by Glenn Smith
* * *
As Jennifer sat staring at her monitor in her office, her mind wandered back to Ashley’s quarters—back to Ashley. Everything had started out normally enough. She’d helped her out of bed, helped her take off her pajamas, guided her into her bathroom—her vision was still a little fuzzy in the morning—stood by while she relieved herself, and then helped to position her new fingers on her toothbrush so that she could hold onto it well enough to brush her teeth by herself. Then she’d taken off her own clothes and stepped into the shower with her, turned on the water, and proceeded to wash her, just as she had each day for past three days. Then something she’d never seen coming had happened. She’d washed Ashley’s body top to bottom and back to front as usual, but when she’d eased Ashley backwards under the water to wet her hair, Ashley had stepped into her and kissed her.
Jennifer had pulled back from her kiss after a moment and stared at her friend, confused, not knowing what to say. Ashley had stared back at her, gauging her reaction perhaps, and then leaned in and kissed her again, longer and with more passion, and Jennifer had let her. Truth be told, she had enjoyed that kiss. Who knew that Ashley was such a good kisser? After that things had gotten pretty steamy, and as much as she didn’t want to admit it to herself, she’d enjoyed that as well. A lot. She’d never really thought about being with another girl that way before. She hadn’t experimented as an adolescent or fooled around with a girl just to make a boy jealous the way some of her friends in school had. She’d only ever kissed boys that way—only ever had sex with guys. What had happened this morning had taken her completely by surprise.
“That’s odd,” she commented aloud, pushing her other thoughts aside when she happened to spot something strange on the list that was slowly scrolling across her screen. The Solfleet military personnel database appeared to be listing two personal financial accounts for the same service member.
She’d been running proactive checks on the financial account records of random shipyard military personnel, looking for any unusual transactions that might indicate possible involvement in illegal activities. She tried to do that at least once near the end of each week, but having been off work last Thursday and Friday, she’d missed this past week. Strictly speaking, her intrusions into those records weren’t necessarily legal, but the fact that the subjects of her checks were truly selected at random put the whole issue into more of a gray area.
So, a service member had a second account in addition to his or her payroll account. The first question was, why would a person need a second account? No, she realized, thinking again. The first question was, whose records was she looking at? She called up the account holder’s identity. Sergeant Dylan Edward Graves, Solfleet Security Police.
Jennifer sighed. “That’s just great,” she muttered. It couldn’t be some low-level scrub of a maintenance clerk, could it. It had to be a security police NCO—one of the good guys.
Maybe he was just hiding money from his wife. She ran a check on the personnel roster and discovered that he wasn’t married.
Strike one.
Maybe he was preparing to get married. She called up the dates the accounts were opened and discovered that, according to the date-stamps, the new account wasn’t new. As a matter of fact, its date-stamp matched the other one exactly, so there was no reason why it shouldn’t have shown up on her weekly checks before, assuming that Sergeant Graves’ records had been among those randomly flagged before, which they almost assuredly had been, given how many checks she’d run in the past. But it hadn’t. This is the first time she’d seen it.
Strike two.
Maybe the computer had duplicated the data line by mistake? No, the account numbers were completely different.
Strike three.
Believing now that she might actually have just stumbled onto something, she accessed the record of account activity, and her eyes grew wide and her jaw dropped when she saw the amounts of the total balance and the withdrawal that had just been made this morning. “Seventy-five hundred federals!” she exclaimed aloud. “It’s Sunday morning, for God’s sake. Why would anyone need to withdraw seventy-five hundred on a Sunday...” Then she spotted the details of the withdrawal, which only left her with more questions. “Notes? Who in the galaxy withdraws cash notes anymore? What the hell is this guy up to?”
Time to do some digging. Even if she didn’t turn up anything concrete, at least she’d burn up some time. She was looking forward to seeing Ashley again this evening.
“Computer, this is an official C-I-D investigative inquiry. Special Agent Jennifer Barrett speaking, case file designation not yet assigned. Inquiry: What is the current location of Sergeant Graves, Dylan Edward, Solfleet Security Police, current assignment Mars Orbital Shipyards?”
“Stand by,” the computer responded. Then, a moment later, it stated, “Sergeant Graves, Dylan Edward, Solfleet Security Police, current assignment Mars Orbital Shipyards, is currently not located within the confines of this facility.”
“What? When did he leave?”
A brief pause, and then, “There is no record of Sergeant Dylan Edward Graves departing this facility. However, access logs indicate that Sergeant Dylan Edward Graves did access this facility’s drop ship docks with proper authorization at zero two forty-seven hours this morning. The logs do not indicate that Sergeant Dylan Graves subsequently exited the docks.”
Just to be safe, Jennifer ran a quick diagnostic on the computer, but she already knew that she wasn’t going to find anything wrong with it, and when the results supported that conclusion she decided it was time to notify her supervisor.
“Boucher here,” he answered shortly after she tapped the auto-call button.
