Supergiant (Gigaparsec Book 2) Read Free Page A

“Temperature and intracranial pressure
are normal. No tumors. I’ll start running tests for other causes of auditory
hallucinations.”
    The only thing that stopped Roz from
ripping him a new asshole was how concerned he looked. She brushed the curl of
hair near her mouth behind her right ear.
    Ivy gripped her hand. “Her brain
shows evidence of psi stimulation.”
    “Wasn’t me. I’m mute,” Max said. He
had been the only other person on the bridge during the maneuver.
    “Maybe the therapy sessions with Echo
have been working, and she’s healing the brain damage,” Ivy said.
    He tore the armband off. “Maybe.
Hopefully. Until I find a cause, she’s off duty.”
    “I have too much to do,” Roz
objected.
    Ivy prevented her from standing.
“We have almost sixteen days until we leave subspace. You don’t have to be back
in the chair until then.”
    Max rubbed her temples. “Does that
hurt?”
    “Feels kind of nice.” Roz’s eyes
closed.
    “Get her in bed,” the doctor
ordered. “If she tries to leave your room in the next eight hours, I’ll tie her
to her bunk.”
    “Prove it,” Ivy whispered.
    Roz elbowed her friend and asked the
doctor, “You’re saying I’m just tired?”
    He avoided her gaze, contacting the
Saurian captain on the comm. “Kesh, start looking through the personnel at
Prairie station.” There were many environs on the planet, but the major cities
surrounded the central grassland plateau. These cities only reached a hundred
thousand souls each. The hundreds of little towns outside these enclaves were
stuck at 1800s Earth levels until the delicate technology ladder infrastructure
could trickle down. “Once we’re back to normal space, radio the planet if you
need to. We’re hiring a cook, copilot, and a grease monkey to take some of the
load off Roz. Otherwise, she’s going to kill herself and take us with her.”
    Ivy soothed her. “Think of this as
a promotion.”
    Max nodded. “Our mission is a
marathon, not a sprint. It could take years for us to locate this Bat physicist,
Crakik, who Echo expects to solve the prototype’s problem.”
    “Nobody can replace me in the
subbasement drive tubes. We can’t risk anyone outside the team seeing the
quantum capacitors.” Roz refused to be squeezed out of a historic project,
especially after all her work.
    “Right.” Max punched up another comm
link. “Reuben, paint radiation biohazard warnings on the tube entrance and fit
them with your best locks. Don’t give anyone a key until I say so.”
    Roz began to bluster until Ivy
asked, “So you think she has radiation poisoning of some sort?”
    Crap . Roz had been in that
tube three times more often than anyone else on board. She had even slept there
a couple nights by accident.
    “I don’t know.” Max took off his
goggles and wiped a hand over his face. “I’m not a specialist. I patch people
together on the battlefield. I’m sure the ship’s designers never planned for
people to climb inside the active prototype. The Saurian pirates who stole this
craft stripped out or walled off anything they didn’t understand. Maybe they damaged
a safety feature.”
    “The designers probably also didn’t
plan for the quantum capacitors to stay charged more than a few seconds,” Roz
guessed. “Am I going to die?”
    Max grabbed her other hand. “Not if
I have anything to do with it. Stop taking your cortical meds, and don’t touch
Reuben. His talent can boost mental abilities in a woman. We need to lower the
number of variables.”
    “When he touched Ivy during the drive
meltdown, she saw visual overlays.”
    “It was an advanced form of aura
sight where I could see your personal representation over time as a sort of
cloud of choices,” Ivy said.
    “Have you seen anything since?” Max
asked.
    Ivy smiled. “We haven’t had the
time or the energy for more experiments involving prolonged skin-to-skin
contact. Dictator Mendez keeps us pretty busy.”
    Max opened the elevator