“…theQueen Bee, requesting information.”
“Mooncamp 1, here,” a male voice answered within seconds. “How can we help you,Queen Bee?”
“This is Captain Tess Bailey coming in to meet theEndeavor. Is she around here somewhere?”
A faint note of tension underscored Tess’s words. With each second that ticked by, my gut tightened.
“TheEndeavor’s in hangar 9, Captain Bailey. She has quite the load for us. We’re grateful.”
Relief and joy blazed across Tess’s expression, so brilliant it put the stars to shame. “Happy to help our DT friends. We’ll be there in a moment. Our transportation is a small personal star cruiser. Model…”—she checked the badge above the passenger-side window panel—“R16. There are three of us on it.”
“Copy that. I’ve already got you on our scanner. You know your way in. Welcome back, Captain Bailey.” The line went silent.
“See? They’re fine.” I reached over and squeezed Tess’s leg. “Nothing to worry about.”
Smiling, she turned off the com unit. “You got them out, thanks to those incendio charges and this ship’s firepower.”
“Merrick’s kitchen-door stunt helped.” The moon got bigger as Demeter Terre slid out of view behind us. “And I have things to make up for. Things I’m sorry about.”
Tess sat back stiffly, staring out the window. “Is that why you’re here, Shade? Guilt?”
“There’s guilt,” I admitted, worried about the sudden change in her posture. “Shouldn’t there be?”
“I guess so. But it shouldn’t dictate”—she looked around, as if searching for the right words out in space somewhere—“life decisions.”
“And what should?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged.
I was pretty sure shedidknow.
“What you care about?” she finally suggested.
I stared at her. So this was what a bullet to the heart felt like. It fucking hurt. “If I didn’t care, starshine, I wouldn’t be here. And guilt wouldn’t be an issue.”
She nodded without looking at me.
“Iamsorry, Tess. I’m sorry for deceiving you. For putting you in danger. For leading you to believe I wasn’t a threat to you and your crew.”
“You weren’t, though.” She frowned suddenly.
“Oh, I could’ve been.” And just the idea of it made me sick. “But I’ll do whatever it takes to make it up to you. And to them. I promise you that.”
I wanted to say more, something more powerful, but I wasn’t about to spill my guts with Mwende in the back, listening. If we’d been alone, I’d have let the cruiser float in low orbit while I showed Tess exactly how much I cared about her and we experimented with how tangled up two people could get in small spaces. As it was, the lieutenant impatiently drummed her fingers against the back of my seat, annoying the shit out of me.
Putting a lid on my frustration, I reached for the navigation controls. “How about some directions to this Mooncamp of yours, Captain Bailey?”
Leaping on the change of subject, Tess rattled off a set of coordinates she’d probably memorized a long time ago. I programmed them into my system, grateful to have something useful to do with my hands. It helped dilute the awkwardness.
“That’ll bring us to the hangars,” Tess said as I put us on autopilot. “It’s where visiting cargo ships come in, but the food will be distributed to different storehouses.”
“And how does that happen?” I asked. We started to rattle. The star cruiser’s sleek design offset a lot of the bumps and jolts of atmospheric entry, but it wasn’t perfect or silent.
Tess gripped her armrests and spoke louder. “They’ll send a big crew with hover crates and some transport vessels to help us. Probably tomorrow—the time to organize a distribution map. Jax will have given them our inventory, and the head food coordinator—Raz Romo—will decide where things need to go, depending on how current supplies look in each depot and around the six Mooncamps.”
“Eggs in different baskets?”
She nodded. “You got it.”
