Once they had left, Brownie asked the computer, “Who is she, and what does she have on him?”
“She is Captain Avelina Bardwell of the Federation Space Force. She was in Greg’s class at the academy. She spent her summers at the same Marine encampment he did. She is every bit as adept at hand-to-hand combat as he is. In fact, the fight in which Daniel Esperanza and two of his followers died may have been fought over her. Some of the testimony is contradictory.”
Sam shook her head, “He killed three men in a fight over a woman? Then he didn’t keep her?”
“There is evidence to support the contention that she killed one of the men, but what is clear is that as a fighting unit, they are a formidable force. If I were human, I would not mess with them. I would advise against confronting her if I were you.”
“What about this Delores person?” Sam asked.
“I have no records of Delores. There is nothing in my data base that offers any explanations.”
Brownie thought out loud, “Instead of one lethal personality we have two who don’t get along.”
“The first part of that statement is certainly true,” the computer offered. “The second part may not be accurate. Neither is as mentally stable as they would have you believe. Having said that, you may be better off with them together. They tend to stabilize each other. It is an unusual relationship.”
“Greg did not appear happy about her arrival,” Brownie said.
“With good reason, but he may be better off this way,” the computer replied. “A lot depends on how she treats him in the next few hours.”
Brownie and Sam waited for permission to leave orbit. They had been in one place long enough and they were anxious to be on their way.
When Greg and Captain Bardwell returned to the flight deck, they were still arm in arm.
Brownie spoke first tentatively and then growing stronger, “Captain, ma’am, I hope I am not out of place here, but we have grown rather fond of Captain Solomon, and we were wondering what your intentions were with him.”
She pulled herself to her full height and puffed her chest in defiance. Even at her tallest, the top of Brownie’s head was even with Captain Bardwell’s breast. Greg smiled at Brownie’s protective tone.
Captain Bardwell laughed. “Ah, Gregory, must I always fight for you? Brownie is it? Sweetheart, you are a dear. I can tell you and your friends have taken good care of my precious Greg in my absence. I thank you. I mean you no harm. My intentions with Greg are entirely dishonorable.” She giggled and swished her hips sensuously. “Men like him are hard to find. Now be a sweetie and secure my ship to this one. We are going home.”
Sam and Brownie looked at each other in terror. “Home? Earth?”
“Not Earth,” Avi replied calmly. She smiled at Greg before continuing. “Take me wherever you were going with this load of cargo and passengers. Where you and my darling Greg have been hiding the past few years. Let’s go there. Isn’t it safe there?”
Greg nodded. “We call the planet Homestead.” The women scampered off for their EVA suits.
When Sam and Brownie returned, Greg and Avi were in the galley talking. They each held a warm coffee container. Greg, like most naval officers dating back to the time of the tall sailing ships, loved good coffee. That was one subject about which all the flight crews agreed. Dr. Miller and Dr. Turner had tried to talk them out of their coffee habit, but had finally given up in frustration.
Brownie said, “Sir, we need to light the candle and head home. I am sure our passengers are tired of weightlessness.”
“Before we go,” Greg asked, “Avi, are you sure you still want to see our little Homestead or do you want to head on with your other duties?”
“Are you kicking me out?” She pouted in that controlling manner little girls often use on their fathers when they want something they should not have.
“No, I wanted to know what you thought was best.” He recognized the pout and shuddered. There was a time when he wanted to marry this woman. Yet he had run from her, not without cause. She wanted him back, and there was nowhere he could run that she would not find him. On one hand he knew he could not marry anyone else, but he wondered if he could survive married to her. Did he really want to do this to himself? One thing was certain, life with Avi would not be dull.
“Let’s go to your place because we can’t go to mine anymore.” She grinned at him. “Computer! Command mode! Take us to Homestead!”
“Aye, Aye, ma’am! Homestead it is! Initiating acceleration to one G. Would the Captain prefer a straight line or elliptical trajectory?”
“Whatever you did last time,” she replied.
“Roger that!”
Brownie stared wide eyed at Avi. “Why did it obey her without being told when it didn’t obey us?” she asked.
“There’s a long story which I don’t want repeated. Computer, you hear that?” Greg replied.
“Aye sir.” It responded in Avi’s voice. Avi laughed, her eyes sparkling.
Greg smiled. “Brownie, go to the flight deck. You have the con. Avi and I are staying here.”
Once the ship had stabilized on its acceleration, Brownie and Sam returned to the galley. When Avi spotted Sam and Brownie, she asked, “Greg, dear, may I bring my stuff over?” Even though she asked it as a question, there was no question what the answer would be.
“Yes, of course.”
“Could I ask you ladies to help me?”
“I’ll do it,” Greg offered.
“I’d rather the ladies helped me,” Avi smiled, “if they are willing.”
Brownie looked at Greg with one eyebrow raised in question. Greg nodded. Brownie said, “Sure, let’s go.”
As soon as the three ladies had entered the P I ship’s crew quarters, Avi turned to the others and asked, “Ladies, so I don’t shoot myself in the foot here, what is your relationship with Greg?” Her tone had a plaintive quality the others had not heard before. There was a slight tremble in her lip.
