Goldie was smiling. And he thought that maybe she approved.
Good. Because he was just about at the end of his patience. And Garnet, who was giving him a sweet smile as she sat up in the bed, was ready.
“Sorry, captain,” Alred said with a frustrated huff. “I still can’t detect a tracker on her either.”
Tanin nodded his head once, accepting the answer. “Then, let’s help the others. We still have an entire ship to search.”
Chapter 28
Garnet
Garnet thought the Humility was huge when she was trying to clean it. But when she helped the rest of the crew search for something that might be tracking them, she realized just how many cracks and crevices and corners it really had.
They absolutely scoured the storage room that once held the casket they came in. The idea was that maybe something had fallen out or attached itself to the ship when Tanin initially opened the sarcophagus. And if that were the case, it might still be in there.
Once they finished looking inside the ship, someone was going to go outside and do a sweep of the ship’s hull. Which was crazy to Garnet, because they were still traveling at stupid speeds through space. And someone was just going to willingly go out there. Sure, the guys said they were going slow, but that just meant they were going slower than light while they waited for the subspace generator to recharge. There wasn’t anything ‘slow’ about it.
But that was for the guys to worry about. Garnet and Goldie had neither the skills necessary to brave the vacuum of space, nor the experience necessary to even know what they were looking for in the first place.
That was also why the two of them weren’t directly helping with the search. It was the guys doing all of that. Garnet and Goldie were serving more of a support role. Garnet brought water and towels as the guys got sweaty. Goldie helped coordinate with Alred. Both of them assisted in moving things around or helping in sorting through things. At one point, Garnet’s entire purpose boiled down to holding ‘cleared’ wires while Vytln dug through the ship’s internals, searching for anything that shouldn’t be there.
It was as he was doing that she stopped feeling disgruntled that she wasn’t allowed to do more. She had absolutely no idea what she was looking at there. And it wasn’t even a matter of trying to find something that looked different,everythinglooked different. Vytln had been slowly patching the ship together for years at this point. And even before they got the Humility, it hadn’t been new. There were decades, over a hundred years, of repairs on this vessel. Layers of old and new were all smashed together in the circuits and components that she couldn’t hope to separate.
A few possible items were found. And whenever something was, it was brought to Alred for him to scan directly. All of them were cleared eventually and, a couple days later, they were all tired from combing through the entire ship with nothing to show for it.
When Garnet woke up on the third day, she lingered a bit in the shower. Sure, the mist wasn’t water, but it was warm and the closest thing she had. What she wouldn’t give for a nice, long, hot bath to soak away the fatigue.
Goldie showered the night before, so she had already gone to join the guys. If they didn’t find anything today, someone really would have to go outside the ship. And it looked like that person would be either Tanin or Trove or both. Vytln knew the ship best, but he was, apparently, adapted to the extreme heat, not extreme cold. The space suits they had weren’t good enough to keep outallthe freezing temperatures of space.
Garnet was nervous about Tanin going out there. Because they admitted that their space suits, like everything else, were bare minimum, cheap, and used. What if one of them popped a leak? Or the life support was too weak and he froze? Or any other number of terrible things that could happen because space was terrifying.
And he was her pseudo-situationship, so, like, she didn’t want anything to happen to him. And maybe she’d feel better about it ifeverythingon this ship wasn’t cheap, busted, overly repaired, and second-, third-, even fourth-hand.
Maybe she could convince him not to go out there. Okay, yes, she accepted thatsomeonehad to go out there. But couldn’t he, like, pull rank or something? The leader doesn’t have to put himself in the line of fire, or something like that?
But even as she had that thought, she knew it wouldn’t happen. Tanin would absolutely put himself in the line of fire first. He didn’t shy away from any task on this ship. The other guys wouldn’t respect and follow him the way they did if he was the kind to hide behind them.
It was frustrating, but she’d be lying if she said she didn’t-
“Beginning evasive maneuvers. Everyone, to their stations.”
“Huh?”
Garnet looked up at the ceiling. Confused. Alred sounded super calm. Not overly robotic, more like he was announcing that dinner was served, and everyone should come to the galley. His tone was so at odds with the meaning of his words, Garnet wasn’t sure if she was supposed to panic or not.
She turned off the mister and stepped out, grabbing for her towel. As she was running it over her body, Alred spoke again.
“Enemy vessel incoming. Prepare to be boarded.”
“Boarded? Alred, what does that mean?” She yelled up at the ceiling.
But she got no response. Alred purposefully didn’t look or listen into the private rooms without being given prior permission. It was rude and a breach of privacy. This was a heck of a time for him to be proven honest!
Garnet ran back to her bed and rushed to grab her clothes.
Stations. Alred said to get to stations. That meant the twins and Trove would be at weapons, Rok would be taking Goldie to the shelter room, and Sway would be on the bridge. Garnet didn’t really have an official position yet, but she was quick to grab her pretty, purple shock stick after shoving her feet into her shoes. She made sure to twist it on before she hit the button on the console beside the door, sending it sliding open.
The ship was oddly calm considering they were actively taking evasive maneuvers against an enemy vessel. But the gravity and g-force stabilizers meant that, unlike in a traditional vehicle, she couldn’t actually feel it moving.
