There's a special lil' ref. in here! Guess it and get extra gold stars !
Even the score
When comes the Day Four
(okay so these aren't making sense anymore)
Beka awoke in a curled ball on the loveseat near the bedroom window. It had always seemed an awfully small room to contain a loveseat, aside from the customary bed, and the window looked out onto a solid grey wall. Harper was sprawled on the bed, a corner of a soggy pillow in his mouth and again, without his pants. She wondered if little green men snuck in his rooms at night and slipped them clean off Harper. Her memory of the night before had remained quite clear, and the last she'd seen Harper, he was in no condition to work the tiny buttons or snaps or whatever held up his pants. A delicious aroma of cooking food cut through her musing and told her where Trance might be found.
"If she keeps ordering up sustenance, we'll go broke before we even begin prepping, and I'll have to do something disgusting, like voluntarily speak to that thoroughly creepy Chichin again." She stood, sleepily straightened the worst wrinkles in her clothing, and padded out into the suite's adjoining room. The day they'd arrived at Tanchico, Beka had discovered what must have been a mix-up; she was paying the rate for a single room while staying in a suite. Trance and Harper shared a room with two double beds, and she had shelled out only the minimal fee for an extra body. Renting two rooms was cheaper than renting three, obviously, and she wouldn't squeeze all three together unless they really did owe the Drago-Kazov empire three thousand guilders. Harper and Trance both delighted in the arrangement, and in any case, they spent much of their time in Beka's sitting...or living... or parlor room. Whatever the damn thing is called!
"Trance, why is Harper unclothed and more importantly, in that state of undress in my bed"
The elfin girl held a gargantuan plate scrambled eggs and fragrant bacon, and Beka surreptitiously wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Oh, well, this morning he came back pretty, um..."
"Wasted?"
"...yeah. He was playing that really annoying game of his, ding dong ditch...except he was forgetting the ditch part." In her mind's eye, Beka could very well see Harper standing in front of complete strangers, grinning moronically at them, around three o'clock in the morning as they asked him what the hell he wanted.
"Luckily," she continued, "most of the rooms were empty." Trance opened a cupboard Beka hadn't even noticed earlier, and the starship captain goggled when she realized the purple girl had prepared the breakfast entirely by herself. There was a kitchen in this place, too?? Eggs and bacon filled a smaller, white plate, and Trance handed it to Beka along with a fork. "Here you go!"
Beka took a cautious bite, and then her face relaxed. "Trance, I didn't know you could cook." A sample of the bacon convinced her of her genius in hiring the mysterious, sparkly being to her motley crew.
"I can cook too," he rumbled, brushing a misplaced strand of gold behind Beka's ear. "You'd be surprised at the skills one acquires in my line of work." The song had changed several times, but their slow, winding dance persisted through the shifts in tempo and mood. Beka couldn't have guessed the time had her life depended on it, and she guiltily remembered that she had no idea where Harper had disappeared to. She tried to look over the Nietzschean's shoulder, but he was simply too tall. They reached a corner of the dim room, and as Tyr gently but irresistibly pulled her in a new direction, she swept her eyes around the bar. Crowded still, any of the taller patrons might shield a slumped Harper from her vision...or he might have left an hour ago.
Tyr, who could spot the cut edges of the label on a bottle of whiskey in this half-light from across the room, (exposing the bartender's as-of yet successful attempt to peddle the cheap swill at an exorbitant rate), could see she was concerned and inquired as to the source of her disquietude.
Divine save her, he was sexy, and he knew big words. "My engineer. The one who, uh, bolted when he first spotted you talking to me and insulted you earlier tonight." Her tone could have dried the water planet of Gigarotte in a matter of seconds. "What is this highly educational vocation of yours, anyway?"
He ignored her query. "I believe he left a quarter of an hour ago, grinning and cackling to himself about...ding dong ditch?" His expression at the point was priceless.
Beka moaned. "If he gets me kicked out of that room, I swear I will slip to Earth tonight and drop him off in the middle of that human ghetto he loves to reminisce about when he's smashed out of his gourd."
Tyr laughed, a shockingly warm sound from that powerful, threatening exterior. "Out of his gourd, Captain Valentine? And precisely, what gourd would that be?"
