“Can I come in?” He ran a finger down the side of her face, loving the soft, supple texture of her skin.
Her brows arched, but her eyes smiled.
“Not when you look at me like that. Despite the evidence,” her cheeks flamed red as her hair, “I’m not that kind of girl.”
Before he could respond, her eyes widened.
“Do you know, I’ve never had to say that before? I guess I should thank you for wanting to well, you know.”
Her eyes widened even more, then narrowed in a frown.
“You do know don’t you?”
For a moment, he was tempted to tease her, but she looked so alarmed, he couldn’t do it. He put a hand on the wall on either side of her head and leaned in close. “I do.”
Her cheeks turned red again. He stroked the heated skin, fascinated by the way color came and went from it.
“Would like to kiss you without the audience.”
She bit her lip and looked both ways. For a moment the passage was empty. She looked up at him and he wondered who she didn’t trust, him or herself?
“Just one and then you have to go. I’m on duty in a few.”
Fyn followed her inside. She turned to face him, her back against a cabinet of some sort. There was barely room for both of them in the tiny room, once the door slid shut behind him. He started to bend toward her and bumped against her desk. She bit back a grin. He slid his arms around her waist and lifted her up, bringing her mouth to his, erasing the grin. She hadn’t said how long the kiss should be, so he took his time. When she was wrapped around him like wet clothes, he finally lifted his head. They both needed the air.
“Good night.” He didn’t let her go. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like to hold a woman, but now he was remembering.
She blinked, and peeled herself off, sliding down to the floor again. More color surged into her face. She put as much room between them as she could. It wasn’t much. Not nearly enough. He still felt warm in the places her body had been. Her mouth had been inexperienced but eager.
“Good night.” Her eyes were wide and surprised.
He didn’t leave. She didn’t ask him to.
She bit her lip. “I’m going to take a walk.”
He dropped his chin, looking at her through the shield of his hair. “Can I walk with you?”
She nodded.
“Is there anywhere on this ship you can be alone?”
She didn’t point out the obvious, that they were already alone.
“Actually there is, though it’s not for the faint of heart.”
* * * * *
“I see what you mean.” Fyn looked at the narrow catwalk at the very top of the Doolittle. He looked over the edge. “How did you find this place?”
That was hard to explain. She shrugged. “I like to explore, improve my situational awareness. Look at this.”
She reached up and pressed a button and a small door slid back, exposing a small porthole with a view to the outside. “I have no clue why they are here, but there are about ten of them along this stretch of catwalk.” She slipped off her jacket, and felt something in the pocket as she bundled it up. She pulled it out. “I almost forgot I got this for you. I think it was the last one, too.” She held out the Mounds for him to take.
“What is it?”
“Coconut and chocolate, dark chocolate, which is, in my opinion, the best chocolate.” She showed him how to open it.
He looked a little dubiously at the two bars, but popped one of them in his mouth and chewed slowly.
“Well?”
“It’s good.”
He sounded almost exactly like she had after that awful crap on Kikk. Sara tipped her head to the side, her eyes narrowing and he grinned.
“I like it.”
He held out the other bar for her, but she shook her head. She liked watching him enjoy the treat. She had a feeling his life, even before his planet was absorbed, had been devoid of the rich experiences she took for granted. When he finished, she put her jacket down on the catwalk, then sat down and lay down, so she could look out. Fyn stretched out the other direction, so that their heads were side by side on her jacket. It was nice and safe—as long as they didn’t roll in either direction. She looked out into space, wondering what the stars were called and if there were people on them. When she’d been young, she’d spent a lot of time star gazing, imagining herself far away from her current foster home. Back then only her imagination had wings. Now here she was in another galaxy gazing at different stars with an alien. Amazing.
“Are there a lot of women in your Air Force?”
Fyn sounded relaxed, almost sleepy. It was a tiny glimpse into a Fyn before whatever had forced him to be a tough guy.
“There are women in all the armed forces. Not sure there are a lot. Do you have women in your military?”
Fyn shook his head. “I’ve never seen a female pilot until you. Our women do—did many things but not battle. They are vulnerable in a way men are not.”
“That’s true.” She’d considered that, when she thought she might be sent into battle. But war wasn’t the only place a woman was vulnerable. Ten years in foster care taught her that. At least now she could give as good as she got. “I knew it when I joined, but it’s worth it.”
“You joined?”
“Our military is completely volunteer.”
He looked thoughtful. “That’s what makes you different. You choose to fight.”
“I know it makes us good.” It wasn’t bragging. It was the truth.
“But this was your first dogfight? Then your world is at peace?”
“I wish it was, but no, there are always tyrants to battle. I would probably have been deployed to our current conflict, but I was tasked to be part of the Enterprise Project. It’s like top, top, top, top secret. Started out as a test pilot at Area 51, thanks to Briggs, and some aptitude test I had to take. I flew one of the prototypes of the Dauntless, then was tasked for the mission as part of the wing.”
“Secret?”
