Supernova (27 page)

“I told
you I’m a good cook,” she said. “When we get there, I’ll show you.”

He felt
heartened at that prospect. Maybe she was thinking about their future together,
too, and felt something beyond physical attraction. He tested the waters
further, bringing his own ideas in the open. “I was thinking I could teach you
to fly a shuttle,” he said cautiously. “Kevnar has them available for personal
use. It’s a helpful skill to have.”

“Really?”
She set down bowls of soup and took the seat across from him.

“The
station is within flying distance to a few residential and commercial planets,”
he continued. “I was thinking when all this is over...I still have furlough
available.” Far more than he should, he thought ruefully. He had a few years’
worth of leave he hadn’t taken.

“You
mean vacation time,” she translated. He nodded.

“We
could take a vacation?” She laughed. “God knows we both need one.”

He took
a deep breath and tried to stop himself from shaking. He wanted to tell her he
was in love with her, but it wasn’t something he was accustomed to confessing.
He had nothing to go on; he’d never said it before.

“Where
would we go?” she asked.

“I have
a few places in mind,” he answered noncommittally, but now he couldn’t think of
them. Furlough seemed so far off and would be until a war with the Nym was
diverted and Fleet was happy with his work at Kevnar. “Lily,” he said urgently.
Damn, that came out wrong.
Now she looked worried. He forced himself to
relax. “Lily, I have to tell you something.”

“Is it
the Nym?”

“No! It’s
just something I have to tell you. And you don’t have to say anything; I just
want you to know.” He was handling this badly, and he didn’t want to hear a
response if she didn’t reciprocate—not yet. But Rian was well-known for
tackling problems and for examining things too closely. Better to just get on
with it. “You’re very special to me,” he managed.

Just
get to the point
.

“More
than that,” he continued. “You mean more to me than anything, including Fleet,
and I never thought the day would come where I would say that to someone.”

She had
an odd look on her face, a combination of hope and caution. He took that as a
good sign and continued. “I don’t have any right saying this because if you get
the chance to go home I want you to do what’s best for you and not think about
my feelings.” He took a deep breath. “I think I’m in love with you.”
Think
—there
was the understatement of the century. He would kill for her—had killed for her
already.

She
closed her eyes for a moment, absorbing the information. “That’s good,” she
said, a smile spreading across her face. “Really good.”

He
breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t scared her off. “Well, I don’t think I’m in
love with you. I
am
.”

But she
wasn’t finished yet. “I love you, too,” she said quietly.

He hadn’t
been expecting that. He wanted to hear it but didn’t think he would. “You do?”
he said hoarsely, unable to contain his surprise.

“Why are
you so shocked?” she asked gently.

“I hadn’t
thought about your response too much, actually. I just wanted you to know.” He
gazed across the table at her, not caring that he looked like a lovesick kid.
The words he wanted to say flowed out of him. “I want us to be together. I want
you in my life for as long as I can keep you.”

“I’m
going to be,” she promised. She stood up and skirted around the small table,
her dinner forgotten as she settled in his lap and twined her arms around his
neck. “I don’t want things any other way.”

* * *

Lily’s
eyes flew open, her heart pounding, and for a few seconds she was disoriented.
She checked the clock inset in the wall—four-fourteen in the morning. There
were tears drying on her face, but that wasn’t unusual when she dreamed lately.
Beside her Rian slept, his breathing steady and calm. She kept her cabin lights
on the dimmest setting at night, still unaccustomed to sleeping in the total
darkness afforded by deep space. She had expected that the stars would offer
some light, but they didn’t. She had never known true night until she came
here; on Earth, there was always something, be it the moon or streetlight
shining through her bedroom window. She touched his face, and he stirred
slightly but didn’t wake. She smiled. He had been exhausted from the prior day’s
stress, and had looked terrified when he told her he loved her. She would never
forget that.

She lay
back on the pillow and tried to think about what had woken her. She had been
dreaming about something, and for the first time it hadn’t been a nightmare
about the cryonics lab or Dr. Zadbac chasing her. She closed her eyes and
forced the memory to return.

The
dream had revolved around her first week in Toronto, moping and wandering
around the Dufferin Mall, buying things for her new apartment. She had known
she was dreaming and felt frustrated that instead of sinking into a fantasy
involving Rian, she was stuck in a crowded mall. She saw the other shoppers
pushing past her, clutching brightly colored paper bags bearing store logos, and
smelled the odor that permeated every shopping center she had ever been in:
that mix of fast food, perfume counters, and air freshener. She had just left a
cell phone kiosk, a top-of-the-line smartphone and twenty-page contract in a
little bag in her hand. She was fuming a little after listening to the sales
clerk’s spiel about the phone’s satellite technology, and she had interrupted
him and told him not to bother; it was the phone’s superior memory capacity she
was after. She had a bunch of her father’s e-books she wanted to load on to it
and keep with her all the time. She had done that when she got home that
afternoon.

Someone
ran into her with a baby stroller and didn’t notice her, merely angling it and
her horde of wailing children into Old Navy, where the storefront proclaimed a
back-to-school sale. This was what Lily hated about Toronto, and what had drawn
her to it to start over: the invisibility. No one noticed her existence, no one
knew her father had died and her fiancé and best friend left her for each
other. There wasn’t a tree farm to struggle with or a house with a dying
furnace to worry about. No strings here, no attachments.

She
passed Victoria’s Secret and considered going in. But she had no one to wear
sexy lingerie for, and she had already spent a boatload on the new phone, which
all but came with a guarantee that it would erase her misery and give meaning
to her life once again.

Her
father had loathed cell phones.

