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IN THE CORNER OF THE TRAINING gym, there was a barricade of desks, screens, and fitness reports that divided Rowena’s world from the astringent smell of new mats and the paperwork that stank of bureaucracy. Maps of Malik IV were spread on every available surface as she compared the readouts from the Persephone with the list of orun-using machines the Jhandarmi had found for her.
A shadow crossed in front of the sunlight let in by the half-open bay door. Rowena flashed an orange warning sign on the shield around her desk, letting the gym’s visitor know that she was there and working. If she didn’t, there was always the risk that some amorous pair might wander in, thinking they were alone.
The person whistled a tune that had been playing in Cargo Blue all week, and it grew louder as they neared her. There was a tap at her shields.
Closing her eyes, she schooled her expression into one of polite disinterest, and looked up.
Hollis Silar smiled at her, wearing his Guardians all-blacks and holding folded black fabric and some documents.
Crack it all. He probably actually needed to talk. She dropped the outer shield and waved him over. “Yes, guardian? Are the update schedules not near the front door?” He looked better than he had a few hours ago. Maybe someone had knocked some sense into him and made him get some sleep.
“This isn’t about schedules.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be leaving for the mountains to train with the Jhandarmi?” Going away? Giving her space? The thought was the bright point of her day.
“In an hour. There’s something we needed to take care of first.” He tilted his head to look at the map. “What’s that?”
Nothing he needed to be interested in, but she’d planned for intrusions and curious onlookers.
“Plans for a unit on navigation and survival in low-tech environments. The fleetlings aren’t supposed to use their implants while we’re out, so I’m checking the physical maps for accuracy and making a threat list.” Not a complete lie. The fleetlings were scheduled to do field training and knowing where there was orun would be an important part of the navigation portion of the class.
“Anything interesting?”
She turned one the maps around so he could see it better. “This is the north end of Seahome, the second continent. Tropical, volcanically and seismically active, it’s the site of the original terraforming drop, which means the species diversity is high, as are the mutation rates for the local flora and fauna.
“Threats include, but aren’t limited to, pit crevasses that drop several hundred meters, often populated by Pandinus imperator albinius, the pale emperor scorpion that grows up to four meters long, and Daeodon malikus, which is a tusked, carnivorous mammal that weighs over six hundred kilos and measures over two meters long. And then there are spiders, snakes, lava flows, poisonous fauna, and—oh, my favorite—the Bloodiers, mutated hunting hounds brought in by a wave of enthusiastic settlers who thought they could hunt the new species. Canis dirus sanguis, nearly hairless, obsessive when hunting, and fond of running down live prey. Large packs roam the jungles of Seahome and are completely feral. It’s a joyful place.”
“Four meter scorpions?” Hollis sounded interested despite himself. “Is that even physically possible?”
“Apparently, if you drop the genetic material of a large scorpion into the terraforming seed mix it’s possibly. They aren’t true scorpions in the way the Empire would have classified them, but they are scorpion-esque enough that the name’s stuck.”
He grimaced. “Let’s never do that again.”
“Well,” she tilted her head in thought, “since we don’t have the terraforming technology, and we don’t have a fleet capable of flying us to other planets, and we don’t have another planet worth terraforming in this system, I’d say we’re safe. Problem solved.” If only all problems were that easy.
“And you’re taking the fleetlings to this death trap alone?” He sounded dubious.
“Are you insulting my intelligence, Silar, or questioning my planning skills?” She should have broken one of his bones during the fight. “No, I’m not taking the cranky murder children alone. Half of them want to see me choking on my own blood, and the other half are feral. I’ll be gathering volunteers from the crews, possibly from the Starguard, and, if I can make it happen, I’ll have a scout patrol from the nearest city-state to lead the teams. Pre-dawn here is full dawn there. If all goes well, we’ll leave early and be back in time for them to shower and eat supper with their crews.”
Still too many ifs for her liking.
Doing low-tech training was a necessity now that they were grounded, but it wasn’t fun. She’d rather deal with a hull breach drill any day of the week.
Animals? Why, dear ancestors, did anyone think seeding the planet with animals mid-terraforming was a good idea? They could be living somewhere with only domesticated species right now, but no, someone had the brilliant idea to put wild animals on the planet.
And speaking of unwanted menaces... “Why are you here?”
“A couple reasons. First, a report courtesy of the Jhandarmi.” He dropped the paper folder on her desk.
She took it with a frown. “You weren’t supposed to read this.”
Hollis shrugged. “They should have encrypted it better. Where is Kydell?”
Checking her implant, she said, “On the southern tip of the second continent. Why?”
In the folder was a printout of images of Briceno walking past columned buildings with a woman who looked vaguely familiar. The face didn’t match any fleet files, but it matched a Jhandarmi sketch of a Person Of Interest from a murder in Clyde River at the start of the year.
There wasn’t much on the woman, only a picture of a round face, black eyes, and black hair cut to the shoulders, but Rowena added it to her Immediate Attention file anyway. If she saw the woman again, she’d know in an instant.
