“Twenty-eight. He's warming up!” She didn't know if she was more shocked to hear Chan's excited voice, or more shocked that his temperature was finally rising.
“Twenty-nine point five.”
She looked down to see Muobo's blue lips...why hadn't she noticed how blue they looked. Then she got a lump in her throat when his eyes moved towards her and the corners of his mouth rose just a hair.
“Thirty-one! I think he's gonna be okay.”
It took another couple of minutes before he was able to talk. But as usual, he had to be a smart-alec.
“Yolanda. I've already told you, you're not my type.”
Surprising even herself, she kissed him then. Right on the mouth. Then she punched his arm. They cuddled awhile longer until she was sure that he was gonna be okay.
Finally she let him go and kept him wrapped in blankets while he recovered.
“Yolanda. In my quarters.”
The ice seemed to transfer from Muobo into her heart as she turned to see Chen looking at her with his own icy stare. Thinking that if the cold didn't get them, his eyes certainly could, she slowly followed him.
She barely got the wall opaqued before he started off.
“I expect to hear an explanation so paramount and phenomenal that it justifies the risk you took with this man's life.”
Hanging her head, she told him about the cave, the shelves of artifacts, how Muobo must have tripped over something. Then, despite the monumentality of the discovery, she kept her head down as she described the ornate boxes (or caskets as she assumed they were) and what she thought might be a preserved body.
“Sir. I don't think that any of this is worth a man's life. I'm willing to accept whatever penalties are deemed necessary for my actions.”
Her whole body crawled as she watched the man's face. He just sat there looking over her shoulder, expressionless as a statue. She didn't know which was worse. The silence, or whatever he might be thinking behind that stony facade.
“It will be up to a board of inquiry to discuss your fate once we return. For now, you will be confined to the ship for the remainder of the mission. You are dismissed.”
Just like that, her career was over. Her life too for that matter. If a board of inquiry deemed it necessary, she could be banished to a station on one of Saturn's moons. The loneliness out there was so severe that some were said to have opened the airlock and simply walked out into vacuum.