Excerpt - Frankie Takes a Holiday, chapter 1
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CHAPTER ONE
Frankie Styles was going to relax.
Leave her poor, banged-up space cargo hauler to the tender care of Eckberg Ship Rebuilding. Get off this repair shop in orbit and down to the bigger moon nearby, Silva. Go directly to Silva’s most gorgeous spot, according to the majority of subscribers to AllWorldsRated. Lay on the beach for a week.
Bliss.
She buckled herself into one of the bank of twelve passenger seats facing each other along the smells-like-new boxy bus orbital shuttle. The straps told the real story. Worn and prickly, the cross-strap snagged on the front of her best blue tunic. The one with the clever stitching that made it drape and swing like dancing.
So much for first impressions. Frankie managed to let that minor frustration go on the wings of a deep sigh. She closed her eyes and let the pilot do their job.
Her gut took note of the jerk and overcompensation on liftoff. Her ears—and her butt—recognized the scrape of the outer hull tripping over the garage-bay threshold on their way out the dock. The unfortunate cracks in the why-so-young pilot’s voice forced her casual grip on the soft edge of her seat cushion into more of a claw.
But all the other passengers were still making the usual murmurs; nobody was hurling or even gasping. It was a quick trip down to Silva, and there was always autopilot.
She should have brought a peppermint candy as distraction.
It would be fine.
Her wristcom vibrated. New message.
Frankie did not open her eyes. She was releasing tension. Good news could be as stressful as bad, and she’d had a full shipment of all manner of news lately.
Her ship, the Spear, the best cargo hauler in the system, was currently in the care of Eckberg Ship Rebuilding, thanks to too much excitement on her last delivery. Somebody had shot at her! She still couldn’t believe it.
She’d lost her main hauling contract earlier that day, and that had felt like the end of the world. But even that was completely overshadowed by the Skolls’ laser cannon gouging the side of her poor, innocent ship. Spear would be out of the flow for a couple weeks, Eckberg’s said.
Then the good news: A new job offer! Doing the same sort of hauling as her lost contract, with added bonuses for “looking into certain matters.” Frankie wasn’t positive what-all those matters would be, but the examples they gave sounded useful and helpful and easily do-able. Hunt for missing shipments. Find out if a painting is in a certain building. Take notes on which ships are at which ports.
Best, Systems Analysis, the forgettable-sounding “philanthropic venture funders,” had agreed to her request for a short contract—six months. If it didn’t work out, she’d walk. But she’d walk with a ship that had upgraded communications and shielding, thanks to the signing bonus. Win-win-win.
Then the strange news: The chonky, disreputable-looking cat who’d stowed aboard the Spear on the last haul wasn’t really a cat at all. Spike was a “field operative,” whatever that was, for Systems Analysis. It was her recommendation that had gotten Frankie her new job.
Spike had also slept on Frankie’s calves on a too-cold, too-dark night or three. Frankie wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Kinda intimate for working colleagues, no? On the other hand, she’d appreciated the warmth.
Plus, she’d just discovered, Spike could talk. The baby-bear-sized not-cat used a simulated voice that growled out of somewhere near her neck. But rarely: Frankie got the idea that Spike didn’t consider her voice-worthy. Their boss, Bruce, called Spike a diva, but not to her face.
Frankie also wasn’t sure how she felt about Spike coming down to Silva with her. Her raggedly striped colleague sat beside her, hunkered down in a meatloaf shape with the lap-band clipped over her shoulders. Frankie had set her small duffel bag on the other side of Spike, for more cushioning in case of trouble.
Spike had given her that look Frankie translated as “is that really necessary?” Probably not. Spike had lived long without her help. But Frankie was here now, and she needed to help.
Well, Spike wasn’t going to want to spend every day at the beach, which was what Frankie planned to do. Her coworker would have to find her own fun.
The shuttle bus banged to a stop, hopefully on a landing pad outside Silva’s second-biggest city. Frankie let the ship settle, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes. Parcels were falling out of overhead bins, half the people couldn’t unclip themselves from their restraints, and the other half were stumbling about as their bodies began to remember real gravity.
All was well.
She couldn’t remember if she’d told Spike of her beach plans, but it didn’t matter. The cat—she was going to keep calling it a cat until Spike told her what she really was—stuck close to Frankie through disembark, decontamination, and customs. But as they stepped out of the building into the mild light and light morning breeze, Spike did not follow Frankie to the platform for transit to the shore. Instead, she veered off toward one that would take her into the city proper.
For a moment, watching Spike lope off, looking confident and disreputable, Frankie felt a pang of loss. Neediness, her? She shook it off and turned back, toward her fabulous, all-expenses-paid holiday vacation.
* * *
The scents of coconut, mesquite, and something astringent embraced Frankie as she entered the tiny tropical bungalow she would be calling home for the next ten days. Big open windows, faux-thatched roof, and bot-delivered meals. Hot tub in the bathroom. Beach chairs and giant umbrellas! What could be better?
She dropped her duffle bag on the teak bench next to the door to the bathroom, which was the only part of the bungalow that seemed to have sturdy walls. The place was more like a high-end hotel’s honeymoon bathroom with a sleeping porch attached than an actual domicile. So much weather could blow in! She couldn’t wait.
She’d have to share the beach—she didn’t spring for total privacy—but this was the last bungalow in the row. A jagged cliff started only about a bungalow’s-length away on her other side. She might see a couple of intrepid hikers, maybe, but nobody else.
Frankie waved away the stray thought that she, a cargo pilot who worked alone and sometimes felt lonely, had chosen a vacation spot that avoided almost all the people in the area. She would see plenty enough of them in the course of things. And she could always go to one of the restaurants or bars. Although, come to think of it, the resort offered drone-delivered drinks right to the beach, so maybe not.
She rummaged around the duffle for her second-best swimsuit, the one with the most coverage, and slithered it on. Maybe tomorrow she’d go short, but this long-sleeved, long-legged beauty would protect her tender spacer’s skin until she got a true reading on the sun.
She switched wristcoms to her all-weather one, and set it to synchronize with her everyday one. Maybe in a day or two she would be able to commit to complete radio silence, but for now she needed the familiar tether. She grabbed two towels, one of the canvas folding chairs, and the most colorful umbrella, and hit the beach.
The view was just as the travel guide had described: pale skies, emerald-blue water peaked with gray, a thin strip of curving pale-sand beach as far as she could see. Hints of hot plastic, musty cloth, and marine life seasoned the air. Gull-like birds way offshore but still so loud. Frankie had no idea what season it was here, but there were only a couple dozen people at the moment.
Perfect.
The sand was already toasty at mid-morning. She grinned as her body woke up the memory of how to walk in the slushy stuff. How it sifted between her toes! She glanced at the bigger sun above and jammed the umbrella into the sand at the proper angle for ultimate shade. She had to fight with the chair to figure it out. Turned out it was one of the kind with the tiny short legs, the ones where when you sit on them your butt pushed the seat almost to the sand. She hoped her spacer knees were up to the challenge of getting up out of that thing.
But not now. Now she ran the dozen steps and into the surf. The first crash of cold water on her thighs made her gasp. She caught her breath, and shallow-dove into a wave and under. All the reviews said you could see clearly under the waves, and they were right.
Frankie kicked hard to get to deeper water but kept herself above the layer that went cold. She had enough body fat to float on her back okay, but the best was floating on her front, just under the waves. Suspended in space and time, she used to call it.
It wasn’t really like space, now that she’d been there. The water was far more substantial. More insistent.
She’d missed it so.