Surprisingly enough, the guard actually answered. “A few moments ago,” he said. “On the orders of Executive Officer Busht.”
O’Keefe was too flabbergasted to speak. It was the first time either of the guards had acknowledged him in any way, and now not only had one of them spoken directly to him, O’Keefe had at the same time suddenly found himself the master of his own accommodations. Pellotte, however, did not miss a beat.
“In that case,” she said, firmly prying the guard’s hand off her arm, “may I come in?”
“Well, yeah, of course,” O’Keefe answered haltingly.
“Thank you,” she said sweetly as she swept past him. She turned to wave at the guards still standing outside. “Bye, boys,” she said as the door whispered shut behind her.
She led O’Keefe to the sofa, playfully pushing him down into a seated position before lightly hopping into his lap. Both her arms entwined comfortably around his neck while he locked an embrace around her waist.
“So tell me,” she asked, “just how long has it been since you’ve had sex?”
“Damn,” he said, flustered by her directness and using the English word. “I don’t really know. Forty-some years, I guess.”
“About time you got back in the saddle, don’t you think?”
“You don’t waste any time on pleasantries, do you?”, O’Keefe said, somewhat taken aback.
Pellotte smiled warmly at him. “Well, I’m a medical professional. It’s my job to take care of you, to make sure that your convalescence is 100 percent successful. That includes your sexual convalescence. After all, with what you’ve been through we have to be sure all the plumbing is genuinely repaired and working at top efficiency. The two of us can verify that the old-fashioned way, or you can opt for Beccassit and his reality simulator helmet.”
“Oh, I’ll go with option number one, no doubt,” O’Keefe answered, smiling back at her. “It’s just that yesterday I was nothing more than a dangerous animal to you people, and now tonight I’m going to sleep with you. That’s a rather drastic change of mindset, don’t you think? I’m wondering what it all means.”
Pellotte’s smile widened, and she looked at O’Keefe slyly, almost wolfishly. “First of all,” she said, “we are not going to sleep together. I’ve been doing this since long before you were born and trust me, I am going to keep you wide awake for the duration of our little tryst. As for the rest, why worry about it. Tonight I’m all yours, and I want to do whatever it is that pleases you. Isn’t that enough?”
O’Keefe thought about that for a moment, until the swelling in his crotch made her logic utterly unassailable. “Yeah, it is,” he drawled. “And what would really please me right now would be for you to undo that top.”
Pellotte laughed lightly, and then reached behind her neck with both hands, beneath her long mane, and released whatever held the flimsy fabric of her outfit over her bosom. It fell in gentle cascades to her waist, revealing her ample brown breasts. She arched her back slightly, holding them forward, as if offering them to O’Keefe, and looked up into his gaze. He nodded slightly, took her face gently in his hands, and pulled her lips to his. Then he kissed her, hard on the mouth.
The light from the lamp at the work station where Valessanna sat was the only illumination in her quarters. She was up reviewing progress reports from the engineering department despite the alcohol still on her brain. The reports were mostly descriptions of the very tedious work of making the last repairs to the ship, or at least the last that could be performed en route. Vigilant was slowly becoming more or less whole again.
An entry request chimed. “Open,” she commanded, and the hatch slid aside to reveal the silhouetted form of Kira Pellotte standing in the passageway. She entered and made her way across the room without a word before flopping down onto the bunk behind Valessanna’s chair. Valessanna abandoned her work, spinning the chair around to face the girl. “So,” she asked, “how was he?”
“Oh, he was fine. He was very sweet, very kind, and very gentle. It’s just that… Oh, never mind.”
“What?” Valessanna asked, concern etching her features.
“Well, he’s been paralyzed most of his life, and he’s extremely young anyway, so he was very inexperienced. And it was like it all still had meaning to him, like it was more than just pleasure. Like it was about three hundred men ago for me. Like it was with Suven. I just made me think about things that I’ve lost.”
“Oh, that,” Valessanna said, relieved. “I thought he’d done something, something out of line, I mean.”
“No, nothing like that. I just wish that over the years things didn’t become so…so frivolous, that’s all.”
“I know, sweetie. I felt that way myself once. But take it from someone who is two hundred years your elder. You’ll get over it. It is just sex, and it is just pleasure. Don’t read any more into it than that.”
Pellotte pushed herself up on her elbows to face Valessanna and shook her long hair from over her eyes. “Was that all it was with you and Kebler? Just pleasure?”
Valessanna sighed and looked away. “Let’s not get into that right now, all right? It’s been a long night, I’ve had a bit to drink, and I’m not really prepared for a deep, philosophical discussion. Let’s just try to stay on mission here. Can you control him?”
“Oh, yes,” Pellotte said, falling back to the mattress and speaking toward the ceiling. “As long as I’m giving him what he craves he’ll do whatever I say. I don’t think there are many women with my experience where he comes from, so I have tricks he’s never imagined. As long as I stay creative he’ll do just about anything for me.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes,” Pellotte said, seemingly without commitment.
