Solfleet: Beyond the Call

by Glenn Smith

  He averted his eyes, trying once more to derail that train of thought, and focused instead on a colorful little knick-knack of some kind on one of the shelves across the room. What was he thinking? He’d come in for a drink. Against his better judgment, but he’d come in anyway. Just a drink and nothing else. Not to determine if Olivia was wearing any panties, and certainly not to get into them if she was... although the prospect of doing so definitely was not an unappealing one. He had a fiancée for God’s sake. He had Beth and he loved her... very much.

  The scotch must really have been getting to him.

  Olivia set the bottle down and picked up their glasses, handed Dylan’s to him, and then raised hers between them as before, without bothering to close her gaping robe. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” Dylan echoed. He clinked his glass to hers a little harder than he intended to, startling her a little if he read her reaction right, and then drained it in one big gulp.

  Olivia grinned as she sipped from her own, then gazed into his slightly tired eyes and said, “You know what, Dylan? As twisted as a large part of that play was tonight, I have to admit I found parts of it a little... stimulating.”

  “You don’t say,” he replied, dispassionately, trying not to cough.

  “Mm hmm,” she confirmed with a nod. She sipped her drink again. Then, sill gazing into his eyes, she added, “As a matter of fact, to be perfectly honest with you, Dylan, it got me pretty worked up and, well...” She laid her hand on his leg and gently stroked the inside of his thigh. “I really want you inside me right now.”

  He couldn’t stave it off any longer. He coughed. Direct, wasn’t she? “Uh... Look, Olivia,” he began. “We had a good time today. You invited me in for a drink and I...”

  She laid two fingers over his lips, silencing him, and set her glass down on the coffee table. Then she moved a little closer to him, leaned in, and gently kissed him on the cheek. Dylan dropped his gaze down the front of her robe.

  She kissed him again, much closer to his mouth this time, and though he knew he should pull away from her, he didn’t.

  She stood before him, untied and opened her robe, revealing all of herself to him, and let it fall to the floor behind her, and before he could react in any way she leaned down and kissed him passionately on the lips. Then she whispered gently into his ear, “Make love to me, Dylan.”

  Dylan swallowed hard and then drew a deep breath, realizing that any will to resist that he might have had when he walked in had apparently drowned in the scotch. He slid his hands slowly up the backs of her legs as she kissed him once more, over her hips, and then up her sides and over her breasts. He pinched her stiff nipples gently between his fingers. Then, with one last burst of will power, he pulled back from her kiss, dropping his hands to the couch and his eyes to the floor. “I’m sorry, Olivia,” he told her. “I can’t do this.”

  She gazed down at him for a moment, then straddled his lap and sat down. Then she reached down between their legs and smiled as she gently rubbed his crotch. “You’re body says otherwise, Dylan,” she pointed out to him, though she must have known that he was already well aware of that. “You obviously can do it, and you want to very much.”

  “Yes, I do,” he quietly admitted. Denying the truth was pointless, especially when it was so obvious. “But like I told you at dinner, I have a fiancée I love very much and plan to marry.”

  “And I’m happy for you. Really, I am. But she’s not here, and you’re not married yet.”

  “That doesn’t make any difference,” he explained.

  “I think it does,” she countered.

  She stood up again and backed off, and then offered him her hand, just as she’d done at the beach. He gazed up at her through glassy eyes that wouldn’t quite focus anymore, and then, just like at the beach, gave her his hand and stood with her. She kissed him again, then started unfastening his belt.

  He knew he shouldn’t let her do that. He knew he should stop her even as he allowed her to unfasten and open his jeans. She pulled his shirt up. He raised his arms and let her pull it off over his head and toss it away.

  His eyes fell to her full, firm breasts as she gently dragged her fingertips down over his chest. He licked his suddenly very dry lips and swallowed hard once more.

  This was wrong.

  She kissed him, then pushed his jeans and his briefs down past his hips, freeing him from their constraint, and dropped them to the floor.

