"I have no desire to shoot you. Ever." She launched into an attack hug, wrapping her arms tight around him, and tucking herself into his chest, holding tight. "I thought you'd died."
Blondie dropped his head to hers, speaking into her hair. "What, that? Been through worse. Bunch of nannies and a little regen, and good as new." When she looked up in surprise, he kissed her.
It was a gentle kiss, Light enough she could have pulled away if she wanted to. She didn't want to, and sank into his embrace, feeling boneless and liquid at his touch. He held her there, twining one hand into her hair, and finally pulled away to let her breathe. She flushed, aware of the rest of the people around them. He smiled, but before he could say anything, Tom pulled lightly at one hand. "Ping me a status check, darling."
She did, and heard Russ say softly, "Where the hell did you boys meet up with her, that she trusts you like that?"
"Long story." Tom replied, and sighed. "And darling, we have to stop meeting when you're run out this ragged. She's not safe to fly. Miller, can you tuck her somewhere dark and quiet so she can get some sleep while we load up?"
"One moment." Blondie stroked her face. "Love, did you lock him out of the plane? Why don't you let him back in so he can move it?"
She closed her eyes, and rested her forehead against his chest as she worked, safe and warm in the circle of his arms. She knew how much she hated being talked over, so she said, "Russ, you're back in."
"Thank you." He replied. "Yes, I was planning on having her sleep through loadout. She's past her duty day, and nothing short of sleep or a combat stim will help when she's timed out." He paused next to her, and put a hand on her shoulder. "Porter?"
"Yes?" She looked up at him, flinching away from the contact, into Blondie's embrace. Blondie noticed, and knocked his hand away.
"Thanks for not shooting me." Russ nodded, keeping his hands out and clear. "But next time recon tells you to shoot someone? Shoot them."
30
She woke to a tangle of limbs and blanket, not all of which were hers. Blondie was holding her, his chest rumbling as he spoke. "Come on, sleepyhead. Time for you to fly."
"Nnnng." Her eyelids were leaden, limbs sluggish to respond, head heavy and thoughts slow. He chuckled, and she heard a package rip.
"I don't have any coffee, so you'll have to have a pick-me-up. You can hit me later." He pressed something to her neck. Icy chemical teeth bit in, and the top of her head fizzed, nerves starting to dance like he'd put in a little bit of lightning.
Michelle blinked, and sat up, putting her hand to the patch on her neck. He put a hand on top of hers, so she couldn't peel it off. "What is it? How'd you stick light and color into my veins?"
He kissed her, stubble scraping against her face like sandpaper, and informed her gravely, "You are too damned cute for your own good." At her exasperated noise, he laughed. "It's a combat stim. This one's good for 6 hours, so you can get us back to base."
She twined her fingers into his, noticing a deep green patch on his neck. "You have one, too?"
"Ah." He picked it off, leaving irritated skin behind. "That one ran out a while back. Otherwise, I wouldn't have caught a nap with you."
"Thank you." She smiled softly. "Are you going to be around Tercia, or…?" She didn't quite know how to say she wanted to see him, not when he was clearly here for a mission.
"If you'll allow, I'll look you up when I'm free." He smothered a yawn, and rubbed his face. "Not that our schedules are likely to overlap, but I'll find the time, or make it."
She smiled, and shook her head. "Only your schedule. I quit."
"Mmm. I'm afraid you're about to be introduced to the concept of voluntold. We need your ass in the air, doing the voodoo that you do so well."
"I pulled a gun on my boss. There's no going back from that." Michelle winced. "And I wouldn't. I can't trust him."
"While I wouldn't recommend it as a standard practice, it's not always an unforgivable. I'm sure you had your reasons." He tweaked her nose, and laughed when she tried to bat his hand away. "And we'll take care of that. Would you like to fly for me, instead? Help a guy out?"
She smiled. "I'd like that. When you're done here, would you have an extra seat out?" She looked away, trying to find courage, then back at him. "Or if not, maybe if I get to the Empire on my own, a way to find you?"
