Lost Flyght – Chapter 11

“Skylar!”

I cringe as I spot the man sauntering across the bar to us with his arms wide open. This must be Skylar’s AI dealer, Eamon, because who else would be this gregarious and just-a-minute-shy-of-sleazy. His mane of dark hair is swooped up on top of his head, and his white button-down shirt is open, not one, not two, but three whole buttons, showing off his chest hair and tanned skin. I’m about to ask Skylar what she sees in the guy when my eyes take in his tight pants that leave almost nothing to the imagination.

Got it. Understood. One-hundred percent.

“Baby, it’s great to see you,” he says, leaning in to kiss Skylar on the cheek.

“It’s good to see you, Eamon. You should stop calling me ‘baby,’ though, if you want to keep your balls.”

I cover a snicker by turning to smile at Gus. I’m flying high on an hour’s worth of orgasms at the shower’s expense, a hefty nap with no dreams, and a dose of painkillers. I’ll stick to weak, fruity cocktails tonight, that’s for sure.

And I’m not stopping with my seduction of Gus. He can’t push me away that easily, and the way he sticks right by my side, I know I still have him in the palm of my hand. He’s not going anywhere.

Eamon breaks off from Skylar, and his fake smile falters at the sight of Asteria before he plasters it back on again.

“Asteria Lee. Well, well, I wasn’t expecting you here tonight.”

“I’m sure you weren’t,” she counters. “But when Skylar told me you two were going to talk AIs, I decided I had to join.” Her fake smile is almost as bright as Eamon’s.

Now I can’t help but laugh. I’m not sure what’s going on here, but it’s already entertaining.

Asteria places her hand on her hip, her strapless black dress swaying to the side. “It’s good to see you out of jail. How long were you in lock-up?”

He chuckles. “Oh, come on. It was a complete misunderstanding, of course.”

“Sure, it was.” She blinks her dark eyelashes at him. “You’re too much of an honorable man for petty crimes.”

“That’s right, I am.”

He slides by Asteria’s sarcasm and approaches me. “Who is this beauty? I think I see a family resemblance.”

He’s so full of bullshit that he thinks this will flatter me? I cock a half-smile and put out my hand to shake.

“Vivian Kawabata. Skylar and I are cousins.”

He bends over to kiss my hand, so I pump his arm to keep his lips from my skin. He gets the picture quickly and rights his body.

“And I’m also the captain of the Amagi, so I’m eager to hear more about your available AIs.”

His face loses its fake charm for just long enough to see the hard-nosed businessman underneath. He knows I’m the client, not Skylar. It may be Skylar’s ship, but it’s my money — money I should use for the farm, money I should use to pay back the lines of credit I drained as soon as I ended up in this mess. But money I will gladly pay so Skylar can fly the ship I now live on.

He doesn’t know that, though.

“This is Gus Correa, friend and ship’s medic.”

Gus does not offer to shake Eamon’s hand. He merely tips his chin up. Smooth.

The head waiter spots Asteria and hurries forward. “Ms. Lee, it’s so good of you and your guests to join us tonight. We have your table set up. Right this way, please.”

The man leads us into the restaurant, and I keep my eyes on Eamon and Skylar as they chat. I’m not sure what she sees in this guy except he’s probably a good lay. Murmurings follow us to our table, but I don’t pay attention to the crowd in the restaurant. It’s too busy to let my eyes wander everywhere.

Once we’re seated, tucked away into a private corner next to windows open to the sunset and ocean, I sit, stare out at the water, and smile. The breeze is pleasant, and the salt air is thick with the scent of tropical flowers and the hum of quiet salsa music.

Now, I really feel like I’m on vacation. Gus’s massage has relaxed my body, and my thoughts are calm. I rest my hand on Gus’s leg under the table and relish his amused grin. He turns to me as everyone else settles in.

“Will you dance later? We passed a dance floor.”

“Depends on how my body is feeling. Hopefully.” I sip from my water glass and think about the last time I was pressed up against him. My lungs reflexively draw in a sharp breath. I shouldn’t do that in public.

