Onboard the Nightbrand

That's not how the Ardorians put it, of course. The official term was compatibility designation. It sounded like a clinical phrase that made the whole thing sound like a bureaucratic filing exercise instead of what it actually was, which was four of my closest friends falling head over heels for alien warriors while I sat in the observation lounge pretending to read soil composition reports.

Gianna went first. She'd always been brave — braver than me, certainly, braver than any of us had a right to be after being hauled off Mars in the cargo hold of a warship with no real say in the matter. But she'd looked at Commander Ariss like she was solving a puzzle she'd been born to crack, and the tattoos on his skin had blazed gold at her touch, and that was that. Gianna belonged to Ariss. Or Ariss belonged to Gianna. It was hard to tell, watching them together, where one ended and the other began.

Then Alissa. Quieter about it, the way Alissa was quiet about most things, but I'd seen her come out of the engineering workshop at third-bell with grease on her hands and a look on her face I'd never seen in all our years at the Mars Colony. The kind of look that said she'd found something worth staying for.

Which left Hannah, Melissa, and me.

I wasn't jealous. That's what I told myself, anyway, sitting cross-legged on the observation lounge's curved bench with my datapad balanced on my knee, watching Ardorion's twin moons track across a sky that was too purple to be real but was. I wasn't jealous of Gianna's certainty or Alissa's quiet joy or Hannah's headlong courage. I was a scientist. My job was to study this planet's botanical systems: the adaptive flora, the bioluminescent root networks, the medicinal compounds that Ardorion's healers had been using for centuries, and to be useful. Being useful had always been enough.

Except it wasn't anymore. Not quite. Not since we'd landed.

"You're reading the same page you were reading an hour ago."

The voice came from behind me. It was low, even, dry as stone. I didn't need to turn to know who it was.

"I'm absorbing it slowly," I said.

Torel, Weapons Master and Security Chief onboard the spacecraft Nightbrand, moved into my peripheral vision without sound, without hurry, like a predator who'd decided you weren't prey but hadn't entirely committed to the decision. He was tall, just like all the Ardorians, built on a scale that made the corridors of the Nightbrand feel cramped even at their widest. Torel carried his height like a weapon he'd learned to keep sheathed. He had close-cropped dark hair, a scar that began above his left ear and disappeared into his collar. Just like Ariss and Araff, he had tattoos dormant along both forearms, lying flat and dark..

He was also the ship's tactical officer. Ariss's second. He stood at the back of every room where decisions were made and saw everything and commented only if asked.

I found him deeply, profoundly irritating.

"The Commander has requested your presence at the morning briefing," Torel said.

"I was at yesterday's briefing. Nothing happened."

"Today's briefing may differ."

"Will it?"

He stared at me. The faintest suggestion of something at the corner of his mouth that might, under laboratory conditions, be classified as amusement. He replied, "Unlikely."

I closed the datapad. "Then why am I going?"

"Because you have been sitting in this lounge for three hours reading the same page, and the Commander believes you would benefit from engagement with the crew."

"The Commander thinks I'm moping."

"His word was withdrawing."

"Diplomatic."

"He is the Commander."

I stood up, tucking the datapad under my arm, and made the mistake of meeting Torel's eyes. They were dark. However, they were not brown-dark like human eyes, but deep, unreflective, like looking into water at night.

I looked away and said, "Fine." I walked past him. "Briefing. Let's go."

He went to open the door, and then walked ahead of me showing the way to the briefing room.

I followed three steps behind him, close enough to catch his scent — clean metal and cold air, like standing near a blade — and far enough to pretend I hadn't noticed it at all.