Billie sat at her nav station, preparing for departure. She was ready to get back out into space. She, like her father and older brother before her, felt most at home on the bridge, heading out on a course she had plotted. She’d often heard them describe the sensation, but until she had scraped up enough money to attend the space academy, she had never dreamed she would experience it, too.
Medeus walked onto the bridge, taking his place in the command chair, and all was right with her universe. At least for that moment. He was flipping switches, receiving reports from all stations around the ship, and generally making sure they were fit and ready to travel. He let Chiron handle the communications with the orbital station.
The people there had seen Chiron and had somehow come under the impression that he was the captain of the ship. Medeus didn’t seem to mind. Billie supposed that had something to do with the damage done to his face. The surgeons had left Medeus looking a bit rougher than the other men. His face, in particular, showed the repair work. It was as if they’d done it on purpose. As if someone hadn’t let the surgeons finish their job—either as punishment to Medeus or a warning to those who saw him.
Billie had a vivid imagination. She could easily believe that certain military elites hadn’t wanted there to be any confusion between the former fleet commander and the cyborg that he had become. She had no doubt that the fleet commander’s face had been very familiar to a vast number of military personnel. When he’d been blown up and rebuilt, there had to be some way to prevent confusion.
It was ghoulish, though, in her opinion. Cruel. Perhaps he’d had enemies, and those officers had wanted to destroy him visibly. If that was the case, they’d done a good job of it. But what made others afraid of him, only endeared him to Billie. It seemed so much harder for him than some of the others. His physical appearance was a barrier all by itself. It made people shy away from him. Billie had seen that from the first and vowed she would never do that to him. Never.
He was a man. With feelings. She truly believed that. No man who didn’t feel could have kissed her the way he had. If only he would kiss her, again…and more. It was the stuff of her late-night fantasies, making love with Medeus. Something she seriously doubted he would ever let happen. Much to her disappointment.
“What did Mrs. Aziner have to say, Billie?” Medeus asked from right beside her. He’d snuck up on her, again, while she’d been contemplating naughtiness. She hoped he couldn’t see the slight flush she knew was on her cheeks.
“She just wanted to verify some of the installation instructions. Jason helped with that. And then, she wanted to say how pleased she was with the gift of the rail gun and that we were welcome to return to the colony anytime.” Billie thought over the long conversation she’d had with the old lady who ran the colony. “She also wanted to remind us about checking the system to see if we could figure out why no trade ships have been visiting. I said I’d remind the captain, which I am doing, right now.” She smiled up at him, and he just shook his head, a slight grin playing around one corner of his mouth. She loved it when he smiled, even just that little bit.
“Thanks,” he replied, losing some of the formality of his usual responses. She liked that even better.
When they were traveling on the in-system drive, heading for the delta quadrant of the system, Medeus kept his eye on target and tried not to think about his luscious navigator. Her work to this point had been superb. One of the men still checked her calculations, but that took mere moments, and they were all coming to trust her abilities more with each successfully charted course. She sat the nav boards alone now, with no cyborg watchdog.
When Medeus had told her she’d be nav first from now on, she had beamed. She’d smiled so hard he’d thought she might jump into his arms and hug him. Not that he’d have minded, but he had to discourage her from such things. He couldn’t get any closer to her than he already was. He—for sure—couldn’t kiss her, again. Not with his past standing between them.
“Captain, there’s a buoy broadcasting a signal out-system,” the man on the comms board said aloud. He was already receiving more detailed information from his fellow cyborg over their shared communications channel, but Medeus had requested that everyone on the bridge speak aloud, when there was time, for Billie’s sake.
“Nav, can you put us in front of the signal? We need to hear what it’s broadcasting.” Medeus half-suspected this buoy, which was located on what would be the main trade route for most cargo ships, had been placed there by the raiders. The Tobias Bay’s non-standard insertion into the system had made them miss the buoys altogether.
“Aye, sir. I’ve got a course,” Billie replied, busily inputting numbers into the nav board.
Silently, Medeus reviewed the course she had plotted and found the path she had chosen to be both elegant and conservative of their resources—as had every course she had plotted so far. He flicked a silent message to Ajax, who had been tasked to check Billie’s course computations because he’d been a pilot and captain of a small ship before his cyborganization. He’d had some nav training, as well, though he was not a specialist. He was acting as pilot, right now, and would implement any courses Billie plotted at the helm station.
Ajax ran the calculations and affirmed that Billie was on target, once again. Aloud, he said, “Course confirmed, Captain,” giving Billie a gentle nod when she looked over at him.
