“So that’s the best we can do?” President McKenna said quietly as she stood at the windows of her private office in the Presidential Complex, staring out over the water toward where the Statue of Liberty still stood. While the United States technically no longer existed, its constitutional values had evolved into the foundation for the Terran Government, and Lady Liberty was as much an icon of the planetary government as she had once been of the nation for which it had originally been created. But statues would not help defend Keran or the rest of the human sphere from the Kreelan Empire. “Forty-seven ships and two heavy ground divisions?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Joshua Sabine told her, feeling ashamed that he had not been able to do better. But in the time they had been given, and with the incredibly stiff resistance the president had faced from Congress, he was amazed they had been able to accomplish that much. “That’s what we’ll be able to deploy in the expeditionary force, while maintaining roughly two-thirds of the fleet here. We’ve altered the refit cycle to have nearly one hundred percent readiness for a three-week window, long enough to find out what happens at Keran. We could provide a lot more ground troops if the Keran government would allow us to send them ahead of time, but two divisions is all we can embark at one time on the carriers without using civilian liners. And if we have to do that, there’s no way we can deploy those troops in a combat environment. It’s the same with the aerospace squadrons we’d wanted to send: there’s simply no way to bring them in under combat conditions. So we settled for two interceptor squadrons carried on one of the fleet’s support ships, along with enough logistics support for a month.” He sighed in frustration. “But they won’t be able to get into the fight unless we can get them down to the planet. And we can’t do that unless we have permission from the government or, if the Kreelans do show up, control of the system so we can protect the support ships as they bring in the interceptors.”
She turned to face him, and once again Sabine was stunned at how much of a toll the last year had taken on her. Her close-cropped black hair was now streaked with gray, and her forehead was creased with wrinkles from the enormous burden she had taken upon her shoulders: literally, the fate of humanity. A fate that so few still believed involved alien invaders from across the galaxy, even after the evidence the government had presented from the Aurora investigation.
But the president did believe it, and she had suffered for her perceived heresy at the hands of the press and from the Terran Congress. After the initial sensation of Aurora’s return started to wear off, the public and the congressmen suddenly paid closer attention to exactly what the president was asking for, and it didn’t take them long to start screaming bloody murder. President McKenna had enjoyed an extremely good working relationship with Congress, but the massive appropriations bill her staff had hammered together in an amazingly short time was met with shocked disbelief. The sale of war bonds, tax increases, possible federalization of key industries, and other measures brought a howl of indignation from the public and their elected representatives. The president had invited further attacks with an appeal for a vote to institute a draft that she sent to both houses. The resulting public uproar plunged her popularity into a tailspin. More than one critic had commented that had the Terran democratic institutions been based on a parliamentary system, McKenna would have been kicked out of office in a very one-sided vote of confidence.
On the diplomatic front, the story was equally bleak. The local diplomats were completely unsupportive, and the official government positions, delayed by weeks due to the communications time lag, were the same.
But there was a ray of hope. The one diplomat who took Hamilton Barca’s entreaties seriously was Ambassador Laurent Navarre from the planet Avignon. Unlike most of the other ambassadors, Navarre was a former naval officer who had seen extensive combat during the St. Petersburg intervention, and he had taken a very keen interest in what had happened with the Aurora. After his initial meeting with Barca, he had taken the bold step of asking to speak directly with Sato. At Barca’s request, the Navy had quickly provided a secure vidcom terminal, and Barca sat in Navarre’s office while the French diplomat bombarded Sato, who at the time was still quarantined on Aurora, with very pointed questions. Impressed with the young man’s responses, Navarre told Barca that not only would he recommend that his government support Earth’s position, but that he would also recommend that Avignon and the other members of the Francophone Alliance offer to send military assistance to Keran. It was a huge diplomatic victory, particularly since the Francophone Alliance represented a major bloc of the human sphere. But it was the only such victory they had enjoyed.
Now, only six weeks were left before the invasion was to occur. A lot of people were becoming curious again as the day approached, drawing the populace away from the general apathy that had replaced the initial surge of reaction to Aurora’s return. “Are they going to be ready in time?”
