Explode: Team Supernova (The Great Space Race) Read online

  (Tripp walks out before Zissel can stop him)

  Chapter Twelve

  “HOW DID YOU like tonight’s fancy party?”

  Tripp sighed. “You know I didn’t. It was worse than the last one, except for the food. Great spread, and they didn’t have the desserts that fought back this time.”

  Sarr’ma put on a preposterous pout. “They were the best part of the last banquet. Them and that woman, Vin—she was hilarious. I didn’t like sitting with Harrington and the bigwigs nearly as much, especially since I couldn’t say what I really thought of them.”

  Stars, she was cute, sitting with her legs tucked under her on the big blue seating unit in their guest suite on the station. Her tail was curled around her ankles so she looked almost demure—what a laugh. Even if she didn’t seem willing to play again, which was probably for the best, he could and would enjoy the view. “I’m surprised you didn’t lay into them when they started talking about intergalactic participation. I saw your claws working, even if they were too busy eating and drinking enough to feed a family of four for a week to notice. Your tail was lashing around so hard I have bruises on my ankles.”

  She sighed. “I reread my contract before dinner. Openly disparaging Octiron and its subsidiaries is grounds for dismissal. If I get kicked out of the race, I’m on my own for getting home. Which would be worth it if Octiron subsidiaries didn’t control most of the intergalactic portals and the rest are in the hands of other mega-corporations.”

  You could stay here. Right. As if you have a life she’d want to share once the race is over. No credits, no job, and an heir to Meridian Corporation with a hard-on of hate for you.

  Now would be a good time to say something silly, as opposed to something truly stupid. “The tabloids say the portals are mostly used to transport galactic playboys to places where they can run up huge bar and hotel bills, break a few laws, and leave before the consequences catch up with them.”

  She smiled. He couldn’t decide if he liked that smile or not. On one hand—hot and dangerous. On the other hand, dangerous and hot. She’d be the death of him yet. After the way she’d handled the asteroid belt, he was pretty sure it would be emotional death, not actual extinction of life, but what came out of her mouth made him question that. “Sounds like an option for getting home. I never heard of a galactic playboy who couldn’t be charmed by a cat-girl.” She shrugged. “I’m not above even giving someone what he wants in exchange for what I need, if it comes down to it. Not my preference—I’d rather convince him that helping me would be the best idea ever—but desperate times call for desperate measures, and I’d rather not be stranded in this galaxy. Not even with you, my star, no matter how much I like you.” While he was still processing her words—her casual disregard for her own safety, let alone conventional morals, warring with the pleasant shock of my star and I like you—she unfolded, hopped over to where he was sitting, and gave him a quick kiss on the lips.

  Quick, but with all kinds of energy simmering below the surface. Energy that suggested she wouldn’t mind a repeat of the other night.

  And curse it, despite hearing she treated sexytimes as casually as she treated her own well-being, he reached to pull her closer. To continue the kiss, see where it went.

  She evaded him as agilely as she’d evaded the tipsy miners on Izbo. “That was for us surviving asteroids, pirates, and dinner with Suede marling Harrington—and getting our own clothes back at last.” Yeah, coming back to their suite to find their bags had been a relief after that ghastly banquet. He was delighted to be in his own worn but familiar clothes, and he was certainly enjoying Sarr’ma in a cropped yellow clingshirt and soft green- and yellow-striped wrap pants with slits on the side that displayed her excellent legs. “You were terrific, Tripp, and I know it wasn’t easy. Thank you.”

  She headed toward the door. In the doorway, she turned and stared at him those huge green eyes. For a second, he thought she was going to turn back. Instead she said, “Good night, my terrific teammate. I’ll see you on the Supernova at 06:30,” in a smaller, more subdued voice than he’d ever heard from her.

  She wanted to stay as much as he wanted her to. Between the kiss, her body language, and the look in her eyes, that was obvious. It was equally obvious that she thought it was a bad idea.

