Page 27 of Across The Stars
“The humans are late,” Salukh said, standing with his arms crossed over his chest at the closed loading station on the spaceport.
We’d been docked for a good two hours. Humans weren’t great at making deadlines. It just went to show how new they were to open space and its obstacles, behaviors, and personality. A pilot of the air was different than a pilot of the stars. I knew that better than anyone.
“They’re learning,” I said, hopeful.
“Captain,” one of the men behind me said. “They’re arriving now.”
“Finally,” Salukh said, slipping his helmet over his head.
I mimicked him and cut my eyes toward the loading dock just as the cargo ship came into view. It was a bulky thing. A little primitive and not very pleasing to the eye, but it was theirs and they were proud of it. It drifted toward the station and as the pilot carefully attached to the boarding tunnel, Salukh was ready at the pressure door to start the exchange.
There were three females at the station ready to handle the sensitive material while everyone else was ready to load up anything heavy. Syfer, to be more specific. When the cargo ship was fully locked into place, the lights above the pressure door turned blue, indicating it was safe to cross the bridge.
Myself and four others walked through the doors and headed for the human cargo ship. There were two at the entrance as they slid open. Penny and a man I didn’t recognize. I’d dealt with Penny before. She wasn’t one to mess around and got things done efficiently and quickly most of the time, but she looked a little irritated today. She escorted us in, sliding her hands into the pockets of her jumpsuit.
“Captain,” she greeted, eyeing the signature blue light veins on my black suit. “It’s mostly new recruits today. They’re good for moving things around, but they don’t know the process yet. Tollie and her assistants are here to oversee the more sensitive items.”
I nodded, looking around the vast cargo bay of the human ship. There weren’t many crates getting offloaded onto the station, but there were plenty coming from us. Syfer was heavy and it needed padding and protection so it didn’t jostle while it was being moved, so there were at least a hundred crates that had to be moved.
I glanced over my shoulder at my men and gestured for them to start walking the syfer over while Salukh and I stayed on board to get the things we needed. As they left, Penny startedinstructing her people to begin taking bins off their secure straps to start the exchange.
When one of the large, white pallets was moved, my eyes caught a glimpse of vibrant blue. It stood out among the drab metal of the cargo room. Naturally, I turned to it and saw the woman I’d bumped into that day on the docks. Innifer. Her hair was tied into a ponytail, just like last time, but she was in uniform now. My eyes examined her slender build as she assisted one of her fellow workers with a stack of smaller boxes, loading them onto a hover cart. I couldn’t deny that I was curious about her, but it wasn’t the time to let it get to me.
When Penny returned, she had a digital list in her hand and was swiping her fingers over the glass to dismiss items.
“Everything but the E7 vials and the copser fluid vats have been loaded,” she said. She looked around as males from my team escorted syfer crates onto the ship, replacing what the humans were taking off. “So it looks like all we have left are the last two syfer crates and your science stuff.”
I chuckled internally at Penny’s phrase, “science stuff.” She wasn’t a biologist, a doctor, or anything that even gave her the slightest interest in those kinds of things. She was a pilot, a coordinator, and a hard worker. Most humans were followers. Penny, if given the right opportunity, was a leader. And not just a leader of a small team of workers. I could tell she was climbing toward something and I was silently wishing her well every time I saw her.
Looking back up, I saw a couple females from the station accompanying Doctor Tollie, a white-haired woman with no social skills, to carefully load the “science stuff” onto hover transports. I watched those two long, white pods exit the cargo bay and could only hope the specimens would be useful, especially after the loss of so much research on the Yutan. Salukh turned his attention to the pods, or more specifically, thelittle blonde female helping to move them, and offered his aid while my attention went back toward Innifer.
She was helping secure one of the syfer crates near the wall and I couldn’t resist watching the way she made such an effort to perfect her task. It was just a few metal buckles and clasps, but she checked her work more than once before she was satisfied. When she stood from her crouched position, she scanned the room, her eyes finding the blonde female and Salukh first before her gaze wandered to me. She paused, staring right at me. For a moment, I felt like she could see right through my visor, which I knew was impossible. Still, she just watched me and I wondered if she could remember that I was the same one who’d bumped her on the Nexus.
My body bristled remembering the sensation I felt then. There was a little beat in my chest that was practically foreign to me and I lifted a hand to feel the slight pulse reverberate under my right pectoral.
It wasn’t possible.
Then Innifer stepped toward me and that flutter in my chest deepened, increasing sensations all together. I watched her, a subtle tilt in my head, and couldn’t help noticing the sway of her hips. She was confident as she sauntered over. Her body was a feminine shape and her strides were long. She watched me the whole time until she was right in front of me and then her eyes turned to Penny.
“Everything seems secure,” she said.
Her voice was tender and almost shy, a complete contradiction to the way she ambled toward me.
Penny barely looked up from her digital screen and said, “Good.”
Then she turned her head away, glancing around as if to double-check the quality of everyone’s work. When she handed the digital pad to Innifer, she finally met her eyes.
“Check everything on the list,” she said. “Then scan each crate to get it in the system.”
“Oh,” Innifer said hesitantly. “Ok.”
“I’m going to talk to the pilot. He’s new and I need to make sure he knows how sensitive this cargo is. I don’t want any fancy maneuvers.”
“Gotcha,” Innifer said, holding the screen in both hands like she thought she’d drop it.
Penny walked off and she slowly turned back around to face me. I watched her throat bob as she swallowed and could feel her heat signatures rising through the enhanced sensory in my helmet. She was definitely nervous and I doubted I was helping by standing over her like I was. I couldn’t help it, though. A big part of me wanted to remove my helmet and take in her scent with my own nose, but that was against protocol.
Forcing her eyes back toward the digital pad, she started going over things on the list like Penny instructed, biting her lower lip. I watched her in my peripheral but didn’t want to add to her timidness by staring right at her. As much as I wanted to study her, it was considered rude and she’d notice.
