Chapter 13

She’d hurt him. Not that she’d meant too. Amy’s stomach clenched around the splash of fruity tea. She’d never been in a position to hurt someone before, and she didn’t like it any more than she’d want a blaster in her pocket with no safety catch. He was the first person in her life to try to excuse her from expectations she probably couldn’t deliver anyway, and apparently she didn’t like that either.

She’d told him she was finally making something of herself, but…who was she becoming?

After he finished poking silently—and angrily, she suspected—at the ship’s course, he rose from his seat and muttered something about being hungry as he stalked out of the cockpit.

Somehow, the small space felt even more cramped without him in it.

With a silent sigh of her own, she turned to the computer. “Show me the Jessup Void.”

Without a single objection that she was too wimpy to even think she should go there, the screen obligingly lit up. As the soft voice read off the text about the unoccupied region, the words—both written and spoken—shifted from Mandarin to English and back again. Her universal translator was trying to interpret for her, but even that super-advanced technology was confused about who she was. She sighed again.

“An ancient supernova at the center of what is now called the Jessup Void decimated the vicinity, leaving only extinguished stars and the debris of broken planets,” the computer intoned. “The region around the remaining nebula is considered a no-go zone since a freighter captained by Antil Jessup vanished while attempting to chart a shortcut across the Void.”

“An abyss where the Body’s Hunger is hidden,” Amy muttered. “Sounds like my love life.”

Except for last night, of course, with Luc. But she’d ruined that in pursuit of this adventure.

“Local legend,” the computer continued, making her perk up, “shared at nearby space stations blames an anomaly at the center of the nebula for the loss of contact with numerous ships since Jessup’s initial disappearance. Those reports have never been verified. Perhaps because…” The computer paused, as if it had a sense for the dramatic. “No ship has ever returned.”

Eesh. “Somebody needs to rethink their travelogue,” Amy muttered.

She studied Luc’s recalibrated map. Surprise, surprise, the coordinates indicated that the second gem was smack dab in the middle of the Void. This Octiron Corp really went for the drama. Well, she’d said this was what she wanted.

The course indicated it would take some time to get to the coordinates. Even with all their advanced technology, space was a very big, empty place. Even emptier with Luc apparently ignoring her now. They could’ve spent these intervening hours doing something more fun… She pushed the thought out of her head even though it sounded like something an infamous interstellar explorer would think. Maybe she didn’t want to be that if it meant putting the adventure ahead of everything else.

It was hard enough pursuing something tangible; how was she supposed to win something as nebulous as—dare she say it?—love?

While the course indicator showed its countdown, she and Luc danced awkwardly around each other in the small confines of the Blissed. He muttered something about preparing EVA exosuits for their next search, and she nodded curtly as if she understood any of what he was talking about. She took some comfort in the knowledge that no matter how estranged they were at the moment, the race had them on an inevitable collision course. Somewhere in the middle of the Jessup Void.

But now that she’d had a taste of him, her nerves prickled with longing whenever she passed him—which was frequent in the small ship. All her fingers, even the missing one, tingled with the need to reach for him, draw him close, hold him still, and explain again why she needed the race as much as she wanted him. But it was as if their universal translators were no longer so universal.

She feared it would take an anomaly to get them talking again.

When he said her name from the doorway of the cockpit where she’d been watching the last ticks of distance disappear between them and the mapped marker, she almost jumped out of her skin.

His jade gaze was hooded. “We need to check your suit,” he said stiffly. “If you still insist on going. This is your last chance…” He swallowed hard. “I’m asking you, Amy, please stay in the ship.”

She opened her mouth to agree, to give in as she always did so he wouldn’t be disappointed in her.

“No,” is what she actually said. “I’m going with you.”

His shoulders sagged, but he stepped back without further comment and gestured toward the hatch.

As she followed him, she said, “You’re probably mad enough to space me now, hmm?”

“Not without a suit.” He glanced back at her. “That’s what you want, right? To go out there with me.”

She’d wanted many things and never made good on any of them.

The spacesuit was bulkier than she’d expected and yet still felt too insubstantial when Luc sealed her in and she imagined stepping out into the abyss. The suit had obviously been intended for the more statuesque woman left behind on Earth, so it was too big even when Luc tightened the joints. But at least it had the right number of limbs even if one of the fingers in the left glove flapped.

He studied her critically. “It’s a bad fit.”

“Story of my life,” she quipped, her voice echoing a little hollowly in the helmet.