“Yeah, not a lot of our people even know we’re out here. Most of our world thinks manned, deep space flight isn’t possible yet. Pretty crazy, isn’t it? We had to be, well, without strong family ties to be able to come. I guess if we disappear, they don’t want anyone asking too many questions.” It wasn’t a happy thought, but at least it was an upside to being an orphan. “It’s kind of funny really. I joined partly just to get away, to go somewhere new. See the world.”
That wasn’t completely true, but she found some people didn’t understand why she felt compelled to fight. It made her proud to be a part of something larger than herself, to strike back against bad guys. To defend freedom. “Never thought I’d make it to another galaxy. I’d have been happy to go to Europe.”
She turned her head until she could look at Fyn. He was so close, she could see the different shades of green in his eyes. Luckily his mouth was well out of reach. He smelled different than he had on the planet, but still very good. Excellent really. Even military issue soap couldn’t wipe out the essential him.
“That’s a different continent on our world.” As she looked into his eyes music began to play inside her head. Soft, sultry…
“So, what’s your story? How did you end up out here all alone?”
His eyes shadowed. “The Dusan.”
“I wondered…” She hesitated. “Did you have family…?”
He nodded slowly. “I had a bond mate. Fiona.”
Fiona. It was a pretty name.
“I tried to get her to come with me that last time before—but she had work to do and wouldn’t leave. Our leaders told us there was nothing to fear. It was over before I could get back.”
“So, she’s just gone.” Sara sighed silently. Staying safely at home hadn’t saved her. “How long…?”
“Many seasons have passed.” He was quiet for a few minutes. “At first I tried to find out, or find a way in, but...”
“What did she look
like?”
“Small, dark, blue eyes—” His voice changed, got softer.
“—beautiful,” Sara finished for him. He’d had beauty, so why was he here with her?
He nodded.
She wanted to ask him, but she didn’t know how.
“What’s your world like?” Fyn asked.
“My world…” She was still getting used to thinking of it as a world and not a country.
“It used to seem big, until I saw how big the universe is,” Sara said slowly. “It’s beautiful, great really. I’ll have to show you some pictures. I have some on my computer. And there will be books in the ship library.”
He could probably read, but she didn’t know how to ask. She’d seen the map he’d helped to create of the galaxy. The area controlled by the Dusan reminded her of the former Soviet Union. The planets hidden behind an iron curtain, the way the Eastern block countries used to be cut off. Didn’t matter where you went, it seemed, there was always someone happy to oppress others.
“Its kind of sad, isn’t it?” She sighed.
“What?”
“The Dusan and Gadi, fighting all these years, people dying, and none of them probably even remember why or who started it. At least when we fight, we know why.”
She was quiet for a few minutes, thinking about her world and his.
“What was your world like before?”
He was quiet for a moment. “It was also beautiful, though I didn’t think about that then. It was only after it was—we spent so much time preparing to fight, everything we did was for defense.” He looked around. “This ship is for fighting but it doesn’t feel like my world did. It’s very different.”
Sara thought she understood what he meant. She’d felt like that in foster care. As if there was no time for anything but surviving, as if she couldn’t live until she pulled free of its undertow. A lot of people would consider the military another kind of cage, but not Sara. If she had a world, then the Air Force was that world. It had given her wings.
Fyn sat up, his legs dangling over the edge of the catwalk and looked down at Sara. She couldn’t read his expression this time. She sat up, too, pulling her legs up to her chest.
“Are you all right?”
He nodded.
She wished she hadn’t reminded him of his lost wife, his lost world. And there had to be other things that troubled him. It was clear his life hadn’t been kind up to now, even before he got stranded on Kikk. It was instinct to retreat inside herself.
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?” she said, even though she knew what he meant.
He arched his brows. He was so dang cute, what on earth was he doing here with her? There was at least one former beauty queen on board and she would have been happy to be “that” kind of girl for Fyn. Sara had seen her ask him to dance. She felt his hand on her chin. He tipped her face up.
“Hide from them if you must, but don’t hide from me.”
He bent his head and found her mouth. The kiss was sweet, only lightly laced with passion. They did need to be careful, after all. It was a long drop off the catwalk. Sara touched the side of his face, feeling the contrast between skin and beard, learning the curve of his jaw as his mouth teased her out of hiding. He could root her out, but her uncertainty was not so easily routed. He could hurt her and she didn’t like that. It was easier to risk her life in her Dauntless than her heart, which was kind of sad, but a truth she couldn’t avoid. She was what her life had made her—and what she’d chosen for herself. Evie always said it didn’t matter what happened to you, only what you thought about it, and then what you did about it. She was rigorously anti-victim mentality. Since she’d grown up black, in the South, she had the right. Sara could see another question forming in his eyes, but before he could voice it, her watch buzzed.
“I have to go. I’m on duty soon.”
She leaned in for a last kiss. Did he notice her lips were new to this? For her part, it seemed to up the shiver factor that it was all new. Another thing for Evie to be right about. She’d been an old-fashioned girl to her toenails and proud of it. But as Sara made her way down, she had a feeling he’d just put the question of why she hid on the back burner, not trashed it. At least it gave her time to try to come up with an answer.
If that was possible.
