by Dean M. Cole
Newcastle stepped up. Jake saluted him.
He returned the salute and shook Jake's hand. "Colonel," the big Texan said significantly. "The two of you have your work cut out."
"Yes, sir," Jake said, smiling self-consciously.
"Now, if you'll direct us to the EON maintenance facility," Newcastle said, his booming voice echoing in the expansive chamber. "I'll take the command contingent to be implanted." The man winced. "I hate the sound of that."
Jake grinned. "It's not too bad, sir. I'll set the lights to lead you there. The computer is already expecting you. Once you're integrated into the network, it will download the Argonian language to anyone who doesn't already have it." He paused and looked to the admiral. "Of course, it'll give you access to the ship's command protocols, sir."
"Perfect," Admiral Johnston said. "I want you to remain on the bridge until we've completed integration."
"Yes, sir," Jake said.
They exchanged salutes again, and the command contingent turned and left the bridge, leaving only Richard and Jake.
Giard nodded to him. "Wing Commander."
Richard returned the gesture. "Afternoon, Wing Commander."
They laughed and hugged, then stood in awkward silence.
After a moment, Richard said. "I wish Vic could be here to be a part of this."
Jake nodded. "Yeah." He swallowed the lump that was trying to choke him. Finally, he pointed to Richard's rank insignia. "Nice surprise! Would it have killed you to give me a heads-up?"
"If you need a heads-up to appreciate a surprise, then you're really not going to like this one," a female voice said.
Jake turned toward her so fast he nearly snapped his neck. One of the people he'd seen toting equipment in the wake of the command staff stepped onto the bridge. She pulled off a wide-brimmed desert camouflage hat and her long, blonde hair tumbled free.
"Sandy?!"
Jake looked at Richard. "What the hell is she doing here?"
"It's good to see you too, asshole," Sandy said wryly.
After a confused pause, he forgot his protest and sprinted to her. Throwing his arms around Sandy, Jake swept her off of her feet and spun her around. He crushed her lips with a passionate kiss. She returned it fervently.
Afterward, her smile faded as she gently touched the facial cuts and bruises he'd earned aboard the Zoxyth ship. "Are you okay?"
"I'll live," Jake said, then winced.
Seeing his reaction, Sandy nodded. "Richard told me about Lieutenant Croft. I'm sorry, baby."
Jake looked away. Sandy pulled him back to her. "He died a hero, Jake," she said.
He nodded. After a moment, Jake pushed aside the doubts and stared deeply into her eyes. "I love you, Captain Fitzpatrick."
"I know," she said, smiling devilishly.
Jake turned and cocked an eyebrow at Richard. "I can't believe you let her come."
Colonel Allison held up his hands. "Hey, you're the one who decided to fall in love with a hard-headed Irish woman."
"Yeah, but you were already a Lieutenant Colonel. You could have ordered her to stay behind."
"Except for the fact that I like my balls just where they are," Richard protested.
Sandy, still in Jake's arms, grabbed his chin and turned his face to hers. "You know I'm the best fighter pilot you've ever—"
Jake opened his mouth to call bullshit, but she raised her own eyebrow. Giard made a tactical retreat.
Sandy shook her head and added, "There's no way I was staying behind."
Still looking at her, Jake nodded toward Richard. "You'll be assigned to Wing Commander Allison's squadron. Obviously, you can't be under my command."
He looked at Richard. "You brought her up here; so she's your responsibility. I want her to be your wingman."
Richard raised his right hand. "Consider it done, Colonel."
Jake turned back to see Sandy wrinkling her nose. She smiled sardonically and theatrically waved a hand in front of her face. "I hope they hurry up and get back. Someone needs a shower."
Jake laughed and threw his arms around her again. Positioning the neck ring under her nose, he squeezed her to him in a bear hug that sent more of his funk flowing out of the collar.
Sandy squealed and giggled.
Lieutenant Colonel Jake Giard smiled. He might make it through this day after all.
***
"Here it is," Jake said with a flourish of his hands.