While we’re perusing the menus, Asteria orders wine, and Eamon and Skylar catch up on gossip. I listen in to their conversation and gather that Eamon and Skylar know each other from flight school. Eamon does not strike me as a pilot, though.

“I didn’t know you also pilot ships,” I say, folding my menu and setting it aside. I’m going to have the avocado lime salad and crab tostadas. Plus, a strawberry margarita I’ll sip on the whole dinner. If I drink wine with Asteria, I will get drunk. I know it.

Eamon modestly tips his head. “Well, I only lasted two years in flight school. The… rigidity of the university system didn’t sit well with me.”

“He couldn’t get out of bed to make it to class on time,” Skylar fills in. “Too many parties. Too many late nights.”

Ah, now their connection makes sense.

“Skylar has the constitution of a well-oiled machine. She was at just as many parties as me, but I swear she was on time for every class.” He mock salutes her, and her smile sparkles. “I decided I was more into the actual ships than flying them, so I spent a year on a long-range supply ship learning the ins and outs of what makes ships tick. Turns out, it’s the artificial intelligence matrices that make them run so smoothly.”

I lean in and listen. Eamon has transformed from a sleazy con man to a man of a singular passion in three sentences.

“Once my contract was over, I moved here and started a shop with some programmers I hired specializing in small-ship AIs. Skylar was one of my first clients two years ago.”

“I gave him a break when no one else would is what he means to say.”

He winks at her. “And thank goodness for that. We’ve come a long way since then. I hope you were happy with Ai while you had her. She was one of my favorites.”

“Yeah, let’s talk about that.”

The waitstaff approach the table and take orders, leaving behind chips and dip and sliding drinks to their spots in front of each of us. I pop a chip into my mouth and hum, bopping my head side to side as I listen to Skylar detail what happened to Ai. Eamon’s face loses its calm charm, and knitted eyebrows and serious expressions take its place.

“A fire? Really? That’s astonishing. I’ve never heard of such a thing happening. Certainly never with one of my products.”

“Come now, Eamon,” Asteria says, swirling her wine in her glass. “Isn’t this why you ended up behind bars on Palo Alto? You stole those AI matrices and tried to make them your own.”

“No,” he says, raising his finger into the air. “Not true. I was in jail over a… misunderstanding. Just like I said.” He sips from his rum on the rocks. “One of my employees made a grave mistake and… well, he threw me under the bus for it.”

There are a few moments of silence as everyone waits for him to say more, but he doesn’t. I’m not friends with this guy, so I don’t mind prying.

“So? Tell us more.” I sweep my hands out at the table. “We have all night and plenty of good food and drinks in front of us.”

He taps his fingers on the table. “If it’ll clear my name…?”

“Anything’s possible.” Asteria’s voice is as dry as the wine.

“First of all, Ai was a fine AI. There’s no reason she should’ve disintegrated on you like that. I hate to blame Carlos —”

“Then don’t,” Skylar interrupts, her face as hard as ice.

“I won’t, but I wouldn’t put it past sabotage. You and your cousin here are in the news a lot.”

Gus lays his hand between my shoulder blades, and it shocks me into realizing that I’m tensing up. He leans over. “I just fixed that. Try not to mess it up.”

I take a deep breath and relax.

“I’m sure Carlos is handling it. He’s on the case,” Skylar insists.

Eamon nods once. “Ai was one of my first products. The older sexbot AIs are all open-source now. Anyone can use them and modify them for their own personal use. I thought it would be fun to use them for a ship’s AI so I tasked my software developers with repurposing the code.”

“Personal use, Eamon?” Asteria leans back in her chair.

“Exactly. I wasn’t supposed to sell it, and technically, I didn’t. Skylar, did money ever change hands for Ai’s license?”

Skylar’s smile is less than amused. “No. Technically, money did not change hands.”

“What did you pay?” I ask, jerking my chin at Skylar.

“I agreed to be fuck buddies for a month and provide five free flights back to Rio so he could see his family. Bartering at its best.” She looks at her nails. “Honestly, I think I made out better in the deal. Eamon gives good head.”

Asteria snorts, and Gus rolls his eyes, but I can see the pain in the angle of Skylar’s chin. I think it cost her more than a few nights in bed than she’s willing to admit.

