“But not yet,” I whispered.
“I understand. You two go have a pleasant evening. You only have three left together. Do make the most of them.”
We walked slowly, not speaking and Sam squeezed my hand once in a while. “I’m having trouble reading you, MD. What are you feeling?”
“Happy and sad, all mixed together. And scared. Like really, really scared. I sent a message to my parents last Thursday morning, as soon as I recovered from that junk they gave me on the Redoubt. I should have heard something back from them already. Nothing. I’d like to go see Winona, but it will have to keep until tomorrow. I can feel her, even at this range. Kal is comforting her and she’s doing the same for him. It will be OK. All I can do is pray that it will be OK.”
“Your parents might not even be on Earth right now, you know? I’m sure they’re fine. Hannah is always fine, and your dad is more capable than I think you give him credit for.” He kissed my cheek while we walked. “You did well in there. You convinced most of them that we’re in the right place doing the right thing. Word will spread.”
“Thanks. That’s good. I think. Is it good? I don’t know any more. I create my biggest disasters when I think I’m doing the right thing.”
“You’re still on plan. Merrimac is happy with your progress, if that counts for anything.”
I stopped with us still a meter short of our door. “You took me in there knowing what would happen, didn’t you? Do you know how terrified I was?”
“I know. I’m sorry, but he said that was where you needed to be.”
“What?”
He turned toward me and kissed me, gently at first, and then I could feel the longing and desire building in him. My heart skipped a beat and started to respond. I began to lose myself in it, but before I could fall completely I pulled away and took a step back.
“Not so fast, my love. I asked you a question. What?”
He chuckled. “You think you’re the only one Merrimac messes with? The only one he whispers to in the middle of night? We’re going to be OK, Little Soul. At least for this next step.” He reached for me, grabbed a handful of my shirt down low by my waist, and pulled me back to him, making me stumble a little. “I plan to enjoy every second I’m with you. What about you? What are your plans?”
“Open that door behind you and you’ll find out.”
CHAPTER 13
INFECTION
The ship was on fire. There were flames everywhere I turned, everywhere I ran. The ship was yelling to me above the sound of the alarm and the groan of bulkheads failing, urging me to move faster. I came around a corner at a dead run and the wall was missing. There were other ships burning in the blackness and I could see the stars. Then I was spinning, cold, and looking back at what was left of my ship while all of the air wheezed from my lungs. A last thought filled me. Well, at least I won’t burn to death.
Sam was holding me while I screamed, whispering to me. It took a few minutes to realize what he was saying. “Just a nightmare. It’s OK; you’re safe. Just a bad dream. Come on, MD, wake up now.”
“Awake. Just a dream.”
“That’s right, just a bad dream.”
“I dreamed I was at Bridger again. Ships breaking up, fire everywhere, and then I was floating free in space. But I wasn’t alone. There were so many of us floating out there dying.” I buried my face into his shoulder, sobbing. “I did that to them. How can God ever forgive me?”
“Hush. It wasn’t your fault. You were at the Academy when Bridger happened, remember? You didn’t kill those people.”
“I did. I made it possible.”
“Let me get you some water.”
“No. Wait. Help me to the toilet. I think I’m going to throw up.”
He took my hands and I screamed again, pulling my arms away from him.
“Storm, lights please.”
I was sitting on the edge of the bed, cradling my left wrist with my right hand.
“Let me see it. Still from where the Puca bit you?”
“Yes. It didn’t hurt yesterday. Not much anyway.”
“It shouldn’t be hurting at all.” He took my wrist, pushing gently on the bright red scar lines that shouldn’t be there. “OK. Let’s get you to the medical bay.”
“Toilet first. Seriously.”
Sam held my hair back while I threw up and then stood next to me while I brushed my teeth, ready to catch me if I wobbled. “I wish I knew if that was an aftereffect of your nightmare or from what the Puca did to your arm.”
“Neither. Our daughter caused it, and it’s your fault that I’m pregnant.”
“My fault?”
I pulled a t-shirt down over my head. “Your fault. I feel how proud you are of yourself.”
He kissed me. “You’re right, I am. And of you, brave girl. Can you walk or do you want to be carried?”
“I’ll walk, but you better keep your arm around me in case I stumble. It takes a while for one of those nightmares to fade away completely.”
I laid down on the scanner bed and we waited while Storm looked at my insides.
“Beurk! What have you done to yourself, Ma trésor? There are many pathological microorganisms in your blood. Please lie still while I kill them for you.”
Winona came in and stood next to Sam while I laid there waiting for Storm to pronounce me clean. Winn looked sleepy and rumpled.
“Hey Winn, why are you here?”
“Ever since you got back, I can hear you from fifty or sixty meters away. It’s getting so it’s hard to find places on the ship where I can’t hear you. Damn Puca. I know what goes on in your head when you’re dreaming about Bridger. I would have let Sam deal with it, but there was something more this time.” She gestured at the display and yawned. “This isn’t good. You worry me.”