Following him into the shipboard residence, Sandy slowed, trying not to gape. The huge cabin's bronze walls and trim matched the ship's gothic decor. Tall fluted casings framed pointed-arch openings. Beyond them, passages led to other portions of the residence. "This room alone is bigger than my parents' house. Well, bigger than it was, anyway." Considering the portion cleaved from the house by a falling chunk of Zoxyth asteroid, Sandy realized it wouldn't take a very big chamber to eclipse her parents' now diminished residence.
The thought dredged up emotions that Sandy wasn't yet ready to explore. She'd already told Jake of her father's injury. She'd also told him of her deadly encounter with the looters, but had omitted the near rape. The memory sent a shiver down Sandy's spine.
Jake paused and stepped toward her. Apparently mistaking Sandy's reaction, he started to put his arms around her. "Sorry about your dad, baby. I'm sure he—"
Sandy shoved Jake away. "I'm fine!" she said too sharply. After a moment she sighed. "Sorry, Jake. You're right. He'll recover. It could've been a lot worse."
A confused look crossed Jake's face. He hadn't pushed Sandy about the looters, but now she could see him studying her.
Before he could start asking questions, Sandy gestured toward the expansive room. "Give me the grand tour."
When Jake hesitated, Sandy raised an eyebrow.
Jake lifted his hands in surrender. "I know that look." After a final confused glance, he turned back toward the room. "Welcome to your new home."
"My new home?" Sandy said. "Why don't we make it our new home?"
Jake froze, motionless except for his slowly descending jaw. Sandy reached up and pushed his mouth closed.
He blinked and then said, "Who are you, and what have you done with my girlfriend?"
Sandy waved a dismissive hand. "There's plenty of room. You probably won't even get on my nerves."
"Listen here, Ms. Independent, available space wasn't an issue," Jake said. "I've been trying to convince you to move in with me for a year now. You always said it was too soon."
"Hey," Sandy said through a crooked smile. "It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind." It was all she could do not to look at her stomach.
Jake looked skeptical. "What changed?"
With both hands, Sandy gestured toward the room. "What hasn't?"
Seeing more questions forming, Sandy placed a finger across his lips. "If this day has taught me anything, it's how fleeting life can be. I always thought we had our whole life to take things to the next level, and I still do. It's just that 'our whole life' is now more of a variable. We've both been in combat before. We knew life could be stolen from a person without their knowledge. Death is rarely like in the movies. You don't see it coming; there are no drawn-out goodbyes. One moment you're walking down the street, the next instant you're dead and don't know it, didn't even know you were in peril. You just end."
Jake nodded. "But now it can happen on a much larger scale." A shadow of dark emotions crossed his face. Sandy thought he must be remembering his front-row seat for the day's tragic events, all capped off by the decapitation of Lieutenant Croft.
Sandy stepped closer and wrapped her arms around Jake. "We have a lot of work to do here; we need to maximize every minute of duty time." She gave him a meaningful look. "But I want to make the most of our downtime, as well."
Jake's eyes focused, and a grin slowly surfaced. "On that note, let's begin the grand tour in the bedroom," he said. He reached to pick her up. Sandy held up her hands and wrinkled her nose. "Shower first, Colonel!"
***
Clad in a fresh spacesuit, Jake stepped from the closet-like cabinet that had grown from the bedroom's floor. "I'm going to head to the hangar and get the bag y'all brought for me." Jake gestured at his spacesuit. "Fresh nanobots or not, I'm really tired of wearing this thing."
After he'd showered, they had collapsed onto the bed. Then they'd made love, a long, passionate exchange that ended with both of them panting and spent. Finally, Jake had risen from the bed and stepped into the spacesuit locker completely nude.
Sandy gave his groin a meaningful look and then consulted her watch. "Including the two-minute shower, you got to take off the spacesuit for five whole minutes," she said facetiously.
Jake laughed. "Five minutes, my ass. That was at least six!"
Sandy smiled wickedly and flipped him the bird. "Go get your bag, Colonel. Then get your butt back in bed. We've both had a very long day."
Jake laughed at her middle finger salute, and then his brow furrowed. "Baby, there's so much to do. I need to—"
"No, mister," Sandy said, cutting him off. "You've already saved the world enough times for one day."
Jake opened his mouth to protest.
