Before returning to the bridge, Sage stopped at his quarters to drop off Svetloka’s belongings. He was also considering all that Tala had shared with him. He’d been surprised that she had opened up that much. It had seemed that she needed someone to talk to, but he marveled that she’d chosen him. Maybe because he’d stuck his nose into her office and pestered her. He was glad he’d managed to get that apology out without fumbling it. Apologies weren’t something he had to utter often these days, and they had never come easily for him.

Too much pride, no doubt. His mother frequently told him he was much like his father, and he was fairly certain it was only meant as a compliment about half the time.

“Eridanus?” Sage asked, pausing on his way out of his quarters.

“Do you no longer require privacy, Captain?”

“No. I require—no, I have a request. You’ve seen the data in the handheld computers some of the women brought with them, right? Can you try to find out what a violin is for me? And how to make one?”

Sage wondered what Hierax would think if he asked him to make a musical instrument. Hierax often said he could make anything. Granted, that generally applied to things with gears and circuit boards. Depending on what exactly the instrument consisted of, Zakota might actually be the one to ask. He could carve out of wood or bone magnificently, though hardly anyone actually admitted that to him.

As he left his quarters, Sage almost ran into Orion. His brother, arms bare and scarred, shaggy hair pulled back in a bun, always managed to look disreputable. Their mother’s words rang in Sage’s mind, and he reminded himself that Orion had proven himself reputable when dealing with the slavers and rescuing the women. If he hadn’t disarmed that bomb the slavers had intended to throw at the Falcon 8, Sage and the others might not have flown away from that planet, at least not in their own ship.

It was strange to admit that. Sage was used to thinking ill of Orion for being kicked out of the military and choosing a profession that involved slaying criminals. He’d read more than one report about a Star Guardian being slain by bounty hunters who didn’t care if the people they hunted down were criminals or not. So long as someone was willing to pay.

But Orion, as he was learning, hadn’t been someone like that. And he wasn’t as anti-establishment as Sage had always believed. He seemed to genuinely be considering the job offer he’d received from High Command, to join the Star Guardians.

“Sage,” Orion said, slowing down and nodding warily.

He looked like he’d been on the way past Sage’s quarters, not coming to see him. Orion had been doing a good job of avoiding Sage since coming aboard. Not that Sage had gone out of his way to be inviting to his brother.

“Orion,” he said, his tone probably just as wary.

After so many years of pretending Orion didn’t exist, Sage didn’t know how to go forward with his little brother. In truth, he barely knew him. More than twenty years ago, when he’d had breaks from his studies at the military academy, he’d gone home to visit Mom, and he’d played with young Orion. But once he’d been commissioned and the war had started, there’d been no time for visits. He hadn’t been able to get away from work to go to Orion’s graduations, neither from school nor the military academy. He’d sent a congratulatory message for the last one, having a notion that they might end up serving together someday, and that Orion might make a name for himself in the space fleet, as their father had done. Their other brothers hadn’t felt the call of military duty, and had their lives in the private sector. Sage had been pleased when Orion had followed in his footsteps, but then disappointed when he’d been dishonorably discharged. Who wouldn’t be?

“Going to tell the ship what’s going on?” Orion asked. “It’s been a whole half hour since anyone’s shot at us. People are wondering if the universe is going to end.”

“Yes.” Sage intended to make a ship-wide announcement before they flew into the wormhole. Though he’d been keeping his crew in the dark in regard to his disobedience, he had to warn everyone about the nebula. “We’re entering the Cronos Nebula as a shortcut. I want you to sequester the women in the rec room again and put a guard on the door—Ensign Thangi.” He’d already said he would get Lieutenant Coric on the bridge, and Ensign Thangi was the only other female Star Guardian.

“I’m going to forgo pointing out that you don’t have the right to give me orders unless I agree to sign on with the Star Guardians, though I suspect that offer is null at this point. Instead, I’ll say, the Cronos Nebula? Are you nuts? Even insane criminals with no minds to lose don’t go in there.”

“We won’t stay long, and I’ve made arrangements to have the crew monitored. We need to confine the women where they can’t become collateral damage. I trust that you can take care of them.”

“You—now, you randomly trust me? After giving me hell when I first came aboard?”

“You’ve proven yourself trustworthy.” Sage frowned. He’d meant the words as an olive branch. He could easily pick someone else to carry out the duty, but he wanted Orion to know that he no longer believed he was disreputable.

“Well, isn’t it nice of you to sit up on your captain’s chair and pass judgment over me. I was always trustworthy, Sage.”

