Starship to Demeter (Starship Portals Book 1) Read online

  “It’s okay.” Sasha stood, scanning Kal’s eyes, back and forth, back and forth, reading her. “Don’t worry. We’re in dark phase.”

  Kal’s cheek twitched, under her eye, as if Sasha had burned her with a laser. Sasha slid her hand up Kal’s arm until she held her behind the elbow.

  “Come with me to the Tube?” Sasha said.

  Sasha’s eyes were so intent, unyielding. Kal didn’t know what to do. Her career flashed before her eyes, her stripes.

  “It will be all right,” Sasha said.

  “I didn’t think, I didn’t know…,” Kal trailed off.

  “It’s been a stressful trip. Do you want to kiss me?”

  The flickering in Kal blazed out into something stronger, something that wanted to be unleashed. The horror of what had happened to Noor, what might be happening with Rai, made it more real, a call that could be answered.

  “Yes.”

  “Kiss me,” Sasha said.

  Kal took a step forward, into Sasha’s embrace. Sasha’s arms slid behind Kal’s back. Kal put one hand on Sasha’s neck, felt the soft skin under her hair, the thick soft hair where it was gathered at the back of her head. Sasha’s expression was blank, unreadable, but her lips parted and Kal kissed her.

  Sasha’s mouth, the lips Kal had studied so often when Sasha was speaking, the mouth she’d never thought would be hers, felt like coming home. Kal licked her lower lip and slid her tongue in, just a touch. Then they were spinning around, mouths locked, hands in each other’s hair, twisting in the air like they were dancing until their bodies met the curve of the wall. Sasha was against it, the subtle flicker of Rai’s sensors behind her. Kal took both hands and traced the hair at the sides of Sasha’s face, brushing it back, making the shape of a heart with her fingertips, from the center of her part out to her ears and down the line of her jaw. Sasha’s head was pressed back, her eyes half-closed as she watched Kal.

  She didn’t say anything. Kal kissed her, again and again. She pushed her body against Sasha, felt the unbroken line from her shoulders to her breasts to her hips to her shins, soldered to her because in this moment she’d be invited. She could. Sasha wanted her to. Sasha wanted her.

  Sasha took Kal’s hand, pulling it away from her face, held it in her own.

  “Let’s go,” Sasha said. She pulled Kal along, away from the bridge.

  The walk down to the Tube was a blur. It was dark, the ship asleep, or at least the inhabitants of it were. Their hands were on each other, Kal feeling Sasha’s body, holding her waist, caressing the flare from waist to hip, the round slope of her bottom. Kal pulled her into the shadow of an alcove and they kissed some more, Sasha’s tongue coming out to play, mouths open, Kal’s palms scooping Sasha’s breasts. She groaned and thrust against Sasha.

  Kal cupped Sasha, holding her between her legs, pressing her mons venus with fingers that felt like they were on fire.

  “Fuck,” Kal breathed, kissing Sasha’s neck, unzipping her jumpsuit to kiss the spot between her breasts.

  “Kal,” Sasha said.

  Kal laughed under her breath, running away from the fear of the last few hours, pulling Sasha by the waist, carrying her along beside her. They ran stumbling together, laughing.

  The Tube achieved at last, Sasha brushed her hand against the beam and the door slipped open. Once inside, the lights glowed to life. “Dimmer,” Kal gasped before she remembered there was no ship control here, so she slid the lights lower with her hand until they settled to a gloaming. Sasha held her hand against the sensor to close the door behind them. She pressed, and the door suctioned further shut.

  The moment had been broken and in the better light of the Tube Kal backed away a little, seeing her boss in front of her, the one with the special codes. The one she’d just kissed and groped. The two realities shimmered and refused to meld. She didn’t know who stood before her, leaning against the door, her jumpsuit half unzipped, her chest tight against the fabric, the deep curve of each of her breasts visible in the V of the zipper.

  Sasha’s head was pressed against the door, pushed back like it had been in the bridge. It was a view of her Kal had never seen before tonight, with her neck vulnerable. She panted a little, chin up, eyes looking at Kal through half-shuttered lids.

