Rabine made her way through the crowd, but it was hard work because all the people clustered close to the ring. When she caught sight of the ring itself, she saw Cliff and another man sitting in corners opposite from each other as a few men worked around them, rubbing their shoulders and arms and offering liquid from squirt bottles. She also saw a young woman walking around the ring holding up a big card with the number three printed on it. The woman—not much more than a girl, really—wore an evening gown that had a slit down the front to her navel and up the right side to her waist. Her mountainous boobs oozed over the edges of the material.
The girl exited the ring as a man dressed in a white shirt, black pants, and a little black bow tie stepped to the center of the ring and pointed at both corners. The men attending the fighters stepped out of the ring, and the combatants stood as their helpers removed the fighters’ stools from the ring.
A bell rang, and the fighters approached each other, their gloved fists up in a defensive posture. For the first time, Rabine noticed Cliff’s opponent had a small cut above his right eye, and a little dried blood stained his cheek. As she watched, Cliff struck out with his left hand, and landed three fast blows directly on the man’s cut. The speed of Cliff’s punches amazed her, and his target was obviously unprepared for the fury of the attack as well, because he had no chance to block the lightning-fast punches. While Rabine didn’t think Cliff hit the man all that hard, the blows opened up the cut, and blood flowed in red streamers down the fighter’s face.
A man standing at the wounded fighter’s corner cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled. “Move! Get moving! And keep your goddamned guard up!”
Rabine found the fight a brutal display, not at all unlike those described in history books detailing the gladiatorial combat of ancient Rome, but she couldn’t look away. Cliff continued to strike his opponent almost at will, but he no longer aimed for the cut still pouring blood down the man’s face. Instead, Cliff focused on hitting the fighter’s body, the sound of the punches thumping above the roar of the crowd. With each blow, Cliff’s opponent grunted, and Rabine saw the man grimace and stagger.
She didn’t know a thing about boxing, but she could tell Cliff was working on setting his foe up for a final, finishing blow. The man couldn’t be able to see well because of the blood, and the continued pounding of his chest and stomach was wearing him down. Rabine knew that at some point, the fighter would be too tired to defend himself and would make a mistake. Cliff stood poised to take full advantage of the situation and would end the fight with one final punch.
The bleeding fighter danced in a circle to his right, dodging a left jab from Cliff in the process. As the two men circled each other, Cliff turned to face where she stood beside the ring. His eyes lighted on her, and she saw him smile, the mouth guard showing white between his lips. Rabine knew instinctively it was a mistake. So did Cliff’s opponent.
The tired man moved his right foot just a little, planting it firmly on the mat. His right fist flashed forward, his shoulders pivoting, putting the entire mass of his body behind the punch. When Cliff smiled at her, his hands dropped a little. Though still held up, his face and head were entirely exposed, and his foe’s fist passed unimpeded over the gloves. Rabine didn’t think Cliff even saw the punch coming.
The sound of the burgundy leather of the glove hitting Cliff’s jaw was like a gunshot, a sharp clap filling the gym and reverberating even above the noise of the crowd. Cliff’s arms dropped instantly to his sides, and his eyes went glassy and round with surprise. The other fighter stepped back a little, and stared at Cliff. He wiped at the blood on his face with his glove, but Cliff didn’t move. The man stepped back again, and looked at the man in the bow tie for a moment, then pointed at Cliff with his glove. The referee stepped in front of Cliff, and he took Cliff’s arms in his hands. He lifted Cliff’s fists to the level of his waist, and then released them. They fell back to his sides, swinging like tree limbs in a breeze. The man said things to Cliff that Rabine couldn’t hear from her place at the side of the ring, but she didn’t see Cliff’s mouth move in reply.
Suddenly, one of the men in Cliff’s corner threw a white towel into the center of the ring, and the umpire waved his hands as the bell clattered. The referee held the bleeding fighter’s right hand high in the air as Cliff’s assistants ran into the ring and eased him down to lie on the mat.