His jaw flexed. “I meant the suit.”

Too bad it applied to everything else too.

She watched wordlessly as he donned his own suit, which of course fit perfectly across his broad shoulders and lean hips and somehow even managed to emphasize the hard muscles in his sexy butt as he bent to check something in their packs.

He straightened abruptly. “Is your suit air compressor working properly?” His voice came through her helmet intimately in her ear, sending a shiver down her spine.

She grimaced. “How would I know?”

“You are breathing erratically.”

“Just, uh, getting used to the feel of it.” She could’ve gotten used to the feel of him too, if he hadn’t felt the need to get all protective.

And geez, it was so wrong that his possessiveness made her melty inside.

He stepped toward her, reaching for her shoulders.

Uh oh. Had he realized she was panting over him? It was going to be really awkward kissing in these bulky helmets…

He pushed her back a step, and the shoulders of her suit clicked into a frame holding the booster system that would move them through space without the Blissed.

So much for kissing.

He clicked into his own booster and attached his pack then hers to their frames. “The ionized gas from the nebula is too strong and inconsistent for the Blissed’s sensors to find something as small as a gemstone, even if we were right on top of it. We’re going to have to scan by hand out there. We can’t stay out there too long or the radiation will broil us, but the calculations indicate the Body’s Hunger should be right here.” He shook his helmeted head. “Mining for stones without a tunnel or any earth at all.”

“No mites either,” she pointed out. “So that’s a plus.”

But as they stepped into the airlock, she suddenly decided she’d rather be fleeing a collapsing mine than about to step into nothingness.

To think she’d naively asked him to space her!

“Brace yourself,” he warned. “I’m going to vent the atmosphere.”

They’d reviewed their plan during their travel to the coordinates, but still she couldn’t hold back a gasp as the small pocket of air with them was sucked into space through the opening hatch. The moisture froze instantly into a shower of tiny stars, quickly lost in the vastness around them. But her gaze was already being drawn to the swirling gases of the nebula hanging above them.

“It’s so beautiful,” she breathed, still clinging to the handhold in the airlock. “I can’t believe I’m seeing this in the flesh.”

“Well, really, your visor is amalgamating multiple wavelengths of light and selectively assigning color to various chemical compositions in order to give you an approximation of what the nebula looks like—”

“Luc?”

He was silent a moment. “Yes?”

“Don’t ruin this moment with reality.”

After another longer moment, his voice sounded wistfully in her ear. “It is beautiful, isn’t it? And you found it. Or at least got us this far.”

She screwed her eyes closed at the reminder. What if she’d been wrong? This crazy spacewalk would be her fault. And color shifting the coordinates was just a wild guess.

But she’d wanted to be more wild.

She opened her eyes and let go of the handhold.

With Luc beside her, she drifted out the open hatch. He’d explained earlier that they’d be tethered via retractable lines to each other and to the Blissed. And the boosters on their backs were programmed to carry them back to the ship with a simple voice command, a physically activated trigger on the control panel built into the arm of the suit, or automatically if their bio-readings exceeded certain baseline parameters. Basically, their spacewalk was as safe as he could make it.

With the obvious exception of them being adrift in a bottomless abyss, of course.

Bottomless? Inadvertently, she glanced at her feet. Where there was nothing below her. Or topless? Or sideless? Her brain spun, or maybe it was her body spinning…

“Amy, you have to breathe. Amy?” Luc grabbed her hand. “Not breathing is as bad as breathing too fast,” he warned. “I’m triggering the suit to take you back to the ship—”

“No.” She clenched her fingers around his, and even through the dulling gloves, the steadiness of him calmed her. “I’m…okay.”

“Focus on the nebula,” he said. “It’ll help your balance.”

Actually, the swirling tendrils of glowing gas made her feel drunk as a drakling on coffee, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. “I got it.”

He spun slowly to face her, as if they were dancing. Through the visor, his jade gaze was intent. “It’s kind of strange that the stone associated with the carnal body is out here in the nothingness.”

“Like the flame gem was buried in the dark.” Thinking of the poem was a good diversion, and she took a deep breath. “I’m glad we can bring them out of obscurity, even if the queen’s legend isn’t real.”

He tightened his fingers on hers. “Ready to scan?”

