by John Ringo
Tommy looked up from a game of backgammon with Papa O'Neal as the navigator came into the lounge and approached him.
"Sir, we just received a short-range encrypted transmission from a neighboring ship. The message header said it was for you." He handed Tommy a data cube.
"Thank you." He set it beside the backgammon board, ignoring the man's hesitation until he apparently gave up on the possibility of snooping and wandered off in the direction of the bridge.
"I think I'll go check on Felicia, if you don't mind interrupting our game." She'd kill him if she didn't get to see this message as soon as it was decrypted. Not that he blamed her. If it was Wendy down there, he'd be biting his nails, too.
* * *
Titan Base, Friday, June 21, 20:25
The branch of the access tube leading to the shuttle's cargo hold, which he was going to have to use instead of anything off of the main cabin, was absolutely frigid. His face and nose were all he'd left bare to feel it, but it was still damn cold. Less worn areas in the gray tube showed it had once been blue. It was probably damn near fifty years old, and reeked of leaking hydrocarbons from outside. Fortunately, he only had to put up with it for a minute or so.
"Diana, I'm going to add you to my case until we get up to the ship. I haven't been sleeping as well as the medics would like, and I think an uninterrupted nap on the way up would do me a world of good." He tucked the AID into the case among his uniforms.
"Certainly, James. Anything that will help you get well soon. I'll see you on board." She sounded almost like a mother tucking her child in.
"Goodnight, Diana."
"Goodnight, James."
He closed the case and tucked it into the cargo bay of his shuttle.
* * *
Titan Orbit, Friday, June 21, 20:25
"Okay, here I am, back as promised." Tommy stepped through the door balancing two trays full of food—and not a corn product on it.
Cally was obviously making good use of the necessaries bag he'd scraped together from somewhere, cotton between her toes and an obviously fresh coat of bright red nail polish on fingers and toes. At least she didn't have any of that thick green goop Wendy sometimes used caked all over her face.
"I thought you might like some company for dinner tonight," he said. "Should I set Sarah up for a two-player game? She does a pretty mean Space Invaders."
"Sure. I'd like that. Truth to tell, I've been a little stir crazy today." Her grin was infectious. "There's so much to do when I get back to get all my affairs in order and, well, you know, start making plans." She looked uncertain for a moment.
"You do think he meant he wants marriage, don't you?" she asked worriedly.
"Back in ACS, despite being a real hardass when he wanted to be, he was as Catholic as you are. There's no doubt in my mind his intentions are marriage. Hell, with the relatives you've got, girl? Not to mention being pretty formidable yourself," he laughed. "Wendy and Shari will just be in heaven helping you plan it."
They were halfway through the third game when it froze.
"Tommy, I'm afraid I have bad news," the AID broke in.
"What?" he asked. Cally's fist was clenched against her mouth.
"Ship instrumentation has detected an explosion in Titan's atmosphere. Traffic control confirms it as the FS-688 bound for the Kick 'Em Jenny. Rescue crews have been dispatched, but . . . it doesn't look good. I waited until I was sure. I'm so sorry," it finished miserably.
"Cally?" Tommy looked over at her. Her hand had sunk back down to the table, and her skin was an awful mottled shade of gray. He tried hugging her awkwardly, but she might as well have been a block of wood.
"Cally?" he tried again. "Come on, honey, you're scaring me. We don't know anything for sure yet. Come on, snap out of it." No response. He did the only thing he could do—left the cabin at a hard run to get Papa O'Neal, finally running him down where he was watching an old movie on his PDA.
"Tommy? What the hell is the matter? You look like you've seen a—" He stopped cold.
"There's been an accident. Ca—Felicia needs you. Now," the younger man said.
When they got back to her cabin, she had stacked the trays outside the door and was inside on her bunk, facing the wall, and nothing they said or did could move her.
* * *
Over the next few days, they took it in shifts to sit with her, trying never to leave her alone. She didn't speak. It was all they could do to get her to eat a few bites and take fluids. They did their best to get the best options the galley offered, but for all the response they got it could have been sawdust.
