Chapter 2

“Uh, I don’t see anyone with a camera, ‘Lach. You sure it was a camera flash?” John scratched his head and Turlach swiveled around, a perfect mimic of the sinister office chair turn. How did he do that?

“What else would it be?” Turlach asked. He narrowed his eyes at John. “You’re pulling my leg.”

“Honest, I don’t think anyone’s been using a camera. You’d have heard the thing.” John frowned as Turlach’s face went from an annoyed pinch to a deep furrow.

Turlach faced the monitors again and his fingers clattered rapid fire against the smooth surface. For amoment, John watched his crewman with absolute confusion. When he looked up at the screens, reams of data flew by almost too fast for John to get a handle on. A couple of code lines he recognized whizzed byand his eyebrows rose of their own volition. “Diagnostics?”

“Well, yeah, John,” Turlach sounded reasonable as he responded, but there was a high note at the end that told him his feisty friend was exasperated. “I didn’t dream up that flash of light, you numpty.”

There was a courtesy he had to do, so John left Turlach to it. The Kibo module was pretty spacious, all things considered, and he was happy to enter it. At first, neither his second in command and mechanical expert, Jason Weiss, and his biologist Eli Palamo, noticed he was with them. That was quite all right. He loved to watch them work.

Eli was Samoan by birth, and except for his size, he showed it. The traditional wrist tattoos contrasted beautifully against Eli’s rosy-brown skin. The biologist wasn’t near as dark as John’s deep brown, but they both had that thick black hair, almost shaved to the skin. It was better that way. He’d hate to have to deal with locks or a fro in zero gravity, unlike Yakecen’s long oxblood braid that slapped against everything.

But the other man, Jason, he was a work of art. Moon pale and sandy blond, with the most striking moss green eyes, he was of the personal opinion that his second was the pinnacle of male perfection. Maybe John was biased, but he’d own that in a heartbeat, especially when Jason looked up, eyes wide with surprise. The smile Jason gave him made his heart leap.

“John, what’s up?” That California surfer accent in a deep alto didn’t help either. Jason fluttereda hand in an arc. “Space to John, come in John.”

The smitten grin settled on his face like an old friend. It had been that way forever, it seemed, since that first day they met at Candidate Orientation. “I just wanted to let you guys know, there was a hiccup with our signal and we’ve lost contact with the ground again. Turlach will have it sorted out soon.”

Eli’s attention shifted from the tablet in his hand to John. When his nose wrinkled in distaste, John’s grin widened to painful levels. Somehow, that usually happy, round face looked ridiculously adorable when Eli expressed any type of annoyance.

“Shit, really? I needed to update the biology department on the microbials in these soil samples.” Eli pointed a finger at John’s face, as if it would help. “It has to be done at the same time, every day. And don’t give me that ‘well, just write it down’ nonsense. That’s not how I do things up here.”

John held up his hands in surrender. He wasn’t a scientist, he was a pilot and glorified repairman, andhe would never presume to tell Eli how to run or document his experiments. There was nothing he could do about the loss of contact though. “How long until you need to report your current numbers?”

Eli glanced at his tablet and started to mouth words to himself. John shared another smile with Jason while he waited for Eli to figure out his timetable. He had nowhere else to be, and time with Jason was always welcome.

Jason waved him over when John locked eyes with him. His second was up to his elbows in the stringy guts of the module; John saw that at a glance. It was some deeper bit of work, a reroute of power if he remembered Jason’s duty assignment right.

“How’s it going?” John took a moment to examine the exposed wires in the wall, interested. Just because he didn’t understand the technical aspects of Jason’s assignment didn’t mean he wanted to stay ignorant of the job. Specializations were good, but John thought they should go back to all the crew knowing everyone’s job. “What are you up to, this time?”

“I’m transferring power cables from the outdated batteries, so the Station is only on solar power.” Jason chased a purple wire with his fingertip until it disappeared behind the old panels.