“Hey! I have my greenhouse!”
He snorted. “I have seen your greenhouse. There are not more than a handful of scraggly plants in it. It is a wonder there is enough air in that ship to breathe.”
Chloe shrugged. “I supplement it with bottled air. I never was very good with plants.”
“Because they must have water,” Reuel said dryly.
Chloe blinked at him. “Was that the problem? I thought there was an automatic watering system.”
“There was at one time, but it has not been maintained.”
She shook her head. “Well, Billy and Bud were lazy sots. They never did more than the bare minimum to get by. I wasn’t sorry to see them go.” She swallowed uncomfortably. “Jared and Kane were worlds better, but I figured the garden was a lost cause.” She frowned, glancing around. “Do you think this will be a good place to grow things? There doesn’t seem to be much growing here now.”
“Buildings will grow here.”
“Yes, but … never mind. I guess you’ll grow the food in the valley below?” She moved to the edge to look out over the jungle. “It doesn’t look like there’ll be a problem growing anything there. It’s going to take a lot of clearing to make fields.”
“It will take a great deal of work to make everything that must be made, but we are cyborgs. We were built to work hard.”
There was bitterness in his voice. She couldn’t blame him. It was actually sad, now she thought about it, that he—none of them—hadn’t gotten the chance to be children. Not that that wasn’t hell at times, but she’d had her mother, even if it hadn’t been for very long, and they hadn’t had one at all.
“When do you think everybody else will get here?”
He lifted his head to look upward even though she knew he couldn’t have seen the ship if it had made orbit. Maybe at night, but not during the day.
“It will be hours yet before the Salvager makes orbit. Shall we go up again so that I can get started on the surveys?”
She smiled faintly. “Bor-ring! I think I’ll take a nap while you survey.”
“You will find a hard bed,” he said wryly, “with the ship still gutted from our raid.”
“I’ll find a spot.”
She didn’t find a particularly comfortable spot, but she didn’t really need much comfort. She hadn’t slept well in weeks and she stayed tired. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she knew she wasn’t sleeping well, she might’ve thought she had a problem, but thatwasthe case. At first, she couldn’t sleep because the guys wanted to fuck half the night and then crowded her afterward. Then she got used to having them in her bed and discovered when they weren’t there she couldn’t sleep and, of course, no one had been in her bed in weeks and now she was horny because she was used to having sex.
The good thing, she told herself, was that she could getunused to those changes just as easily and go back to being comfortable sleeping alone and not having sex. It seemed to be taking longer than she thought it should, but then she’d been pretty depressed about the whole business and that sure as hell wasn’t helping her sleep, or rest, anyway.
She didn’t actually sleep when she finally found a spot to lie down. She dozed off and on, but it seemed to her that she felt every bump of the air currents. She knew when Reuel descended for a closer look at something and when he went up again. Hunger finally drove her from her efforts to nap and she got up and went to ask Reuel if he’d brought food onboard.
He stared at her blankly for so long that she knew his mind was somewhere far, far away. “I did not think to bring food,” he finally said.
She wasn’t surprised since she knew he hadn’t expected to find the planet. He’d thought they would fly close enough in to survey, see it wasn’t livable, and return to the Salvager.
“We will go back. I have surveyed a good bit. I should study the data anyway, and I am starving. I had not realized that was why I had begun to feel … empty.”
They discovered their timing was good. The Salvager came into view almost as soon as they broke through the atmosphere and they rendezvoused with the mother ship just as it began to pull into an orbital position.
“Will you join us in the mess tonight to celebrate?” Reuel asked as they descended the gangplank and crossed the docking bay.
Chloe considered it and discarded the idea. “I appreciate it, but I think I’ll just have something in my cabin. I don’t know why, but … well, I feel a little ill smelling all the food.”
Reuel sent her a disbelieving look, but he didn’t argue and they parted company as soon as they reached B deck. She was a little irritated by that look. Maybe it was a slight exaggeration, but it wasn’t a lie. She did feel a little ill thinking about eating in the mess hall and at least some of the smells did bother her.
Not that it was any of his business!
She decided, since she could hear activity in the mess hall as she passed it and knew everyone was in there, that she’d stop by the facilities and take a bath before she headed to her cabin. She peered in cautiously when she reached it, just to be sure, and finally went in when she saw it really was empty.
She thought she was more tired from trying to nap than she would’ve been if she hadn’t. Or maybe she was just tired from flying most of the day? That was fatiguing in itself when it was so restrictive of movement.
