I floated lethargically somewhere warm and soft. I didn’t want to wake up, I didn’t want to move. Some part of me knew that bad things were waiting for me when I did, like pain. I tried to stay floating in the warm darkness. That thought touched off a memory I didn’t want of fuzzy warm energy that tasted like strawberries. I gave up and opened my eyes.
I saw the bottom of a bunk not far over my head. I stared at it a minute, trying to place where I was. Which ship? When? The engines were running, a deep vibration barely felt. It was as familiar as my own heartbeat. I was on my own ship, in hyperspace, but not my bunk. I was in the bunk with the medunit attached because I'd broken my ribs again.
I breathed in and out, waiting for the stab of pain in my ribs. It didn’t come. I felt a slight twinge, sore muscles more than anything. I felt better than I had in a while. I also felt very hungry.
The smell of fresh baked cookies drifted past. I sniffed, wondering if I was still dreaming. I heard a murmur of talking, it sounded like a lot of people. Someone in the room with me snored. I turned my head. The other three bunks in the room were all pulled out and occupied. Something in the room stunk, it almost overpowered the smell of cookies.
It was me. I needed a shower. But so did the rest of the people on the ship. Just how many were there? I had no idea, but I suspected it was a lot more than our life support system was rated for. I swung my legs over the edge of the bunk and sat, careful not to knock my head on the upper bunk.
I was barefoot. I frowned at my naked toes. I vaguely remembered Clark taking my boots off. I didn’t see them anywhere. It didn’t matter. They were somewhere, and if not, I had more in my cabin. Besides, I was on my ship. I could stand being barefoot on my own ship. I shuffled into the lounge.
People sat everywhere, on the cushioned bench, on the floor, around the table, in the engine room, even up in the small cargo bay that was pressurized. Jasyn sat on the floor in the galley, talking to a woman I didn’t know. She saw me and stood, smiling.
“Feel better?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said, picking my way over legs to her. “It would be nice to get clean, but I don’t think we have the water for it.” I counted at least twenty people just in the lounge.
“Water is a bit tight, even if we recycle. Life support is running on emergency override. But,” she handed me a cookie, “we have seventeen qualified engineers on board, five of which are specialists in life support systems. Have a cookie. I saved you some casserole, since I know you hate chicken noodle.” She popped a container into the warmer.
I bit into the cookie. It was perfect. At that point, it could have been two weeks stale and hard as a rock and still been considered perfect. It wasn’t, it was soft and chewy, the chocolate still dripping.
“I had to fight off thirty people to save that one for you,” Jasyn said.
“Thank you. It’s been at least three days since I had anything to eat.”
“Eating shouldn't be a problem. We should have enough food, as long as you don't mind using the freeze-dried emergency stock.”
“You know how much I hate it. Clark bought it in case we got stuck somewhere. Use all of it. I won't mind. How many people are on the ship?” I savored the warm chocolate, nibbling to make the cookie last as long as possible.
“Fifty three.”
The woman Jasyn had been talking to stood, watching me with interest. “You must be Dace. The name’s Roz.” She stuck out her hand.
I licked chocolate off my finger, then shook her hand.
“They say you were the one who got us out of there. How?”
“I didn’t do much,” I said. The warmer beeped.
“Let her eat first,” Jasyn said. “Then we’ll beat the story out of her if we need to.”
I was being watched, by just about all of the fifty three people on the ship, except the ones still asleep. Commander Hovart leaned against the wall by the cockpit. I met his gray eyes and wished I hadn’t. He’d seen the equipment in the cockpit, nothing I said now would convince him I wasn’t an undercover agent posing as a smuggler.
I mentally shrugged and gave in. Let them think what they would. I’d never see most of them again. I took the steaming dish of food and found myself a fork.
They made room for me at the table. Darus took the chair across from me. He grinned, as if we shared a great secret. If only he knew the truth. I bent my head over my food. Now that the danger was past, I wasn’t sure what I wanted from him. He had no idea he was my father. Did I want to say anything to him? Or did I let him go, never tell him?
“I was there all along,” Darus said. “Let me tell you about it. Dace can correct me if I get it wrong.”
He told it like a great, grand adventure vid. I tried to correct him the first time he exaggerated what I’d done. He talked right over me. And got even wilder in his exaggerations. Wade joined in telling the story. Between the two of them, I could have done a ten season serial. They had all of us laughing, although I suspect part of it was still euphoria at escaping in one piece.
The rest of them shared their version of events. I cleaned my dishes and went to find a quiet spot. I wanted time to myself, to think.
There wasn’t anyplace on the ship. The cockpit had seven people crammed inside. My cabin was occupied, both bunks. I went in anyway. If nothing else, I wanted to change out of the gray suit. I’d been wearing it for days and it smelled like it. I opened my locker and pulled out a green suit. The people snoring in the bunks didn’t notice or care.
I used the bathroom to change. I was very tempted to use the shower, but I knew exactly how much water we had on board. It would be barely enough drinking water for the five days it was going to take us to finish the trip.
