Starfall (BOOK 1)

Chapter 17

MARA

Machinery fell into a rhythm, and ships sang and purred. Tunie's track played her own sense of flow as she did maintenance on extra edevic weaponry she found in the storage hold under the arena. Mara drew her cleaning brush through one of the energizer cartridges, freeing it off excess release dust before switching her attention to putting every piece back together. "Tunie, switch to track five," Mara said as she opened her toolbox, taking out her divider to work on the next weapon. As she detached the cartridge, she lifted her head at the sound of soft strings then her beating drums of her preferred track for maintenance. "Tunie, switch to track five."

Tunie hesitated, and then continued playing the same soft waves of music. Mara sighed and folded her arms. Someone's been messing with the tracks again... Unable to concentrate with the tingling strings, she swiped her hand over her personal workboard to write down everything she managed to get done while Captain James and the others were on their mission. "Track Six?"

Nyra's hard Kestran metal rocked through her eardrums and shook the walls of her workshop. "Track Seven?" she yelled over the hard chords.

It went quiet into a slow piano roll. Mara huffed and continued to write down on the workboard to move onto her next projects. Let's see... Engine room maintenance and a check of our hyperchrono accelerator — been giving us some issues recently.

In the corner of her organized chaos, a red alarm beeped for a docking sequence from the control room. I guess they're back. Out of her chair with a stretch, she headed out of her workshop with Tunie squeaking and rolling to follow her. Meryn and James' scouts landed into the bay with ease, but she frowned when Keren and Nyra hopped out of Captain James' scout ship instead, while Meryn crawled out of his own, hauling out another unfamiliar shape onto the wing while James heaved himself out of the other side.

Mara headed straight to Meryn's ship to check for any marred surfaces due to its careless pilot, but hesitated as Meryn hopped down with the unconscious shape. "I really would've preferred if we didn't knock Rayan out, James," he called back as Captain James stared down at him, arms folded.

"He'll wake up in a few minutes," Captain James pointed out as Meryn adjusted with the black-haired man leaning on him. "Take him to Aelius. He said he wanted to check on him. I'll be there once I've discussed something with Evelyn." He hopped off the other wing before rushing up onto the catwalk and heading into the bridge corridor.

"Right... but he's your 'luggage' as you so eloquently called him." Meryn sighed, then eyed her. "Can your usual tirade wait until after, Mara? I have to take this guy to the Infirmary."

Mara opened her mouth to bite back, but she stopped herself. "Fine. Just this once, Meryn, but I'm going to check on your ship later." As Meryn nodded and dragged the man named Rayan away, she turned to Keren and Nyra, who joined her. "So, what happened down there?"

"You know, the usual — explosions, chases, fights..." Keren listed and then smiled at Tunie. "Ah, you've decided to listen to gentle music instead of whatever amalgamation of instruments you play in your workshop."

"Oh, so that's the track you set up." Mara pursed her lips. "Are you also the one who set up a track with only instrumentals and no vocals?"

"You've asked me this, and I swear I'm not the cause of the mystery music," Keren said and drew his hands up, while Nyra giggled beside him. "Hey, at least I don't listen to 'shake the entire ship with it'." He switched his attention to Nyra.

"What? Gets the heart pumping, doesn't it?" Nyra mused.

"If that's how you want to describe it." Keren shook his head. "Before you ask, I swear I didn't get a scratch on Captain James' ship."