Two months later.
When the door announced a visitor, I said over my shoulder, “Come in, Yoan!” and went back to sorting through messages. There was always a shit ton of them and any of them might be more paying work, so I couldn’t just ignore them.
The joys of being a freight captain.
I didn’t hear the door open.
“It’s not Yoan.”
I spun in the chair, my heart leaping. Dalton stood a pace inside the door, and Darb sat just outside it, his tongue lolling. Dalton was holding a bunch of roses.
My mouth opened. Nothing came out.
Dalton cleared his throat. “The roses are wrong, yes?”
“I…no, you know I love roses.” It was our little secret.
“I hedged my bet, anyway,” Dalton said. He put the roses in his other hand. Carefully, because he was also holding a bottle of scotch.
“Good hedge,” I told him, getting to my feet. “You’re back from Proya.” Someone had finally got around to naming the red dwarf where we’d found Mace.
“They finally decided that they’d learned as much as they could out there,” Dalton said. “I think they got sick of ship food, myself.”
“Even Jai and Marlow? Sauli’s ship has the good files.”
“They want to strategize, now we’ve learned what we can. And Fiori announced that they’re going to wake up the first of the Orions in a week or so. They think they’ve figured out how to do it. They’ll be our next source of information.”
“Our?”
“Humans. Us.” Dalton came over to the desk and put the bottle and the roses on it, then turned back to me. “I’m going to keep working for Jai and Marlow, Danny. They’re right in the middle of all this…whatever this is. Only…” He halted, his gaze roaming over my face. “I need a ship to do it. Turns out there are people who specialize in being chiefs of staff, and I’m…not.”
“You’re a get-things-done guy,” I agreed.
“Jai has things he wants me to do. Actually, he said he’d rather have you do it—”
“Of course.” I hid my sigh. I was still a hammer, just not an imperial one anymore.
“But he wants me to help you,” Dalton finished in a rush. “He practically ordered me to.”
I held still.
“But that’s not why I’m here,” Dalton added.
My heart jumped.
“Fact is, I quit,” Dalton said. “Then he started talking about if I was going to quit just to be with you then he could use a team like us, yaddah yaddah…” He let out his breath. “I can’t believe you waited for me, Danny. Nearly thirty years… “ He shook his head. “Am I too late?” he whispered.
“Thirty years late.”
“I fucked up,” he admitted.
“But you got Mace out of it.”
“And then I got him back, thanks to you.” Dalton took a breath. “Life has always been interesting, with you in it. I didn’t know until now that life just…works out, when you’re in it.”
“Using me as a metaphor for a curse is a shitty apology, Dalton.”
“I’ll get better at it,” Dalton promised, his mouth close to mine.