Sabine shrugged. “They’ll be as ready as we can make them, Madam President,” he told her. “Admiral Tiernan has been running them through a tough training cycle, trying to get the new ships and crews in shape. He’s got a lot of challenges trying to pull everything together, but everyone’s pushing as hard as they can. I think the ground forces are fine, as General Singh decided - wisely, I believe - to take two of our best divisions and tailor them for the deployment. So if we can get them on the ground, they’ll be ready to go.” He sighed. “Part of it is that we just don’t know what we’re going to be facing. For all we know, the Empire could throw a thousand ships at us in the first wave. Aside from the things we see from the crystal ball…”
That’s what everyone had taken to calling the alien artifact showing Keran, which had almost completely transformed into a raging world at war.
“...we have absolutely no intelligence information to go on.”
“And the Keran government still hasn’t budged?” McKenna asked.
“No, Madam President,” Hamilton Barca sighed. “I’ve done everything I can think of, short of wringing bin Sultan’s princely neck to get them to accept our help, even humanitarian assistance. They simply refuse to allow a Terran military presence in the system, even a single military vessel.” It wasn’t a surprise, of course: part of the reason for Keran’s odd mix of Chinese and Arabic cultures was due to the last round of wars that were fought on Earth before the Diaspora. The old United States, together with India and Russia, had been heavily involved on the “opposite side.” The inhabitants of Keran viewed the Terran Planetary Government, which was largely dominated by constituencies from the old United States, Russia, and India, with a great deal of circumspection, if not outright distrust.
“Then how the devil are we supposed to know if the invasion takes place?”
“That, at least, we have covered,” Barca told her, nodding toward Vladimir Penkovsky.
“We’ve arranged the diplomatic courier shuttle schedule so that there are at least two courier ships in-system at any given time,” Penkovsky explained, “with one in orbit and the other transiting in- or out-system. We’ve equipped all the courier ships with enhanced sensor packages that will augment their normal navigation and collision-avoidance systems to provide us with data on what is happening in local space and on the planet itself.” He held up a hand to forestall the question he saw the president about to ask. “No, Madam President, none of the equipment is classified or in any way compromises the diplomatic integrity of the couriers in the unlikely event one of them should be examined. Everything is off-the-shelf and commercially available. The upgraded systems will not provide information as detailed as we could get from our military systems, but it will be close.”
McKenna nodded, satisfied. The last thing she needed now was a major diplomatic incident with the Keran government. “What about the French?” she asked.
Barca smiled. When she said French, she meant the Francophone Alliance. Like virtually all the major nation-states since the formation of the Terran Planetary Government, the country once known as France still existed as an administrative entity. But in Terran Government circles, “France” referred to the group of worlds settled by refugees from France, Belgium, their former African colonies, and even some of the Quebecois from Canada, during the Diaspora. Unlike some of the other worlds that were settled during that period, they had benefitted from amazing luck in colonizing Avignon, La Seyne, and several other planets that were very compatible with humans and were rich in natural resources. Collectively they had become one of the major economic and military forces in the human sphere, and generally shared common interests with Earth. Fortunately, the Francophone Alliance also enjoyed very good relations with Keran that weren’t tainted by unpleasantness from the past. “That’s still our best news,” Barca told her, “although it has its warts, too. The Alliance is preparing to deploy roughly one hundred warships to Keran, along with ten ground divisions. Ambassador Navarre indicated that the only real sticking point was the ground forces: the Keran Government is only going to allow them to deploy a single division planetside until or unless the enemy fleet actually materializes. The Kerans still don’t think there’s anything to worry about, and while they don’t mind having a bunch of French warships in orbit, they don’t want three full heavy corps of troops running amok on the streets.”
“But the French don’t have enough carriers to get their divisions deployed quickly from orbit,” Sabine pointed out, incredulous. “Are they just going to hold the troops on starliners until the attack comes and then shuttle them down?” Barca nodded, shrugging. “Good, God,” Sabine said, rolling his eyes, “they’re going to be sitting ducks!”