“Trust is something you have to earn, especially when—”

“When what? When we never see each other? That’s not my fault, buddy. You’ve always been too busy to make time for your little brother, and I noticed you got particularly busy after I was kicked out of the military. You and Dad both.” Orion pushed past him, stalking down the corridor.

Sage wanted to snap back that Orion had never gone out of his way to make time for him either, but they were running low on time now, and having family arguments wouldn’t get anything done.

“You will see to the women?” he asked. “Or do I need to get—”

“I’ll do it,” Orion snapped and disappeared around a corner.

Sage sighed and headed in the opposite direction, to the bridge. He wondered if he and his little brother would ever see eye to eye.

“Dr. Tala, are you in here?” a familiar voice called.

Tala was still in the sickbay office, alternating between examining the limited data she had and wishing she hadn’t burbled out her life’s story to Sage. Of all the people she could have chosen as a confidant, why him? So far, she’d felt she could stand toe-to-toe to him in any arguments, but now he had… well, ammunition if he chose to use it that way. Granted, he’d never lashed out at her or shown any indication that he would attack her verbally. He was just obstinate and bossy, and he expected her to be one of his minions.

“In here,” Tala said, pushing herself to her feet.

She startled when she noticed the view screen on the wall, one she’d originally mistaken for a porthole. Later, she’d realized it was the equivalent of a flat-screen television, displaying the view of some camera on the ship’s exterior. Right now, it showed a big silver-green donut hanging in the black sky, the light of some distant sun illuminating it.

It had to be one of the wormhole gates. It was her first time seeing one, though she’d experienced the unpleasantness of traveling through them several times now.

She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but it seemed to simply float in space, distant stars visible through the donut hole. It looked like a hoop one might teach a dolphin to jump through rather than some portal to another solar system. It also looked like the ship would sail through that hole very soon. Tala’s stomach flip-flopped nervously as she imagined dealing with men made crazy from some weird space sickness.

“We’re supposed to round you up,” came Juanita’s voice from the main sickbay chamber.

Tala stepped out of the office and almost bumped into her. A low rumble came from behind her—one of the svenkars. Angela stood beside the animal, and Lieutenant Treyjon stood behind her. Orion leaned in the doorway while reading something on a display floating above the logostec on his wrist.

“Round me up?” Tala asked.

“Sage wants all the women put in the rec room where they’ll be safe,” Orion said.

“Apparently,” Juanita said, “we’re entering—”

“Attention, crew and guests,” came Sage’s voice over the intercom. “We’re about to enter the Cronos System, which contains part of the Cronos Nebula. The nebula has an unknown factor that affects the minds of men and, to a lesser extent, women. All non-navigation-essential crew are confined to quarters. Guests will stay in the rec room. Two of our pursuers are less than an hour behind us, so it’s possible we’ll be followed. Crew must be prepared to take battle stations if necessary, but we hope to avoid conflict with other vessels while in the system.”

“And conflict with each other,” Treyjon said. “I’ve heard of this place. Nothing good.”

“I’m excited to see it,” Juanita said, bouncing on her toes. “Treyjon says people go crazy in there. This totally reminds me of the Naked Time.”

“The what?” Angela asked.

“It’s one of the original Star Trek episodes where the whole crew gets infected with this disease and loses all their inhibitions. Sulu tries to take over the ship with a fencing foil! They were all passing the disease to each other through sweat, FYI. In case that helps you solve the problem. Oh, and it started in the water on a planet that was breaking up. Water turned into a complex chain of molecules that acted like alcohol and depressed the brain’s centers of judgment and self-control.” Juanita said that last sentence as if she was quoting the show from memory.

“I’ll be sure to take all of that into consideration,” Tala said. She was never quite sure if Juanita was joking or not when she cited fictional shows as examples for their real problems.

“There was a Next Generation show with a similar theme, but it was a total copycat episode, so I doubt we’d get anything out of it.”

Orion smiled fondly at Juanita. “I don’t know why Sage isn’t just tranqing everyone and letting the AI steer the ship, at least until we get to the next gate.”

“He’s worried the pursuers will follow us through,” Tala said, “and that we would be in big trouble if a ship caught up to us, and everyone was unconscious.”

Orion and Treyjon gave her curious looks.

“He confided that to you?” Orion asked.

“It wasn’t a confiding. It was a telling.”

The men’s expressions made Tala wonder if there was something strange about the captain having shared that information with her. No, of course not. She was his doctor, for all intents and purposes, right now. That was the reason he’d been sharing information with her.

“As the ship’s only doctor,” Tala said, “I need to be ready. I have to stay here in sickbay. I can’t hide in the rec room. What if someone’s hurt?”

