring to her feet in righteous indignation. The warmth of Max’s hours
spent with her turned to the sting of betrayal.
He wants a freaking alien
three-way?
“Let me get this straight. If I help you and sleep with your pet
man, you’ll cut me in on the greatest research project in sentient history?”

The venom in her voice caused Echo
to draw back and blanch. “Humans always seize on the sexual. Both of you have a
lot of healing to do first. You must learn to love yourself before offering
yourself to another to love. We do not rush the sacred.”

“Right. I just wanted to establish
the price. We both know what I’ll be.”

Echo shook her head. “Have you ever
heard of arranged marriages? The parents select a mate for the child. I scanned
several planets worth of candidates, and you’re his best fit. You’re strong,
skilled, intelligent, and innocent. He needs all aspects of you to realize his
potential.”

“Wait. You
chose
me for
him?”

“The choices are yours. I merely
led him your direction. Please don’t tell him about my involvement because he
genuinely likes you, and male egos are fragile.”

“Genuinely likes?” Roz tried to
mock the words and hold onto the anger.

“With potential for so much more. I
only ask that you remain open and listen to your heart.”

Rubbing the numb spot on the back
of her neck, Roz asked, “What if we don’t excite each other … physically?” She
recalled the warm glow she had felt sitting near him in the hotel.

“You realize I read minds.”

Roz blushed. “I mean, you’re
gorgeous. So was his last girlfriend, Troutwine. Why me?”

“When you learn to love yourself,
you’ll see the answer. Stop shearing your hair so often. You’re doing it to cut
away your own femininity. You can be both the best in your field and a
desirable woman.”

Clasping her head in her hands, Roz
said, “Why is this coming to the surface now?”

“We won’t be in Human space much
longer. Your opportunities to leave and mine to survive are dwindling. I need a
commitment—hope. Will you join us with your whole heart on this endeavor?”

Roz didn’t like being pushed into
any course of action, but she didn’t want pride to make decisions for her
either. What would she have done without the Magi’s revelation? As an engineer,
she couldn’t walk away from the greatest invention in history. As a friend, she
wouldn’t leave Echo to die or Max to suffer. As a null, Roz wanted the chance
to belong to something larger. As a woman, she couldn’t bring herself to abandon
a relationship with Max, even if it seemed a little unconventional. Every
aspect of her urged her to yield. The most she could do was dictate the terms
of her surrender. “If I do this, no more hiding things from each other.”

“Agreed.”

“I want him to ask me first,
though, and without prompting from anyone. A girl has to have some standards.”

“So Max meets with your approval?”

Roz shook hands with the frail Magi,
trying to sound businesslike. “This guy could have a lizard tail and I’d have
to agree. The subbasement drive is too important to pass up.”

“Such noble sacrifice.” Echo
suppressed a smile.

Halfway to the elevator, Roz
remembered why she had come down here. “Do you approve of what they’re doing
for Deke?”

Echo stood and tilted her head.
“How could I object to someone else being freed from slavery and allowed to
develop their potential, whatever their race? Besides, the military AI on
Deke’s shuttle has a great deal of navigation data about our route, saving us
weeks of guesswork.”

“Did you know Alyssa is a
criminal?” Roz asking, hoping for some moral outrage.

“Nothing violent. What you call a
confidence artist,” Echo explained, waving the furniture away. “Max has
informed me of the relevant details, and I approve. I believe in the power of
love to heal and reform a wounded soul. Don’t you?”

Roz opened her mouth to object, but
no arguments came. All she could manage was a weak, “If any of them endanger my
ship, I’ll kick them off at the first police station, bound and gagged.”

“
Your
ship?” teased Echo.
Before Roz could fumble an apology, she said, “
Our
ship.”

****

Roz returned to her room, confused and aflutter. One of the
most advanced species in the Union had treated her as an equal, asking for help
in complete honesty. She couldn’t be mad at Echo. That left a complicated snarl
of emotions for Max. For his sake, Roz had left behind everything in her
stable, boring life. The new job had worked out better than her wildest dreams,
so why was she angry? She dragged the sleeping Jeeves out from under the bed to
have a one-sided conversation. “Your daddy has been hiding things from me. I’m
not okay with that.”

She pulled a pouch out of her
pocket, which contained fresh coconut meat. Jeeves devoured the offering,
making noises of pleasure.

After a long discussion, Roz
decided she could repair her relationship with Max for the sake of their
“child.” Jeeves was sensitive and might react poorly to seeing his daddy shouted
at and kicked in the testicles by Mommy. At the very least, she promised Jeeves
that if she absolutely had to act on her anger, she would take Max into another
room first.

She stroked Jeeves until he slept
in her arms. Then she decided to catch a nap herself because Deke starting his
shift early meant she would begin her next stint at about three in the morning.
That time shift alone should help buffer her from others until she could better
face them.