by Rachel Ford
Dagir snorted. “Now you tell me. I wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble, if I knew she was going to get medals out of it.”
Nik and Grela were home, now. Nik slept most of the time. Grela, Brek was convinced, slept hardly at all. She ate, and cried, and pooped more than any ten adults, though. At least, so it seemed to the Minister.
Nik adored her, and so did he. He was around the Kels more now than he had been before. After he’d missed a few sessions, Raylor Elkar visited. Nik was asleep, but she said, “It’s you I came to check on, anyway.”
“Me?” he wondered.
“We all got word that Nik’s doing okay, but you damned near disappeared off the face of Central. Nobody knows what’s going on with you.”
“Oh.” He felt his cheeks coloring under the intensity of her scrutiny. “It’s been busy.”
“Hm. Well, Nik’s a lucky woman, I guess. I’ve seen men care a lot less about their own babies.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Isn’t it?” He shook his head, and she smiled. “Alright then. If you say so. I’ll try to be back in a day or so, but give my best to her, when she’s awake, will you?”
“I will.”
She nodded, and stood. “Good to see you’re still kicking, Brek. And, get some rest yourself. You look like you could use it.”
He could. Dr. Kel had hired a nurse to help look after Grela at night. Still, between learning how to care for an infant – a new and terrifying world to the miner turned MP – to pitch in with childcare, and fretting about Nik – whose slow but steady progress still worried him – he didn’t have much time for sleep.
She’d been home for about a week before he returned to parliament. Nik’s friends had started coming by now, since her strength was picking up. Giya stopped by twice, with flowers the first time and baby supplies the second. Raylor was back, and the Bik brothers with her.
He went at Nik’s urging. “I’m fine, Brek,” she assured him. “You should go. There’s no sense both of us shirking our duty. I have to stay, but you don’t.”
He couldn’t have been less attentive if he’d fallen asleep in his seat. It didn’t matter what was happening on the floor. It didn’t matter who was speaking. His thoughts were with Nik, and all the turns and changes he’d witnessed in her health. The fear that one of those reversals might happen while he was gone lingered, ever-present in his thoughts.
It wasn’t rational. He knew that. But her health, her well-being, was the happiness he’d resolved to content himself with. He could not bring himself to believe Dr. Kel’s observations. On some level, he hoped they were true. Of course he did. But the pain he’d felt as she spoke of Grel, the pain she’d so clearly felt, dampened his hope. He was no expert on love, and he couldn’t pretend to understand the workings of the heart. But he knew one thing: he loved Nikia Idan, and he would always love her. And so, until and unless she loved him, her health and happiness were the most he could hope for – the most he could allow himself to hope for.
So the session ran long, and he picked up none of it. Nik frowned at his vague answers later that day. “Is this Kel’s doing?” she asked finally.
“What?”
“Not telling me what happened, in some kind of misguided effort to keep me away from politics? You know I could just watch the sessions, right?”
He smiled. “It’s not that, Nik. Honestly. Although, I’m sure Kel would kill me if he knew we were having this conversation at all.”
She reached out a hand to his. “Then what is it, Brek?” She studied him for a long moment. “Are you alright?”
“Of course. Hey, don’t worry about me. You’re the one who needs to focus on getting better.”
She squeezed his hand gently. “I do worry about you. Everyone’s been so focused on me-”
“You almost died,” he felt it necessary to point out.
“Yeah, but when’s the last time you slept, Brek? In a bed, I mean, and not here, keeping watch over me?”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “I don’t like the beds here. They’re too soft.”
“Not what you were used to on Theta, eh?” she teased.
He nodded. “Exactly. But I’ve had no luck finding a rough, lumpy mattress. So here we are.”
She smiled, but was not sidetracked. “You need to take care of yourself, too.”
“I do. I’m fine.”
She rubbed a thumb across the back of his hand. “Promise me?”
He’d tried very hard these last days to suppress feelings like this one, but the softness of her eyes, the affection in her touch, sent a jolt through him. “I promise, Nik.”
Chapter Forty-Three
It was the middle of the night, Echo Nine time, when the TS-Seven broke atmosphere. It had been a day of mixed blessings. Kerel was up and about. Adjusting to having one arm, and the myriad sensations accompanying limb loss, wasn’t easy for the ensign, but she’d been a trooper. She insisted on taking a watch this afternoon, and Dagir had sat it with her. It wasn’t the first time the thought occurred to Captain Elgin that, in a different set of circumstances, it might not have been long before he had two officers named Dagir in his crew.
The thought put him in rather a glum mood. This was not a different circumstance. The anti-rad meds they’d scavenged from the Falcon’s Talon were running low. So was their water.
Death was meandering through the front yard, and would be knocking at the door soon enough.
And then the sound of a ship breaking atmosphere had woken them all. A few moments later, a scratchy transmission reached them. “TS-Supernova survivors, this is Captain Mercer. Please come in.”
The rest had happened quickly enough. The Seven landed and picked up survivors. Mercer made contact with the rebels, and they surrendered. Better to face the music back home than a death by radiation poisoning here.
