Read Online Honour's Knight by Rachel Bach - Free Book Online Page B

back. That only made Ren smile wider, and she watched me like a predator until the closing cargo door hid her behind a wall of steel and ice.
    “I cannot believe he would take a child into such weather.”
    Rashid’s voice made me jump. I’d been so caught up in Ren, I hadn’t realized he was right behind me until he’d spoken.
    “What does he think he is doing?” Rashid snapped, glaring at the closed cargo door like he could burn a hole in it with his disdain. “I don’t care whom they’re meeting, it is suicidally foolish to go out in such weather.”
    “The captain does as the captain does,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t even care about the weather anymore. All I wanted to do was go hide somewhere Ren’s smile couldn’t find me.
    Fortunately, the crazy impulse passed, helped along by the fact that we had a cargo bay full of quickly melting snow to deal with. “All right,” I said, walking purposefully over to the closet where Mabel kept the big brooms. “Let’s clear this avalanche out before it melts and we have to deal with a flood instead.”
    After his surliness, I expected an argument, but Rashid did exactly as I asked. We swept all the snow into a big pile at the bay’s center, and then, since opening the door again would only let in more, we piled the frozen stuff into ten-gallon buckets and hauled it over to the ship’s water tank. By the time the cargo bay was clear, our water was topped off and my arms were aching even in my suit.
    But bad as I was, Rashid’s suit had no motors to help him. By the time we emptied the last barrel, he looked ready to fall over, so I sent him to the bridge to rest up and keep an eye on the external cameras. I should have gone back on patrol—this was still a hostile planet after all—but there didn’t seem to be much point to being on guard when we were sitting with no cargo on an ice ball that even scientists wouldn’t live on. But I couldn’t bring myself to slack openly, so I grabbed a mop and started swabbing up the water the snow had left behind.
    I told myself I was performing a vital service for the safety of the ship. After all, if the floor was wet when the door opened again, it would freeze solid, leaving us with an ice rink. That was a nice cover story, but the truth was, the mopping was busywork, something legitimate looking that didn’t require real attention. That I saved for my footage of what had happened at the door.
    My cameras had caught everything. I didn’t dare look at the cook’s face directly, even on a recording, but I didn’t have to. Just like when I’d woken up in the medbay, his expression was seared into my mind. I didn’t know why my brain cared so much about the stupid man, but it seemed like I was stuck with him. All I could do was shove the horrible feeling that I’d forgotten something aside and focus on what was really bothering me: Caldswell’s daughter.
    The captain couldn’t have seen Ren’s smile from where he was standing, and from the way the cook had been watching the frozen ground under his feet, I was betting he hadn’t either. Her smile had been just for me, but why? What did the captain’s crazy daughter want?
    I was alone in the cargo bay, so I raised my visor and glanced around surreptitiously. To my great relief, I didn’t see a thing. I hadn’t seen a glowing bug for a while, actually, not since the one Ren had also seen in the lounge. My private theory was that the knock on the head that had taken my memories had also fixed whatever it was that made me see the hallucinations, which would make it the only good part of the whole mess as far as I was concerned. Then again, whatever the things were, I knew I couldn’t see them through my cameras, so there was always the chance that they had been around and I’d just missed them. I had my visor up now, though, and I still saw nothing, but it was starting to be less of a comfort.
    I leaned on my mop with a frustrated sigh. The