“Sage said to round up all the women,” Orion said.

“He told me to prepare sedatives in case they’re needed.” Tala thought about mentioning the second part, that Sage thought he might be rendered unfit for command, but she doubted he would want that admission to be shared. “I can’t do that from the rec room.”

“You should at least have some protection,” Orion said. “In case men get squirrelly.”

He looked at Treyjon, who looked at Angela and the svenkar. The four-hundred-pound, leathery-skinned predator was currently standing at the foot of one of the beds and drooling on the deck, a huge brown tongue lolling out behind massive fangs.

“We can do it,” Angela said brightly, placing a hand on the creature’s back. Its back was as high as her shoulder.

The svenkar made a noise that might have been agreement, contentment, or a warning that it was contemplating dinner and that humans were tasty.

“You sure?” Orion asked, looking to Treyjon rather than Angela.

Angela frowned as she noticed that second-guessing look, and she lifted her chin. She wasn’t a big woman, being more on the wispy side in her homemade floral dress, but Tala remembered that she had been talented with the dogs at the shelter, having experience that had seemed beyond her years.

Treyjon nodded. “She’s good with the svenkars, and she’s bonded with the female.” He nodded toward the one in sickbay with them. “Lulu listens to her better than she does me.”

“Lulu?” Tala hadn’t realized the creature had a name. And such a non-ferocious name, at that.

“Lulu,” Angela said firmly.

The svenkar lifted her chin, and Angela scratched under it. The thing swished its tail, thwacking it hard against the raised bed without seeming to notice.

Tala resolved to run a quick search and make sure the animals weren’t mentioned in any of the nebula files. What if they also grew irritable and attacked others?

“Very well,” Orion said. “I’ve got to make sure the others are set up and protected. Sage ordered me to.” He curled a lip.

“He orders everybody to do things,” Treyjon said. “It’s his job.”

“Yeah, but I’m not in his command.”

“You’re his little brother, right? Aren’t you supposed to obey your elders, especially wiser family members? That is the way of things on my planet.”

“Yeah, but your planet is backward.”

Treyjon’s eyes narrowed. “Said like a man who wants his shoes munched on by a svenkar. Or perhaps his feet.”

“Juanita?” Orion asked. “Are you coming with us or staying here?”

“I get a choice?” Juanita’s bright brown eyes lit up.

“Well, if I lock you in the rec room with the others when you don’t want to be there, I imagine you’ll escape. To perform your ritual selfies.” He smirked at her as they shared some inside joke.

She grinned back at him. “Yes, inevitably.”

“Juanita and Lulu and I can all stay with Tala,” Angela said. “To make sure nobody bothers her.”

Tala had a feeling the two—three—of them would be more likely to bother her, especially if she was trying to gather data for research, than anyone else. She imagined drool short-circuiting the jet injectors she’d already loaded with sedatives. As a backup, she’d also figured out how to make a gaseous version that could be distributed ship-wide through the ventilation system, but since that would affect everyone while delivering an imprecise and possibly dangerous dosage, she would save it as a last resort.

“All right,” Orion said, and left the doorway to wrap his bare, muscular arms around Juanita. They seemed like such an unlikely match, her with her blue-tipped dark hair and geek tendencies and him with his bad-boy bounty-hunter style. “Be careful, and comm me if you need me. Even if I’m crazy from some disease, I’ll come protect you. From anyone else who is crazy.”

“I believe you,” Juanita said.

They engaged in a heated kiss, and Tala looked away. She made the mistake of looking toward Treyjon and Angela, who had stepped together into a tight embrace of their own, lips locking as they gripped each other tightly, as if the thought of a single molecule of air between them was painfully distasteful.

Looking away from them as well, Tala found herself meeting the svenkar’s black eyes. Maybe it was her imagination, or a case of transference, but the beast seemed to wear a long-suffering expression.

Usually, Tala would have no trouble ignoring public displays of affection, and they certainly wouldn’t make her think sexual thoughts of her own, but for some reason, she experienced a twinge of some vague emotion that she couldn’t identify. Envy? That they all had someone and she didn’t? No, she didn’t think that was it. Loneliness? That she was far from people she knew, far from the familiar? Maybe that was some of it.

Since the not-so-chaste kisses didn’t look like they would end soon, Tala headed back into the office. She set her hand on the back of the chair, intending to sit down and run a comparison of male and female brain chemistry, but paused, remembering how Sage had stood in almost the same spot as he collected the former doctor’s belongings and listened to her blather on about her life and her problems. She also remembered the brief haunted expression that had been in his eyes as he looked at the pictures of his friend’s family. His dead friend’s family.

