An Officer’s Duty (47 page)

Bennie nodded. “Oddly enough, I’m not surprised. If they dug a giant tunnel under the surface of their worlds, sealed it and removed the atmosphere, they could launch ships into hyperspace that way. It would make the most sense as to how they could come and go without being seen.”

“The stress of a wormhole tunneling through a planet could show itself as a series of microfaults and microquakes, giving them a possible way to locate it…” Ia gave up and shook her head. “Eh. That’s speculation better left for better heads in the military to mull over.”

“How are your crew doing? Are they giving you respect, yet?” Bennie asked next. “Or are they giving you a hard time?”

Ia blew out a breath. “I find myself wanting to be short with them sometimes. I try to hold it back, though; it’s not their fault.”

“Oh?”

The single word held a wealth of inquiry. Not once did Ia forget that the woman across from her, friend or not, was a trained psychologist as well as a spiritual advisor, and a Department of Innovations–assigned watchdog. Slouching a little, Ia rested her head on the high, padded back of her own chair. “I served with Ferrar’s Fighters for several tours of duty. Some of them came and went, but…we
knew
each other by the time I was put into a position of great authority—being a corporal-ranked Squad leader doesn’t count. I’m talking noncom, real authority.

“I just have to remind myself, I’ve only served with these soldiers a week or so,” she finished, shrugging.

What she really meant was,
I precognitively remember serving with them already, but I have to remember that I haven’t actually done so in reality, yet
. But Ia didn’t
say
that to Bennie. As much as she liked the older woman, as much as they were friends and Bennie was her confidante, there were certain things she couldn’t yet say.

“So long as you realize this, rein in your temper—what little temper you have,” the chaplain teased dryly, “and treat them fairly, they’ll come to respect and follow you.” She sipped at her mug of caf’ for a few moments, then frowned softly. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you have an…air of command about you. No, not command…”

She fell silent for several seconds, thinking it over. Ia gave her the peace to do so. Finally, Bennie shrugged.

“The only words I can think of are
purpose
and
drive
. Or maybe
destiny
…whatever it is, it puts me in mind of the story of Joan of Arc.” Bennie shook her head, her thick braid sliding across her shoulders. “Not exactly the most pleasant of comparisons, sorry.”

Ia chuckled softly. “Here’s hoping I don’t get burned at the stake. Though my enemy right now are the Salik, and that means they’d rather eat me alive than cook me, first.”

“And how do you feel about
that
, as a possibility?” Bennie asked her. “You
are
working the Blockade, and it has been known to happen.”

Ia lifted her mug in mock-salute. “I hope they consider me eminently worthy of being eaten.”

The look Bennie gave her, taken aback to the point of dismay, tickled Ia’s sometimes strange sense of humor.

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” she chided the chaplain, chuckling under her breath. “The only way they’d find me ‘eminently worthy’ of being devoured alive is if they thought I was a major war-prize.
That
means I’d have given them so much grief and hell, destroying ships and capturing Blockade-runners, there’d be fewer of the frogtopus bastards around to give
other
soldiers hell.
That
kind of reputation, the one that puts me at the top of their To Be Eaten list? I can live with that, Bennie.”

“You
want
to get eaten?” Bennie asked her, still dubious.

That made Ia burst out with laughter. “
God
, no! What kind of masochist do you take me for?
Ahahaha! Ha! Heheheh…heh
…Oh, stars. I haven’t laughed like
that
in a long while…”

Bennie smiled over the rim of her mug. “Well, at least I’ve finally tickled your funny bone. You don’t laugh a lot, do you? Chuckle, yes, and other restrained forms of mirth, but laugh outright? Nooo, our Ia is
far
too sober and serious to guffaw.”

That made her snort with laughter. Blushing, Ia covered her nose, reducing her “guffaws” to a mere chuckle once more. Bennie grinned and lifted her mug in salute.

“Gotcha.”

Ia stuck out her tongue, then buried her fading smile in her mug. There were reasons why she rarely laughed. It was hard
to be that carefree with the fate of the future looming constantly throughout her thoughts.

FEBRUARY 5, 2494 T.S.

Her older brother peered into the pickups on his end of the vidlink and frowned. “You look like hell, Sis. What’ve you been up to? That isn’t a sunburn, is it?”