“They don’t have any choice,” Barca pointed out. “Believe me, Navarre wasn’t happy with the plan when he heard about it, either. But the Alliance approved it, so that’s what they’re going with.”
“So which division are they allowing the French to land ahead of time?” the president asked.
“They’re deploying the entire combat contingent of the Foreign Legion,” Barca told her, “which is technically a division-plus. They’re sending all twenty field infantry regiments, plus the Legion’s independent armored brigade. Navarre said the decision is already raising hell with peacekeeping operations where they had to pull out some of the regiments, but they did it anyway.”
Sabine grunted. “The Keran government would have been better off letting them deploy the other nine divisions and keep the legionnaires in orbit if they were worried about troops getting wild on the ground,” he said. “On the other hand, they’re a bunch of tough bastards. Good call. But they won’t have any heavy artillery support outside of the armored brigade.”
“So,” the president asked, “what major problems do we have left, aside from the obvious ones.”
“Command and control,” Sabine said immediately. “We’ve been talking to the French about inter-operability, but we’ve gotten an ice-cold shoulder.” The president gave him the look, the one where she seemed to promise that she’d rip the heart out of someone’s chest if he or she hadn’t been giving something their all. “Ma’am,” Sabine said, leaning forward to emphasize his point, “we even offered to give them a set of our systems to look over and modify - no questions asked! - to be compatible with theirs so our ships and ground troops can communicate effectively. But they’re so paranoid about their system security that they simply won’t do it. They refused to even take the equipment and software that we offered them, even to just look at it.”
“So when the attack comes and our ships jump in to assist,” she asked him, a look of pained incredulity on her face, “they won’t be able to communicate with the French fleet?”
“No, Madam President,” Sabine told her grimly. “Aside from the normal basic communications that all ships have, we’ll have no way of integrating our battle management capabilities. The ships will be able to talk to each other with normal voice and video, but other than that both fleets will be fighting completely on their own...”
* * *
Aboard the recently commissioned destroyer TNS Owen D. McClaren, Lieutenant Ichiro Sato found himself far more worried about the survival of his own ship in the current fleet exercise than the strategic concerns guiding the president’s cabinet discussion. What troubled him wasn’t the complex targeting and maneuvering problems the exercise controllers were throwing at the ships. It was the ship’s captain.
“Goddammit, Sato!” Commander Scott Morrison, the ship’s captain, cursed, making half the bridge crew cringe. Glaring at his young tactical officer, he practically sneered, “I ordered you to fire on target Delta with the pulse cannon. Are you deaf or just incompetent?”
“Sir,” Sato said, trying not to grit his teeth, “as I explained to you earlier, the pulse cannon has a thirty second recycle rate under optimal conditions.” The pulse cannon was a highly modified laser that was mounted in the ship’s keel. It could deliver a massive punch, but the entire ship had to be aligned on the target, and it took virtually all of the ship’s energy reserves to fire. It was a powerful weapon, but had some serious tactical drawbacks. The McClaren was one of only two of the expeditionary force’s ships that had been built with one. “You had already ordered a laser salvo against targets Alpha and Bravo, which depleted the energy buffers. Every time that happens, the recycle sequence for the pulse cannon resets-”
“Enough,” Morrison snapped, waving his hand dismissively as he turned back to the primary bridge display. “The bottom line is you fucked up.”
“Sir, I-”
“I said that’s enough,” the captain hissed. Getting out of his combat chair, which was strictly prohibited during exercises except for safety reasons, he stalked over to Sato’s position. Pointing a finger in Sato’s face, he went on, “The reason - the only reason - you are on this ship, mister, is because you managed to stuff your head up Admiral Tiernan’s ass so far that you could look out his ears. All I ask from you, if it’s not too much, is that you just sit there, keep your bloody mouth shut, and do your fucking job!” He paused, staring at Sato and clearly expecting the younger man to cave in. Tall but still gangly even in early middle age, Morrison normally towered over Sato. But now the captain’s face, which could only be described as grossly ordinary, was a mere hand’s breadth from Sato’s nose. “Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly, captain,” Sato replied stonily, his gaze unwavering, although his hands were digging into his armrests. He wasn’t intimidated; he was disgusted and heartsick that such an awful man had been given command of one of the few ships humanity had to send against what Sato knew must be heading toward Keran even now. And it was an insult that someone like Morrison had been given command of the ship that bore Captain McClaren’s name.