When I was dressed again, I sat on the floor in the bathroom and tried to sort out my thoughts. I twisted the gold band on my finger, Darus’s wedding ring. What was I going to tell him, if anything?
I liked him, but did I want him as a father? Why had he abandoned me? The little child inside my head wouldn’t let it go. If he’d really loved me and wanted me, why hadn’t he come and gotten me off Tivor? Why hadn’t he rescued me from the orphanage?
Someone knocked on the door. I muttered under my breath as I stood and opened the door. It was going to be a very long trip.
My bunk now had five people sitting on it. The upper bunk, a narrow one I’d never thought would ever get used, contained one very loud snorer. Three others sat on the narrow strip of floor. I couldn’t kick them out, even if it was my cabin. They had nowhere else to go.
Someone in the lounge played the lute Jasyn had bought for me what felt like two lifetimes ago. Singing, laughter, talk, it could have been a party in the dorms at the Academy. I left my cabin.
The woman with my lute had a soft husky voice, pleasant to listen to, and she knew a lot more than I did about playing the thing.
There was a card game going on in one corner, a dice game in another. Someone else had set up the Crystals set we owned on the galley table. I picked my way past people to the engine room door. At least a dozen engineers crammed the space around the engine or sat on the steps. The narrow walkway in the cargo bay above was full as well.
“Dace, what are you doing?” Jasyn asked, catching my sleeve.
“Looking for an empty corner,” I said.
“The upper bunk in my cabin is still unclaimed, I think,” she offered.
“Thanks.”
She gave me a half smile that said she understood exactly how I felt. I saw Darus heading my way and ducked past her, to her cabin. I wasn’t ready to face him. I made every excuse I could to stay out of his way. On a ship the size of the Phoenix with the number of people we had on board, it took some very creative maneuvering.
I didn't have the excuse of needing to do maintenance on the ship. With the number of qualified engineers, pilots, and others on the ship, nothing had a chance of breaking down. The life support filters were cleaned at least once an hour. Every gauge on the engine was read just as often. Our course was checked and rechecked, even though once in hyperspace it couldn’t be altered. There was always a group around the com unit, reading anything and everything from the ship’s library, especially news reports.
Two days later I still wasn’t ready to talk to Darus.
I was on my way from the bathroom in my cabin to a corner in the far end of the cargo bay when Darus caught up with me. He blocked my way, planting himself squarely between me, the galley table, five men playing dice on the floor, and the steps up to the cargo bay.
“Well?” he demanded, folding his arms over his chest and jutting his chin out.
“Well what?” I tried to step around him.
He shifted to block my way. “You’ve been avoiding me,” he said, not seeming to notice that everyone in the room watched us. “That takes a lot of effort on this ship. Why?”
“Why what, Darus?”
“Why avoid me? Did I say something? What did I do? Tell me, Dace.” He was hurt by my avoiding him. He didn’t know the truth. How could he possibly guess? “Do I smell bad? Everyone on this ship smells.”
That got a few snickers. I looked away. I didn’t want to talk to him, not yet, and not this publicly. He was going to force the issue.
“So I’m sorry for making you look like a hero. Or should I have told a different version? It was close enough to the truth. Why are you avoiding me?”
I twisted the ring on my finger. He looked at it, noticing it for the first time. He looked back up at me, eyes suspicious, not wanting to think I was a thief.
“Yes, it’s yours,” I said, pulling it off and holding it out to him. “Your ship was stripped, except for the locked compartments. I broke into the ones in your cabin and took this.” He didn’t take the ring. The room was very quiet. “How well do you remember a woman named Lirondalla Muberretton? I took her picture from your locker.”
His face went white, his expression blank. He stared at the ring as if it were poisonous. “What does she have to do with any of this?” His voice was strained and hoarse.
“She was my mother.” My voice broke. Tears, hot and stinging, filled my eyes. “My full name is Zeresthina Dasmuller.”
He turned his gaze back up to me, a stunned look on his face.
“She listed my father as Darus Venn. I don’t know any more, because she died when I was three. They put me in the orphanage in Milaga on Tivor.” I had to stop, because my chin was trembling and the tears were starting to overflow. I wiped them away with an angry swipe of my hand. “Why did you leave me there?” It came out in a tiny, high voice.
“Your mother? You? My child? Dace, I didn’t know. I had no idea.” He smiled, like light growing after a storm. He pulled me into a hug. “If I’d known about you,” he said as I sobbed into his dirty shipsuit, “I would have moved the stars out of their orbits to get you out of there. I tried to get your mother out, tried everything, until I heard she was dead. That’s when I gave up, transferred to Exploration trying to forget her.” He patted my back, awkwardly as if he’d never done it before. “Zeresthina was my mother’s name.”
Someone started clapping, as if we’d just put on an incredible performance in a vid. The others picked it up. I laughed through the tears. Darus let go of me to stand on a chair and wave his arms.
“Congratulate me. I’ve got the best daughter in the Empire. No, in the galaxy! Someone find me something to drink. Drinks for everyone, even if it is water.”
