Supernova (15 page)

“There’s
a place on 18-F that I’ve been to a few times,” he began, but she was already
dropping her credit chip in her pocket and slipping on her shoes knowingly.
They didn’t speak again until they were in the lift, heading to Deck F, on the
outer edges of the commercial sector.

“Have
you read anything interesting on your new datatab?” he asked.

She
looked at him blankly for a few seconds. “Oh, right, my e-reader. Taz
transferred some his files to it and I’ve been reading up on space history. If
I’m going to be passed off as a local, I should act like one.” She paused. “Datatab,”
she repeated.

“Short
for datatablet.”

She
asked for some clarification on other terms, and he was pleased to answer them.
His ego was wounded at the notion that her reaction to him could be
stress-based. But it wasn’t as though she had launched herself at him and torn
his clothes off last night, although his body tensed at the thought. Thank the
gods for
that
, because his self-discipline would have been severely
tested. He would have rejected her, but it would have been difficult. Acting
Captain Rian Marska was a lot of things, but he wasn’t someone who took
advantage of vulnerable women.

Except
for kissing her the second time.
Damn.

Was
taking her out to dinner considered taking advantage? The unpleasant idea
popped into his mind like a skib sting. No, he decided. He would keep it
strictly professional and put any other notions aside, even though he was
loathe to.

The
restaurant he picked was small, a little-known gem favored by station locals
and staffed with people instead of serving bots. It was the place he and his
friends preferred when they had been in the academy, and it was far less rushed
and crowded than the pubs on the lower decks. They took seats at the back and
ordered tea to start; then he watched her flip through the table-mounted menu
screen with a critical eye before sighing in frustration.

“Pick
something for me,” she urged. “I don’t know what any of this is.”

“What
foods do you hate?”

“Pickles
and anchovies, if they still exist.”

“They
do, although anchovies are an Earth delicacy.”

“Seriously?
Ugh. Pick something with at least one vegetable.” There was a challenging note
to her voice. He tabbed in the orders through the menu.

“That’s
it?”

“A
server will be along shortly, but yes.”

“Oh.”
She leaned forward and looked at him expectantly. He wasn’t sure how to
respond.

“Where
would I find information about Earth?” she asked. “From my time. News clips and
the like.”

“We can
go to the library here and download some history files,” he said. “I don’t know
how much will be relevant to your case, but they have millions of files.”

She
shrugged. “I want to know if anyone was looking for me when I was kidnapped,”
she said quietly. “I didn’t have a lot of friends in my life at the time, and
my stepmother was out in Vancouver, but I’d like to know. Self-centered, I
know.”

“No, it
isn’t. You had a husband for a while?” Rian kept the question casual.

“God,
no,” she replied. “The last serious relationship I was in ended a couple of
years ago. I thought I was going to marry him at one point, and we lived together
in the basement apartment on the farm, but he took one look at my best friend
and decided she was the one for him. I felt like an idiot when I found out.”
Losing Katy had been worse than Cameron, she had realized shortly after. “When
I was finalizing the sale of the tree farm I heard from a couple of mutual
acquaintances that they were expecting a baby.”

Rian
absorbed this information, an unexpected swell of rage flaring when he thought
about the bastard who had broken her heart in the worst possible way. What
would possess anyone to give her up?

Professional
, he reminded himself. He would
have to give her up shortly, and he’d never really had her to begin with.

* * *

They
stopped at the library after dinner. She was surprised by it, a fact that she
whispered to him as she took in the consoles lined up in rows around the
office-like space.

“Why are
you whispering?” he asked.

“Because
we’re in a library. It’s the polite thing to do.”

“I see.”
Rian had no rejoinder to that.

“People
read in libraries,” she patiently explained. “They come in for peace and quiet.”

“Interesting
times you come from,” he said. He showed her how to buy a datakey at the
automatic info kiosk and download files to it from one of the consoles. She did
searches on names and places foreign to him, and sighed when nothing came up.
Then she did searches focusing solely on Toronto, Canada, twenty-first century,
and cryonics. There was more than he expected, but he had never been one for
ancient history. She downloaded news clips from the excavation to Darcan-2,
everything she could pull up on the Nym, and at his suggestion, one of the
texts he’d read in the academy about Earth’s history from first contact with
the Kurrans to the present. She also picked out a couple of novels and a text
on Fleet pharmacy procedures.

“I was
hoping there would at least be some newspapers archived here,” she said.

“What’s
a newspaper?”

“They’re
like your news clips and vids,” she explained. “Only they’re printed, and you
bought them from a news box or a corner store with change.”

“And how
often were they printed?”

“Daily.”

Daily
printed news matter. “Your homes must have been full of them.”

“No,”
she said. “You put it in the recycling when you were finished with it.”

Rian was
incredulous. “Let me get this straight.
Every day
, you would print an
entire book you’d throw away after reading it?” Lily nodded. “What a waste of
resources. No wonder Earthlings left.”

“Now you
can see why I was surprised to find out that Earth didn’t accidentally blow
itself up.” She kept her eyes on the console as she pulled some more
information, but she was smiling. “I think that’s it.” He showed her how to
disconnect the datakey, and they left the library.

* * *

They
were the only ones in the lift back to the barracks deck—unsurprising, since
most of the
Defiant
’s crew was probably living it up on station while
they still had the chance. Lily was quiet, likely contemplating her assumed
fate on Earth.

He stole
a glance at her. She was looking at the floor. Involuntarily, he reached for her
hand.
Strictly as a gesture of support
, he told himself. She curled her
fingers in his and stepped closed, raising her face to meet his level.

