Rogue Mate, page 9
part #1 of Rogue Star Series
It was the best I could do, and it wasn’t nearly enough.
“Thank you, sir.” He fought the tears as best he could, but I couldn’t fault him for losing that battle.
“Mi tamba zum li cron, Shar. Moka nar Tambo.” It was an ancient saying from their tribe, honoring the family of the deceased and praising the lost.
Shar nodded, and we grasped one another’s forearms and touched heads.
He left the bridge and I turned around, fury wrapping my words. “Whatever that was, hurt us and hurt us deeply. I want to know how it stayed hidden, and I want to know now.”
I pushed the button for the ship-wide communication system. “Repair crews begin work at once. We need to make sure nothing else is wrong with the ship…and we need a funeral detail organized.”
Anger gave way to a familiar ache. This was the worst part of being captain, but there was no escaping it.
“We will honor those we lost.”
Kalyn
Idensa. Daria. Neera.
I don’t think I’d exchanged more than a few words with any of them. I only had known two of them by name.
I didn’t know what the tradition had been on Persephone Station when someone passed away. Considering how dangerous the station was, it had to have been a common occurrence.
Lynna explained they’d used a giant drill to cut deep into the icy crust of the planet, place the woman inside, and cover her with ice so she would never decay.
“What makes you think you have any right to decide what happens to them?” Maris snapped when I asked Dejar what our burial options were.
Her face was drawn and pale, her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot.
“I don’t,” I replied. “There are decisions that have to be made. I’d rather make them than force any of you to be pushed further into grief.”
“That’s because you aren’t grieving,” Aryn snapped. “You didn’t know them. You didn’t care about them.”
“Of course I cared!” I gasped.
“You didn’t know Neera’s name,” Maris shot back.
I didn’t have anything to say. They were right.
I cared, but not enough. I felt a warm hand press against my back. Dejar had stepped closer without me noticing.
“I understand that all of you are in pain,” he began. The women of Persephone Station turned their attention to him.
Some glared at him with eyes like hot coals. Other stared at him, their sleepless night apparent in the dark circles under their eyes.
“May I share what the Shein do to honor the death of a fallen friend?”
I kept very still. It wasn’t my question to answer.
“Yes,” Lynna said quietly. Some of the other women looked at her as angrily as they looked at Dejar. It wasn’t her question to answer, either, apparently.
The other women liked Lynna, much more than they liked me, but Lynna was different, too. She went to Persephone Station voluntarily for research purposes.
She wasn’t sentenced to exile on the station as a laborer. I feared I’d never understand the social complexities of Persephone, especially now.
“We release them into space, then set them ablaze until they are nothing more than ash,” Dejar explained. “Their ashes will drift together into the void, where they become part of the cosmos.”
“That’s lovely,” I heard myself say, my voice so quiet, only Dejar would’ve been able to hear me clearly.
“That will be acceptable,” Maris said. A few others murmured their agreement, but most stayed silent.
“I will make arrangements.” Dejar bowed his head. “It’s up to you whether you want to attend the burning or not.” On that note, the women dispersed. I stood in place. I couldn’t will my legs to move.
“It isn’t your fault. You know that, don’t you?” Dejar said softly, his mouth only inches from my ear.
“But it is,” I whispered back. “The moment you accepted the job, I felt wrong. I didn’t say anything when I could’ve and look what happened. You lost some of your crew. I lost three women I should’ve gotten to know when I had the chance.”
“No one could’ve predicted that ship’s attack,” Dejar assured me, his strong hand rubbing small, gentle circles, easing muscles that were screaming at me. “It didn’t leave a trace on the sensors, not even a heat signature. Valtic’s going blind reviewing the records. It’s impossible for a ship not to leave a heat signature. Whoever attacked us was incredibly sophisticated. Even if we had seen them coming, we would’ve never been prepared.”
“I should’ve spoken against taking that job,” I insisted.
“I would’ve taken it even if you had,” Dejar admitted. “I had the same bad feeling in my gut as you did, but I pushed forward. If anyone is to blame for what happened, it’s me. I’m the captain.”
“Don’t say that.” Without thinking, I reached out and touched his arm. For a brief moment, we were suspended in time. The skin of my fingertips resting against the warm skin of his forearm. Our eyes met, something electric crackled in the air around us. Then, just like that, it passed. Feeling breathless, I retracted my hand.
“I need to be alone for a moment,” I stammered. “There’s a lot I need to think about.”
“Use my office,” Dejar offered. “No one will bother you there.” I nodded my thanks and hurried off down the hall. I was so distracted that I ended up on the wrong end of the ship. When I finally made it to Dejar’s office, I let the door slide closed and put my back against the cool metal.
Maybe I would’ve felt better if I forced myself to cry. I wanted to. I was sad enough to weep, but the tears wouldn’t come. Years of hearing my mother describe tears as a weakness had trained me to hold them in at all costs.
I knew she sent me to Persephone Station to avoid a scandal, but did she honestly think I could do this job?
