Of Bravery and Bluster

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Of Bravery and Bluster Page 31

by Scott Kelemen


  He didn’t answer, so she stepped out and let the doors close behind her, relieved to have escaped. She was terrible at this type of thing! She wanted to just wash the pain away for him, but knew it was never that easy. Tragedy didn’t work that way.

  Louisa picked up her datapad and looked at her next appointment. It was another message delivery. It appeared the Trinitian powers-that-be had decided to use her accidental presence and connection to the Academy to put a personal touch on all their communiques. At least this one was good news.

  She queried Sam’s location and followed the electronic trail to his assigned quarters. Touching the entrance request key, she rocked on her feet and whistled idly as she scanned around the empty corridor.

  The door parted. She turned back and looked across at her 155-centimeter height into Sam’s bare chest. Totally smooth, dark skin that compelled her eyes to linger. Contoured muscles too fine for words. He was wearing what looked like silk-blue pajama bottoms, a mercy in the way of modesty but upped his overall appeal to what she would call sizzling. A fine sheen of moisture as if he was just in the shower and not quite fully dry.

  What was dry was her mouth, her tongue thick enough to block proper words from getting out. Babbling “Ahh, I, umm…I sa…” didn’t exactly count. Her focus drifted up, feeling more like a voyeur every inch they traveled. His shoulders were no less sexy than his chest, and when she finally got up to his smile, she nearly melted.

  Scrubbing along his scuff of short hair with a towel, Sam asked pleasantly, “Evening, Lieutenant. What can I do for you?”

  “Ahh, but…why…towel?” She immediately regretted it. ‘Right, Louisa, because that’s what you want to say right now?’

  Sam knew what she meant. Evaporators were far easier, and universal on normal showers. “What can I say, I like the feel of the fabric.” He continued to mop his body as if completely unaware how it drew attention to every molecule of his fine shape. He strolled back into the center of his room, inviting her “Please, come in.”

  ‘I shouldn’t. I really shouldn’t. Not with him half naked and perfect and all that.’ She did anyway, her body taking orders from her hind-brain instead of listening to her front-brain’s extremely good reasons not to do it.

  With her still working at finding words again, Sam asked helpfully, “Should I be flattered that you just stopped by to say hello?”

  A little added distance helped clear the lump from Louisa’s throat. “Oh, ahh, no. Not at all. I was, umm, asked to relay a personal message from the Commanding Officer of the battleship ASV Regal. It’s tradition for the best cadets to get their, ahh, choice of assignments. Many starship captains try to influence cadets into picking their ships. They want the best officers, and maybe bragging rights. Well, ahh, Regal’s captain is one of Trinity’s most influential officers in the Alliance and will soon ascend to flag rank. Being posted to a battleship right out of the Academy is incredibly rare, Mister Pierce. He is personally requesting that you select a placement in Regal.”

  Sam ceased his efforts with the towel, not sure what to say. ‘A battleship. A tactical officer’s dream to serve on one at any time in your career, but right away? Thrilling to even think it!’ It was an honor.

  But it was also exactly what he had been trying to avoid for four years.

  A Trinitian captain. Recruiting him. Maybe others. The whole ship would be heavily biased toward a Trinitian crew. He had worked so hard to be free of all that, and here he was right back at square one. Why would any Trinitian captain who saw his file would make the effort?

  Louisa’s face fell. “Oh, I thought you’d be happy.”

  Sam realized he hadn’t said a word. He forced a smile back on his face. “Oh, I am. You’re right. It’s an honor any way you look at it. Just never thought it was going to happen to me. Not after I avoided pushing my Trinitian connections back at the Academy.”

  Louisa shrugged, “I wouldn’t know. Don’t think we ever shared two words the whole time you were there. Some Trinitian captains see outsiders like you as projects. With your grades mingled with rumor that you weren’t integrating well with the Trinitian cliques, he might want to rehabilitate you, so to speak.” She fidgeted as she spoke, managing to stub her toe on a chair in the process. She gave a wince and a small squeak, but fought to contain any further reaction.

  Sam’s smile had returned in full force, charmed by her kittenish nerves. He realized that if he needed to be reminded that all about Trinity was not bad, she might just be the perfect one for it. “My fault entirely.” As if by accident, he drifted closer to her. “How’s your head?”

  Reacting to his approach as much as his topic shift, she asked, “Excuse me?”

  Sam’s eyes flickered up to her forehead and back. “When I landed back in the shuttle bay, I saw you being taken away with Johanna. Rumor is you helped save her, but got shot along the way. They had your head all wrapped up.”

  Again, a flush of embarrassment reddened her cheeks. “Oh, right. I’m not allowed to talk about the details. But, they got the swelling down, and I don’t have any worse than a concussion.”

  “A concussion? You must have had some long nights since then.”

  “Long nights?”

  “You aren’t supposed to fall asleep after a concussion, right?”

  Sam had circled a little to one side and was now about an arm-length away from her. “That’s something from older days. Not necessary anymore, not with a modern medical bay nearby.”

  “Ahh, I see.” He stepped in a little closer. Really close. “You saw me graduate, right?”

  “What? Oh, umm, of course.”

  “So, since I’m not at the Academy anymore, you are most definitely not in my chain of Command, right?”

  Louisa trembled for some reason. This didn’t happen to girls like her. He couldn’t be suggesting what she really thought he was suggesting here! “No, I guess not.”

  His smile did melt her this time. “Good. Because it just occurred to me that you saved my friend’s life. In fact, since you peeled Garam and Makaio out of that escape pod, you might have saved everyone on the station. It doesn’t seem fair that no one has noticed.”

