Rogue Instinct Read online

  I heard the footsteps coming and everything was immediately clear.

  None of the rest of my crew was stupid enough to use my things, so that left Maris.

  “Hey, Orrin.”

  That was it.

  That was all she said as she moved past me back to the workstation.

  “Might I ask why you’re at my workstation?”

  Her shoulders stiffened as she turned around. Her lips pressed together for a moment, then she forced a slight smile. “I was trying to finish building this small converter, so I could show you something, and I didn’t have enough room in my area. I didn’t think it would be a problem.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and looked down at her. “Well, let’s see. You have your own area in which to work, yet you deliberately chose to use mine. My tools and components are out of place, and you’re acting as though what you did was simply nothing.” A small voice in the back of my head suggested I might be overreacting, but I was far, far too tired to listen to it.” Yes, it’s a problem.”

  “First of all,” she said as her chin rose, eyes narrowed, and a single finger stabbed towards me. “Your stuff is all here. Yes, I moved it around, but I can move it back without issue. I remember where everything goes. Secondly,” she poked me in the chest with two fingers. “I’m not some random loser you can just order around. I have a brain and I’m one of the best engineers in the entire Terran System. I’d rather work with you than behind your back. Got it?”

  When she poked me in the chest, I clenched my fists as I kept my arms crossed. The slight whine from my left hand reminded me it was time for a tune-up.

  Reminded me that I’d done my own share of forcing people to “stand back, let me work”.

  Years ago, while on a trip back home to care for my grandfather, my hand had gotten caught in a piece of farm equipment and was mangled beyond help.

  The doctors and prosthetic manufacturers told me there was nothing they could do. The nerves in my hand, wrist, and half my forearm had been obliterated.

  I told them all to go kout themselves and spent the next year and a half building and designing my own prosthetic. When I was finished, I went back to each of those doctors and manufacturers and showed them in a nonfriendly manner that they had been wrong.

  So, this outburst of anger and insubordination from Maris was nothing new.

  I understood her completely.

  And it didn’t make a bit of difference.

  It was my engine, this was my workstation, and she had violated my space without compunction.

  “Very well, you say that you can put my things back where they belong because you remember where they go? Get your useless materials away from my station and put my workbench back the way it was. You have until I’ve completed my checks of the engine to finish.”

  I walked away from her, on making sure I ran my engine checks as quickly and thoroughly as possible. At least my anger had burned through some of the haze from lack of sleep.

  “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that,” I heard her say from behind me. She jogged to catch up, then stood in front of me, holding that piece of junk. “Will you stop for just a moment and let me show you this?”

  “No.” I continued to the central engine computer and began running my checks on the system.

  I heard her curse under her breath, then, with a huff, she slammed the converter down on the desk next to me. “Look at me,” she snapped.

  Caught a bit by surprise by the force in her words, I turned. “What is it?”

  “Look at this converter I’ve been working on.” She picked it up and handed it to me. “Go ahead. It’s not a complete working model because I’ve been forced to work with scraps, but the principle is there. With something like this, we can improve the efficiency of the engine, get better consumption, speed, and less heat. It’ll get us another couple of years out of the engine, as well as another ten to fifteen percent added to our speed.”

  It was a bit crude looking, but the basic premise was there. I turned it over, examining it more closely. A few modifications, and she might be on to something.

  Might.

  “Theory is well and good, but in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re stretched to the limits. We can’t afford for our only engine to be your laboratory.”

  “Are you serious?” she asked, her temper rising. “I’ve been working on this for years, trying to find a way to make Terran space travel safer. I had already proven that it works in small tests. I’m telling you, this will work. Why won’t you give me a chance to show you?”

  “Can you guarantee its viability?” I handed the converter to her and turned back to the computer screen. My digital checks were nearly complete. “Can you guarantee that it will work for longer than a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours? Can you guarantee that it won’t destroy the engine, leaving us stranded in the middle of nowhere with only a few hours of oxygen remaining before we all die?” I continued to monitor the readouts as she fumed next to me.

  “Guarantee? No one can guarantee anything when it comes to innovations, not completely. There’s always a chance that something will go wrong, but I’m telling you that these converters will work. I can have four of them built in a matter of hours, then if we install them at…”

  I held up a hand to silence her.

  As she stopped talking, I looked again at the readouts. Something wasn’t right in the digital checks and I was going to have to go into the secondary engine compartment to look into it. According to the checks, one of the decompression lines was working at only fifty-percent capacity, and that meant that the cooling pumps were getting overtaxed.

  Kout.

  “My apologies, Maris. There is a problem that I must deal with and I don’t have time to speak with you about your attempts at playing with my engine. Excuse me.”

  “What the hell did you just say? ‘Playing’ with your engine?”

  I gave her a quick glance and her face was changing color, getting redder in hue. Not really the best look for her.

  “You have got to be shitting me. I’m damn good at what I do and if you would just get off your goddamn pedestal for longer than half a second, you’d see that. I can help you with the issue you have with the decompression line, too” she said.

  She must have looked at the screen.