Rabine found she was holding her breath and had her hand over her mouth. When she moved her hand, she felt wetness trailing down her cheek from the corners of her eyes. She wiped at the tears, and forced her way through the crowd to Cliff’s corner.
Chapter 3:
The Morning
He couldn’t focus on anything, but Cliff knew there wasn’t that much going on. Meyers spoke loudly as he leaned in close over Cliff’s face and kept patting his cheeks. The roar of the crowd sounded far away, and he couldn’t pick out any words that made sense. Then again, he couldn’t understand what Meyers was saying, either.
All Cliff could clearly remember was seeing Rabine at ringside. She wore the standard-issue dress uniform he’d seen countless times before on women of the Fleet. In fact, he probably saw it at least a hundred times a day. But the navy blue skirt and white blouse looked so much better on Rabine.
Her legs, exposed from just above her knees, went on forever, and the sight of her dark skin had made his mouth water, almost choking him on his mouth guard. The low heels she wore were just high enough to accent the shape of her legs. The snow-white material of the blouse fit her torso like a second skin, emphasizing the graceful shape of her body and calling attention to her amazing chest.
He also remembered the crushing blow from his opponent. Cliff still saw twinkling lights when he closed his eyes, but they had died down from the supernova explosions of a few moments ago. He was beginning to actually recognize individuals in the mass of people pressed around him, and he thought that was a good sign.
Suddenly, Rabine stared down into his face. He didn’t have any problems recognizing her, despite having met her less than twenty-four hours ago and spending fewer than four hours studying her face. She looked worried. “Cliff? Can you hear me?”
He tried to smile, but a pain shot through the left side of his head and the abortive smile turned into a grimace. “Yeah.”
“Good. They tell me the doctor will be here in a few minutes. Just relax.” She smiled and did a much better job than he’d done. Cliff wondered if his cognition was working as well as he thought because the gym suddenly seemed brighter and he heard birds singing someplace nearby.
* * * *
The intercom on his desk buzzed, and Logan tapped at the switch to answer the call. “Logan here.”
“Sir, radar has detected a large spacecraft moving toward the planet.”
This was something new. Never before that he knew of had a ship from outside come to his world, at least since the time of the Old Ones more than seven thousand years ago. There was nothing in the history books to tell Logan how to proceed. “How big?”
“Huge. It looks like it’s about two kilometers square.”
“Are they trying to contact us by radio?”
“Not that we can tell.”
He needed more information. “Send out ships to intercept.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The intercom went dead, and Logan wondered if this could be something new from Crosley and his people. They might have stolen technology before destroying the ships they bombed over the last few years. Building something that large undetected wasn’t very likely, but Logan knew he couldn’t just dismiss the idea.
* * * *
A big bruise covered the left side of Cliff’s head, but the doctors said he had no broken bones or permanent damage. Rabine still had no explanation for the flashes of fear and worry she’d felt last evening, but they had all faded when she heard the doctor tell Cliff he’d be fine in a day or two. She’d stayed at sickbay with him until late last night, and then gone home
when the medics decided to keep Cliff overnight for observation.
Her sleep had been restless, and she attributed most of it to her confusion about how she reacted. The idea of two grown men in a ring pounding on each other for no good reason was intellectually more than a little silly. Maybe abhorrent was a better word. But she had gone to the match and even found herself excited by the contest, at least while Cliff was winning. The possibility that Cliff was hurt scared her. She really didn’t understand any of it.
And it was all her fault. Rabine knew that when Cliff saw her at the side of the ring, he had lost his focus and his opponent took advantage of it.
She had met him at sickbay earlier, and now they shared a table for brunch in one of the mess halls, and Rabine studied him across the table. Cliff winced a little when he tried to chew on the left side.
He set down his fork and chuckled. “I guess the good news is that this is as bad as it’s going to hurt.”
