The Nightshade Problem: Sol Space Volume Two by James Wilks

Author:James Wilks [Wilks, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2017-02-14T07:00:00+00:00

Day 3.

“Hey Dinah, can I talk to you?” Carl Overton had opened the bulkhead door at the top of the ReC and was currently looking down at the first engineer.

Dinah was standing on what was the rear wall of the Reactor Control room when the ship was flat and not thrusting; she was running a diagnostic test on the engines. Beyond the raised console in front of her, the slanted windows offered a view down into the main fusion reactor that powered the ship.

Dinah did not look up at him from her surface. “I’m busy right now. Maybe later.”

“All right,” he said after a moment, then closed the door. Dinah’s fingers moved continuously across the surface. A second later, the hatch opened again and Overton’s legs appeared. He climbed down into the room, closing the hatch above him as he did so. When he reached the floor and crossed to her, he was breathing quickly, but not from physical exertion.

“You know what? Not all right. We need to talk.”

“I told you, I’m busy,” she said again flatly. She keyed a readout of engine output over the past hour and then began running a comparison with the output hour by hour over the previous day.

“Well, you’re always busy, so you’re going to have to make time.” He was heated, and he reached out to grab her arm and swivel her towards him, but thought better of it. Instead, he stood still, and waited for her to acknowledge him.

Finally, she turned to look him in the face. “What is it, Corporal?”

His eyes narrowed. “Don’t pull that with me. You’ve been avoiding me since I came on board. You don’t want to be friends with me? Fine, but don’t act like we’re still in the service. You might still call people ‘sir,’ but I gave that up years ago. There are about a dozen ways you can keep me at arm’s length, but that one is not all right.”

She looked down, and for an instant she looked genuinely sorry, but the moment passed and she gazed back at him, hard as ever. “So, what is it?”

He had rehearsed this speech a number of times in his head, but he still took a moment to organize his thoughts. He drew a shuddering breath, then began. “Look, I get it. I do. I was a fling while you were on Cronos Station. I was supposed to be temporary, and now suddenly I’m in your world here. I must feel like the one night stand that just won’t go away. But I don’t have a choice. It was you,” he pointed at her, his voice raised and his finger a centimeter from her sternum, “who dragged me into this. You came looking for me. You asked me, former-soldier to former-soldier, to do you a favor. You took me to bed. And you told me to get Evelyn the hell out of dodge if things looked fishy. I had a decent life, a good job, and friends. Now that’s over.

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