Phoenix in Flames Read online

  I pulled my feet up onto the bench. Jasyn had orchestrated remodeling while I was away. The lounge had been enlarged, sacrificing one of the original four cabins in the process. My cabin was the only one untouched. The other two had been connected and refitted as a nursery for Louie. The medunit we had on board was tucked in behind the nursery. Half of our original cargo holds were now more cabin space, located up a short set of stairs where the internal cargo bay used to be. Many of the bins were still there, lining the short hallway. They were used for storage, not cargo. Jasyn and Clark had the cabin closest to Louie's nursery. The other two were bachelor quarters for the rest of the crew. Ginni and Twyla shared one, while Darus and Beryn shared the other.

  Jasyn had rebuilt the galley area, making it bigger. We didn't eat the frozen dinners most spacers survived on. We ate fresh, when we could get the supplies. They kept me out of the kitchen, though. Darus and I had that much in common, we both burned water when we tried to cook.

  A metallic clatter rattled up the stairs to the engine room. The inevitable string of swear words echoed up the confined space. Darus was working on the engine again.

  I went down the stairs and slid open the door into the engine compartment. It was a narrow space, less than four feet wide for most of it. The engine was to my right, the wall to the left was lined with bins for parts and tools. Darus currently stood in the middle of the walkway, halfway to the back, swearing a blue streak at the fitting in front of him. He had a big wrench in one hand. His other hand was covered with grease and oozing blood. He glanced towards me. The swearing stopped abruptly.

  "What?" he demanded when I didn't move.

  "Clark insisted I come talk to you."

  He snorted. "What did he threaten you with? It had to be pretty awful to get you down here."

  I looked away, feeling the all too familiar hurt burning in my chest. The rest of the crew thought it was my fault that we were at odds. It was mutual. I tried, and had my efforts thrown back in my face.

  "Clark was right," I muttered. "We are too much alike."

  "You say something, or am I just hearing the engine coolant gurgling?"

  "Why do you hate me?" I asked him bluntly.

  He didn't answer. He put down his wrench and rubbed his bloody knuckles.

  I sighed and wrapped my arms around myself. We'd had a rough start to our relationship, considering he didn't even know I existed until I rescued him from Vallius. I thought he was dead. We spent a rocky time learning to know each other, but I was under the impression we were building something positive between us. Until I'd come back aboard the ship at Shangrila. The antagonism between us had grown with each day since then. And I wasn't sure why.

  "I don't hate you," he said. "I don't know how to act around you anymore. I don't know who you are."

  "I'm the same person I was before."

  He shook his head in denial. "You've changed." He picked up the wrench again. He opened a storage bin behind him and dumped the wrench inside.

  It was the wrong bin. I walked past him and opened the bin.

  "And I can't do anything right," he said. "You come down here and redo everything I do. So why should I try?"

  I picked the wrench out of the bin then opened the drawer to the left. I put the wrench in the slot where it belonged.

  "You rearrange the bins and give me grief if I don't put everything back exactly where you put it," he grumbled.

  "That's because if there's an emergency, I want to know exactly where every tool and part is."

  "What kind of emergency? Are you planning on attacking pirates by yourself again?"

  "Any emergency. I don't want to be fumbling around searching for tools. That's why they belong exactly where I put them. You just toss them in wherever."

  "What difference should it make? They're still down here."

  I slammed the drawer shut. "It makes a lot of difference. What if the lights are out?"

  "Then you shouldn't be down here trying the fix the engine."

  I turned away from him, ready to leave him to his grumbling. I'd promised Clark I'd at least try and I had.

  "Maybe it's different on Patrol ships," I said. He'd been Patrol for most of his life. He'd been a gunnery officer for most of it, what he hadn't spent on Vallius.

  "I wouldn't know. I'm not a real engineer, just a Patrol engineer." His voice was pure acid.

  "Is that what this is really about?" I asked, turning to face him. "I never said you weren't a real engineer."

  "But I'm not good enough for your ship," he answered. "Why else do you keep coming down here and redoing everything I've ever done?"