Medeus could see her answering smile and almost wished it had been aimed at him, not his brother cyborg. But that way lay dangerous territory. He shook his head and concentrated on the matter at hand.
“Change course, helm,” Medeus gave the order formally. “Let’s see what that buoy is saying. Comms, play the message once you have it.”
“Aye, Captain,” Jason, the cyborg at the comms board, replied dutifully.
It took them about twenty minutes to put the ship at an angle where they could intercept the message. When he finally heard the whole thing, Medeus’s suspicions were confirmed. The raiders had placed a false quarantine message, interdicting the colony and the entire system. Dire threats were made against any ship that dared cross the quarantine.
Such things had been done regularly throughout human space for as long as men had traveled the stars in ships. Some places were just too dangerous. Some solar systems were quarantined as navigation hazards when they contained unstable space-time. Some received no-fly-zone status due to hostile aliens or primitive cultures that needed to be protected.
Some—the scariest of the lot—were quarantined because of pathogens. Deadly plagues that could wipe out every last human being in the galaxy, should they get loose. That’s the kind of warning that was on this buoy. It warned of a deadly plague that had run rampant through the colony, turning everyone there into disease-ridden monsters.
The message used all the right language. It sounded legal enough, but it clearly wasn’t anything put in place by the central government. For one thing, the buoy was a commercially available model. The ones the government issued were much more high-tech. This model could be easily tampered with. In fact, that was Medeus’s plan—to change the message and reverse the quarantine, warning anyone who heard the message that there had been raider activity in the system and to beware of strange ships.
“Comms,” Medeus spoke to Jason, the cyborg who was best at doing such things, “change the message as we discussed and send a ping back to the colony with a recording of the original message, and our compliments. Tell them what we’re doing to the buoy and lock that device down so nobody else can tamper with it the way we’re going to.”
“Aye, Captain.” Jason smiled as he turned back to his station. “This is gonna be fun,” he commented along their private channel.
“Nav, what are the most common routes for vessels approaching the colony?” Medeus asked. “Put up a chart on the forward screen when you have it.” Medeus knew it would take a few minutes for Jason to reprogram everything and lock it down.
Billie had the chart ready long before Jason was done, as Medeus had expected. She flashed it to the display, and Medeus studied it, along with everyone else on the bridge, except Jason, of course. He was clearly enjoying himself, if the nearly maniacal grin on his face was anything to go by. Medeus couldn’t wait to hear the message Jason was crafting to put on the buoy.
“Good work,” Medeus complimented Billie, even as he studied the paths other ships would take to get to Aziner Colony. “The most likely places for further buoys, based on the position of this one, are here and here.” Medeus highlighted two areas on the chart with a simple command from his internal computer to the ship’s system. “Nav, plot courses to intercept both points. I want to see if the raiders posted more quarantine notices and, if so, remove them.”
“Aye, sir,” Billie replied, already looking up numbers in her references.
They spent the rest of the day trolling around the system, intercepting message buoys and reprogramming them. Each time, they sent a message back to the colony, though from this far out, the colonists probably wouldn’t receive the signals for a day or two. By the end of their search pattern, they had uncovered three more buoys, but that was it. Medeus was confident there were no more, and all four had been reprogrammed, and their code vandalized—in a good way—by Jason, enough that the raiders would never be able to use them as they had, again.
Jason had crafted a message that stated the colony has been under attack by slavers and to be on the lookout for pirates. They sent a copy of Jason’s new buoy message back to the colony, along with the location of each of the buoys and command codes so they could control them remotely. The colonists might not have a ship capable of traveling to the buoys, but their signal would reach them, given time, and they could check periodically to make sure the buoys were still there. If one or more went missing, it would be a good indication that the raiders were back in the system, and the colonists might have time to prepare. Jason had rigged each of the buoys to report any traffic that passed within range back to the colony, which was as good an early-warning system as they could rig on short notice, and with no parts.
It was a small victory, but Medeus would take it. With any luck, the colonists would get some help, or at least some visits from trade ships. Perhaps they’d be able to prosper, once more. Or maybe, those who wanted to leave and head back for Earth would find passage.
A few colonists had inquired about leaving on the Toby, but once they realized rogue cyborgs were in charge and they had no plans to go anywhere near Earth or other places with a military presence, they soon stopped asking. It was just as well, Medeus thought. They had enough to deal with already. The women and children from Eagle Nest Station were really starting to come together to make the ship run smoothly.
The new hydroponics section was looking better and better each time Medeus went down there. He was pleased to see how many of the older kids were taking an interest and how many of the women had good prior experience in aquaculture. He was sure that, in time, they’d be producing their own vegetables, fruits, herbs, and even grains.
