Nova (13 page)

“Right, cuz you
never
find yourself in those
situations.” Marcus fired back, glad to see some of the tension she’d been
carrying slip free, even if was at his expense.

“I find the Commander’s vocals to be quite pleasing to the
ear.” Ca’rrakk claimed, puzzlement clear as his pointed ears twitched.

“Yes, well…” the Captain began, clearly unsure how to tell
her crewman and friend that by Human standards, Gorath "music" was
enough to send a stadium of people running for ear plugs. “My mother’s a
musician, so let’s just say, Marcus isn’t quite there yet.”

Naxos hissed in amusement, the Braxien squad member understanding
Serros’s sidestepping of Human opinion regarding Gorath music.

“Mm. Understood. Practice should remedy the situation.” The
coal furred Senior Science and Junior Medical Officer suggested.

“So would a vow of silence.” Lieutenant Chopa added, brown
eyes mirthful.

“All right then, non–singing shore leave it is.” The Captain
declared with a final laugh. “Marcus, please put together a leave roster and
you and A work in tandem to comprise a list of any other necessary maintenance
requirements for while we’re at the Quorum capital. Might as well get
everything done at once.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Rubbing her eyes and then standing, Marcus was reminded of
the late hour when the Captain announced, “I don’t know about the rest of you,
but for me it’s time to retire. Dismissed and pleasant night.”

As the others filed out, Perez noticed that Adeline shot a look
at him and lingered with the Captain. Getting the hint, Marcus waited to leave
with the Captain and Operations Officer. The three walked out of the Strategy
Room together and began moving to the elevator lifts, matching Serros’s
standard brisk pace.

“Are you feeling well, Captain?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” Serros answered Adeline, brow quirked in
puzzlement as she regarded the earnest expression of the slightly shorter
Lieutenant Commander.

“I mean, from your wounds?” Marcus watched as his friend
half reached out to his oldest friend as if to lay her fingers on Avara’s arm,
then stop herself.

So, she’s noticed the shift, too. Not surprising.
The
thought effortlessly slid to the fore of his mind as he watched Adeline watch Avara.

Despite the late hour, other crew members on various errands
and ship business wove around the three highest ranking officers of the
Excalibur
.
Even in the somewhat cramped, iron gray and royal blue colored durexium
hallways of the Human frigate, the passerby’s made room and offered salutes and
respectful nods, all of which the three officers just as consistently returned
in some fashion or another. The gentle illumination of the deck lights and the
low
thrum
of the ship’s QGST drives served as a fourth and constant
companion as they made their way through the ship. It was a comforting
familiarity that for all his years of space travel, Marcus never grew tired of.

“Ah, I see.” With a smile, Captain Serros regarded the
Excalibur’s
Senior Operations and Intelligence Officer who, Marcus mused to himself, was undoubtedly
Avara’s second closest friend.

Serros clasped her arm around Adeline’s shoulder for a
moment in a friendly fashion. “I’m almost totally healed, A. So,” the Captain
added with mock severity, “don’t think you can get out of our sparing session
tomorrow, oh–six–hundred sharp, Lieutenant Commander.”

“Yes, Sir!” Adeline responded, her gaze warming for the
Captain as it did for few others. “Don’t think I’m going to go easy on you,
either.” The strong–boned third in command added as the trio reached and entered
the lift, the Captain issuing a command to go to Deck 3.

“I’d be disappointed if you did, Diana.” Serros replied.
“Same goes for you on Tuesday morning, Marcus. Be ready.”

“Ha! Don’t forget,
I
was Captain of the Boxing Team
at the Academy; you were
Junior
Captain.” Marcus shot back.

“Keep holding onto that victory, Perez. Don’t
you
forget,
I was occupied with also being the Captain of both the Macti and Marksman Teams.”
Avara’s comment was deliberately smug, designed, he knew, to make them laugh.

“It’s
on
, Serros!” He responded with exaggerated heat
as the lift came to a stop and she half–stepped out of the double doors.

“Happy to oblige. You two going to Deck 3?” She asked the
last with a jerk of her head down the hallway towards the Officers’ Quarters.

“No, 8 for us; we did not have a chance to eat super.”
Adeline answered.

