Yan was careful with his tumbler of expensive whiskey as he moved. The enclosed warehouse dock was enormous, but most of the lights at this end were off, leaving only emergency illumination and pathway markers. All the noise was down at the other end of the building, audible as only a faint buzz in the distance.
Around him, the first generation of her Starfighter designs had been completed and certified to Aquitaine’s standards. Maybe they would be good enough for his standards, as well. It would have been nice to have Gustav or the Twins here. Those three could put a fighter like these through its paces far more readily than the boring test pilots the Republic used.
He reached out one hand to just stroke the bronze-colored metal of the craft before him, probably the oddest design he had ever drawn up. A revolution in everything and everywhere, with his signature at the bottom in red ink. Because if you were going to do it, you should do it in vermillion.
It was almost as good as holding his first granddaughter for the first time had been.
“That is still the ugliest damned thing I have ever seen,” a woman’s voice intruded on his reverie.
Yan pivoted slowly. It wouldn’t do to spill that fantastic, liquid smoke, either on the floor or his expensive suit or, worse, brush up against something covered with grease or the other kinds of crap you found on a flight line.
She was tall and lanky. Almost the opposite of Jessica that way. Laconic and occasionally foul-mouthed enough to fit in with his pirates back home. Mostly, Yan knew Ainsley Barret to be a very high-functioning introvert, a maths nerd, rather than a barroom brawler, like so many of her comrades.
Still, da Vinci was an expert. Possibly The Expert. And would be seated in this very craft, when the time came. She slowly sipped her own glass of whiskey.
Yan smiled at her like a Buddha and left his hand on the fighter’s hull. He silently glanced up at the craft. He supposed a simple fighter pilot would find the craft annoying and clunky. After all, they had each of them grown up wanting to fly the sleek, elegant javelins of the Fleet. They probably all had posters of them on their walls as kids. Aquitaine was rich like that.
Engines at one end, guns at the other, pilot in the middle, stubby winglets with missiles and pods on each side. It was a design as old as technology. Totally worthless in space to have all that streamlining built in, but woe to the poor engineer that suggested otherwise to former fighter jocks turned Fleet Lords and Senators.
Lucky for him he didn’t give a shit what politicians thought. Same went for pilots like Ainsley.
Still, it would be her life on the line in this craft. Even if she thought it was ugly.
“It’s also faster than anything in the fleet, da Vinci,” he finally said, turning back to look her in the eyes.
Like him, she was dressed for the occasion. On him, simple grays in good fabric that stood out against everyone in their pretty dress uniforms. On her, black and green that stuck to every curve in mildly distracting ways.
“You couldn’t even put a beam on it?” she asked.
Ah, so that was her issue. Not that his new design was a forward-facing horseshoe, with the cockpit on the left bar and a weapons platform on the right, with two big engines out the back, flying like a stubby Y. Not that it had an order of magnitude more power than the design it was replacing, or better shields, or the sensor array and nav computer off of a dedicated scout corvette.
No, da Vinci wanted to be able to shoot people, like everyone else on the team.
“No,” he said simply. “You’re already down to cold rations and bottled water for any extended mission. I started with what the Twins did to rebuild Eel’s strike bomber, and took out everything to give you enough shields to stay close with the hornets while running your jammers at full power. Thought about mounting Archerfish beams like the Twins have, but you’re going to be so many light-centuries from a logistics yard that every spare consumable I could cut, went away. Would it make you feel better if I bought you a beam pistol and a shoulder holster?”
“Already got that in the emergency survival kit,” she replied, stepping close enough to run her own free hand across the fighter that would be her second home. “What’s this give me?”
“Second Thuringwell,” Yan replied evenly, holding his place but glancing sidelong. She was near enough he could smell her perfume, but he didn’t want to make it obvious he was stepping away from the woman. “Except running at full speed, and loud enough to impersonate Auberon instead.”
She slipped under the nearer hull and stood fully upright in the space between forward nacelles, cockpit on her left, sensor array on her right. The body was still streamlined, just not elegant. Not like da Vinci.
Rather than bend, and risk spilling the contents of his glass, Yan stepped around the nose of the craft. Ainsley was a Flanders mare in a carpeted stall when he did.
“And if it doesn’t work?” she asked, meeting him with a hard stare.
“Then the two Strike teams and the Escort Wing will be up shit creek,” he said.
Just because, Yan stepped closer. Not quite into her personal space, but enough that they could talk in low tones. Subdued.
Intimate.
“The Emperor wanted something that could take on a pack of hungry sharks that can blink in and out of RealSpace,” Yan continued. “And do it clear the hell over on the far side of the Empire from your logistics train. And he tasked me with doing it.”
Her head came up, just a bit, and her jaw jutted, ever so slightly.
“So you’ll design it, and then send us off to die?” she sneered quietly.
“No,” Yan countered. “I’ll be right there with you. Probably have to break out some of the spares from Andorra and fly alongside on the run out so I can teach you kids how it’s done.”
That lit something in her eyes. Competition. Competence.
Challenge.
Talking to the fighter jocks in a language they understood.
I’m better than you. Here, let me show you.
