“It wasn’t my fault,” Dr. Walker said. “They picked up our transmissions and well, you heard her. They wanted to meet aliens.”
Tim rose and looked around. One of the passengers had taken the first aid kit from him while he was working and passed it along the line, so that each injured person was able to tend their wounds.
Damage appeared to be fairly light. This was a relief. It could have been much worse. But Trac had tried to mitigate evasive action effects as much as possible. He was a better pilot than he would admit to. Of course, he very much disliked being at the helm. Tim did not know why. He liked piloting.
But since Trac didn’t like piloting, he should relieve him.
Before he could act on that thought, he noticed that Lira had released her face plate and there was a bird head next to hers. He blinked, almost asked, then wasn’t sure he wanted to know if she had two heads.
He made his way to the cockpit, stopping in the doorway and looking around. Riina, or possibly Lt. Dish, had directed Drun to a seat at the small science station. She was back at navigation and Rinna was in her co-pilot seat. Fred was back in his place around Trac’s neck. Tim noticed that Drun was staring at the skitterfin with wide eyes.
“I can relieve you,” Tim said. He stepped forward and the hatch slid closed. If this bothered their passengers, he didn’t have to see it. He was already tired of them.
He’d been on missions gone wrong, more times than he cared to count up, but this one felt like it was just at the beginning of going wrong. His now human gut was twitching a wild and insistent warning of more trouble incoming.
Trac rose without complaint, surrendering the pilot seat to him. He continued to control the shuttle through his cybernetics until Tim was settled and able to take over, then transferred control—just in time for another round of extreme dodging.
He hadn’t used to care about days or nights, but now he knew what the humans meant when they complained about how long the day had been.
It had been long and looked to only be getting longer. But…he almost smiled. He’d held Riina in his arms for several whole seconds. And she’d looked like she didn’t mind.
Out of the corner of her eyes, Riina noted Drun shifting in his seat. Well, he’d wanted this view. She could have told him that seeing what was incoming wasn’t much fun, particularly when one lacked the power to control the dodges. Just when she’d start to relax, the firing from above began again.
“Were you injured?” she asked. That was also a possibility.
“Only a few bruises,” he said, somewhat dismissively. His gaze flickered sideways to Trac and Fred. She wondered which bothered the man more. The cyborg or the skitterfin? He shifted again.
A few bruises, in the right section of his anatomy, could be as bad as a broken bone. It was only because of Tim’s quick action, she wasn’t sitting on some bruises. He’d cushioned her very…nicely.
She felt warmth suffuse her again. At the memory of being held. Of the way he’d looked at her. At the very human, very male way he’d looked at her.
She felt a sudden impatience for the mission to end, for them to be alone, for…talking. For clearing the air. She tended to forget how very inhuman it must have been for him to live for so long as a cyborg robot. How could he know the longings of her heart? How could he recognize them enough to act on them?
She hadn’t wanted to take advantage of his, well, innocence, but that look he’d given her? That had been far from innocent.
Even as the shuttle was expertly steered into a wrenching dodge, she felt her lips edge up in a tiny smile.
A girl had to get her good moments where she could find them—especially one who’d spent a very long time frozen in stasis. She’d returned to life. She should be able to return to LIFE.
She looked at Tim and then stiffened. His muscles were bunching, as if he were struggling to control the shuttle.
“Trac,” Tim gritted out.
“On it,” Trac said.
Warning lights flared on every panel that Riina could see. The ones she couldn’t see? She heard.
The cacophony was unpleasant and made it impossible to ask what was happening. She thought Drun might have tried. She saw his mouth moving.
The weird part? The shuttle wasn’t lurching anymore. Their flight had smoothed out. And they were proceeding in a manner both level and…
She studied the controls.
She’d had some training as a pilot, but the readings exceeded her training. She’d almost have said they weren’t proceeding at all. But that wasn’t possible. No transport, not even a lowly shuttle could go from traveling at speed to stopped without the occupants feeling the transition.
The only useful thing she could think to do was to shut off the various warning sounds. One by one, they quieted until there was no sound left, just frantically blinking warning lights.
“What is happening?” Drun demanded, though his voice sounded less authoritative than it had.