Eamon halts his story as the food arrives. Once the crab tostadas are in front of me, my stomach growls like I haven’t fed it in years. I grab the bottle of the Happiest of Hot Sauces from my bag and shake a few drops onto the dish. Gus takes it from my hands and dashes his own dish with it too.

“So, anyway,” Eamon picks up once everyone is eating, “I only ever installed Ai in three ships total. All barter jobs. I never sold her on the open market. It was good practice for my development team and me. I hired more people, and we got to work on our own, custom AIs. Nothing borrowed. Everything from scratch with the lessons we had learned. Until…”

He raises his finger into the air.

“Until this one guy I hired, who I thought was some whiz kid genius, turned out to be faking it. He had stolen code from his previous employers and was passing it off as his own.”

Asteria’s hard expression softens.

“He turned me in to the cops and then fled. So, that’s why I was in jail. Of course, I have good lawyers so I got out pretty quickly.”

This reminds me of my own, now deceased, lawyer, and my stomach closes up even as the hot sauce warms my cheeks. He was supposed to find me a buyer for the seeds, either Athens or Cosmas. I wonder how far he got before he died. I haven’t thought about it since the meeting with Renata Dellis and the fire because there’s just been too much going on. But this is something I should come back to. Maybe, just maybe, I can negotiate something with Cosmas on my own. I’ll have to do the research and soon.

I glance at Gus, who has already finished his stewed chicken dish. He’s eyeing my crab tostadas.

“Would you like to try these? They’re delicious.” I gesture to my plate, but he shakes his head.

“If they’re so delicious, why aren’t you eating them?”

I narrow my eyes at him. Maybe bringing a medic on board wasn’t the greatest idea I’ve ever had.

I shrug. “I have too many things on my mind.”

“You know what I’ve noticed?” Gus asks, and I cringe from the barrage of a lecture I’m about to get. “That the Happiest of Hot Sauces only works well the first couple of times you eat it. I think our bodies learn how to metabolize whatever’s in there after only a few doses.”

Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting him to say.

“If you ate those berries again, I bet you wouldn’t be as sick the second time.”

“Hmmm.” I spear a chunk of crab on my plate and enjoy it as my body relaxes. “That’s an interesting theory.”

He tilts his head. “It’s common with drug addicts — always needing either more of their drug or to take it more often to get the same kind of high. Human bodies are adaptable. They become used to their conditions fairly easily. This is why we’ve lasted as a species.”

I nod as I scoop up greens, sauce, and crunchy tortilla and shove them into my mouth.

“Bodies can learn to function with all types of stressors like high cortisol levels or starvation or slow poisoning.”

Gus reaches over and fills up my water glass.

“The problem is that no one should ever get used to starving when there’s food right in front of them. No one should live with the kind of stress you’re under if it can be dealt with.”

I lower my voice. “I know how you can help me relieve my stress.”

His returning smile melts my insides. “The answer to all your problems isn’t sex, Vivian.”

“It is in this case.”

The surrounding conversations melt into the background as his hand softly brushes my knee under the table and inches up the inside of my leg.

“You’re not going to give up, are you?” he asks, his lips close to my ear.

“Is that a challenge?”

“Hmm, I think it is.” His hand is so far up my skirt now that his fingers caress the skin along the edge of my underwear.

Water rushes through my head as I imagine where we could go next with this.

“Vivian! Hello? Are we busy tomorrow?” Skylar is waving her hand in my direction because, obviously, I wasn’t paying attention. Not even close. “Eamon wants us to come by the showroom and see the AIs in action. You up for it?”

“Yes,” I say, my voice cracking. I clear my throat. “Yeah, sounds like a plan.”

Gus withdraws his hand and returns my skirt to its former position before standing up. “I’m going to go look at the rum selection at the bar. Eamon, would you like to join me? I think the ladies have business to discuss.”

“Sure.” Eamon stands up and joins Gus to walk to the bar.

Phew. I wrap my hand around the glass of cold water and then press my cold hand to my neck.

“Wow. He is really into you,” Asteria says, watching Gus and Eamon walk away. “Was this Jin’s idea? He mentioned how he gets along great with Gus.”