  Louisa managed a weak, bird-like peep, staring up at his gorgeous eyes. She dropped her datapad, her fingers forgetting how to hold solid objects. “But…”

  His hands rose up along the outer edge of her arms, caressing up to her elbows and then towards her shoulders. “Oh, but you should. Someone should really think about thanking you properly. And to be safe, maybe we should keep you awake for a while. You know, to be safe.”

  “I’m not…”

  Sam reached up and stroked a devastating caress down her cheek. “But you are. And more.”

  She swallowed hard. ‘Nope, didn’t help. Still can’t talk.’

  He called out, “Computer, door closed please.”

  The automatic doors hissed shut just as his lips sank against hers.

  ***

  Johanna sipped the poor imitation of pineapple-peach juice, doing her best to ignore the minor atrocity of selling it under that name. Most of her attention was fixated on the lifeless Proxima surface and the moon rising against its horizon.

  A shadow larger than that moon’s blocked out the wardroom’s lights on her back. He stomped over deliberately, slowly, as if the steps were forced by someone or something other than Makaio’s own conscience. She smelled the alcohol on his breath, so perhaps that wasn’t a mistake.

  He spoke with that same begrudging attitude, as if made to do so. “Most people drink beer to forget. Don’t suppose you’ve at least spiked that juice of yours with a little extra zing.” An accusation hung around his words, an unspoken ‘At least that would make you more normal.’

  Johanna wasn’t ignoring him, but had no need to turn in her seat. She could see his normally round, dark face made splotchy and puffed by the beer that coated his breath. “Forgetting is not really an option for me.” Her eidetic memory would continue to repl
ay Glen’s face disappearing in a hail of blood spatter for the rest of her life, unless she trained herself not to conjure it over and over. She wasn’t there yet.

  See that hadn’t worked, Makaio tried again, “Would it help to say I was an idiot?”

  That was enough to make her head turn, peering up at him quizzically from her sunk-down, cushioned seat. “Why?”

  “For thinking you could ever be a coward. They told me. Showed me the data, I mean. I get why you did it.”

  Johanna relaxed back into her chair, turning to face the window again. “Ahh. The fault was not yours. I misled you purposefully into thinking I was leaving people to die. There is nothing to forgive.”

  Makaio growled, kicked out a chair across a small table from her, and swung a leg over it to sit down more beside her than looming behind her. “Dammit, Jo, can’t you even let me apologize without being…you?” He closed his eyes in pain, waving the words away. “Forget I said that. That’s how we got here in the first place.”

  A mild smile found its way to Johanna’s face. “How ironic. We became friends in the first place over the first drink we shared, where you told me to always be myself.”

  Makaio stumbled over whatever he had been about to say and choked out a laugh. All his carefully rehearsed attempts to figure out what to say dissolved into the mist of his less than sober mind. “Fine, then how about I just ask you for your help?”

  Johanna tilted her head in a mute question.

  “Because we finally have at least one thing in common.”

  She understood immediately. “Garam told me you were the one to push him over the edge.”

  “I might not have a perfect memory, but I remember it. No-one believes me, but do you know the most disturbing thing? I swore that bastard almost sounded happy on the way down. Like…like he knew he had done what he had to do. It was terrifying.”

  Silence clung to their shoulders.

  Johanna asked, “What would you recommend as a tasteful non-alcoholic beer?”

  Makaio huffed derisively. “We might have some advanced technology in this day and age, but that is simply impossi..” He faded off as he watched her eyebrow rise. “Did you just...make a joke?”

  Johanna grew a touch of pink on her cheeks as she stared back out at the moonrise.

  Makaio grinned. “Never mind. Barkeep! Could we get a couple of Heron Faux-Ales over here? Yeah, that sounds like the perfect place to start.”

  ***

  Dianne and Garam stood at the entrance to the wardroom, taking in the scene.

  Garam whispered, “Well, then. They’re talking. That’s good, right?”

  Dianne shrugged. “Usually a good sign. Makaio can be the proverbial bull in the china shop, but Johanna isn’t all that breakable in the end.”

  “If we go in there, we’ll ruin it.”

  They took a few quiet steps away, back into the corridor. The door closed, leaving them trapped outside the only officer’s bar on the whole station.

  Garam looked down the corridor one way, then the other. “So, now what?”

  Dianne shrugged. “Sam isn’t answering his comm.”

  Garam sighed. “So, he’s busy, too. That leaves you and me.”

  Dianne perked up. “We can go see a holovid!”

  Liking the idea, Garam let the enthusiasm show. “What do you want to see?”

  Feigning a casual air, Dianne plucked a name as if at random. “Oh, how about Rubregor V? It just came out, and Sam got to see it ahead of the rest of us. He won’t mind. Johanna won’t care. And…well, screw Makaio. He yelled at my best friend.”

  “You’re going to hold a grudge on that?”

  “No, but gives me an excuse to go to see this without him.”

  “Gotcha. Sure, I’m in.”

  Dianne meandered off toward the holovid theatre alongside him. “Besides, this will give the perfect opportunity to catch up on some important details I forgot to grill you about.”

  “What are you talking about? What happened the last few months was nothing like a Rubregor film. No one dove off any cliffs, there were no jet packs, and not a single nuclear explosion was detonated.”

  “But someone did sleep with Naia Monlier.”

  Garam’s mouth dropped open. Then, snapped shut tight. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Really? Huh. Well, we have a few hours. I’m sure seeing her up on the holoscreen will inspire a few confessions.”

  “Ohh, no.”

  “My marks are on ‘yes’.”

  “Anyone ever tell you you’re a little evil, Dianne?”

  “I have no idea what you mean.”

  The story will continue in…

  Of

  Courage and

  Chaos

 

 

 


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