Page 10 of Crash Landing
The guy wasn’t bad looking. Not like you’d expect a science geek to be. He had a handsome face and salt and pepper hair smoothed back from his forehead. He seemed like a cigar smoker. I was going to spark a brief conversation, but he shot me down so quickly, I lost my nerve.
Then his gaze shifted toward me over the rim of his glasses and instantly his expression softened. I smiled brightly, trying to be sweet, which I was good at from time to time. His eyes roamed down my body once and he slid his data pad behind his back.
“Ms. Worthington,” he said. “Forgive me. It’s been a long day.”
“And it’s about to get longer. I just wanted to introduce myself,” I reattempted. “I was a last-minute recruit since another girl couldn’t make it. I hope I can prove myself.”
“I’m sure we can find ways for you to be useful.”
I cleared my throat and nodded, my cheeks heating under his stare. When I caught a couple of the interns at the top of theramp whispering amongst each other, I realized I wasn’t doing anything for my reputation.
“Looking forward to it,” I said, continuing into the shuttle.
Fuck. Fuckety fuck. Was it the way I looked at him?
It was high school all over again and I hated it. I straightened my jacket and avoided eye contact with everyone as I found my seat. I stuffed my bag under it and strapped myself in, wasting no time trying to get to know my fellow interns. They all seemed to have made up their minds about me anyway and I was there to learn, work, get extra credit, and impress the ones who could help me find a good position after graduation.
After twenty minutes of going over safety protocol and getting everyone situated, the shuttle’s engines purred to life. The floor vibrated with that familiar sound and I gripped the arms of my seat trying to relax. Soon, we’d be at the Nexus where we would get a little time to settle before we were transferred to another ship headed for Sylos. It was all so familiar and yet it was all unexplored territory for me. Before, I was pretending. Now, I was official. I was making a name for myself and I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity like I’d wasted so many others.
I only wished I didn’t have to ride on so many ships to get places.
The trip through the atmosphere was marginally less jarring than the first time I left Earth and while the jostling of the shuttle did bring back a few reservations, I was holding together much better than I expected. I didn’t puke, so that was good. I wanted to pass out, though. It would have made things easier. I was happy to know one of the other interns was in the same boat, though. Unlike pilots, engineers, and military personnel, science geeks weren’t acclimated to space travel, so I felt a little less embarrassed to be among them.
Once we left the atmosphere, it was smooth sailing all the way to the Nexus. It was humanity’s first city in space and it had everything. Advanced medical research, exploration programs, pilot programs, trade centers, alien zoology, botany, astrology, and transportation technology. It was stacked and it was an absolutely stunning sight to see. Even though I’d seen it before, this time felt like the first time. It was a titanic structure of three rings stacked on top of each other. In the middle was a cluster of what looked like city skyscrapers mirroring each other. As we neared, I could see the dozens of space crafts coming and going. It was a lot busier than I remembered, but it had the same drone barrier I recalled from my first trip. The little drones surrounded the entire space station scanning for danger or unauthorized spacecrafts.
Last time, they denied us entrance when an unknown craft was too close. I shivered at the idea. I never wanted to be in another space attack again. I’d managed not to think of the freighter and all the people who died that day for a long time, but now, with nothing but the black expanse around us and the eerie silence of open space, the image of that day was all I could see.
I closed my eyes and gripped my seat, doing the breathing exercises. Five counts in, five counts out. It helped, but a little part of me wished I’d taken the medication. Then again, considering my past with pills, I didn’t want to stumble down that road again. It was a bit too hard the first time Dr. Kiens recommended it to me.
A computerized voice spoke over the shuttle’s comms telling us we were on approach to the Nexus.
Thank fucking god.
We couldn’t dock fast enough.
I kept my eyes closed the entire time as we entered the Nexus borders and drifted toward the docking bay. Once the shuttle was locked in and I felt the engines shut down, I opened myeyes and released a long, strained breath. My heart was beating wildly and there was a thin layer of sweat under my clothes, but otherwise, I was proud of the way I handled the whole trip. For hours, I’d managed to disconnect just enough to keep it together.
“You’re alive, Sam,” I muttered to myself, shakily unfastening my seatbelts. “No explosions. No screaming.”
“What?” someone said.
I looked up to see a guy with obnoxiously curly hair looking at me with a brow raised. I smiled at him and pulled my bag out from under my seat.
“Nothing,” I said nicely, wanting to slap that stupid look off his snooty face.
I followed the other interns off the shuttle as soon as the ramp lowered, eager to get on solid ground. Or, as solid a ground as I could without being on Earth. As soon as my feet hit the slick metal of the Nexus, I felt my body shaking. I wasn’t entirely solid myself after my mini freak out while we were docking. I didn’t even want to look over my shoulder at the black expanse behind us, which I knew was visible behind energy barriers that made it look like there was nothing dividing us from space. It had been pretty to me once, but now it was just dramatic and scary and a place where the gek could find you in an escape shuttle and kidnap you. I was much more eager to find out where I was sleeping that night.
Why couldn’t I just stay on the Nexus? The Nexus was nice.
I found myself in the back of the crowd as we marched across the docking bay to the elevators leading to residential areas of the Nexus. I was hoping I could stay mostly invisible until one of the girls glanced back at me. She was a tiny thing like myself with a young face and a rich brown shade in her complexion. A wild head of dark curls was braided on the sides so the middle could be the center of attention. I made the mistake of making eyecontact with her and when I did that, smiling was just a reflex. She smiled back and slowed her gait, coming to walk by my side.
“Hi,” she said. Her bag was a worn-out backpack that she had slung over her shoulder with pins and buttons scattered all over it like she was straight out of high school. Hell, she could have been. Most of the people from the university were geniuses. “I’m Candice,” she said, holding out her hand.
I glanced at it, surprised she wasn’t opposed to physical touch.
“Sam,” I introduced, taking her hand in greeting only to realize how much I missed people openly touching each other. I used to be a huge advocate of no physical touch until Innifer and I left Earth and realized it was all bullshit.
“I know. Everyone’s been whispering about you.”