Wouldn’t last long. Yan knew that. Those same kids had better reflexes than he did, and more experience in the little ships. He hadn’t flown a Starfighter full-time in almost two decades, since he rated a move to ship-side crew and worked his way up to be Ian Zhao’s second in command.
Before Jessica. Before the future.
Before Yan Bedrov had to grow up.
She stepped a half-stride closer herself. Again, not intimate, but personal. Confidential.
“And you think you can beat me?” she asked.
“Not for long,” he murmured back. “I just have to teach the rest of you where the new corners and boundaries are. Then you’ll start pushing them.”
A normal voice now might sound like a yell, confined on three sides by a brand new P-6 Vanguard fighter. And Yan Bedrov on the fourth.
“Pushing boundaries?” she teased lightly. “Is that what you like?”
Yan grinned lightly at her, nearly on a level as they spoke.
“I’ve been hanging around pirates for nearly three decades now, da Vinci,” he said. “It’s what you brigands do best. The good ones, anyway.”
There was something in her eyes now. That same fire, perhaps, turning darker.
“And that’s me?” she asked.
“I studied your missions in great detail when I was building this design, madam,” he said. “Petron. Ballard. Thuringwell. Even the early stuff when Jessica was just figuring out how to get crazy on The Long Raid. Anybody less than the best wouldn’t have been able to pull all that crap off.”
“Studied me closely, did you?” she continued, easing forward another half-step. “How closely?”
Yan was breathing on her now, but still never touching, although if either of them moved, a circuit would close. Probably with a blue spark of electricity.
“Pilot leaves her signature in every blip of the throttle,” Yan said. “Every word spoken. Every shot fired. You’re as good as Jouster, but you never wanted to fight. You wanted to fool everyone else into mis-thinking. A master of misdirection.”
Her breath smelled like whiskey and mint. An odd combination, he thought, wondering what she tasted like. She was close enough to find out, if he wanted.
Did he want?
A few Imperial ladies had thrown themselves at him on St. Legier, afterwards, but that was mostly the exuberance of near-death and victory. And they knew he was leaving shortly anyway.
da Vinci was a different story. He would be working very closely with Ainsley, perhaps for years, depending on how this campaign went. Interesting woman, but she held her cards very close.
Yan wondered how much of her behavior now was just bravado. A new stick against which to measure.
She was studying him just as closely. Yan noted how her eyes half-closed as she took a sniff.
“Mis-direction, Bedrov?” she finally said. “So you don’t really know what I want?”
It felt like there should be slow music, as close as they were.
“Does anyone?” he countered. “Do you?”
That jibe got home. The eyes grew shrouded, piercingly intense.
Suddenly, Ainsley Barrett was an eagle spying a trout swimming too shallow.
“Are you married, Bedrov?” she queried. “Is that the root of your reticence?”
“Corynthe views these things differently, da Vinci,” he replied. “I had a woman when I was younger, but after two kids, she decided she didn’t want to deal with someone who was away all the time, and likely to come home dead anyway. Still gave her most of my money, back in the days when thirty was old and nobody I knew expected to live long enough to retire. Have a second wife, but that is more of convenience. She was already twice a widow when I settled down enough to maybe see forty. That was a decade ago. I’m home more these days, stationed at Petron, but I haven’t seen her in a year and she won’t be waiting up for me.”
“So you think I’ll just be a fling?” she asked tartly.
Yan noted that she hadn’t moved away from him. Or closer. Neither did he.
“I think you’ll be whatever you want,” Yan replied quietly. “Any man or woman who thinks otherwise is a damned fool.”
Neither of them moved, planets tidal-locked now, letting the universe rotate around them.
“And if I wanted more than a roll in the hay?” she snapped at him.
Yan shrugged nonchalantly. He took another sip of the superb whiskey as a way of catching his breath.
Kissing this woman sounded dangerously fun.
He fixed her with his own predator’s stare, like a soon-to-be-dead man entering the fighting circle. There had been three of those along the way. It had stopped after three. Nobody wanted to be the fourth once they realized how deadly he was under all the unassuming poise.
“You’ve got however long Karl’s war lasts,” he replied. “After that, I might go back to Corynthe. I might stay on Ladaux. I might become a Baron in Fribourg. If you want more than that, you and Aaliyah will have to have a personal discussion. Or end up sharing me.”
“That’s all you have to offer?” she sneered.
“Anything more would be a lie, Ainsley,” he retorted hoarsely. “Anything anyone offered beyond that would be pure fiction.”
“So you’ll give me honesty?” she asked.
Something had changed in her voice. A new flavor that hadn’t been there even a second earlier.
“For starters,” he said. “I’ll call your bullshit. I’ll expect you to call mine. I snore. And I’d enjoy snuggling up against your back, first thing in the morning, even before you woke up to a warm hand wrapped around your breast. Past that… Karl, Wachturm, and Jessica have shit that’s going to need to be done, and nobody but me that can do it, at least until someone decides to go get Pops. And you’re going to be flying against opponents so strange that they might as well be an alien species, so there’s a pretty good chance you don’t come back, some day. Honest enough?”
He liked the little flare thingy her nostrils did when she got her back up. The little squint that crinkled the bridge of her nose.
What the hell.
He leaned in and kissed her, noting how carefully they each held a half-empty whiskey glass away from their bodies as the other hands found flesh and muscle.
And pulled.