Free The Mind Field by Blaze Ward Page B

keeping her alive for so long, with the anti–freeze elements slowly being weaned out. The longer she had to recover, the better. At least in theory.
    Any Ship’s Surgeon, even the drunkard that Sokolov had apparently fired three years ago, would have made him feel better right now.
    Javier wished he had Suvi handy to talk to, but that would raise too many questions from the crew as well. And he really wasn’t prepared to deal with Sykora again, any time soon, not if her latest gambit to drive him crazy was going to look like this.
    He sipped his tea and thought dark thoughts.
    The hollow thump caused him to blink. He didn’t think he had been asleep. Hell, with this much tea in him, he wasn’t sure when he would next sleep.
    Thump. Right. Activity. Progress.
    The sarcophagus suddenly started to hiss, just like a tea kettle reaching the boiling point.
    Javier was out of his chair and across the room in almost one bound.
    The machine had broken the internal seal.
    He could smell the gases it was releasing. It smelled like a pickled artichoke he had eaten once, at a parish fair.
    The room picked up the faintest hint of fog, even as the air circulation system kicked itself into overdrive and sucked the strange vapors down and away from him, probably to vent into space.
    Below him, the glass slowly retracted into the belly of the system, like a vehicle window rolling down, with the faintest puff of dust.
    Javier held his breath, mostly out of anticipation. He vibrated, but that was the adrenalin mixing badly with the caffeine. He rocked back and forth on his feet, like a kid waiting for his turn to open birthday presents.
    Javier stopped when he caught himself.
    I am a professional. I am this ship’s Science Officer. I need to act like a grown–up. At least for a little while.
    He looked down at the girl asleep with bemusement.
    Up until now, she had been a problem to solve. First, transporting her intact from the other ship over here, and then getting the power switched over. Finally, defrosting her like a ham.
    He hadn’t taken the time to actually look at her.
    Her hair had been tucked up under a knit hat to keep it away from sensors and probes, but a few stray hairs peeked out. Redhead. With a splash of cute freckles across her nose and cheeks.
    A very feminine face, soft across prominent cheek bones and a soft jaw. Skin that his mother would have called porcelain.
    He couldn’t see much more of her, other than the black shirt with her Order’s logo on both sides of her throat. A Shepherd of the Word. An honest–to–goodness missionary.
    She wouldn’t have been old enough to know the Rama Treadwell himself, the ship wasn’t that old. But she would have remembered the Union of Man in the early days, before entropy and bureaucracy set it. Before the dream had soured.
    Not that he would tell her. Let her find that on her own. Wasn’t that what Sykora had said? She deserved the chance to make her own decisions, rather than having them made for her, however well–meaning those decisions might be.
    Eyelids fluttered.
    Breath restarted with a gasp, drawing cold air hard down into her lungs.
    Pretty blue eyes opened. They didn’t focus, but he didn’t expect them to.
    He leaned back as the lid of the sarcophagus cracked along the edge and slowly began to pivot up and away. It was a well–designed system he had no intention of interfering with.
    Inside, she was wearing a full bodysuit, made from some stretchy black material and covered with a mesh of sensors and tubes that had kept her safe and alive. A little more solid than he liked his women, but in relatively good shape for a woman who had just set the galactic record for a nap.
    “Can you hear me?” he said in a quiet voice. Everything from now on was going to be intuition and luck.
    He was rewarded with a couple of blinks.
    “You are safe now,” he continued in his best bedside soothing voice. “Let me know when I start making sense.”
    She turned in his