This chapter's a bit short, my apologies. But that's just where it insisted on ending!
Chapter Twenty Four
After leaving the cafe, Beka decided to have a look around Miqo Drift. She couldn't stand the thought of sitting in her room, waiting for Harper to get back to her. She had not felt this nervous for a long time and could not pin down why this was. This wasn't a matter of life and death, and it wasn't even a momentous occasion like, say, the upcoming nuptials of her... what Charlemagne was; the Nietzscheans referred to her as his 'consort'; boyfriend was definitely the wrong word. Yet she felt restless and twitchy and clammy, like she was fifteen again and waiting to hear back from Bobby after their latest fight. It wasn't really the same feeling, but the thought that Harper might not want to work with her made her chest tighten. She had missed that little spaz, and Trance too.
The thought of Trance led her to the greenhouse after several wrong turns. Finally, coming around yet another identical corner, she saw a winking glass dome made of beveled glass tiles. A blurry green mass wavered inside. As she followed the edge of the dome in search of a door, Trance rounded the curve so suddenly that they bumped into one another.
"Beka!" Trance exclaimed. "Hi, wow, I'm so happy to see you!" She wrapped Beka in a hug and then bounced back on her toes. "Come on, I left a couple of things in my quarters."
Beka could only laugh as Trance's giddy energy surrounded her like a cloud of glitter. "Um, sure. Is this the greenhouse Harper was telling me about?"
Trance glanced back and nodded. "Yep, that's it. But I have to get some things – come on, I'll show you everything when I have my tools." She fairly skipped down the corridor, and Beka had to jog several steps to catch up to her.
"So it sounds like you and Harper are pretty happy here," Beka said when she caught up to Trance. "Things are going pretty good."
Trance shrugged. "Pretty good. I mean, they let me take care of my plants, and I like that better than other jobs I've had. No one yells at me here. But, you know, the drift is kinda dirty." She wrinkled her nose in faint distaste. "They don't even have a proper hydroponics bay. This was left over from..." she looked around and lowered her voice. "I think they were growing drugs in here once." She nodded solemnly.
As they continued their trek to Trance's quarters, Beka was struck by Trance's total lack of curiosity about why Beka was at Miqo Drift. She chatted as if they'd not been separated for a day, all the way to her quarters. Inside, flowers bloomed and sweet smells wafted in the darkness. Before Beka could see much of anything else, Trance had
darted inside and retrieved her tools. Shears and tiny rake in hand, Trance led the way back to the greenhouse.
At one point, the route passed near the hangar, and a couple of Nietzscheans wearing familiar insignia slipped out just before Trance and Beka passed the corridor that forked off in that direction. If she had not spent most of her recent weeks around Nietzscheans, she might not have recognized the anxious looks that passed between them: raised eyebrows, tightening of their jaws, that instinctive contracting of the muscles that controlled their bone spurs. It was more than what she saw, too; the air was suddenly charged with adrenaline when they saw Beka.
And they were Jaguars. Maybe she was just picking up on a dislike of her – she didn't expect of Charlemagne's Pride to welcome her as his crew had – but Beka had always trusted her gut, and her gut was telling her that these Jaguar Nietzscheans were panicked at the very sight of her. Beka glared at them as their strode past. Let them know she was on to them, she thought. Let their superiors ream them out for getting caught.
"Beka, do you know those guys? It kinda looked like their recognized you. Are they on your ship, the Shining Path?" Trance tilted her head as she watched them walk away. She sounded curious but not worried.
"I don't know," Beka replied. "Hey, would you mind if we checked on the Maru real quick before we visit the greenhouse? It'll just be a quick detour."
"Sure," Trance chirped. "I haven't seen the Maru in so long. Harper always said it was a bucket of bolts, but I think it's kinda cute."
"It's a he." Beka was always correcting people about that. She grinned. "Cute? I don't think anyone's ever said that before."
The ever-bright lights of the hangar glowed dully on the Maru's decidedly un-shiny hull. Nothing looked amiss to Beka's eyes, but then, she hardly would expect Nietzschean saboteurs to break windows and smash gaping holes in the hull. When she tapped a code into the display near the Maru's main hatch, she saw the no one had crossed the threshold since she had disembarked a couple of hours ago.
"Trance," she said thoughtfully, "you were saying that you liked the greenhouse better than your old jobs. What exactly did you do?"
"Oh, um, I... you know, I found things. For people who wanted them. I like fixing plants and people better, but I'm pretty good at finding things."
A faint smile crossed Beka's lips. "That's what I thought. I think there might be a bomb somewhere on my ship. I don't want you to touch it, but do you think you could find it and show it to me? I'll even pay your going rate for, um, finding things."
Trance waved her hand dismissively. "Oh no, we're friends, Beka. If you really want, you can take Harper and me out to eat tonight. Most nights he eats these dried noodle things, ew."
"It's a deal."
