Queen & Commander (Book One of the Hive Queen Saga)

Chapter Fourteen: Unorthodox or Illegal?

A/N: The complete ebook of this story is on sale for 99cents (similar international pricing) from April 15 - May 15, 2014 at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, iBooks, and Smashwords.

A week into the trip, Luciano thought he was defending himself well in the pilot house. He’d not caused any further gravity stalls. He’d learned what a space pilot needed to know... so long as everything remained routine.

If something bizarre did happen, the pilot on scene would just have to check the Manual Pilot Manual. Luciano wouldn’t know any better than it would, and he was pretty sure it lived in the pilot house purely to assist with dangerous emergencies.

As usual, he avoided the unpadded pilot chair, intended for a man taller than he. Its supports were in all the wrong places, perfect for digging into muscle and bone. In frustration, he measured the whole two steps across the confined space and pinged Ceridwen’s room. She was probably still holed up there.

God forbid she join her Hive or check in on the pilot whom she’d promised to relieve as soon as possible.

Her face filled his screen. For all that her hair had frizzed and her skin wore a sheen of sweat, his heart expanded under her gaze until it filled up his chest and pushed his lungs to the side, making it hard to breathe. Her normally piercing gaze seemed unfocused. He had to do something that would make her concentrate on him.

“Hey, Luciano.” Her eyes drooped at the sides. “I’m a bit busy right now.”

What exactly did she think was more important than keeping her promises to him? Couldn’t she read while on piloting duty? She’d sworn that she’d come up and let him teach her the pilot’s liturgy, that she’d send him down to Medical as soon as they were safely underway.

Well, her working hours had come, and it was time to tell her that. “Why don’t you come up to the pilot house for a lesson today, my lady?” He used the title like a lever, to remind her of her duties.

It didn’t work. She sighed a sweet breath that he couldn’t smell, trapped as he was in an olfactory cocoon that reflected his own sweat and exhalations. “I really need to get up to speed on all this material about ship owning and cargo runs and explorations. But I’ll come by tomorrow, all right?”

Don’t worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will be anxious for itself.

He tried to keep the accusation out of his voice when he said, “That’s what you told me yesterday.”

She dramatically raised one hand into the frame, leaning her head against its fingertips. The pose distorted her countenance into long-suffering contempt. “Look. This stuff is important, okay? And there’s a lot of it. I just need some time. If I make it to you tomorrow, that’s great. If I don’t, I’ll get there when I can.” She straightened and took her hand back out of the frame, as if she could turn the teasing smile on and the contempt off. “Of course, this’ll go faster if no one keeps calling me to interrupt, right?”

She definitely wasn’t coming up to learn and relieve him today, then. Didn’t she realize that no one knew how to keep an eye on things while he slept?

He grumbled, “Right,” and ended the call. He supposed he should’ve waited for her to do it. She was Queen, after all. But if he’d had to look at her for one more moment, his heart would have withered and his lungs would have dried up, and where would that have put the ship? It’d put the Cauldron without a pilot, that’s where.

Fuck! He slammed a hand against the wall next to the built-in screen, popping open a panel in the process. Double-fuck! There were no spare things to throw in the efficient pilot house, no space to pace, no compatriots to yell with.