Hollis clicked his tongue to get her attention. “I skimmed the report Tyrling sent over, since you’re so loathe to share information. Briceno, whoever that is, broke his pattern and went there to do some gambling. The Jhandarmi thought you needed to know what their resources were for the area.”
Her implant lit up. There were multiple orun sources in the area around Kydell. Interesting.
“Are you going to tell me why you need that information?”
“No.” He was hiding it well, but she knew he had to be exhausted. There was no reason to add to his list of worries. “What was the second thing?”
He tossed the shirt at her. “Saw it at the flight show and I thought you might want to add it to your grounder wardrobe.”
Warily, she unrolled the black fabric. There was a cartoonish picture of an atmospheric plane and a round-faced woman with black hair wearing a flight suit, underscored by the caption, ‘Save An Engine Ride A Pilot.’
Rowena looked up. “In what alternate universe would I wear this?”
“Don’t know.” He shrugged. “She reminded me of you though.”
Right... “I guess I could use more cleaning rags in engineering. Anything else?”
Silar smiled and dropped a fleet datfile on her desk. “The Captain’s Council had a vote, and gave the OIA orders, who then in turn gave the Starguard and Academy committee orders, and now the orders are yours.”
“Orders for what?” Rowena used telekyen to pick the file up and charge the electric pages. “Syllabus for a Sexual Information class? What?” She looked up in horror, blinked, and re-read. “What?”
“Carver gave it to me this morning and asked me to pick an instructor. Several of the age seventeen cohort have gone to their captains with questions of a personal nature,” Silar said in a tone that sounded perfectly reasonable, which meant he was up to no good. “Normally a captain would tell them to ask their parents. But—”
“But most of this cohort are war orphans.” Rowena cursed under her breath. When war was originally proposed, everyone made it sound glorious or necessary, the only path to survival. No one ever mentioned the fallout. Or the aftermath. Or said that the cost of war was more than blood and tears.
Lost Fleet kick Old Baular in the balls for his sins.
“Still... why is this my responsibility? Can’t they do crew training on this?”
Silar nodded. “They could, but the captains felt it would be better if this cohort was given training by an adult they trust.”
“That should rule me out immediately.” Rowena pushed the report back at him. “Like I said, half of them would happily dance over my corpse. Why don’t you do it?”
He pushed back with telekyen. The file shivered in the air, suspended between their warring wills. “You’re their primary instructor. And, as you said before, I’m already very busy.”
“Crack in the hull! What am I supposed to tell them? ‘Sex is a thing that sometimes happens between consenting parties and certain people enjoy it?’ This is not my field of expertise.” She let the report drop to her desk.
This was not news to anyone in the fleet.
Sexual attraction was something she understood on an intellectual level, but rarely experienced. Even she wasn’t sure if those brief moments counted. It certainly wasn’t the same as what she saw in her crew or friends. And since she was generally touch-phobic, even on a good day, she’d managed to convince the Captain’s Council that in their genetic plans for future generations, they could count her out.
Unless she knew the person well enough to trust them with her life, she wanted nothing to do with sex.
Silar knew that.
She looked up at him again.
He knew it.
He was her training partner and nemesis.
He knew all her weaknesses and strengths.
He wouldn’t smile as he asked her to teach something she was unqualified for, not unless there was something else he wanted from this.
Someone else might have thought that, with Silar’s history, he was trying to find a way to offer a casual sexual encounter. But they both knew that was never going to happen. Whatever their relationship was, from classmates to antagonists to very reluctant co-workers, there was nothing casual about their interactions.
Gold fire crossed Silar’s brown eyes as his grin widened. He knew exactly what she was thinking.
“What do you want?” Rowena asked.
“Hmm?” His eyes widened in feigned innocence. “Want? Whatever could I want from you?”
What...? Oh. “Reports?” She raised an eyebrow in speculation.
Silar offered an exaggerated shrug.
It was the reports then. She sat down in her chair. “We both know I’m not the right person for this job. So cut to the chase, what do you want from me so you’ll handle this?”
He picked up the file. “Full reports on your operation with the Jhandarmi.” His tone had switched from deceitfully playful to the no-nonsense tone of a senior guardian. “Who you are with. Where you are at. What threats you might be facing.”
“I can’t get the Jhandarmi to read you in on this.”
“I said full report, not official. You know the difference.”
She did.
“When you leave Enclave for this I want to know what area you’ll be in and what trouble you expect to find. When you get back, I want to know you’re here in Enclave, and a medical scan proving you aren’t injured.”
That last bit was going to be a sticking point. “Injuries happen on the job. I can’t always throw a shield up or teleport out of a situation, not without causing a panic. Not every grounder is as accepting of our tech as the ones in Tarrin.”
“Fine, I’ll accept a medical scan with the understanding that you’ll go see your ship’s medic if you’re injured.”
She made a noncommittal noise. The Danielle Nicole’s chief medical officer was closely related to her captain, and as much a risk to her life as any murderous grounder. “I’ll make sure I get patched up. But this is only for movement related to my Jhandarmi consulting work. Nothing more.”