Sato had only come aboard two weeks earlier as the ship was finishing up her initial space trials, and had been immediately appalled by the state of the crew: sullen and quiet, the various departments of the ship in fierce competition to avoid the captain’s ire. Morrison had effectively cowed all of the officers, including the exec, except for the chief engineer, Lieutenant Commander Vedette Pergolesi. But while Pergolesi stood as a human heat shield between the captain and the crewmen of the engineering department, the rest of the crew had to fend for themselves. After having their hides flayed a few times after he’d come aboard, even the senior chiefs stayed out of the path of the captain’s vitriol. Most of them had seen his type before and kept their distance as much as possible. And that, as much as anything else, was devastating for the crew.
“We’ve just been hit by a brace of kinetics,” the XO said in a matter-of-fact voice. While Morrison had been berating Sato, an enemy ship had fired the equivalent of giant shotgun shells at them. Since no one else on the bridge was about to interrupt his tirade to ask for maneuvering orders, or take the initiative to change the ship’s course and avoid the incoming projectiles, the exercise computer declared five hits along the length of the hull.
“Goddammit!” Morrison cried disgustedly, stomping back to his command chair.
“And the captain has been declared a casualty because he wasn’t in his combat chair,” the XO added meekly, waiting for the spontaneous human combustion that he knew would result.
Morrison didn’t disappoint him.
“Incoming from Commodore Santiago, sir,” the communications rating announced in the middle of the captain’s impressive stream of invective. Her voice was perfectly neutral, but Sato had no trouble identifying the underlying tone of vicious glee.
Morrison threw himself into his chair and snapped, “On my console.” Sato knew that normally the captain took any calls from senior officers in private in his ready room adjacent to the bridge, but he couldn’t get away with that in an exercise, especially since he’d just become a casualty for being out of his command chair. Even on the small console screen that was embedded in the chair, the entire bridge crew would be able to hear the admiral, even if they couldn’t see his expression. All exercise communications were recorded for later analysis during the debriefing and lessons-learned discussions, and no one had any doubt that the recording of this particular discussion would make its way to the entire crew.
“Scott,” Commodore Rafael Santiago, who commanded the flotilla to which McClaren was assigned, appeared on the vidcom and demanded, “what the devil is going on over there?”
“My apologies, sir,” Morrison answered evenly. “We’re having some difficulties adapting the pulse cannon to our tactics. It’s playing hell with our energy buffer allocation, and our tactical officer lost the shot on target Charlie. I was trying to get that sorted out when the kinetic attack came in, but the XO failed to maneuver clear.” He put a sympathetic but determined look on his face. “We’ve only had a couple weeks to hammer this crew together, commodore. We’re not as tightly integrated yet as the other ships.” McClaren was the only newly-launched ship in Santiago’s flotilla; the other five ships had captains and crews that had served together for more than a year.
Santiago frowned. “I realize that, Scott,” he sighed. “And training is where we’re supposed to make our mistakes. Let’s just make sure we all learn from them, because we won’t get a second chance at this.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Morrison replied, resolution evident in his voice. “We won’t let you down.”
“Good enough,” Santiago said. “Carry on.” The screen went blank.
* * *
Sato and some of the other junior officers from McClaren sat around the table at the back of Nightingale’s, one of Africa Station’s less reputable bars, enjoying their last bit of off-ship time before the expeditionary force prepared to deploy. While open twenty-four hours a day, the bar’s schedule was really slaved to Universal Standard Time, which was now sixteen-hundred. Before the dinner hour the bar was fairly quiet and not too crowded, but business would pick up soon, with raucous music blaring over the bodies packed onto the dance floor and seated at the surrounding tables.