I wondered if she’d heard about the station being obliterated. In her position, it was likely she would’ve been one of the first people to know.
Did she send a team to Pluto to investigate, or did she write it off as an elegant solution to her problems? She’d always detested the station, but she detested the thought of its residents rejoining ‘decent society’ even more. Did she mean for me to die there all along?
Not even the thought of my own mother wanting me dead brought tears to my eyes.
I still believed it was some sort of miracle that Dejar picked us up and allowed us to stay on his ship, but I had been foolish to let myself get comfortable. Of course this wasn’t a permanent solution.
I was so content to play pirate and trick myself into believing I was good at something that I allowed the women in my charge to be put in danger.
Blindly, I stared around the office, until a blinking dot caught my eye. One large wall screen displayed the map of our current location, updating as the ship’s position changed.
The course we were meant to be on was plotted along the map in red.
We were so far away from where we were meant to be. Using my fingers, I zoomed in on our location. We were close to a small planet of some kind. It was labeled, but I still couldn’t easily read the writing.
Dejar had been kind enough to add a feature to most of the ship’s displays that changed the labels to Terran when toggled. I activated the feature.
Dominion Outpost Nine.
I hadn’t forgotten what Dejar told me about the Dominion, but surely, they had to be the best chance of getting back home.
And off the Rogue Star.
I’d made the decision. It was the right one, but still, my heart cracked just a bit further. Stiffening my spine, I took a few deep breaths and left Dejar’s office.
He wasn’t on the main deck anymore. I checked the mess hall first but left immediately after meeting several hostile glares from the women who’d convened there.
Qal finally told me Dejar was in the med bay, the last place I wanted to be.
I tried not to look at the shrouded bodies when I entered the med bay, but I failed.
“Kalyn, you shouldn’t be seeing this.” Dejar stepped in front of me, blocking my view of the room.
“We’re near a Dominion outpost,” I said in response, words ashen in my mouth.
“Yes,” he nodded. “We’re going to avoid it as best we can. Hopefully, that dark ship didn’t attract too much attention.”
“I need you to take us there.” My voice didn’t sound like my own. It was as if I’d turned into an efficient, emotionless droid.
Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.
“I don’t understand.” Dejar’s brow furrowed. “No place run by the Dominion is safe.”
“I have to appeal to the Dominion and get them to take us home,” I explained. “We don’t belong in a galaxy like this. It’s far too dangerous. We shouldn’t be here in the first place.”
“The Dominion are likely hunting for this ship as we speak,” Dejar stressed.
“You wouldn’t have to stay on the planet,” I said. “Just long enough for us to disembark and then leave before anyone realizes we came from the Rogue Star.” I bit my lips, the pain a welcome distraction from the churning in my stomach. “We won’t say anything to betray you, I promise.”
“I can’t leave you somewhere where you’ll be in danger,” Dejar argued.
“I’m in danger now,” I insisted. “All of us are. Going to the outpost is my best chance of getting the other women home where they’ll be safe. I can’t sit here and wait for more of them to die under my command.”
Dejar stared at me for a long time, his expression pained, searching, as if he was trying to come up with an alternative plan of any kind.
Eventually, he sighed and hung his head in defeat.
“If that’s what you truly want, we’ll take you to the outpost.”
I could tell he didn’t like the idea. I doubted the rest of his crew would, either.
But it needed to be done.
Dejar
I didn’t want them to go.
Fine.
I didn’t want Kalyn to go, and the rest of the women had been useful, even interesting to have around.
But I would have traded them all for her.
I stared at the door to her quarters. Every argument I tried had failed. And I couldn’t, wouldn’t, refuse her.
Finally, I knocked.
“Come in,” was the response.
I drew in a deep breath, let it out, and opened the door. Kalyn looked up from the small desk and smiled, just a ghost of her usual radiance. “Hi, Captain.”
Captain.
The word was like a kick to the gut.
Not Dejar.
“Kalyn,” I said as I closed the door behind me. “I wanted to let you know that we’re about to dock at Outpost Nine.”
“Thank you. I was just finishing up a little bit of paperwork for the three women that…” she stopped talking and took in a shuddering breath. “Drafting letters to their families. In case we get a chance to send them, I’d like them to know how they died.”
I knew how she felt. “Don’t give in to the loss. Death is an inevitable part of life, and it cannot be stopped. What you cannot do is let it consume you.”
She looked up at me, her eyes wet but not yet dropping tears. “They were my responsibility. They shouldn’t have died.”
“So were the six men that I lost. And you’re right, they shouldn’t have died, none of them. However, you can’t let it consume who you are. What would you have done if they had died at Persephone Station?” I asked.
“But they didn’t die there, they died out here, and I’m the one that…”
“That what?” I interrupted. “Brought them here? No, you didn’t. Made them stay on board the ship? Again, no, you didn’t. Unless you brought the dark ship to attack us…did you do that?” I fixed her with a stare and looked into her blue eyes, silently challenging her to argue my point.
She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, and closed it with a shake of her head.