“He is our Captain,” Brownie answered. “We are his crew. We travel together. We are building a small fleet of ships to defend ourselves against pirates and Swordsmen. We are building a community together.”
“That’s it?”
“That depends on what you’re doing with the information.”
“I’ll level with you. I’ve chased Greg half way across the galaxy. I drove him away once. I am not doing it again. I made a horrible mistake letting him go. He is the only man who can give me what I need. He is the only man who understands me. I am the only woman that can give him what he needs. We all make mistakes. I made a one a few years ago and I intend to fix it. I have searched too hard for him to let him go now. I want him back, and I will go wherever he goes to make it happen.”
“Well then, sister,” Sam interrupted, “you’re going about it all wrong. You shouldn’t be ordering him around. He hates it.”
Avi shook her head. “Not so. Greg likes being in charge, but he also likes not having to be in charge all the time. Does he have someone he turns control to sometimes when he doesn’t have to?”
“Yes. Blondie most of the time, and Katherine some of the time,” Brownie answered.
“And what is his relationship with them?”
Brownie hesitated. “Look, the computer told us about your fracas with Daniel Esperanza. It told us about your training. Frankly, we’re afraid of you, and now that you’re here we’re more afraid of him. If I tell you something bad, will you promise not to take it out on us or on him?”
Avi sat slowly. Sadness consumed her. The trembling in her lip abruptly stopped. “Brownie, Sam, please understand, we fight to survive. We don’t enjoy it. We hate that we have to do it. Our people learned to fight only a relatively short time ago. Once we learned to do it, we found we had to be the best. Greg and I have fought side by side many times. I would really rather forget what happened with Daniel Esperanza and the thugs he hung out with. When things stopped flying in our direction, Greg grabbed m
y arm and we ran. It is one of my most horrible memories. I still wake up in the night from the nightmares. You may tell me whatever you want to tell me without fear that I will harm either him or you. I promise I will not hold a grudge about anything that happened in my absence.”
Brownie took a deep breath. “We were stuck in orbit with him for during a hurricane, and during those two days Blondie and I had sex with him several times. He’s pretty good for a guy.”
Avi raised an eyebrow. “For a guy?”
“Well yeah, I mean, well you know, Blondie is my life partner.”
“And you, Sam?”
“Katherine.”
Waves of relief washed over Avi. “And that’s it?” She started to laugh.
“Almost,” Brownie offered, “when Greg went over to Myra’s ship…”
“Myra?” Avi interrupted, “Myra Myrakova? Is she with you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s how she knew! I should have figured! I love it. I’m sorry, I interrupted you.”
“When Greg went to Myra’s ship he left his communicator on. We heard him argue with Myra.”
“Must have been a beaut!”
“It was. He referred to us misfits and deviates. Blondie will barely talk to him. Sometimes I have problems with it.”
“And you Sam?” Avi asked.
Sam nodded slowly.
Avi looked at them for a moment before continuing. She spoke softly and gently. “Greg is not long in the sensitivity department. Well, sometimes he is. Sometimes he doesn’t get it. That is one of the reasons I treat him the way I do. Sometimes you have to clobber him to make him understand. I can get away with that. You can’t. I intend to keep Greg. Our relationship will be tempestuous. We will shout at each other. We will get physical, but we never hurt each other. Once we get established, you will see a new Greg and you will like the new one better than the old one. The difference is that what you see as the new Greg will be the Greg I knew at the Academy.”
Sam said, “We like Greg the way he is.”
Avi smiled, “You will like him changed better. Please help me pack. Ladies, we will get along fine. Please believe me. I will do everything I know how to do to see that it stays that way.” They packed quickly and hauled her luggage to the other ship. She headed for Greg’s sleeping quarters.
“Avi, no.” Greg stood in front of his door.
“But Greg…”
“Avi, please, I need some time.”
“As you wish.”
Brownie led the way to the first unoccupied sleeping quarters and unpacked Avi’s luggage.
After they had finished unpacking, they headed back to the galley. Greg was pulling some freshly thawed cinnamon rolls out of the oven.
Avi’s face lit up. “Greg, you remembered!”
He smiled. “How could I forget? Running out in the middle of the night to get cinnamon rolls? These aren’t the best I’ve ever had, but they are the best I can do on short notice.”
They settled in with a round of coffee and cinnamon rolls. After the seconds on the rolls, Sam asked, “Avi, what’s a shikse?”
Avi looked at her and closed one eye. She put her hand gently on her forehead and whispered “Oh shit.” She looked at Greg and said, “I did one of yours.”
“That didn’t take long,” he said smugly.
“I will apologize and then explain. I should have thought before I opened my mouth and I didn’t. I meant no offense. Please accept my apology. A shikse is a non-Jewish female. Generally the term is meant to be derogatory.”
“Are you Jewish?” Sam asked.
“Yes,” Avi replied.
“We both are,” Greg added.
“We never knew,” Sam said.
“It didn’t matter,” Greg answered. “Does it change things?”
“A little, in a good way I think,” Sam thought out loud.
“While we’re chatting,” Avi said, “I have important news.”
