Free Girl From Above #3: Trapped by Pippa DaCosta Page B

“I don’t know. Perhaps he was disturbed and wasn’t able to complete the intrusion.”
    Caleb didn’t look convinced. Neither was I. “Can you repair it with the spares we have on the ship?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good. Do it.” He held out the pistol. “Just in case.” I took the gun. When my fingers brushed his, he snatched his hand back as though I’d burned him. The symptoms of his alcohol withdrawal muddied my ability to read him, just like they had in his cabin earlier. I couldn’t be sure his anxiety was real or the result of his body’s cravings, but from what I knew of Caleb Shepperd, I suspected the withdrawal masked a deeper secret. He’d agreed to hand me over to Bruno. Just because he’d told me, it didn’t mean he wouldn’t go through with it.
    “What did Doctor Lloyd want?” I asked as he turned to leave me to the repairs.
    Caleb tucked a thumb into his pants pocket and looked at me sidelong. “Nothing?” He’d phrased it as a question with a slanted smile.
    “Lie.”
    “Try this on for size, synth. You scare the crap out of me in a whole load of fucked-up ways, but I trust you. You’re about the only person in the nine systems I do trust. And that’s the most fucked-up thing of all.”
    “Truth.” A smile pushed forward, but I kept it caged.
    “We will get out of this.” He left me then, and I watched him step through the pressure door and close it behind him.
    His last words had been a lie.
----
    I finished the repairs to the hull in an hour. The new panel section would hold until we could dock Starscream at a professional depo. Caked in metal dust, the tang of metal on my tongue, I sought out the doctor’s cabin but detoured toward the bridge when I heard voices echoing through Starscream’s main catwalk.
    “… could be a glitch, but I’ve been over the results several times.”
    “We ain’t goin’ anywhere. Go over them again.” Anger tugged on Caleb’s voice. I wrapped my fingers around the door latch but hesitated.
    “No matter how many times I go over the results, the data won’t change, Captain,” the doctor replied. A heavy silence hung in the air. I waited, listening to the information my acute diagnostics fed me.
    “You can’t tell her.” This came from Brendan.
    “I agree. She er … it wouldn’t help.”
    “She’s a fucking lie detector. Good luck trying to keep it from her.” Caleb’s flight chair creaked as it often did when he fell back into it, and then the familiar sound of his boots clunking against the flightdash meant he’d propped his feet up.
    “If we were on Janus, if I had my lab—”
    “What ifs and maybes, Doctor. Worth about as much as dreams.”
    “Without dreams, Captain, we’d still be bashing two rocks together and worshiping fire. Although, I’m not convinced you’ve yet to evolve beyond that.”
    “Careful, Lloyd. Just because I don’t have your smarts with the numbers, doesn’t mean I don’t have other talents.”
    “I’ve seen your talents, Captain. They mostly consist of blind luck and criminal behavior.”
    “My criminal behavior is keeping Chitec off your scrawny ass and providing you with credits to send back to your sister. It sure ain’t nothing to do with luck. You got a problem with crime, then you sure picked the wrong ship to hang your conscience on, Doc.”
    “I came for One.”
    “From what she tells me, you came for you.”
    “Things have changed.”
    “Sure they have. You’ve got a crush on your pet project—” A rustling sound, a few grunts, and then Caleb chuckled. “You’d better act on your urges soon, Doctor. From what you’re telling me, she won’t be alive much longer for you to enjoy.”
    I stepped back from the door. Brendan said something about the results, but I tuned out the voices and turned away from the bridge, retreating to Lloyd’s cabin. I stripped, discarded Caleb’s pulser pistol, and shut myself in the tiny shower cubicle. The sensation of water tracing over my skin