33: Alek

"You're sure we're good to go?" Alek asked again, folding himself into his seat. He glanced over his shoulder at the engineer, buckled into her chair beside the captain.

Tink rolled her eyes. "Yes, for the hundredth time."

"And we're good to slip? Because when we punch out of this asteroid, we're going to light up their sensors. And, no offense to the Lyra...." He paused to run his hand over the console to show the ship he meant it "But a ship that can go stealth will have a few more tigers in the engine."

"The Lyra has some tricks up her sleeve." Tink looked past him to the viewscreen, which displayed the twilight grey interior of the asteroid.

He glanced over at Ish. The boy sat beside the navigator, clutching Grim in his arms, as Ish showed him the undulating map of space that somehow indicated where the nearby slip points were. The boy stroked the cat's head with long fingers as he watched Ish's hands, wide eyed and mouth agape. He laughed as Ish caused the undulations to ripple with a flick of his fingers.

"Should he be here?" Alek tried to keep the frown from his face. He failed. The boy glanced at him, and his smile fell. "It's not safe," Alek added, softening his tone. "Ish has to fly this bird into the slipstream soon."

"I don't really fly it, I navigate it, but he's probably right."

The boy nodded solemnly and got up from beside Ish, taking the cat with him.

"He can sit by me," Severn said, patting the jump seat beside the Ops console. At the moment, the display beside him showed the locations of the bots crawling around on the outside of the asteroid, like little red spiders. He tapped a button to recall them.

Ish leaned over. "You might want to talk to Ben." His eyebrows lifted. "Like he's a person, even if he is just a kid." He shifted back and enlarged his holoscreen, zooming in on the slip point. "Slip at phi 50°, rho 6, zeta 4."

"Ben?" Alek asked, the word tugging at something in the base of his skull, causing him to frown again though he didn't know why.

"The boy. His name, apparently, though who would name their kid that, after that medical scam?" Ish shook his head, not looking at Alek. "'Bio-equivalent nutraceuticals'. Bollocks."

"Language," Alek whispered, glancing at Ben. Returning his focus to the viewscreen, his eyebrows pulled together. He recognized the acronym, but it wasn't the itch in his brain. He shook his head and filed away the question of the boy's name to puzzle out later.

Instead, he tapped a switch on his console. The display shifted from the inside of the asteroid to images of the space outside, relayed by the bots skittering back to the Lyra. All the panes were empty, showing nothing but the speckled background of the solar system. Cass wasn't reporting any anomalies, but their adversary's ship had this shroud tech the captain mentioned, the ultimate silent running. He sighed, letting the air in his lungs out slowly and pulling his shoulders down. He knew he couldn't trust what the bots were reporting about the space around them. Instead, he'd have to fly by instinct.

I got them into this thing. I need to get them out. "Buckle up, folks. The ride's about to start."

Alek took a large mouthful of starshine, letting the alcohol burn its way down his throat. He usually didn't touch the stuff, but there wasn't much that would calm his nerves right now. The choices were sex or booze. And a vigorous tumble in the bunks was not in the cards. Kandi would kill him with her thumb; Tink would eviscerate him with a wrench; Rebeka would glare him into retreat. And Ish would laugh him off, given that Alek had dissuaded his attentions when they first met.

He tried to convince himself that he'd saved them. He'd gotten them from the asteroid to the slip point, with the enemy only realizing at the last second when the Lyra blinked out in front of them. And even though they saw the slip point the Lyra had entered, they couldn't easily follow. According to Ish, the slipstream wasn't exactly a conduit. At least, there were many paths through it. Well, many threads that you could followed. Or something like that. They could try to track the ship using...at that point, Alek had stopped trying to follow, and just nodded until Ish realized he'd lost him.

But if he were honest, the hair-raising flight from asteroid to slip point was only part of the reason his nerves were fractious. The other was Ben. The word, not the boy, he tried to tell himself. But the word is the boy, another voice said.

He pulled his tablet closer and took another sip of the starshine. Stabbing a finger at the screen, he opened a search: BEN. If he'd known what his handlers were messing with when they'd sent him to the Lyra, he would never have stepped onto the gangway. For one thing, he'd been trying to save his life, not lose it. His jaw clenched, angry at being kept in the dark by people who said they wanted to help him.

The screen flickered, pinpoints of static dancing across it. Then it displayed a message: Cannot access the Connect.

"Jacks. The slipstream." Another lesson from astrodynamics that he'd forgotten: unless your ship had an ansible ampilifier, the only way to access the Connect while in the stream was through the stream. Which right now meant through Ish. "Zeus' bollocks." When Alek lifted the glass of alcohol to his lips, he realized it was empty. He reached over to grab the bottle then dropped his hand with a heavy sigh. There was a reason he never touched the stuff — it went down too easy and didn't bring any clarity.

Sweaty from his small ship workout — run, pull-ups, stairs, planks, repeat ad nauseam — Alek wiped his face with his shirt. The improvised exercise routine had left him thirsty, so when he passed the common room, he popped in for a glass of water. It was dark except for the light over the sink. Even the window to the cargo bay was dark. After downing the first glass in a few quick gulps, he re-filled it.

"What were you doing trying to access the Connect?"

Alek spun around, almost dropping the glass. He swallowed as his eyes started to pick out the captain's shape in the chair in the far corner.

"Bleeding Hades, you scared me." He lifted the glass to his lips and took a sip, forcing his body into a casual stance despite his racing heart. "Not an easy thing to do." He raised his eyebrows, then crossed his free hand over his waist like a shield as he wondered how she knew he'd tried to connect.

"You haven't answered my question."

Alek took another drink and shrugged. "Just looking for some new entertainment."

"Not enough in the ship's banks?"

He let a sneer form. "Nothing to keep me interested."

"What are you interested in, Alek Wa?" The chair creaked as Rebeka shifted, coming to standing.

Alek didn't like the emphasis she put on his fake family name, but he turned his back to her and put the glass in the sink, forcing his movements to be fluid. "Honestly?" He faced her again. She'd crossed the room to stand by the table. He could see her face better now, and the suspicion written on it. "Sleep."

"So why aren't you in bed?" Her eyes narrowed a fraction as she peered at him.

"Perhaps the same reason you aren't...too much excitement, nerves are a mess," Alek answered honestly. "And I think Kandi would slice me bow to stern if I asked her to join me in calming them," he added, then left the captain to figure out the truth from the lies.