One down.
It would take a couple of hours for the computer to complete the battery of tests she’d selected, over sixty, which would give her a thorough starting point.
Something deep inside her intuition told her the answer didn’t lie there, but she’d do it anyway.
Kayehalau didn’t appear during lunch, but he’d prepared them a delicious spinach and cheese quiche and left it cooling on the counter. Aaron had already taken a piece and headed back to the bridge. Emi eyed it with suspicion, waiting so long that Ford finally fixed her a plate and forced her to take it.
“You know, you need to take it easy, babe,” he said. “I can feel your tension, and I’m not even empathic.”
She glared at him as she sat at the table. With an acerbic retort on the tip of her tongue, she stopped, took a deep breath, and forced herself to relax. “I’m not feeling very good.”
Caph looked concerned. “You all right?”
“I don’t know.” She picked up her fork and stabbed at the end of the piece of quiche. “I did a blood draw on myself a little while ago. The computer’s crunching through it now.”
“What’s going on?” Ford asked.
“I. Don’t. Know.” She caught herself and tried again. “Maybe it’s more than just Kayehalau. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. I don’t know.”
Ford took her hand in his. “Hey, why don’t you come down to engineering with me after we finish eating? Kayehalau won’t be anywhere around, and I’ll go over the jump engines with you.”
She mustered a smile. “Again?”
He grinned. “Again. I’ll explain them to you a million times if you want me to.”
She took a deep breath and picked up her fork again. The quiche did taste delicious. “All right. Deal.”
Chapter Ten
She spent over an hour with Ford down in engineering, using a voice recorder to capture what he said. No matter how many times she tried, she couldn’t wrap her mind around the physics and mechanics that were the jump engine. That didn’t mean she didn’t want to try to understand it. The Tamora Bight was her home for the next several years, and she wanted to know as much about it as she could. She wanted to be an asset to her men for more than just her medical skills and training. She wanted to feel useful.
She wanted something complicated to focus on that might take her mind off Kayehalau’s presence on board.
“You good?” Ford asked, concern in his voice and washing from him to her as they left engineering and emerged in the cavernous cargo hold.
She nodded, despite feeling the whiff of Kayehalau’s presence somewhere nearby. He was on the move, she sensed that, but where he was she couldn’t tell. Hopefully he was heading to the bridge.
Ford pulled her close and kissed her, cradling her cheeks in his palms. “It’s going to be okay, sweetheart,” he whispered. “We’re halfway through the mission. I know this has been rough on you, but we’re so proud of you.”
She nodded, blinking away the prickle of tears threatening. “Thanks.”
“Love you.”
She forced a smile she knew didn’t fool him in the least. “Love you, too.”
“I have to get back up to the bridge. You want to walk with me?”
She started to say yes, then hesitated. “I should hit the hydro lab.” It would keep her away from the bridge, where she knew Kayehalau would be to observe the jump.
“Okay.” With one last, quick peck on the lips, he turned and walked away.
Emi slipped the voice recorder in her pocket and realized with a wistful pang that she’d left Bucky sitting on her desk.
She’d go over Ford’s jump engine explanation again later. She loved listening to him explain things, between the warm, soothing tone of his voice and how gently he spoke. Not that Aaron and Caph weren’t good at it, too, but as Aaron often said, Ford just had that special touch.
She looked up at the cargo hold ceiling as Caph’s voice sounded over the com link. “Five minutes until jump.”
Hydro lab it is. Especially since she felt Kayehalau’s presence closer than before. She began picking her way across the cargo hold, toward another corridor that would lead her a back way to the hydro lab without her running into Kayehalau.
Unfortunately, when she turned around one stack, she felt the darkness bloom, spreading and strengthening, and she nearly screamed when she walked into Kayehalau. “Jesus Christ! You scared the crap out of me!” With her heart racing, she drew away from him. When she tried to walk around him, he reached out and grabbed her left wrist.
It took Emi a second to realize he had his hand on her. That was when an even more sickening feeling washed through her, worse than the normally dark cloud she felt at his presence. She slipped her right hand into her pocket and activated the voice recorder again. She would finally have solid proof she could show to the men.
Then they’d kick this creepy guy’s ass to the curb at the closest stop.
“Let me go, Kayehalau,” she ordered. “Get your hands off me.”
“No, Doctor,” he said, his voice still sounding calm and devoid of any hint of anything other than bland serenity. “I am regretful that I cannot do that.” His long fingers tightened around her wrist. “Not until I finish what I have started.”
“What are you talking about?” She forced herself to look up into his face. His complacency scared her more than anything. He’d planned something. He wasn’t anxious or worried.
He knew her men were busy on the bridge with the jump sequence, giving him at least twenty uninterrupted minutes.
Despite her struggles, he pulled her along with him, down the cargo hold’s main corridor toward aft, to a far corner near his cabin pod. “I have prepared, Doctor. Do not worry. This will not hurt. I assure you, you will not remember anything. It will not take long.”
She futilely fought against him. Despite his willowy appearance, he was strong as fuck and solid. “Let me go! What are you doing?”
“I must reproduce. It is my time. I only have seven days left in my cycle.”
Horror replaced her fear in an instant as his plan finally became clear to her. “You need an incubator!”
“Yes, Doctor. If I do not, I will die.” As they rounded another cargo stack, she saw he’d set up a makeshift medical area just outside his pod quarters.
Emi screamed, fought, kicked. His iron grip proved unbreakable, his tough flesh seemingly impervious to her blows.
“I apologize for giving you the drugs, Doctor. It was necessary. I have been surreptitiously administering you compounds I synthesized. Some, which bring on mildly psychotic illusions, so your men would think you are experiencing space sickness. And others that impair your memory and will facilitate what must happen, as well as make temporary changes to your reproductive anatomy to suit my purposes so I can make a DNA transfer. Once I harvest the eggs, I will reverse the effects of the memory and DNA compounds so you will not experience any permanent damage. The hallucinogenic drugs will wear off on their own. You will believe everything was delusions, simply brought on by space sickness and perhaps an ill effect of the jump engine.”
“Drugs?” It made perfect sense now. Triumphant, she said, “Well, you’re shit out of luck, asshole. I’m running a full blood work panel on myself as we speak. The computer will find whatever it is you used, and I’ll have my goddamned proof, so you might as well let me go now, asshole!”
He cocked his head. “Yes. I will make sure I destroy that evidence while I have you incapacitated during the jump initialization.”