  Which it was. One night counted as a fun bad idea, but trying to make that one night into something more was somewhere between dumb and catastrophic. Too much was riding on this race to risk emotional complications—definitely for him, and probably for her too. She’d traveled from another galaxy to get here; no matter what she claimed, she had more at stake than outdoing her brother. Good thing Sarr’ma was tough enough to walk away from the temptation. He wouldn’t have been. Not tonight.

  He’d be stronger from now on. His job on this team was to keep Sarr’ma safe. And that included keeping her from getting involved with a man who had nothing to offer but anger, powerful enemies, and a mission that would probably doom him.

  *

  Sarr’ma wasn’t big on self-reproach, but she lectured herself as she practically ran down the corridor to her room. Stupid. Maybe in a week or so, you’ll be able to kiss him like that and not set yourself on fire. Not yet. The memories are still on the surface of your skin. You still want him too much. So hands off.

  It sucked like a black hole, dragging in light and joy. But give it a week or so and it would get better. They were adults. They had a goal, a race to win. They couldn’t risk distractions.

  She couldn’t risk breaking his heart once he realized she wasn’t exactly what she claimed to be. As teammates, they could fight it out. As lovers, it would hurt, and that was the last thing she wanted.

  Which meant putting on her big-girl tail bow and walking away.

  She opened the door to her room still lost in thought and nearly jumped out of her skin when something whirred past her feet.

  A cleaning ’bot? How the heck had that gotten in?

  Right. There was an access panel in the door, too small for most living beings, but the perfect size for the ’bot.

  She took a quick look around to make sure a camera-drone hadn’t taken advantage of the access panel as well, then picked the ’bot up and studied it. Nothing odd about it—no cameras, no compartments that contained anything but cleaning supplies, no hidden weapons—just a ’bot that had been mis-scheduled. She placed it out in the hall. “Come back in the morning, little guy,” she whispered to it, though she wasn’t sure it understood speech. “I’m checking out early.”

  Cameras and hidden compartments? Wait a minute…

  The maintenance ’bots on the Supernova went in and out of the engine and transporter rooms regularly, using an access panel much too small for her fit through. (She’d tried and wound up with bruises.)

  Camera-drones were fragile. A couple had already stopped flying and were tucked in a supply closet awaiting repair. How hard would it be to wire the camera mechanism to a ’bot? She’d have to send the vid-feed directly into her neurorelay, since she knew that wasn’t monitored by Octiron; that would be the most challenging part. The neurorelay worked here, at least for data storage, because it was biotech, but it wasn’t exactly compatible with the local com systems.

  Forget checking out early in the morning; she was heading back to the ship now and come back to check out later. If no one thought she’d be on the Supernova, no one would turn the cameras on—and what Octiron Media didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

  Chapter Thirteen

  SARR’MA NARROWLY AVOIDED shouting something out loud that she shouldn’t. She looked around the lounge area quickly for camera-drones. Safe. This leg of the journey to their next challenge was dull enough that Sparky was flying. At times like this, Gus pointed his drones toward teams doing more exciting things, probably figuring the AI would alert him if anything dramatic cropped up.

  Great. No cameras around and Sparky’s attention was elsewhere. She could vent safely. “Magnets? The transporter and
engines are powered by marling magnets?” She’d finally gotten her ’bot-cam to work, but what she was getting from the feed made no sense. Maybe those things weren’t magnets at all. Maybe she screwed up the interface with her neurorelay so the images were getting scrambled. Biotech wasn’t her area of expertise, but good luck finding an engineering nashbet who hadn’t figured out a way to direct-feed porn before they had a credit chit of their own or an ID that would let them get to the best sites. Still, she’d been linking up to tech that was slightly different than what they had at home so she might have gotten it wrong.

  “You just figured that out? I hadn’t thought about hyperdrives and transporters and stuff, but practically everything else uses magnets for something, so it makes sense.”

