Page 28 of Defiance
Even when we left the atmosphere and the shaking stopped, Agent Gaul kept quiet. A blessing, really. No platitudes or awkward small talk. The line in the proverbial sand couldn’t be clearer: business was business, and Gaul wasn’t going to dress it up with social niceties.
The pilot, a tight-lipped shilpakaari woman with short violet tendrils, opened the observation shield. She turned off the interior lights, speaking quietly to a glowing holo-orb that pulsed with another murmuring voice. The pilot chuckled, sitting back in the cockpit with one boot up. She took a languid drink of water while the transpo guided itself towards a sleek silver ship growing larger to our left.
If she wasn’t worried, I wasn’t either. Compared to a boat on the rough Irish seas, the gentle drifts of a spaceship made me sleepy and calm. I gazed out of the windshield at the stars you couldn’t see from the ground, and wondered which one of them was the Sun. Could I even see if from here?
“Where’s Piaoguo?” I asked suddenly. Surely our destination was closer. Gaul’s ear twitched and the pilot looked over her shoulder at me. She pressed a couple of lightkeys on her display, and the windshield highlighted a tiny cluster of light near its upper edge.
“In the Taixi system,” she told me, planting her feet back on the ground. She stowed her water bottle and shook out her short tendrils.
“What about Earth?”
The pilot looked at Agent Gaul for a hard moment, but he didn’t respond, ears perfectly still while he stared back. Shetapped some more, and a line glowed up the surface of the windshield. “It’s above us. About there.” She pointed towards one o’clock through the ceiling with one black fingernail.
I stared at the spot and felt just… the same. I’d lived my entire life in County Mayo minus my university years. Having no way to return was a liberation.
“Cheers,” I said under my breath, rubbing my palms on my thighs. Gaul watched me again, the scales along his nose flexing as he adjusted his fangs. I gave him a tight-lipped smile, then studied the stars some more.
I didn’t even realize we were docking until I saw the transpo drift into the larger ship’s hull sideways. It felt exactly like docking a boat, minus the rumble of the diesel engines. By the time we disembarked, I felt in my element.
At least until I came face to face with the god-tier resting bitch face of a shilpakaari woman with lavender skin and turtleshell eyes. She studied me in her mahogany gaze, the gold stripes of her pupils thin and skeptical. Shiny tendrils with a golden sheen of oil curled comfortably over her shoulders like a Brazilian blowout worthy of American news anchors.
Agent Gaul walked down the gangplank without ceremony.
“Gaul, always a pleasure.” He snapped his tail at her feet, watching our luggage as the pilot offloaded it. “Or not. Anyway, welcome aboard theTidus,”she said with fake boredom. She lifted her cuticles to inspect them, but her eyes scanned me from head to toe. “Commander Siat Xata. And you are?”
“Charlie Halloway.” I held out my hand to shake, just in case, but the commander didn’t seem to recognize the gesture. She looked at my hand, then nodded her head once and turned on her heel.
“Briefing in my quarters. I’m going to need a stiff drink for this.”
Splendid.So much for not knowing human greetings. Xata definitely did and definitely snubbed me on purpose. This was going to be a pleasant trip.
12
We followed Commander Xata to a lift and up three guns. The doors opened into an open-plan suite with a sultry attitude. There was a conference table with neatly organized plasdocs spread over its surface, but it also held a hookah and discarded, recently worn lingerie. An armory in one corner had a glowing gun display and two sets of full-body armor, but also a velvety red pouf and a vanity table. Down two shallow steps were Xata’s bed—large enough for four, draped in unkempt black sheets—and pillows surrounding a low table. All around the perimeter of the room, a ribbon of windows revealed the stars, twinkling like sequins in a spotlight.
I sat down at the conference table, but Agent Gaul glanced at the lingerie, then crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. His tail curled into a spiral behind him as his ears brushed the ceiling.
“Your usual, Novak?” Xata asked, punching an order into a foodbay hidden in the wall nearby. She shifted on her hip, glancing at him sideways. “Or something stronger?”
Novak adjusted his fangs, licking his teeth with his unruly forked tongue. I adjusted my seat, squirming from one hip bone to the other to alleviate some of the heat between my legs.
“Aniqua,”he grunted.
“Suit yourself.”
Xata didn’t ask me and the tension rose. I busied myself with perfecting the corners of a stack of plasdocs and counting to bloody one hundred to keep myself from spitting curses. There was something unspoken in the room and I had a gut-wrenching feeling that the problem was me. They had history—or maybe not-so-history—and I’d stepped in it when I took Gaul’s offer.
“Tiduscan offer you surveillance as back-up while you’re on Piaoguo.” The commander held out Gaul’s drink and he took it from her hand. She grinned sourly, and pushed her own lingerie onto the floor as she sat down with a tall flute of something dark and sticky hanging from the tips of her fingers. “But technically, I’m escorting you there to act as Ferulis’s proxy and sign a bunch of—”
I stood up, cutting her off.
“Right, well. Sounds like a chat I don’t need to be in the middle of.” My fingers trembled and my cheeks blazed, but my voice was steady. I smiled in an attempt to appear friendly, training it on Xata and resolutely ignoring the black shadow to my right. “You two enjoy your drinks. Talk it out. I’ll just ask the ship where I’m bunking and get out of your hair. Or, eh, tendrils.”
I sidled out of my chair and nearly tripped. Novak’s tail had wrapped around my ankle, holding me in place.
“Stay,” he said, piercing me with his black stare. His red slitted pupils dilated open and Xata burst into laughter.
“Oops!” she tittered. “Did I forget to type in your drink order? My bad.”