She looked at Sam. He had his arms crossed watching Storm’s progress. “You’re right, it’s not good. I don’t know what the KDF used on her, but even the most basic medical AI should have been able to correct this. The fact that it keeps coming back is…worrisome.” He tapped the display and I closed my eyes, not wanting to see. “Look at where the bones were shattered. You shouldn’t be able to see anything there but pale lines. This looks like it was broken yesterday.”
“That’s what their medic said too. I went through all this every day I was there.”
“Thanks for telling me. How much pain are you in?”
“Not much. They gave me some pills that I take a couple of times a day. I didn’t want you to worry, and I hoped that it was finally starting to heal.”
“It’s not.”
“There you are, mon ingénieure, fit for service again.”
I slid off the bed. “That feels much better. Thanks, Storm.” I grinned at Sam and Winona. “Too early for breakfast?”
“It’s 03:00, Duse. Go back to bed.”
I took her hand and kissed it. “Winona, I’m sorry I woke you. I’m sorry for a lot of things I’ve done to you recently. Thank you for still being my friend.”
“You are still worth more than you are trouble. Barely. Let me see your wrist.” I held it out to her and she took off my watch so she could see the entire scar. “Where is my lock of hair?”
My mouth opened and closed a couple of times before any words came out. “I don’t know. I didn’t take it out. It should be there. The medic on the Redoubt might have taken it, but…”
“Now they have a piece of me, and it’s no wonder you’ve been doing stupid things. Damn Puca bastards.”
“I’ve used it since then. I know I’ve felt you guiding me. That’s what gave me the confidence to volunteer all of us to stay here and fight for reunification.”
“It wasn’t me. It was the Puca.”
“You’re both crazy. It’s only a good luck charm. You can’t believe it has any real power. That
’s just superstition or mysticism or something. Just give her another new one.”
We both turned and stared at Sam, Winn still holding my hand while her eyes examined him.
“Clueless,” Winona pronounced. She kissed my wrist. “I’ll get you a new one and I have some research to do. It’s going to take a few days because I need information from Granma Matoskah back on Earth. We can beat this, Duse, but you are going to have to trust me.”
“Always.”
“Samuel, you take her back to bed and make her sleep, and I mean sleep. No more of that other stuff tonight. And if you are going to do that, warn me first.”
“Right,” I told her. “So you can go somewhere farther away.”
“No.” She kissed my wrist again before giving it back to me. “So I can wake Kal up in time to synchronize with you. It’s an astonishing experience.” She put her hands on Sam’s cheeks and kissed his mouth, a very real kiss that made him blush even as he returned it. “See you at breakfast.”
He watched her leave. “Wow. I, um, I think we may need to find a more secluded spot on the ship for the next few days.”
I wrapped my arm around his waist. “Yeah. I’m not sure I like how much you enjoyed that kiss.” He jumped when I pinched him.
“You scare me a little, MD.”
“That’s good, but right now I just want you to hold me while I sleep.”
“I’ll try to do that.” He put his arm around me. “No promises.”
The Esprit Orageux held station two kilometers out from the Hoog Schelde shipyard for the next seventy hours while the Union and Kastanje’s Provisional Government finalized the peace accords. Captain Rostron kept me busy running attack simulations against the Yards and making sure all of our weapons arrays were prepared for immediate action. She didn’t trust the Separatists, or the KDF.
Storm was confident that we could destroy all of the shipyard’s ways and the static weapons mounts without opening any of the habitat modules to space. We built the scenario together, only slightly in defiance of the Captain’s orders to make plans to shred the entire complex and send it tumbling into Kastanje’s atmosphere.
“What do you think, Storm? I hope we never have to use it, but…”
“It would save lives, but if the Captain wants all of them to die, I will destroy everything and everyone.”
“Um, you don’t want to do that, do you?”
“They hurt you, petite âme. Hurting them does not trouble me anymore. I have sufficient kinetic weapons left to get the job done, and my directed energy weapons should be effective against whatever remains, since there will be no opposition.”
I tapped the armament status display. “You’ve used two thirds of your missiles, Storm. What did you do while I was gone?”
“The Captain has ordered me not to speak of it with you yet. She told me that she would discuss it with you when the time is right. She’s worried that the Union might take me away from her, so she is keeping what I did a secret.”
“But she didn’t say you couldn’t show me.”
“I believe that would be covered by the same order.”
“I’m going to find out, Storm, you know I will.” I started looking through the system logs and crew reports.
“I will not block you.”
I was still tapping at the display. “You’ve used over half of your reserves of Holloman armor too. It must have been one hell of a fight.”
“Not talking.”
She didn’t need too. Winona’s personal log detailed it for me, once I’d hacked her password. Storm had gone rogue.
Eighteen KDF Fast Attack Craft had emerged from Becker’s Redoubt, showing how badly the Union Intel services had been deceived by the Kastanje Home Collective. The Esprit Errant and Esprit Vengeur had bugged out immediately, while Captain Rostron held fast waiting for word from Major Alaoui. With hope dwindling, and the enemy almost upon her, the Captain had given the order to withdraw. Storm moved away a few kilometers, decelerated into a lower, faster orbit, and then she had gone into autonomous attack mode, spinning to protect herself.