"Oh, lovely. I thought you'd never ask." He kissed her again, holding her tight. "We'll find a way."
The next few minutes passed quietly, wrapped in each other, until someone walking by called, "Miller, fuck her later. We have a schedule to keep." Blondie shifted, and Michelle looked over to see him giving them two fingers with the back of his hand as they walked away, laughing.
She giggled, and sat up, feeling for more awake and alive than she had in days. "All right. I have a plane to fly. Are you going to catch a nap on the way back?"
He helped her to her feet, smiling. The more she woke up, the more she could see how exhausted he looked. "I hope so. If I'm not sleeping, something's very wrong."
"You're welcome to the jumpseat in the cockpit again. It's quieter, and warmer on this plane, than the hold." She put a hand on his chest, feeling his rapid heartbeat under her palm. "Should be a lot calmer, this time, too." And if he was there, he'd keep her safe.
"I certainly hope so." A crooked grin met her own smile. "I'll see you there."
31
The sun was up, and had been for an hour, by the time she landed. The roar of thrust reversers woke Blondie, and the rest of her pax were up and moving as she taxied to ramp. Russ stuck his head into the cockpit, and said "Porter, please taxi up to the maintenance hangar. We don't want satellites to see what we're offloading."
"You already told me that, four hours ago." She snapped; the artificial cheer had worn off well before the landing, leaving only a strung-out jittery feeling.
Blondie, surprisingly, came to Russ's defense. "We're going to get hit with a missile strike if you forget, so it's worth repeating."
She nodded, and replied to tower's request she switch to ground. Taxi instructions forthcoming, She guided it down the ramp. Something felt off. There was a ghost in the system – She had to recheck to notice it was her chief pilot. Former chief pilot. He didn't try to wrest control, just accessed info on the flight. "What stim did you give her? 8 hour?"
"6 hours. She'll be awake long enough to get in at the safe house and eat something before racking out." Blondie replied softly, and Michelle pretended the hairs on the back of her neck weren't standing up, to be talked about in the third person by the one man she trusted most, and the one man she trusted least.
"She's already attenuating; let me shoot the data to you." A pause. "The more tightly wired they are, the more the combat stims give them a high, the faster they burn through 'em, and the harder they crash at the end. She's running Starlink 61's; she's going to crash hard, much sooner than you think. Keep a close eye on her."
"I see it." She could feel Blondie pulling accesses in the system; he wasn't wired for flight like her and Russ, and the requests were a lot clumsier, brute-force. "Still trying to take care of her, even after she pulled a gun on you?"
"Hell, Miller, she's not the first of my troops to threaten to shoot me. Won't be the last." Russ laughed, but it wasn't happy. "Damned civvie. If she was one of my troops, she would have told me to fuck off long before it got that bad. Looks like you've been smarter with her than I've been."
"With her. My first wife taught me a lot about how not to handle civvies. Most of it by screaming in my face, and the rest by leaving." Blondie sighed, and Russ grunted, dropping out of the system as she idled one engine and spooled the other up to turn into the company pad. Blondie still pulling files - that was strange, but it was all data download, no interference with flight. Michelle ignored it as irrelevant and concentrated on the marshal guiding her in toward the open hangar. Forward, forward, slowing to a creeping crawl until he crossed his wands and thrust down, for full stop and eng
ine shutdown.
She hit the annunciator then, as she raised the nose and lowered the ramps. "End of the line, everybody out." She unplugged, noting the way one plug was loose from where she'd yanked it out yesterday… no, earlier today. Last flight. She needed to squawk that in maintenance. Standing, the world swam a bit. "Blondie?"
"Ma'am?"
"May I ask your help finding a place to stay?" Her head felt curiously empty of thoughts, her feet leaden and inclined to trip as she carefully made her way down the stairs.
He followed, close behind. "Of course."
"I'd have woken you to ask earlier, but you needed the sleep." It was important to explain why she sprung it on him last minute… the hangar seemed amazingly dark, compared to the daylight pouring in around the edges.
"You can rack out in your bunk. No one will disturb you." Chief was by her side, and she drew back away from him, stumbling.
