Chapter 27

Naomi had loaned Nik a set of resistance bands to work out with while they waited for the cancer meds to take effect on the organisms eating the electronics on the ship. She didn't plan to be on the ship long enough to suffer the effects of zero gravity on her muscle mass, but exercising would give her something to do besides sitting around idly. Maybe it would also take her mind off Amos.

Using her handheld as a guide she went through a series of exercises and started to work up a good sweat. Her shoulder didn't bother her anymore, but it was definitely weaker than the other and had a more limited range of motion than it did before she dislocated it, so maybe this wasn't a waste of time after all. She had never been particularly strong, relying more on stealth and speed to survive on the station, and tired quicker than she anticipated. Still she pushed herself a bit longer; she would never get better at something if she gave up when it got difficult.

Speaking of difficult, the exercise did nothing to stop her thoughts about the big welwata. First, what the hell had possessed her to kiss him? When did he stop being someone dangerous to someone she wanted to kiss, even if it was chaste? Nik may have been twenty-four years old, but she could count the people she had kissed, including on the cheek, on one hand minus a few fingers. It just wasn't something a station rat did. She hadn't been lying when she admitted to Naomi that she had never been in love. Sure, she had a crush on an older kid when she was twelve or thirteen, but nothing ever came of it.

Point of fact: she couldn't say she had ever looked at someone and thought "I want to be with him or her" in THAT way.

So why now was she thinking about how he smelled up close, hot metal and sweat from working on the Roci. She had smelled that combination on countless others, from further away and had never thought it smelled good. But on him, it did. It suited him. Why, when she closed her eyes, could she still picture his with clarity; steel blue irises surrounded by a darker gray ring, brown eyelashes just a shade darker than his brows, and creases in the corners regardless of his expression.

He made her feel things she hadn't felt before and was at loss how to deal with. She poked at the feelings like they were a stranger passed out in a dark corridor, too skittish to get close enough to be grabbed.

Her hand slipped off the band, letting it snap back into her leg.

"Oww!"

Rubbing the welt, she let herself float freely, despite the warning from Amos. If not for her SSAS, she would love living on a ship like the Roci, the crew her family, working together towards common goals.

"Stop being stupid," she muttered. The Roci was not her future; Ganymede was. Her family was already there, waiting on her.

After cleaning up, she left her room to check on the microbes, hoping to see signs that the experiment worked.

Naomi and Holden were standing in front of the panel already. By the look on their faces, the answer was not what they had hoped for. Peering inside at the wiring, she whistled through her teeth. There indeed was a drastic change, but not for the better. Almost all the visible wires were bare now and it had only been an hour since they had treated the space.

"What now?" she asked the others.

"We need to get a sample of them to test toxins on," Naomi said flatly.

"We'll have to move to the next panel, then. Looks like they're almost done with this one," she turned to go to the next one in line.

"Hey, folks, we've got incoming," Alex's voice was staticky and broken over the comm system.

"Great, we're losing comms," Holden shook his head in exasperation. "Alex, what's going on?"

"MCRN frigate closing in on us," he responded. "They're hailing us, Hoss."

"I'll be right there."

He turned to Naomi and Nik, "figure this out."

"We will, Jim. We just need time."

"We may not have it."

He gave Naomi a quick kiss and headed for the bridge. Naomi looked at Nik.

"Any other ideas?"

"A few," Nik answered. "Let's get us some bugs first."

"Tell me you have good news," Holden asked them two hours later when they pulled themselves up to the bridge to join him and Alex.

"We figured out how to kill them," Naomi told him.

"That's great! How?"

"Massive doses of radiation," Naomi said glumly as she drifted over to his chair.

A heavy silence descended.

"What about the frigate?" Naomi was the first to speak.

"Well, they're offering to help us out by nuking us if we don't hand over Nik in the next hour," Alex answered with heavy sarcasm.

"That would take care of the problem," Nik shot him a wry smile.

"Not helping, either of you," Holden snapped at them, and they lapsed back into silence.

"Ok," he pinched the bridge of his nose, "one problem at a time. If the MCRN wasn't breathing down our necks, how would we irradiate the entire ship without everyone on the ship having to take anti-cancer meds for the rest of their lives like me?"

"Put everyone on the shuttle and evacuate. Once we are at a safe distance, remote fire a nuke and detonate it just far enough away not to do any damage, the remotely pilot the Roci through the radiation cloud before it disperses too much. After that, purge the ship then return and fix whatever we fried."

