We left the long care ward and went down a floor to the cafeteria. Once there, I saw the food available and made a sour face.
The woman smiled. “It's not that bad.”
“Will your opinion of me drop if I say that I can't trust your word yet?” I asked and she chuckled.
“You're stuck believing me because there isn't a restaurant anywhere near here.” She said and we went to the line. “Unless you have a shuttle or a hover car with a transit permit, that is.”
“Wait, you can get permits to fly normally?” I asked, genuinely surprised.
The woman nodded. “Once you establish that you're not going to fly like a crazy person.” She said and loaded some things onto her tray. “Try the green stuff. It tastes like galis.”
“What's galis?” I asked and took some.
“You're really from out-system then.” She said and I nodded.
“We came to see that man and do a few other things.” I said, so I wasn't lying. “We even went to the continental falls yesterday.”
“It's breathtaking, isn't it?” She asked and I took half of the food items that she did.
When we reached the end of the line, I paid for both meals and two drinks.
“You didn't have to do that.” She said.
“I asked you to eat with me.” I said and we went over to a small square table near the side of the room.
She sat down and instead of sitting across from her, I sat next to her. “Flirting already?” She asked as she gave me an inquisitive look and I gave her a crooked smile in return and rested my knee against hers. “I'll take that as a yes.” She said with a satisfied smile.
I was picking up her surface thoughts, now that I had direct contact with her, and gave her a genuine smile. “Do you work exclusively for the hospital?”
She shook her head. “I only consult and come in on extreme cases like these.” She said. “That man's mind was mulched from the inside. We suspect Presence was used; but, we haven't found any trace of any, except for bits of his own in key areas.”
“Key areas? Oh! You mean like motor functions and sight and sound.”
She nodded. “I tried to probe him, and all I can get from him is a distinct impression that...” She stopped talking and gave me an apologetic look. “I can't discuss a patient's case.”
I smiled and slid my hand over slightly and rested it on hers. “That's okay. I've confirmed who he is and since I'm not family, I don't need to know anything more about his health.”
The woman relaxed and nodded. “Thank you for understanding.”
I chuckled. “You must have expected me to pester you for all the details to relax like that.”
She smiled. “I had suspected it, yes.”
I used my free hand and tried the green stuff. It tasted like mint with a hint of peanut butter. “You're right. That's not bad.”
One of her eyes squinted slightly. “You don't like it.”
“I'm sure in some other context, it would be delicious... like on a dessert with holis berries on top to counter the nutty taste.”
The woman widened her eyes slightly and her thoughts coalesced and focused on the subject. “You can cook?”
I chuckled. “I could lie and say a little; but, I've been helping in the kitchen since I was about eight.” I said. “I didn't start learning about how to really cook until I was forced to take care of myself when I was eleven.”
The woman's hand turned over and held onto mine. “I can't cook to save my own life; but, my mother always had me help in the kitchen.”
“It sounds like you had a great childhood.”
“Unbelievably.” She said and her thoughts played dozens of scenes with her and her mother cooking.
I picked at the food and tried to hide my reactions to the different tastes that would have fit better as parts of other dishes and not stand alone food. It was difficult. We held hands the entire time and she couldn't help but laugh at my reactions and I got all of her surface thoughts. When we were done of the food, I put my tray on top of hers and slid them out of the way.
“What can you tell me about the organization that man works for?” I asked, and she didn't answer. I caught all of her surface thoughts and she didn't really know anything, except that they occasionally found a headless body. They would be traced back to that organization, mostly because they turned out to be an ex-employee. “I guess that can be considered part of his case and you can't answer.”
She nodded her head, relieved that she didn't have to lie to me about what she knew. “Where are you headed to next?”
“Now that I've seen him, I don't really have a reason to stay.” I said. “I also doubt claiming to be a tourist after you-know-what's-people were so nice to let me come here, would probably piss them off.”
The woman chuckled and her thoughts floated around being trained in basic Presence use, to stop her from becoming 'dangerous' in the eyes of The Order. They had even given her a license to practice.
“There goes my hope for a date tonight.” She said and then gave me an apologetic look.
I picked up her hand and hesitated for a moment to tease her, then kissed the tips of her fingers. Her face flushed slightly red as I did exactly what she believed was how a proper man should treat a woman. I let her hand go and stood up, picked up both trays and took them over to the slot to drop them off, then left the cafeteria. I quickly left the building and went to the shuttle at the landing pad down the street and climbed aboard.
“Call the control tower and get permission for a flight path back to the ship.” I said.
Simone did so as Jelly took the shuttle out of standby mode. Simone gave her the information the control tower sent and we took off and flew along the odd twisting pattern to take us up into orbit. The three of us relaxed as the shuttle docked to the top of the Udelis and it gave us a sense of safety. I went out and attached it properly and then the three of us left the shuttle through the umbilical and into the ship.