Abruptly, she felt foolish for all that she had shared and also for worrying that he would use it against her somehow. How many of his crew, people he liked and might have considered friends, had he lost over the years? Instead of considering that, she’d whined about her career problems. She’d known life and death aplenty over the years, but she’d never had to operate on someone she knew well and cared about. She’d lost her dad when she’d been a teen, but nobody had been sad to see him go. She knew her mom had secretly been relieved. What Sage had to deal with, no doubt making decisions every day that could result in the deaths of people he cared about, surely superseded her own problems. Instead of complaining to him, she should have put a hand on his shoulder and tried to offer him comfort for his loss.

“One minute to gate,” Sage said over the intercom. “Buckle in.”

Tala slid into the seat, finding the belt and fastening it this time. She heard Angela and Juanita speaking in the main room and hoped they were doing the same, that they weren’t still kissing their new boyfriends.

That was her last thought before the world exploded in purple confetti.

She expected to survive the experience, and wake soon after, but the confetti dissolved into a memory of something that had happened a few days earlier.

Treyjon had been shot by those slavers, and he lay on an exam table as Tala worked on him with the assistance of the medical robots. She used the tools she was slowly becoming accustomed to in order to stop the flow of blood long enough for the nanobots to be programmed to rush in and repair tissue. She’d also, under the guidance of the ship’s AI, applied cell matrixes kept in a refrigerator, like slabs of meat leftover from lunch, laying them against his exposed muscle and bone so the nanobots could use the nutrients from the raw material to rebuild his damaged chest.

There had been much less for her to do than in a typical surgery, but it had been harrowing, nonetheless, her unfamiliarity stealing much of her typical confidence that she knew what was best and could save her patient.

When she’d stepped back from the operating table, wiping sweat from her brow, Sage had been there, standing at the foot of the table. Since she’d been focusing and hadn’t seen him come in, his presence startled her. He’d given her a nod and asked after Treyjon’s status, with her and Eridanus both replying.

“Good,” he said. “A moment, Doctor?” He tilted his head toward the sickbay office.

They walked past Angela, Juanita, and Orion, who’d also gathered around while she was focused on the operation.

“I shouldn’t leave him for long,” Tala said, her stomach doing a nervous flip. She wasn’t sure why, but she worried she’d done something ineptly and that Sage would chastise her for it.

“I know.” He waved at a panel, and the door closed behind him. “I only wish you to know it pleases me when you help my people.”

His brown eyes closed partway, his lashes dropping over them, and her stomach flipped a few more times, but for different reasons. It had been a while since someone had given her a look like that, and even longer since she’d wanted someone to give her such a look, but she didn’t think she was misreading it.

“Kiss me,” he ordered, as if he fully expected to be obeyed.

Tala stepped forward, almost obeying before she had time to think about it, but she halted and planted a hand on his chest. “You’re not in charge of me, Captain. If I pleased you with my healing skills, then you owe me one. You can damn well kiss me.”

His eyes widened, flaring with intensity. With satisfaction. And she realized that she hadn’t truly told him off.

“Where?” he asked, his gaze sliding from her eyes to run down her form.

Her entire body heated up, burning away the crystals of ice that had encased it for so long, that had made her forget what it was to be attracted to a man, to get hot when one touched her, or even looked at her.

Since he seemed amenable to the idea, even suggestive of it, she reached for the button of her jeans. But her cheeks flushed as she imagined what would happen if her invitation was accepted. She thought about chickening out and simply lifting her shirt, baring her stomach. But his sharp eyes followed her every move, hungry and bold. They made her feel bold, and she went for her fly.

Tala woke with a start, the dream scattering into fragments, but not so quickly that she didn’t recall some of it. Enough to heat her cheeks and make her glad she was alone in the office. That was not what had happened the day of Treyjon’s surgery.

“Tala?” Juanita poked her head into the office.

Tala spun around, her cheeks on fire. “Uh, yes?”

“You all right?”

“Yes, I just didn’t realize—it seems you can dream during those gate jumps.”

“Oh yeah, that happened to me on the one before this one.” Juanita’s gaze shifted toward the wall. “Wow, look at that. It’s beautiful.”

Tala looked toward the view screen. The gate was gone, as was the typical black star-filled space they’d been flying through. A hazy purplish-pink cloud filled the sky now, with the pricks of a few stars barely visible out there.

“That’s our nebula,” Tala murmured, hoping she had the medical knowhow to handle any problems that arose as they traveled through it.