He grinned down at me, I had to smile back, even if he was embarrassing me. I could see why my mother had been attracted to him. I wiped tears from my face.
The woman with my lute hit the opening chords of a fast dance tune. Darus jumped down from the chair and swung me around. Roz pulled her brother into the dance. Someone else pulled another person in. More of them raided the galley for anything that would hold water. The room was really much too small for dancing, but it didn’t stop anyone. If there had been anything besides water to drink, I’m sure most of them would have been drunk. They didn’t need the help.
We celebrated everything. They toasted me and Darus first, and then Roz and her brother, and moved on to toast just about anything and everyone on the ship, stopping to dance between toasts while the cups were refilled.
It was loud, and noisy. I gradually worked my way to the now empty cockpit. I sat in the pilot chair, for the first time since I’d left the Phoenix to scout the other ships. I ran my finger lightly over the familiar controls.
“Mind if I sit here?” Darus asked. He slid into the other pilots chair before I could answer. He was still grinning, as if he couldn’t quite believe I was real. “You reminded me of her, the first time I met you. You’ve got her eyes.”
He meant my mother, I know he did. “What was she like? All I remember is dark hair and a lullaby.”
“She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever met,” he said, his face wistful. “I wasn’t supposed to meet her at all. Tivor had strict laws about that. She was assigned to deliver supplies to our barracks. The sergeant got sick and asked me to fill in for him. The first time I saw her, it was magical.” He shook his head, at a loss for words. “I lost my heart when she smiled.” He looked out the viewscreen, at the rippling colors of hyperspace.
Someone behind us broke into a loud and offkey rendition of ‘Danny Boyo’, the unofficial anthem of the Patrol. I leaned back in my chair and thumbed the door control. It slid shut. The loud singing was muted.
“Tell me. Tell me the way it really happened.”
He thought for a moment. “She came floating in on wisps of golden light, with flowers growing under her feet, her hair shining around her like Sira silk.” He looked over at me. “Wouldn’t you prefer that version? It’s the way I like to remember it.” He sighed and looked at the viewscreen, leaning back in the chair.
“She wore a shapeless black smock, like every other woman on Tivor. And a black scarf over her head. She looked scared when I met her. I told her the sergeant was sick and I was supposed to take his place. She handed me the forms to sign, never said a word. I noticed everything about her, though. She had big eyes, dark brown, as scared as a rabbit. She chewed her nails, they looked almost as bad as yours.” He gave me a sad smile as I curled my hands to hide my ragged nails. “She was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever met. It took me two weeks to get her to talk to me. It took a month to learn her name. The sergeant stayed sick for two months, until he was relieved and I was posted in his place. We made arrangements then, to meet secretly. She had a friend who could smuggle notes between us. Her friend collected trash. He’d leave her notes behind a loose brick in the wall. I’d leave replies there.
“We used to meet behind an old warehouse. After three months, I knew I loved her. She told me she loved me, too, but it was too dangerous. She told me not to see her again. She was crying when she told me. It broke both our hearts. I promised her I would try to get her immunity, get her cleared to leave Tivor. And I tried. I went to my commander, he was sympathetic, but he couldn’t do anything.
“Liri met me one last time. Her friend smuggled us to an abandoned cottage on the beach. She had her father with her. He married us.”
“Her father?” For some reason it had never occurred to me that I might have more family, somewhere on Tivor. My mother had to have come from somewhere.
“He was shot as a traitor six months later. I don’t know anything about her mother. She never talked about her.” He shifted in the chair, running his finger over the edge of the control panel. Just like I did. “We hid there for a week. I never saw her again. I was transferred off planet the day after I came back.”
We listened to the singing, something mellower now that I didn’t know. Darus picked up my hand, turning it palm up. He pushed the gold ring into it.
“You keep it,” he said, his voice rough. “I loved her enough to give up my life for her. I would have if it could have changed things.” He closed my hand over the ring.
“I spent most of my life wondering who you were. Why you never came to get me. The other girls used to tease me. They told me their fathers were dead, but mine didn’t want me.”
“Dace, if I’d known about you, nothing would have stopped me from getting you off that planet.”
“You’re the reason I managed to get away from Tivor.”
“What?”
“Six years ago, they declared you missing and dead. They gave me your pension fund. I spent it on a ship.”
“Good ship,” he said, eyeing the Phoenix appreciatively.
“That was two ships ago.”
His eyes opened wide in surprise. “You want to explain that?”
So I did. I told him about my life, about the ill-fated Star’s Grace and my adventures with the Targon Syndicate and the Sessimoniss. I told him about Jasyn, and her brother, and Clark. The only thing I didn’t tell him about was Tayvis.
He talked in return. He told me about his life. He told me stories about the Patrol, about some of the planets he’d discovered and surveyed.
I still wasn’t quite sure how I felt. I wasn’t ready to call him dad. Father sounded much too stuffy and formal. But we had the beginnings of a real connection.