  “Then, if you let me, I can make four converters to install in the engine which will solve issues like this and allow the cooling units to completely block off our heat signature.”

  The idea sounded good, and I might be honestly interested.

  Someday.

  Right now I just didn’t have the time.

  “No. Now, I have work to do, and if I remember correctly, you do, as well. Aren’t you supposed to be working on replacing the thermostats in section six? Get it done.”

  “Don’t forget to clean up my workstation. I don’t want to see that mess when I get finished,” I called out to her as I walked away.

  I headed for the secondary engine compartment, two levels below us.

  Her idea wasn’t a bad one, but it just wouldn’t work.

  We didn’t have the proper materials on board to make the converters she recommended, and the fact that she couldn’t guarantee their effectiveness was enough reason to say no.

  She just needed to do the work that was assigned to her and let me do the work that I needed to do.

  If she wanted to work on an engine on her own, then maybe she needed to get off this ship. This engine was mine.

  That fact was plain and simple.

  And non-negotiable.

  Maris

  “What an absolute idiot!” I exclaimed for the fourth time since I’d returned to the room I shared with Aryn roughly two minutes ago.

  We were two of the lucky ones. Our room had a tiny porthole that looked out into the vast expanse of space. Aryn liked to pile whatever she could find into a precarious stack, so she could sit with her face right up near the window.

  Wit
h a long sigh, she looked away from the window and stared at me. “You’re either going to have to tell me who you’re talking about or stuff a sock in it,” she said.

  “Orrin,” I groaned. “He came into the workshop while I was tinkering,” I explained. “I thought it was the perfect time to show him my ideas for that converter I used to work on in my spare time on Persephone Station. Remember?”

  “How could I forget? You were obsessed with that hunk of steel,” Aryn replied.

  “They’ve got metal better than steel on this ship! Metal that’s perfect for the converter.” I spoke faster. A stranger wouldn’t understand a word I said, but Aryn was used to it. I got excited when I talked about work.

  “Orrin didn’t want to try it,” Aryn guessed.

  “No, he didn’t!” I exclaimed. “But now would be the perfect time! I could build it in a day, and we need every advantage we can get. I’ve already got the plans outlined. I just need materials.”

  I could see the system in my mind, exactly where the pieces needed to go, what we’d need to rearrange.

  It was all so clear.

  Why couldn’t he see it?

  “Why would he say no if you’ve got everything worked out?” Aryn asked.

  “It’s too experimental,” I said with disgust. “We’re drifting slower than I could walk in an effort to save fuel. Wouldn’t a reasonable person want to try something that could help us make the most of the fuel we have left?”

  “Have you talked to anyone else about it?” Aryn asked. I stopped pacing.

  “No, I haven’t.” A brilliant idea struck me. “I’ll go to Captain Dejar. He’ll want to know that I thought of a way to conserve fuel.”

  “Will he listen to you over Orrin, though?” Aryn pointed out.

  “I doubt it,” I sighed. I started pacing again, more slowly and with less vigor than before. If this was like a problem down in Engineering, I’d work backwards, see what steps needed to happen first. “I could go to Commander Kalyn,” I started. “and get her to talk to Captain Dejar on my behalf. He’ll do anything she wants. She’s got him by the balls.”

  “Does he even have them?” Aryn cocked her head to the side.

  “What?” I sputtered, knocked out of my head by the question.

  “Balls. Do Shein have them?”

  I sputtered with laughter, trying to come up with an answer. “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “I don’t know,” Aryn shrugged. “But Dejar’s got something that Kalyn likes and Shenna’s moony over Aavat. Whatever Shein males have, it must be good.”

  A lot of women from the Terran System shied away from the subject of men. Now that the human male birth rate had dropped to nearly zero, men were essentially mythical creatures. The thought of coming into contact with one through a breeding contract rendered most women speechless. Some were incapacitated by the thrill of it. Others balked in fear.

  Aryn and I took a different approach. We turned our species’ business-like way of creating future generations as a joke. Laughing at men and breeding contracts made them less intimidating. Not that we would have to worry about that again. From the look of it, we were never going back to the Terran System.

  Who would’ve thought being pursued by the Dominion would’ve had such a great upside?

  I wasn’t too crazy about the attempted kidnapping, though.

  “Great,” I sighed, shoving my hands in my pockets. “Now I’m going to walk into the office thinking about what Shein males have in their pants.”

  “You’re welcome!” Aryn called after me as I strode out of the room.

  Commander Kalyn wasn’t in the office, but in the dining hall having a late lunch.

  For once, she was alone.

  A perfect opportunity.

  “Hi, Commander.” I stopped in front of her table.

  She looked up at me with a friendly, if slightly surprised, smile. “Maris, good to see you! You know you don’t have to call me Commander, right? It’s not like we’re exactly part of the Space Force anymore,” she laughed, gesturing to the empty chair across from her, which I took.

  “I know,” I replied. “Old habits and all.”

  “Did you come for a chat or do you need something?”

  “I wanted to chat with you about something I need,” I grinned, crossing my fingers under the table. “Well, that we all need.”