Desperate, I knelt down and grabbed her hands, turning her towards me. “Don’t go. Don’t leave the ship.”
Her eyes shone with sadness as she looked away. “I have to. I have to make sure my girls are safe, and the only way to do that is to get them back home to Earth. I don’t want to leave, but I have to. They’re my responsibility.” Her voice broke a little as she spoke, and her hands squeezed mine, but she didn’t look at me.
I put my hand on her cheek, cupping it gently. I ever so slowly moved her face, so I could see her eyes. “Stay. I want you to stay here, with me.”
I leaned in and brushed my lips over hers. Not the demanding, hungry kiss I’d dreamed of, but a silent plea.
For a moment she leaned into me, returning my touch, her lips yielding to mine as I tasted the salt of her tears.
Just as I thought that she might stay, she pulled away.
“I can’t. I’m sorry. I have to take care of them.”
With that, she stood up and walked out of the room.
Aavat was already in the hangar bay with the other women, while Kovor ran the bridge.
After a few minutes, I received word that the women had left the ship.
I stayed in the room, sitting on her bed, until the ship left port.
I went to the bridge to concentrate, but Kalyn’s ghost was everywhere. We’d done as she asked, staying only long enough for them to leave, with another job already lined up, far away.
Later that evening, as my shift was ending, Aavat came to speak with me. Leaving Qal in charge, which drew stares from several crew members, Aavat and I went to my office. “What is it, old friend?”
“The little one, Shenna, was looking all over the ship for her cat,” Aavat said to me, or rather, to a point on the wall over my head. “She couldn’t find it. I told her if I found it, I’d find a way to get it back to her.”
“And?” I asked, curious as to why he refused to meet my eyes.
“I found the cat.”
“And you want to go back?” I asked, incredulous. “To drop off a cat?”
“Maybe,” Aavat replied before trailing off.
I sat in silence waiting for him to continue.
“There have been some issues with work quality since we’ve left the outpost,” he answered me, changing the subject.
“Really? You bring me something this trivial? First, a cat and then work quality?” I shook my head at him.
He only snorted in derision, plopping into the opposite chair. Kalyn’s chair.
“Do you have anything else to say?” I snapped.
With a shake of his head and a smirk on his face, he just looked at me. “No, not really. You’re a very funny Shein. Did you know that?”
“Excuse me? How am I being funny?”
“The women have been gone a few hours, and the men are already complaining about the extra work they have to do, and how boring it is around here now.” He raised his eyebrows. “I think they got a little spoiled.”
“And how does that make me the funny one, exactly?”
He looked at me, leaned back in his chair, folded his arms and kicked his feet up on my desk. “You got spoiled, too. You want Kalyn back. It’s as plain on your face as the tattoos on Shar’s head. You’re acting out, you’re angry, and you’re being a general pain in the kouting hurg.” He smiled a smug little smile that essentially dared me to punch him in the face, or say he was wrong.
He wasn’t wrong.
And I probably shouldn’t punch him. I might think about it for a few minutes, though.
“Oh, I am? And since when do you think you have the right to put your feet on my desk?”
“See?” he said with a laugh. “Petulant teenager. Just admit that you miss the woman and that you want her back already.”
“And what if I do?” I said as I threw my hands in the air. “What am I supposed to do about it?” The ship rocked a bit as we entered the fold to deliver our cargo. “It’s not as if we can turn around and go back.”
“True,” he said with a shrug. “But we can always fold back after we deliver the package. Convince her to come back. Hell, convince them all to come back. The men miss the women already. I miss the women. It felt good to have a competent crew on board.”
He rose from the chair and poured himself a drink from the decanter at the far side of the office.
He didn’t fool me. We already had a good crew. The women just made us better.
“What if she doesn’t want to come back?” I asked him, keeping an edge in my voice.
He took a deep drink, let out a big sigh as he swirled the rest of the drink in his glass, and leaned against the wall. “Forget her and move on. Or,” he said as he finished his drink. He poured himself another glass and offered me one, which I declined.
He walked over to the far wall to look out the window at the nothingness of the fold. He was milking the drama, letting it draw out before he finished his thought.
I hated him. “Or,” he finally continued, “if you can’t forget her and move on, you can always resign, give me back my ship, and go chase after her.”
“Your ship?” I asked with a grin. “Since when was this your ship?”
“It was my idea to combine forces and go to Kovor, if you remember correctly,” he responded, then downed his drink. He looked over at the decanter, shook his head, then placed the empty glass on my desk.
“I was the one that knew Kovor in the first place. If I hadn’t suggested his name, you would never have known about him.”
It was a favorite argument of ours, one that both of us enjoyed having. Truth be told, it was Aavat’s idea to combine forces, but the ship was Kovor’s. He owned it, he just let us fly it.
“So?”
I looked at Aavat quizzically. “What?”
He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “What are you going to do, idiot? Are you going to give her up or are you going to go back for her?”
Give her up. I’d tried it, even for a few hours.
Never again.