  Kal turned away. It was too intense in that moment. She couldn’t look. Sasha? Sasha wanted her? She sat down, getting her breath back.

  “Kal.” Sasha lowered her chin. “I needed to get us here.”

  Kal’s breathing slowed. “Oh?” She looked at Sasha’s expression. “Oh.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You mean because you wanted to get us away, where she can’t hear us?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was a…a what, a biometrics trick?” Kal’s voice wavered a little.

  “I’m not sure how deep this goes with her. You felt it, too. A sense of…”

  “Danger,” finished Kal.

  Sasha nodded.

  “Well, that’s…I guess I fell for it.”

  Sasha pushed herself off the wall and walked over, stopping at a spiral comm in the wall, part of the self-contained network unconnected to Rai. She tapped out a message, taking her time. When she was done she sat down next to Kal.

  Kal was trying to pull herself together. She felt exposed. “Did you think I’d respond that way?”

  “I couldn’t know for sure. I took a chance.”

  “You could have said, ‘Kal, let’s go to the Tube for a minute.’”

  “I was covering bases, but yes, I could have tried that, too. If she’s up to something, I didn’t want her to know what I was thinking.”

  “I’m sure she’s puzzled now,” Kal said, an attempt at lightness.

  “We need to determine if we’re in trouble.”

  Kal smoothed her hair, tried to collect herself. Let the blood get back to her brain, if it remembered how. “What do you think?”

  Sasha gave a great exhale. “Let’s talk it out. Noor needed help. Clearly communicated it through a working comm. Rai did not assist her. Left her to die in the airlock. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “Is it even possible it was deliberate? She said there was a power surge. Maybe it interfered with comm?”

  “Maybe.”

  “She had some kind of leak in her helmet. Without that it wouldn’t have happened. Rai can’t create holes in a light suit.” Kal realized she was speaking faster than normal, maybe trying to push words, push the earlier ones out of Sasha’s mind.

  “That’s true.” Sasha shook her head. “I don’t know what to think. There’s not much we can do about it unless we ask Rai. I don’t want to do that without some serious forethought. It shoots everything into an adversarial framework. It could escalate.”

  “We could ask…” Kal trailed off.

  “Noor? Yeah. Bad time for her to be down. Noor’s not able to analyze the data for us. I could poke around, but Noor would do a more careful job. I don’t like that it was her, either.”

  “What do you mean? You mean if Rai wanted to get someone out of the way, she’d be a good one?”

  “If you put it like that. It would be logical, but it’s never happened.”

  “Rai is pretty new,” Kal said. “Relatively. There’s Yarick.”

  Sasha nodded, flipping the zipper on her suit. Kal found it distracting.

  “There are some reasons not to involve him if we can help it.”

  “Is it really possible?” Kal said. “Could Rai do that? Would she deliberately not help?”

  “I don’t know,” Sasha said. “There are parameters against it, of course. We don’t have enough information to rule it out. We’re going to have to be careful.”

  “About keeping what we suspect from Rai?”

  “Yes. If it’s even possible.” Sasha zipped up the top part of her suit. Kal tried not to show her disappointment. Sasha didn’t have any underwear on, under the suit. It was hot.

  “Worst case scenario she could sabotage
the whole mission, Kal.”

  Kal rubbed her head. “It’s expressly forbidden. Base level programming. Noor would know more.”

  Sasha got up and paced the room. “She learns. Maybe something she’s learned has overridden the directive somehow. Something, or someone. Can’t rule out someone here interacting with her, modifying something key. It’s theoretically possible, though it doesn’t seem likely.”

  “Like Yarick.” Kal paused. “If it was, it didn’t work out very well for him, though. He had to rescue Noor.”

  “He’s not the only possible, but given we’re spitballing, he’d be at the top of the list. Something could have backfired on him. Maybe he didn’t want her to die. He’s on the spot to rescue her.”

  They were silent for a long moment.

  “I can’t stop thinking about the Carys,” Sasha said.