  Marling stars! She’d forgotten Tripp was on the couch studying the write-up of their next challenge. She might have to backpedal a bit. “Not to me. We don’t use magnets as a power source where I come from. How does it even work? I’m sure there’s information about it on the Universenet, but the best tech sites are all blocked here.”

  Tripp shrugged. “I couldn’t explain how it works in a vacpac heater, let alone something this complicated. I guess that’s why they told us to leave the drives and stuff to Sparky. It’s just going to give us normal people headaches.”

  She almost protested, “I’m not a normal person—I’m an engineer,” but bit her tongue on time.

  She wasn’t one yet. Maybe that was the problem. A full-blown engineer with multiple degrees and years of experience could probably figure it out from the vid-feed, but she couldn’t make any sense of it.

  Still, she had some information, which was better than she had before. Including one thing she had to share. “Remember how I set that building on fire on Izbo? There was no legit reason for flames, any more than there was at the start of the race. I’m not sure how magnet power works, but it shouldn’t require anything inflammable. I think they attached a flaming gadget to the ship so our takeoffs look more exciting.”

  Tripp slammed his fist into the small table next to him. “So Octiron risked blowing people up at the start of the race to get flashy visuals. That’s stupid! I wonder how many people caught on. I mean, I figured the racing yachts needed an extra boost or something, but I never claimed to understand this level of tech.”

  “Audience surveys,” Sparky said out of nowhere and everywhere, “suggest that the majority of viewers do not understand how interplanetary ships are powered; more than seventy percent of fans of The Great Space Race have never been out of their home country, let alone off their home planet. The same survey revealed that even people who understand electromagnetic power prefer footage that shows flames.”

  Sarr’ma held her breath, waiting for Sparky to ask how she’d figured these things out. Luckily, the AI didn’t bother. Curiosity, it seemed, was not part of its programming.

  Thank the stars.

  Instead, Tripp waited until they were in the relative anonymity of the corridor to pull her aside and whisper, “Did you figure out a way into the engine room?”

  She smiled, showing her teeth. “A little ’bot told me,” she purred.

  “I don’t want to know the details, do I?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. Just know that this cat’s curiosity has been satisfied.”

  Not really, but it was a start.

  He didn’t smile, except with his eyes. “Nice,” he said.

  Then he hugged her. “I’m not sure what you did, but I’m glad you did it,” he said. “It was driving you nuts not knowing. Driving me a little nuts too; I don’t like it when Octiron hides stuff from us.”

  And now she’d be driven nuts thinking of Tripp’s arms around her. But she could live with that.

  *

  The next challenge involved a puzzle in a featureless low-G space filled with glowing rose light and directional clues that made no sense at first in a setting where up and down weren’t obvious. Easy-peasy bloxfruit squeezy, thanks to Auntie Merr’san taking her kitten-self to bounce around in unfinished low-G sites while Auntie M. worked. (Of course, Sarr’ma said it was stuff she’d learned in school—which wasn’t entirely a lie. A thorough grounding in astrophysics gave her useful clues as well.)

  And Tripp seemed to enjoy bouncing around in low-G once he figured out the jellyfish-like aerial creatures were harmless. The fact that they figured this out because one drifted into Sarr’ma’s face? Minor issue compared to watching Tripp enjoy himself. She had a bad feeling he was one of those adults who didn’t have much chance to play.

  Next came a choice of stealing an idol from a low-tech culture that still relied on bows and arrows or appropriating a piece of art “inspired” by those idols from an exhibit in a gallery on one of the richer Central Alliance planets They’d leaned toward the low-tech planet at first because it was worth more points. Then it dawned on them the gallery was probably in on the whole thing, taking a loss because being featured in the show would make it a tourist destination. For the bow-and-arrow people, the statue was a sacred object, not a tax write-off. So the gallery it was, and despite Sarr’ma’s agility and Tripp’s welcome ability to use a grid disrupter, dealing with the laser array was…challenging. Still, they got it.

