Dodds saw that many of the chairs were overturned, and though the tables still stood, cutlery, crockery and glassware lay scattered all across the wooden floor. There was a faint hint of wine and beer in the air, intermixed with what smelt like rotting food. Nice. He was surprised there weren’t more flies about.
A thin layer of dirt and dust covered many of the surfaces, a great deal clinging to much of the surviving glassware. He briefly contemplated washing off some of it in the kitchen, but decided that it would be better to continue drinking out of the bottles. The last thing he wanted was to turn on a tap and hear the rattling of empty pipes, a sure signal to a nearby patrol of their presence.
He dusted down and then pulled a few of the cleaner cloths off the tables nearby, laying them out on the floor at the rear, where Natalia had created some space. He then upended a few of the tables and created a barrier between themselves and the exposed front, before finally settling down on the floor opposite Natalia.
He opened their food sack and rummaged around inside, locating and passing a bottle of water to Natalia. “Sorry it’s warm,” he said. He had no idea why he was apologising.
“Thanks,” Natalia said. She began gulping down the water, emptying more than half the bottle in her first go.
Damn, she must’ve been just as thirsty as he was. He removed a bottle for himself, though he didn’t consume nearly as much as she did. He then pulled out a couple of packs of sandwiches, a wrapped packet of chocolate biscuits, some slightly bruised apples, and a small box of cereal. Natalia picked up one of the packs of sandwiches, looking over it for a moment before pulling open the packet. Dodds did likewise and the two sat quietly for a while, savouring the taste of the food and the end to their hunger.
“What are you smiling about now?” Dodds asked, noticing a hint of merriment on the blonde woman’s face. “Not still thinking about the rats, are you?”
Natalia swallowed the mouthful she had been chewing, her face splitting into a grin. “I’ve always wanted to go for a picnic on a date.”
Dodds chuckled. “This is hardly what I’d call a date.”
“No? We met in the park, went for a drive, had a stroll around town, met some new people, had some excitement, held hands, and now we’re having dinner together. Sounds like a good date to me.” She winked playfully.
Dodds smiled. It was a somewhat tenuous and frankly absurd summary of the day they’d had. Still, for a moment, it made him forget where he was and what was happening around them. Natalia took another bite of her sandwich, but carried on looking at him as she ate.
She’s cute, Dodds thought. Maybe more so if it weren’t for that whacking great big bruise on the side of her face. He wondered what she was thinking about as she looked at him.
“I hope this food is all in date,” she said, turning over some of the packaging. “The last thing I’d want tomorrow is to find myself running for my life, only to be struck down by crippling diarrhoea.”
Dodds couldn’t help but laugh. She’s funny, too. Natalia then began attending to her hair, that had been tied up above her head ever since he had met her. She now let it fall free, rearranging it so that it hung down naturally. Dodds found himself staring, almost mesmerised. Why was he suddenly feeling like this? Snap out of it!
“Tell me about yourself,” she said.
“Hmm?” Dodds responded, finishing off his first sandwich and swallowing it down. He picked up his bottle of water and took a swig, to help it on its way. “What would you like to know?”
“What’s your name?”
“You know my name,” he said.
“Your first name,” she said. “I’m guessing you’re very used to formally identifying yourself by your surname.”
“Oh. My first name’s Simon, but everyone always calls me Dodds.”
“Why?”
“It’s not a very interesting story.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Well, okay, when I was at the pilot academy there were three Simons, and we got our names on a first-come, first-served basis. The first guy got to be called Simon, the next Si, and then they just called me Dodds. I don’t actually know any other Simons now, but everyone just sticks to calling me Dodds.”
“You all use your first names?”
“Usually, yeah.”
“Don’t you normally get nicknames and that? Call signs?”
“We do, yeah, but don’t often use them.”
“What’s yours?”
Dodds paused. “I’d rather not say.”
Natalia’s smile returned. She had clearly guessed that it was embarrassing. “Tell me.”
Dodds sighed. “Tweedledum.”
The smile widened. “Seriously?”
Dodds just nodded.
Natalia covered her mouth for a time, but he could see her whole body was shaking with the laughter she was suppressing. “Who was Tweedledee?” she said finally.
“A friend of mine, called Enrique. But, anyway, it doesn’t matter,” he said, keen to move the conversation on. “Everyone I knew always used to use first names more often than surnames.”
“But they all call you Dodds?”
Dodds nodded.
“Do you mind if I call you Simon?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Do you have a middle name? Sorry, I just like to know things about people,” Natalia added.
Dodds paused. What was with him and embarrassing names? He toyed with the idea of saying no. “Oliver,” he said. He waited for the inevitable reaction as she put the pieces together.
“Your name is Simon Oliver Dodds?” she said a moment later, before once again suppressing laughter. “Nice initials. I’d love to meet your parents. They must have a hell of a sense of humour.”
“They said it was quite apt, given how I was when I was little, yes,” Dodds said.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Natalia said, waving her hand apologetically. “Well, fair’s fair, I suppose – I was born on 1st April.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, you really have no idea what that’s like. Eventually, I started telling people it was a week later. That’s what thirteen years of receiving large cardboard boxes, stuffed full of foam peanuts and a baked potato at the bottom will do to you.”