  “What’s that?” she tilted her head, waiting.

  “I found a way to increase fuel efficiency,” I explained. “But Orrin isn’t willing to let me install it.”

  “I’m sure he has his reasons,” Kalyn replied.

  “He’s scared,” I scoffed, chest tightening just a bit. This would be my only chance. Surely, I could make her see the possibilities. “He doesn’t want to take any risks. Though, if you ask me, trying to make our fuel supply stretch to the space station is really a bigger risk in the long term.” Her mouth tightened, and I knew she was worried too. “What I’ve come up with allows the ship to travel at greater speeds and use less fuel without increasing the heat we give off.”

  “That sounds amazing!” Kalyn gasped. “We wouldn’t have to worry about managing supplies so carefully. We could get the girls from the auction house on their way to a new life quicker. It sounds like it’ll solve all our problems.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.” So, maybe I didn’t mention that it was experimental tech that I’d only tested in theory, but she didn’t need to know that. Not exactly.

  I was sure the converter would work. I’d make it work.

  “Does Dejar know about this?” she asked.

  “I haven’t told anyone about it except for you and Orrin.”

  Well, and Aryn. But she didn’t count, not in the way Kalyn was thinking.

  “Let’s go tell Dejar. I’m sure he’ll let you install it if it helps us as much as you say it does,” Kalyn said enthusiastically.

  She dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin like a proper lady. Most of the time, I forgot that she was the daughter of one of the most powerful women on Mars. Then she did things like that, and I remembered she came from a more rarified life.

  I used to hate her for it but over the past few weeks, she’d proven that she was nothing like her mother. She cared about us, all of us. Even if I’d been a bitch to her.

  Maybe those kinds of assumptions were another old habit I should break.

  Dejar sat at his desk frowning over a small stack of papers. If I had to guess, I’d say he was staring at our dwindling supply list. Aavat stood with his back to me, looking at a massive three-dimensional map of Dominion space, watching the progress of the Rogue Star.

  “Maris thinks she can solve our problems.” Kalyn folded her arms across her chest and gave Dejar a knowing smile.

  “Is that so?” Dejar said without looking up.

  “She’s proposed a kind of converter for the ship that could increase fuel efficiency without giving off extra heat,” Kalyn explained.

  “The Rogue Star already has one,” Aavat said over his shoulder.

  “It could use an upgrade,” I jumped in. “It does its job well enough, but it could be so much better.”

  “How so?” Now Dejar lifted his head to look at me.

  “The metal used throughout the ship is superior to Terran steel in almost every way, but the Terran heating process gets more out of metal than whatever process you’re currently using,” I began. “If I use your metal, but heat it my way, I can create an engine modification that amplifies energy bursts by exposing the reactions happening within the engine to a greater heat threshold.”

  “I thought the idea was to decrease heat?” Dejar lifted a brow.

  “That’s the second part of the enhancements I’d make,” I carried on, hoping they’d follow along, that I’d prepared well enough to convince them. “I’ve been experimenting with scraps in the workshop. I’ve come up with an alloy that I can coat the metal with. It absorbs heat and cools it.”

  “Not a bad idea,”
Dejar nodded. “It would solve many of our problems until we can get to the space station. And it works?”

  “Absolutely.” I forced a smile.

  Theoretically, it worked perfectly. If my upgrades didn’t work, the risk would be minimal. The ship wouldn’t be worse off than it already was.

  Probably.

  “Aavat, call up Orrin, let’s see what he says,” Dejar ordered. Aavat tore himself away from the map and spoke rapidly into the intercom.

  “Are you going to let me fix up the engines?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Dejar scrubbed at his temples. “If it’ll help us get to the space station faster, I’ll try just about anything.”

  “Thank you!” I beamed. “You won’t be disappointed. Neither will Orrin.”

  And neither would I, when I could finally show him that I knew what I was doing.

  Aavat returned with Orrin. Orrin looked at me with a confused expression then looked to Dejar.

  I held my breath. This was where it could all go terribly, terribly wrong.

  “Maris believes her enhancements will make everything easier on us,” Dejar explained. “I’ve given her my approval to carry them out.”

  Orrin stole a glance at me, and I could tell he was annoyed. I’d had lots of practice, learning that particular expression.

  I didn’t bother hiding my smug smile. I was going to lord this over him for days, but a teeny, tiny part of me might have felt badly. Just a bit.

  “On the condition that you, Orrin, supervise her work.”

  My smile dropped off my face in an instant. Shit.

  Orrin

  “Are you sure you want to put that coupling there? It would be more efficient if you ran it through the damper instead of around it,” I grumbled two mornings later.

  Her converter was coming along, and this time, with the right parts to work with, she was taking her time to make sure it was built properly.

  With another huff, she put her tools down and turned to look at me. “Do you want to build this without any clue as to what I’m trying to do?” she snapped at me.

  “I have a clue as to what you’re trying to do, that’s why I’m saying that the coupling should go through the damper instead of around it,” I shot back. This entire project was a waste of time. Waste of resources.