Cree waved aside his second in command's concern. "You hungry?" he asked as he headed for the food preparation center.
Drewe followed him. "No, Sir. I've already eaten." He looked about him, amazed at the havoc within his superior's food preparation center. There were dirty utensils and dishes piled everywhere. For such an otherwise ordered and disciplined man, Cree's living quarters were a disaster.
Shoving a stack of encrusted glass bowls aside, Cree found one that looked reasonably clean and stuck in under the replicator. "Viragonian mushroom soup," he said, leaning against the counter as the replicator prepared his food.
Drewe wondered why his commander was glaring at him and why anyone would want Viragonian mushroom soup for their morning meal. Or at any time, for that matter. When the foul-smelling soup was dispensed, Drewe wrinkled his nose and turned away. One look at the things floating around inside that grayish-green broth would surely bring up his recent meal.
"I want you," Cree said in between large spoonfuls of the soup, "to get The Revenant ready for a trip to Terra the first thing in the morning. I want to leave no later than sixteen hundred hours tomorrow."
Drewe's eyebrows shot up. "Tomorrow?" His brows came down in confusion. "But aren't you going to Hell-12?"
Cree slurped down the remaining soup, then stacked the dirty bowl on top of another. "When we get back," he said, straddling a chair and sitting down, "They've got solar storms in Gamma quad."
Drewe nodded. "That's good, I guess. Is there anything else you want done before we go?"
Cree looked up. "Aye. I want you to locate a woman in the Be-Mod Unit." He narrowed his eyes. "Dunne. Bridget Dunne."
"Did she offend you in some way, Sir?"
"Offend me?"
Lona swallowed. "Aye, Sir. Are you going to terminate her? If so, I need to get an order of extermination from the Ministry of Corrections and..."
"I want you to buy her for me," Cree interrupted.
If Drewe Lona was astonished at that request, to his credit, he hid it well. He carried on with the conversation without missing a beat. "Are you allowed to do that, Captain?"
A hiss of contempt exploded from Cree. "I am a Reaper, Lona; I can do whatever the hell I want!"
Drewe knew that was true enough. Even if the man had been severely censured by the Court of Military Inquiry and faced a month of hard labor at the Helios Twelve penal colony, his reputation had not been sullied by the stigma of his punishment. If anything, it had been enhanced.
"What if the Ministry of Science won't sell her to you?" Drewe questioned, doubting that was a possibility though feeling he would be remiss in his duties if he did not mention it.
Cree waved a dismissive hand at his second in command. "Offer the bastards an ungodly amount of money, Lona," he snapped with irritation. "They're always bitching about not having a big enough cut of the budget pie."
"How high do you wish me to go?" Drewe asked and wasn't prepared for the reaction his innocent question caused.
"Just buy me the gods-be-damned female, Lona!" came the enraged shout. Bowls, spoons, and glasses flew off the table as Cree's arm swept a pathway across them. "Don't make me have to repeat myself, Sailor!"
Drewe's mouth sagged open and his eyes flared with shock. He flinched as another thunderous bellow of absolute rage poured from Cree, "I don't give a shit what you have to pay for her! I want her and I will have her! Do you understand me?"
All the pent-up anger and repressed hostility Cree had always felt had reasserted itself just as the Director had predicted it would. Kamerone Cree— a very complex man with a precise intellect, a personality that denied opposition, and an ironclad will that prohibited any— glared up at his 2/IC with such brutal fierceness of purpose, the young man took a fearful step back.
"Get the hell out of my sight, Lona, and do as I ordered you! I want her in my quarters by the end of the day. Is that gods-be-damned clear?"
"Aye-aye, SIR!" Drewe barked, snapping a smart salute into place. "Right away, Sir!"
Drewe exited the Captain's quarters with as much dignity as his flaming face would allow.
