Taking Sunshine
Woone chased Krooke as only Nafalli burrowers could. Alice, Gabe and Iruuk watched with amazed amusement as Krooke erupted up from under the sand, shaking grains off his fur. "Where'd you go?" he asked, looking in all directions, his nose twitching.
Woone popped up closer to the shoreline, coughing. "Too much water in the sand that way!" she announced.
"I knew I lost you!" Krooke shouted, diving into the loose, dry sand, disappearing deep under the surface.
"How do they keep from suffocating? The sand must close in around them as they move," Gabe asked.
"I bet that's what would happen if they stop moving for too long," Yawen offered as she and Noah joined them. "The flyboy's fighter is docked to the Clever Dream. I have him set up in a guest bunk." She was in a bikini that was more like three patches, too daring for Alice, but it looked good on her, and it looked like Noah reduced his uniform down to trunks that were recoloured green and blue.
Woone ran up the beach, away from the waterline, her short legs moving so fast it was almost comical, then she dove into the dry sand, disappearing beneath the surface in seconds. "You're right," Iruuk said. "Burrowers are always making room for themselves ahead. They don't turn around often. It makes them good navigators, they always know which way is up and north. Well, almost always. No one's perfect. The legends say they were also the first to start exploring the oceans in wooden ships. The real age of exploration didn't really begin until the tree dwellers joined in, though."
"Keep telling yourself that, stretch," Faloo said, joining them and looking up at Iruuk.
"Water's wet," Iruuk said as he squeezed a spongy ball over Faloo's head, dripping a small bucket's worth of cold water onto her carefully groomed fur. "Oops, I didn't know there was so much in there, sorry!"
"Oooh!" she growled, tripping him and grabbing his foot. "I'll show you water!" she said dragging him by his ankle to the water's edge.
He struggled for a moment, trying to yank free, then clawing at the sand. "Wow! You're strong!" Iruuk laughed.
Giggles pierced the air as she fought to pull him into the waves with her. He started finding his feet and a war of splashes began between Faloo and Iruuk.
"Hey! Fur-Face! My ball!" Gabe shouted.
Iruuk tossed the water-logged ball back to him, still splashing Faloo back with his other hand. Gabe almost failed to catch it and sighed with relief when he had it firmly in hand. "Wow, that almost got messy."
"It's just water," Yawen said.
"Catch," Gabe said, whipping the soft ball at her. It struck her squarely in the shoulder, half covering her with yellow and green colours. The crews in folding chairs arranged in a semi-circle facing their ships laughed and gasped. "It's a Splatter Ball. If you catch it you get a little wet, but if it hits you after you don't, you get painted."
"Popular where you come from?" Yawen asked, picking the ball up and looking at the dripping yellow and green paint.
"Yeah, we get in a circle to start the game, then start throwing. Losers run the ball back to the water and get to throw back," Gabe explained as he started backing away from Yawen.
"Oh, sounds simple." Yawen burst into a run towards the shore to re-soak the ball, then looked at Gabe, brandishing the dripping toy.
"Game on!" Gabe laughed, breaking into a run.
Half the crewmembers in the folding chairs got to their feet and Alice almost didn't notice that Yawen targeted her before she whipped the ball in her direction. Alice caught it more by reflex than skill, cold water splashed her, but it didn't turn to paint. "What do I do?"
"Pick a target!" Gabe shouted from a distance.
Alice spotted Knud in the corner of her eye, sunning on the sand in a bathing suit that was more of a modesty pocket with string. Jessen noticed and rolled away. "Get him!"
Alice threw the soft ball hard, and cold red and purple paint erupted from it as it struck his side. He stood up with the ball in his hand, his eyes searching for whoever threw it.
"It was Yawen!" Alice pointed at her as she emerged mostly paint free from the shore and laughed as Knud charged after her. Yawen ran towards the crowd of crewmembers. Another ball made an appearance, something Alice only realized as it struck her in the forehead, covering her with green and white.
"You had that coming! Callum said, putting distance between himself and Alice."
Noah grabbed the ball from the sand and rushed to the water. "I've gotta get in on this!"
"No!" Alice shouted, running after him. "My throw!" she laughed.