  This was so wrong.

  She smiled up at him, then wrapped her arms around him and kissed him yet again.

  This was so, so wrong.

  He kicked off his sneakers and stepped out of his clothes a bit unsteadily, no doubt from the scotch. Then, leaning on her slightly for support, he pulled off his socks and dropped them onto the floor. He took her into his arms and kissed her passionately, pressing himself against her warm, bare flesh. And then, finally throwing all sense of fidelity and commitment to Beth to the wind, he guided her back down onto the couch and climbed over her, eased himself down between her legs, and pushed deep inside her.

  Chapter 13

  Jennifer drew a deep breath and exhaled loudly, then rolled over onto her stomach, lifted her head up off of her pillow, which seemed to require a lot more effort than it should have, and peered through narrow crescents of still very tired eyes at the blank face of the clock imbedded in her headboard. Blank? Why was it blank? She hadn’t turned it off. She never turned it off. No wonder her room was so dark. She dragged an arm out from under the warm blankets and rapped on it a couple of times with her knuckles. The display flickered once, dimly, then again, and then finally snapped on, casting a ghostly blue-green glow across her bed just as the bright blurry digits changed from 0525 to 0526 hours.

  She dropped her head back to her pillow and sighed. She’d set her alarm for 0530. Four minutes. Four more minutes before she had to get up. She hated it when that happened—hated when she woke up just a few minutes before her alarm was set to go off. It happened to everyone occasionally, of course, but in her case it had become as predictable as the shipyard’s weather. It had been the same old story for as far back as she could remember. Whenever something bad happened to her, or to a member of her family, or to one of her friends, she always woke up in the morning just minutes before her alarm went off—like clockwork, so to speak—until the situation resolved itself. This time it was Ashley, which was why she’d set her alarm for 0530 instead of 0630—she intended to go visit her before work. She’d hoped that would make a difference. Obviously, it hadn’t.

  Why couldn’t she wake up a few hours before her alarm instead? At least then she could go back to sleep.

  She usually just laid there and waited for the alarm to go off before she got up anyway, but not this time. Not this morning. The sooner she got up, the sooner she could go see Ashley, and the sooner she went to see Ashley, the more time she’d have to spend with her. Four minutes early was close enough.

  She turned off the alarm—she hadn’t really wanted to wake up to that shrill, off-key, ear-piercing noise anyway—then tossed her blankets aside, sat up, and dropped her feet to the thinly carpeted floor... and sighed once more. She really hated that carpet. It was thin, extremely tightly woven, and had been laid directly over the hard plasticrete floor with no padding underneath. They might as well have not installed any carpet at all. And it’s dark naval-tan color was just plain ugly, like dirty desert sand. Given a choice she would have preferred the new thicker, much softer carpet that was being installed in all the quarters currently being renovated. Its lighter tan color wasn’t substantially different, but it would certainly be an improvement over what she had.

  She’d have to remember to try to bribe one of the installers to change it out for her.

  She yawned and exhaled sharply, and then straightened her oversized, faded, and slightly threadbare burgundy button-down pajama shirt, which had twisted around her torso in her sleep. Ernesto’s pajama shirt, she reflected, grabbing
a handful of it and clutching it tightly to her heart. Still the only article of clothing she ever wore to bed, or ever would wear to bed, until the day he finally returned to her. That was the oath she’d sworn the day Ernesto left, and now, nearly a year later, she still clung to that small fragment of hope that someone, someday, might yet find him alive somewhere.

  Tears welled up in her eyes and flowed freely down over her cheeks. Despite the fact that she always tried to put on a brave face and depict a positive persona in public, the truth was that Ernesto’s absence remained a constant source of heartache for her. She still loved him very much and missed him terribly.

