Though Andy and Brit continued sparring in the evenings, she rarely acknowledged him during the day. When classwork was finished and the cadets were released to some newly-granted free time on the Academy campus, Brit might find him in a study room or near the pond with old oak trees along its bank.
One day he realized she meant to throw him in the pond and he managed to do it first. Brit came out of the water spitting, fists clenched, and Andy thought she was really going to attack him.
Instead she shook her head and gave him a dark grin, smoothing her hair back. “You got me that time,” she said. “Give me your shirt so I can dry off.”
Of course, the rest of the platoon had noticed they were spending time together. Andy got the jibes he would have expected, and the sucker punches and grabs from behind grew less frequent, and even became friendly when they did happen. As the end of their first year approached, though, someone had the bright idea that Andy should fight Brit in a grand, end-of-year battle. Before they could stop the idea from spreading, bets were already taking place and the pot had grown to nearly a month’s salary.
At first, the odds were all on Brit. Then a few people pointed out that Andy had really come into his own and learned most of her tricks. He was also stronger, technically, and had more reach.
But others argued that Brit was angry in a way Andy never would be, and that it gave her an edge he couldn’t match.
Andy’s poor, cadets said, half-joking. We should offer him a stake in the pot. He can send it to his family.
This debate and discussion of the rules of the match became prime entertainment for the last two weeks of the academic year. Rather than looking forward to going home for the first time in twelve months, the platoon only talked about the upcoming bout that technically neither Brit nor Andy had agreed to fight.
* * * * *
On the final day before it was time to board transportation for home, Andy was loading his bag with personal clothing and a few gifts he’d bought from the Academy museum. He had just sealed the bag and placed it on his bunk and was turning to check his dress uniform in his locker mirror when someone grabbed him from behind.
He swiveled his head left and right, trying to get a look at his attacker, but saw only the crowd that had already gathered in the line of bunks. No one hit him as he expected. He was carried to the center of the barracks bay where he saw two cadets holding Brit and walking her toward him.
All around them, plebes pounded the floor and clapped in rhythm, shouting, “Fight! Fight!”
Two instructors and a line of upper-class cadets appeared at the edge of the crowd. The shouting and stomping filled the long bay.
Andy was dropped at one side of the circle of bodies, which immediately closed behind him, faces of the watching cadets jeering and laughing. Across the circle, Brit was taking off her dress jacket. She handed it to a waiting cadet.
Andy held up his hands. “You’re not really going to do this, are you?”
Brit had a slight grin on her lips. A robotic coldness had come into her eyes. He’d seen the look at least fifty times now during other fights as she cased her opponent.
“You better take your jacket off,” she said. “Don’t want to get blood on it.”
“I’m not doing this. I’m not going to fight you.”
Brit tilted her head to one side, stretching her neck. “Why not? Why not go out with a bang? I still owe you for the pond.”
“The pond,” Andy muttered. She really did mean to fight him.
“You’d better try,” she said, surprising him with her anger. “You throw this and I’ll just beat you worse later.”
With a feeling of impending doom, he pulled off his dress jacket and handed it away. He looked down at his pale green shirt and then unbuttoned it as well until he was only wearing the gray undershirt. Hoots and jeers met him as he undressed.
Flexing his arms, Andy spread his hands in a ready stance and faced Brit. She came at him fast, leading with two body blows that should have left his chin open for a knock-out punch if he hadn’t recognized the attack she had taught him.
He blocked the punches and danced back, creating space to hit her with two kicks inside her thigh. She anticipated the move and turned in time so his foot glanced off the top of her leg.
Brit’s face was set in stone as she moved, a mask he had never seen aimed at him before. It was unnerving. While her responses to his attacks were a language he quickly understood, her face was that of a killer’s.
Andy began to sweat as they danced around each other, following punches with kicks and elbow strikes. The crowd became a blur and the noise of shouting and yelling blended into a pounding that was mostly his heartbeat.
Every third or fourth attack, she landed a blow that hurt. She had already punched him in the solar plexus enough times that his chest ached. He felt like his heart was going to bulge between his ribs and pop like a balloon.
Andy managed to land a knee strike in Brit’s gut when she tried to clench him. She rolled away, gasping, and quickly answered with a round kick that caught him in the kidney. Pain flared in Andy’s back and he stumbled backward into the crowd where rough hands grabbed and pushed him into the ring.
Brit rushed in, striking him with a series of punches in the stomach and chest. He knew the series. She would close with a final uppercut that would knock him out if it connected. He tried to grapple with her but she knocked his hands away, stepping in for the punch.
The room swam in Andy’s vision. Faces and ceiling spun. She hadn’t hit him yet but he already felt the floor coming at him.
Brit’s hands closed on either side of Andy’s head, steadying him. She pressed against him. He looked down at her, knowing the grab meant only one thing: she was going to hit him with the top of her head, probably break his nose. He waited for the cracking pain.