Her
father, who was sitting on a bench in front of the store, where he most
certainly had not been when she bought the phone. Daniel Stewart was wearing
dirt-streaked jeans and a goofy Spinal Tap T-shirt under a beat-up denim jacket
he’d had since his college days. His grime-streaked hands held a ceramic mug of
black coffee, the same cup he drank from for years. He looked like he had just
come off a day of tree planting. He and the crowds around him were oblivious to
one another.

“Hi,
sweetheart,” he said and smiled.

Lily’s
heart caught in her throat, and tears sprang behind her eyes. “Dad?” she said. “What
are you doing here?”

He
shrugged. “Wanted to say hello.” He patted the bench. “Have a seat.”

Lily was
about to tell him how badly off the rails her life had gone, but he held up a
hand to silence her. “I’ll make this quick,” he said. He pointed to the bag
holding the phone. “I hate those things.”

“I know.”
Tears slid down her cheeks. She hadn’t dreamed about her father since before
she left for Toronto, and he had never spoken to her in them before.

“They
have their uses, though.” He took the phone out of the bag and thumbed over the
touchscreen, and Lily saw it was the way she had last seen it. The wallpaper
was set to the photo of the orange cat that used to skulk around their farm,
and he flipped through the pictures and e-books. “Good uses and bad uses,” he
added cryptically. He handed it back to her.

“Dad...”

“I have
to go. I love you, Lil.”

Then
Lily had woken up. She wiped away fresh tears, remembering the sound of his
voice and his odd commentary.

Her cell
phone. That outrageously expensive bit of genius with its Internet browser,
eight megapixel camera, and
Undead Uprising
mobile app in addition to
making calls guaranteed never to drop on her wireless provider’s network. The
one remnant of technology from her time she hadn’t seen since she woke up in
the cargo hold of a spaceship, whisked away to be decontaminated in sick bay.
The phone that was equipped with a GPS feature, should she ever lose it in her
home, at work, or the side of a highway. The kiosk’s sales clerk had assured
her she could look up the phone coordinates on her computer, whether it was
turned on or off. It was one of the few like that on the market.

Lily
slipped out of bed and dashed to the living room, her footsteps muffled by the
carpeting. There was a big viewport in here, and she stared out at the
starfield. A satellite from the old days drifted a few thousand miles away, a
tiny metallic cone among the stars. They were remnants from an old era that no
one had seen fit to dismantle.

Realization
hit her like a bucket of ice water, then fear.

She
bolted for the bedroom and shook Rian’s shoulder. “Wake up,” she commanded. He
stirred, mumbling. “Lights!” she barked, and the cabin illumination switched on
to full power. Lily’s eyes narrowed against the brightness.

“The
hell?” Rian muttered.

Lily was
already dressing. “I know how the Nym found us,” she said. “And you’ve got a
traitor on board.”

* * *

Lily
explained as much as she could about her theory in the elevator ride to sick
bay, where, Rian told her, her purse and belongings should still be in a
decontamination locker. Rian had insisted on stopping by his cabin so he could
pick up his laser pistol and an extra charger clip, and it was holstered at his
hip. The sight of it made Lily even more nervous.

“Is there
still a GPS satellite orbiting around Earth?” she asked.

“There
are a lot of satellites around Earth,” he admitted. “There are a lot of them
around their galaxy and surrounding areas from the first days of intergalactic
travel and trade. The Commons doesn’t use them anymore. We have our own network
of communications beacons.”

Lily
remembered seeing an abandoned satellite her first trip to the mess. “You have
your own network now,” she confirmed.

“Yeah.
Our beacons are smaller, cheaper, more secure, and mobile.” He rattled off
their attributes like he’d be programmed with them. He was reverting back to
his captain mode, but Lily could tell he was nervous.

Her mind
raced. The first Global Positioning System satellite had been in use since she
was a little girl, the Russian GLONASS installed by the time she was in
university. By the time she had been kidnapped, the Galileo satellite,
controlled by the European Union, had recently been launched. And of course
smaller cone-shaped versions still littered civilized space.

The
memory of the news reports she had half-listened to in her car ride to work
that morning and on her phone on her lunch break came flooding back. “There was
a UFO orbiting Earth on and off for a couple of weeks before I was kidnapped,” she
told him. “I completely forgot about it until now. It showed up and disappeared
near our satellites.”

“What
did it look like?” he asked brusquely.

“I don’t
know. I never saw any pictures. I didn’t really follow that story at all. Just
silver,” she recalled.

“Like a
Nym cruiser,” Rian guessed. “We can check out wormhole and vortex activity
later. Fleet will need to know that.”

“I’m
sorry,” she said. “I should’ve remembered.”

“It’s
okay. No reasonable person would blame you for forgetting.”

“The Fleet
higher-ups will.”

“We’ll
worry about that later.”

Sick bay
was deserted this early in the morning. “Where’s Bekri?” Rian whispered. “He’s
the overnight doctor. He should be here.”

“It’s
probably a good thing he isn’t,” Lily said. Rian nodded in agreement and led
her to the storage area at the back of the infirmary, to a wall of sealed
lockers. He palmed open the lock on one and flicked on the mediscan he had
pilfered the night before. Carefully, he removed a clear plastic cube from the
lockers. Inside, Lily recognized her black corduroy purse and the things
spilled around it—her keys, the contents of her wallet, crumpled receipts, and
a twenty-dollar bill.

Rian
quickly scanned the cube. “No toxins,” he announced, and opened it. “This could
have come out of decon a long time ago.” Lily reached into the bag and felt
around for the smooth rectangle of her cell phone but came up with nothing.

“It’s
not here,” she said bleakly. “Shit. Where did it go?”

“I don’t
know,” Rian replied darkly. “There’s only one person who would.”