Blue Galaxy Read Free Page A

“You’d be giving me a great gift. It would be a fulfillment of my childhood dream and…would keep me occupied.” She dropped her hand and walked away. “Tell me. Where are you taking me?”
    “You don’t know?”
    She shook her head mutely.
    So that was why he was being paid so much. She was being smuggled off Earth and married to an unknown suitor. Not just illegal, but also immoral. Javan turned to the viewscan. “I don’t know the destination.”
    “Where have you charted a course for? You must have an idea of where we’re going.”
    “I won’t receive the final destination until we reach the general vicinity.”
    “And the general vicinity is?”
    It was the beseeching quality of her voice that did it. That and his unease about her situation. “The outer rim. Victor Quadrant.”
    She was silent but raised her eyebrow.
    “Victor Quadrant has two barely habitable planets, three lunar bases and three space stations. I’m not for sure on much more than that, except…”
    “Except?”
    “Well, that quadrant has a reputation.”
    She waited.
    “It was the last quadrant to be colonized. It’s still very…”
    “Very what?”
    “Volatile,” he said carefully.
    She approached him. “Thank you. I know you’ve probably been paid to ask and answer no questions. But now at least I’ll be able to study the quadrant. I’ll be better prepared…for whatever awaits me.” She squeezed his hand gently, and he looked into her liquid brown eyes. “Thank you.” She deposited a kiss on his cheek and left the cockpit.
    Gaping, he stared after her as she went back to her cabin.
     
    Javan regretted pointing Sola in the direction of his written accounts. She’d stayed in her cabin for three weeks, venturing out only for brief visits to the cockpit for flight lessons and views of the planets. He’d taken advantage of her absence to vent the crate with the corpse into the asteroid belt. He’d observed some of her halfhearted attempts to choke down the nutripacks. She managed to be excited for the flight lessons but was otherwise wan and sad and losing weight. In the fourth week they met in the galley. She pushed her nutripack aside and asked what was in his flask.
    “Cypriot brandy—it makes the nutripacks more bearable.” He grinned and poured a generous splash into a mug.
    She reached for it.
    “Wait.” He took the mug to a mounted white cylinder and extracted a few cubes of ice.
    She sipped and grimaced as the brandy went down. “It does help. The nutripacks are so flavorless, so textureless. Ugh!”
    “They’re a perfect nutrition-delivery system, but yeah, definitely not haute cuisine.”
    He offered his flask, and she poured more into her mug. “How’s the studying going?”
    “You have an impressive amount of information, Captain.”
    “Javan, remember?”
    She nodded. “How long did it take you to write it all down?”
    “Fifteen years or so. Ever since I’ve had the Kypris. Not much to do between ports, so…I wrote down things that might come in handy at a later date.”
    “You could probably sell the files about Victor Quadrant. Information is very valuable.” She held out her mug for more brandy.
    He shook his head. “That quadrant changes too rapidly. Even the information you read could be out of date by the time we get there.”
    She looked hopeful. “So whichever obnoxious warlord my uncle is marrying me off to could be out of the picture by the time we arrive?”
    He stared at his flask before taking another swig. “It’s possible.”
    “What would happen then? Would you return me to Earth? Or—” She took a big gulp of her brandy.
    “I won’t know what my final instructions are until we get there. Possibly you would marry his replacement. Possibly your uncle formulated an alternate plan.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know. The person who hired me for this job specified I should follow the instructions on the datasphere and ask no questions. I won’t get