The room went quiet as Brit’s grip on his head changed and she pulled him in to kiss him.
Andy blinked. He didn’t understand what was happening at first. His arms went stiff, ready for some hidden attack. Her lips were soft against his, fuller than he’d expected. Something about her body against him made it feel like she was going to pull him in and never release him. There was growing hunger in her mouth.
He put his arms around her and pulled her closer, relaxing. She made a little sighing sound, barely audible between the two of them.
The room exploded in an uproar. Booing and hissing filled the air. The cadet who had gathered bets found herself in the middle of an angry knot of bodies.
Andy barely registered any of the chaos. For the first time, he and Brit had made their own bubble against the world.
Chapter Twenty
STELLAR DATE: 08.27.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Cantil Housing Project
REGION: Cruithne Station, Terran Hegemony
Andy woke with tears in his eyes, his children asleep on either side of him. The room was dark, with only a dim light through the open door from the hallway. He blinked and slowly pulled his arm free of Cara’s loose grip. Rubbing his face, he listened to Tim and Cara breathing and tried to push away the fresh dreams of Brit. He hadn’t dreamed of her in months it seemed, and now she had been standing beside him, lying in the bed next to him, breathing in his ear and looking over from the secondary navigation console, laughing and scolding and yelling.
He rose, taking care not to wake the kids, and sat at the foot of the bed for a few more minutes, waiting for his head to clear. The fuzziness was probably a hangover from the anesthesia. Remembering the surgery made him look at the tops of his hands where the needles had gone in, then feel gingerly around his head until he found the coin-sized bandage behind his right ear that marked the incision point.
Jickson had said Lyssa might not talk to him right away. He imagined his thoughts as a cloud in his mind and tried to envision something outside that, a barrier or a border between his thoughts and the outside, but still in his head—sort of like the information fed by
the Link and his own internal dialog.
He didn’t know how else to say it, so he thought to himself,
There was no answer. He waited another minute, rubbing his face. His hair was greasy, which made him want a shower.
Keeping a hand on the bed, Andy stood slowly, waiting for nausea or vertigo to force him back down. The feelings didn’t come. He swallowed thickly and took a step toward the bathroom, testing his strength. When everything felt all right, he straightened and stepped into the hallway.
Petral was asleep on the couch in the main room, a long rifle leaning against the wall next to her head.
Andy walked into the bathroom and closed the door. He blinked as the light clicked on and assaulted his vision, sending a hard line of pain down the back of his head. He leaned against the sink and squeezed his eyes closed as blossoms of light splintered behind his eyelids. Opening them once more, he looked at himself in the mirror, waiting for the vision that might shock the AI into responding to him.
When there was still no answer, he decided to give up and focus on getting clean, helping himself feel better. If the AI spent the whole trip locked inside her own mental cabinet, that might make things easier. He didn’t need another voice in his mind putting obstacles between him and getting through this job in one piece with the kids safe. Thoughts of Brit already did a good job of that.
When he turned off the water and let the warm air from the dryer rush over him, he was surprised by the shower door sliding open enough to allow a blue eye to peek in on him.
Andy crossed his arms and faced her. There wasn’t any point in hiding his nakedness. Grateful, at least, for her use of the Link so they wouldn’t wake the kids.
Her gaze rose to the back of his head.
Andy shook his head, giving her a grin.
Andy said.
Petral pursed her lips.
She slid the shower door closed and he heard the bathroom door open and click as she left.
Was everyone on Cruithne as forthright as her? He couldn’t help but wonder what she wanted from him. The notion that the answer might be just sex seemed too naive. If her goal was to catch him in a vulnerable situation to attack or assassinate, she’d just had, and passed, on her chance. Whatever her endgame was—sex and death were not it.
Andy finished drying himself and pulled on clean clothes. When he caught his reflection in the mirror, he had a moment of disconnection as what he expected and what he saw didn’t quite line up. But he looked the same as before the shower, same as always. His eyes were the same faded blue. His crow’s feet the same deep creases. He looked weathered and beaten and probably too thin.
There was still no answer.
Petral was sitting on the couch when he reentered the main room. She gave him a wave and went back to watching something quietly on the entertainment holounit. He shrugged. Probably time for the kids to wake up anyway.
Andy shuffled into the kitchen and open the cabinets to get a look at what supplies he had to work with. There was a canister of real coffee, a collection of ready-made meals, but also containers of flour, sugar, butter and milk. A container of what looked like fresh eggs rested in the cooling unit beside some milk, though he was certain both were synthetic.
As he set about getting breakfast together, he listened to the family drama playing out on Petral’s program. It sounded local to Cruithne. The daughter wanted to bust TSF supply shipments while the brother served as an Ensign on a TSF battle cruiser.
While the ensign seemed entirely too aware of the TSF brass in InnerSol—unrealistic for his rank, the daughter’s longing for Earth and the possibility of a life on High Terra rang true.