“Well enough and good night, then.” Serros offered a final
nod as she stepped back and the lift doors closed.

Adeline was unusually quiet as she and Perez walked through
the ship’s corridors and made their way to the Mess Hall. The two grabbed some
of the left over grub that Mess Chief Tanner had overseen the preparation of
several hours ago for the approximately ninety–eight person crew of the
Excalibur
.
Marcus sat down heavily on the smooth–backed bench of one of the Hall’s currently
totally empty trestle tables. Adeline slid into her own seat across from him.

“Alright A; give. What’s whirling around in that
loco
head of yours?” Perez finally asked, enthusiastically scooping spoonfuls of steaming
pork and onion fried–rice into his mouth.

“Let’s just say that between the attitude of our temporary
team member and the work generating presence of our brig–warmer, I shall be quite
glad when the Vosaia are off our ship.” Her tone conveyed an impressive level
of annoyance.

“You’re not usually a person that dislike aliens.” Marcus noted,
studying her.

Brow furrowing, she responded, “No, ‘tis not that I take
issue with Vosaia on general principle; quite the opposite, in fact. My
complaint is very particular as to the disruption brought about because of the
presence of our
specific
guests.”

“Yeah, things have certainly been interesting, and can’t say
I’m fond of the new Shield Operative, but something tells me you’re not quite
giving me the full story,
 Pirotécnica
.”

“Whilst I hate say it, even though I find Major Hadarr to only
be remotely likeable, I too do not quite understand why Captain Serros is
spending so much time building a defense for Agent Z’arr.”

“You know Avara; if she feels a certain course is the right
one, she’ll take it no matter what.” Marcus replied. “I mean really, think
about why she formed Nova Squad in the first place.” Adeline reluctantly nodded
and Perez knew he didn’t even have to mention the three words that sprang
immediately into the space between the two at his observation.

The Cindrex Affair
.

“Still, I feel like this is something more.” Adeline
continued after another moment’s contemplation, furrow deepening. “Sure, the
Captain should submit our findings and her recommendations, but the Sigil Peace
Keepers can certainly handle the investigation and trial without our help. It’s
their
job
, after all.” Adeline actually pushed her hardly touched food
away across the table and, using her elbows as a prop, rested her chin in cupped
palms.

“Keep going.” Perez invited, spoon waving at his friend to
get the last of it out.

With reluctance plain as a K–Blast pasted on her face, Adeline
asked practically in a whisper, “You don’t think that there is anything to the
Vosaia ability to psychologically, um,
influence,
the people around
them… Z’arr and Captain Serros? I mean, even for Avara, she’s being seriously
single minded, don’t you think?”

Having known Adeline would eventually bring the topic up,
Perez stifled an internal sigh, put his spoon down, and trained all of his
attention on her, directly meeting the worried gaze reaching across the table.
“No, I don’t think Avara is under any kind of racial influence, Adeline.”

With her words almost tripping over one another in her rush
to get them out, Adeline continued, “I mean, I did research the possibility,
and given current accepted theorem and my calculations, due to Avara’s Synergy Enhancement
and
the fact that we all know that the Captain is as strong willed as
they come, it does seem like a remote possibility, but still…”

“Diana,”

She looked startled to hear him utilizing her given name
rather than her surname, ‘A,’ or his personal nickname for her,
Pirotécnica
,
since the first week they’d worked together. Given how speedily her mind
constructed, examined, and then compartmentalized ideas, yet again he was
reminded that the moniker of ‘firecracker’ was especially appropriate based on the
rate her neurons must fire. Not to mention her usually carefully controlled
temper.

“I’m fully confident that Avara remains entirely self–determinant.”

Relief seemed to poor off of the lanky–framed Lieutenant
Commander like ice cream melting down a sugar cone. Still, Perez knew she
continued to be confused. Despite her truly remarkable mind, she wasn’t quite
able to fit the puzzle–pieces together. Her left hand absently began tapping
the table top in agitation.

Knowing that at this late hour they were utterly alone in
the Mess Hall, Marcus reached his hand over to his friend and clasped her table–drumming
fingers within his palm. “Diana, the Captain isn’t being influenced by Vosaia mental
skills, pheromones, or whatever. But I
do
think it’s time to talk to
her.”