  Because it gave me an excuse to stay on the ship. Because I'd missed having grease under my nails. I didn't say any of it out loud. I stared at the storage bin and bit my lip.

  "Why don't you just say it to my face?" he growled. "Tell me I'm lousy at fixing the engine, instead of sneaking around when I'm not looking to do it all over."

  "That isn't what I'm doing," I snapped.

  "Then what are you doing?" He folded his arms and waited. He was going to demand an answer. I might as well give him one he'd accept.

  "Avoiding paperwork."

  He shook his head. "You're hiding. You're running away from everything again. You aren't the only one who's ever suffered, Dace." He shifted, moving in closer, leaning over me. "Life doesn't revolve around you alone. We've spent enough of our lives worrying about you and chasing after you. And you're still demanding everyone drop everything to deal with your moods."

  I slammed the bin shut. "I am not demanding anything! I don't want your sympathy. I don't want you meddling in my life. I don't want you telling me what I should do." I turned away from him, stalking towards the stairs. If I stayed any longer, I'd be tempted to sucker punch him. In the head.

  "You're being an idiot," he called after me. "Running away to hide instead of facing things. Just like always."

  I stopped and counted slowly to ten. I only made it to three.

  "I am not running away. I am leaving before I do something I'll regret."

  "I'd like to see you try."

  "You want me to break your arms?" I turned to face him again.

  "I want to see you doing something more than crawling through the engine or moping in the cockpit. If you're really through with Tayvis, then let him go and start living again."

  "I have," I shouted.

  "Not that anyone would notice."

  "You're right, Darus. You're a lousy engineer." I turned and marched up the stairs before I could see the hurt in his face.

  What right did he have to tell me that? His words stung, mostly because they were true. I went to my cabin and locked the door behind me. It would have been much more satisfying to slam the door, but spaceship doors don't slam. I threw myself onto my bunk.

  I fumed at the ceiling for a while. I wasn't sure what hurt most, the fact that Darus was right about me running away or him saying it out loud. I didn't know who I was anymore. I hadn't figured out how to fit back in on the Phoenix. I could leave, but I didn't want to. I wanted things to be simple again. I wanted the easy friendship I'd had before with Jasyn and Clark and the others. I didn't know how to build it again.

  There was a small compartment next to my bunk. It held the few possessions I didn't want to lose. I opened the door. Taped to the inside were several pictures, several years old now. Me with Jasyn and Clark at their wedding. A picture of the crew of the Phoenix at Jerimon's wedding. Ginni was the only one not in that picture. Clark's sister Twyla had just joined us. And so had Beryn. Darus wasn't in that one, either, I noticed. He'd still been in the Patrol. I ran my fingers over the faces in the pictures.

  I had a few other snapshots. One of me and Darus on Parrus right after we'd escaped from Vallius. We both looked happy. What had gone wrong? Why couldn't we just be friends and let it grow from there?

  I stopped at the last picture. I hadn't opened this compartment for a long time, not since before I'd left for Se
rrimonia. The last picture was grainy, a poor copy of a surveillance photo. The face was blurred, but it didn't matter. I knew that face almost as well as my own. I pulled the picture free and rolled over onto my back. I held Tayvis' picture up. Nothing was ever going to fix the pain between us now.

  He'd walked out on me, after promising he would never walk away from me again. He hadn't trusted me enough to believe in me. Nothing was ever going to bring him back. I started to crumple the picture in my hand.

  I couldn't do it. I couldn't let go. Maybe in the future, but not yet. I slid the picture into the compartment under a stack of notes, a very small stack. I should throw them out, they were all from Tayvis, reminders of what might have been. I fingered them and knew I could never throw them out. Tayvis was always going to be part of my life.

  I pulled out the other stack of notes I had hidden in the compartment. They were love letters from my mother to my father. The stack was short, more because of circumstances than anything else. She was native to Tivor, he had been Patrol. They should never have met. But they had met and fallen in love and risked everything to marry. Darus had been transferred away as soon as they were discovered. He hadn't known she was already pregnant with me. He tried everything to get her off Tivor. She'd died in the food riots a few years later. And I'd been left an orphan, at least as far as the government was concerned.