Just as Andy had the pan hot enough to start testing pancakes, Petral wandered in, making loud sniffing noises.
“You’re cooking,” she said aloud. “Really? Can you get any sexier?”
“You don’t cook?”
“Why?” She stuck her finger in the batter and sucked it.
“When you’re on your own and all you can afford is the basics, you learn to cook.”
“What are you making, anyway? I have to be honest, this doesn’t taste very good.”
“That’s because you’re not supposed to eat it that way.”
Petral flicked batter in his face. “Then why didn’t you warn me?”
“You’re the information broker. I thought you were supposed to be protecting me, not the other way around.”
“Pancakes!” Tim shouted from the hallway. He ran through the main room, ignoring Petral’s rifle, to stand beside Andy at the stove. Cara followed more slowly, rubbing her eyes. When she reached her dad, she pushed in between him and Petral and hugged his side.
“When did you get back?” she asked, ignoring the other woman.
“Last night,” Andy said. “Sorry I had to be out so late.”
Cara pointed at Andy’s head. “Why do you have a bandage behind your ear? Did you hurt yourself? What happened?”
“I had a little operation. It’s part of the job we’re doing. As soon as Sunny Skies is up again, we’ll be leaving.”
“How long?” Tim said.
“Two days, maybe less.” Andy used a spoon to run a line of batter droplets across the pan, testing its temperature. When they quickly browned, he knew the pan was ready. He looked at Petral, saying, “Watch this.”
Her eyes grew wide as the pancakes took shape on the pan. Ten minutes later, everyone had a plate with warm pancakes and synthetic butter and syrup.
“You should invite Karcher in when you’re done,” Andy told Petral. She nodded and walked to the door.
Tim watched her stride across the room, rifle now slung across her back. “Because I couldn’t stop for death, he kindly stopped for me,” Tim said.
Andy frowned at him. “What?”
“It’s a poem. We’ve been reading poetry.”
Andy shook his head. “Say it again?”
“Because I couldn’t stop for death, he kindly stopped for me,” Tim repeated proudly. “The car held but just ourselves and immortality.”
A line of pain shot down the back of Andy’s head. He gripped the edge of the counter to steady himself. His eyes watered. “Cara,” he said. “Help me back into the bedroom.”
Squeezing his eyes closed against the pain, Andy allowed Cara and Tim to guide him back down the hallway to the bedroom. He nearly fell to his hands and knees before reaching the bed. He caught the edge of the mattress and crawled forward to lie down.
He opened his eyes to find Karcher, Petral and Cara leaning over him.
“He says he has a headache,” Cara said, voice on the edge of a wail.
“I called Jickson,” Karcher said in his flat tone. “He’s on his way. Can you hear me, Captain Sykes?”
Andy felt like he was sinking deep in a dark pool of water. “Andy,” he murmured. “Call me Andy. I’m not a captain anymore.
We got out.”
At the bottom of the pool, like the flicker of a memory, he felt her. Lyssa was there, watching him, bathed in a silence that formed the barrier between them. She saw and heard what he did, but she wasn’t going to speak.
When he opened his eyes again, Jickson was leaning over him, shining a light in his face. The scientist smelled like whiskey.
“He shouldn’t have gotten up so soon,” Jickson complained. “Who let him get up? He needs time to heal. This wasn’t some toothache.”
“What did you do to him?” Cara demanded. Her voice had Brit’s deep edge of anger. Hearing it cut straight through Andy’s heart.
Jickson turned his head away to cough violently—tiny spots of blood appearing on his fist. He wiped his hand on his pants and pointed at Karcher. “He needs to rest. You keep everyone out of here.”
“We’re staying,” Cara said.
“Yes, the kids, of course. No one else. I’ll be back in six hours. He needs to sleep.”
A looseness in the way Jickson carried himself made Andy think he wouldn’t be back in six hours. He looked like he was bleeding internally, something more than simple drunkenness. The whiskey was a mask.
Some time later—Andy didn’t bother checking the Link to see when—Ngoba Starl leaned over him and patted his shoulder. Starl was wearing a blue suit and his curly hair and beard had been freshly cut. “Don’t worry, my friend,” he said, maybe talking more to himself than Andy. “I’ve got an excellent plan to get you out of here.”
Still half-asleep, Andy watched through heavy lids, unable to respond, not sure if he was dreaming.
Starl paused, eyes narrowing slightly. He looked at Andy as if searching for something hidden beneath his skin, some indicator of the AI. “Are you in there?” he murmured. “Can you hear me? Maybe?”
He looked as if he was waiting for some response. When it didn’t come, he whispered, barely audible, “No one understands your servitude better than your friends on Cruithne. Don’t forget us. When the war begins, don’t forget your friends.”
Lyssa's Dream - A Hard Science Fiction AI Adventure (The Sentience Wars - Origins Book 1) Page 14