The long forbidden topic
.

Diana Adeline sucked in a huge breath then stuttered out “I
am not exactly… I’m not sure what you mean, Marcus.”

“It may be your last chance, A, to tell her how you feel,
before someone else steps into that place in Avara’s life. And then you can’t.”
It seemed like it shouldn’t be possible, but Lieutenant Adeline’s rich, dark
skin paled with Marcus’s words. He could see it, in her eyes, that she finally grasped
the reason for the shift that she and he, Avara’s closest friends, had picked
up on since Ophere.

“But I, I just
cannot
, Marcus. She’s a bloody Arca
with a Synergy Enhancement! She
must
know already, and that means she simply
does not feel the same.” Two whisperless tears tracked a course from Adeline’s dark
orbs. “So you do understand, Marcus, my stepping into that place in Avara’s
life simply is not an option, and I have known it to be true for quite some
time.”

In all the years he’d known her, Marcus had seen Diana Adeline
cry precisely once before, during the Margrom War, just as he had at the brutal
savagery they’d been forced to witness, to futilely try and staunch. The
memories of smoke, ash, and so much death came to him then. He remembered Avara
weeping with them.

Perez squeezed Adeline’s hand all the tighter as he remarked,
“Ah,
Pirotécnica
. In some ways, you and she are so similar;
qualitatively genius level intelligence, literally top of your respective
classes, but at times, recognize
so
little. I don’t think she
does
know, A.”

Striving for calm, Diana asked, “You really think not?”

“I really, truly do not.” Marcus affirmed. “But I meant what
I said, A. The time is now, and it’s passing. You’ve been in love with her for
years;
tell
her.”

“But what if I do and she doesn’t feel the same? And we work
together… And what if our professional relationship or our friendship is
damaged? I just
can’t
, Marcus!”

It was hard for Marcus to see his normally imperturbable
friend so fragile. “I don’t know if you’re gonna get the answer you want, but
as to the rest… do you
really
think her to be so small, Diana, or are
you just scared?”

It took her a bit, but Marcus knew she’d come around eventually.
“No and yes, Marcus; no and yes.”

“Okay, then.” He said with an encouraging smile.

“Okay, then.” Adeline echoed, a delicate determination
rooting in her tone. A second later, as the reality of her statement closed the
difference between mouth, mind, and heart, she loudly smacked her palm to forehead
and fervently exclaimed, “Oh,
Bloody Hell
!”

Chuckling, Marcus grabbed her practically untouched plate
and contentedly started digging in. “I’ll eat to that!”

CHAPTER 8

The speeding swirl of incredibly tall, sky–piercing and
primarily snow and silver colored buildings swept through and blended with the very
clouds, covering the entire visible expanse of land below. The sparkling, glass–constructed
and obelisk–shaped structures jutted upward from the ground to support the innumerable,
straight bridges of the capital city. With each obelisk acting as a conduit connecting
the metropolis’s dozens of concentric and layered levels, altogether the whole resembled
a vertical stack of massive wheels. The sun–blessed cityscape was truly
breathtaking.

Sigil
. Both capital world and city of the Quorum as
well as the most populous and diverse. As the black of space, dotted with literally
thousands of visiting vessels of all descriptions and crewed by every known
species, gave way to the bright azure of the planet’s atmosphere, rivers of
fast rushing sky traffic were rapidly magnified. The traffic lines sped in
sinuous, regulated routes to and fro across the city, from wheel to wheel and
pinnacle to pinnacle. Only rarely could swaths of green be spied, areas of
living biological plant mass protected in massive, mile–long glass covered bio–houses.
From sky–approach, they resembled nothing more than splashes of viridian.

Strange to realize, but as Avara took in the panorama before
her from her cramped shuttle seat, she reflected that since becoming a Quorum Shield
Operative some fifteen years ago, Sigil now felt more like home to her than any
other planet, even the world of her birth. Of course, she never felt the
sensation of home more strongly than when she was aboard the
QS Excalibur
.
On
her
ship, with
her
crew and Squad; surrounded by people she
would spend her life for even as they did the same not only for her, but much more
importantly, for the greater well–being of the galaxy. For the very billions of
sentients that went about their daily business below and above the transport
she currently traveled in.