Page 23 of Collision!
But his fingertips tingled with the memory of reaching for Mariah when Lub cheeped an alarm, catching her before she slid right off the stool, and tucking her under the workbench.
His quill-scales hadn’t even snagged her sleeves.
He sent a private message to Felicity, asking her to check on Mariah.
“Why?What’s wrong?”
He scowled at his datpad, which he could do since he hadn’t allowed visuals in response to her immediate reply.“You are the cruise director,” he reminded her.“It’s your job.”
She laughed.“That’s your excuse?”
He thought for a moment.“She was muttering, possibly incoherent, about coffee.”
“Earthers do that after an all-nighter.”She paused, and before he could come up with another reason, she reported, “Remy says Miss Juraszczyk has obtained coffee.So I guess everything is good.”Her cheerful voice took on an extra lilt that made Suvan grit his teeth.“Unless you wanted to know something in particular about Mariah?”
“No.”He could obtain every IDA profile from the cruise director’s records if he wanted.He wouldn’t even have to hack Felicity’s folders; he had power override on every system.
But that would be wrong.
“Anything else, Chief?”
The sound of her expectant waiting scraped on his nerves.He, who preferred silence.
“Nothing.”
Before he could stab the disconnect, Felicity hummed out a breath.“Actually, there is something.As a thank you to Miss Juraszczyk—from all of us at the Big Sky Intergalactic Dating Agency—for sharing her expertise in this emergency, please authorize one of the smaller fabricators to print a gift of yarn.”
If only he’d disconnected faster.“What?Me?Why?What kind of yarn?”
“Oh, whatever you think she’d like.Thanks, Chief.”Then she cut him off.
He glared at nothing.
He didn’t have time for this.And it was a waste of resources.Also, how could he guess what Mariah would like?
How frivolous.Unless the captain ordered—
The cruise director’s formal request for a temp subcontractor compensation gift hit his datpad, followed almost instantaneously by the captain’s approval.
Which probably meant Felicity and Nehivar were together right now.
Suvan went back to his engines.
+ + +
At the next ping to his datpad, he was ready to be rude.But it was an all-hands automated message from the captain—to the passengers as well.
“The results from the vote to return to port or continue our cruise were unanimous.”Even the miniaturized hologram of the captain projected calm command.“There was not a single request to return.You all wish to continue.”
If there was a cheer somewhere, it did not reach the engine module, but Suvan felt a quiver of…somethingthrough the ship.
He swung around to the sensor console.Since he’d placed the extra monitor in the Starlit Salon to watch the anomaly in its current form, there’d been no unusual readings.At least nothing more unusual than a manifested harmonic resonance in plasmic form radiating into the quantum level.
But there’d been an energy spike at the captain’s words.Or not at the words themselves, since the captain had obviously pre-recorded the message.It was the response of everyone aboard that actuated the resonark.
And it had reverberated all the way to his engines.
The captain continued: “After serious consideration, I rescinded myself from the vote.Your welfare is my responsibility, but I’ve been told this ship is not only mine, not on this voyage.So while I will not waver in my duties to the ship and all souls aboard, I will honor your choice to stay the course and then see us safely home.”