  Kal blanched. “Why?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer. The Carys was the cautionary tale. “What does the Carys have to do with this? It was…it was a portal problem.”

  “Was it? We don’t know what went wrong, for sure.”

  “The amnesia didn’t help.” Kal had to admit, it made the whole incident that much more disturbing than it was already.

  The one crew member who survived after the accident had very few memories of what happened. The portal to Endymion, another system, they believed, had failed, seemingly while the Carys was in it. The portal called Physis no longer existed; or if it did, it wasn’t accessible by any means attempted. Only one of the pods had made it back before Physis winked out of existence. The starship Carys had either been destroyed in the portal, or gone on, unable to get back.

  “It can’t help us much now,” Kal said.

  Sasha came out of her reverie. “True,” she said, her tone brisk. “We have to deal what’s in front of us.”

  Kal thought back over her interactions with Rai. “Do you think we could talk to her about it? Rai? Without making it worse? Knowing her, she probably already knows we know.”

  “It’s possible. Also possible she doesn’t. Have to think about it, before revealing that information to her. I’m afraid we don’t have a predictive model of behavior for her anymore.”

  “But she still has one for us.”

  Sasha stared at Kal. “Exactly.”

  Kal had to look away.

  5

  Fallout

  The day after, for Kal and Sasha, was the day of, since night had rolled around to morning before they found their way back to their cabins. The usual intervening sleep had not softened or mitigated anything, and the only word for seeing each other on the bridge was awkward.

  Kal sorted through slingshot protocols as Sasha took in the data from the night before. The absence of Noor was palpable.

  Seeing Sasha concentrate over the map table was different now. Her hair was still damp from the shower she’d gone back to her cabin to take. Skin glowing, hair slick, she looked like a different person to Kal, yet disturbingly the same. Who was she now? What would happen? Presumably now Rai wouldn’t know, couldn’t know they had a secret from her, because it had been true. Rai wouldn’t know Sasha had created a scenario for Rai’s benefit, not her own pleasure. Kal was so confused by everything that had happened in the last twelve hours it felt like her brain was in data failure, with code overwriting code until the primary directive was so obscured by addenda it couldn’t be discerned anymore.

  Sasha was the most disciplined person Kal knew. It made working together now a little easier. Sasha wasn’t making any references, by look or word, to what had passed between them, and it made it a little less uncomfortable for Kal to carry on.

  Kal was startled out of her thoughts by Sasha’s voice. “Find out from Inger, please, how Noor is doing. Go in person.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Kal said. Sasha barely glanced up.

  Kal turned on her heel and walked across the gangway like an automaton, as if she were back on parade drill. She could act the part of the soldier with the best of them.

  She found Inger in the infirmary, the hollows under her eyes betraying a lack of sleep, which gave Kal a pang. Inger had spent an equally difficult, equally sleepless, night. Noor was in a hyperbaric chamber, her arms linked to tubes, small colored dots of sensors on her head and chest.

  “How is she?” Kal asked.

  “It’s been tricky,” Inger said. “I’ve had to keep an eye on her.”

  Kal observed Noor in silence for a while. Noor’s brow was smooth, her face almost serene. It wasn’t an upsetting sight except for the fact that Noor’s most obvious qualities were always her energy, her laser focus, her fleeting and infectious smile. Asleep she looked like a queen in a space fairy tale, ennobled, awaiting the right spell to wake from her enchantment.

  “She looks beautiful,” Kal said.

  Inger lifted her eyes from the image she was reading. Her eyes were bloodshot. “She’s not in any pain anyway.”

  “What is the coma for?”

  “It’s to let the inflammation in her brain go down. It would be painful.”

  “Is her brain all right?” Kal’s voice was hushed. She couldn’t bear to contemplate Noor’s faculties impaired by this.

  Inger didn’t answer right away. Kal looked up at her in alarm.

  “I won’t know until she’s out of it.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I hope so.”

  “God, Inger,” Kal whispered.

