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  “Not just that,” she said with a small shrug. “The other applications are endless. Whales still beach themselves sometimes and no one knows why. Imagine if we could prevent them from doing that, just by setting a few well-placed call boxes at the bottom of the ocean? Or when fishing crews go out and they have one of these attached to their hull to keep whales – maybe even dolphins – away from their nets? Who knows? Maybe someday we will be able to crack the code that allows us to talk marine mammals.”

  Dane was quiet for a time, looking her over and not saying anything, as if he was trying to measure her intellect through her skull. “I can see why the board wanted you along to try. You’re passionate.”

  She folded her hands in her lap, a little self-consciously. “A little.”

  “Very,” he corrected. “Well, that’s all we really need you to be.” He took a long breath. “Okay, let me tell you how this little excursion is going to run.”

  She listened intently.

  “We’re going to be out for two, maybe three weeks. Let me be clear, your apparatus isn’t the focal point of this expedition, but it was an opportune time to try and test it. We’ll be out far enough for you test your gizmo. Now we know that humpbacks get your signal well enough, but the board wants to know if you can make it work effectively on other species. We’ll be coming across from Gray whales… some Brydes… maybe even a Blue Whale or two.

  “Now our lab, our machine shop, server room… everything that we have on board is at your disposal. We have a couple of interns on board who can lend you a hand if you need it, but for the most part you’ll be on your own. The board got everything that you asked for to build one of these call boxes so you shouldn’t have any problems there. So, for at least two weeks, you can make a go of it. The results will largely depend on you. Ok?”

  She nodded. Nya was accustomed to doing things on her own.

  “Good. Well, why don’t I show you to your stateroom then?”

  “Stateroom?” she asked confusedly.

  “Yeah,” he said, getting up off of his desk. “You’re a guest, not an intern. Your cabin will be about the same size as mine, there’ll be enough room for you to do your work without anyone bothering you if you want. After that, I’ll show you the rest of the boat.”

  She gave an appreciative smile. “That sounds good.” As they got up to leave, she gathered her bags and followed her host out of the door. She again glanced at the nameplate as they left. “Were you in the navy?” That seemed plausible, given how many tattoos that he had. But this man with her was far too young to have ascended to the rank of an admiral.

  “No,” he said with a laugh. “It’s a little inside joke between me and the crew.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Well, back in the days of tall ships and wind-powered sailing, an admiral wasn’t always a man that rose in rank in the navy. A man who had enough money to commission a ship to a private venture could be called an admiral.”

  She thought about that. “Did you finance this expedition of yours?”

  “Sort of. You know of the Carver Group, yes?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, I own it. Your cabin is this way.”

  Chapter 3

  Nya felt nothing short of stupid after her first day aboard the boat. She had spoken – somewhat imbecilely – to the man who had written her acceptance letter. She didn’t understand why she didn’t realize it before. But as the seconds quickly turned into a minute of silent contemplation, she arrived at the only answer she could.

  She had been so damn nervous about being here she hadn’t paid attention.

  To a scientist, a lack of observation like that could be a big mistake. It was the small things that tended to affect the outcome in most cases. And that was true, all the way from the minor plains of particle physics all the way up to everyday physics.

  She had kicked herself as her host had given her the tour.

  Dane… Dane Carver, self-styled billionaire, mogul, tycoon, whatever someone wanted to call him, he probably was. Her research had shown her the kind of things that the Carver Group was into. They were so heavily invested in so many things it was likely that that literally had a hand in everything. From the dispensers that people used to get towels in a public restroom to the technology that the military put in their satellites, the Carver Group had their fingers into it.

  And Dane Carver controlled the hand that wielded those fingers.

  She felt like such an idiot.

  Dane had even signed the letter that gave her permission to come aboard and do what she planned on. She didn’t know why she didn’t keep that little piece of information tucked away in the forefront of her mind. An important detail, that. But how could she have known? There was only one Dane Carver… but surely there had to be more than one Dane working for the Carver Group? And certainly, the man who owned it all was not the tattooed and rather punkish looking man that had shown her around his private floating lab?

  Apparently, it had been so. And more fool she for not having thought it so. She had imagined Dane Carver to be some well-kempt and well-dressed man sitting in an office sky rise somewhere. She hadn’t expected… well… what she had found.

  And the fact that he owned the very foundation that had granted her the opportunity to do her research felt like a slap across the face, returning her to reality. Nya felt like she was some kind of a bumbling idiot that had wandered into a minefield and the only tool she had to find her way out was a jackhammer.

  Every step from here on out had to be careful.

  She sat sequestered in her cabin, which was just as Dane had promised; not all that different from his own. She had a cot, a desk, a chair, a wardrobe to put her things, and a few shelves that were empty of anything except for the few small keepsakes that traveled with her. Though she still felt the excitement of this milestone in her life she felt stupid for having spoken as she had to the man who practically owned her.