  She and Ernesto had joined the United States Army’s Military Police together just a few weeks after they graduated from high school. Then, as soon as they had completed the required minimum three years time in service, they’d applied for voluntary transfer into Solfleet and had eventually been selected. Jennifer had thoroughly enjoyed her time in military law enforcement, so she’d elected to continue in that field and had joined the Security Police. Ernesto had enjoyed serving as an MP as well—at least he’d claimed to—but as it turned out, the quiet lure of what Jennifer had always considered to be an overstated and at its core mythological romanticism of the glory and honor of combat had enticed him. So, rather than join the Security Police with her, he’d chosen the Solfleet Army’s Highly Mobile Light Infantry—the Humlees. He’d considered the Marines first, but had ultimately decided that he wanted to keep his feet planted firmly on the ground, any ground, as much as possible. The Solfleet Marines, it seemed, spent far too much time aboard the ships of the fleet, traveling from one world to the next, to the next.

  After attending Solfleet Basic Training and their individual technical schools separately, the high school sweethearts had managed to hook up for one last three day long weekend romp prior to his having to ship out on his first assignment. She’d stolen his pajamas out of his suitcase on the very first night, put them on after she showered, and told him that he was going to have to sleep in the nude. Naturally, he’d been only too happy to oblige. He took a shower as well and then emerged from the bathroom stark naked, picked her up, carried her to the bed, and laid her down. Then, without saying a word to her, he pulled his pajama pants off of her, tossed them away, and then lay down beside her.

  That night, after having steadfastly resisted his patient, gentle, but increasingly desirous efforts to bed her for so long, she’d finally surrendered her virginity to him.

  They’d spent nearly the entire weekend naked and in bed together, both day and night. She’d given herself over to him again and again. She’d never felt so alive and free before. Then, early that following Monday morning, Ernesto had shipped out. His orders had indicated that his voyage would last twelve days, after which time he’d be given ample opportunity to contact her and let her know that he’d arrived safely on station. But the troop transport he’d shipped out on had never reached its destination. No one had ever determined what happened to it. No wreckage had ever been found, and no one aboard had ever been heard from again.

  And all she had to remember him by were a stack of holophotos and his pajama shirt.

  Despite having been moistened by her tears, her eyes still burned and wanted to close. And why wouldn’t they? She usually didn’t wake up for another hour yet. They didn’t want to open an hour early, which was no real surprise when she thought about it. She’d known last night when she reset her alarm and went to bed at her regular time that she’d feel extra tired in the morning. But she was determined to stop and see Ashley again before work, and if she was going to do that, then she had to get her butt in gear and start moving.

  And then, after she saw Ashley, she’d go arrest that little Al-Sharif son-of-a-bitch, drag him down to the office, and make him sing like a canary locked in a room with a pride of hungry house cats.

  “Lights,” she called out, her voice still scratchy. The overhead lights immediately came on at their full intensity, effectively blinding her for several moments, even though she’d already closed her eyes again. She coughed and cleared her throat, then said, “Down fifty percent.” The lights dimmed obediently to what she decided was a much more tolerable level, although her eyes were still going to need a few moments to adjust.

  She unbuttoned her pajama shirt, then stood up, pulled it off, and dropped it onto her bed. Then she reached for the ceiling and cracked or popped several joints as she stretched every muscle in her body. Finally, she forced her eyes open just enough to avoid stumbling over the stack of unopened boxes she still hadn’t unpacked as she staggered into the bathroom.

  The lights flickered on automatically and came up to fifty percent intensity the moment she walked in. She headed straight to the toilet and sat down.

  Ashley hadn’t been expected to regain consciousness at all during that first night, so after spending some time sitting quietly by her side, during which time she’d written up her report, Jennifer had returned to her quarters to get some sleep. She’d gone right back there yesterday morning though and had spent the entire day with her, just as Commander Ansara had suggested. She’d talked to her, read to her, and even sang to her a little bit. And she’d prayed for her, aloud, even though she herself wasn’t a particularly religious person. That Ashley was a believer had been good enough. Then, sometime in the middle of the afternoon, Ashley had awakened. Not completely and only for a few minutes, but long enough for Jennifer to promise her that she’d visit again in the morning. Ashley had smiled slightly to let her know she’d heard her—at least Jennifer had assumed that was what her smile meant—then slipped back into unconsciousness.