Finally, on the third day, she picked up a towel and a change of clothes. Papa O'Neal made sure the way to the head was clear and stood guard while she took a sponge bath and changed into fresh clothes.
He took it as a hopeful sign and tried to talk to her, but she only shook her head.
That afternoon, while Tommy was spelling him for a bit, he went up to the bridge and bribed the communications tech to let him call Earth and download all her favorite music. Compressed, it didn't cost all that much. Well, not really, anyway.
The rest of the afternoon and evening, he had his PDA cycle through everything he could remember her liking. She still wasn't talking, but he didn't think it was his imagination that some of the tension had left her body. That was, until it cycled through to that old war-time Urb band. When it hit their stuff, he heard a sniffle. His eyes shot to where she lay on her back, eyes closed. A tear leaked slowly from beneath one eyelid. Then another. Then another. Finally, when she broke into full-force sobs he sank down onto his knees next to her bunk and held her until she cried herself out. It took a long time. Then again, his granddaughter had a hell of a lot of her crying saved up.
When she was through she still didn't seem to want to talk. He grabbed a box of tissues he'd tucked away more out of hope than faith and let her clean herself up.
As the weekend approached, her appetite had improved, almost back to normal, more or less.
She still wasn't talking, but he'd managed to get her interested in playing a few old movies and holovids by the simple expedient of disappearing for awhile and leaving his PDA next to her on her bunk.
By early in the week, she was watching movies practically nonstop. Another massive download had gotten him the complete combined works of Fred and Ginger, along with an inexplicable smattering of old Three Stooges episodes. But hell, if she'd asked for 1970s soap opera archives he would have gotten them for her, and damn the cost.
* * *
Orbit around Earth's Moon, Wednesday, July 3, 06:30
Granpa's PDA said they had reached the Moon. The schedule said they'd be here for a few days unloading and reloading freight from the hybrid Human-Indowy factories. Granpa was snoring on the floor of her cabin. He needed to reapply his depilatory foam. Badly. The red stubble looked downright strange after all these years of getting used to him smooth-jawed all the time.
This cabin was getting pretty rank, too, now that she thought about it. It would have been bad enough that they tried to feed her fish somewhere along the trip and the odor had lingered. Her sheets smelled. She wouldn't have noticed the always-familiar air of Red Man in the mix, except that it was a bit stale. Still, there was something solid and a bit comforting about it.
The light blue of the Galplas in the cabin probably would have been okay if she hadn't been staring at it for the whole trip. Somebody had come up with a green scrap of carpeting for the floor from somewhere and glued it down. She could see the bits of it that extended out past Granpa. The shade clashed horribly with his hair, but it was probably marginally more comfortable than bare Galplas.
She felt a bit guilty. She'd been having herself a good mope, but Tommy and Granpa had obviously been worried sick. She was going to have to at least, well, talk and things, so that they could go get some sleep and do whatever they needed to do.
After all, she had a whole rejuvenated lifetime to look forward to. Oh, joy. She p
ulled her mind back from the pit by main force. One day at a time.
She peeked out the door. She wasn't supposed to be seen by the crew, but she didn't really care at the moment. Fortunately, none of them were around. She grabbed a laundered jumpsuit, a clean towel, and a few of the jumble of toiletries Tommy had gotten her. She wrinkled her nose at her own stink. She needed a shower. She really needed a shower.
Fortunately, freight crew who didn't have the night shift weren't exactly early risers. Well, this crew wasn't, anyway. Good. No underwear, but it couldn't be helped. She could buy some stuff down on Selene Base. If she didn't get some fresh underwear, she was gonna kill somebody. Okay, well, not literally. She sighed. It was going to be a hell of a long road back.
Granpa didn't wake up until almost nine thirty. She only got him to go off to his own cabin for some real sleep by faithfully promising to say more than two words a day to him when he came back.