And before he knew it, Elgin was in medbay, being treated by a real doctor, en route for Central.
It was a little surreal, the change of fortune a little too quick; it left him reeling.
Kerel was here too, and so, of course, was Dagir – long after his rad treatment wrapped up. He shook his head at the pair of them – and at himself, for apparently being blind to what was happening right under his nose for so long.
But then, Doctor Gi move his leg a millimeter to the left, and he was brought back to his own plight. “Godsdammit, Doctor: are you trying to put me back together, or kill me?”
“I can give you a sedative, if it would help, Captain.” It was said without much interest one way or the other, and though he gave him a proper scowl, Elgin couldn’t blame the man too much. He’d treated worse injuries than a broken leg today, and he had worse ones left to tend.
“No, just watch what you’re doing.”
The doctor carried on without addressing the comment, and Elgin waited and watched. An x-ray turned up mixed results. The bones were healing, but not all of the breaks were aligned properly.
“We’ll have to break it again, and reset it.”
“Well happy fucking day,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Do what you have to.”
“It’ll be a bit before we get to you, actually. There’s a lot more serious cases in the queue. You’re going to have to sit tight, Captain. We will get to you as soon as we can.”
Elgin wasn’t sure if he should be happy to have his torture delayed, or annoyed that the suffering was prolonged.
He was somewhere in that middle ground, secretly relieved but outwardly harrumphing, when Captain Mercer stepped into medbay.
Lest there was any doubt that he was the target of this visit, Mercer whistled and declared, “Well damn me if you don’t look like shit, Elgin.”
“At least I survived a suicide run through an entire fleet. What’s your excuse, Mercer?”
“Too busy cleaning up your messes. This is becoming something of a habit. Me, saving your ass, I mean.”
Elgin grinned. “I’d say
thanks, but you’re way too smug already.”
Mercer grinned too. “You did kind of singlehandedly end the war. We’ll call it even.” This said, his expression sobered. “I’m sorry about the Supernova, though. And your people.”
Elgin nodded. “Me too.”
“It was damned gutsy, what you did. Insane. But gutsy.”
“I wish I had time to get my people off first.”
“You made the right call, all the same. You lost hundreds, and probably saved hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions. Lenksha was capable of anything. He probably wouldn’t have won the war, but what he could have done first?” He shook his head. “You made the right call.”
“I know,” Elgin said. And, he did. That’s what they’d all signed up for, after all: to fall on their swords to keep the Tribari people safe, if it came to that. “But they were good men and women I lost.”
Mercer nodded. “I know.”
It wasn’t something he wanted to contemplate. It was one of those parts of the job that could drive you nuts if you spent too long thinking about it. “What about Lenksha’s people? They give you any trouble?”
“Not a bit. Those boys were as eager to get the hell out of there as you. Hell, I don’t think half of them were even there except that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“They perpetrated war crimes on civilians,” Elgin reminded him.
“Maybe. But when your boss puts a gun to your head, people will do a lot of things.”
“Not all people.”
Mercer grinned. “No. As you like to remind us. But you had your own ship, when you told Lenksha where he could put his orders.”
“It didn’t happen exactly like that.”
“Point is, you had a fighting chance, Elgin. Those kids? If they refused an order, they would have been gunned down, and the next guy would have been too scared to do anything but comply.”
“It doesn’t make it right.”
“No. But the same crimes would have been committed.”
“But they wouldn’t have blood on their hands.”
“Does it matter, when you’re dead?”
“Doesn’t it? Isn’t that the only thing that matters, in the end?”
Mercer sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t know. All I know is, I’m sick of seeing dead kids wearing our empire’s uniform. I’m sick of writing to parents and widows and widowers and – worst of all – kids, telling them their loved one died. I tired of Tribari spilling Tribari blood.”
Elgin nodded. “Me too. And maybe you’re right, Mercer. Maybe, in the end, it wouldn’t have made a difference. But things never change until someone disobeys those orders. Blood keeps getting spilled. Blood will always be spilled, until someone steps up.”
The other captain smiled absently. “You know, if you were anyone else – if, gods forbid, you were one of those damned ministers – I’d think you were one of the most pretentious blowhards this side of the daystar. But you, at least, have the record to back up the words.”
He laughed. “That doesn’t mean I’m not still a pretentious blowhard. It just means I’m not a hypocrite, on that point anyway.”
Mercer laughed too, clapping him on the shoulder. “I can’t say I saw myself ever saying this…but it’s good to have you back, Elgin.”
“Thanks. I’m pretty excited about being alive myself.”
“Yeah, yeah. Get some rest, okay? Central’s going to want a full report. You know how those ministers love their reports.”
Nik smiled as Brek entered her room. Grela had eaten, and was asleep now. He was who she was waiting for. “Hey you,” she greeted. “I was wondering if we were going to see you today.”
“Sorry, Nik. There was another fight with the Captains. This time about tracking down the Consortium fleet. I wasn’t sure we were ever going to get out.”
Her forehead creased. “What happened?”
