Page 3 of Galactic Search and Rescue
Taz laughed. “You’re quite right, Shen. I’m supposed to be working, not star-gathering. You’re a good dog to remind me.” Unlike the other teams’ dogs, Shen didn’t appear to have a functioning controller in her head, so Taz had to speak to her in human language. Even if Shen’s controller worked, Rylando probably wouldn’t let Taz connect to it, any more than he’d let the other team members do so.
With a watchful eye for wandering weasels and shepherding dogs, she quickly cleared the rest of the large items that didn’t belong to Silver Team and added them to the outside stack.
The rest of the storeroom mess wouldn’t need the assist frame, so she marched it to the corner, disconnected, and stepped down to the floor.
Out of habit, she used the manual controls to power it down instead of her implanted headjack and controller. In rescues, having military-grade implants that could wirelessly interact with chatty military and civilian AIs was just as handy as her teke talent. They were legacies of her military days, but she’d only met one or two other CPS minders who had them. She’d styled her straight dark hair short over her forehead and long enough on the sides to cover the jack. Out of prudence, she avoided mentioning the implants, in case having them broke some obscure CPS regulation. Rylando knew, but no one else in the unit seemed to have noticed.
Both cats now sat on top of the skimmer’s control pod canopy, as if surveying their empire and finding it wanting. Mariposa the owl was excavating the jumble in the corner, intent on eating every insect she uncovered. When Lerox lumbered over to nose through the pile, she screeched and flew up to the top of the cabinet. Lerox’s pawing made a bigger mess but did cause more insects to move, making them easy prey for Mariposa to swoop in for the catch.
Taz couldn’t tell if Lerox’s actions were meant to help the little owl or coincidental. She’d have to ask Rylando. She’d often seen him encourage them to use their skills and superior senses to uncover hidden contamination and damage, so maybe that explained it.
Thankfully, he never used his minder talent to march them around like brain-wiped automatons, like she'd seen one previous team member do several years ago. Most animal-affinity minders were better with animals than people, but that miserable excuse for a rescuer had hated both the job and anything living. Rylando was the exact opposite.
And once again, her thoughts wandered without her permission to her teammate. Apparently, her stupid heart learned nothing from her epic record of failed relationships. Especially the last disaster that had caused her to request an immediate transfer, even though it meant agreeing to an extra year of CPS service. Her lover from regular military Space Division had turned out to be a cheating thief, and she hadn’t seen it coming.
With this new assignment, she'd vowed to be professionally friendly with everyone but wear extra flexin armor around her heart. Easy enough with the rest of the misbegotten unit. She hadn’t counted on Rylando being so sexy, funny, and clever. Or how much she enjoyed being around his animals.
She picked up the chair Lerox had been trying to eat and carried it to the wall where it belonged.
Null chance of anything happening between her and Rylando. Even if he hinted that he returned her interest—which he hadn’t—they’d have to go stealth mode with their relationship. She wasn’t doing that ever again.
Besides, it was unwritten but well-known GSAR policy to break up any such unions—even cohab contracts and marriages—by transferring the parties as far apart as possible. Just like GSAR to make a service-wide blanket policy instead of dealing with occasional individual problems. With her rotten luck, they’d assign her to her dysfunctional family’s home planet, or even worse, back to the duty station she’d just escaped from.
Blowing out an exasperated sigh, she got back to work. Keeping busy was the best thing to keep her from the same spiral of thoughts she’d been spinning for the last hundred days. She cleared a path to the skimmer and made two piles, one for undamaged goods and one for potentially repairable items. GSAR units rarely threw anything away and weren’t above trading or scavenging. Lately, new supplies from headquarters came just about as often as having the only winning numbers in the Hundred-Planet Lottery.
Shen sat and looked up expectantly, as if waiting for something to do. Taz tried one of the few commands she knew. “Shen, find the exit.”
The moment Taz raised her hand, palm forward, Shen took off like a rocket around the bulk of the skimmer to the far-right end of the storeroom. Stymied by the jumble of bins blocking the door, she nosed and squeezed her way through them. Once she touched her nose to the door, she backed up, sat and barked twice, paused, then barked twice again.
The two cats watched Shen’s actions like they were spectators at a grav-ball match, making Taz laugh.
“Good job, Shen!” Taz showed the dog her flat hand, then lowered it to her thigh. Shen trotted back to Taz’s side and sat, looking up.
She crouched and stroked just under Shen’s ear, praising her cleverness. Recently, when Rylando had been away for a couple of days with Moyo and left Shen behind, Taz had awakened to discover the smaller dog sleeping on the foot of her bed. Probably missing Rylando and wanting some company. Taz pretended to herself that she hadn’t been feeling the same thing.
Shen licked Taz’s chin, then stood, tail wagging.
Though it was probably silly, Taz had made a habit of explaining what she was doing to the animals when Rylando wasn’t around. “We need to move more of this so the cleaning bots can do their job.” Taz turned a mock glare and a wagging finger toward the two cats. “And leave them alone, you delinquents.”
Lerox, apparently bored with the pile of debris, jumped up on one of the few undamaged crates and started grooming his belly, hind leg in the air.
“Come on, Shen, let’s clear more paths while we don’t have a weasel underfoot.” She snapped open a few crates for collecting the smaller items. Handing some of the items to Shen to carry was fun, and the smart dog quickly figured out which crate Taz pointed to. The sooner they made a dent in the cleanup, the sooner Taz could sneak off for a nap before taking the comms shift.
Not that anyone would thank her or Rylando for taking care of the mess. As near as she could tell, Unit 1051 had become the short-term detention pen for screw-ups and the permanent punishment post for unredeemable assholes. If only she’d known that when she’d looked for the unit with the most vacancies, presuming they’d take her immediately—which they had. She should have asked around for recommendations, but all she could think of at the time was getting away.
Her best guess as to why clever and highly competent Rylando stayed in the unit was his unusual team. He knew the regs backward and forward, and easily stymied Bhayrip’s petty machinations. A more effective commander in a better unit might outmaneuver Rylando into giving up his animals.
At least she’d had the good instinct to let Bhayrip and the others think she was on punishment detail for a previous colossal clusterfuck she'd been ordered not to disclose. Much safer to be dismissed as just another fly-by fool than resented for being Ensign Excellent.
Thirty minutes later, just as she was closing the center cabinet, Rylando and Moyo strode into the storeroom.
He looked around with a grin. “This is ace. You’ve made impressive progress.” Crossing to the now-accessible skimmer, he slid the crate he carried onto its floor. “Sorry I took so long. I had to clear the debris off the food-storage unit, and Hatya needed time with Moyo. The uncertainty about GSAR is stressing her, so when even a Jumper admits she needs comfort...” He shrugged apologetically.
“It’s stressing everyone out.” Taz made a disdainful noise. “Except Bhayrip, because he refuses to believe the CPS would disband us.”
Rylando shook his head in disgust. “He thinks because Concordance Foundation law requires the CPS to provide search and rescue, GSAR is untouchable.”
“He really thinks that?” She rolled her eyes. “I suppose I shouldn’t mention the Minder Corps base consolidation, or the rumor that Minder Corps personnel are disappearing every day? Or anything about Ayorinn’s Legacy?”