Cree stared moodily at the clutter of dishes on the counters of his food preparation center. "What a gods-be-damned mess!" he grumbled. He hated such mundane, boring, female work as cleaning, and since he was not adapted all that well to doing it and did not trust strangers into his quarters to do it for him, his pigheadedness made it his personal chore. Dishes and linens would pile up to the ceiling before he finally broke down and sent them through the sonic cleaners. Everything was allowed to go to rack and ruin until he could stand it no longer and rolled up his sleeves to tackle the job. If the chore seemed too vast— as it did at that moment— or he was in a particularly foul mood— as he was on most days he noticed the mess— he would simply throw out the old and buy new. Since he couldn't do that with his Ministry of Fleet Operations issued uniforms, he had to bundle them up and cart them off to the station cleaners so he would have clean clothing to wear. If he had his way, he thought, spying a pile of rumpled uniforms lying in the sonic sink, he'd go air-clad as his Chalean ancestors had. The thought of running around FSK-14 with his manhood swinging free brought a smile to his lips.
"That would certainly scare the hell out of the Resistance." He chuckled.
Sweeping aside a pile of laundry, he flopped down in a chair. He had always thought that if someone wanted to really torture him into giving away Empire secrets, all they had to do was make him do mindless cleaning.
"Torture cleaning," he muttered. How the hell did females endure it? How could they sweep and dust and mop and wash and scrub and scour and fold and stack then start it all over again day after day after day? The mere thought of that repetitive agony made him practically tremble with frustration.
"I have to leave early today. I'm right in the middle of spring cleaning and I want to get the bookshelves dusted before my new research manuals come."
"Bridget," he whispered, remembering hearing her talking to Tina outside his cell door one afternoon. He would bet a month's credits she liked to clean. Maybe she even thrived on the organization of doing such repetitious idiocy. Most women did.
"What are you doing right now, Bridget?" he asked, then frowned heavily.
Why hadn't she been there that last day? Had she been reassigned? Handed over to another warrior whose punishment had just begun? Was she even at that moment giving another man solace and comfort and the sweetness of her gentle touch on his fevered flesh? Was another man looking into her beautiful green eyes?
Cree grimaced. He didn't like to think of her smiling eyes looking down on another man. The thought of her soft voice speaking gently to some other warrior to calm his anxiety made the Reaper acutely uncomfortable and not a little angry. He squirmed in his chair.
"Bridget."
And he sure as hell didn't like the notion of her touching any man other than himself.
"His name is Konnor Rhye. Do you know him?"
"Bridget," he growled and it was more a curse than anything else.
His natural competitiveness asserted itself and he shifted in the chair again, his eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.
"He doesn't like to be kept waiting."
"Oh, yeah?" Cree growled. The image of Bridget with the faceless man made his lip curl. That he would put a stop to ASAP!
He pictured her sitting across the room from him and almost smiled, although smiling was not something he did very often or had ever done well. He was unaware that his right hand was caressing the chair arm, his thumb moving sensually over the edge, until the faint sensation started in his groin and he wiggled, trying to ignore it.
"Captain Cree?" the Vid-Com interrupted with a pleasant chime.
Cree's mouth turned vicious. "What?" he barked.
"Shall I send for a surrogate, Sir?"
"What?" he repeated, suddenly realizing what he was doing with his hand. He jerked his fingers away from the chair arm. "No, I don't want a surrogate
! Did I ask for a surrogate?"
"No, you did not, Captain," the Vid-Com answered in its polite, reasonable tone, "but you appear to be experiencing sexual excitement and Article 26 of the Ministry of Defense Code of Elite Conduct states..."
"I know what it states!" Cree shouted. He reached out, grabbed a pair of dirty underwear and threw it at the Vid-Com screen.
"Sir," the Vid-Com stated in a slightly miffed tone, "you seem agitated as well as sexually excited. Perhaps you would like to take an extra injection of triso."
"What I would like is to take you apart and leave you that way!" the Reaper spat, throwing another piece of dirty laundry at the screen.
"You have neither the authority nor the expertise to do that, Captain," the Vid-Com insulted him. "I suggest you take something to eliminate the uncharacteristic behavior you are exhibiting; it does not compute." The Vid-Com clicked off with a squelch.
"Compute this, you piece of shit!" he suggested, grabbing his crotch, but there was no answer to his vulgarity.