"No. Can't trust you." She took a step back, and something went wrong with where she put it; the bottom seemed to drop out of the world, and she was falling.
Two strong arms caught her before she could hit the ground, and held her tight. "Miller, she's crashing now!" Chief was speaking in her ear, and she wasn't able to get away from him. "If you want to get her offsite, you're going to have to carry her."
"Already?" A hand brushed hair away from her face, and Blondie said, "Damn, we cut that entirely too close. 8-hour stim next time."
"Told you, she's wired too tight. I can put her to bed in the bunkhouse; she'd been living out of one of the beds anyway." She cringed, but her shout of protest came out barely a whisper, and her limbs weren't working.
"No, she's coming with me. Here, Tom. It's going to get entirely too busy around here." Blondie said, and she was passed off to another set of arms.
"I should put you to bed with her." Tom hefted her, and started down the ramp. "Don't daisy-chain stim tabs!"
"Any more than I have to, yeah." Blondie agreed, then raised his voice. "Show time! Get your asses moving!"
Tom carried her through the hangar, into the halls of the pilot's side, only to stop at a very quiet, very angry voice. She'd only heard Rock sound like that once before when a customer had tried to grope her, and it put the hairs up on her neck. "Who the hell are you, and what the fuck are you doing with my copilot?"
"Tom Greenfield, and I'm going to put this young lady to bed. Michelle's crashing off a 6-stim." He adjusted his grip to hold her a little tighter.
"Bunkrooms are second floor. Door's down there. I can carry her." Rock replied. "What team are you with?"
"5th recon. And I'm tasked with taking her offsite." There was a small pause, and Tom said carefully, "I don't know what friction went down between her and the chief pilot last night, but she was most firm that she's quitting."
Rock let loose a stream of truly impressive curses, and they moved into the stairwell, going up stairs as their voice echoed off the close walls. "Like hell she is."
"You can tell her that when she wakes up. Me, I know better than to argue with a woman who's damn near incoherent with exhaustion and rage. If I'd had any choice, I would have just put her to bed, but we needed her to fly back." They opened the door at the top, and talked as they walked down the hall.
"Couldn't make the chief fly?" Rock opened another door, and the smell of the bunkroom let her know where they were. She made the loudest protest she could, and it came out as a tiny squeak.
Tom squeezed her a little tighter, in a hug. "He was in just as bad shape. Someone has to run ops here today, and someone had to crash. Pick one."
"Roger." Rock was opening drawers, and paused. "Damnit. I did not need to know that she has lacy underwear."
"Yeah, I like those red ones." Tom replied, and laughed. "But it's the black bra with the color-changing bits that kills me. You can look at it for hours before it repeats."
"You fuck her?" Rock said it so mildly it almost didn't sound like a threat.
"Nah, patched her up after a firefight." The humor leaked out. "Had to wire her up to keep her heart going. Spent a long time watching her, making sure she'd keep taking the next breath."
Rock grunted. "That should be all her shit, then. Probably missing something. Women."
"Probably." Tom agreed cheerfully.
"I'll drive. Where did you site the safehouse?"
"I'll give directions on the way." Tom carried her out, and down. As they left, she relaxed into him, letting the darkness take her. From a long way off, she heard Tom say, "Didn't get your name."
"Rocky Valdez. 45th." Rock replied.
"Sir! An honor to meet you, sir." Tom was impressed, and she wondered why. Who had he been? That question lingered as she slid all the way into sleep.
32
She woke with a bang - literally, there was an odd banging sound in the sky above her head. And more inside the hotel - doors slamming back, including her own. Twitch shook her foot hard, as she sat up and tried to yank her leg away. "Come on. Up, up, now!"
"What the hell? What's going on?" When she started speaking he let go of her foot, and picked up a rucksack. She'd barely sat up and pulled the sheet up in front of her chest when he tossed it at her, hitting her and spilling her clothes across the rumpled sheets.
