“What’s that?” she challenged.
“I want to see how long you can stay mad at your circumstances. And Alice.”
“I’ve been known to be slightly hardheaded,” Dawn warned him.
“Then this will pass the time,” Miller smirked, “Alice, show us what we’ve been missing.”
The dark screen before them lightened to transparency. The SkyLine swirled around the edge of the glass. The vortex of teal and azure unfolded before them as an infinite tunnel into the black. Dawn almost fell straight backward at the explosion of color. Once her eyes adjusted, she nearly lunged forward. The call of the abyss was strong in the center of the stardust cyclone. Dawn squeezed her arm to keep from giving Miller the satisfaction.
“We’ll see,” she said. Dawn stayed, wide-eyed, right where she was.
Chapter Six: Shooting Stars
Dawn sprawled as wide as she could across her oversized bed. Even with the tips of her fingers stretched to the point of discomfort, she couldn’t span it. She rolled this way and that, to forcibly rock herself back to sleep. When that failed, she tried staring at the ceiling. She would try anything at this point, to keep her eyes from the clock in her wall. Her record stretch, since she stirred, was six minutes without looking. The greatest ambition she could focus on at 4 AM was to beat six minutes.
“Damn,” she muttered when she finally caved. The clock ticked a quiet laugh at Dawn’s pitiful four-minute resistance. She marveled at the idea of time, and how much sway it held over her life. Even without the conventions of sunrise and sunset that defined its importance, it tormented her. She sat up. If sleep wouldn’t be her company, she figured a good wander would do just fine.
Dawn paced to the far side of her cabin, by the door. The whole place was about the size of her apartment in Shanghai. Dawn couldn’t decide if it seemed smaller for knowing she was inside a ship, or larger for the vastness of the abyss outside her porthole window. Dawn meandered across the horizontal slatted walls of glossy wood. The cool breeze of the Arcadia’s acclimation systems blew up the space between her bare knees under her nightgown. A shiver of excitement pulsed through her, and woke her up a bit. She rubbed her palms down over her hardened nipples to soften them before she reached the window. The tap of a finger lightened its tint, just like Miller had done on the bridge. The SkyLine roared by on the other side of the ovular glass. Dawn thumped her forehead against the screen to watch it.
The SkyLine’s aurora emanated through her gown. Had anyone been in the room to enjoy it, they would have seen Dawn’s silhouette in the oceanic neon. There was strength in her curves, but tenderness too. There was both firmness and dimples on the ridge of her behind. Her breasts bulbed out from the faint top row of her abs. After so many hours spent at the gym, she could strangle as easily as embrace. At the moment, Dawn wasn’t sure which she was more in the mood for.
Then the Arcadia’s conditioned breeze curled up her legs again. It danced across her thighs like the graze of invisible fingers. When Dawn pushed the fabric of her gown down between her legs, she found herself more excited than she wanted to be. Damn ship! Dawn cursed in her mind, though part of her knew it was just part of its regulating system. She knew she could have worn underwear. She knew she could have taken one of a hundred invites to the bar with friends from the academy, to partner up and relieve her tension. She’d made countless decisions that added up to this sexual tension, but the Arcadia playing on it? That decided for her - strangle. She tapped the porthole window to turn it black again. Dawn pulled on her athletic pants, zipped up her training jacket, and headed for the gym.
“There… anything I need to worry about?” Miller laughed. His upside-down face peeked over the barbell in Dawn’s trembling grasp. She let it down slow. She closed her eyes to focus on the tear of fibers across her torso. Miller reached down to help her, which is exactly what she hoped he would do. The second the bar touched her chest, Dawn pumped it straight up into the air over her. Miller twitched back in surprise.
“Not unless you interrupt my workout,” she smirked.
“Mutiny before five,” Miller sighed, shaking his head. Dawn finished her set, and set the bar down on the rack over her.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Dawn admitted, after a few heaves to steady her shaking arms. She stared into her thighs while Miller lingered, “Does this... happen a lot?”
“In the beginning. First few trips. Some people never grow out of it. Having no night and day… it’s different,” Miller told her, his tone as introspective as Dawn’s. “Looks like you’ve got a solid outlet, but you might want to pick up one or two more.” Dawn’s instinct was to put on a show, but this was least sarcastic she’d seen Miller yet.
“Yeah?” she took the chance for wisdom, judgment-free.
“It’s five days to Neptune, one-way. We’re stopping at Saturn, too. We’re talking close to two weeks you’ll have nothing to do but wander the Arcadia. Even when we’re anchored, you’re not going to want to wander too far. You’ve heard stories about the outerworlds, I’ll wager,” said Miller. Dawn nodded, and stood for the Captain to use the bench. He laughed at the offer and snapped off a magnetic plate from each side of the barbell. Miller replaced them with smaller, lighter plates.
“Too much for you, Cap’n?” Dawn teased.
“I’m not twenty-five anymore,” Miller chuckled. He started his set while a tale unfolded from his d
ry lips. “But I was, when I was an Admiral on the outworlds… I lost six men because I was too loose.” He gritted his teeth, whether under the weight of the barbell or the story Dawn wasn’t sure.
“How?”
“We were stranded a day or two on Neptune after a mission, without fuel. I sent eight men down to the surface to buy some. Two came back,” Miller told her. He plopped the barbell down and hoisted himself upright in one movement. He hardly stayed that way. The longer the story went on, the further his stature deflated. “The fuel station was on the edge of a terradome, just outside the dock. The two that made it back… they told me they’d been jumped. Slush-dredgers gone bad. They threw six of my men outside the edge of the terradome. It was easier than fighting with them… can you imagine what happens to a human body, unprotected, on the surface of Neptune?”
“I-I can’t,” Dawn admitted.
“Those two survivors walked me to where it happened, so we could… make an impression for the WCC. Needed fuel, anyway. I’ll never forget what their bodies looked like. They were hardly bodies anymore,” Miller’s eyes sunk lower with each word. “I gunned the dredgers down myself. When it was all said and done, there were twelve less people on the outerworlds, six of them my friends. The worst part of it, though… was what the dredgers were doing when we found them. I wondered why a bunch of dredgers needed so much Chrysum, when all they do is fish for it all day. They… were smoking it.”
“I didn’t know you can smoke fusion minerals,” Dawn mumbled, unsure what else to say.
“Neither did I, until I saw it myself. They massacred my friends… so they could get high. And I killed them. That’s law in the outerworlds.” said Miller. Then, like the flip of a switch, his face morphed to its usual cheer, spiked with a bitter hint. “So… no wandering off the ship too much, alright?”
“A-alright,” Dawn stammered. Miller slapped a hand to each knee to push himself up. He left the bench for his Admiral again.
“One more piece of advice. I know you’re still reeling about not flying on your first mission as a pilot. No one can blame you for that. But… try to lighten up on Alice,” said Miller. He waited until Dawn’s mouth popped open to assert, “The quickest way to make this trip a living hell is to take out your frustrations on those who try to help you. There’s no shortage of people with knives for your back where we’re going. Take friends where you can make them.” Dawn’s lips tensed, then relaxed with a slow breath of restraint.