She hesitated, wondering if this was really the direction she needed to take him now, but her conscience needed soothing. “That’s all my fault. I’m sorry.”
He looked directly into her eyes and leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table, but it wasn’t the same thing he’d done at the bar. He really looked interested in her, and not just to get her out of her uniform. “No, it’s not your fault. Yes, you being there distracted me, and I forgot what I was doing, but that’s my problem.” He smiled. “Like I said before, you’re a beautiful woman, but that’s not your fault, either. I was so happy to see you that I lost it.” He rubbed his jaw. “And I paid for my mistake.”
He’d said almost the same thing at the bar, but somehow it was different now. At the nightclub, Rabine saw a shallow man trying to seduce her. Now, she sat across the table in the mess hall from a man who saw her as a beautiful woman and didn’t know how to deal with the situation.
“Thank you, but I still feel bad about you losing.”
“I had to lose sometime, and now it’s over and done with.” He paused for a moment, his eyes tracking across her face. “By the way, thanks for sticking around sickbay last night.”
“If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have been there.” Rabine saw him roll his eyes. “OK, I get the picture. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“Uh-huh. And thanks for having brunch with me today.” He chewed a bite of his omelet for a moment. “Why did you come to meet me this morning?”
“Same thing, really. I don’t know anything about boxing, and I didn’t know if you were really hurt or not.”
“That depends on how you define hurt. Sure, I got my bell rung, but nothing permanent.” He reached across the table and rested his hand on hers. “I’m fine.”
Rabine felt a tingle on her skin starting at where Cliff’s fingers touched the back of her hand, and it ran quickly up her arm, sending shivers through her like a cold blast of air from an open door. At the same time, warmth spread through her body, a feeling of relaxed safety setting her at ease. The last remaining thoughts that Cliff still tried to seduce her faded, but an odd desire for him to try again flooded her mind. She doubted he’d have to try very hard.
She tried to speak, but her voice only squeaked like a mouse. She took a sip of orange juice and tried again. “I’m happy to hear that.” It was all she could come up with.
Instead of smiling or laughing at her as she expected him to respond to such a lame statement, Cliff’s face took on a serious note, and his gaze locked to her eyes as something she could only describe as softness covered his expression. He squeezed her hand lightly. “Rabine…”
The wail of the general quarters horn cut him off. As the alarm screamed its call to readiness, Cliff squeezed her hand again as he stood up. “We’ll talk later.” He joined the crowd of crewmen as they headed for their battle stations around the ship.
Rabine sat for a moment, watching the door he’d left by as if she expected him to return. She finally left the mess hall, headed for her post on the bridge.
* * * *
“All decks report battle stations, Ma’am.” The Communications Officer played with her console for a moment. “Still no response from the ships on any frequency.”
Elsa nodded. “Thank you. Tactical, what have you learned?”
“Five ships, all with chemically fueled impulse-type engines.” The officer studied the readouts on the tactical station. “All ships carry heavy lasers in the visible spectrum and missiles with conventional warheads. I’m getting readings that one of the ships may have missiles with atomic warheads, Captain.”
She swiveled the command chair to face her new Science Officer. “Details, Mr. Salas.”
“It looks like they are old-style fission warheads, between one and two megaton yield.”
The odds were the deflector shields would protect Daedalus from the lasers and conventional weapons, but only the Harbison Field could stop the particle bursts of the nuclear warheads. Elsa didn’t want to raise the Field, though, because it might look like an offensive weapon. At this point in the game, the people on the planet were reacting appropriately and with due diligence in sending out ships to check on the arrival of Daedalus. There was no reason for her to assume the approaching ships were actually hostile.
“Thank you, Mr. Salas. Tactical, time until the ships are within range.”
“They will be in range of our systems in nine minutes. They won’t be able to hit us for twenty-seven minutes.”
“Time to planetary orbit?”
The navigator checked her charts. “Two hours and six minutes, Ma’am.”
