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He truly needed to get off this asteroid.
“You see, if you ask the wrong person about the Crescent Rim, you might be querying a fanatic, andtheywill direct you wheretheywant you to go,” Morwong continued.
This sounds like bogus.
“Once you reach the place and learn you’ve been misled, they’re not too willing to let you leave. It’s a surprise your ship made it here in the first place. Where did you even get the fuel?”
“Why would they do this?” Lucca cried.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, Lucca. It’s just an aggressive recruiting strategy. People do all kinds of nonsensical things for whatever illusion they’re fixated on. Whatever the case, because of this feud, it is not currently recommended to visit either.”
Lucca groaned angrily.Looks like she’s not going that way anytime soon. The thought made Caligher’s tail wag, and he kept his mouth shut about it. Instead, he was coming up with names for the babies they could spend the rest of their weird lives bearing and it seemed like a completely inappropriate thing to say at the moment.
He doubted the baby talk would console her.
“I’ll probe my contacts and see what I can come up with,” said Morwong, “but you take the aforementioned risks if you follow any leads I find. For once, I agree with Caligher. Safer to stay here.”
* * *
LUCCA
Steam rising from her mug, she typed into her console.Dear Mom. It’s been a while. How are you? Has Dad decided to talk to me again?She chewed her lip, staring at the screen. She could no longer make sense of her life.I met someone,she typed. If her mom had been there, she would have known what to do. She would have put Lucca’s fears to rest and prescribed her a straight course of action. Lucca typed her private messages, pretending they had a chance in hell of reaching home.
Caligher pinged her. A little buzz of warmth filled her chest as he jettisoned gifts at her ship at a faster rate than the delivery system could accept. Grin spreading, she typed her journal entry.
His neediness reached a boiling point.
“Pay attention to me,” he demanded.
“Alright!” she relented, closing out her screen and going to see what all the fuss was about.
He’d been… busy again. She half-expected more sex toys, even hoped for them, but he sent her ingredients and toiletries. He sent her a bottle of something that she suspected was pure, skin-melting acid. She had no idea what he expected her to do with it.
“Zoramia is meeting some Erulean diver. We’re going to the bar. Offer’s open if you want it.” His tone was very ‘take it or leave it.’ He knew it was a slim chance, but kept inviting her, just in case.
“I’m going as her wingman,” he added.
Lucca tapped on the translator in her ear. That had been a direct translation. People played ‘wingman’ in his society and that amused the hell out of her. “Oh?” she asked. “What’s that entail?”
“Not much. She’s bringing me along to suss him out, but she already does all the work by rejecting everyone who wants her.” He laughed. “I get to sit there and look pretty.”
“Must be nice,” she said. “Were you and her ever…”
“Ohhh, oh no. My sensitive parts are deeply, deeply afraid of that woman. She’s too sadistic.”
Lucca burst out laughing. “Aren’tyousadistic?”
He made a choking noise, momentarily caught off guard by her uncharacteristically straightforward question. “Sure. That’s why it would never work. You need a sadist and a person who is…”
“A masochist?” Lucca supplied.
“Right. You don’t put two sadists together.”
“You don’t?” She felt herself edging closer to the screen, prodding him for answers with pure fascination.
“You don’t,” he asserted, more confidently this time. Then he seemed to reconsider. “Well, that depends. You could have a pair of sadomasochists—”
“Oh,couldyou?” Lucca exclaimed, glee and amusement rising, melding into delight. Her questioning seemed to fluster him, and she could hear him battling it down and trying to gain control over the conversation. Trying to be the foreboding person he’d channeled while dominating her over a phone call.