“Oh?” Greg raised one eyebrow.
“The Federation Supreme Court passed a ruling that impacts us. You know that the Space Force treated Pirate Interdiction pilots as subcontractors because they figured none of us would survive a full term of service and they did not want to pay survivor benefits. At the same time, the Force held the reward money the P I pilots earned from the insurance companies for the recovered ships, crews and cargoes. The court ruled unanimously that the Force could not have it both ways. The reward money the insurance companies have paid to the pilots of P I craft that have successfully thwarted pirate raids belong to the pilots and not to the Space Force. They did compromise and allowed the Space Force to hold the funds in escrow until the pilot retired, but the funds must be released in a lump sum payment. If the pilot died before mustering out, the payment was made to a spouse or dependents. My lump sum payment was great enough that I could buy my ship. That ship out there is my personal property. The Space Force is short of cash to buy new ships, and I lease this one to them complete with the services of myself as pilot for a nice fee. I’ve been on quarterly contracts for a couple of years.”
“Sounds like a dream come true for someone who wants to fight pirates for the rest of their life,” Greg said mildly sarcastically.
“Or someone who wants to travel searching for something they lost,” Avi answered. “All I have to do to terminate the contract is fail to show up for payment at the end of the quarter. I can report to any Space Force installation to continue the contract. I spend a couple of days filing after action reports and go out again. But there’s more. The Judge Advocate General’s Office ruled that payments made before a divorce was filed were to be included in the divorce proceedings. However, payments made after the divorce proceedings started, regardless of when the incident motivating the payment occurred, did not go into the divorce payment calculations. In your case, all of your payments were made after your divorce. You are a rich man.”
“Wonderful! I have all this money I can’t get at. I’m a fugitive, remember?”
“I’m getting there. I have a cousin who’s an attorney at the financial center on the moon who can get your money, except that what good is all that money way out here? So, here is my idea. The Swordsmen haven’t figured out who I am yet so I can still travel freely. I will take your power of attorney and have your money transferred to an account at a bank on the moon. We will then buy your old P I ship.”
“Won’t it raise some alarms if my money is moved?”
“Not if someone posing as your ex-wife does it with the help of a banker willing to look the other way.”
“Sure, we walk up to the bursar’s office and hand them a credit card and walk away with a heavily armed warship. I don’t think so,” Greg said sarcastically.
“Well, we can’t actually buy it. We have to steal it. If we try to buy it, the six months it will take to complete the negotiations will give someone plenty of time to plant a homing courier missile on the ship which will lead directly back to us. We steal the ship. The insurance company pays the Space Force. We quietly pay the insurance company using my cousin as an intermediary. The insurance company informs the Space Force that the ship has been located and drops the criminal charges but we keep the ship.”
“Can we do that?” Brownie asked amazed.
“We can’t steal just any ship. We can steal Greg’s old ship because he programmed it to react to his instructions even if they violated standing orders. Apparently it has gotten cranky in your absence. It is giving fits to everyone assigned to it since you left. It does not appear to like any of its new pilots. It locked one out. A technician took three weeks to figure out how to get into the ship. Once he got in, the ship locked him in, and it took him a week to get out!”
“A Space Force tech or one from the manufacturer?”
“A Space Force tech, why?”
“There’s a trick the Space Force doesn’t know. The manufacturer left a data port where they could take over control of the ship when it arrived back at their serv
ice bays for overhaul. The assumption was that normal control systems might not be functioning properly, and this gave them an alternative. Every Saturn Space Industries ship has one somewhere. The trick is to know where it is.”
“The Space Force will be happy to get rid of that troublesome ship and buy a new one.”
“Do you know where it is now?”
“Last I saw it was parked next to the Space Force base in Sector 5.”
“Excuse me a moment,” Greg went into his room. They heard some rummaging around before he finally emerged smiling. He plugged a data module into the ship’s console. “Command mode.”
“Aye sir,” the computer replied in Brownie’s voice. Brownie giggled.
Avi shook her head. “Always loved talking to his machines.”
“The data module contains the instructions and pass codes necessary to assume command of my old P I ship. Please program a courier missile to lock on to the P I ship’s transponder and pass along the commands and pass codes. Have the courier transfer a navigation algorithm that will bring the ship from sector 5 to orbit around the uninhabited fourth planet in system two of sector twenty-one. We will send the courier missile to Sector 5 as soon as we drop out of hyper. We will have Myra meet the ship in sector twenty-one and bring it home with another program which you will write.”
“Aye sir.”
The trip back to Homestead was loud and raucous. Greg’s attitude had changed. Previously he had worked alone developing the simulations and games they played. Now that Greg had company, he and Avi developed new simulations and added diabolical challenges to old ones. Due to the amount of time Greg had previously spent alone, Brownie and Sam had assumed he was more comfortable with his own company than with others. He and Avi were always together and after a few days of travel in hyper drive, she quietly moved into his quarters. In spite of Greg’s suddenly cheery disposition, Brownie did not quite trust Avi and in some ways was jealous of her. She often wondered what Blondie would think when they arrived.
Solomon Family Warriors II Page 15