Page 60 of Collision!
“But it’s late,” she continued, “and youarehurt.You need to be ready for whatever we find in the null cloud.Repair and recalibrate, Chief.”
Her kiss this time was on his forehead.A tender brush, but it shattered something in him in the gentlest way.He sighed as she curled against his chest.And though he didn’t reach for her, the sweetness and soft sounds of her surrounded him as he fell asleep.
+ + +
Mariah had coffee and gulab jamun ready when he woke.
“Rise and shine,” she murmured as she wafted the delectable scents under his nose.
He peeled back the eye coverings.After the imposed darkness,sheseemed to shine, her dark hair and eyes rich with deep, subtle hues, her skin luminous in the glow of Lub’s lure where the goblhob sat patiently beside her.
As he levered himself upright, Suvan took one of the pillowy round pastries.He swung his bare feet to the deck to make room for her on the cot.
She settled beside him and handed over a mug.“How’s your shoulder?”
He rolled both shoulders back.“Better.”
“And your eyes?”
Taking the opportunity to gaze at her, he murmured, “Much better.”
Lashes fluttering, she took a sip of her coffee.
This was…nice.A morning shared, the warmth of the coffee wafting around them, a drooling goblhob at their feet.
Was this what he’d missed when he’d left her after their forgotten night together?Never again.
As they deconstructed the sweet treats—which she informed her were a dessert from their homeworld made by Anouska—he checked the engine diagnostics and all the downstream power loads.Much, much better than he would’ve anticipated.
He showed her the readouts.“Patterning our engines after the resonark’s waveform has vastly improved our power, speed, efficiency, stability, emissions conversion—every metric I monitor.”
“That’s great.”She hovered one finger—subtly glistening with sweetener—over the datpad.“And this one?”
“It’s a real-time rebalancing analytic.Engines are living systems, in some ways.They do best with constant managing and maintenance.But watch this.”He toggled through the historical data.“See these jagged lines?That’s me, changing the throughputs, the latencies and loads, trying to maximize coherence.Here, where it smooths out to a perfect wave?”
“After the giant spike?”
“That’s where our power surge initially hit the engines.Butafter, that’s the mirrored tesselation, dynamically balancing.It’s like the ship has become its own engineer.”
“That’s amazing.”She looked up at him.“Um.How do you feel about that?”
He tilted his head.“I’ve never seen anything like it.Itisamazing.”
“I thought maybe you’d worry about where you fit in now.”
She was watching him so anxiously, he had to consider her words.“I’ve made engines my work.”He knew he wouldn’t hedge with her.“And my life.Perhaps too much.I could use some help sometimes.”
Her dark eyes gleamed in the datpad light.“And I suppose it’s not achiefengineer.”
Was she teasing him or humoring him?But she wouldn’t do that.Even though he’d tried to reverse-engineer her wild designs with no luck or logic, he knew she spoke her beliefs with a clarity and conviction that rivaled any precision diagnostic.And she wanted to share that trust with him.
When he found himself tilting toward her, as if his own internal supports were buckling, she met him halfway.And the kiss was sweeter than ever.
His datpad chimed an interruption.
“Um,” she whispered against his lips.
“Leave it,” he whispered back.“The engines are fine.”