“Nothing much. Rel wanted authorization to search for them. Telari wants to cut a deal, find a way to get them to come back. They argued. Nothing was decided. As usual.” He shook his head, adding apologetically, “I don’t really want to think about it anymore. Not tonight.”
She grinned. “Fair enough. Did you get anything to eat yet?”
He shook his head again. “No. I’m not hungry.”
Now, her frown returned. “Brek, you’ve got to eat.”
“I will, I will.”
She pulled a face, then pressed the buzzer that had been installed in her room. It was Dr. Kel’s idea, in case she needed assistance from one of the house staff. In a minute, a voice came on the line, asking, “Minister?”
“Good evening, Paidar. I just wanted to let you know, you can bring dinner up now.”
“Right away, Minister. Both, or just the one?”
“Both, please.”
Now it was Brek’s turn to frown. “Wait a minute, have you eaten?”
She shrugged. “I was waiting for you.”
“Nik!” He was astonished. “You’ve got to eat.”
“And so do you,” she returned evenly. “So I figured we’d do it together.” He grumbled out a reply, but she ignored it. “Hey, I want to show you something.”
“What?”
She laughed at his suspiciousness. “I’ve been busy today.”
“I thought you were supposed to be resting?”
“I was, Mother,” she teased. “But here: look at this.” She grabbed the tablet she’d been working on, and extended it to him.
He took it gingerly, but then his eyes widened. “A house?”
She grinned and nodded. “Yes. I talked with Giya, and, now that the war is over, the compensation for Contributor properties will be coming through. The Aldir estate – the subcommittee is looking at building a university on the grounds.
“So I’ll be able to buy something.”
“You’re thinking of this place, then?”
She nodded again. “It’s not very big, but it’s got a nice yard. I want Grela to have a yard.”
He looked up now, and their eyes met. “It’s on Central,” he said simply.
She smiled. “Yes, it is. In the City, even.”
He smiled too. “I like it.”
“I found some others I like, too. Here…” She reached for the device, and he returned it. She scrolled through her saved pages, and he moved to her side, crouching to see the properties as she went through them. For a moment, they cycled through houses like this. Then, she tapped the bed beside her, “Hey, you can sit beside me, you know. I don’t bite.”
He blinked in the face of her amusement, then nodded slowly. “Alright.” Then, he rounded the bed, and stiffly, very stiffly, sidled onto it.
She wondered at that. Brek was a man who, covered in her blood, hadn’t flinched or shied away when she’d needed him. How many times had he held her hand, or wrapped an arm around her when she was cold? She’d seen a distance in him lately, though. She felt it now – oddly enough, more so as he closed the physical distance between them. And it pained her.
He was still too far away to comfortably share a screen, so she moved closer. “Here,” she said. “Look at this one. It’s got a fountain in the back, which I’d have to take out. I wouldn’t want that when Grela’s young. But it’s very nice.”
He took the device, but didn’t meet her gaze. For a while, they passed the time in this manner, him examining properties, and her pulling up new ones. His manner relaxed, the tension in his shoulders lessened, as the minutes passed.
By time their dinner arrived, he was conversing freely again. He went to rise, but she said, “Stay. I’ve got more to show you, once we’re done.”
He did, and propped up against the headboard and a copious amount of pillows, they ate.
It was a good dinner, full of flavor and protein, and Brek sighed. “I don’t know. You think the Kels are looking for another son? I think I could stand to be adopted, if it meant eating like this every night.”
She laughed, n
udging him. “You’re going to have to learn to cook one of these days, you know.”
“I can cook.”
She snorted. “You told me about some of the things you ate on Theta. Like grilled tunnel scavver. Remember that?”
A scavver was a type of large rodent native to the moon, and he grinned at the memory. “I promise you, Nik, no one – no one – eats scavver, grilled or otherwise, because they like the taste. You eat it to keep your ribs from turning in on your spine.”
“Alright,” she conceded. “I’ll give you that one.”
“This, on the other hand…” He took another bite of steak, and chewed it appreciatively. Then, he turned back to her. “Nik?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad you’re staying.”
She smiled at him. “Me too, Brek. Me too.”
Once dinner wrapped up and the trays were taken away, they returned to the houses. There were a handful that stood out. “Once I’m on my feet again, I want to take a look at them.”
He nodded. “Good idea.”
She glanced up at him. “Maybe you could look with me? For another set of eyes, and all that.”
He studied her for a moment, then nodded. “Of course, Nik.”
She smiled. “Good.”
They talked for a long time after that. Nik told him about her plans for Grela, the schools she hoped she’d be able to get into, and how eager she was to try to start a garden once she had a place of her own. He listened, and nodded, and worked through the problems she would find with her plans.
“What about you, Brek?” she said at length. “Do you think, someday, you’ll want a house too?”
He nodded slowly. “Maybe.”
“On Central?”
He considered. “I don’t know. I suppose it depends.”
“On what?”
“On what happens. If I get re-elected, for starters, I guess.”
“And kids?”
“What?”
“Do you think you’ll have kids?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re good with them. Grela likes you more than me, I think, half the time.”