I’m as Tellurian as it gets; plump, average height, brown eyes, wide nose. Even with all the mixing amongst Tellurian continents, neither of us could pass for the other.
“I do.Tanak velari navesh,”I incline my head.Technically,it meansnice to meet you,but from what I remember is literally translated asmeeting you is joy. Such a beautiful language. It’s a more informal greeting but it can’t hurt to try to relate to her, butter her up a little. “So, you’re flying the ship home?”
Surprise slackens Captain Tanisira’s expression and then it tightens again, closes up. I wonder which part of what I said bothered her. She sweeps past me without comment. I watch with curiosity as she taps away at the coffee table. Her height is such that it looks uncomfortable to bend that low - still, she does it with a certain grace. It’s my curiosity that finally gets me off the floor but when I go to peer at what she’s doing, she shuts it down. The table reverts to clear glass again.
“Are you going to let me out? You can’t keep me here; this is kidnapping.” I don’t mention the obvious. I remind myself that I can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
Tanisira straightens so quickly that I have to step back to avoid a face full of shoulder.
“It’s not kidnapping if the person I’m detaining is a stowaway. So no, I won’t be letting you out to roam as if you were some kind of pet. You’ll stay here until we dock at Red Horizon and then I’ll hand you over to the station police.”
I cock my head. The authorities? Tanisira may be the captain of theMidasbut it’s Dominik’s ship. Shouldn’t she report me straight to him and let him handle it? Not that I want her to—fucking hell—but it’s interesting that she isn’t planning to. Matter of fact, it’s interesting that I’m being held here at all. “Whose cabin is this?”
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she presses a wrist to the pad by the door and a holo materialises on the wall beside me. It’s a digital clock. There are two different times displayed and labelled: Suryavana and Neo-London. Then she picks up a bag I hadn’t noticed by the door. I try not to let her silence anger me because I’m so relieved to see the time. Her answer doesn’t matter much anyway because I suspect I already know the answer.
As she unpacks items, she names them. Splint, painkillers, reader—
“Are you really not going to let me out?” I gape, looking from the reader to her. “I don’t care how many books are on that thing, you can’t keep me cooped up in here.”
“This should keep you occupied. The journey is only five and a half days, you’ll survive.”
“Marlowe,” I snap.
“Excuse me?”
“My name is Marlowe. Maybe you’re having a hard time treating me like a person because you’re pretending I’m notone.”
Her eyes narrow. “I’m not in the habit of rolling out the red carpet for petty criminals.”
“Then why am I in your quarters?”
Tanisira pushes past me just as the panel beside the door beeps. When she commands it to open and it slides to the side, a cart trundles in. There’s enough of a pause before the door closes for me to see no one waiting in the passageway. The cart comes to a silent stop by the sofa.
I’m still thinking about the fact that she just said I’d be stuck in here for almostsixdays. The ship utilises two systems and one of them is antimatter propulsion, but Vee didn’t tell me it wasthisfast. It’s a little dizzying; after all, my ancestor was one of the original colony cargo carriers and each round trip took her about six months. In her twenties, she spent more time on her ship than she did on-planet.
“I don’t think Gryphon had a brig in mind when he ordered the custom build,” Tanisira says.
She presses a button on the side of the cart, and the lid slides back and notches into the bottom. There’s a plate of food, a side dish, a glass of water and some fruit. And, of course, my stomach chooses now to make its hunger known. It all looks too plump and smells too good to have come from a food printer.
“He is the father of my child,” I enunciate. My patience may be wearing thin faster than I thought it would.
“A man like Gryphon is in the habit of letting his family sneak around?”
Ooh, cursed stars, it takes everything in me not to scoop up the food and fling it at her. I usually have a much higher tolerance but right now, I really want to punch her in the face. I know my strengths, though, and, more importantly, I know my weaknesses.
I change tack, figuring the longer I can keep her talking, the more I might learn. Maybe something that could helpme connect with her, to draw out her empathy, if she has any. Maybe something I can file away for later, to use to my advantage.
I fold myself onto the sofa and lean forward, inhaling the aroma ofmaki aakas. It looks so good I could drool. I’m smiling before I even realise I’m doing it and when I look up, Tanisira is watching me. Our eyes meet, but neither of us looks away. Food is a universal language, is it not? Even more so than Tellurian.
“Veelovesthese. He says his dad always takes him to the best Suryavan deli.”
I can’t put a name to the flicker in her expression. She’s almost like a statue, this captain.Fine, I think,I can play.I pick up a roll using the chopsticks by the plate and dip it into the little pot of sauce. The tang ripples across my tongue and I blink in surprise. “If the deli makes anything as good as that, I don’t blame him for preferring it to our usual sushi place.”
There. A twitch of her eyes; Tanisira isn’t as stoic as she wants to make me believe.Maki aakasfeatures a form of nori that evolved from Japanese cuisine, and Suryavans don’t like it when people don’t give their ancestral dishes the respect they deserve. Normally I would, but I was curious.
I push the cart towards her.
“Seeing as I’m going to be stuck here for a while. I wouldn’t say no to the company.”
