VICK IS hiding things from me.
I wake before Vick. It’s a testament to how exhausted she is that my slipping from the bed and out of the room doesn’t rouse her. With her training and paranoia, the slightest sound should bring her to full alert. Maybe VC1 is giving me an assist.
I’m halfway across the living room when her alarm goes off, its annoying rendition of the traditional military reveille bugle making my teeth grind together. When I’m still with her and that horn sounds, I practically leap off the mattress.
Why she doesn’t just let her implants wake her, I have no idea, but I suspect it has to do with her wanting one more demonstration of being a “normal” human being.
So I’ll endure the bugle when we share a bed.
She’s moving around in her bedroom, albeit more slowly than usual, but when I hear the drawers opening and closing telling me she’s somewhat okay, I continue on to my own tasks of dressing and packing. Our vacation destination, Infinity Bay, is a predominantly water world peppered with islands of varying sizes and maintaining a comfortable temperature range perfect for sunning and swimming. Unlike my parents’ home state of North Carolina in what would now be the dead of winter, the island paradise is the perfect choice of locations for the annual reunion.
But it necessitates the packing of clothing items I don’t keep on the moon base.
I have neither shorts nor tank tops. I prefer sleeping in a long T-shirt if I’m alone, or sexier wear if I’m with Vick. I do have a bathing suit, a cute two-piece in hot pink that I wore exactly once to the base’s indoor pool before I tired of the ogling and Vick’s constant readiness to punch the next soldier who drooled over me.
I toss the swimsuit, along with some ivory and tan slacks and a few short-sleeved button-downs into my suitcase and vow to drag Vick shopping when we arrive. She’ll be even shorter on her wardrobe than I am, and I don’t want her to stand out any more than she’s already going to. Some casual attire will go a long way toward preventing that.
I hope.
Biting my lower lip, I add in some lingerie and underthings meant more for play than practicality. It heartens me that Dr. Alkins’s advice wasn’t all that different from my Academy mentor’s. Keep trying. Be patient. Keep Vick’s mind on me and off her memories. I can do that, so long as Vick is willing.
We meet in the living room at the same time, me with my rolling luggage and an additional bag slung over my shoulder, Vick with her Storm-issued duffel. I’m in a white knee-length skirt and strappy sandals with a pink top. She’s in uniform.
Of course she is. Gray shirt, gray slacks, black belt, black combat boots. And she’s armed, her pistol, not the usual XR-7 but some other (probably deadlier) letter/number combination I can’t keep straight, hanging in a holster on her thigh.
Still, she’s here. She’s packed and she’s going with me. Something tight inside my chest loosens.
She eyes me, head cocked a little to the side, gaze narrowed as if daring me to criticize. I can’t help it. I have to say something.
“The gun is a bit much.”
“Last time we visited your family, if my patchwork memory serves me correctly, there was a terrorist attack.” She folds her arms over her chest.
I place my hands on my hips. “It was a bomb, Vick. It went off. Boom! No shots were fired. Your pistol was useless, because, yes, you had it at the time. Do you really want to terrify everyone when we get there? Is that the first impression you want to make?” Of course it isn’t. I regret the words the second they leave my mouth. More than almost anything, Vick wants acceptance. I know that. If I could kick myself, I would.
She holds my gaze for another moment before looking away. “It’s a thirty-six-hour flight. Through raider territory. I’ll store it before we disembark,” she mutters, then strides away, the door to our quarters opening at her approach. I trail behind her, lips clamped shut.
We’re silent all the way to the landing bays. We’re in the commercial sector, as busy as the Storm’s hangar but in a much more haphazard way—babies crying, older children darting around their harried parents who desperately try to corral them before they can be squished by a luggage transport or a taxiing shuttlecraft. Workers shout to one another over the whines of engines, the screeching of landing gear, and the squeak of tires on smooth-polished gray tarmac. Scents of lubricants and fuel assail my nostrils. But no blood of injured soldiers returning from assignment. No med staff guiding antigrav carts stacked three high with human-shaped black bags.
I suppress a shudder and follow Vick to the window counter of Pleasant Journeys Travel Unlimited.
Under normal circumstances, we’d take a Storm shuttle, arranging our passage around some convenient mission’s flight plan. But nothing is heading for the outer rim in the next few days, and no tourist vessels going to Infinity Bay have a layover on Girard Moon Base, so we’re stuck renting a private civilian yacht.
I don’t mind. It’s pricey, but my generous salary has let me store up quite a bit of savings over the past few years. I’m happy to foot this bill.
From the underlying edge in Vick’s voice while she haggles with the rental agent, she is not pleased about that decision.
“…refuel in the Fighting Storm’s hangar and then hop it over here?”
“Civilian craft aren’t permitted to land in a military-owned facility.” The male representative’s smile shifts from friendly to feral in the span of a sentence. His too white teeth gleam in the overhead lighting.
“You charge too much for your hexaline. I’m not paying those premiums. And we’re not owned by a governmental military. We’re independent.”
“That’s irrelevant, ma’am. And didn’t your ‘independent’ facility have a fuel-leak fire just last night? Sure, you can refuel over there, if you want to spring for the complete-coverage insurance.” The bright smile widens.
Vick’s muscles bunch under her uniform shirt. The clerk can’t see the gun in its holster, but if he could, he’d blanch at Vick’s fingers twitching above the grip.
Hoping to calm her, I lay my hand over her free one where it clenches the edge of the counter in a knuckle-whitening grasp.
Emotions flood me like a dam burst: impatience, frustration, and barely controlled rage, all tamped down behind the implants’ dampeners but obvious to me through our physical contact. I jerk my fingers away as if burned, taking an involuntary step back.
It’s not fast enough.
Vick’s head snaps in my direction, eyes widening in surprise, then lowering in shame. It takes me a moment to figure out what’s happened.
While we touched, my fear transferred to her. She scared me. And she knows it.
With a start, I realize we never did the release procedure, never purged her pent-up fears from last night’s traumatic experiences. We were so busy arguing and emotionally hurting each other, it completely slipped my mind.
I wonder if it slipped hers, too, or if she conveniently “forgot.”
“Vick….”
Without looking at me, she holds up her hand, palm out, cutting me off. “Don’t.” Snatching the stylus off the counter, she scribbles her signature on every required line highlighted on the rental agent’s screen.
The clerk grins in triumph, then passes over an access keycard and points across the hangar. “Berth seventeen, silver hull, electric blue trim, Tranquility printed on the hatch. You can’t miss her.”
The irony of the yacht’s name is not lost on me as I follow Vick’s retreating figure stomping between double rows of parked interstellar craft.
Not an auspicious beginning to our R & R.