“We’re fucked,” Ensign Kayla Watanabe sighed. She was the ship’s junior navigation officer, and had more than once been on the receiving end of a rebuke from her captain for things that weren’t her fault. That didn’t bother her so much; she could take the tongue lashings. What she couldn’t take was the certain knowledge that their ship couldn’t fight worth a damn.
Heads around the table nodded glumly. They had managed to do better during the rest of the exercise, but Sato attributed that to luck as much as anything else. Commodore Santiago had positioned McClaren in a support role during the following engagements, giving the other ships the lead in the flotilla’s attacks while McClaren cleaned up the scraps. The ship had managed to survive, but the entire crew felt humiliated.
“What do you think, Sato?” Watanabe asked. “Are we going to get our asses reamed by the Kreelans?” In unison, the others turned to him, dejected, but eager to hear what he had to say.
It was odd, Sato thought, that here he was, again the youngest and least experienced officer on the ship, much as he had been on the Aurora as a midshipman. Yet, they were looking to him for an answer, for leadership. It was true that he outranked most of those around the table, but there was more to it than that. He was the only one aside from Pergolesi, the chief of engineering, who continued to stand up to the captain. Even during the shit-storm of their after-action review, when the captain had found fault with virtually every one of his officers, Sato had stood firm and said what needed to be said about his perceptions of the crew’s performance - both the things they had done well, and those they hadn’t - respectfully but firmly. For the record, if nothing else, he’d thought at the time. He had absorbed a lot of abuse from the captain after making contradictory observations on the actions of some of the other members of the bridge crew. It had been incredibly difficult to not spell out all the captain’s mistakes, but he knew that wouldn’t help. There was no way the commodore would replace Morrison at this late date unless he made some sort of flagrant violation, and the captain was too savvy for that. As with his conversation with the commodore during the exercise, he was an expert at taking just enough blame to make himself look responsible, while shoving the bulk of it off on the alleged inadequacies of his junior officers.
Sighing, Sato looked around the table at their expectant faces, the faces of people he’d only known for a couple weeks, but on whom his life would depend in the coming battle. He wished he had some good news for them, some way to give them some confidence. “Look,” he told them, “I’ll be honest and say that I don’t think the expeditionary force is going to be nearly enough to stop them when they come, even if we had the best captain in the fleet. I don’t think the Kreelans will be using ships like the ones that attacked Aurora, but they don’t have to. Somehow they’re going to level the playing field with us, but...” He shook his head. “I think Keran is going to be a much bigger version of the arena that my old crew fought and died in. I don’t think they’re going to let us win this battle.”
“So all this is for nothing?” one of the others asked, disgusted. “We just go out there and get our asses kicked by an enemy we can’t touch?”
“No,” Sato replied forcefully. “That’s not what I meant. I don’t think we’ll be able to save Keran from whatever the aliens plan to do. But I do think that they’re going to give us a chance to show them what we’re made of. I think if we fight hard and well, we’ll buy humanity extra time to build its defenses. If we don’t...” He shook his head. “If we don’t meet their expectations, I believe they could wipe us from the universe without even trying.”
“But what the hell do we do about Captain-fucking-Queeg?” someone asked.
“Nothing,” Sato sighed in resignation. “The only thing we can do is our very best as individuals, and to try and work hard as a team. The captain’s used to playing the department heads against each other, instead of having them work together.” It was common knowledge that very few officers aboard a ship would ever qualify for command in what was a relatively small fleet. So the competition for top ratings on their first ship tour was critical: only the officers in the top one or two slots stood a chance at ever earning command wings. And the way most captains accomplished this winnowing of their junior officers was to pit them against each other, promoting those who wound up with the fewest marks against them. It was generally a divisive and corrosive way to run a ship, but only a few captains, such as Ichiro’s old skipper, Owen McClaren, saw beyond it to cultivate a close sense of teamwork, basing officer evaluations primarily on how well they worked with one another. Almost all of McClaren’s former junior officers qualified for command later in their careers, and Ichiro knew that the Navy was very shortly going to wish it had a great many more command qualified officers. “So,” Ichiro went on, “we’ve got to do our best to work together. Forget all the career advancement garbage. That’s not going to mean a thing if we get vaporized a few weeks from now.”
