Page 26 of Doom Averted

I hadn’t seen Arianna in two weeks, and Babbit kept disappearing too. He didn’t even sleep with me at night, going off somewhere else. I felt like I’d been abandoned and I wasn’t sure how to fix this, the engine room was no longer my haven, it was too quiet. My thoughts were distracted, filling with the sound of her voice and the taste of her skin. I wanted my girl, but she was avoiding me.

If not for how busy the engine kept me with constant tweaks, more fixes, and dangerous readings I had to keep an eye on, I would have gone and tracked her down. There was somehow always something important that needed my attention. If I even had time to sleep, it was just to stumble to my quarters and crash for a few hours, until the next alarm woke me.

“I think everything is pretty under control, you should go find her,” Eoin remarked from where he was leaning over the main console. His mercury eyes were on the readings where they’d been for the past ten minutes as we re-calibrated the engines yet again. Our high speeds to get to Arianna had done a huge number on the system and I had to admit that Eoin had been invaluable in ironing out as many of them as we could while flying.

I had expected the young Terafin male to help me refine the ore and then leave, but he’d planted himself in the engine room and just stayed. When Jakar had done that in the first months after we’d regained our freedom, I’d gone a little crazy, the young Pretorian just never stopped asking questions. I was glad that he’d found his own niche on the ship, now we only occasionally worked together, which worked.

Eoin however… He didn’t speak much either and he worked with intense focus and precision. Sometimes I forgot he was there, I suspected that when I went to sleep, at the most, he crawled behind some consoles and caught some z’s right on the floor. I might struggle to find time to hunt down Arianna when she was avoiding me, but he was definitely avoiding Tori.

Grunting to acknowledge what he’d said, I pointed my tail his way. He didn’t look up from the readings so I jabbed his shoulder with the sharp tip until he did. “Like you have taken the time for your girl? You are actually living in my engine room. When was the last time you took a fucking shower?”

He had the good grace to look a little embarrassed but he was spared from further conversation when the coms turned on and Ziame’s voice filled the awkward silence. “Da’vi, can you prep the engine for a slightly faster-than-normal FTL jump? We appear to have company…” Cursing, I rushed to push Eoin aside and pull up the sensor readings so I could see for myself. Yes, there, the clear signature of the Kertinal Raptor Class Vessel. The same one that had been chasing us since we rescued Arianna.

“Definitely Allignon, damn it! I’m sorry this is happening, Ziame. I hate causing all this trouble,” I apologized as I worked, reading the stats, and calculating the safe margins. I asked Akri to double-check my predictions while I started prepping the engine for an enhanced FTL jump. It was a risk to do that after we’d had such catastrophic damage but the coating Eoin had helped me apply should have improved the odds and repaired the microfractures.

“Shut up Da’vi, this isn’t your fault, besides, we voted, right brothers?” Ziame said and his query was followed by a chorus of ayes and various urgings for me to shut up. Yeah, the Kertinillian Army had fostered a sense of brotherhood, but I’d been thoroughly disillusioned, males like Allignon were everywhere and they called the shots. It was these gladiators that really knew how to have a guy’s back.

“Okay, okay, calculations are in, we can do a thirty-second jump at a hundred and ten percent, is that enough?” I said. Sharing a brief look with Eoin, the younger male started plugging the cables in with calm, steady hands. I’d shown him how to engage the enhanced drive when we’d been refurbishing everything right after our trip to Zosma Y. It still made me uneasy but at least I was certain that Eoin was a good person, he also didn’t understand the complete mechanics of it, so he should not be able to replicate it.

Chloe’s softer, serene voice over the com was reassuring. “I have calculated the route, we’d land on top of Yengar Spacestation with a thirty second FTL jump at those speeds. Are they less inclined to bother us in front of witnesses Da’vi?” I wasn’t sure if that was going to be the case, but it was the best we could hope for. Leaping away from Yengar would make us even more likely to miss Drameil’s auction of those human slaves.

“Best shot, we can’t push the engines even more… We need a cool down after this leap to reassess.” They should hold, but I’d want major diagnostics after the jump to make sure this new material was holding. If it worked… I didn’t know how that was making me feel. What if I had found a way to permanently enhance our engines? I still didn’t want the Kertinillian Army to get their hands on the technology but it was proving to be helpful to us.

“They are closing in, engaging evasive maneuvers,” Kitan declared. The readings on the console screen showed me the ship right on our tail. They definitely had a faster cruising speed, we needed to get this FTL up and running. Kitan’s flying was making our ship move erratically on the screen but it wasn’t noticeable as long as our gravity generator was keeping up.