The game moved up and down the beach, eventually forming into a crowd of multi-coloured crewmembers trying to catch each other whenever they weren't paying attention to the three throwers. The three soft Splatter Balls were re-soaked and thrown more times than anyone could count, and most of the shots landed, especially when Theodore joined and was hit from all sides at once. Jessen, Noah and Iruuk learned their lessons quickly, however, since Theodore was faster than all but the tall Nafalli, and could throw with more precision and speed than anyone. They all found themselves thoroughly splattered.
When most of them were exhausted and covered in every colour the toys could produce, Noah approached Alice with a small bag in his hand. "Can I drag you away for a while?" he asked.
His nervousness was clear to her, there was no need to find his mood empathically, and she was glad to feel normal again. Maybe someone from Lorander would see that as closed off, but she felt calmer when her mind wasn't open to the feelings of the people around her. "Sure, let's walk."
Neither of them bothered washing off. Most of the crewmembers were still covered in colours as they took tall bottles of chilled fruit drinks from refrigeration chests. Yawen looked up from where she was making a spiral on her belly in the paint and winked at Alice as she started walking off with Noah.
Alice shook her head and started away from the gathering, snickering under her breath at their motley colours. It would all rinse off easily enough, she'd dunked in the water twice to get rid of paint before getting her final coat from Knud and Iruuk as she caught a Splatter Ball tossed by Gabe. She decided there had to be one in her vacation kit, a bag she wanted to put together for rare days like the one her crew were having.
When they were far enough from the crew to be out of earshot, Noah offered her the small, loose weave bag. "I ran into a little girl named Shauna at the hospital who tracked me down through Crewcast. She said you and Iruuk saved her father, and she made something for you."
"Did you find out why she was in the hospital?" Alice asked.
"She said her brother, Amel, was getting his head fixed. Her father said that he suffered traumatic brain damage when they were getting away from some mad 'bots, and Haven Medical was repairing the damage."
Alice opened the bag and found two bracelets. Hers was made from opalescent blue, white and green beads held together by soft black string. Iruuk's was longer but only had a couple extra beads, but she also added a metal wolf head to the end of the piece. "These are amazing, she's really young to be this good. I'm going to have to visit her," Alice said. "Help me put it on."
Noah tied the bracelet around Alice's wrist above her command and control bracer. "She said your roommate kept on telling her that you weren't home and weren't taking deliveries."
"Roomie," Alice shook her head. "That stupid AI probably still thinks I live there. I gave my house up a while ago, the Clever Dream and a hangar are more than I need. I think Roomie was one of the things that made letting that place go easier, she could barely make a cup of coffee."
"You got your hands on coffee beans?" Noah asked, surprised.
"No, she'd be mystified if I told her to make real coffee. I mean the synthetic stuff," Alice snickered. "Thank you, Noah."
"No problem," he replied, rechecking the knot holding the bracelet on before letting go.
They continued down the beach quietly for a few moments, and Alice was tempted to reach out, find out what he was feeling, but said the first thing that came to mind instead. "I know you." She regretted it immediately.
Noah regarded her with an expression that seemed caught between confusion and surprise.
"I mean, I'm not supposed to tell you this, I could get into real trouble, but I listened to and watched everything you recorded on Iora. I've been following you on Crewcast ever since. The only thing I haven't seen are all the reports from the Iron Head Nebula." It came out in a rush, one that stopped abruptly when she took a long drink from her vanilla peach beverage. The relaxing effect of the inebriant took the edge off the moment, and she stopped drinking, surprised at its potency.
"You got into my storage, too," he said after a moment. "So?"
"Uh…" Alice looked at him, he didn't seem angry, not even shocked or confused anymore, he just looked down the shoreline as they walked it.
"I mean, what did you think? When I recorded all that stuff, I thought I'd be dead when someone found it, so I really didn't hold back. Now I'm around, and you saw it all, so I could run away screaming, maybe try to dig like the burrowers, or I could just ask; 'what do you think?' and hope for the best."
Alice chuckled nervously. The thought that he never thought he'd be around to have his logs reviewed never occurred to her. There were memories from a time when she knew how to talk to people, to be convincing, even alluring but they didn't help her. On the spot, she didn't know what to say, how could she sum up the week or so she spent going through his experiences, listening to his voice. When all the recordings were reviewed, the holograms watched, that's what she missed most - listening to him talk to her - but she forced herself to let it all rest instead of giving her comm unit, or Roomie Noah's voice, though it was tempting.