When Medeus finally went off shift, along with all the main-shift bridge crew, he headed for the hydroponics section. He wanted to see how it was going, and there shouldn’t be any people there at this time of the cycle because it was main-shift dinner—a meal at which everyone would appear. For those on the later shifts, main-shift dinner served as either breakfast or lunch, but regardless of what sleep cycle people were on, it was good to gather as a whole group at least once per day.
He walked among the newly planted rows, enjoying the soft glow of the lighting as it mimicked sunset. The colonists had included a few starter seedlings that were already about halfway to maturation. They were in one section nearest the hatch. Medeus would start and end his informal tour there, among the immature greenery. The sprouts and small plants that symbolized hope for the future.
As he walked along, stretching his legs, he breathed in the fresh scent of sterilized dirt and water. The nutrient mixes and fertilizing compounds had different smells, depending on which crop was planted in them. The seedling trays were crowded with seeds that would be thinned and potted on once they sprouted, and each would sprout at different times, depending on the seed.
Medeus read the markers the gardeners had left clearly visible on each planted tray. Everything looked in order. They were making a good start of a system that would help feed them all.
Suddenly, the scent of apples came to him as if from a distance. Was he losing his mind? Was he imagining the scent of the woman he craved with every fiber of his being, even when she was nowhere near? Medeus looked around. He hadn’t heard the hatch open, but there it stood…fifty feet away…open. With Billie leaning in and looking around. Had she come looking for him?
He got his answer when she spotted him, smiled then walked into the hold, letting the hatch close behind her. She walked on a direct path to his location. He stood perfectly still, not sure what to make of her appearance here, at this hour.
“You weren’t at dinner,” she began, as she stopped a few feet away from him. “Someone said they thought you had been coming down here when nobody was looking.”
“I guess I haven’t been as stealthy as I thought,” he admitted, shaking his head slightly. “I wanted to check on progress. Growing our own food is a key step to making us more self-sufficient. We may not run into such understanding people as those of Aziner Colony in the future.” He decided to add a bit more truth to his words. “And I like to see green, growing things. My father was a farmer, back on Earth. I grew up in Iowa. My first starship was a tractor. At least, I used to pretend the controls on the auto-tractor were starship controls when I snuck into the cab for a ride. The cab was my pretend command chair.”
Her smile widened. “I used to play with the auto-nav on my mother’s car, pretending I was plotting a course for hopping between solar systems.”
She moved a step closer, the length of one of the ‘ponics stations between them. He was at one end of the six-foot by three-foot unit, and she was at the other. They were, at least, both on the same side, along the same aisle, surrounded by similar units with only enough room to push a collection cart between them.
The lights kept dimming at a very slow, steady pace, in pretend-sunset. The atmosphere was intimate, even though they were in a huge cargo hold. The rows of lights just a few feet over the growing beds and the units themselves created a sense of the big space being crowded, even if it wasn’t really true.
“I guess we weren’t so different as kids,” he said, taking a step closer to her, even though he knew it wasn’t wise. His head wasn’t in control, right now. No, other things…farther down his body…were guiding his motions at this moment.
“I guess not,” she agreed, moving another step closer until there was only about two feet separating them, near the center of the ‘ponics unit. “So…why didn’t you come to dinner? Aren’t you hungry?”
“I’ll get something later,” he said offhandedly. “I needed some quiet time to think about…things. And I don’t like to come here when the kids are working. They…”
“They’re scared of your appearance,” she said, not unkindly. “Which really is all the more reason that you should come down here and show them that you’re not really scary at all.”
He had to chuckle at her boldness. “I’m not scary? Really?” He moved involuntarily closer. “Billie, I have looked in the mirror.”
“Then, your mirror must be broken, because the man I see when I look at you is a good man. A kind man. A powerful man.” She moved right up against him, and with his one hand on the rim of the ‘ponics unit, it felt natural to put his other arm around her waist. “When I look at you, I see a man who is scarred, but stronger for it,” she told him.
“You really see me that way?” he asked. He had to hear it again. “As a man?”
“As a man I’m very attracted to, Medeus. A man I’d like to get to know a lot better.” She moved, and then, they were kissing.
This was nothing like that first tentative kiss on the bridge. This was an all-out flame-throwing, hold-onto-your-britches kiss. He went from zero to light speed in no time flat, and he knew… He knew… This time, he wouldn’t be able to let her go. This time, he wouldn’t be able to be noble.
But, then… Nobility—sometimes—was over-rated.