“Ready?” I asked Eoin, then I checked in with Akri one last time for the calculations, adding in the erratic variables of the evasively moving Vagabond. My companion nodded his head right after he plugged in a final cable, and Akri was calling out an affirmative as well. I found myself holding my breath in anticipation for a moment, it was like being back in the engine room of the Balista, confidently announcing that we could leap into FTL, without knowing the true risks. I knew the risks now and I wasn’t feeling confident, yet...

“We are ready for FTL,” I announced, my hand shaking against the console. “Everybody strap in if you haven’t already.” I suddenly regretted that I hadn’t made time in between all the repairs, the anxious working on the Vagabond’s systems. I should have told Arianna that I loved her and that I wasn’t going to let her run scared.

“Go,” Eoin said next to me and I couldn’t keep the shock from my face when I realized that the male had read where my thoughts had gone. “You should talk with your female, I can flick that switch and keep an eye on the readings. It’s only thirty seconds. Go now!”

My feet were taking me out of the engine room before I had fully thought this through. The leap was about to happen at any moment, all Kitan and Chloe were doing was creating enough distance between this ship and our pursuer to safely go into FTL. We couldn’t risk dragging them with us somehow.

When Babbit appeared out of one of the cleaning bot vents just down the hallway I felt like it was a sign. “Where’s Arianna?” I called out, breaking into a full sprint when the male Riho turned around and started running, his black and blue striped tail waving like a plume behind him. I had suspected that the animal had been forsaking me to hang out with her, that was proven when he dove into an empty set of crew quarters and Arianna’s voice rang out to greet him.

Chapter 18

Arianna

I’d been using this empty room to sort yarn in for a while now, it was the place I could duck into and hide from everyone. I liked the girls, I liked hanging out and talking with Jakar or watching Fierce and Thorin play their alien version of chess. I just wasn’t my usual social self right now, I was feeling all out of sorts so I just wanted to… hide. Man, I was just such a coward.

Sitting here, pining over Da’vi when I was the one making the choice to stay away. He was working his ass off to fix the ship, to get us to Yengar so these gladiators could heroically burst in and save more humans stranded out here. A useless lump of flesh, just taking up space and air. Instead of feeling more confident, of managing to stay in that glass-half-full mind space, I was starting to think more and more like my dad and brother about myself.

The warnings over the com told me I needed to strap in and I tried to figure out how to fold down the seat in the corner of the room. I struggled to get it to latch down, so far, someone else had always helped me with this. See, I was useless yet again. What was with me today? It was far worse than normal, I just wanted to curl up under my blankets and cry.

“Sunshine,” a deep voice called out, the dual layers of tone vibrating against my skin. I froze where I was standing, sure I was imagining it. This was the very last moment that Da’vi would abandon his precious engine room to talk to me, they were about to engage his special engine again. The back of my neck itched with the urge to turn around and look and since I was already feeling unstable, I gave in.

Unless I was now also delusional besides having horribly intrusive thoughts, he was really there. His coveralls were torn on the knees and one arm, the sleeves rolled up all the way to his biceps, hair in disarray. He looked like he’d slept in his clothes and barely slept at all too. I was immediately angry that the girls had been telling me he was taking care of. Clearly, that wasn’t true, he looked a mess!

He looked wonderful too, that warm look in those deep purple eyes, the way he was devouring me with that look. I just knew that he’d missed me. I had been missed, me. That felt like a weight dropping from my shoulders and a smile formed on my face, one that felt real for the first time since I’d left that shuttle. Oh boy, they were right.

In two strides he was in the middle of the room and I just leaped at him, my eyes already growing wet. What an idiot I was, why would I think I couldn’t love? It was my family that was burdened by that, not me. That’s why I’d run all my life, searching for the place I belonged. Then I’d found it and I almost let my fears destroy that chance.

Da’vi caught me against his body, his mouth crashing against mine. It was like an earthquake, everything was shaken by its foundation, my world turned upside down, my life rewritten in that instant. “I love you, Da’vi,” I said against his lips, “I’m sorry.”

He pressed his forehead to mine, our bodies rocking together as if the world was still on a crazy seesaw ride. “Why are you sorry about that, my Sunshine? I should be the one who’s sorry. I should have come for you sooner. I love you, and I’m telling you right now, no more separate beds, no more running, you are mine.”

I’d had men say to me that they loved me, but Da’vi was the first I believed. Especially, when I realized the rocking wasn’t just my crazy rollercoaster emotions, the ship was shaking for real. Da’vi was holding me up, his legs braced against the crazy motions. He’d left the engine room to find me in the middle of a crisis, in the middle of engaging his experimental engine, the one he feared might kill his friends. He’d gone completely bonkers.