19. Chapter 19

Chapter nineteen

G arrett stared into the climate modeler and watched his latest simulation come to life. The S-series machines had a slower computing power than the later models, which meant that his simulations took longer to create and to load, but it had the best visuals package of any of them. Watching the weather unfold in the heart of the machine was like being on the planet itself. Garrett adjusted the imaging equipment on his head, then connected to it with his implant to move his point of view deeper into the oncoming storm.

This particular simulation was investigating the probability of wintertime tsunamis and how they might affect Pandora's single, solitary outpost. The Neptune would arrive on the planet's main continent during its summer season and would have about eight standard months of building time before the worst of the weather hit and working outside became untenable.

Not that summer was a hell of a lot warmer than winter, but the storms were milder, and there was even a brief growing season that they'd have to take ruthless advantage of if they were going to become self-sustaining in five years, which was the Pandora Project's current goal. Originally it had been three years, but Doctor Sims' biologists and botanists had stated in firm unison that such a thing was impossible, and eventually they'd managed to convince their supervisor of that as well. Which didn't mean that there hadn't been plenty of fights over it, but nothing was ever easy with Martina Sims.

Garrett moved his view to the walls of the outpost and gazed out over the dark, storming ocean. On a planet beset on a yearly basis with hurricanes, tidal waves, and floods, the founding colonists of Pandora had chosen to put their only settlement right next to the damn sea. Yeah, growing seasons and subtropical jet streams and blah blah blah, but from an efficiency perspective, it was ridiculous.

For six months of solid and impassable winter, the settlement—officially called Pandora City but commonly referred to as the Box—was completely shut in. No building took place except for repairs, no one went outside except in dire circumstances. Over the few centuries of low-level colonization that had already occurred, almost all the deaths that weren't attributed to old age, illness, or murder happened when someone found a reason to go out into the fury that was winter outside the Box.

And here it came, like clockwork, the first great tidal wave of the winter season—not always the worst but terribly shocking for all that. Garrett watched from his virtual vantage point on top of the wall, watched the water melt away from the coastline as ever-shifting tectonic plates battled for supremacy miles below the surface of the water. He sped the simulation up and saw water slide with terrible speed, away over the rocky beach and out, out into the horizon, then come crashing back with a growing force, higher and taller than anything nature made that he'd ever seen before. The front edge of the water boiled with energy, and it crossed the ground between the coast and the Box in moments, a dark-purple wave with its edges foaming a sickly, rabid white.

Garrett could almost feel the foundations of the sturdy settlement shudder beneath his feet as the wave rose up and then crashed over them, flooding his vision with blackness and covering the Box with water. The Box could take it, obviously; it had for many years, and with the environmental shields up, the water just sheeted over them, but it was nevertheless shocking to be plunged into such a deep darkness and surrounded by so much total, sepulchral silence.

"—arrett. Garrett !" A hard hand smacked him sharply on the shoulder. "Are you listening to me?"

It took a moment, but Garrett finally pulled himself out of the simulation and removed the imaging helmet from his head. He felt strange, shaky and a little ill. His supervisor, naturally, ignored that. Martina's pretty face glared at him, her mouth twisted into a frown. "I've been calling your name for the last two minutes."

"I was working," he said slowly, putting himself back together after it felt like everything had been washed away.

"No, what you should have been doing was working. What you were doing was watching your cute little climate simulations and wasting my time. And why didn't you tell me that you have a first aid class scheduled today?" She pointed at the hard copy of his work schedule that she had fisted in one hand. "You're supposed to participate in all expedition-required educational classes on your days off."

Garrett shrugged insouciantly, getting into the flow of fighting with Martina. "I scheduled it for an off day, but then the class was cancelled. I didn't choose when it was rescheduled, and—oh, look here." He checked the schedule she was brandishing in his face. "It says here that it's the last standard first aid class being offered before we make Pandora. Looks like my attendance is nonnegotiable."

"You shouldn't have waited until the last minute," she fumed. "There's too much work to be done for you to go swanning off and leaving a dozen projects just sitting—"

"It's one afternoon," Garrett pointed out. "One tiny little afternoon. A blip on the radar of life."

Martina put her hands on her hips. "Every moment counts."

"Look—"

"No!" she said stridently, her voice rising with agitation. "Every moment counts, Garrett! And when those moments are supposed to be spent working for the greater scientific advancement of the expedition, I expect them to take place here, in the lab. Your professional time is mine, and I don't like to share it. Plan better in the future."