Dodds chuckled and started on his second sandwich.
“How long have you been with the navy?” Natalia said.
“About nine, ten years?”
“Long time. And you joined when you were sixteen?”
“Nineteen,” Dodds said automatically. Yes, very clever, he thought, realising that she had made him reveal his age without asking him directly. Time he asked some questions. “How about you? How long have you been a spy?”
“Oh, I prefer to be called an agent,” Natalia said. “To me, the term spy conjures up images of me crawling through air vents, having fights with assassins disguised as waiters in hotel rooms, and sleeping with impossibly beautiful model-like women every other night. It’s too silly, and I imagine I’d get bored of doing the first two rather quickly.”
Dodds felt part of his sandwich become lodged in his throat for a second, but managed to force it down. He suspected that Natalia had thrown that comment in there on purpose, just as he’d started to swallow. “Okay,” he said once he’d recovered. “So how long have you been with the secret service?”
“I joined up when I was twenty-three. Before that, I worked for a recruitment agency. I saw an advert in the back of a newspaper one day and thought I would sign up for an interview and assessment, if only for something funny to tell people on a night out. Turned out that I had most of the qualities that they were looking for.
“I was getting tired of working in recruitment, anyway. The whole nine-to-five thing was getting tiresome, and I couldn’t deal with all the office politics. I was sick of waiting on people who would put their own egos and careers ahead of the success and integrity of project work. The sort of people that valued visibility over deliverability.
>
“I then quit my old job and started working for the service, full-time. I told my friends that I had taken a job working as an administrator for Revenue and Customs – something that sounded boring and wouldn’t have people asking hundreds of questions if I was unavailable a lot of the time.
“To tell the truth, I thought I was only going to be doing administration and working directly with Office. I then spent fifty hours during my first week undergoing firearms training. Can you imagine? One week I was pushing a pen around a bit of paper, and the next, I’m learning how to use all kinds of handguns and rifles.”
“That must have been a bit of a shock.”
Natalia shook her head. “Are you kidding? It was exciting! I had to do a lot of very interesting things, such as creating a persona for myself. I was given a new name, back-story and personal history, all of which I had to learn inside out. Suddenly, I had a brother named Sean – I’m an only child, by the way – who was studying to become a marine biologist at Hitchins College on Torelli, after a lifetime’s fascination with fish. Probably the hardest part of it is that they had decided that I was going to be a vegetarian, and I can’t live without bacon sandwiches.” She shook her head, as though thinking back on how hard it had been on her. “I was able to convince them to alter my back-story to say I turned veggie at sixteen, so if I did slip up every now and again it would come across as a little more plausible.
“And then, after about twelve months of intensive training, I was assigned to work with a small team within Mitikas. I was placed there almost right at the outbreak of the civil war.”
Dodds smiled. “So, Natalia’s your real name, then?”
“Mmmh hmmm,” she replied, whilst chewing.
Dodds found himself not so sure. If he was to believe that what she had said before was the truth, then Natalia Grace could actually be yet another one of her identities. It didn’t matter too much. “What did you have to do?”
“Espionage; general information gathering. They sort of threw me in at the deep end. I had to learn how to talk about stuff openly, in a manner which wouldn’t raise suspicion. We got around it by substituting words and terms for others, sometimes using a term that was ambiguous in the context of everyday speech.”
“Such as something like, the fish are in the tank? That might actually work, given what your brother does.”
“I think I might actually have said something like that at one point,” Natalia said. “It’s likely you’ve heard quite a few terms yourself, but are completely unaware of who or what is really being referred to.” She went quiet for a moment, then chuckled. “I’m amazed I managed to get through the early days, now that I think about it. I was inexperienced, but they desperately needed people in Mitikas, to find out what was going on, no matter how proficient they were. I wasn’t the only one, either. I once met this big black guy from the CSS whom they had done a similar thing to. He was being coached by a highly experienced operative at the time.”
“Do you still enjoy it?”
Natalia paused for a time, her expression somewhat ambivalent. “Can’t say either way. I’m kind of stuck. It’s one of those jobs that’s difficult to get out of. Once they have you, they’ve got you for life.”
“How do you mean?”
“They’re always watching you, even when you ‘retire’. They can even haul you up for more duty, any time they like. They’d just blackmail you, if they needed to.”
For life? You can never ever leave?
“It gets a little lonely, too,” she added, almost to herself.
Dodds opened his mouth to speak.
“How about you? Do you enjoy serving in the navy?” Natalia said.
He sensed Natalia wanted to avoid anything else on that subject; she sounded like she wanted out. He decided to go along with it. “It has its ups and downs. I’ve made good friends, learned a lot and had some interesting experiences, but not sure that I would spend the rest of my life there.”
“What about serving the Confederacy? I imagined you’d be a little more patriotic than that.”
“Everyone has different reasons for joining up,” Dodds said, with a small shrug. “When I was nineteen, I started entertaining grand visions of having rip-roaring adventures across the galaxy. It was either that, work in an office all day, or work on my parents’ orchard.”