Valessanna ignored the impassivity of Pellotte’s answer and went on with her end of the conversation. “Good,” she said, leaning forward and speaking conspiratorially, “because we now have no other legal means to bind him to our will. What I feared has come to pass in that I can find no legitimate way to coerce him or even hold him. All I can do is keep him isolated from the crew. And once we reach Sefforia we will have to convince him to voluntarily place himself in the care of a psychiatric hospital, as there is no chance of the High Council availing themselves of whatever knowledge he possesses. That’s the best I could get out of Cyanne. She thinks he is too barbaric to be of any assistance to us. However, she feels that doctors might be better able to understand Vazilek psychology after studying an aberrant, and Beccassit thinks the possibility exists that they might even rehabilitate his mind. If those assertions are true, and the doctors are able to extricate the understanding that we need, it could well reflect enough merit on me to get me out of at least some of the trouble I’m in. I might even be able to retain my rank.
“He is, after all, the perfect specimen. Lindy couldn’t have abducted a man better fit for our purposes if he had made it his life’s work. For the love of Stirga, he is a graduate of Annapolis, one of the specialized universities that grooms their youth to lead their killing units. He almost certainly has all the information that we could ever require locked away in his vicious little brain.
“But for this to come to fruition we are going to have to have his cooperation, and that cooperation is going to have to be immediate. Once we reach Sefforia, it will not be long before the word gets out that we are home and our superiors begin to show up. If we expect to see this through to a successful conclusion, we will have to have the aberrant already in treatment and be seeing some real, positive results from him before the brass get there and start taking everything over. So it’s up you to keep him in line until we get to that point. We girls have to use our guile now and again, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Pellotte answered, apparently totally disinterested in the changes in plan concerning the aberrant, while the plaintive tone of her simple affirmation could not be discounted a second time, as it seemed to the ears of her captain to be nearly drowning in doubt.
Pellotte pushed her torso semi-upright once more. “I just expected him to be different, that’s all. But he seems like any other man. If he is any different at all it’s in a good way. I expected him to be more, I don’t know—savage. But he was every bit as patient and kind as even Pender.”
“Pender?” Valessanna gasped. “You’ve been with Abblehoff?”
“Yes,” Pellotte replied sheepishly. “And why not? He’s been with everyone else. And don’t worry, it was before us.”
“I’m not worried, just surprised. You’ve never mentioned that before.”
“I didn’t see the need.” Pellotte paused for a moment, reflecting. “What if my patient is right?” she finally asked.
“Right?”
“About the Vazileks.”
“Sweetheart,” Valessanna said, almost laughing, “he can’t be right. He’s an aberrant! His people die long before they would be eligible even to hold office in our society. They don’t even know we or the Vazileks are out here. Rest assured that he doesn’t have anything remotely approaching the sophistication or the wisdom of our leaders. I think that we can be sure that they know infinitely more than he does about what goes on around the Milky Way. The Vazileks are merely criminals, powerful and frightening criminals to be sure, but criminals nonetheless. They will cause us trouble for a time, but eventually even they will tire of rapine and destruction. They will grow weary of killing themselves to avoid arrest and will finally consent to talk. Then everything will go back to what it used to be. Our leaders will find a way to insure that is how all this ends.”
“But our leaders have had no exposure whatsoever to anything like them,” Pellotte persisted, “while Hill seems to have had more than his share. What if we know as little about the Vazileks’ intentions as he knows about sex?”
“Oh, Hill it is now. You’re beginning to sound like Beccassit. Kira, you don’t actually have feelings for this barbarian, do you?”
“No!” Pellotte exclaimed. “Well, yes, in a way,” she added in a more subdued tone. Then almost angrily, “I don’t know. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore. If you don’t have to talk about Kebler, I don’t have to talk about… About this! And what’s with you anyway? A few months ago you were so despondent over our losses, and now you’re scheming like never before and thinking only of yourself and your rank and your precious commission.”
Valessanna rose from her chair and crossed the short expanse of deck to the bunk. She seated herself where she could look down into Pellotte’s face. “Don’t be upset with me, sweetheart,” she said. “I admit there is a selfish aspect to this endeavor, but mostly it’s about accomplishing the mission, about making all the lives we lost count for something, about saving uncounted other lives. There is still a chance that we can make that happen, and it is very important to me.”
“I’m sorry. I should know that, and I’m not upset,” Pellotte announced sulkily. “It’s just been a very long day, that’s all.”
“Okay,” Valessanna said in a soothing tone. “Just promise me you won’t let this affect you too much. It makes me worry.”
“I won’t,” Pellotte whispered. There was a long pause while Valessanna gently stroked and rearranged the nurse’s tousled hair. Finally Pellotte took her captain’s hand in her own and said, “Why don’t you save your reports for tomorrow and come to bed. I need someone to hold me.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:
Return to the Union
“Sub-light in ten seconds, Captain.”
“Thank you, Pender,” Valessanna acknowledged.
The navigator began a countdown at five. As usual, his calculations were close enough to perfect that the viewscreens sprang to life just as zero left his lips, revealing uncounted stars and one brighter sun hanging directly in their path.
“Shall I contact traffic control?” the ensign at the communications console asked.