“I’m sorry to bother you on a Sunday morning, sir,” she began. Then she pressed the red ‘secure’ pad on her panel and told him, “I’ve just secured this channel. I suggest you do the same and then go to your headset if you’re not alone.”
A few seconds of silence passed, and then, “All right, Miss Barrett. We’re secure. What have you got for me?”
“Sir, I’m in the office making up some of the time I missed last week. I was running my weekly random checks of personnel financial accounts and the computer came back showing two separate accounts for a Sergeant Dylan Edward Graves from the yard’s security police where it’s only shown one before. But according to the date-stamp on the second account, it isn’t new. In fact, both accounts are shown to have been opened on the same day, several years ago.”
“Is there anything else unusual about them?” he asked her, sounding disinterested.
“I’ll say there is,” she replied. “You should see the numbers. One of the accounts has a huge balance, and a seventy-five hundred fed withdrawal was just made this morning. In cash notes, no less.”
“Where from?”
“Stand by.” She ran the inquiry and then told him, “Withdrawal was via a terminal at the Red Gulch Crown Hotel on Mars. That tracks. The computer already told me that Graves entered the drop ship docks early this morning and never left. He must of gotten aboard one of them and gone to the surface.”
“All right. I’ll notify Major Ross. We’ll take it up the chain if need be. Good work, Jen. Boucher out.”
Chapter 54
Departure had gone smoothly enough, by the book, and Geoff had proven to be a pretty good pilot. As soon as they’d left Mars airspace, Dylan and Verdai Gen had gone below to get something to eat. Actually, Dylan hadn’t been very hungry, so he’d settled for an overdue cup of coffee. To help make the Naku more comfortable, Geoff had lowered the ship’s air temperature to what was just short of chilly for everyone else. Nicole and Carlos Garcia had joined Geoff on the upper level and Stacy had climbed down into one of the twin observation bays to gaze out at the stars for a while, leaving Dylan alone with Verdai, who’d spent the entire morning after his meal studying the redundant engineering readouts in the wall above the couch. Dylan had tried several times to engage him in conversation
, but the most he’d been able to elicit from the man were disinterested one-word or clipped sentence answers. Eventually, he’d given up trying.
Lunchtime came and went, as did dinner. Dylan tried to talk, but no one seemed all that interested in engaging him in conversation so he eventually gave up and settled onto the couch to read, thankful that Geoff and Nicole had thought to include preloaded readers among their ship’s supplies and equipment. Judging from the majority of titles, their tastes in popular fiction seemed to lean toward the post-apocalyptic and steam punk, neither of which interested him very much, but there were also a few science-fiction selections mixed in. Ironically, he found a pair of old ones about man’s first mission to Mars that he’d never read before—as if he hadn’t already had enough of Mars—so rather than waste any more time searching, he selected the first of those and started reading. It turned out to be a little slow in its pacing, but it was well written and held his interest. And the main protagonist turned out to be a Native-American, which was something he hadn’t seen in a work of science-fiction before.
Now the hour was getting late and Dylan was beginning to feel tired. He bookmarked his page—no doubt he had plenty more reading time ahead of him—and then turned off the reader and stood up. He reached for the ceiling and stretched, then headed aft to the sleeping cabin and found that the lights in there had already been lowered to about a tenth of their normal “daytime” intensity. Someone had already gone to bed.
The two bunks closest to the door, Geoff’s and Carlos Garcia’s, were empty. Owner/pilot and engineer were still topside, probably going over the ship’s systems status and settings one more time before bed. Verdai Gen lay fully clothed, as much as any Naku was ever fully clothed, in loose shorts and a sleeveless cotton shirt, on his back in the bottom center bunk, on top of his blankets, cool air blowing directly down on him from the wall vent, his hands folded over his chest as though he’d fallen asleep during prayer. Directly above him, apparently sound asleep as well, Nicole had rolled over onto her side against the wall and pulled her blankets up around her as though they were a cocoon, leaving only the top of her head exposed.
That left only the pair of bunks nearest the head available to choose from, and Stacy had obviously already chosen the top one. She lay on her stomach, arms up around her pillow and head turned to face the bulkhead, in what looked like an old oversized white tee shirt that she’d cut off just below her breast line to leave her midriff bare. Despite the cool air, her blankets only just covered her hips, and Dylan couldn’t tell for sure whether or not she was wearing anything besides that cutoff tee shirt. It wouldn’t have surprised him if she weren’t at this point, of course. She’d shown herself to be a pretty flirtatious young woman throughout the day, when her brother and sister weren’t nearby.
Forcing himself to look away from her—she was pretty nice to look at—he set his reader down on the headboard and then stripped down to his briefs and stuffed his dirty clothes into the laundry bag that was hanging on the front of his locker door. Then he turned back to his bunk, folded down the blankets, and climbed in. He lay down on his back and pulled the blankets up over his shoulders, then drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly to relax.