“Gleas, get us a course out of here.” I said as I entered the cockpit.
“I already have one.” Gleas said and hit a button on the communication console. “Shuttle secured and passengers are aboard. Thanks for the help.”
“Anytime.” A voice said. “Good travels and great food.”
Gleas chuckled and turned off the console. “There was a random patrol sent over to check us out.” She said. “When they came aboard, we were in the middle of eating and...”
“Say no more.” I said with a smile. “I just had the weirdest tasting meal ever in a hospital cafeteria. I can only imagine what the military here would be getting.”
Gleas nodded. “They barely looked at anything while I distracted them by eating a meal from our favorite restaurant.”
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
“I was tempted to hold a cloth to their faces to stop their drools!” Deborah laughed, too.
“I sent a care package of a dozen meals over to the traffic control station and now we're good friends.” Gleas said with a laugh and put the ship on course.
“Good work, you two.” I said.
The ship left orbit, two satellites lighter, and loaded with information that no one knew we had. We waited until we reached the Lagrange point before we completely relaxed and then we jumped into hyperspace and left behind one of the oddest missions I had done so far. I knew it wouldn't be the last.
“Let's get the data translated back into text.” I said to Simone and we went to the living room and set things up to reverse the process we had used to get the information. It was going to take a while, and we had to watch it closely, to make sure that it got everything right. When it missed something, we marked it on both the console and the time index on the video file. We would have to go back and correct all of the errors that such an inefficient transfer would always have.
Once the footage ended, we spent another few hours changing and fixing the spelling errors, missed words, overlapped names, and everything else that had gone wrong on the transfer. When we were done, we had a comprehensive list of the active agents, their missions, where they were currently stationed, and their secret identities. I hadn't expected to get quite that much during the mission and I also didn't expect to get away without having some kind of fight.
Frankly, it was a relief to not have to fight my way out of a situation. I knew that wasn't going to last, once I started my campaign of removing all of the assassins. I couldn't start here because it was too heavily protected and I was trying to be covert. If I attacked them now, they would know it was the new people that came on the latest ship, and I didn't want to give The Order an easy time trying to catch me.
I chuckled at that thought and Simone glanced at me, so I took her hand and she started laughing, too.
With the very important task of converting the data done, we made several copies of the information and spread it out to several places, one of which would be the network hub I had made when we exited hyperspace in the Dizahl System. After that, we all gathered in the kitchen and ate a meal together for the first time in almost a week.
It was going to take three days to get back to our base and I told them that I needed to work and make more satellites. Simone offered to help and followed me into the bedroom to watch me put one together. She tried not to laugh at the ridiculous amount of skills and Presence that I was using to assemble them so quickly and after an hour, she spoke.
“I think I'll let you handle this all by yourself.” Simone said and pat my back, then she slid her hand up to my neck. “Don't stay up too long this time.”
“You can't tell me what to do.” I said in a nasal voice and she chuckled.
She held my neck for another moment and then let go and smacked the back of my head.
“Hey!”
“I'll be back in six hours to check on you.”
“What if I'm not done by then?” I asked with a smile.
“You better be.” Simone warned me with a wicked smile and left the bedroom.
The time passed by and I finished about fifteen minutes before she came back into the room. I thought about pretending to be working; but, she would know I was faking it right away. She came in with a small tray of food, just enough for a snack, and I turned to hold my hands out to her.
“Don't you dare touch me with those filthy things.” Simone said and looked around for a good place to put the tray down. I cleared a spot on my main desk for her and moved back out of the way. She stepped by me and bent over slightly to put the tray down. Her hair had slid to the side when she did, so I silently stood up and reached out to press my dirt-covered fingertip to the back of her neck.
Simone flinched at the touch and she almost dropped the tray. “You did NOT just touch me!”
I darted by her and went into the bathroom. “Of course not!” I laughed and quickly stripped off and hopped into the shower.
“Get your ass out here and apologize!” Simone said.
“I'm busy washing my filthy things!” I said loudly. Even over the sound of the water, I could hear her growling and grumbling. “I can't quite hear you. I'm still too busy!”
Simone stood there, still slightly bent over, and simmered in her anger. She had apparently just taken a shower and I had ruined it for her. I finished my shower and made sure I was completely clean, dried off, and dressed in my nightgown. I prepped a cloth with soap and water and grabbed a small towel before I left the bathroom. I walked over to her and formed a small area with Presence around the dirty spot with my clear fingerprint in the middle of it.
“I didn't realize you just washed.” I said and squeezed out a few drops of water onto her neck and she flinched a little, then I used the soapy cloth to clean the spot. “I'm sorry.”
Simone took a deep breath and let it out. “I overreacted.” She said as I used a bit more water to rinse the spot, then used the towel to dry the spot. “I'm not sure why I did, considering you don't normally volunteer to touch me so casually.”
“I think that's why.” I said and she stood up straight to look at me. “You would rather have me caress your neck, dirty hands or not.”