Inexplicably finding uproarious, Beka couldn't think of anything to say and for once, didn't feel the lack of words. She laughed right along with this Nietzschean, who likely called humans 'kludges'; to their faces when angry, probably grew up with slave laborers, fully supported the system, and had taken a few himself while quelling one of the too-common uprisings. No, she wonderingly found herself insisting, she couldn't believe that of him. Well, about calling annoying humans kludges, she could. Hell, she called 'em (them...us...whomever) worse on less provocation.
This time he didn't experience a change of heart at the last minute, and his lips were on hers before she could gather her wits and ready herself. To Beka's utter lack of surprise, he kissed magnificently, and unlike many of her acquaintances from awkward years past, he didn't try to engage her in a vigorous round of tonsil hockey. Just as the kiss began heating to a fever pitch, he captured her bottom lip with his teeth and slowly, sensuously pulled back until he could look down on her again with his by-now trademark half-smile. She was sure he was observing the most astonished, disconcerted, completely floored, and very simply stunned woman this side of Tarn-Vedra.
"Beka?" His voice was strangely high-pitched. "Are you okay?"
Beka's head jerked up as it dawned on her that Trance, not Tyr, had called her name. "Uh, yeah Trance, I'm… good here. And you? You… good there?" The rest of that flashback had transpired, just a few hours ago, and when she ran the tip of her tongue across her lips, she detected a savor that was neither eggs, nor bacon, nor the toothpaste she'd automatically slathered on whenever she had finally stumbled in this morning.
Trance lowered her eyes to the larger plate of breakfast in her hand. "Not really. Something's not right here, Beka," she replied in a tremulous voice Beka had never heard from her crewmate. For an instant, brown eyes met blue, but they dropped before Beka could read anything in them. "I don't know what." Her voice was the tiniest bit defensive now, but in the next sentence, resignation overwhelmed everything. "But something is..." she inhaled deeply, then exhaled deliberately, as if steadying herself, "it's all wrong."
"If this is wrong," a voice from an unseen throat declared, "then lock me up for life, cos baby, I don't wanna be right!" Harper, of course. He winced immediately upon entering the sunny kitchen.
Trance looked back down at the plate she held, and when she raised her gaze again, that hopeless shadow had passed. Beka could hardly believe she'd heard those foreboding words when she saw Trance smile brightly and ration some of the eggs and bacon on another plate for Harper.
He squinted at the cream-colored dish. "Am I just being paranoid, or is this from the same purple pixie who managed to take out every single light on the Maru simultaneously while trying to make coffee?"
Beka swatted him. "Hey, be nice or no breakfast." She moved to snatch the plate from his hnd, but he drew it swiftly back to his chest.
"Come on, you wouldn't deprive you favorite engineer of your magnificent creation, would you, Trance?" He widened his eyes, and his voice took on something of a pleading tone.
Trance laughed. "It's okay, Beka. I can hardly change a lightbulb, and Harper couldn't fix toast to save his life." The named sputtered but chose not to refute Trance's very accurate statement.
Beka handed her own breakfast back to Trance half-eaten, and Trance inquired if something was wrong with it, those big, brown eyes staring up at her from that childlike face. Beka almost fell over herself assuring her that everything was perfect. "We're meeting with our slightly creepy and very obscene employer today, and I'm afraid if I eat much, I'll just lose it all over him."
"You know, boss, I'm sure if you agreed to a little, uh, time alone with our paying- in- cash Chichin, we'd all find our salaries doubled. Considering the incredible hotness of our kind, generous, always-lookin'-out-for-her-crew captain, he might even triple it." As he spoke, bits of yellow spilling from his mouth, Harper waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
Beka turned from Trance and walked slowly toward her engineer, a murderous glare behind her blue eyes. "Trance," she said quietly, her gaze locked on Harper, "unless you want to stick around or the slow and highly painful execution of one Seamus Zelazny Harper, I would suggest you run downstairs and let the manager here know he's about to have a mess on his hands."
Harper yelped and backed away, brandishing a fork defensively. "All right, all right, no one-on-one with El Jefe." Trance looked from Harper to Beka and back uncertainly. Before Beka could reply that he was forgiven (or take his utensil and rearrange him into a Cubist painting), he went on the offensive. "And speaking of guys wanting to, um, get to you know you better, Beka, what's with that huge-even-for-an-Uber Uber mackin' on you last night?"