  “God, that was so stupid,” she muttered to herself over and over as she got comfortable in her new surroundings.

  She found that would be fairly easy to get comfortable on this boat. Dane had shown her the layout before he went his own way, allowing her to do as she pleased to get settled in. She had been thankful for the opportunity to be away from him so that she might sulk in private for her behavior.

  But every thought that passed only made her feel more like a complete fool. She was a scientist, dammit! She was supposed to be objective! She was supposed to be logic before emotion! It wasn’t like he’d formally introduced himself to her when she’d been shown into his cabin! It wasn’t like his name had been printed on the damn door! But as she thought on the joke of the brass nameplate, she realized that in a way, it had been his name on the door.

  Fuck.

  She tried to give her mind over to other things. She was pleased to find that she had been right; most of the space onboard was given over to science. Most of the rooms aboard were labs dedicated to one form of marine sciences or another. There were several full labs in which she would find the kind of machinery needed to build her call box. And while most of the rooms were given over to biology, there were enough given over to technology so that she might very well be able to work without bothering or being bothered by anyone.

  Dane had told her that most of the people working aboard – of which there were only twenty or so, including her – were dedicated to the fleshier bits of marine work. He’d told her that she could expect to run into two or three other people working in marine engineering, but otherwise she wouldn’t have to worry too much about having to share equipment or resources with other people.

  The rest of the boat was pretty standard as well, she found. The passengers and the crew had separate living quarters and the areas where the two groups worked were pretty exclusive, so no one would be in each other’s way. And they weren’t so different, although she was not likely to run into any of the genuine crew as their work kept them in parts of t
he vessel where the scientists like her generally didn’t go.

  Among them there were the engine room and bridge, places where she would likely never have to go unless there was some reason for it. There were communal recreation rooms, as well as communal showering areas since space was somewhat limited. There was a small library, a dining area, and a com-station with a ship-to-shore uplink where she could get online with anyone on the mainland without interfering with the ship’s operation; but she would have to sign in and claim a time to do so as there was only the single station. Other than that, the rest of the boat was a collection of labs and resource compartments. Nothing too complex and it was easy enough to find her way around.

  But learning how to coexist with the others aboard was going to be more of a challenge, she had found.

  “We have a few simple rules,” Dane had explained during her tour, “the crew has their own work to do. They don’t interfere with our work and we don’t interfere with theirs. There’s no need to and we give each other a wide berth, everyone stays happy that way.”

  “Seems simple enough.”

  “Rule two is that we’re all going to be in these tightly cramped quarters for three weeks and occasionally tempers are going to flare. Usually it’s something work related when it does. Some might not be so bad and will be brief and summarily forgotten. Others might be entered into the books. But regardless of how you may find some of the people that you’ll be working around personally, keep your feelings away from their work and they’ll do the same for you.”

  She took that in easy enough. “So, the short of it is: mind my own business? That should be easy enough to cope with.”

  “Finally,” Dane added, “rule three is a simple phrase: no jealousy.”

  That one brought her up short. “What does that mean?”

  He only smirked. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  Chapter 4

  Nya carried the latest motherboard for her call box to the electronics storage room. Although technically calling it a motherboard was like calling a canoe cutting edge technology, relatively speaking. And that was owed largely to the fact that her attempts at perfecting the motherboard were all crap.

  She turned the device over in her hand anxiously, as if hoping to see the imperfections in the device. It was folly to do so, she knew, as the problems were mostly in the coding, but there were still plenty to be found in the hardware. That the hardware wasn’t waterproof was her largest concern and the one that she had yet to properly figure out a way around.

  She looked at the collections of circuits and chips. It was the size of the palm of her hand and as far as computing power went a digital wristwatch would have been able to do more. She was finding that to be particularly irksome. And finding the means to correcting that was proving to be a tiresome chore.

  “You’re nothing but a glorified recording device,” she said to the small collection of hardware. “You shouldn’t be this hard to work with.”

  It was true. Her project required only that the device play back certain sounds, in certain sequences, at certain settings and frequencies, and nothing else. But every time she tested the sounds under the pitches that she needed them to be in her lab, the sounds came out more like a tuba player high on meth.

  And then she had discovered the problem: the motherboard was wet… with humidity… generated from inside the damn call box.

  The only way around that was to work in an airtight room and remove the humidity factor completely, but it wasn’t going to happen aboard ship here. And she reminded herself that in the real world people wouldn’t have access to that kind of an environment if her device should fail. No… if she could skip that step now in development, it would aid the Carver Group in deciding on whether or not her project was worthwhile or not.

  There were still so many problems to solve.

