I thought about your question and I felt shameful for never questioning myself. Never looking back, I mean. I just went with it because that’s what I felt I was supposed to do. There was always a feeling of fear of what I might find. But sitting here I started to retreat, to back away. It doesn’t make sense, I know, but I felt like I was retreating.”
Eric reached across the table and took her hand. She stared at it and smiled. Her vision blurred until she blinked it away. “Thank you,” she whispered, and squeezed his hand for emphasis. She swallowed and tried again. “Okay, so here I am feeling like I’m falling away and suddenly I realized I was about to have another black out. I don’t know if it always happens like that or not, but I think I stopped it. I got scared! Really, really scared! I mean stranded in a chunk of steel floating through space without eyes and ears scared.” She paused to share a chuckle with him. “Anyhow, I fought back. I pulled myself out of it and came back…I came back to you. For you, I mean. Or for me because of you…whatever, you’re the key here.”
He had a ruddy color to his cheeks that she found irresistible. She wanted to kiss him, but a sudden noise from the passage outside made her jerk her hand back quickly. Just in time Tarn walked in. He stopped, seeing them together, then grumbled something about them eating all the good food before he turned to make himself a meal.
“ I need to speak with Captain Sharp,” Eric said, nodding his head.
“ Have you got an idea?” Kira asked, confused by the abrupt change of topics. She knew better than to discuss anything personal in front of the ex-Marine, but beyond that she was as lost as she claimed to be.
“ Something like that. Come on, I might need some help with astrogation.”
Kira grabbed her plate and scraped it into the recycler, then she stashed it in the dishwasher while Eric followed suit. He led the way out and up to the bridge, moving too quickly for her to ask him what he was going on about.
“ Captain!” Eric burst into the bridge, making the man jump in his chair. “Sir, I- we, I guess, need to talk to you.”
Sharp scowled at them. “This better be about fixing my ship. We’ve been floating another week and nobody’s got a clue what’s going on. It’s Tarn’s shift on the hull watching for the asteroid belt but still nothing.”
Kira looked at Eric and saw him looking back at her. “Uh, Sir,” she said, “Tarn’s in the mess hall.”
“ It’s a galley, this isn’t an army barracks,” Sharp snapped.
“ Right, galley. Sorry, Sir.”
“ Might make a space monkey out of you yet…or not, is that what this is about?”
“ No, or not unless you decide it is,” Eric said.
Sharp stared at him, then finally motioned for him to go on when Eric didn’t say any more.
“ Sorry, just trying to figure out how to say this,” Eric said. He took a deep breath before plunging in. “Captain, when you hired me I wasn’t entirely truthful about my past.”
Sharp chuckled. “You think anybody on this boat is?”
Eric nodded the point. “All right, fair enough, but I think you really need to know this. There’s a bounty on my head. A big one.”
Sharp leaned back in his chair and crossed his hands in his lap. “What’d you do?”
“ Does it matter?” Kira interrupted. “You’ve got Tarn on here, ethics and morality can’t be too high on your priority list.”
Sharp turned an icy glare on her. “Loyalty is my top priority, young lady. I care about morality to a point, but with a proper sense of loyalty it doesn’t matter, so long as you’re not breaking any laws on my ship.” He turned back to Eric. “So, what’d you do? Kill somebody? Steal from somebody?”
“ Nothing that impressive, I just slept with the wrong people.”
“ People?”
He nodded.
“ This sounds like a good story, go on.”
Eric sighed. Kira interrupted again, “I don’t think that’s any of your business, Captain.”
“ It’s my ship, it’s my business. I’m judge, jury, and executioner here.” Sharp’s tone was exactly what his name implied.
“ I spent time with both the wife and daughter of the Governor of Plentiful. When-“
“ Wait! Both? Together? Like, at the same time?”
Kira rolled her eyes while Eric laughed. “No!” He burst out. “No, that would have been…awkward.”
“ I bet,” Kira added drily.
“ Awkward, hmm…”
“ Anyhow,” Eric continued in an exasperated tone. “The governor found out and I was banished, legally. Off the record he put a contract on my head. Five million in Core Script.”
“ Five Million?” Sharp echoed. “You must have really pulled one over on him!”
Kira smirked. If Sharp only knew just how ruined any women who’d been with Eric would be for another man he’d think five million was a pittance.
“ There were some medical issues,” Eric muttered. “But I decided you should know. I’ve been with you a few years now and it’s been smooth sailing, by and large. Sooner or later somebody’s going to find me. Doesn’t seem right me putting you all at risk because of something I done when I was a stupid kid.”
Sharp nodded. “No, it’s not right, and you should feel downright ashamed of yourself for hiding it from me. Matter of fact, if you’d have told me that when we first met there’s no way you’d be on the Mule right now.”
Kira saw the muscles tense in Eric’s jaw. She reached over and took his hand in hers, trying to coax some of the tension out of him.
“ That’s a port we won’t go back to though,” Sharp added. “You been a damn fine engineer for me and I don’t take that service lightly. You want to leave, I won’t stop you, but you’ve been taking care of the Mule for me and I take care of my own. Same reason I haven’t spaced Tarn for the dumb shit he’s done lately.”
Eric relaxed, then glanced at Kira. “You know about us?”
Sharp smirked. “Walls of this old bird don’t block as much sound as they used to.”
Kira wanted to die. She grabbed Eric’s hand and that alone kept her from running out the hatch and leaping into the airlock herself, especially now that it was fixed.
“ If Tarn’s in the galley, doesn’t that make it your shift up on the hull, Mr. Sackman?”
Eric nodded and gave Kira’s hand a squeeze. They started to leave but were stopped by the Captain calling Kira back. With a nervous flutter in her stomach, she waved good bye to Eric and turned to face the Captain.
“ It’s been itching at me for a while and I just can’t figure it out. That’s unusual, most things I can’t figure I don’t let get to me,” He began then paused to look at her.
Kira felt a weight press on her chest, making it difficult to breathe. Was the Captain making a pass at her? Or worse, was he going to extort her into doing something?
“ I was contacted by somebody with no name and no face, you see. Someone that offered me a tidy sum to take you on. Quarter of it was just to agree to meet you, then remainder is released when we check in at the mining station.” Captain Sharp studied her, his eyes trying to pierce the skin from her face. Kira stood steady. She had no idea what he was talking about. She had no relatives or mysterious benefactors out there. Her parents had died in when she was a child, innocent bystanders killed in an uprising over food.
“ I thought maybe that somebody was you. Computer disguises the voice, darkens and blurs the image, you know how it is. Looking at you now though, I see you’ve got no idea.”
“ No Sir,” Kira said. “I’m about the loneliest person the universe has ever seen.”
“ I see, just you and whoever you’re shacking up with, and they’re just the flavor of the week?”
“ No!” She fell silent after blurting out her answer. It pissed her off, what she felt was real! She’d never trusted herself to have a boyfriend or more than an occasional lover. She gave up trying until Eric. Or at least she thought she gave up. Her blackouts lasted months sometimes, maybe she was shacking up with any flavor of the week.
“ None of my business,” Captain Sharp said softly. “What you do on your time is your business, not mine. Long as it don’t bring trouble to my ship or crew, you can screw whoever you want and I’ll just sit back and be envious.”
“ Envious?” Kira asked, disrupted from her depressing thoughts by his choice of words.
“ Yeah, you’re getting some action and I’m stuck doing Captain-y things.”