While he waited for her answer, glancing at her with growing uncertainty, she was tempted to run back to the social safety of the group too, but nodded to herself and stepped in front of him instead so she could be face to face as she walked backwards. "You're here, and it does my head in because I'm used to listening to you talk to me, I mean some listener you recorded all that for in the future. I don't know what to expect from the live version," she smirked at him, enjoying how he regarded her with a surprised half-smile. If Theodore was monitoring her heart rate, he might be alarmed, and that was after she'd had a good pull on her relaxer beverage. "What do I think of hours and hours of you? Watching you go through everything you did on Iora unvarnished? I…" I missed you when it was over, she thought, blushing. "I want to know more," Alice said instead. "But it wouldn't be fair to start asking you questions the first time we meet up, not since I have such an unfair advantage, so if there's anything you want to know about me, I'm an open book, but it stays between us, no sharing."
Noah laughed, sweeping his paint spattered hair out of his face. "I'm not crazy enough to share your secrets."
"Why's that?" Alice asked, pretty sure she knew the answer already.
"Let's see, your father is a well-known badass."
"Generous and a loyal friend if you get on his good side," Alice said.
"Your mother is officially our Queen now," he said.
"A caring, smart woman who would always rather be nice and considerate before anything else, you don't have to worry about her… much," Alice corrected.
"Much," Noah laughed ruefully for a moment. "You know a lot of people running the fleet from there, including my Wing Commander, my boss." He sighed, looked her up and down, smiled a little before focusing on her eyes. "Then there's you. I mean, I only know what you put on your Crewcast profile, but you set records after dropping the framework stuff, set a high bar in the Academy, and even if half the rumours are true, you've seen almost as much of the galaxy as I have, survived more trouble than I would have if I was on Iora for a decade, and you can still be fun, beautiful." He smiled as though getting those compliments out, especially the last one, was a victory for him. "Even in a dozen colours of paint."
"You were expecting Captain Buzz Kill?" Alice replied, happy that he found her fun. It had been a long time since she'd unwound and enjoyed herself like that.
Noah laughed. "I don't know what I expected. Maybe a nod or a handshake before you went about important business, that's kinda how I get treated with most higher ranking people. You're a Captain, and a famous one, so…" he shrugged.
"You tempered your expectations," Alice said. "This is not a business suit," she added, glancing down. "And rank is not an issue on this beach. Not my rule, it's Gabe's but I'm going by it. So, ask me anything."
Noah tapped his command and control unit a few times then looked back at her. "Oh, I'm not setting it to record, I'm enabling privacy mode. A buddy in engineering set me up with the best blocker out there."
Alice held up the slender, transparent blue command and control unit she slipped on after her ride on the sky luge track. It looked completely ornamental, a bracelet, but it had all the communication and computing functions most people would need. "Modified for privacy. This thing records but doesn't share unless I want it to or someone knows the override, and only two people in the fleet will know it if something happens to me."
"Glad we have our privacy sorted," he smiled. "Even after meeting you in person, you seem so together, like you have your whole life figured out."
Alice laughed and fell in step beside him. "Oh, wow, you have so much to learn about me. My head's just starting to come together, I'm a mess."
"You don't look like a mess to me," he said, causing a resurge in her blushing, which she hoped he couldn't see well under the paint. He glanced at her and chuckled. "Well, maybe you're a mess right now, but a short swim would fix that."
"Good idea," Alice said, draining the rest of her bottle in a long pull, crumpling it up so the glass reverted to harmless sand, then running into the water.
He stuck his mostly full bottle in the sand and rushed in after her. The paint dissolved completely by the time she swam out far enough to tread water. She turned and was surprised to see that he'd caught up. "Okay, Open Book," he said, finding a little bravery in the moments it took him to swim to her. "What's it like being a Fleet Darling?"
"Ouch," Alice laughed, splashing him. "It sucks! Everyone's watching, it feels like most of them are just waiting for me to screw up. I'd trade places with you in a second."
"Me? I'm just a pilot. Yeah, I feel like a pretty big deal when I'm out there, like part of a team with important work to do, but you have this awesome ship and a crew. You must see some pretty amazing places."