"War's started. Unass the bed; we've got to get to the airfield before they start landing troops." As she blinked sleepily at him, she realized he was stark naked except for the carbine in his offhand. And then she realized what he'd said.
"Shit!" That was enough to get her standing bolt upright, grabbing clothes out of the mess and pulling them on. Twitch didn't even make a teasing comment; he was already out the door. He'd left it wide open, and she could hear yelling, as he moved down the hall, pounding on each door.
She made it out into the hall with her hair a complete mess, shirt untucked and boots unsealed on her feet. Twitch had acquired clothes, at least. He had a shirt on, and boots and pants in one hand when she came around the corner. "Michelle! Hold this!" He shoved the gun in her hands, and she automatically checked if it was loaded while he pulled on pants. It was heavier than she was used to, and fully loaded with a long curving magazine. He spoke quickly as he sealed himself in and threaded his belt buckle. "They've been staging the Dome around the country for the last three days, and we got the command modules and techs in last night." He didn't bend over, just put one foot up on the wall to seal his boot, then followed with the other. "Looks like we got it up and running just in time."
"I'll have to apologize to my chief for running us ragged on the dome deployment, then." She heard a strange crumping sound, and Twitch slammed her against a wall as the air was filled with the sound of car alarms. "What was that?" Out the nearest room's window, the view was blocked by a cloud of dust.
"They missed one." A stranger came out of one of the rooms, similarly armed and unshaven, face still creased from a fold in his sheets. "You have the keys?"
"Luke does." Twitch replied, and she fell in with them and one unfamiliar face as they headed to the door with ground-eating strides. As they hit the door, the three raised their guns overhead, lining up. She stayed back and saw the one in back put a hand on the next's shoulder. They buttonhooked through the door, moving like they must have practiced together a thousand times - if she didn't know who the strangers were, Michelle thought, at least she knew what they were by that alone. "Clear."
She followed, noting their car was, thankfully, parked and waiting on the other side of the hotel from the impact. Luke got out and tossed the keys to Twitch, who took the driver's seat, and she was squeezed in the back between him and one other member of the team. Everyone but her was in full body armor and loaded for bear; she felt quite underdressed with only her jacket and pistol. As they took off, she tried to hide the icy ball of fear in her guts with a smile at the sandy-haired man squeezed in on her left. "Hello, Luke. Good to see you in one piece; I hope this ride has less shooting than the last one we took."
Luke laughed, looking not
at all worried. "Hard to get worse, yeah? Intelligence didn't tell us the fuckers had RPGs. But don't worry; all our shooting's going to be at the far end."
Twitch grunted. "You hope."
The stranger next to her leaned over to look past her at Luke. "Who's the piece of ass?"
"Michelle, Juan DelAlmeida. He's an asshole, but he's our asshole. Great breacher." Luke said, and she nodded. "Up front, that's Ross Keenan. He's a damn good overwatch."
Ross turned around, and nodded at her. "Hey."
"Guys, Michelle Lauden. She's our pilot. Flew us back last night."
"Why the hell do we have a civvie pilot?" DelAlmeida looked at her, then back at Luke. "And where's she know you from?"
Twitch was the one who spoke up. "She's the TransCon pilot who brought the bird in after a missile strike. Miller's voluntold her, so we don't have to wait for the 42nd to get a pilot in here."
"I heard about that. Good work, ma'am." A silence fell, strained and entirely too jumpy as they pulled out of the parking lot tangle and got up to speed on the expressway. Twitch tapped his temple, and said, "Might as well roll the windows down, so they don't get blown out if one lands too close."
"Roger." The car filled with wind, the noise failing to break the tense silence between them, until her hair was tugged out of the jacket and blew Luke's face. He laughed, suddenly, and they looked at him.
Luke reached out, and grabbed a large handful of her hair from in front of his face, holding it over his mouth, like a pretend mustache. “What do you think? Is it me?” She rolled her eyes, and he thrust it back at her. In arch mock-offended snooty tones, he said, "Madame! This pet keeps trying to climb all over my good suit. I believe it belongs to you? I suggest you keep it leashed!"
Going Ballistic Page 17