He glowered at the intercom plate thinking how much he loathed the monitor that kept tabs on him for his Controllers. Every facet of his life was probed by the men in the Defense Lab. He could undergo no sensation, no stimulation, nothing without his Controllers being aware of it. They monitored him more closely than they did the others of his kind and kept precise logs of his activities. They even monitored him in his sleep with a specially designed implant that had been given to him when he reached puberty.
The implant had been designed to block dreams— pleasant or otherwise— the moment the forbidden vision began a switch on some Controller's board shut down the sensation.
Unless he missed his guess, a similar device was used to prevent the type of forbidden sensation he was experiencing at that moment and was too proud to ask the Vid-Com to rectify with the paging of a surrogate. For the first time in his life, he wondered if the tumescence that had become acutely uncomfortable would dissipate without female intervention.
"Captain?" the Vid-Com intruded once again.
"What?" he bellowed, swinging his head angrily toward the offending intercom.
"Please do not use that tone with me," the Vid-Com chastised him. "You have a visitor."
Cree cursed beneath his breath. "Who the hell is it now?" he demanded as he stalked to the screen and punched the unit into operation. Drewe Lona was standing outside his quarters and looking intensely uneasy.
"Your visitor is Lieutenant Lona," the Vid-Com said in a cold, mechanical voice.
Cree ground his teeth together. "I can see that you worthless piece of wiring interface!" he spat. "Admit him!"
Drewe flinched as the doors to the Captain's quarters slid airily open to him. He looked up from his keep inspection of the floor and into the angry eyes of his commander.
"Well?" Cree demanded.
Dull red infused Lona's face. "I ran into a slight problem, Sir." His young face scrunched into an apologetic half-smile. "I was told you had to have permission from the D.O. before I can put in the paperwork for you."
Cree glared at his second in command for a brief, raging moment before spitting out a vile Diabolusian vulgarity. Spinning around, he stomped to the Vid-Com. "Computer!" he shouted.
"Captain Cree, I must insist: If you do not stop shouting at me, Sir, I will not answer," the Vid-Com warned him.
"Who is the Duty Officer today?" Cree snapped, ignoring the threat.
There was a moment's hesitation as the computer checked the daily log, then the ominous answer slid insidiously into the room. "Admiral Drae Cree is on duty today, Captain."
Drewe glanced at his commander's face and saw the wariness settling across Cree's tight features. He watched as those cold dark eyes shifted from side to side in furious thought then winced at the enraged explosion of contempt that shot out of his Captain's mouth.
"Why the hell did it have to be my gods-be-damned sire?"
"Captain?" the Vid-Com pressed. "Do you wish me to contact the Admiral's office?"
"Aye," Cree seethed. "Make an appointment for me with him."
"Do you have a time preference or shall it be at his pleasure?"
"ASAP!" Cree yelled.
"I will see what I can do," the Vid-Com replied, it's tone even more chill.
"Bitch," Cree muttered as he swung away from the screen and slammed his powerful body onto the sofa.
"Do you think he will give you permission?" Drewe asked, wishing he hadn't when the Reaper turned his full, annoyed attention on his 2/IC.
"Why would he not?" Cree countered, his eyes flashing brown fire. "After I spent two weeks in that gods-be-damned..."
"Captain Cree?" the Vid-Com injected.
"Aye?" Cree's voice was a song of contempt.
"The Admiral will see you at 1330, Sir."
Drewe barely had time to move out of the Captain's way as the man jumped up and stormed into his bedsuite. He followed slowly, his long-standing connection to Kamerone Cree giving him certain privileges no other man would dare exercise.
"Have you thought about quarters for her once you have purchased her, Cree?" Drewe asked, thinking it best to assume a positive outlook rather than consider a negative one. "She won't be allowed to remain in the Women's Quarters once..."
"She will be living here with me," Cree snapped.
Drewe blinked. "Do you think they will allow that?"
"Why the hell do you keep inferring that I will not get what I want, Lona? They've never denied me anything before so why should they start now?"