Elsa considered a moment before she turned to Chris. “What do you think, Number One?”
He looked away from his damage control console to face her. “I don’t think I would do anything different from what we’re doing now. We can get the Field up before any of the nukes can reach us, and the shield will handle everything else they can throw our way.” He grinned. “My gut is telling me to sit tight.”
She had to chuckle a little. Chris was a by-the-book kind of guy, and it drove him crazy when Elsa would rely on her feelings in situations like this. It was true there had been some friction between her and her XO in the past over their differences in command styles, but they had both moved from the extremes to find some common ground in the middle, and Elsa thought that was probably a very good thing. She knew the extreme ends of the bell curve rarely held any answers—they were almost always someplace in-between.
“Very well. Maintain battle stations. Keep the Harbison Field off, but I want it deployed instantly if they launch a nuke at us. Shields up, weapons armed but not tracking. Communications, keep trying to raise those ships or the planet.”
Elsa leaned back in the command chair to wait and see what would happen next.
* * * *
Cliff sat at his battle station in the Intelligence Office wondering what in the hell he had planned to say to Rabine before the alarms sounded. He knew what he wanted to say to her, or more accurately, what he wanted to communicate to her. He wanted to tell her he’d never seen a woman as gorgeous as her. He felt a strange need to tell her that everything about her—from her looks to her conversation to her ability to read his mind—fascinated him like no one he’d ever known. He had to explain to Rabine that he felt like a fool for the way he tried to come on to her the first night in the club and that his only excuse was he felt like he was going to start babbling like a twenty-four-karat idiot if he didn’t say something, even if it was exactly the wrong thing to say.
The problem was he had no idea how to say those things to her. Besides, it didn’t make any sense at all.
Ensign Reynolds came past his cubical and leaned inside to smile at him. She held on to the frame of the partition wall, stroking her hand up and down the metal post and rubbing her leg against the divider like it was a dance pole at a strip club. She fluttered her eyelashes at him and purred, “Hi, Cliff.”
She had spent a couple of nights with him a fe
w weeks ago, and she’d been full of youthful enthusiasm, but he found her actions a little annoying just now. She turned a little, and the dividing post of the cubical nestled between her grotesquely huge boobs.
He at least had to be cordial. “Hi, yourself.”
She giggled, a tittering like a room full of little kids. “What do you have planned for later tonight?”
He sighed. “Maggie, we’re at battle stations and being approached by ships that might be hostile. There may not even be a tonight.”
Her eyes half closed, and her voice came from low in her chest, resonating no doubt from inside the caverns formed by her tits. “If there is, I’ll make it one you’ll never forget.”
Cliff considered several responses, all of which would have hurt her feelings, before settling on one that was at least neutral. “No, thanks. I’m still a little shook up by that beating I took last night.”
She nodded slightly. “That’s OK. Speaking of that, who was the woman with you in the ring?”
“Just a friend.”
The seductive smile flashed back again. “Just remember she can’t suck your cock like I can. Think about that while you’re jacking off.” Reynolds made a kissing motion before she went on her way.
Cliff frowned. Just when did Reynolds’s boobs become grotesque?
* * * *
The Captain speaking to her from the command chair interrupted Rabine’s thoughts. “Mr. Salas, are you getting any life form readings from the planet yet?”
The Fleet habit of referring to all mid-grade officers as ‘mister’ bothered her—she liked her femininity. Rabine checked her sensors. “Yes, Ma’am. I’m seeing several large cities with populations of about half a million, plus many smaller communities.” She switched to a finer resolution. “There are two different species of people down there. The large cities have only one type of people, the same ones as in the ships. I see no mixing of peoples in the smaller settlements, either, but it looks like the two species have about the same number of towns. There’s not much difference between the people, though. They probably share a common ancestor.”
Aaron, Melodee - As Darkness Falls [Flights of Fancy 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) Page 4