She nodded and released him. The control panel on the arm of her suit included a scanner, and Luc had calibrated it for the drakling homeworld molecular signature. Since they had to deal with more area to cover and the interference of the nebula’s gas clouds, they were deploying their scans in a reinforcing grid, hoping to sensitize the signal.

With a nudge, he sent her floating away from him, away from the Blissed, while he went the other direction. With enough space—so much space!—between them to scan, they’d be able to zero in on the one nugget of rock they actually wanted in all this dead zone. Hopefully.

But there was just so. Much. Empty. Space.

She swallowed hard against the urge to yank on the tether and drag herself back to him. “This is the interstellar

part of the infamous explorer,” she muttered.

“Say again.” Luc’s voice in her helmet made him sound as if he wasn’t halfway across the Paragon Galaxy.

“Just contemplating the meaning of life.”

“Contemplate the readings on your scanner,” he said, though his tone was amused.

“Yessir, Captain.”

“Teammates,” he corrected. “Although if you want to start taking my orders…”

She broke in rudely. “Any indicator on your end?”

He snorted at her non-response. Across the distance between them, she watched as he aimed his wrist at an angle from her. “Adjust your visor to two-ten to two-fifty electron-volts and send your signal.”

She matched his gesture and, with the change to her visor, saw the beam shoot from her wrist. The beam met his, and she swore she felt the connection inside her. Which was impossible, of course, but maybe in some poetical dimension…

“Next signal,” he said. “Crossways, this time.”

With more beams, they set up a grid. This would make for boring television, she feared, but as each quadrant began to glow with lemon-lime light, her heart beat faster. Was she wrong about the color correction? Maybe they were out here for no reason… Her mouth was dry with anxiety, as bad as any standardized test she’d ever taken and flubbed.

Silenced in the forgotten abyss. That was the line from the poem, and that was how she felt.

“Luc,” she said hoarsely. “What’s the audio frequency that corresponds with the electron-volt of the exact center of the yellow-green wavelength?”

“Audio?”

“In the poem, the Body’s Hunger is hidden in the abyss, silenced. Bringing light to the darkness helped us find the Heart’s Flame. Maybe we need sound to counteract the silence.”

The note of doubt in his voice made him seem very far away. “In space, no one can hear you recite poetry.” But he drifted toward her. “We need to be touching for sound to carry.”

Frustration twisted inside her, inextricably bound with her yearning to touch him again, even if it was through their heavy suits, even if it was just to continue their search.

“The middle of the auditory spectrum is here.” He set the dat-pad on his forearm. “Five twenty-eight hertz corresponds to the middle of visible light in a prism.” The sound whispered through her helmet. “It’s the frequency of chlorophyll, which carbon-based plants use to convert sunlight to substance,” he said, reading from the dat-pad as he floated. “And med scanners use the same frequency to repair damaged tissue and DNA.” He grunted. “Could’ve used one of those…” He reached for her.

“Yeah. Fascinating.” She grabbed his hand to reel him closer, and as their helmets touched, the pure tone swelled between them.

The gridlines they’d sent beaming through space began to vibrate, thrumming the darkness like guitar strings. But she couldn’t hear anything, because the vacuum of empty space couldn’t carry a tune.

“Dance with me,” Luc murmured.

She peered at him. “Dance?”

“It’s just one note, but we can pretend.” With a little spurt from his suit’s booster, they began to twirl lazily.

The gridlines followed the beams from their suits, slowly shifting across the seemingly empty space. If the second gemstone was floating somewhere between the beams…

She gave her booster a nudge, tightening the twirl, bringing their oscillating lines closer together. From her perspective, the nebula wheeled too, as if it wanted to join in the dance. If there was anything out there…

The lines converged, and in the center, a brilliant flash of golden-green—like a spring leaf lit from behind…or a certain aroused drakling’s ravenous stare—blazed in the permanent night. A clarion call echoed back impossibly along the gridlines, making her clutch at her helmet in surprise as her whole body reverberated.

“The Body’s Hunger!” Despite the deafening volume in their headsets, Luc’s voice rang clearer. With a zoom of his booster, he hauled her toward the floating gemstone.

As his fingers closed around it, the flawless middle C surged once. Not a note she’d ever managed to produce from her violin, but now it lived in her very bones. Then it vanished, leaving only an echo in her blood.

Luc’s soft exhalation whispered down her spine. “Astonishing.”

Since she was staring at his wondering eyes, not the stone, she caught the flicker reflected in his facemask. She glanced over her shoulder. “Uh, Luc? We have visitors.”