All
thoughts, all pretences of being professional around her were sucked out the
airlock when she looked at him like that. He kissed her hard, backing her up
against the lift’s wall. He felt a murmur of surprise against his mouth and
realized he’d caught her off-guard. Her hands found his shoulders and pulled
him closer, and her lips parted. Her tongue met his eagerly and he groaned,
pressing against her. The lift’s pinging between decks registered as loudly as
red alert sirens, and his hand blindly groped the wall for the emergency brake.
The lift squeaked as it halted, giving them a bare few minutes alone before he
had to restart it or risk being caught by a maintenance crew.

Rian
kissed her like a man starved, unable to suppress his gasp when she pulled his
shirt from his waistband and let hands explore the contours of his back. Her
touch was electrifying, but jolted him back to reality. Quickly he sprang away,
breathing heavily. He pressed a button and the lift whirred back to life. “Apologies,”
he said.

“What
for?” She had a dazed look on her face, a look he had caused. Despite
everything, he couldn’t help feeling a little masculine pride at the sight.
Desire roared back to life once more.

“That
was inappropriate on my part,” he admitted, tucking his shirt back in.

“What
about mine?”

She had
him there.

The lift
doors opened. He stood at near-perfect military stance, fully expecting to see
Admiral Kentz or Lieutenant Steg, or, gods forbid, Ensign Shraft waiting to
step on, but no one was there. Rian silently offered a prayer of thanks to the
gods and presumed he was at the end of this week’s quota of luck.

He walked
her through the corridor to her door as though he were in the academy,
escorting his date back home after a night of beer and horror vids. She leaned
up and kissed the skin below his ear, and his pulse quickened. “You could come
in,” she murmured into his ear. He slid his arms around her waist and pulled
her to him.

That
thought had entered his mind, too, and he nearly accepted. He
wanted
to,
but he couldn’t, especially not here. “That’s not a good idea,” he whispered
regretfully. It wasn’t just what Lily was; it was the station itself. He caught
her hurt look and dropped a kiss on her lips. “Please believe me. I want to.”

“So then
come in. Just so you know, I was going to make you some tea.”

He
smiled at that. “We both know neither of us wants tea. It’s just that here and
now—it’s not a good idea. Our locations are traceable, and neither of us needs
more hassle from Fleet.”

She
muttered something derogatory about Fleet.

He
kissed her in reply, and let her go at the sound of voices coming off the lift.
“Good night,” he whispered. The voices came closer. “Departure at 0730
tomorrow,” he said.

She
mock-saluted him. “See you tomorrow, Captain.”

Chapter 9

The
Defiant
stayed in orbit around Rubidge Station for another day after her crew returned,
and Lily watched it through the viewports sometimes. It was the size of a small
planet, rust-colored, with constant traffic and ships leaching off its lower
decks.

She
tried to make her cabin a little homier. She had some clothes to put away and
was pleasantly surprised to find a stack of towels waiting for her when the
crew was permitted to board the
Defiant
. She also found a new tablet
computer with a matching stylus and a datakey that contained her texts for the
pharm tech training, the history of Fleet and some star charts, information she
was now downloading to her datatab. Everything she would need to know to fit in
Commons space. She had a good idea of who left everything, and it warmed her
heart.

She felt
like an idiot over what happened on their last night on Rubidge. Not over what
happened in the elevator, but what happened next. She hadn’t seen Rian except
in corridors since they returned to the ship a couple of days prior and hadn’t
had a chance to explain that propositioning men wasn’t a habit of hers. But as
she had learned in the last couple of weeks, life was nothing but a series of
firsts. She had hoped he would take her up on her invitation and had been
sorely disappointed when he turned back into the distant captain; now he probably
thought her to be some kind of slutty opportunist. Or worse, he thought her
reaction to him was rooted in psychological trauma and he was needlessly
playing the overprotective hero.

Except
he wasn’t—not really. His kiss in the elevator had told her as much.

Only
Lily Stewart could travel 850 years into the future, meet someone like him, and
have him reject her because he didn’t think she was really attracted to him.

The
files finished unpacking into her datatab. She scrolled through them with a
fingertip and touched the heading
Commonwealth Galactic Academy
Pharmaceutical Technician Program: Introduction
and brought up a note that
Rian had obviously attached to the file. After some careful reading, she was
able to translate it:

Just
so you know, I wanted that cup of tea. R.

She
sighed like a high school girl receiving her first love letter, and wondered
where he was. Probably learning how the new things on the
Defiant
worked; half the crew had spent the last two days crawling around tunnels and
playing with new programs. Especially Taz, who was immediately caught trying to
transport one body part at a time into another part of the ship.

She
opened a file and began reading about Earth’s history since her kidnapping.
There had been a world war in what would have been her lifetime, and two more
before an uneasy truce was declared across most of Earth shortly before mass
interplanetary immigration began. Still, no one had accidentally detonated a
nuclear weapon or unleashed a zombie virus on mankind. She was relieved to
discover than the human race hadn’t turned out to be as stupid as she had
anticipated. In 2092, for instance, Earth’s depletion of fresh water had
dwindled enough so a new water sterilization procedure had been implemented in
what had once been India. The technology was cheap, portable, and could purify
just about anything. It had been essential for what eventually turned into an
intergalactic space travel alliance between India, Egypt, and Pakistan, who
initially colonized three small uninhabited planets a galaxy away from Earth
twenty-five years later.