Beka opened her mouth and closed it again. Damn. "Oh, you know. Probably some merc trying to get close to me only to off me in a few weeks."
Trance's voice rose, quick and higher than usual. "This Nietzschean, Beka, what was his name?"
To her dismay, Harper deigned to answer for Beka. "Nothin' out of the ordinary—tall, dark, and bladed. He must've been, like, seven feet tall with these dreads hangin' halfway down his back and wearing some seriously itchy-lookin' chainmail."
"It was nothing," Beka said hastily. "We played poker and danced a little." She hoped he wouldn't recall seeing their work-out session a couple of days earlier. Not that she had anything to hide, but Harper could be… touchy about some things. "Anyway, we're supposed to meet Mr. So Not Getting Into My Pants pretty soon." Looking her crewmates up and down, she sighed. "Harper, find some pants."
As Harper scrounged for an article of clothing with which he could cover his bottom half, a heavy knock interrupted Beka asking a suddenly mysterious Trance what she had meant, that something was wrong.
Beka grimaced mid-sentence. "I'm going to find out what you were talking about, Trance, but right now, I must somehow find it in me to harness the urge that begs me to make the universe a better place and rid it of that Chichin's existence." Trance gave her a tiny smile.
Just before Beka opened the door, she paused and regarded Trance. "And since when does he know my room number??"
Harper skidded in as Beka reluctantly opened the door, and, for several minutes, chaos ruled the scene.
"Mr. Eron, how did--"
"Captain Valentine, my delicious Venus of--"
"Mr. Eron!"
"Hey, Beka, what's he--"
"Tyr?!"
"Rebecca, Mr. Harper--"
"Captain Valentine, are you already--"
"From last night, boss, it's the--"
"Harper!"
"I see you're not only beautiful, but--"
"Mr. Eron!!"
"Miyk, please, Re--"
"Captain Valentine, Mr. Eron!"
When she heard Beka gasp Tyr's name in astonishment, Trance's eyes flew open, and she repeated the name to herself in a whisper.
Only the Nietzschean heard the elfin girl breathe his name, and when he turned to examine her, he noticed a peculiar and very puzzled expression on her violet-complected countenance. He lowered his voice to escape the ears of those arguing around him. "How do you know my name, girl?"
Her brown eyes reflected the questions he felt. "I… I must have heard it somewhere. M-maybe from Beka."
Her fluster might simply be a result of a large, unknown, and possibly angry Nietzschean addressing her… but he doubted that. Did the girl (what in Drago's name was she?) know something she shouldn't? He made a mental note to keep and eye on her, then returned his attention to the cacophony of voices rising and falling sharply.
Beka rubbed her head and waited for the babble to die down. It did, eventually, and when silence reigned once more, she fixed her eyes on the Chichin. "Mr. Eron. Without any poetry, accolades, or calling me anything else than 'Captain Valentine', could you please explain to me… explain to us why you wanted to meet with us this early and why he's tagging along with you?" She indicated Tyr with a toss of her head and grinned inwardly at the thought that he probably wasn't used to anyone referring to him as the guy just tagging along.
"My Titanian temptress…"
She coughed.
"…Captain Valentine," he continued smoothly, "I simply wished to let you and your crew know that you may begin your preparations any day you desire. This, as you appear to already know," Doubt filled his obsequious voice for a moment, then disappeared. "is Tyr Anasazi, and he has graciously agreed to aid you on your mission."
Beka's eyebrows climbed her forehead. "Oh he has, has he??" Behind her, Harper moaned softly. Mess with Beka's crew or ship, and you found yourself up the Milky Way without a towel. "And what gave you or him the idea that I wouldn't kick either of you out an airlock the moment one tried to interfere with my crew's business?!"
For his part, Tyr just nodded to himself and glanced over at Miyk. He'd warned Tyr that the woman was protective of her ship, but if they couldn't work something out, Tyr wasn't about to risk his health for this job. People like her protected their ships and crews like Nietzschean women protected their children.
"Dearest Captain Valentine, I promised you that only the Mayrah's crew--"
"That's the Maru's crew."
"Yes, that solely her crew would be involved. All I'm asking is that just for the duration of this mission, you… take on this one extra crewmate. He will prove invaluable when the time comes to extract the Duchess."