Sandy raised a finger and cocked an eyebrow. "Are you trying to get kicked out on your first night?"
Jake held up both hands. "I surrender. You win. To the hangar and straight back."
"Good, now that that's settled, is there any way I can contact my mom back in Nellis? I want to check on Daddy."
Jake paused, staring blankly, his eyes unfocused.
Sandy pursed her lips. "Hello?"
He snapped out of his trance. "Sorry, I was accessing my EON."
Suddenly, a chime came from her crumpled flight suit where it lay forgotten on the room's floor. It was her cellphone's incoming text alert.
She cast a questioning look at Jake.
He shrugged a shoulder. "I created a virtual repeater and linked it to a Nellis area cell tower by tapping into its microwave radio link."
"Wow, that's pretty impressive. How did you learn to do that so quickly?" Sandy said.
"I wish I could take credit, but the ship's system is pretty smart. It did all the hard work. I just pointed out your device. It accessed your phone and deciphered the communications protocols. After that, it downloaded the GPS coordinates and frequencies for the most recent cell towers the phone had accessed. Luckily, we're far enough east of Nellis that one of the towers had a microwave communication link that happens to point in our general direction."
"Okay …" Sandy paused, shaking her head. "Thanks for the telecom tutorial, Captain Techie. You lost me at 'communications protocols.' You could've just said the ship did it."
"Hey, you asked. It's not my fault you can't understand anything that doesn't have nuts and bolts and comes with spark plugs." Jake gave her his patented crooked smile. "And, that's Colonel Techie to you," he said with a wink.
Having collected her phone, Sandy threw her flight suit at him. "Get the hell out of here before I make you go back into that spacesuit locker."
Jake saluted her. "Yes, ma'am."
Sandy grinned and flipped him off again.
As Jake left the room, she unlocked her phone and dialed her mom. To her relief, it started ringing almost immediately, and to her greater relief, her mother answered on the first one.
"Sandra?"
Sandy smiled as an enormous weight lifted from her shoulders. With a single word her mother's voice told her everything she needed to know. The feisty humorous edge to her voice said Daddy was fine.
"Hi, Mom!" Sandy said. "I hope you're behaving."
"Well, I don't give two shits what they think, but those doctors got another thing coming if they think I'll sit by quietly while they ignore my Johnny."
Sandy heard her daddy in the background. "Damn it, woman. I told you I'm fine. Quit pestering them."
Sandy laughed. Even from a thousand miles away, she could picture them bickering. There was no malice on either side, more playful banter than true argument. Her daddy called it 'terms of endearment wrapped in burlap.'
"Put her on speaker, Firecracker," her dad said, calling Sandy's mom by her well-earned nickname.
"Firecracker?" her mother said with a harrumph. "I'll shove a firecracker right up your ass," she added, apparently forgetting her earlier concern for her husband's health. "Listen to Mr. I-still-have-a-flip-phone trying to tell me how to work a smartphone." During the last half of her mother's tirade, her voice gained an echo. The edge faded from her elderly voice as she added, "We can both hear you now, hun."
"Daddy?"
"Pumpkin!"
The returning strength in his voice brought a tear to Sandy's eye. "How are you, Daddy?"
"Oh, I'll live," he said gruffly. "Your mother's nagging will put me six-feet-under way sooner than the loss of a leg."
Several minutes later and after deflecting multiple inquiries as to her whereabouts, Sandy said, "It was great to hear your voices, but I better go. I love you both."
"Bye-bye, pumpkin," her daddy said.
"Just a sec, hun," her mother said.
Through her phone's speaker, Sandy heard the rustle and shuffling of her mother standing and walking. Faintly, she heard her say, "I'll be right back, Johnny."
After the click of a closing door, her mom's voice returned in a whisper. "Does he know?"
Sandy blinked. "Does who know what, Mom?"
"Don't be coy with me, Sandra."
Sandy sat up on the bed. "Wait. How do you know?"
Her mother chuckled. "Oh let's see. I'm not sure if it was the fifth or the fifteenth time your hand went to your stomach while we tried to make our way around that big old rock that hit our street."
