She’d rolled over onto her belly when he got up, exposing a long shapely back and heart shaped buttocks that tempted him to explore the cleavage with his face.
Shaking the thought, he grabbed the edge of the cover and tossed it over her before leaving the cabin.
The smell of coffee led him to the galley. Grabbing a steaming mug full, he downed a mouthful before he was clear headed enough to think better of it, scalding the inside of his mouth, his esophagus, and his stomach. The burn more than the caffeine jolted him into alertness, and he headed out again. When he reached the bridge, he could see the busy space port in the forward viewing screen. They’d already been caught by the tractor beam and were gliding in for hookup.
He settled a hand on the docking pilot’s shoulder. “Stay put. We won’t be here long. When you check in with the dock master, tell him we’re headed to Andromeda to pick up a load of ore.”
Stepping to the com unit, he touched the pad. “Marx, Johnson, Gracia, and Vang--meet me at the main airlock--NOW!”
Vang and Johnson were the last to arrive, and they looked like he felt, glassy eyed from too little sleep, their hair standing on end, and their uniforms fastened crookedly. He glared at them. After staring at him stupidly for several moments, both men looked down at themselves and began trying to tidy their appearance. “Each of you are to take one of these locators, find a ship ready to leave that has a deep space destination, and make sure you get the thing on board without getting caught--and move your ass. If we stay put too long, they’ll be all over us.”
Saluting, they held out their hands for the locators, tucked them in their chest pockets, and hustled out the airlock the moment the door opened. Dropping the last two in his own pocket, Dax followed them. Walking briskly along the docking arm until he reached the main dock, he scanned the vessels lined up on either side. He’d just decided to try his hand at a freighter near the center when he spied Johnson talking to one of the crew members.
Changing course abruptly, he continued down the main concourse until he reached the furthest end and took a right along a secondary docking arm. He was in luck. He found a deep space rescue vessel that was loading supplies. Hailing one of the dock workers, he told the man he wanted to make sure the meds he’d sent over had reached the dock safely, gave him a fake name, and set him off to look. Wandering casually among the crates while he was waiting, he removed one of the locators and dropped it into the open crate the man had been trying to secure when he arrived.
The dock worker looked worried when he came back. “I didn’t find it. You sure it was supposed to be going out on the Mabel?”
Feigning surprise, Dax stared atthe man a moment and then craned to get a look at the vessel. “Hell! Wrong ship! Sorry.”
The man glared at him irritablybut kept his thoughts to himself.
Satisfied, Dax turned and strode purposefully away. The man would no doubt remember him if questioned, but that hardly mattered. Vids were everywhere. One could hardly take a leak without being examined thoroughly. He was just hoping the trackers wouldn’t stop to question anyone at this point or examine the surveillance vids.
When he reached the main concourse again, he considered what to do with the last of the locaters. Five ships would be leaving port with Lena on board--six if he planted the last one. Were they more likely to follow the six carrying her, figuring she must be on one of them? Or more likely to ignore the six, figuring they were all decoys?
Deciding to see just how clever they were, and how many were trailing them, he returned to the ship with the last locator and headed for the bridge. “Set a course for Andromeda,” he told the navigator as he settled into his chair.
“Yes, sir!”
His pilot, Rodriguez turned to look at him questioningly.
Dax returned the look in silence for several moments. “After we pass the seventh buoy, change course and head for the dead system and settle the ship into orbit around the sixth planet. We’ll wait there for a few hours and see if we’ve got company. If nobody shows, we can head back to main base.”
Rodriguez frowned. “They’ll pick us up right away if we deviate from the flight path we charted.”
“They won’t. Trust me. They won’t know until we don’t pass the eighth on schedule that we took a detour. That will give us a good three days lead on them. We’ll be home before they notice we’re missing.”
“The seventh buoy?”
Dax nodded. “It’s currently inoperable. I’m going to my cabin. Call me immediately if you pick up anything we need to worry about.”
Once he’d entered his cabin, Dax simply stood over the bed for several moments, wondering if it was even worth the effort of trying to get some sleep. It was only the reflection that he wasn’t likely to fare any better, for other reasons, in the crew quarters.
More than a little tempted to roust Mel out of her quarters and take her bed, he considered that option for a few moments and finally discarded it. Nobody, including him, wanted a med working on them that was dead on her feet.
What he needed was pain killer--some of the stuff doc had given Lena would do the trick.
The only problem with that was that he couldn’t afford to take anything that might make it hard to get his head straight if he only managed to get a few hours sleep.
A whole lot of Lena would work even better, but that wasn’t an option, be she ever so comfortably ensconced in his bed.
Muttering a curse under his breath, he finally decided on option number three--a stiff drink. One wasn’t likely to impair his judgment, but it would relax him.
Settling in his desk chair, he poured himself a couple of fingers of whiskey, chilled it in the freeze unit and sipped it slowly, allowing his mind to drift where it would as long as it didn’t drift in Lena’s direction.
He’d spent a lot of years resenting Lena and her brother Nigel for ‘usurping’ his place with his father. It was unreasonable, of course, and he’d been old enough to know better, but that sort of thing rarely touched on logic.
He couldn’t recall that he’d ever really gotten along his father. About the only thing he remembered with a lot of clarity about his childhood was that his father was hardly ever around--too busy saving the world to spend much time with his family. And pretty much all of his memories from when he’d been a youth were about fighting, mostly his father.