Ia shook her head. “Decompression sickness. It was a sneak attack by ore smugglers. They blew a hole in my half of the ship. Everyone got into their p-suits okay, but
okay
doesn’t cover how the damned pressure foam expands and makes it that much harder to climb into them. We’re confined to the Battle Platform on Sick Leave while they put the
Audie
back together. By the time she’s flightworthy again, the docs tell me the broken capillaries will have healed. The daily goo baths don’t hurt, either.”

Despite the speed of the micro-sized hyperrifts used in interstellar communications, traveling hundreds of lightyears to the second, it still took several seconds for him to hear her side of the conversation and respond.

“Lucky you, you
get
regeneration goo,” he muttered. “There’s been a media storm locally on certain doctors at the hospital refusing to use the stuff on patients who ‘aren’t that badly injured’ according to said doctors,” Thorne warned her. “More specifically, on patients who are known to be particularly anti-Church.”

“And?” Ia asked, waiting to hear the most likely probabilities confirmed. She had already foreseen something like this, but the variables had created several minor possibilities. None of it would seriously change the near-future timelines, but it would be a point to be dredged back up again when it came time to sway the undecided members of Sanctuary’s population.

“They’ve stirred up a board of inquiry, and the victims are now suing in court,” Thorne told her. His mouth pressed into a grim line. “Regeneration biogels are disgustingly expensive to acquire on Sanctuary, so the doctors are arguing that it’s being saved for cases that truly need it. Except three of the victims were badly burned in a chemical fire and could’ve used doses
of the goo to prevent severe scarring. They’re suing the physicians on grounds of religious discrimination and the violation of their Hippocratic Oaths. The results are…unpleasant… to look at, so the consensus is that they’ll win the sympathy vote from the jury.

“As it is, if they want the scars gone, they’ll have to have their skin peeled away from the affected areas before the biogel can be applied—the more liberal of the media services have been romping and rolling all over that part of the news.”

“How charming. I hope those so-called doctors get what they deserve. On a more cheerful topic, did you get the gift I sent for Little Brother?” she asked.

It took him a moment to catch her meaning. Raising his brows, he nodded slowly. “Yeah, I got it, along with your latest shipment of holy beads. But he’s off camping in the mountains with some friends this week. I should be able to give it to him next Tuesday.”

Camping in the mountains was a prearranged euphemism for working down in the lava tunnels. “Just so long as he’s careful. How are Mom and Ma doing?”

“Pretty good. They found a new harpist for the restaurant. Not quite as good as the last one, or the dulcimer player, but then he’s still learning how to control the picks. Their anniversary is coming up. Did you remember to ship a gift?”

Ia winced. This time, the reaction wasn’t feigned. “No, I honestly forgot. Extend my apologies and get them something nice in my name. I’ll wire some credits to your account to cover it.”

He lifted his hand into view, warding off the suggestion. “I’ll pay for it myself. What they’d really like is a chance to talk to you themselves.
Uh…
” Thorne looked away from the vid pickups for a moment, frowning slightly, then nodded. “In nineteen hours Terran Standard, they’ll just be waking up, locally. That’s the best time to catch them. Right now, they’re busy with the restaurant.”

She nodded. “I’ll be up at that time anyway. It’s the Opening Ceremonies for the Winter Olympics, and everyone in the Blockade Fleet is looking forward to seeing the displays the Gatsugi have planned for their show. I don’t know what news-Net channel you’re watching, but the ones piped out here have said they’ll
be posting a chromatic scale with colormood translations to help the non-Gatsugi understand what they’re seeing.”

“Alien cultures,” Thorne quipped. “Gotta love ’em. Well, everyone but the Church.”

“How are your classes going?” she asked her brother.

“I’m just about finished with my midterm project in Integrated Delivery Systems, and I’m halfway through my graduate paper on Satellite Spaceport Systems Design. Since Sanctuary doesn’t have any moons or habitable rocks worth speaking of, I’m pretty much the only one at the college studying domeworld structures and building logistics,” he told her. “I’d tell you all about it, but I wouldn’t want to bore you. Or take up too much time on this call.”

“I wish I had time to
be
bored, because I’d love to hear it,” Ia confessed. “Unfortunately, you’re right, my free calling time is almost up. Pass my love to Fyfer, Mom, and Ma, will you? And keep a share for yourself?”