  And then there’d been the disaster that she’d rather not think about. Bar brawls were one thing, but actual-factual armed revolts were not her idea of a good time. It was a good thing Tripp was a large mammal with a powerful right hook and she had claws and…well, she was kind of was afraid to use them on other sentient beings, but when it was her and Tripp or some stranger with a blaster, it got a lot easier. At least the problems had started near the transport portal. They’d gotten in and out so quickly it hadn’t cost them time, even though they hadn’t completed the challenge.

  But because they’d failed to complete that challenge, Octiron would choose their last one. Great. Octiron already set up the mandatory one on Altaria for them, and those were supposed to be killer—sometimes literally. The last thing she wanted was them choosing something else for her team.

  Sarr’ma spent time trying not to worry about what Octiron would come up with. Then she decided she might as well worry about it, because otherwise, she’d worry about two things that could make her crazy: getting her hands on the hyperdrive and transporter so she could make sense of them; and keeping her hands off of Tripp.

  She kept studying the vid-feed, on the theory that it would eventually offer up its mysteries.

  She had no idea what to do about Tripp.

  Throughout all these challenges, there had been heated glances and casual touches that lingered a bit too long to be casual and one or two goodnight smooches where neither of them wanted to say goodnight. But she’d resisted the urge to jump into Tripp’s lap and snuggle. She’d pointedly made herself pull away from goodnight kisses and head off to sleep alone. Which had sucked, but she knew it was a better idea than having wild sticky sex that interfered with their ability to work together.

  No matter how much she wanted it. No matter how much she could tell he wanted it.

  Staying hands-off was driving her crazy.

  Maybe once they made it through the challenge on Altaria, she’d reconsider. If they rocked that one, which was supposed to be insanely dangerous, they’d deserve a naked, consenting-adult good time.

  Good thing she had a plan in the works to make sure they rocked it. It gave her something to do with her hands other than caressing Tripp.

  She’d gotten that ’bot to snoop in forbidden areas for her. Now to reconfigure it for more complex tasks. This was going to be so great, it almost made up for the lack of quality sexytimes with a certain miner.

  Okay, she couldn’t lie to herself that much. But it would be a cosmic distraction from thinking about sexytimes she wasn’t having. Especially since it would mean a lot of time hiding in her room and not looking at Tripp.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ALTARIA. OTHERWISE KNOWN as Planet Farewell because so many people sa
id bye-bye to life thanks to the planet’s booby traps, land mines, and other hidden perils. No one knew who’d put the traps there—the planet had been uninhabited for centuries—but the theory was they were the remnants of some long-forgotten war, or maybe a society of sadistic zelacxis who deserved whatever nasty fate caused them to vanish from history. And then there was the wildlife, most of which might as well be animate booby traps.

  She prayed to the Great Cat Mother that her ’bot-rebuilding project would help. She’d tried to think of all the possible tasks they might need it to do, but she had no faith that the prospective challenges outlined for them actually covered everything the planet—or Octiron—might throw at them.

  At least it was better than nothing. She hoped.

  *

  Tripp looked at the lush, forested surface of the small planet below them. “Looks like paradise, doesn’t it? But they say it’s more like hell.”

  Sarr’ma, who was studying the 3D projections of the planet, asked, “That’s the human myth, right? The horrible place of eternal torture? It can’t be that bad. I’m sure it’s dangerous, but Octiron’s sent people there other years and most of them didn’t die. They wouldn’t want too many deaths. Advertisers wouldn’t like it.”

  He hoped she was right. On the other hand, massive carnage might be great for ratings. Half the audience would figure it was fake but exciting and the other half would be glued to their screens to wallow in real-life blood and guts.

  Right. Time to think about something else—such as how to make sure he and Sarr’ma got off this planet in more or less the same shape they ported onto it. Not that it was easy to make a plan when they didn’t know exactly what they were doing. They were going to have to grab all the tools and weapons that might be useful and hope for the best.