Sandy winced. Had she been that obvious? Looking down, she realized even now her hand rested on her abdomen. Self-consciously, she lowered it, resolving to break that unfortunate habit. "Listen, Mom. I'm sorry I didn't say anything, but I just found out before all this …" She paused, looking around the alien room.
"Before all this shit happened?" her mother said.
"Yes, Momma." Sandy hesitated again. A tear threatened to crest her lower eyelid. She swiped it away brusquely. It wasn't just this shit: the attempted rape at the hands of a couple of white trash meth-heads had scarred her as badly as the day's otherworldly events. The looters had come from a section of California affectionately referred to as Calabama. But those assholes didn't have the sunny Southern disposition she affiliated with the region. What-the-Fuck-Buck and his psychotic brother Leroy had nearly robbed her whole family, baby and all, of their lives.
Before her mother could interrupt, Sandy continued. "But I'll be damned if I'm going to let them pull me from this. We don't know how long this break will last. Hell, we don't know how much longer humanity will last. I won't be doing my baby any favors if I convalesce while the world burns down around my ears."
The sharpness fell from her mother's tone. "No, dear, you wouldn't, but you need to tell your man. Jake deserves that much."
"No, Momma. I don't want him distracted, not any more than my being here already has. Besides, he's just as likely to order me back to the surface or find someone who will."
After a moment's hesitation, her mother said, "Fine, but I suggest you stop holding your stomach like you have a prolapsed abdominal hernia. The little booger won't fall out of your belly … not for several more months, anyway."
Sandy smiled. "Yes, ma'am."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"Mr. Thramorus?"
Remulkin didn't respond. Seated on the bridge's only combat couch not cluttered with emptied uniforms, he continued staring at the floor.
"Remulkin Thramorus?" the Space Marine said again.
After a second nudge from the female Marine's blaster rifle, Remulkin batted away its muzzle and glared at the woman. "Who the fuck else would I be?" He paused and gestured to the room's complement of piled garments. "I told your admiral that everyone else is … well,
they're fucking gone!"
Framed by her closely cropped black hair, the woman's face hardened. "I think I'll be the judge of that, Mr. Thramorus."
"Have fun with that," he said with a dismissive wave. "There's a lovely sight waiting for you in the tractor beam control room. I suggest you start there. Now leave me the fuck alone."
She waved one of her squad members to her side. Jabbing her muzzle into Remulkin's chest, she said, "Keep an eye on the good scientist. If the asshole so much as farts wrong, do me a favor, and shoot the bastard."
"What the hell?" Remulkin said, batting away the muzzle again. "I'm not the enemy here."
"I don't know what you are. Maybe you are what you say: the only man left on the planet, and now the only person left alive on one of my ships. But if you ask me, that's two coincidences too many."
Remulkin glared at the Space Marine. Holding out his empty hands, he said, "Search the damned ship, Lieutenant. Afterward, if you think I'm responsible, feel free to throw me in the brig. In the meantime, fuck off."
Her lined face returned the glare for a moment, then she looked at her subordinate and pointed at Remulkin. "Watch him." Turning from the pair, she gestured to the door through which her squad had entered, and they stormed back out of the bridge.
As silence returned, Remulkin looked at his guard. Pale and skinny, the young enlisted man looked nervous. The Marine couldn't be more than ten years older than Remulkin's son. Thoughts of his lost family threw a fresh wave of grief across Thramorus. Looking from the young man, Remulkin stared at the floor. Hidden from view, tears cast their own waves across the image of the mottled gray deck and its frozen ocean of nanobots between his boots.
To his surprise, a small section of the floor under Thramorus lifted like a finger extending from a viscous fluid. Blocked from the Marine's view, its soft absorbent tip gently dabbed the tears from under Remulkin's eyes.
He shook his head and gently pushed away the assistance of the ship's artificial intelligence. "I'm fine."
"What, sir?" said the Marine.
"Nothing."
A few minutes later, the lieutenant reappeared at the bridge entrance, her face ghostly white. She waved at the nervous private and said, "Quit pointing that thing at him. The way you're shaking you're likely to shoot the poor man at the pop of a micrometeorite hitting the hull."