"Not since the Fleet formed. It's mostly been rescue and emergency work so far. You miss travelling around?"
"Yeah, but I love flying, so if I had to choose, I don't think I'd change anything," Noah said. "What about you? What would you change?"
"Nothing. I think I've changed enough for now. Sometimes it feels like I was a completely different person a few months ago, then I remember that teenage girl and realize she's still here a little." The relaxation effect of her drink was making her muscles feel warm and her mind calmer. It was a welcome change, but not overwhelming. "Gimmie another question."
It was clear, right there in his changing expression: A question came to him, then he decided it was either the wrong question or a bad idea.
"What was that?" Alice asked with an upraised eyebrow.
"If you could be anywhere…"
"That's not what you were really going to ask, was it?" She punctuated it with a splash.
He regarded her more seriously. "You just seem more comfortable watching people, not being in the middle. Like the Splatter Ball game. The moment you had a ball you couldn't get rid of it fast enough, then you avoided getting the ball back so someone else was the centre of attention. Every time I ask you a question, I feel like I'm putting you on the spot, even though you ask me to. You're amazing, why do you want to stick to the background?"
Alice knew what he was talking about immediately. She was more social before she met Jacob Valent, only stand offish because she was afraid knowing her too well might get them into trouble while Meunez was chasing her, but she was having trouble finding the ease and confidence she once had with people. Her hesitation prompted him.
"Maybe I'm just seeing you at work? Like you're a captain whenever your crew is around?"
"No, that's not it," Alice said, starting to swim back to shore.
"I'm sorry, it didn't feel like a good question," Noah said as they walked out of the water a few moments later.
Alice stopped, he nearly collided with her. "I'm just…" she didn't know how to finish her thought aloud.
"Hey, it's okay," Noah said, touching her shoulder. His hand felt warm on her cooled skin.
Maybe it was the light effect of her drink, or a need to tell him, but something drove her to look up into his eyes and just speak. "When I started listening to your logs I didn't feel really connected to anything. I had a friend or two I liked, but I was a clean slate, studying hard, chasing my goals at the Academy. Then I listened to you talk to me for a whole week, saw you do a lot of growing up. Then I got to the end and…"
Noah didn't look surprised. Instead he looked maybe a little pleased? Amused? What was that little smile stretching his lips and narrowing his eyes. She reached for her empathic gift and failed to get a read on him. When I don't want it I can't shut it off, then I want to read him and I can't concentrate enough to open up. I want to cheat, for once, I need to know how bad I scare him off. She thought, barking a short laugh at the thought. "You got to the end?" Noah asked quietly.
"Then you stopped talking to me," she finished. "And I missed you."
It didn't take an empath to see that he was pleasantly surprised. "I could start recording logs again. Send you daily reports on my days aboard the Merciless." He was teasing.
"I'm being serious!" she laughed, in disbelief that he was actually teasing her about a huge revelation that she expected would send him running for his starfighter.
"So am I!" he said, grinning. "'Day twenty-one. Patrol was boring. I definitely shouldn't eat the apple-cinnamon mix before flying again. I am amazed I made it back to the ship before using my suit's plumbing. One of my roommates has a squeaky drawer they keep opening once or twice a night. Tonight, I'm going to set my command and control unit to record, so I can catch the bugger and force him to service that thing so he doesn't wake me up again. I keep dreaming of squeaky kawaii dragons chasing me,'" he said in a narrator's voice.
"No, I miss you," Alice said, rejecting the falseness of it, then realizing what she said and blushing. "The way you recorded before, like you were talking to a friend." It seemed important to explain.
He took her hand gingerly and looked into her eyes. It felt like her mind and all the thoughts within paused. "Hey, just…" he started to say softly, then an alert turned her command and control unit red.
"We have to get back to the ship," she said.
"Yeah, one sec," he gripped her hand a little.
His light blue eyes met hers the moment she turned back towards him. "Quick," she said.
"I just want time to catch up, okay?"
Some of that confidence she remembered returned just long enough for her to squeeze his hand back and smile at him. "I'm your open book." Excited, elated, she turned away from him and started running up the beach.
Carnie passed her momentarily, but he had to slow down to retrieve his bottle from the sand. With him close behind, a more serious mood began to settle on her. She had to be a Captain again by the time she got to her crew.