“No, not yet. There will be no need until we get in closer.” Valessanna’s voice sounded tired and defeated, and she no longer cared. They were home now, back in the Union; there was no reason to erect any further facades of invulnerability for the crew’s sake. She wasn’t going to be the captain of Vigilant for very much longer anyway, so what difference did it make now what the crew thought. “But keep a sharp eye on the sensors, if you please, just in case,” she added, knowing that the command was unnecessary. If something so big as a garbage scow began to approach Vigilant she was certain she would hear about it immediately.
Nevertheless she was confident that the area would be relatively deserted. This system was hardly a destination that teemed with ships from the outside. The population was tiny by Union standards, thanks to the lack of large land masses on the watery world of Sefforia that was the only habitable planet in the system. Commerce here was light and visitors few. There was always a great deal of local traffic between the asteroid belts; there were three in the system; and the extensive zero-g factory platforms and shipyards that the belts had engendered. But Vigilant was approaching from an angle almost perpendicular to the planetary plane, so they would see very little of the freighters that plied those routes. Even when they got in close to their destination, the only ships they were likely to encounter would be corporate shuttles carrying technicians out to the factories for support or back in to Sefforia for recreation. Valessanna was intimately aware of all these things because Sefforia was her birth world and an ideal port of call for Vigilant under the circumstances. The repair facilities in the system were excellent, more than adequate for the ship’s refit, and it would be easier to hide the presence of the aberrant here than on a more populous world. She would also be able to suffer the official inquiry that she fully expected to undergo enclosed by her native surrounds.
These facts had led Valessanna to presume that Sefforia would be the perfect world for Vigilant to make port. She had been certain that the planet they were approaching was a world where the ship could slip quietly back into the Union while drawing as little attention as possible. And as she had not been specific concerning their return date in her message to headquarters, it seemed a given that it would be weeks before any significant police presence arrived. Thus she was caught completely off guard when the crewman manning the sensors made an immediate report, his own surprise evidenced by the aporetic tone of his voice. “Captain, my board shows three Incorruptible class cruisers orbiting Sefforia. I make them to be the Courageous, the Arbiter, and the Observant.”
Valessanna’s heart abruptly sank. She had been banking on using the hiatus between their return and the arrival of her superiors to organize her defense and set her plans in motion for the aberrant. Now suddenly, and unexpectedly, her time was up. She did not believe that she had been naïve. She had envisioned some sort of police contingent beyond the norm to be on hand and waiting for Vigilant to arrive, as she had understood that under the circumstances headquarters would want to be informed immediately of their return. She had also expected high ranking officers to be boarding a ship bound for Sefforia within hours of an incoming drone’s confirmation of their making port. But three cruisers already in orbit, apparently waiting patiently just for Vigilant? It was hard to believe. Three cruisers were the lion’s share of the firepower for the entire precinct, and it was especially troubling that Courageous was among them, as she carried the flag for this sector. Undoubtedly Inspector Claudaine was aboard. Valessanna was starting to get a very bad feeling about what kind of reception she and Vigilant were about to receive.
Her fears were seemingly confirmed twelve minutes later when the ensign at the communications station announced another startling revelation. “Captain,” she said, in a shocked voice, “I’m showing an enormous column of emissions coming in, apparently generated from Courageous. It looks like more than just the mail—a lot more.” There was a long pause before the
woman spoke again. “Captain!” she exclaimed, “The ship’s logs are downloading. All of them! Directly to Sefforian UP headquarters!” Almost as an afterthought she added, “And there is a priority one message for your eyes only. Vigilant has routed it to your quarters.”
“Very well,” Valessanna sighed. She dismounted from the command chair and turned to Busht, saying softly, “Colvan, you have the conn.”
“Acknowledged, Captain,” Busht answered mechanically. “The first officer has the conn.”
Priority one meant the sender expected the message to be read immediately if not sooner, so Valessanna hastened from the bridge as soon as command of the watch was passed on. She made her way as quickly as possible to her quarters. On the way, as she rode the lift, a thousand variants of what the message might contain flashed through her brain. None of the possibilities were very appealing. She would almost certainly be relieved of command to start with, and that would be effective immediately. In her thoughts the dreaded prospect of a stint in rehab reared its ugly head once more, so it was with great trepidation that she entered her quarters, took a seat before her work station, and ordered up her messages. As she had expected, the priority communication was not computer generated text that was the norm for intra-fleet communications; it was a personal v-mail from Inspector Claudaine. She stared at the visage of his head and shoulders, floating frozen in the air before her, for several seconds before activating the message.
“Valessanna, I’m very pleased you and your crew have at last made port,” the Inspector began, a surprising smile spreading across his round face. “You seem to have had a very exciting deployment. The force welcomes you home.
“As I’m sure you have already realized, however, the circumstances of your return have necessitated the employment of some rather extreme precautions.” Claudaine’s smile faded as he launched into the business end of the missive. “Your crew, with a few exceptions, is to be reassigned. Orders posting them to new positions aboard the Observant, the Arbiter, or here with me on Courageous have already been sent. They will report to their new stations immediately, with no shore leave, either now or in the foreseeable future. I understand that this may seem harsh, but the situation dictates that they should be kept separate from the general population for as long as possible.
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