I nod and sip at my watered-down margarita. “Yeah. There are complications, though.”

“With?” She refills Skylar’s wine glass before refilling her own.

“His family. Not Ken or Jin. Family and ex-girlfriends seem to be persistent themes of my relationship network. Speaking of which, I was hoping I could pick your brain about something.”

“Shoot,” she says, leaning back.

“I’m going to guess you were around when Jin was dating Cressida. Your mother mentioned Cressida had friends she fell out of favor with, and that maybe those friends would have ammunition to fight Cressida with.”

“Oh yeah.” She throws back her head to look at the ceiling. “God, there were so many of them. But I remember someone in particular. A big, public fight, and then we never saw the girl again after that. Some Ossun land heiress… Um, Marissa? Mikayla?”

I gasp. No. It couldn’t be.

“Malina? Malina Tsing?” I sit forward at the same time Skylar does. This bit of news has caught her attention.

Asteria snaps her fingers and points at me. “That’s it. That’s her.”

I cover my mouth with my hand and remember the dinner I had with Malina not too long ago. I had introduced her to Jinzo, and they had known each other. At the time, it felt awkward too, like there was a ghost between them.

There is a ghost between them named Cressida.

“You know her?” Asteria asks. “Because I remember they were super tight. They even shared men, though Jin wanted no part of that. Then suddenly, they were fighting in one of the restaurants on the home ship, and Malina never showed up there again.”

My brain rolls this information around in my head, over and over. There’s something juicy here for me to dig into, but do I know Malina well enough to open old wounds? How will I figure out what happened without jeopardizing our new friendship?

Asteria stands up. “She’s the one you should speak to. I bet there’s something there for you to get the leg up on Cressida. I’m going to head to the ladies’ room. Dancing after dessert?”

I nod, eager to get rid of this energy I now have pent up in my legs. They bounce under the table.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Viv?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing, a teenage spat. And maybe I shouldn’t be digging into Malina’s past when I barely know her.”

I pick up my drink, and when my eyes raise just past the lip of my margarita glass, I find Asteria hustling back to the table, her feet moving at double speed. She never even made it to the bathroom. She’s shaking her head with her eyes wide and weaving in and out of tables.

“We gotta go,” she says, grabbing her bag. “Shit shit shit. I had a feeling this was going to happen. Why didn’t I listen to my instincts?”

“What’s wrong?” I ask, standing up and grabbing my bag.

But I know immediately what’s wrong.

Now that I’m on my feet, I can see across the expanse of tables. And directly in my line of sight, a pair of green eyes connects with mine, and her lips quirk. Oh no. It takes a moment for my brain to catch up to the signals being sent from my eyes, but once it registers the gorgeous dark red hair and alabaster skin, it knows.

Fucking hell. It’s Cressida Briar-Stevenson.

And she’s spotted me.

“I thought maybe she wouldn’t come to Carnival this year.” Asteria approaches me and puts her hand on my arm. “Maybe she’d be too wary of her image with all the news surrounding you guys. I’m so sorry. I should’ve known she doesn’t give a crap. That more bad news is better than no news for someone like her.”

Our eyes are locked on each other from across the room, and I’m too scared to look away.

“Vivian?” Asteria shakes me, and my eyes disengage from Cressida’s. Damn. I blinked first. “Vivian, it’s my fault. We should go.”

I glance back at Cressida, and she’s whispering to other people at her table. I don’t want it to look like I’m running away from her. Skylar shakes her head.

“I should go say something to her.” Shifting to my left, I try to get around Asteria, but she blocks my path. Skylar joins her.

“No. Not now,” Skylar warns. “Not tonight when she has her whole network here. You need backup and a plan.”

Asteria sighs and drops her head. “And I’m leaving tonight. Damn it. I should figure out how to stay and help.”

I play a confrontation with Cressida in my head a few different ways, and none of them go well for me, so I concede.

“Fine. Not tonight. And don’t worry about it. You should go if you’re needed at home.”

I turn and ignore Cressida’s deathly stare. Time to get everyone and go.

“Let’s grab Gus and Eamon and head back to the villa.”

I have plans to make.