Everyone agreed with that: what was the point of coming out in the top one or two position on your ratings when you were dead?
Sato picked up his glass and drained it, savoring the cold tea. Unlike the others, he didn’t drink alcohol. “Okay, I’ve got to go.” Standing up, he said, “I’ll see you all back aboard tomorrow morning.”
Watching Sato leave, Watanabe remarked, “Well, maybe when we go into combat the first time, the captain will forget to stay in his chair...”
* * *
Ichiro was covered in a fine sheen of sweat as he went through the various katas he had been taught, the movements to attack and defend with the katana. It had become an obsession, and the closest thing he had now to religion.
One of the first things he had done to fill up what little free time he had after being released from quarantine aboard the Aurora was to seek out a sensei to teach him how to use his grandfather’s weapon. It was a difficult task for two reasons: he had no idea even where to look for someone with the right skills, and among those he found very few were really willing to offer what he truly wanted: a crash-course in how to kill with a sword. He wasn’t interested in the finer points of swordsmanship, because he knew that he would never make a great, or probably even good, swordsman: that process took many years, and he only had a little over one year to learn what he could. The teachers he spoke to didn’t understand that he didn’t want to learn for sport or for some higher personal purpose. He wanted to learn how to kill.
Then one day a man appeared at the door of his cabin on Africa Station. When Sato opened the door, the man, who was of Japanese descent, bowed and then gestured for Sato to go with him. The man refused to say a word. Frustrated by the man’s bizarre behavior, Sato was nonetheless curious and decided to follow him. The man took him to the station’s sports complex, where they entered one of the many exercise rooms. It was empty except for two items: a pair of wooden swords, bokken, that lay in the center of the floor.
The man, who Sato judged to be in his late fifties, knelt gracefully on one side of the two bokken. Sato, shrugging, knelt opposite him. Giving in to ingrained habit from his childhood, he lowered himself to the floor in a deep bow, and the older man did the same. Then he handed Sato one of the bokken, and wordlessly began to teach him how to use it.
The scene repeated itself every day that Sato was on the station. Regardless of whether he was there early or late in the day, the old man magically appeared on his doorstep. Sato had tried everything he could think of to get some sort of information from him about who he was and what he was doing there, beyond the obvious of teaching Sato swordsmanship, but the old man calmly ignored him and simply got down to business as soon as they arrived at their designated workout room. Sato tried to find out who scheduled the room, but in every single case, it was listed as open. He tried finding out who the man was from the shuttle transit services, but they couldn’t release passenger information, and even Steph couldn’t dig her way to the bottom of it. It was maddening.
But aside from the strange circumstances, Sato could clearly see that the man, his silent sensei, knew what he was doing. The many hours they spent together were hard and challenging, and more than once Sato went back to his quarters sporting a number of welts where the sensei had underscored some of Sato’s shortcomings. But that only made Sato want to train harder, because he knew that if his teacher had been a Kreelan wielding a real sword, Sato wouldn’t just be bruised, he’d be dead.
After about eight months, they began to train with real katanas, but with their edges blunted. Sato knew that he didn’t have the refinement or overall abilities of someone who had trained for years, but he now had confidence that he could fight. He knew that he would lose against a Kreelan warrior who had probably been trained since birth for combat, but he would never again be completely helpless as he had been in the arena aboard the Kreelan warship, seemingly so long ago.
Then, two weeks ago, his sensei suddenly stopped coming. Sato was worried that something had happened to the man - he still didn’t even know his name - until a package arrived. It was a tube about fifty centimeters long and maybe fifteen in diameter. Carefully opening it, he was stunned at the contents: a wakizashi, the shorter companion sword that samurai warriors traditionally carried with the longer katana. But this wasn’t just any wakizashi. It was the companion to his grandfather’s sword.
Wrapped inside the tube was a brief handwritten note in flowing Japanese characters:
I regret the odd circumstances of our relationship, young Ichiro. But after your journalist friend sent word to Nagano of your adventures and mentioned your wish to learn the ways of the sword, your mother sent me. She swore me to silence, for she did not wish your father to find out for fear he might somehow learn what your mother had done. He is a most unworthy man, unlike his son.