  Did Darus regret never seeing her again? Was that why he was pushing me so hard? He didn't want me to make the same mistakes he had, except my relationship with Tayvis was completely different. Tayvis had chosen to walk away. And there was nothing I could do about it.

  I sighed and slid the notes back. The compartment contained a few other trinkets, momentos of times that had been peaceful and happy. There weren't very many in my life.

  Someone knocked at my door. I ignored it. They knocked again. I shut the compartment and rolled onto my back.

  "What?" Couldn't they just leave me alone for a while?

  The lock on my door snapped and released. I glared at the door as it slid open. Overriding the lock was just plain cheating. Clark walked into my cabin. He let the door slide shut behind him.

  "Did they send you to chew me out again?" I asked. "Or are you here to pretend to cheer me up?"

  He sighed and sat in the chair next to my bunk. The cabin was very small.

  "Why do you keep fighting with everyone? You're so prickly."

  "I always have been, Clark. And I'm not fighting with anyone. Except Darus and he started it."

  "He cares about you."

  "I know. So do the rest of you." I sighed and propped my head up on my pillow. "Darus picks fights with me. Jasyn and Twyla keep trying to cheer me up. Ginni avoids me. Beryn ignores me. And you play psych tech. The only person on this ship who treats me like a normal person is Louie."

  "And he screams anytime you come near him," Clark said.

  "So I don't go near him."

  "You hide instead. From everyone."

  "What's wrong with that?"

  "Dace—"

  "Is there some reason I should leave the ship or be happy all the time? I'm not happy, but maybe someday I will be. I need some time, Clark. I need space to find my own answers."

  "The ship is pretty small."

  I shook my head. "I don't want to leave. I get nervous when I do. It's like knowing something bad is about to happen, but you don't know what."

  "The worst that will happen is you'll have to deal with port authority."

  "I know that. I didn't say it was a rational feeling. Just give me time. And tell the others to quit trying to cheer me up."

  "And tell Darus to quit picking fights with you?"

  "I don't know why he does."

  "Because he's worried about you. He wants to help and doesn't know how. You won't let him."

  "He said it was because I think he's a lousy engineer."

  "You redo everything he does."

  "Because it keeps me busy. He's a decent engineer."

  "I'll tell him you said that." He made no move to leave. He watched me instead.

  I gave in with a sigh. "I'll tell him myself. And apologize to him. Again. He has to apologize, too."

  "Why do I feel like a referee around here?" Clark stood. "Dinner should be ready in about an hour."

  He left, shutting and locking the door behind him.

  It was an illusion of privacy. I knew they cared about me, that Jasyn worried about me. But I needed to sort out my own feelings in my own head. I glanced at the door to the hidden compartment. My life, a pitiful handful of photos, but it was my life. And those were the good times. I promised myself there would be more good times. And fewer bad ones.

  Chapter 4

  Paltronis shuffled her feet as she waited. She'd been waiting too much lately. Waiting for papers, waiting for orders, waiting, waiting. She was tired of waiting.

  She was currently waiting for the attention of the aide working behind the desk. Fedrithus wasn't much of a post. The Patrol base consisted of three rundown office buildings and two warehouses. There was only one landing bay for ships. It looked like it wasn't used very often. Fedrithus was a backwater world in the middle of nowhere in the Empire. The Patrol maintained a base because at one time, about a thousand years ago, Fedrithus was a bustling exploration port on the edge of known space. The frontier of the Empire had long since passed it by and left it to slowly fade into a glorified fuel stop. The planet was mostly barren, a wasteland of sand and salty oceans. Life had never managed to get much of a foothold beyond algae. The air was breathable, though it tasted of dust. The Patrol base existed because a Patrol base had been on Fedrithus since it was settled.