"This is different," Drewe reminded him. "You are a Reaper and what you are doing has never been done before. To my knowledge, no Elite has ever asked permission to have a female live with him. You would be setting a precedent I'm not convinced the Tribunal will allow."
Cree straightened up from the bottom of his wardrobe where he had found his uniform tie lying in a coil at the very back. He stood there with the black leather tie dangling from his hand. "What makes you think they might not let me keep her here?" he asked quietly.
For the first time in his nine-year acquaintance with Kamerone Cree, Drewe saw an emotion so alien, so totally un-Cree like on the man's face, it threw him for a second. Never would he have imagined his commander capable of exhibiting uncertainty and doubt, but there it was emblazoned on Cree's still face. It made Drewe uncomfortable.
"Answer me! Why wouldn't they let me keep her here with me?"
Drewe shifted from one foot to the other. "I don't know that they won't, Sir. I just think you should prepare yourself in case they refuse your request."
"They'd better not refuse me," Cree said, turning back to snatch up his uniform belt.
Drewe had no answer for that bold statement. With what passed for nonchalance for the young man, he folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall as Cree stripped down to his underwear.
Sitting down on his bed, Cree jammed his long, muscular legs into the black leather uniform trousers then stood up to jerk them over his lean hips. He bent over to retrieve his black silk uniform blouse then thrust his arms through the sleeves. "I want you to make sure there is extra triso on board when we leave tomorrow morning," he said as he buttoned the uniform blouse with irritated little movements of his powerful fingers.
Drewe tensed. "You aren't close to Transition, are you, Sir?"
"No," Cree answered, "but I wouldn't like to need it and not have it." He threaded his black leather belt through the belt loops of his trousers, snapped up his fly, and cast his 2/IC an arch look. "Would you like to be with me when I needed it and didn't have it, Drewe?"
"No, Sir!" Drewe admitted, knowing full well he was being teased and astonished that another un-Cree like thing was happening here.
"Look in that top drawer and give me my collar insignia," Cree ordered as he turned to the full-length mirror on his bathing suite door and looped his tie over his head.
Drewe found the set of silver Raven insignia then extended them on his palm to his c
ommander. As Cree snapped the insignia into place, Drewe reached out to brush away a piece of lint from the Reaper patch on his Captain's left shoulder. The scarlet red triangle with the twin silver slashes bisecting the center were an emblem very few people on board the station liked to see. Even touching it made Drewe's fingers tingle.
"How do I look?" Cree asked, heading for the door.
"Sharp enough to pass even Admiral Kahn's inspection," Drewe commented, "but I really think you should put on your boots before you leave."
Cree looked down and cursed. He stomped back to his bed, sat down, and began to pull on his boots.
He is as nervous as a raw recruit, Drewe thought, but he would cut out his own tongue before making such a statement to Kamerone Cree.
"Well?" Cree barked as he stood up. "Do I pass muster, now?"
"Very professional, Sir," Drewe agreed. "And very intimidating." He knew from experience that whoever passed the Captain in the corridors would step aside when they saw that black uniform advancing on them and no one would dare look up into the face of the man wearing it. "Good luck, Sir."
For just a moment, Cree hesitated. He met Drewe's encouraging look, then told the Vid-Com to open the door, darting out of his quarters before he could rationalize what he was about to do.
Chapter 8
YEOMAN Djarl looked up as the door to his office shushed open. He stood up immediately, executing a crisp salute. "The Admiral is expecting you, Captain," he said. "You may go right in, Sir!"
Cree nodded, acknowledging the salute. He walked to the Duty Officer's door and stood there for a second, adjusting his tie, his belt. He squared his shoulders then pushed the entry pad into the D.O.'s office.
"Captain," the Admiral greeted him as Cree marched into the room and snapped off a perfect salute.
"Thank you for seeing me, Sir!" Cree barked. He threw his shoulders back in a rigid stance of attention, his palms curved along the side seams of his trousers.
"At ease, Kamerone," the Admiral said in a friendly tone as he leaned back in his chair. He watched his biological son take a parade-rest stance with military precision and was very impressed with the young man standing before him. Father and son had never been this close before.
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