She knew me through your grandfather, you see, who was an honored friend, and my sensei long ago. She wanted you to have this, your grandfather’s wakizashi, when you completed the training I could give you. Your father had spitefully hidden it before you left home, but your mother found it again soon after, and kept it safe since then.
You are a fine young man, Ichiro. Your mother is so very proud of you, as would be your honored grandfather.
- Rai Tomonaga
It was a revelation for which Ichiro was totally unprepared. He simply sat in his quarters for most of that evening, staring at the note and the short sword that had come with it. Finally, he spent the next few hours, well into the night, composing a note to his mother, the first he had sent since he had left home.
Now, on his last free evening station-side, he had spent a full two hours practicing the moves Tomonaga had taught him when the door chime rang. Then he heard the door open. Only one person had his access code. Steph.
“Hey, kid,” she called to him as she came in, the door automatically swishing closed behind her. She always called him that when they were alone, although she was only ten years older.
Steph leaned against the wall near the door, watching as Ichiro went through the remainder of a ballet of lethal moves with his grandfather’s sword. Bare above the waist, the muscles of his upper body rippled as he slashed and thrust with the glittering weapon, and she marveled at how hard and chiseled his body had become. He hadn’t exactly been in bad shape physically when she’d first met him on the Aurora, but he had totally transformed himself in the last year with the help of the mysterious Tomonaga-san. Admit it, woman, she chided herself, trying to look away but failing, he’s goddamn beautiful.
After a few more moves, Ichiro sheathed the sword, making even that move graceful and deadly-looking. Holding the katana in both hands, he bowed his head to it, then carefully placed it on a small wooden stand that held the matched pair of swords.
“It’s too bad the Navy didn’t take you up on your suggestion to make close combat training and swordsmanship mandatory,” she sighed. “Then they’d all be hunks like you.”
Ichiro grinned at her as he toweled off the sweat. “Don’t you wish,” he quipped. “So, what’s going on?”
She folded her arms at him and gave him a look that he knew from experience meant that he’d just said something incredibly stupid. “Gee, I don’t know,” she told him, stepping up to take the towel to rub down his back. “Maybe this’ll be the last time I see you before you deploy, you moron.” She paused, then added, “Although maybe I’ll get to see you while you’re on station at the rendezvous point.”
Ichiro whipped around and took her wrists, not altogether gently. “What?” he exclaimed. “I thought you were staying back here to cover the president.”
Steph’s career had taken off into the stratosphere after her coverage of the Aurora, and she had been able to pick any assignment she’d wanted. She’d chosen a lead position on the press team that covered the president, and hadn’t been disappointed by the massive battle that had been waged in the following months between the executive and legislative branches. While the fighting had only been waged in words and manipulation of governmental processes, it had been as fierce in its own way as men and women grappling on a battlefield.
“I know, Ichiro,” she told him, reaching her hands up to touch his face, his own hands still wrapped around her wrists. “But I asked for an embed position in the expeditionary force. That’s where the action’s going to be, and I want to be in the middle of it.”
“Stephanie,” he nearly choked, looking as if he’d been sucker-punched, “you mustn’t go. Please.” He had never called her by her full name since she had told him she went by Steph.
She smiled up at him. “Trying to be Mister Chivalrous, are you?” she told him gently. “Listen, I know how to take care of myself.” She moved closer, her nose almost touching his. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Most of us won’t be coming back, Steph,” he whispered, his dark almond eyes glittering. “Maybe none of us. I don’t want...I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Nothing will,” she whispered before bringing her lips to his. For just a moment, he didn’t react. They had always been “just friends,” never thinking that their relationship would ever be anything more. Then he returned her kiss, tentatively at first, and then with growing passion. When Steph felt his powerful arms wrap around her, drawing her body tight against his, a wave of heat rushed through her core. Suddenly, she wished that they’d done this a long time ago.
Without another word, Ichiro effortlessly picked her up and carried her to the bedroom.