  She found the storage compartment where she had fished out most of the electronics that she needed for the last three days. She’d been to the room nine times since then and found that it was more like a refuse pile than anything else. The room was simply an array of shelves loaded with plastic crates filled with the debris of unwanted electronics. Discarded parts were the rule in the room, and no one had voiced her disapproval in salvaging what she needed for her work from there. She had pried chips, wires, screws… whatever she needed. And if anyone was upset for what she took or left behind, no one had said anything. She figured that there was no reason for anyone to become upset over what was left behind.

  Maybe that was her problem.

  She was using secondhand materials, things that had already been put through their paces and possibly discarded because they had reached their limit. She hadn’t thought to try and look for fresh parts, apart from what the Carver Group had already given her. She’d anticipated some problems but completely overlooked others. But sooner or later it was going to come to that: the unexpected problems.

  She pushed open the door to the electronics storage room and she gasped and dropped the motherboard to the floor, nearly stepping on it when she saw what was within.

  She saw a man and woman, sitting on a chair that was pushed up against the wall. The woman had her back to her, and the man’s hands traced up and down the woman’s naked back as the pair of them moaned.

  Nya saw that the woman wore a small skirt that was presently further up her abdomen than it should have been, and her lack of panties told her that this woman was either anticipating this kind of event or maybe she simply had discarded them. That seemed a possibility as she saw the woman’s shirt lying on the floor next to what Nya presumed to be her lab coat, both of them looking as though they had been removed in haste. And she sat straddling the man.

  She could only make out some of the general features of the man over the woman’s shoulder. He was Asian, his hair dyed partially blond, his eyes tightly clenched from their movements and unlike the woman that straddled him he was still mostly clothed. She could see his checkered shirt was still in place, though his trousers were pulled down around his ankles and his lab coat was still in its proper manner across his shoulders.

  The pair of people looked as if they had thrown themselves into this tryst as though they had precious little time to complete it. And neither of them seemed to take any notice of her.

  The woman moaned and the man grunted as their bodies rocked against one another, the sounds they made were in a strange kind of rhythm. The air in the small room was thick with musk and Nya felt even more foolish for not having heard the sound before she cracked the door open.

  “Oh my g...” she began, her face turning red, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’ll just…” she stuttered before bending down to pick up her pocket-sized motherboard and closing the door behind her, sealing the couple in their privacy once more.

  She rushed away from the room, mortified, her work forgotten and her line of thought destroyed. She felt terrible enough to want to try and curl up in the non-existent space beneath her bunk and try to disappear.

  Chapter 5

  She didn’t emerge from her cabin until later in the evening when the boat had gone into its night cycle and she felt safe that others would have gone to sleep. Part of her felt terrified, thinking that the pair of lovers she had seen had by now, most certainly, started the gossip ring about her walking in upon them. She cringed inwardly at the thought as to what might be said about her.

  She didn’t dare try to imagine what they could have said about her as the day went on and instead tried to bury herself in her work. And for the remainder of the day that had seemed to help.

  However, the feeling didn’t last and when her stomach began to growl, she knew that her hunger had finally overcome her fear of ridicule. Gathering up her lab coat, and confident that at least half boat was asleep, she went to the dining room for supper. She knew the routine of the boat well enough to know that food would still be found Dane had explained that no one, not even the crew, was on a set schedule. Food would be prepared for a
ll hands and left out for others to eat as they willed.

  When she arrived in the dining room, she found the place mercifully empty. The table where the supper was set out beckoned her, loaded with heat trays where small electric heaters kept the prepared sustenance warm. She stepped the table, gathered up a tray and surveyed the food that would remain here until morning when the new crew rotation began.

  There were small cutlets of brown meat that looked like steaks, mashed potatoes, assorted vegetables, bread, and some kind of red paste that looked like it was supposed to be pudding.

  She had gathered up a plateful and sat in a corner, hoping no one else would come in while she ate. She briefly pondered serving up another plate and keeping it with her overnight to avoid needing to come in to breakfast the next morning and thus avoiding the embarrassing stares and gossips that were sure to come. It seemed a good plan, but after only ten minutes or so of privacy, someone did come in.

  Dane.

  He smiled when he saw her, and she felt herself turn inward. If anyone had heard about what had happened to her today, he would have. But he casually walked to the supper trays and after gathering a plate from the heated food trays he walked to the corner table where she sat. “Good evening. Mind if I join you?”

  She felt like saying yes, but after the way she’d conducted herself the day that they’d met she felt as if she had to make up for poor impressions. Today’s events certainly were no exception. “Not at all,” she said with indifference.

  Dane sat down across from her and began to eat, dipping his fork into his mashed potatoes and taking a mouthful of it. After a few minutes of strained silence, he finally spoke. “I understand you had a bit of a thrill today.”

  She nearly choked on her own mashed potatoes. “Excuse me?”

  He chuckled as he swallowed his food. “Dr. Inira and Dr. Yao… they mentioned that you walked in on them today in the scrap room.”