“Nothing more,” Silar agreed. “If you go out with friends, meet a lover, or anything during off-duty time, I don’t need to know. Go have fun.”
Rowena nodded, but she wasn’t giving in that easily. “I can work with that. If...”
“If?”
“If you carry a scanner with you while you’re in the mountains.”
Silar’s eyes narrowed. “What scanner and why does it need to go to the mountains?”
“It’s small and light. All I need is to see if it can scan for orun traces in the mountains. I’m tracking some illegal tech for the Jhandarmi.” That was more or less true, for a given value of true.
“I have to teach sex ed and carry the scanner? That seems like a bad trade. What else are you giving me?”
Rowena cocked her head to the side and pretended to consider her options. There was really only one concession left to make. “I’ll keep your knife with me.”
“And the emergency card to call a Guardian.”
That was more than she wanted to give, but she accepted with a grimace. “Fine.”
“Thank you.” He didn’t smile in victory, which showed he’d matured over the past few years, because this was a rightful victory he could hold over her head.
The thought made her fists itch. No matter how many times her pride took a blow and she lost, it stung.
“It’s a win-win situation,” Silar said as if he guessed her thoughts. He probably could. “Anything I need to know about the fleetlings before I prep the class?”
At least he was letting the conversation slide back to neutral ground. “If you do an open forum session, you’re going to get at least two questions about coping with the death of beloved ones. The worst off is the Mirtoll boy, Kada. He was on the Karff when Old Baular attacked it at the end of the war. Most of his age group didn’t evacuate on time. He was twelve, and it was his first love.”
For a moment Silar’s jaw tightened in memory.
The Mirtolls were a C-class crew, unallied, and poorly armed. The Baular’s Slibinas had attacked them, demanding food and fuel. When the Mirtoll captain refused, the attack had destroyed nearly everything.
“Why’d he come to you? You’re Warmonger.”
“Because I lost my first love to the war,” Rowena said. “Or as near to love as I’ll ever get. He wanted to know how I coped with Mal’s death.”
Silar turned to her, a note of concern in his eyes. “Did you cope?”
Did she cope? The question was deeper than that.
Did she heal? Did she forgive the Council for banishing Mal? Did she forgive the grounder who planted a bomb in his car and killed him?
“I’ve seen a trauma counselor.”
Silar’s look could have frozen planets in their orbits. “Seeing them doesn’t help. You need to actually talk to them.”
She wrinkled her nose. This was not a discussion they were going to have.
Silar sighed in acknowledgment. “Acknowledged. That’s a no fly zone. Anything else I should know about before I teach your group?”
“Don’t be shocked when several of them show up wearing uniforms they outgrew last year. They’ve determined that Guardian Silar, the Elite-ranked warrior, is single again and eligible for pursuit.”
“Ha!” He laughed with a genuine smile. “Oh, ancestors.” A red blush flushed his cheeks. “Oh, ancestors, no. Can you pass the word along that anyone too young to fight in the war is too young for me?”
“We were too young to fight in the war.”
“We were.” He sighed. “Still... try to convince them that I’m not what they want.”
Rowena smiled. “I’ll do what I can.”
It was a little hard considering he was the ideal fleet officer—handsome, kind, efficient, and, even when he was pushing the limits of her patience, she had to admit he was fun to look at. It wasn’t sexual, he was just that pretty. Perfectly proportioned and classically built. And, when he wanted to, he could look at a person like they were the only thing that mattered in the universe.
The fact that he was single was not related to a lack of interest.
His tongue flicked out, wetting his lips. “You know, if you’d kissed me when I asked the other day, your fleetlings wouldn’t be chasing after me.”
“Or they’d kill me to take out the competition!”
“Eh, you could handle them.” He grinned, and he had that look in his eye that invited her to forget everything else and let him make her the center of his orbit for an hour or two.
She gave him a tart smile. “I could handle them, but I don’t want to handle you.” I don’t want to deal with the fallout when you get bored. “Shoo. I need to finish this before someone breaks their environmental system in this weather.”
The heat in his eyes became a warm glow of comradery. “Fine. I’ll go. And, Lee, the reports?” He raised his eyebrows. “I expect the first briefing today. Data on my desk before breakfast.”
“Already sent,” Rowena said. She put her shield back up as he left, feeling like she’d dodged a kinetic round.
One of these days she was going to have to take Silar out, or do something to put their issues to rest. The state of constant uncertainty, never knowing where they stood or how much of his flirting was real, was taking up too much of her mental energy.
“Should have killed him last year,” she muttered.
Too late now.
Now, Titan was married to a Silar ally. And Silar was proving himself useful. If he was dead, she’d need to find a new training partner and someone to handle complicated emotional questions from her class.
It was tantamount to admitting she needed him.
She made a face of disgust.
Maybe it was time to get away from the fleet, or at least the gym. There were too many memories and emotions here for her to think clearly.
She looked over at the squeaky clean new combat mats, remembering Silar’s teasing request for a kiss. She should have said yes just to watch him run in fear.
Grinning, she turned back to the maps. Now... what were the teleport coordinates for Kydell?