“Always,”
he promised.
“Mizzu.”

“Mizzu, tu,”
she returned.
“Ghin t’Fyfer sa numcha, eyah?”

“Eyah,”
he agreed, giving her a pointed look, before affecting a look of remembrance. “Take care, Ia—oh, I don’t know if you heard, but the Power Pick numbers just leaped to the astronomical level. The multipliers are pushing the winnings into the trillions of credits. I think I’ll try buying a ticket myself, even if gambling’s not normally my thing. It’s always been more Fyfer’s thing.”

“Well, you know me,” Ia quipped dryly. “I don’t like to gamble. Not to mention, the odds are too high for my taste, especially with the Power Pick tickets limited to one per sentient, once it shot past the ten billion mark.”

He grinned, enjoying the secret joke embedded beneath her words. “Still, you have to admit, that’s a lot of cold, hard creds. It’s very tempting, even for us straight-laced types. Good luck, and keep your head down, Sis.”

“Always,” she promised. “Love you. Tell Mom and Ma I’ll call them in nineteen hours Terran Standard.”

She watched him reach for the controls and shut off his image, leaving her with a blank blue holding screen. Sighing, she gathered her thoughts and tapped in her account number, preparing to pay for the next call.
So much for the free call.
Now I need to put one through to the Grandmaster. That’ll cost a pretty tenth chit…as will wishing my mothers happy anniversary.

Her arm unit beeped, startling her. Flicking open the lid, she saw she had a vidletter waiting for her. Downloading it to the commscreen, she opened it with a tap of her finger. Meyun Harper filled the screen. The one Human she still had trouble predicting.

“
Umm
…hello, Ia,” the prerecorded image stated. “I miss you, and I was thinking about you…and they want me to call someone every week, something about improving morale. I’ve already contacted my parents, that was last week. This week, I thought of you. Oh, the Navy wound up stuffing me into Blockade duty midtour. Seventeen percent, I believe it was. Anyway, that’s why it’s mandatory to call someone.”

Ia quickly paused the letter. Pressing into the timestreams, she searched for signs of his presence. It took her several minutes of effort, but she located shadows of him about a third of the way around the edge of the ragged bubble outlining the Salik Interdicted Zone. Relief staged a bittersweet, ambivalent war with regret inside of her.

Don’t even pretend the two of you can do otherwise,
she admonished herself.
You know you’re better off staying far away from this man…

Tapping the screen, she restarted it. Better off or not, she would listen to what he had to say, because she still wanted to hear it. She just couldn’t do anything about it without risking the timestreams.

“It’s gotten a bit chaotic here from time to time, but I’m already getting recognition for my talents—look, see?” he offered, picking up an awards box, tilting it so the silver and brass flower inside flashed and glittered. “Not two weeks in, and they’ve already given me the Compass Rose for extraordinary acts of engineering. I’d tell you what it was for, but…well, you know, it’s the Blockade. Everything’s been classified down to the last millimeter out here. Or it seems like it.

“Anyway…I just thought I’d drop you a vid, let you know I’m alright. I,
um
…can’t stop thinking about you,” he added carefully, staring into the pickups as if he could see her eyes.
“It’s not getting in the way of my work or anything, but…Yeah. Take care of yourself, alright? Remember to duck when going through airlocks, and stuff. Meyun Harper out.”

Duck when going through airlocks?
Ia repeated to herself. His image gave her a hesitant smile, then the recording ended. She probed the timestreams. Ahhh…
right. Duck when going through smuggler ship airlocks, got it. Not bad, Harper, not bad,
she silently praised.
You’re already getting the hang of this covert message stuff. Luckily for you, I already knew about the potshot in question. I promise you, I’ll duck in plenty of time.

She did not, however, compose an actual response. Ia didn’t have to be a precog to know that it would tempt her into communicating with him on a greater basis. That ran the risk of letting feelings—hers or his, it didn’t really matter—sway her from her task.

Bennie’s going to give me hell for this,
she realized, wincing.
The moment she finds out he called me, and learns I didn’t respond
…Compared to everything else, it was a relatively small price to pay. Of course, that didn’t mean it would be comfortable to endure, not when Chaplain Benjamin enjoyed teasing her so much.