* * * * *
With Sara’s Dauntless back on operational status, and having been approved as a back-up pilot, the tenor of Fyn’s days changed. The wing consisted of six squadrons. Four of the squadrons were made of ships like Sara’s. The others flew something called a Hellfighter—which he learned had been named for craft from a previous war, just like the Dauntless. Fyn did sims on those, too. They were bigger and less maneuverable than the Dauntless, but they had more firepower and they could drop bombs. Fyn liked dropping bombs, even if they were sims. The different squadrons rotated through a schedule of alerts. Each squadron did a twelve-hour shift, then had twenty-four hours down—unless there was an escalation, in which all squadrons would deploy as needed. It was a brutal schedule, but he never heard anyone complain.
The Doolittle was efficiently crafted, in Fyn’s opinion. Fyn hadn’t been allowed on the bridge, but Carey told him the bridge was at the “pointy end.” There were two fighter bays, one on each side at the rear. There was also a shuttle bay, which housed the SAR craft, like the one that had rescued them from Kikk and transport shuttles. The ship also had a variety of weapons positions on the craft itself. When they’d approached it the first time, he’d seen an exterior that was sleek and it looked like it was elongated, like the smaller craft in design, but inside it had everything. It was basically a huge, armored, flying city.
His tour didn’t include any sensitive areas of the ship and when he’d asked about propulsion, Sara had frowned and said it was an ion drive, but all she knew about ions was that it made them go fast.
“Fighter pukes love fast,” she’d added with a grin. “And we need fast for inter-galactic travel. Otherwise, when we returned to Earth, everyone we used to know would be old or dead.”
The showers were communal, but separated by gender. They relieved themselves in the “head.” There was a commissary for necessities, though it was, according to Sara, getting a bit thin on stock. After months on Kikk, it looked pretty good to Fyn. There were places to wash your clothes, places to eat, places to play, places to work, and places to “work out.”
He hadn’t been there long, but it seemed Sara’s people worked hard and played harder. They were a curious mix of easy going and totally committed. At first he’d wondered how they’d make it out here. They’d accepted him so readily, almost carelessly, but he’d quickly realized the Old Man—what they called Colonel Halliwell, though not to his face—could size a man up with a glance. Fyn couldn’t figure out what the colonel saw when he looked at Fyn, but he knew he didn’t want to disappoint him. It was easy to slip into this life and forget he had another one, that he’d sworn an oath to the Ojemba.
The Colonel had hand picked the crew and they worked together as smoothly as their ship moved through space. The only odd note in the whole was the scientists—Sara called them the geek squad. They moved around in small groups, and seemed to have a language of their own.
From what Fyn had been able to pick up, the Doolittle was actually part of a string of intergalactic spacecraft that had been deployed across several galaxies. Each craft was just within subspace contact with the next craft in the chain, with the last craft just outside of their home galaxy. The Doolittle was the furthest out and the most vulnerable. In the next few weeks, they would be resupplied, recalled, or replaced by another ship. He also knew that if the Doolittle moved deeper into the galaxy, they’d lose contact with the Boyington, the next closest ship, and earth. Until the Dusan attack, the plan had been to make short, exploratory hops deeper into the galaxy, then return and report. Exploration was their primary mission, after all. The Boyington could reach them in an emergency, but it would tak
e time, even traveling at their top speed—and if it moved, it would sever both ships’ contact with Earth.
The Colonel was in a tough spot. He could withdraw, but they’d won the first round. And if they withdrew, it was possible it would embolden the Dusan. If they had the firepower, it would be better to win another battle. But, the Doolittle hadn’t felt the full force of a Dusan attack. As Sara had noted, they might not be as good at tactics, but they did have numbers. If the earth ship lost, there’d be no one to take the story back to their galaxy.
While the Colonel pondered his options and waited to send his report back through the relay, they’d been doing some sensor sweeps of the ocean on Kikk, trying to locate Sara’s island city, so far with no luck. The data from Sara’s computer showed a spike, but the Colonel refused to let anyone go down to the planet. If they had to withdraw—and could—he wanted his people within quick recall of the ship.
Fyn almost hoped they wouldn’t find it. The lost outpost would also be of great interest to Kalian. He seemed to have eyes and ears in places no one would expect. As Fyn knew, any one of the small moons could be an Ojemba watching post.
And then there was Sara. Something he’d said was bothering her, he could tell. He didn’t know what it was, though he had a feeling it had to do with Fiona. He thought about asking Briggs how it worked with their people, but what if he didn’t like Sara getting involved with, well, an alien. From what he could tell, they were built the same, but that didn’t mean Sara’s people weren’t territorial.
He shouldn’t get any more involved with her, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. The more he told himself he should stay away, the more he found himself seeking her out. He felt whole when he was with her, as if some part of himself had been missing, but wasn’t anymore. There were prettier women on the ship and women more than willing to experience mating with an alien, he was learning, but all he wanted was Sara. She had something more than pretty, though if he had to describe it, he’d be at a loss. Whatever it was, it seemed to be exactly what he needed.
Nebula Nights: Love Among The Stars Page 182