Simone considered what I said and then nodded. “Yes, it's because you did it to annoy me.”
“I'll try not to do that in the future.” I said and took her hand while I floated the cloth and towel back into the bathroom. I turned to look at the cockpit and 'saw' that Deborah was in the pilot seat. “They're splitting the shifts?”
“Only while travelling in hyperspace.” Simone said and I heard her thoughts turn to something more personal. “Hunter, are we really going to do this?” She asked. “Are we really going to take down The Order?”
“One step at a time.” I said and looked at her face. “I have my own gripes against them and how they treat people; but you, you make me want to wring their necks for what they did to you.”
Simone stared into my eyes and she felt my resolve.
“First, we need to finish the salvage job, get more of my satellites spread around, then we can concentrate on the information we just acquired.” I smiled. “Raiding their compounds and businesses is going to be dangerous.”
“...and lucrative.” Simone smiled. “You recognized some of the business names.”
“Who would have thought that The Order would have their hands in so many business ventures?”
“Did you think that taking over planets and then star systems is cheap?” Simone asked with a laugh.
“No. I just thought it was all given to them.” I said and she laughed again.
“Shipping yards get paid to make Order specific ships, even if the shipyard is owned by The Order.”
“I saw some of that in the data.” I said. “The sheer amount of money being filtered through their businesses is staggering.”
“It's just like the Bogorim Corporation.” Simone said. “Remember what he said when you delivered the bounty that time.”
“They have about fifty thousand credits passing through their offices every hour.” I said.
“Now imagine their multi-system business is spread over thousands of worlds.”
I had to take a breath and let it out. “Probably ten to a hundred times that amount a second.”
“You are about to toss a very small wrench into that machine.” Simone said.
“I'd rather smash it all at once.” I said and she caught her breath. “I have to work with what I have, though.”
“You mean us.” Simone said, indicating her and the pilots, so I nodded. “We are all going to help you as much as we can.”
“I hope so, because I expect things to get rough in some spots.”
“It doesn't matter.” Simone said. “None of us want anyone else to go through what we went through.”
I nodded again. “Good.” I said and let her hand go. “Now get out of here. I need to go to bed because someone ordered me to.”
Simone smiled and waved at the bed, then walked to my door. “Who do you want me to send in to sleep with you?”
“What?” I looked at her in surprise.
“Gleas and Deborah packed up all of Luxea's things and put them in the cell with Rhubin's and Kalina's things.” Simone said. “There's only one bunk available.”
“Why didn't they put everything from the cell into Luxea's room?” I asked.
“They wanted an actual room to stay in, maybe?” Simone shrugged. “I didn't ask.”
I sighed. “I'll find out it the morning.” I said and looked through the ship to see Gleas was in Rhubin's old room and Jelly was in Luxea's. Both were already in bed, and neither bed was big enough to handle two people sleeping in it, unless they were very well acquainted.
“Go get changed and come back.” I said and moved the completed satellites over with the rest of them. My room was getting crowded with them, so I was going to have to start storing them somewhere else or deploy them in the surrounding star systems. Simone took out her sleeping clothes and changed right there, then she climbed into bed and held a hand out to me.
“Okay, I guess I don't need to wait until the morning to find out why.”
Simone chuckled and wagged her hand at me. “I didn't ask them to, even though it's a benefit for me.”
I walked to the bed and took her hand, then climbed in beside her. She stayed on her side and closed her eyes as she let my thoughts flow over her. I couldn't help myself and let her thoughts flow over me as well. It was too difficult to ignore how much she liked that I wasn't completely blocking her. Of course, she heard those thoughts and stopped trying to stem the flow of her own thoughts.
It wasn't quite a storm of thoughts that swirled around in her head; but, it was getting there. She was having a difficult time calming herself enough to sleep like she wanted to, because she was just too excited about staying in my bed again after so long. I caught her envy at Jelly sharing it several times the last few days, despite knowing nothing happened.
It was the potential. Simone's errant thought sounded loud and clear, then I got the underlying concept. It didn't matter if nothing actually happened, because it very easily could have. Two people, in bed together, and the potential that idea contained filled Simone's mind and set her other thoughts into the whirlwind they currently were. Once again, there weren't really any prevalent sexual thoughts mixed in.
It was the occasional touch, sharing Presence, feeling another person's warm breath on your skin, cuddling in the middle of the night, holding hands or other parts, which actually had a sexual variant in it, and a dozen other scenarios and circumstances that preoccupied her mind.
Nothing's going to happen. I thought to her directly and she didn't open her eyes as she smiled.
Something's already happened. Simone thought back to me. Now calm me down so we can go to sleep.
I held in my sigh and used my calming technique, then shared it with her. She actually did sigh as her mind settled down and languished in my clear thoughts and mind. As an afterthought, I also used a meditation technique and put the both of us to sleep.