She turned and stalked off down the lab, leaving a wake of startled glances passing between her and Garrett. They didn't often have confrontations, mostly because Garrett gave as good as he got, so watching anything happen between them that went beyond monosyllables was a surprise.

Garrett shrugged it off. He'd almost forgotten the first aid class. Again. Now he definitely had no choice, though. He turned off the climate modeler and set the imaging helmet back on its stand, then stood up and stretched, rubbing lightly at his lower back.

"Oh, please," Shekar said from where he sat a few tables away. "Don't even pretend that your highly ergonomic lounge chair makes your back hurt."

"You know, jealousy is an unattractive emotion," he advised his friend.

"It's not jealousy!"

"Envy, then." Garrett grinned. "Avarice. Greed. Covetousness."

"Covet what?" Shekar shook his head. "That isn't even a word."

"It is, my friend, and it applies to you." Garrett patted him on the shoulder. "But don't worry, I forgive you."

"Thanks," Shekar said dryly.

"My pleasure."

"Speaking of off hours, it's my turn to cook tonight," Shekar said, looking between Garrett and Lila. "Are we doing dinner?" They'd taken to cooking for each other one night a week, and of the three of them, Shekar was by far the best cook.

"I should be done learning to amputate limbs with my teeth by then," Garrett agreed. "Lila?"

"Oh, I can't," she said apologetically, her cheeks flushing slightly. "I, um, I have a date."

"A date?" Shekar asked, his face falling. "Really?"

"Yes, and it's the only night he could get off this week, otherwise I wouldn't have scheduled it during our dinner," she told him. "I'm sorry."

"Like an actual date with a person?" Shekar persisted. "In person?"

"Yes."

"Who is it?"

"He's a teacher."

"What, like a children's teacher?"

"Yes."

"But you're a scientist," Shekar said, looking totally confused. "What do a geologist and a children's teacher have to talk about?"

Lila rolled her eyes. "What do a geologist and a mathematician have to talk about?"

"Lots of things! Soil mechanics, geotechnical engineering, the calculations for the core sampling equipment … we have plenty to talk about, we work together!"

"Exactly," Lila said shortly. "And I'm tired of talking about work." She turned her eyes resolutely back to her own equipment.

"Fine."

"Good."

"Fine."

"You already said that."

"Yeah, well, I meant it," Shekar snapped. "And actually, this is all for the best because there are plenty of things I need to catch up on, and I think tonight's the night. Garrett"—he turned back to their bemused audience—"sorry to disappoint you, but my cooking will not be on the menu this evening. I have things to do."

"What kind of things?" he asked mildly.

"Just … things. Important things. I have to go talk to Doctor Sims." Shekar stood and took off down the lab, his tatty white coat fluttering behind him. Lila looked after him and sighed.

"That went well. Not ."

"He'll get over it," Garrett said quietly.

"He'll have to." She looked down again, and Garrett put a hand on her shoulder, then left the lab and made his way to the infirmary.

"Doctor Caractacus!" The perky nurse at the front desk grinned when she saw him. "Great to see you! The class is almost ready to start; they were just waiting on you, so go right on in."

"Thank you." He walked into the room she indicated and found himself the subject of numerous stares from no one he recognized. The medical technician at the front of the class, a burly older man, frowned and pointed at a seat. Garrett sat.

"Let's get started." He stood behind a table covered with numerous bulky medical devices. "First off, before we get going with the hands-on stuff, I want to explain a few things to you. I assume everyone here knows that you can't put a natural in a Regen tank, give them injections of Regen, or use any equipment on them that relies on Regen." He waited for his students to nod en masse.

"That being said, there are a lot of devices that you can safely use on a natural, and I'm going to show you how to work them. There's a medical locker in every wing of every floor of this ship, and each of these lockers is stocked with everything you're going to see today. Some of these will be unfamiliar to you, so pay attention while I go over how to use them.

"This," he said as he held up a boxy thing with electrical pads attached to it, "is a defibrillator. It jumpstarts a person's heart by charging it with an electrical current. You turn the machine on, stick these pads on the person's bare chest, and when it zaps, you let it do its thing. If it tells you that you screwed up, you rearrange the pads and try again. Red light means don't touch, because there's current running through it. Green light means you can touch." He dropped it back onto the table, then moved on to the next device. "This …"

The session stretched into five long, droning hours of boredom. As far as Garrett could tell, it mostly boiled down to, "Apply pressure and call for help," if it was bleeding, and, "Do CPR and call for help," if someone wasn't breathing or had no heartbeat. The devices were good if they were there, but mostly, caring for a natural was too complicated for a layman. They all had to memorize the number for emergency services on the ship, practice setting limbs, caring for burns, doing chest compressions, and a lot of other things that Garrett remembered having to learn as a child but never using.