Natalia grinned. “So you wanted to join up with the Confederation Stellar Navy and become a hero, defending the galaxy from some great evil and rescuing damsels in distress?”
“Something like that,” Dodds said after a pause. That bloody H word again. It made him recall just how naïve he had been. It had been batted around a lot in the past few months, as the CSN had exemplified the White Knights’ contributions to the success of Operation Menelaus, as well as their ongoing services. At first, he had accepted it as the truth, then, when the Pitt and Castro families had written to him to convey their dismay at his embracing of the fame and glory, he had taken a step back. He didn’t want to be a hero any more.
“Is it tough?” Natalia asked.
“No, it isn’t as bad as some make out,” Dodds said. “A lot of the things you read in the press are exaggerations or isolated cases. And, contrary to popular belief, you get plenty of time off.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, sure. At the end of the day, it’s pretty much like having a regular job – when you’re not on tour or assigned to a carrier, then you’re free to spend your weekends and evenings as you please.”
“Really?” Natalia looked surprised.
“Well, okay, it does depend on a few other things, but it’s not like they have you doing push-ups twenty-four hours a day.”
Natalia nodded thoughtfully for a moment.
“Do you go on a lot of tours and operations?”
“I’ve had my fair share.”
“Have you ever killed anyone? By accident, I mean?”
Yes. “No,” Dodds answered automatically, pushing aside the truth that seemed keen to leap out. Liar.
Well, some things people were better off not knowing. He caught himself rubbing at his wrists. He stopped almost immediately. Natalia hadn’t seemed to have noticed. He wondered if she had picked up on the speed at which he had answered, but again she said nothing, her eyes lowering to the sack of food. Dodds looked down at the sandwich he held in his hand. He had been hungry at first, but now he was working his way through his second sandwich far slower than the first. He turned away from Natalia, to peer over the tops of the table he had arranged behind them, out into the pitch-black night. He couldn’t help but wonder what had become of Estelle, Enrique, Kelly and Chaz. Would he survive the next few days, only to discover that they had all been killed? He fought the sudden compulsion to immediately start back towards the coast.
“What are you thinking about?” Natalia said. She sounded concerned.
“I’m worried about my wingmates,” Dodds said, turning back to her.
“I’m sorry for what I said earlier about them – that they might be dead. Are you close to them?”
“I’ve known most of them since I joined up. They’re my best friends.”
“So long as they managed to find local forces, then they’ll be okay,” Natalia said.
There was a hint of doubt in her voice, though. Maybe she was just being realistic. He finished his sandwich and then looked at what else there was to eat. He picked up the biscuits and unwrapped them, impressed to see that few of them were broken. He passed them to Natalia, but she didn’t immediately take him up on the offer.
“You okay?” Dodds said.
“I’m sorry for abandoning you earlier,” she said.
Dodds gave a little smile. “I’m sorry for hitting you.” That bruise really was coming up a treat.
“You were only doing what you had to, to survive.”
“So were you.”
“No, I wasn’t. I was …” She did not seem to know what to say.
“Don’t worry about it,” Do
dds said. He offered the biscuits once more and she accepted, taking a couple from the stack. Dodds took one himself and they sat chewing them thoughtfully.
“W … what happened to you after I left?” Natalia asked. “How did … how did you survive?”
She looked quite guilty for asking the question. Dodds chose to ignore that. “I was trying to get out of the Sabretooth, when I saw that a group of those soldiers had someone surrounded. I tried to escape, but they must have noticed that I was still alive and came over to finish me off. They were being led by Admiral Zackaria. He seemed to recognise me. He said he knew me—”
Natalia suddenly gasped and began coughing on the biscuit crumbs she had inhaled. She covered her mouth to dampen the sound. When she was done, her jaw was quite slack. “Wait, he spoke to you?” she said in disbelief.
“Yeah,” Dodds said. “W—”
“What did he say?” Natalia cut him off before he could continue speaking.
Dodds was bemused by her reaction. Why was the fact that the man had spoken to him so important? She was staring at him in rapt expectation, as though he was about to reveal the secrets of the universe to her. “He … er … he said that I had humiliated him and the Empire, that I was a pox upon the Mission and that there would be no glory for me. It was almost as if he had a personal vendetta against me.” He shrugged. “Why?”
Natalia looked stunned. “He hasn’t spoken to anyone in years, at least not in any personal manner. What else did he say?”
“Nothing else, that was pretty much it.”
“No?”
“No,” Dodds said, after a moment of hesitation. He was about to bring up Zackaria’s mention of his plans for the ATAFs and the other Knights, but something in the back of his mind told him to remain mum on his involvement with both of those. As he swigged again at his water, he realised that Natalia had picked up on his falter, so he decided to change the subject. “He wasn’t dressed like the other soldiers, though. He was wearing some sort of silver armoured thing. Not completely solid, like those old suits of armour – more like bits and pieces over his formal naval uniform?”
The Battle for the Solar System (Complete Trilogy) Page 71