Starfall (Starflight #2)(29)
Kane leaned across the table and fist-bumped the captain.
“What about you?” Solara asked Cassia. “You didn’t answer your own question.”
“She’d pick door number one,” Kane mumbled with one cheek full.
Cassia nodded. “As long as I was treated fairly, yes.”
“Now it’s my turn,” Kane said, and leveled a challenging gaze at her. “Would you rather leave your home world forever, or stay on your home world and never leave?”
All around the table, the crew gave a collective “Oooh” and fired off the same response. They chose wanderlust over home and said the question was too easy. They didn’t realize what Kane was trying to do: force her to admit how much she’d miss space travel once she settled down as queen.
“I don’t know,” she said, and meant it. Neither option appealed to her. She wanted both—to have her world and leave it, too. As much as she loved Eturia, she couldn’t deny that staying there forever would feel suffocating. She’d barely scratched the surface of what the universe had to offer. But she supposed she’d already made her choice when she’d taken the throne, so she answered, “The second one.”
Doran drew back an inch. “Really?”
“But…but…” Solara sputtered, tongue-tied from shock. “You’d never leave home. That means you’d never visit the Obsidian Beaches or see the quantum nebulae fields.”
“Or drink hellberry wine,” Kane added.
“I could have it imported,” Cassia said.
“Wouldn’t taste the same as drinking it fresh on Pesirus.”
She used a spoon to stab at her lentils. Everyone was taking this game too seriously. She was about to tell them so when her com-bracelet beeped a transmission request from General Jordan. “Start the next question without me,” she said, and stood from the table. “I’ll be right back.”
She jogged up the stairs to the landing and tapped the Accept button. There was a flicker of light, and Jordan’s hologram appeared—all six feet of him, practically on top of her. She took a backward step and bumped into the wall. The added space didn’t help much. She was still close enough to waltz with his image.
The color in his cheeks said he’d noticed it, too.
“Wait, let me find a better place to talk.” She strode into the lounge, where the crew usually spent the hours after dinner playing billiards or sitting around the holographic fire pit. “Better?”
Jordan took in the surroundings, peering at the wall mural behind her.
“It’s the Black Forest,” she told him. “My captain, the previous one, had it commissioned to remind him of home.”
“Your captain. He must have meant a lot to you.”
“He did. I loved him like a father.”
Jordan nodded, though his face was impossible to read. “So how is it, being back on the ship again?”
“I won’t lie; it’s strange,” she said while lowering herself into one of the cushioned chairs around the fire. “It feels like I’m wearing a pair of boots that don’t fit anymore. It’s a good thing you called when you did. You saved me from death by awkward dinner conversation.”
He gave her one of his rare smiles, and with no warning whatsoever, a flutter broke out inside her stomach. “I live to serve.”
She rubbed a hand over her abdomen. Maybe she was hungrier than she’d thought. “Did you find anything at the armory?”
“Yes and no,” he said, tucking both hands in his pockets. “The shipment from your wedding day contained a supply of shock wave grenades.”
“No biological weapons?”
“None that we could find.”
“What about Markham?” she asked. “Any word from the other kingdoms?”
“Yes. They haven’t reported any outbreaks.”
She swore under her breath. “That can’t be a coincidence.”
“It’s not,” he agreed. “Someone’s trying to weaken us.”
“Until we find out who, we need to keep this quiet. I want a gag order issued.”
“Already done,” he said. “We also quarantined infected colonists to their homes.”
“Good, thank you.”
They exchanged a few silent glances after that. There didn’t seem to be anything more to say. Just when she assumed Jordan would sign off, he grinned in an almost sheepish way and told her, “Troop inspections aren’t the same without you.”
That made her smile.
“Stay safe,” he murmured, and then disconnected.
She released a breath when his image disappeared and found herself wishing she’d kept the conversation going a little longer. She sat alone in the quiet room, listening to the scrape of utensils and muffled conversations from the galley until her rumbling stomach forced her back downstairs to finish her dinner.
Her bowl sat alone on the table when she returned. Doran and Solara were gone, probably to the engine room, and Kane stood at the counter drying the last of the crew’s dishes. Renny had already filled his favorite mug with Crystalline. As he headed for the doorway, no doubt to occupy the same cushioned chair she’d just vacated, he pointed at her bowl and asked, “Want me to heat that up for you?”