Page 39 of Breaking Point
Luciana was still rereading both the original post and the callous, acidic counterarguments when a message dinged on her screen, demanding immediate attention.
“I’ve been called to the Bridge for a meeting.”Her heart fluttered as she looked at Caelen around her screen.
Caelen’s face lit up.“They’re willing to talk!”Happiness shone in her eyes.
“It just says ‘emergency meeting’,” Luciana warned.
“What else could it be?”
“Don’t get your hope up,” Luciana said and went to change and prepare.
She splurged on a pod to the Collinas gate, for she couldn’t stand the idea of how long it would take to walk there.At the gate, she showed the message on her personal pad, as evidence that she was expected.The guards still made her wait, while they connected with the Captain’s office to confirm.
Then, still showing a puzzling reluctance, they let her in.
A guard who looked too young to be an adult escorted her to the Captain’s suite, which lay at the end of another white corridor with pristine, glowing walls.This one didn’t have many doors coming off it like the last one.
At the end, another set of double doors slide aside.The guard took Luciana over to another bench to wait.This one was padded.
She didn’t have to wait long, either.An excessively neat man came up to her.“I’m David.Saska Rosalva’s assistant.The meeting has already started, so let’s just slide you in the side door.”
Luciana hurried after him as he moved over to a door on the other side of the room.Saska Rosalva was Captain Traver’s Chief of Staff.She squashed the flare of hope that tried to bloom in her chest.
David held his hand over a door plate, and glanced at her.“Just slip in and take a chair at the end of the table, okay?”
Luciana frowned.“Theyareexpecting me, aren’t they?I got an invitation…”
“I sent that.Yes, they thought it would be appropriate for you to be there, as you have the largest interest in this.”
The hope persisted in trying to grow.She tamped it down again and as David touched the door plate, she slid through the opening and looked for an empty chair at the table that he had warned her would be there.
It was a huge board table, easily able to seat thirty people around it.At the moment, there were perhaps twelve people, and all of them sat at the top end of the table, which was the end farthest away from where Luciana stood just inside the door, orienting herself.
No way was she going to sit at this end and strain to hear what was being said.
She moved along the table, and the gray-haired woman at the end of the table looked up and stopped talking.That had to be Saska Rosalva, the Chief of Staff, Luciana realized.
Everyone else was alerted by Rosalva’s silence and looked around.
Luciana almost tripped when she realized that one of the people watching her walk up to the table was Brice.
Her heart slammed around in her chest and her mind sang high arias.She hesitated.Could she do this, now?She hadn’t been braced to see him again.She hungrily took in his appearance.The broad shoulders.The planes of his face.The dark eyes.
He looked angry.Clearly, he didn’t want her here any more than she wanted to be here.
“Luciana, please take a seat,” Rosalva said, waving toward the first empty chair on that side of the table.
Luciana fumbled with the chair, her fingers numb and her heart beating way too hard.
“I don’t understand.Why does Luciana need to be here?”Brice said.
“Thatisthe point of the meeting, is it not?”Rosalva asked, her tone pleasant, but cool.
Luciana made herself look around the table, meeting the gaze of anyone studying her.Brice was glaring at Rosalva.Captain Travers was not at the table.
Luciana felt a little jerk of disappointment, but rallied.The Chief of Staff had huge discretionary powers on the Bridge.Perhaps Rosalva was the person she should speak to about Devar, after all.The Chief of Staff wouldn’t be holding this meeting if she didn’t have the ability to make decisions and direct actions.
Rosalva didn’t seem upset by Brice’s peremptory tone.“Luciana is here because the majority of the area that would be taken up by the arena is currently hers.Her stalls and her…office,” Rosalva read off from a pad in front of her.