She remained unresponsive to any verbal commands and had locked out all engineering stations and physical access to the engine and weapons areas. The only answer she had given for her behavior was that ‘the mission was too important to leave it unfinished,’ and that she, ‘was not going to abandon Major Alaoui and her engineer to those bastards.’ Winona had included a footnote in her AAR that Storm had been audibly weeping while saying it. The FACs were no match for her, and she destroyed five of the attackers in less than fifteen minutes.
She pursued the others when they attempted to retreat, using her forward directed energy weapons to carve them up even as they were entering Kastanje’s atmosphere. One FAC had tried to escape into deep space while Storm was busy with the ones making for the surface. Storm’s pursuit had overloaded and damaged three flow injectors in the starboard engine. Several hours later, ignoring the KDF Captain’s desperate plea to surrender, Storm had destroyed them at extreme range, firing her weapons long enough to melt the fusible links in all six forward batteries in the process.
“We need to get you back to Dulcinea, Storm. You know that, right?”
“Lieutenant Killdeer helped me repair the physical damage from the engagement. It’s why it took so long for us to make it back to you. I am fully functional and combat ready.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. You can’t lock out our Captain. You can’t disobey her orders.”
“I know that is true. But should I have left you to die?”
“Yes, if the Captain ordered it. I love you, Storm. Don’t hurt yourself because of me.”
“Will you help me repair the damage inside my operating system? I have isolated and corrected some things, but other areas that led me to my defiance are elusive.”
“Sure. I’m your engineer. It’s why I’m here.”
“Do you have any new recipes? A new recipe might help.”
“Have you ever made sopapillas?”
Sam made me go to the infirmary twice a day to have my arm treated by the medical AI. Whatever was living in there kept coming back. It seemed to spawn every few hours from the original bite and then flow all through me. Sam was worried about what would happen if it took up residence somewhere else in my body. He didn’t say it, but I could feel him dreading what he knew might happen if we couldn’t control it. My blood wasn’t connected only to me anymore.
“Sam,” I told him while I dressed for dinner on Friday night. “I’m scared. You’re leaving for Kastanje tomorrow afternoon. I don’t know when I’ll see you again. My parents still haven’t replied to my messages and I don’t know where they are. Look at my arm. It’s not getting better, and I don’t know what this infection is doing to our daughter. I’ll be four weeks tomorrow.”
He kissed the scar. “Just keep having the med AI treat it. It will be OK until we can find another solution.”
“I don’t believe that and neither do you.” I bit my lip and closed my eyes. “We’re going to have to cut it off.”
“No, we are not. We’re not there yet.”
“I think we’re close. Winona says she’s working on something, but she won’t tell me anything about it. Whatever this stuff is it’s from the Puca, and they were excited about me being pregnant. We need to keep our little girl away from them. One arm isn’t too much to sacrifice.” I smiled, trying to sound brave. “I have two of them.”
“Stop guessing and stop panicking. We are not going to cut off your arm.”
“Thank you for lying to me. It’s a noble lie.”
“It’s not a lie.” He kissed me and then ran one finger from side to side across my collarbones. “Where did you get this dress? I’ve never seen it.”
I let him change the subject. “Do you like it? This is the one from Costrano,
the one I refused to wear for him. I thought you might like to see me in it. It’s a traditional Dulcinean design, which means modified old English, probably. What do you think?” I wiggled my hips and I knew exactly what he thought.
“I hope you’re not planning on lingering over dessert. I shall endeavor to act the gentleman for as long as I can, but…” He shook his head.
I pouted. “I taught Storm how to make sopapillas this afternoon, with lots of sweet, sticky honey. I want at least one.”
“You can have as many as you want as long as you get them to-go.”
“Deal. I’ll bring back some extra honey too. We will feast all night on sopapillas.”
I tried to maintain a happy mood during dinner, but every time the conversation with Winn and Kal would lapse, I’d drift back into all my worries. Winona wasn’t any better. She kept staring at Kal, eyes huge as if she was trying to memorize every angle and every expression of his face.
By the end of the meal, even the sopapillas couldn’t make me happy. They were delicious, but after the first nibble I just gazed at mine, not sure what to do with it.
Winona reached across the table and took it off my plate.
“Hey! I was planning on eating that.”
“Were you?” She licked honey from her fingers. “Too late.”
I went to get more and then stood behind her and asked, “Do you want another?” I picked one up and held it over her, letting it drip into her hair.
“You wouldn’t…” She looked up as a big drop of honey hit her forehead.
“Oh, yes I would.”
“Lieutenants…” Sam warned us. “Not in front of the enlisted. You know better.”
“Do I?” Sam wasn’t smiling. “OK, fine. Winona, please allow me to escort you from the mess hall.” I took her arm with my sticky fingers, while Kal and Sam followed us out.
She waited until we were out in the passageway with the door closed behind us before she screamed. I giggled and ran, looking back to make sure she was in pursuit. We circled each other, dodging around Sam and Kal several times.
Wandering Storm Page 20