"I'll . . . be okay eventually, Granpa. Well, mostly. Just, not yet. I can't be okay yet. Go get some real sleep. I need to catch the shuttle down and buy some stuff."
"I'll go with you," he said.
"Granpa, I need some shop time alone. Call it retail therapy if it makes you feel better. Look, I promise the very first thing I'll do is buy myself a PDA and call you and give you the number, okay?"
"If this is what you need, but Cally if you do anything stupid or dangerous I swear I'll hunt you down and haunt you."
"I'm . . . not even thinking about something that dumb. I just need time. Uh, Granpa?"
"Yeah?"
"Could I borrow a credit card?"
* * *
Selene Base, Earth's Moon, Wednesday, July 3, 20:15
It had been a hard day of shopping. She had dropped most of her packages off at the freight loading zone. The shuttle pilot had asked about her injuries. Fortunately, she'd been able to explain them away as injuries from the mugging—mostly sprains and bruises that had looked worse than they were. They hadn't seen her at all in over a week, so it wasn't out of the realm of possibility.
Granpa had quit worrying so much once she checked back in and he had her back on e-mail and knew her plans.
She had set herself one firm homework assignment for this evening. She had never been less in a partying mood in her life, but by God she was going to sit in a bar and take one full drink, without chugging it, before she found quarters for the night. The freight shuttle wouldn't be taking its next load up until early afternoon tomorrow.
Hell, she might just stay dirtside for a few days. Or not. One day at a time.
She was standing in front of a bar the new buckley said was commonly frequented by freighter crews and others on the way from here to there. Her black catsuit was likely to get her quite a bit of attention, but she had seen it in the shop and hadn't been able to resist it for sentimental reasons. This one fit a little better than the last one—she'd lost weight over the past two weeks, between one thing and another. One day at a time. Hell, one minute at a time. I will go in and order a drink. One drink in a social place. Then I can go find some quarters to hide in for the night.
It wasn't the happiest drink she'd ever had. She found herself ditching the occasional pest who tried to pick her up and desultorily sipping at the strawberry margarita in front of her, resisting the temptation to guzzle it just so she could leave. I should have known it was too good to last. No, dammit! One day at a time.
She heard another damn pest walk up to interrupt her drink and sighed.
"Is this seat taken?" he asked.
"It is unless you can lick your own eyebrows!" Oh, God. Why did I have to say that.
"How do you think I do my hair?"
Her sudden grip on his hand was white-knuckled for a few moments before softening. There had to have been a good reason. After all, there often was for this kind of thing.
Epilogue
Under a cornfield in Indiana, Thursday, August 1
The base seemed empty with so few Indowy in it. Aelool's clan was quite small by Indowy standards, and he hadn't been able to afford to bring enough inside to replace the losses. Clan Beilil had sided with Aelool's clan, their debt to the O'Neal clan was vast beyond measure, but the absence of the rest of the Indowy Bane Sidhe was palpable.
It made Cally appreciate even more that Aelool had made time to come down to talk to her. It had taken some doing to arrange this. The owner of the Irish Bar at Titan Base's shuttleport had no doubt wondered why someone had wanted an order of the bar's promotional T-shirts and shot glasses shipped all the way to Earth, but her FedCreds spent just as well as anyone else's. That the shipment really was T-shirts and shot glasses would never occur to anyone who might check up on her later.
"For what it's worth, Miss O'Neal, I think you're doing the right thing in taking a sabbatical to have children. I'm sure we all understand that in the circumstances of your loss you would prefer not to add a mate to the mix. Besides, Clan O'Neal, though small, is more than capable of providing you all the social support human children need to thrive." He paused delicately. "Have you selected a donor?"
Cally stuck a hand in her purse and came up with a handful of field issue biosample cubes.
"I had learned to cache anything I might need someday by the time I was eight." Her smile was bittersweet. If he mistook the reason, that was just perfect for their purposes.
"Oh." He looked nonplussed for a moment, before recovering. "I'm sure that will be a great comfort to you."
THE END
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