By the end of the five hours, he was tapping his foot on the floor and struggling not to drum his fingers. Fuck it, he needed out of there. He needed to be doing something. Or someone.

Less than two weeks away from Pandora, and he hadn't been laid since the night before they left Olympus. It was pitiful. So what if Jonah had been amazing? Garrett had slept with plenty of amazing people. Jonah wasn't his first drifter either; he'd carried on a very satisfying affair for several months with the head of a drifter clan while he traveled with his father, helping him juggle being a senator and an active Alliance general.

That had been right after Garrett and Robbie had called it quits … three years of the good, the bad, and the ugly, and Garrett treasured every minute he'd had of the longest relationship in his life to date even if sometimes Robbie had frustrated him to the point of losing his temper. He hadn't spoken to Robbie, or Wyl, for almost a week now … too long.

The class was abruptly ended, and Garrett leapt for the escape route, more than ready to kiss the infirmary goodbye. He didn't need to get his brain chemistry checked today, he was done with the damn class, he didn't need a shot of Regen …

"But I don't like shots," a small, familiar voice whimpered pitifully from behind a curtain.

"Gotta have it anyway, bucko," another, equally familiar voice replied.

Bu no. It couldn't be. It just couldn't.

"It will only take a second," the female doctor's voice said soothingly. "Then you'll be all done."

"But it hurts."

"It didn't hurt your friend last time, did it?"

"No …"

"His friend?" the man's voice—not that man's voice, oh no—asked under his breath.

"Doctor Caractacus. He and Cody met the last time Cody was in to get a shot, and they ended up getting theirs together."

"Daddy …"

"C'mere, bucko." Garrett heard a creak and a shift as the weight on the infirmary cot changed. "Just relax, okay? I've got you. You're gonna be fine."

"You'll just feel a little pinch," the doctor promised. There was a small whine a moment later, then the noise of a Band-Aid being unwrapped and the softer, muffled smack of a kiss. Garrett intimately knew all of the sounds two bodies made when they connected, and this was a reassuring, gentle kiss, probably the father's lips to his son's head. A moment later, the doctor pulled back the curtain, and Garrett saw what he had been sure he wouldn't see.

His one-night stand, Jonah, sitting on a cot with Cody in his lap, both of them admiring the Space Ranger Band-Aid that decorated his son's arm. The doctor saw Garrett first.

"Doctor Caractacus! Cody, look, it's your friend from before."

The two men's eyes met, and Garrett would have been hard-pressed to say which of them was more shocked. Jonah looked a little less put together than the last time Garrett had seen him, but anyone would be disheveled with a squirmy five-year-old on their lap. His sandy-brown hair was tied into a ponytail, but several hanks had been pulled free, and there were stress lines clearly visible around his eyes and mouth. He was a little paler than Garrett remembered and clean-shaven now instead of alluringly scruffy, but Garrett's stomach still clenched with sudden want at the sight of him.

"Garrett!" Cody wiggled until his father put him down, and he crossed the few meters between them with a bouncy step, the pain of his shot forgotten. "Daddy came with me this time, and it didn't hurt all that much, and look, I got another Space Ranger Band-Aid! This one is the purple Space Ranger, though, and he isn't my favorite, and last time I got the green one, and I like him better. Remember?"

"This is your friend?" Jonah asked in a slightly strangled tone.

"Yeah, Daddy, he sat with me, and then we got shots. Are you getting one today?"

"Um, no," Garrett said, finally pulling his mind out of the memory gutter. The last thing he needed was to get an involuntary erection in front of a child. "Today I had to come in for a class."

"Like a school class?"

"Exactly like that except more boring," he confessed.

"That doesn't sound like fun."

"Oh, I don't know," Garrett drawled, looking straight at Jonah with slightly hard eyes. "If I hadn't come in for my class, then I wouldn't have gotten to meet your daddy. Something tells me he can be a hard man to find." Not that Garrett had tried to find him—he'd made himself resist—but the man had blown off their morning after, and the almost-inevitable prospect of more intensely hot sex, with no explanation. And now he was here? It was too good an opportunity to pass up.

To his satisfaction, Jonah winced. "Doc, how about you check on Cody's ears while we're in?" he suggested. "Maybe find him a red or green Space Ranger Band-Aid."

"Sure," the doctor said, a little mystified. She took Cody by the hand and led him over toward another partition. Garrett crossed his arms and stared at Jonah, and Jonah stared right back.