thought with a growl.
This
was the real reason I should have just told my lust to shove it and kept the hell away from Rupert. Because at the time in my life when I needed to be strongest, he made me weak. He made me want to live, to reach for a future that I couldn’t have, shouldn’t want, and wouldn’t get, and the more I thought about how stupid and unfair that was, the angrier I got.
That wouldn’t do at all. We were only twenty minutes into the jump. If I spent the rest of it stewing like this, my virus would kill us both before we got to Kessel. What I needed was a distraction, something to keep me too busy to rage about the hopeless tragedy my life seemed to be turning into. A pirate attack would have been perfect, but there was no hope of that in hyperspace. So, with nothing else on offer, I decided it was time to do what I usually did when I was feeling trapped, upset, and anxious. I decided it was time for a drink.
Alcohol was forbidden on royal fleet ships, but Anthony had never paid much mind to rules he didn’t like. Sure enough, a little hunting turned up a bottle of whiskey tucked away in the tiny freezer behind the medical ice packs. It was a good Paradoxian label, too, not as smooth as the Terran blends, but it tasted like home.
Four swallows later, I decided this was the best decision I’d made all day. True, I was still going to die and lose the only man I’d ever loved before I’d even gotten him, but at least I didn’t have to be sober for it. Part of me knew that didn’t make any sense at all, but the rest of me was buzzed and ready to tell all the problems I couldn’t do shit about to go to hell with my compliments.
I put the whiskey back in the freezer and sauntered up to the bridge to check out those training videos. The Home Guard always got the newest, coolest stuff, and between my time on the
Fool
and the eight months I’d lost, I was criminally out of date on my armor knowledge, which meant I might actually learn something. I was just about to flop into the captain’s chair and pull up the video list to see if there was anything promising when I discovered I had an audience.
The little phantoms I’d seen floating around when I’d first gotten on the ship were now sitting in a line on the edge of the flight console like birds on a wire, if birds were semi-transparent and came in shapes ranging from small spider with too many legs to fist-sized blob. There were seven of them, all sitting perfectly still, and though no two were alike and all seemed to be lacking eyeballs, I got the distinct impression they were staring at me. This would have been creepy sober. Drunk, it just pissed me off.
“Scram,” I said, waving my arm at them.
I didn’t expect it to work. I wasn’t close enough to send them running, which was the only time the phantoms seemed to notice I existed. If anything, I expected the little critters to break their line and float away. Instead, they moved closer together, waving their little appendages like they were trying to get my attention.
I arched an eyebrow and hauled myself up out of the chair, walking forward until I was standing directly behind the pilot’s seat. This put the glowing bugs right on the edge of what I’d begun to think of as my phantom panic zone. But though I was dangerously close, they didn’t run. They just waved harder.
I looked around the bridge, but there was nothing to see. I was alone in hyperspace with no witnesses to judge my weirdness, and so I decided to take a risk. I cleared my throat and leaned down, fixing my eyes on the largest phantom, a strange, foot-long glowing critter that looked like what might happen if a lobster and a centipede got stuck together. Then, feeling like a right idiot, I whispered, “I see you.”
I held my breath, waiting for a response, but the phantoms just kept waving like I hadn’t said anything.
“I see you,” I said again, louder. “What do you want?”
Nothing.
I rolled my eyes and
This
was the real reason I should have just told my lust to shove it and kept the hell away from Rupert. Because at the time in my life when I needed to be strongest, he made me weak. He made me want to live, to reach for a future that I couldn’t have, shouldn’t want, and wouldn’t get, and the more I thought about how stupid and unfair that was, the angrier I got.
That wouldn’t do at all. We were only twenty minutes into the jump. If I spent the rest of it stewing like this, my virus would kill us both before we got to Kessel. What I needed was a distraction, something to keep me too busy to rage about the hopeless tragedy my life seemed to be turning into. A pirate attack would have been perfect, but there was no hope of that in hyperspace. So, with nothing else on offer, I decided it was time to do what I usually did when I was feeling trapped, upset, and anxious. I decided it was time for a drink.
Alcohol was forbidden on royal fleet ships, but Anthony had never paid much mind to rules he didn’t like. Sure enough, a little hunting turned up a bottle of whiskey tucked away in the tiny freezer behind the medical ice packs. It was a good Paradoxian label, too, not as smooth as the Terran blends, but it tasted like home.
Four swallows later, I decided this was the best decision I’d made all day. True, I was still going to die and lose the only man I’d ever loved before I’d even gotten him, but at least I didn’t have to be sober for it. Part of me knew that didn’t make any sense at all, but the rest of me was buzzed and ready to tell all the problems I couldn’t do shit about to go to hell with my compliments.
I put the whiskey back in the freezer and sauntered up to the bridge to check out those training videos. The Home Guard always got the newest, coolest stuff, and between my time on the
Fool
and the eight months I’d lost, I was criminally out of date on my armor knowledge, which meant I might actually learn something. I was just about to flop into the captain’s chair and pull up the video list to see if there was anything promising when I discovered I had an audience.
The little phantoms I’d seen floating around when I’d first gotten on the ship were now sitting in a line on the edge of the flight console like birds on a wire, if birds were semi-transparent and came in shapes ranging from small spider with too many legs to fist-sized blob. There were seven of them, all sitting perfectly still, and though no two were alike and all seemed to be lacking eyeballs, I got the distinct impression they were staring at me. This would have been creepy sober. Drunk, it just pissed me off.
“Scram,” I said, waving my arm at them.
I didn’t expect it to work. I wasn’t close enough to send them running, which was the only time the phantoms seemed to notice I existed. If anything, I expected the little critters to break their line and float away. Instead, they moved closer together, waving their little appendages like they were trying to get my attention.
I arched an eyebrow and hauled myself up out of the chair, walking forward until I was standing directly behind the pilot’s seat. This put the glowing bugs right on the edge of what I’d begun to think of as my phantom panic zone. But though I was dangerously close, they didn’t run. They just waved harder.
I looked around the bridge, but there was nothing to see. I was alone in hyperspace with no witnesses to judge my weirdness, and so I decided to take a risk. I cleared my throat and leaned down, fixing my eyes on the largest phantom, a strange, foot-long glowing critter that looked like what might happen if a lobster and a centipede got stuck together. Then, feeling like a right idiot, I whispered, “I see you.”
I held my breath, waiting for a response, but the phantoms just kept waving like I hadn’t said anything.
“I see you,” I said again, louder. “What do you want?”
Nothing.
I rolled my eyes and
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