  "You are a security consultant?" the aide asked her when he finished reading the report. He looked up with cool gray eyes. "I can't imagine why we would need a security consultant here. But your papers are in order. If you'll follow me, sergeant." He stood, his chair scraping across the bare plascrete floor of the reception area.

  Paltronis picked up her duffel then followed him. The loss of rank didn't bother her. The trumped up charges that resulted in her demotion and post here did. A lot. She and Lowell both knew it was a move to get Paltronis away from him. They were isolating him, one tiny bit at a time, cutting away anyone and everyone who might possibly support him. And he didn't know who they were.

  It was her snooping that landed her here. She and Lowell had many private discussions, using whatever technique they could to keep from being overheard. The rumor at Patrol headquarters was that they were having an affair. She didn't mind the smirch on her reputation. She was flattered by it. It was the rumor that had been her downfall, though.

  When Dace unmasked Vance Shiropi's mother as a traitor, Lowell had hoped that would deal the rebels a heavy blow. It hadn't even slowed their plans. Whoever was behind the rebellion against the Emperor, it wasn't Lady Candyce and her high society friends.

  Paltronis had been caught snooping through files she shouldn't have had access to. She'd been court martialed, demoted, and sent to the most out of the way place the Patrol High Command could find. Lowell's hands had been tied. If he'd admitted she was snooping on his orders, he would have been shot as a traitor himself. The rumor that they were lovers made it impossible for him to defend her. He was head of the Patrol, in name only. All real power bestowed by the Emperor's appointment had been siphoned away by the rest of the High Command. The corruption of the rebellion had spread even there, at the highest levels of government.

  The aide stopped by a warped door near the back corner of the third floor of the most decrepit building. He jiggled a key in the lock until the knob grudgingly turned. He pushed the door open. A wave of hot, stale air sighed out of the room beyond.

  "We aren't much on luxury here," he said, waving her through the door. "But you do get a private room. Unless you'd rather bunk with the grunts downstairs."

  "This is fine." She sat her duffel on the bare mattress of the battered bed. A cloud of dust motes rose laz
ily into the light filtering in from a very dirty window.

  "You can requisition basic supplies at the canteen. Lunch is in about an hour. The Commander would like to see you there." He turned away.

  "Thank you," she said, but he was already gone down the hall.

  She pushed the door shut. It took effort to get the warped door far enough into the frame to engage the lock. She turned to survey her new home.

  The small room held a bed, a battered chair that tilted to one side, and a single set of metal shelves for her belongings. The one window looked out over the warehouses, away from the ships. Beyond was nothing but a vast sea of golden sand and the blank blue sky.

  There were two other doors to her room. The nearest one, once she'd yanked it open, revealed a shallow closet, bare of everything but dust. The second door opened into a bathroom. Rust stained the toilet. The sink was chipped. The tub, an old fashioned one without the shower attachment that was usually standard, was short and shallow and rimed with soap scum. Another door led out of the bathroom. She tried to open it. It was locked from the other side. She listened but heard nothing through that door.

  She went back into her room to unpack. The building was quiet, but not silent. It spoke with its own voice. The floor creaked under her feet as she put her few belongings neatly on the shelves. The window sighed and rattled as a fitful breeze gusted past. Paltronis finished her unpacking and stood near the window, listening.

  She heard pipes gurgling once. The building settled as the heat of the day built outside the window. The boards siding the building popped. The cooling system kicked on with a burst of dusty air from a vent high overhead. Slightly cooler air wafted past her, towards the floor. It smelled stale.

  She pried at the window, trying to open it. The latch was crusted with dust and sediment. It hadn't been opened in years. She found her small pocketknife and used that to pick away the crud around the latch. She heaved at the window until it finally opened a few inches.

  The air outside, though fresher smelling, was hot and dry. She pushed the window shut. It squealed loudly as it slid down again. It might offer her a way out, if she needed it. But it would be noisy and anything but quick. And there wasn't anywhere to run, not here on Fedrithus. Miles of barren desert, a whole barren world, waited beyond. The city wasn't big enough to hide her. She leaned on the sill and sighed.