Page 50 of The First Spark
He pressed his face into her hair, breathing in the scent of lavender. For the first time in ages, he let himself relax. The steady commotion of the hangar bay faded away. It was just him and her, the way it had been since she crashed into his life on Santursi. He could almost delude himself that he deserved her friendship, that there wasn’t any harm in sending her a message once he got to Dali, that nothing would happento her.
She stepped back. Reality returned with the heavy weight of the metal tag hanging under his shirt.
Zane offered her a strained smile.
Judging by the look on her face, she knew what he was thinking.
Neither of them addressed the ghost in the air as he muttered “goodbye”and entered the shuttle’s short boarding tube.
He stopped inside the cargo bay and folded his arms. Hannover lingered around the corner, easily within earshot, avoiding his gaze. She fumbled with a lever on the wall, but she clearly had no idea what it was used for.
“Even I know eavesdropping isn’t polite.”
“You were being loud.” A flush colored Hannover’s cheeks as she took a seat in the cockpit, running her hands over the control panel. “You were in love with her, weren’t you?”
Zane scoffed. “Mira?”
“That’s the reason for all of it, right? The girls, the alcohol. I’m guessing you gave her a ring, but it didn’t work out.”
“A ring?”
“She still wears it.”
“She had that ring before we met. I don’t have a clue who gave itto her. Our engagement was only a cover for an op. I mean, yeah, we hooked up a few times, but what Mira and I had was nothing.”
“Nothing,” Hannover said, with one of her patented looks of disgust. “I wonder if she feels that way.”
He did, too. But he would never ask.
“Are you going to call her?”
He let his silence answer for him: probably not.
Hannover looked at him like something particularly horrible, like a piece of gum stuck to a shoe or moldy food left in the chiller.
Zane rolled his eyes. “What do you want to hear? We agreed it was just a bit of fun. Nothing more.”
The robotic pilot’s arrival spared him from Hannover’s rebuke. With a cool glare, she moved out of the pilot’s chair and took the seat behind him. The aibot set a nav path for Dali, sealed the docking tube, and eased the ship away from the station. According to the nav computer, he’d be trapped in this cockpit with her and her questions for nine miserable hours. Zane stifled a groan.
“Who, then?”
Hannover’s dazed voice tore him out of his thoughts. She was staring deep into space.
“Who what?”
Hannover startled, and the glaze over her eyes vanished. She looked down at her shoes and bit her lip. He was starting to realize it was one of her tells.
“What? Might as well spit it out.”
“Something happened to make you this way.Someonehappened.”
“All those cycles training to read people, and that’s the best you’ve got?” The chain of beads under his shirt was a weight on his chest, crushing him more with every sarcastic word. Ducking his head, he mumbled, “Not Mira.”
Dali, Sector 4
Decemmensis-10, 817 cycles A.F.C.
The blindingglow from the stargate drop faded, and Kalie blinked rapidly to clear black spots from her vision. A mechanical screech whirred through the cramped cockpit. As the noise died and the darkshields folded into the ceiling, her breath caught.