With that, Trance set down her tools, went very still, and let her eyes roam across the surface of the Maru. After a few quiet minutes, she took slow steps toward the Maru until she has close enough that she lightly skimmed the hull with her fingers. Beka could swear that she heard the girl singing under her breath. Trance rose on her toes and dropped to her knees as she made a circuit around the Maru, then another.
"I think..." she whispered, before peering behind the engine compartment. "I found it! Right back here, on the other side of these square thingies." Beka hurried over to where she was pointing. She would have missed it if not for Trance's guidance; even so, she could barely make out a metallic grey sliver, small as a playing card, that should not have been stuck to the anti-matter tanks. She hated to imagine what it was supposed to do to her ship and what that would have done to her.
"Great," she breathed. "Okay. Trance, what do you think of drift security? If I asked for their help in getting this thing off my ship, do you think they'd actually be useful? Do I have to bribe them?"
"Hmm. If you're a friend of Harper's, they'll probably help you out. I think the administration here is pretty happy to have him."
Beka chuckled. "Thanks again, Trance. Let's go make a report and then we'll finally see this greenhouse I've heard so much about." She paused and gave Trance a long, curious look. "It's funny... if you hadn't forgotten your tools, we would have completely missed those Nietzscheans, I would never have seen that explosive. Are you always this lucky?"
Trance gave her a smile and a lopsided shrug before skipping out of the hangar, tools once again in hand, toward drift security. Good at finding things, indeed.
**
Harper gaped at them over their drinks. "A bomb?!"
Beka nodded. "Trance found it, and security here disarmed it. They said it was a pretty nasty one. It's triggered by the engines preparing for liftoff and would have exploded the moment I tried to enter slipstream."
"And killed us along with you," Trance added.
Harper made a face. "Only if we agreed, and now I'm not so sure about that." At Trance's outraged look of surprise, he held up his hands defensively. "What, there are people trying to kill her! No offense, boss, but I dunno if it's worth it."
As if on cue, the server came by with a steaming appetizer plate loaded down with half a dozen fried, steamed, grilled, and otherwise delicious-smelling kinds of food. Harper gazed at it longingly as it made its way to their table. As he reached out his hand to take something, Trance slapped his hand.
"Harper! Beka is asking for our help!"
He shook his hand and gave her a wounded look. "I know, Trance, but listen, we got a good thing here. I dunno if they're just gonna keep my job for me if I ship out for two weeks."
Beka interrupted before they could snipe at each other anymore. "Hey, look, I understand. Harper, Trance was telling me that you haven't taken a vacation since you got here. It'll be less than two weeks, and I can promise you transportation back here as soon as you want it. But that's only if you want to come. You're the best guy for the job, I know it, but it is dangerous."
Harper stared into his beer as Trance toyed with the umbrella that had come with her drink. "I mean... I thought you were in good with those people, Beka. What's going on?"
She took a sip of her fruit-infused seltzer. She had wondered the same thing, so she had done a little research, back in her quarters. Though she was something like semi-retired from Darjella's organization at this point, she still had access to the intel – and because of Darjella's many clashes with Pride Jaguar, there was a lot of interesting information. Beka had contributed a bit of it, what she felt comfortable divulging.
"It's the Alpha, Heinrich Sheroky. He hates Charlemagne, hates my sort-of employer, opposes almost anything the Matriarch supports, and lately he's been saying some pretty nasty things about Tyr's little movement. I get the feeling that he'd like to align his Pride with the Drago-Kazov, but his people are a little nervous about coming out against Charlemagne and the Matriarch, not to mention the Nietzschean messiah."
"The Drago-Kazov??" Harper dropped the fried something in his fingers into one of the tiny bowls of sauce. "Crap. I hate those guys." As he fished his food out of the bowl, a thoughtful expression crossed his face. "Then again... Beka, are you saying that, if I do this for you, I will be pissing off some Uber who likes the Dragans and who tried to kill you?"
Beka grinned and nodded. "That's what I'm saying. Look, I'm not going to tell you that Charlemagne is the best thing for humanity since the Systems Commonwealth, but if he and the Matriarch are in power, the Dragans will have one less ginormous fleet at their disposal."
Trance clapped her hands. "This'll be so much fun, all of us back together again!"
**
She's red again, clad once more in lace instead of purple velvet, and she's smiling wryly. "You can't blame me, you know. I knew that the three of us had to be together, even back then, and I thought that maybe Tyr would be close enough for... for the right things to happen. This was one of the first paths I ever tried, so maybe I had an excuse." She shrugs that same lopsided shrug.
"I was just so happy to see her again. Beka, she... you can't help but love her. In different ways, we all loved her, and no matter what else changed every time I tried a new path, a new branch, that stayed the same." Tears are glistening in her eyes, but she's smiling. "She's just the sort of heart you need in a universe like that: tough, maybe a little scarred, but loyal and always willing to love again." She wipes her eyes and laughs.
"I'm sorry, I won't interrupt again. Anyway, there's not much left. This wasn't a path that could have worked out to bring back civilization, when I think back on it. But Beka inspired so much love in such funny places. I hoped it would be enough.