  “I’m doing what I can.” Inger’s voice was strained. Kal had never seen the unflappable Inger stressed. Inger would never overstate.

  “I know you’re doing everything. It’s not your fault.”

  Inger was silent.

  “I have to report to Captain Sarno. Anything else you want me to say?”

  Inger shook her head.

  It wasn’t usual, but Kal had the sense Inger could use some reassurance. She seemed very alone in this, one lone person keeping another alive. The decisions were all hers. Any mistakes would be hers. She might blame herself for Noor’s condition and the outcome, even though she was the expert doing everything she could to save Noor and return her to them all.

  Kal was new, very new by the terms of this crew. It was taking a chance to say something to one of the old hands. She steeled herself.

  “Get some rest soon. Who’s going to spell you?”

  Inger didn’t seem to take offense. “Chyron said she would.”

  “Take care of yourself. We can’t get by without you.”

  That got a little smile from Inger. “Thanks. I will.”

  On the way back to the bridge, Kal thought about how she would report to Sasha. Noor was probably Sasha’s closest friend, if friend were the right word, on the ship.

  Sasha was writing on an image when Kal got back. She looked up, her eyebrows contracted in concentration. “How is she?”

  “She’s still in a coma. Inger’s keeping her that way for a while so the inflammation in her brain can go down. It’s supposed to help her heal and not be in pain.”

  “Prognosis?”

  “She seems to think she’ll come back out of the coma, but she can’t be sure if she’ll be a hundred percent when she does.”

  “In what sense?”

  The tension in Sasha made Kal nervous. “Mentally.”

  The muscles in Sasha’s neck and jaw were like wires. “Okay. I’ll check in with her in a bit. Keep me in the loop.”

  “Yes, Captain.” She cleared her throat, standing straight. “Do you want to go to the Tube?”

  “What?”

  “If you need a break later.”

  Kal had to withstand the intensity of the captain’s startled look, but Sasha caught on fast. Kal could see the moment Sasha understood what Kal was doing, giving the two of them another chance to talk in private, with the same excuse. Only then could Kal breathe again.

  Sasha gave a curt nod and looked back to her work. Kal went back to her own, her face on fire. At least the only witness was Ra
i. She didn’t know how long she could do this.

  A short while later, when she felt light-headed from hunger, Kal swung by the mess to grab something. She only intended to grab and go, but when she saw the hanging chairs she was drawn toward one with her yogurt and fruit in her hand, someplace she could sit and sway and hide for a few minutes.

  One foot on the floor, one tucked beneath her, she swayed herself in the canvas chair (one of the textures proved to promote grounding), looking sightlessly off in the distance as she spooned up the yogurt, reliving last night. So caught up in her memories she missed the fact she had an audience.

  “Long night?”

  Kal jumped, spilling yogurt down her front. “Shit. Gunn. I didn’t see you.”

  “I didn’t see you,” Gunn said. If her tone wasn’t accusing, it wasn’t happy, either. “Last night.”

  “Last night?” Kal licked her finger and dabbed at the yogurt spot on her shirt. She chewed her lip, trying to think.

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” Gunn said. “Before the captain called me to spell her on the bridge.” They were neighbors, their cabins next to each other.

  “Maybe you were already asleep. We were working late.”

  “You and Captain Sarno?”

  “There was a lot to do with Noor down.”

  Gunn’s arms were folded but Kal sensed her softening with the mention of Noor.

  “Have you heard the latest about Noor?” Kal said, pressing the point.

  “No.”

  “She’s being kept under. Inger’s not sure what the outcome will be.”

  Gunn took this in. She unbent and sat down in one of the hanging chairs near Kal. Kal knew this as an indication of true distress, as Gunn never sat in the hanging chairs.

  “Will she die?”

  Gunn’s expression made Kal feel a little connected to her, for the first time. “I don’t think she thinks so.”

  They sat together glumly, contemplating life without Noor. Or Noor changed, not herself.

  “That bastard Yarick won’t like it,” Gunn said at last.

  Startled, Kal swung her chair to face Gunn. “Why?”