Page 9 of Star Bright
She had no answer for that. “Maybe I should go check on Ug and Kong.”
He twisted his grip on the pod to grab her. “Stay, please.”
She squeezed his hand. “Of course.”
She had never felt so helpless. Her parents’ estrangement and eventual divorce when she’d been a teenager had been more relief than grief, and even caring for her older sister through hospice, there’d always been something todo. Just sitting here was hard, and she couldn’t imagine how he wasn’t tearing apart the pods with his bare hands.
“Memories keep crashing together in my mind,” he murmured. “Yadira hatching into my hands, Atsu barely walking but reaching for me as he stumbled, laughing. And then I remember putting them in the pods so they could rest. So I could just rest.” When he looked at her, his miserable eyes were cold and gray. “Why would I want them away from me?”
“Ug and Kong will find out everything they can,” she assured him. But even as she said it, she knew there was a chance whatever they found out might be its own sort of crash. “How’s your head?”
He touched the gauze still taped to his forehead. “I keep forgetting that too.”
“Let me see.” She leaned in to peek under the gauze, the tape peeling up without pulling at his skin. “At least the lump is gone.”
And apparently the space age had managed to come up with an adhesive bandage that didn’t hurt worse than the wound—but it still needed help with dating?
“Draklings pride ourselves on toughness,” he murmured. “Yet a trifling bump to the head has all but wrecked me?”
This close to him, she couldn’t help but notice the heat of his body, almost feverish.Draklings need hot. So the little robot had said. A Montana winter night really didn’t offer much of that, so she moved a little nearer yet toward him.
“Well, there was a spaceship crash too,” she reminded him. “And apparently a hundred years with no dreams, so maybe don’t be so hard on yourself.”
He gazed down at her, a flicker of light in his gray eyes. “I may have dreamed.”
She almost asked what a drakling dreamed about but managed to bite her tongue. Really, this had nothing to do with her.
The bandage might not cling, but she seemed strangely stuck on him.
They waited in silence, though she felt the tremors that wracked his body when his shoulder brushed hers. Probably this wasn’t helping his own recovery any, but of course he wouldn’t leave his children.
Now that he’d remembered them. Oh, how he was going to hate himself for that when this shock was past.
The whir of Kong’s wheel announced their return, and Darcy stiffened as Vash spun around, eyes blazing again. “What did you find?”
“Ug was able to retrieve some data from your ship’s logs. The manifest indicates you and your two offspring were scheduled for a journey from the drakling homeworld to this closed planet. This corroborates with the expired IDA contract. But according to the recovered time stamps in the ship’s log, you programmed a brief rest cycle in the stasis chambers. A not uncommon practice in a smaller ship like yours, to conserve resources and reduce crew friction.”
Vash twisted his mouth in a snarl. “I wouldneverice my fledglings because I was tired of them or wanted more for myself.” With obvious difficulty, he eased upright, but his tone was even colder when he asked, “Did you find my mate’s pod?”
Kong hesitated. “There are no other stasis chambers aboard, and nothing in the manifest suggests other passengers besides yourself and your two offspring.” The robot spun its wheel in a nervous circle. “It seems that shortly after you three entered stasis, the ship encountered an interstellar storm. Shielding deflected most of the radiation, but some of the systems went through a reset. And apparently the chronometrics recalculated improperly, affecting both the stasis chambers and the ship’s routing schedule.”
Leaving the ship to wander slowly across the galaxy with its slumbering prisoners for a hundred years. Darcy winced at Vash’s simmering tension. “Maybe we need to concentrate on the children now. Kong, you said they aren’t in any danger, correct? The pods are working all right now?”
“With most of the outpost’s services offline for the closure, deeper scans aren’t possible, but the life support components seem unaffected by the timing reset. Standard procedure for exiting cryo involves in-unit revivification, with gradual warming, electrical stimulation, and basic cellular supportive therapies all handled by the stasis chamber itself. Also, more natural sleep phases, including dreaming, will be resumed. Atthe end of that sequence, the younglings will wake without the mental and physical debilities inflicted by a more abrupt transition.”
No dreams for a hundred years? That seemed so sad. Darcy glanced at the drakling man. “So we just push a button to start the process?”
“No.” Vash let out gusting breath. “Wait. I need to remember everything before…” His hand fisted on the pod lid. “I can’t let them see me like this.”
Ug grunted, a disapproving sound, but Darcy nodded. “You’re already much stronger, and your memories are coming back. If waiting won’t hurt your children, you have time. It’s not like we have anything else going on.”
He looked at her. “Thank you.”
She pointed at Kong. “I know getting a signal out of Sunset Falls can be tricky because of the alleged unique local geology that I’m now suspecting is partlyextraterrestrial in origin. But you must have some way of getting in touch with Brin and your bosses.”
“Ask him.” Kong wheeled around toward Ug.
Darcy lifted an eyebrow. “The guard dog?”