  Jennifer realized suddenly that her eyes were closed again, her shoulders were hunched, and her head was sagging forward almost far enough for her chin to rest against her chest. She’d finished going to the bathroom and had almost fallen back to sleep right there on the toilet. She raised her head and shook it vigorously to wake herself up again, then stood up and stepped over to the sink to start brushing her teeth while the toilet auto-flushed.

  She gazed sidelong through still tired eyes at the bathroom door she’d left standing wide open as she released a dab of toothpaste onto her toothbrush, then stared at her naked reflection in the mirror in front of her. She glanced down at her roughly rectangular strip of fine brown pubic hair—she always kept it neatly trimmed—then grinned at the way her breasts jiggled and bounced from side to side when she started brushing her teeth. Of all the perks that had come with the job, having her own private quarters was still the one she appreciated the most. It felt nice not having to concern herself with being modest for modesty’s sake to protect some prudish roommate’s sensibilities for a change. Hell, she could lie around the place stark naked if she wanted to, whenever she wanted to, and no one would ever know. She’d probably never actually do that, of course, but it was nice to know that she could if she wanted to.

  And she could invite her friends over whenever she wanted to, if she ever got around to unpacking the rest of her stuff and cleaning up the place. Ashley would likely be the first.

  Poor Ashley. The way Doctor Zapala had explained it, the PPG blast had done a lot more than just burn through her flesh. Because she’d been shot at such close range, not only had she taken the full force of the bolt itself, she’d also suffered a severe concussion resulting from the sudden change in air pressure that always occurred within the first few feet ahead of the muzzle combined with the blunt-force trauma of having struck the back of her head on the deck. Coup and contrecoup injuries, Doctor Zapala had called them. Two focused blunt-force trauma injuries to opposing sides of her brain. Long periods of unconsciousness were to be expected early on in Ashley’s healing process, but as time passed she could expect to experience progressively longer periods of consciousness and lucidity.

  Could expect to experience. Jennifer had decided not to ask Doctor Zapala what it might mean if she didn’t experience them. The most likely answer to that question, irre
versible brain damage, frightened her and she hadn’t wanted to hear it stated out loud.

  She found herself hoping, probably unrealistically, that Ashley might experience one of those progressively longer periods of consciousness and lucidity during her visit this morning. She’d already told her they’d caught the guy who tried to kill her, but she’d appeared to be out cold at the time, so Jennifer didn’t know whether or not she’d heard. She wanted to tell her again while she was obviously awake. She wanted to be sure that Ashley knew it.

  And she wanted to tell her how sorry she was for not being there to back her up. She still hadn’t forgiven herself for that.

  She finished brushing her teeth and rinsed out her mouth, then stepped into the shower. She tapped the start pad and then let go an ear-piercing shriek and practically jumped through the ceiling as a sudden blast of ice-cold water rained down on her. She backed out of the freezing stream as far as she could, pressing herself into the corner. “Shower off!” she hollered, suddenly wide awake. The heavy stream instantly dwindled to a mere trickle and then stopped completely a few seconds later. “Damn it!” she exclaimed, shouting at whichever maintenance worker was supposed to have already fixed the problem after the same thing happened to her yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. “When the hell are you people going to get your heads out of your asses and fix this thing?!”

  She drew a quick deep breath and huffed, then drew several more, trying to calm down while the shock to her system wore off. Then she shouted, “Reset to seven and start!” but she stayed right where she was, pressed into the corner, until the panel indicated that the change had been made and the water started flowing once more. Even then she waited until the stall started filling up with steam before she reached out and carefully tested the water’s temperature with her hand. Then, finally, she dared to step back under the flow.