"There's no way we could get away with launching a nuke with that frigate nearby. They would assume we were targeting them," Alex told them.

"And the Roci would be out of commission until we could get any damage caused by the radiation fixed," Naomi agreed.

"Then that brings us to problem number two: the marines that want to blow us apart," Holden sighed.

Nik chewed on her lip and waited for a viable option from one of the crew members. The three threw ideas out and discarded them in rapid succession. Finally, Holden threw up his hands in defeat.

"So, we can either wait for life-support to fail or wait for the MCRN to nuke us? Those are not acceptable."

"I'll go," Nik said softly.

"What?"

"No!"

"No, think about it," she said in a stronger voice. "If I turn myself over to them, they will leave you alone and you can follow through with the plans to destroy the microbes and save the Roci and yourselves."

"We are not giving you up to them," Naomi leaned towards her and said slowly. "We will find some other way. We always do."

"And if we don't? What happens if we just sit here until complete system failure?" She took a bracing breath and forged ahead, "look, they are looking for something that my parents allegedly stole nearly twenty years ago. I was only four. All I need to do is convince them that I don't have what they're looking for. Hell, I don't even know what they're looking for!"

"That has to be the dumbest thing I've heard anyone say in a long time," Amos said from behind her. Sometime during the conversation, he had joined them without her being aware. "What's going to keep them from just throwing you out an airlock when you don't cough up what they want?"

She planted her hands on her hips, an act that lost its impact when she shifted her weight and one of her mag-boots unlocked and she had to catch herself on a nearby chair to stay upright.

"You don't know they'll do that," she answered when she was done with her wobbly dance.

He snorted, "are you willing to take that chance?"

"Yes," she said quietly. "It's our only choice right now."

"Cap, Naomi," he turned his attention to them, "you can't seriously be considering this?"

"She has a point, Amos," Holden answered.

"Jim!" Naomi jerked around to look at him in astonishment.

He held up a hand to stop her next comment, "I think I know a way we can guarantee they don't harm her."

"Really? Again?"

He shrugged, "It worked the last two times. Why not this time?"

"Because eventually it isn't going to work, that's why. Are you willing to risk Nik's life?"

"He isn't. I am," Nik jumped back into the conversation.

Holden looked around the bridge, "someone give me an option that doesn't end with all of us dead."

When no one answered, he continued, "Alex, contact them and let them know we are sending her over. I'll take her in the shuttle. Naomi, Amos, you two prep the Roci for evacuation. Nik, meet me at the shuttle airlock in ten minutes."

Amos' face was thunderous as he slapped the rail before turning and dropping out of sight without another word of protest.

Outside the shuttle airlock, Nik waited for Holden with nervous anticipation. Now that the decision was made and the arguing over, anxiety over what lay in store for her was eating away at her resolve. Her stomach was rolling, making her glad she hadn't eaten recently. Her hands were shoved into her coverall pockets to stop their shaking and keep her from picking at the line of grime that seemed permanently embedded in the crack on the marble around her neck.

She leaned back against the wall, closed her eyes and took three deep, calming breaths; telling herself everything was going to be just fine.

"Why do you keep doing these things?"

She didn't bother to open her eyes. "If you've come here just to argue with me some more, you might as well just leave. I'm already nervous enough without your help."

He sighed and leaned against the wall by her side. "They're going to try to intimidate you first. The person that interrogates you is going to be unpleasant when you don't tell them what they want to hear right away."

"I didn't think it would be easy or fun. I'm not an idiot."

"I didn't say you were."

"Ya, you kinda did."

She got a short laugh in response. After that, neither of them said anything. They let a quiet, calming silence descend. Nik found that her stomach wasn't rolling so much anymore, and she no longer had to hold onto her thighs inside her pockets to keep her hands from shaking. When Holden came around the corner, that's how he found them.

"Ready?"

"Ya, let's get this over with."

The airlock door hissed as it opened, and Holden ducked in ahead of her. Before she could follow Amos grabbed her by the arm to stop her.

"Be careful."

"I will. I promise."

"If shit goes sideways, just do your thing and find a spot to hide."

"I will," she repeated looking up at him.

He looked like he was going to say something else, then stopped himself and let her go. She smiled faintly and stepped into the airlock, leaving him behind.