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He'd inhaled the forest, closed his eyes and pictured the leaves. He’d tried to humanize the flesh in his clutches, remembering that this wasn’t some animal but a person who was not ready for the kind of games she was goading him into.
Just as he’d been about to shove her away for fear of breaking his new toy, the fight had eased from her body and she fell limp in his arms. She learned fast once he taught her how to sever his hold. Of course, he helped a little. She’d never be able to get away that easily in real life. But she didn’t really need to. She just needed to know the basics that would make him falter in the heat of the moment.
He had smelled her arousal. And then, when she’d gotten away and stood facing him, the way her nipples pebbled through her singlet wasn’t lost on him. He wondered if she'd even recognized it herself, how hot she was for it. Or if she put it down to sweat, and exertion. Her eyes had dragged up and down his body twice before staring resolutely somewhere else.
Orion always suspected the fight of it wasn’t what scared her. It was the other thing. The exorin, threatening to get her hooked and dependent on anyone other than herself. She’d have to accept that eventually.
He hadn’t followed her out of the pilot’s gym. He needed distance. Ignoring the other patrons, he’d taken out his frustration on the punching bag in the corner before ditching his afternoon meetings in favor of the farthest bar he could find.
He’d downed a few shots and thought about something—anything—other than how her cunt would feel squeezing his cock. He said he'd give her time to build her strength, and he would. He had half a mind to drink well into the night, maybe find a tight little distraction.
Orion smirked at the thought of Kaia’s earlier jealousy, asking him about his hot date. He had the opportunity now that he was back onColossal. On Mars, he’d had to restrain himself to the best of his ability. He had no interest in leaving a trail of addicted Martian women in his wake once he inevitably left the planet. But here, nothing was off limits. If some chick he picked up got addicted, she could get exorin straight from the source. Except then he’d beresponsiblefor someone other than himself, and having one little pain in the ass to patronize was going to be more than enough.
Besides, his evening appointment wasn’t with some lowly official he could just ditch. Mare Halena was waiting for him.
Orion groaned as he got off his stool and headed to the command center.
By the time he got there, he’d been composed and sober-looking enough. Not enough to fool his mother, of course. Her nostrils flared as she no doubt smelled it on him: the alcohol, but also the adrenaline of earlier, which clung to him like a stain. She made no comment.
“Good, Mr. Halen, you’re here. Shall we get started?” The lead navigator flicked a map of X1s Galaxy onto the thermaview pebbled with faraway stars. “I believe we left off with digging into the three potential planets yesterday.”
The view zoomed in on three columns of data—signatures the scout ships had picked up from their long-range mission.
“X1s-A appears to be about half the circumference of Old Earth. The other two are thought to be approximately the same size.”
“Let's focus on those two then,” Mother said in that clipped tone.
The man discarded the first column without question. “X1s-B and C have similar profiles. There is an eighty percent chance of a breathable atmosphere, but that’s the easiest part to detect… We don’t know much more, other than the stories.”
“Stories?” Orion asked.
“There are rumors thatElysianpicked up additional data from one of these three planets when it had to skirt past X1s Galaxy on its last expedition.”
“Elysian… the colony that disappeared?”
The navigator nodded. “They never returned from the expedition, but a scout they left behind reported getting a transmission concerning these planets. Original data has been lost, but her accounts were promising.”
Promising? Orion stared at his mother. Was she that desperate to find New Earth before Upload? Desperate enough to go chasing the trail of a missing colony, likely dead like so many others on their expedition flights?
Going out into unexplored space was always a gamble. Everyone knew that. But taking that gamble on some random hunch from a random navigator whose parent colony was probably a dead husk somewhere out there was lunacy.
“Please tell me we have more to go on.”
“We have enough to consider it.” Mare Halena’s eyes were flicking up and down, no doubt scrolling through the scant data in her Neurosync vision overlay.
“Yes, but you’re not justconsideringit. You told Kaia we’re going in six months.”
“I have already considered it. We have three promising planets, and we will investigate two of them.”
“Mother.”
“You are here to shadow, Orion. Your input isn’t required.” From the corner of his eye, Orion saw the lead navigator look away.
“What do you think about all this?” Orion forced him back into the conversation.
“Sir, it is not my place to—”
That’s enough,his mother’s subvocalization chimed in his comms.