He was surprised by how comfortable the bunk turned out to be.
* * *
Dylan opened his weary eyes, rubbed them a little bit, and then opened them again. The lights were still set at their dimmest level where Geoff had set them when he went to bed several hours ago, providing just enough illumination for people to safely move about the cabin if they needed to and no more. It reminded him of his own bedroom back home on Cirra—God, that seemed like a lifetime ago—of how the muted light that filtered in through the windows on a moonlit night cast faint shadows over the furniture and softened sharp outlines, making the entire room seem to glow with a ghostly aura. The ship was obviously still deep in its night cycle, and all was quiet.
He reached over to the wall panel and felt around for the pad that would illuminate the clock, then squinted against the bright blue-green numerals when they lit up. 05:39. He pulled his hand away and the accursed display winked off a few seconds later. Damn. If there was anything worse than waking up in the middle of the night, it was waking up in the morning less than an hour before you intended to. It was too late to drift back into a deep sleep, but much too early to climb out of bed and wake up. Even if he tried to be quiet, what noise he would inevitably make might still be enough to disturb the others. So, rather than risk doing that and possibly alienating them even further, he decided to just lie there and think away the time.
Before long he heard Stacy stirring above him, rolling over, tossing her blankets aside from the sound of it. A moment later her bare feet appeared dangling over the side of her bunk, and then she was drifting ever-so-slowly downward to the deck. Remembering how little she’d worn to bed, Dylan closed his eyes, intending for her to think him still asleep if she happened to look down at him. But temptation got the better of him, as it usual did, and he opened them again just as her feet reached the deck.
As he’d suspected, the hem of her tee shirt only hung about a third of the way to her waist at most-barely low enough to cover her breasts completely. Below that she’d only worn a pair of small white or light-color panties. Her mussed hair appeared a ghostly white and her skin a pallid gray in the dim light, which played over her sensuous curves and cast dark shadows within the recesses of her flesh as she turned around and faced the bunks. She raised her hand to the small panel attached to the bedpost, probably to adjust the gravity for the bedside deck plate, hesitated for a moment, and then turned away and padded quietly into the head.
Stacy was a very beautiful girl and she had a great body, and the prospect of having sex with her was not at all an unappealing one. But her age, he knew, made that an impossibility. She was only seventeen and his personal morals wouldn’t allow for him to pursue that possibility, no matter how intense his desire for her might become. As a matter of fact, he felt a little ashamed of himself for even thinking about her in that way. That on top of the shame he already felt for having slept with Olivia Dunn and Nancy Gillis, but at least the both of them were adults.
Olivia Dunn and Nancy Gillis. Beautiful, sexy, and very willing young women. A pair of ships he’d passed in the night. He closed his eyes. He really missed Beth.
* * *
He took Beth by her waist and pulled her close, then slid his hands down over her smooth hips and gently squeezed her bottom as he softly kissed her. “Are you going to be my Eul’tiran?” she whispered. She pressed her lips to his, and as the passion between them grew she dragged her fingernails lightly down his back, then freed him from his jeans. She pressed her body to his and moaned with desire as he responded to her touch. Then, suddenly, she drew back and said, “Come back to me,” and then ran off and dove into the pool and started swimming toward the opposite bank.
He tossed his jeans onto the pile of clothes and ran in after her. He caught up to her near the center of the pool where a narrow column of stone rose up out of the unknown depths to fall barely an inch short of breaking the surface. She stood atop the small platform, faced him, and struck an enchanting pose. “The goddess Satah’ra has appeared once again,” she proclaimed to the night. She looked down at him and added, “And you, mortal man, have looked upon her.”
“And she’s even more beautiful than the legend says.”
Beth smiled, looked up into the trees, and then whirled away and dove back in.
He swam after her and caught her by the ankle as she reached the far bank. He closed the space between them, then reached around her on both sides and grabbed hold of the moss, trapping her between his arms and pressing himself against her as he kissed the nape of her neck. She turned to him and rested her hands on his shoulders, then wrapped her legs around his waist and invited him with a passionate kiss to consummate their newfound relationship.
She moaned with pleasure as he took her, rising upward a
s he pushed deeper inside her until her breasts broke the surface and her nipples stiffened in the breeze. And then they were out of the water, sitting safely on the bank near its edge, and as he crawled over her, she lay back on the warm, soft moss and wrapped her legs around him once again. He lay down gently on top of her, and as the passion between them grew, they made love.
That was more like it, Dylan thought as he drifted back toward consciousness, enough to realize that he’d been dreaming, and to remember his earlier dreams. That was how it had really happened that night when he and Beth first got together... more or less. No albatross had been flying overhead. There had been no coral caves beneath the rolling waves. There hadn’t been any rolling waves, either, for that matter. Nor had there been any distant echoes. The albatross, the caves, the waves, the echoes. Those elements had obviously been created by the music that had been playing in the room at the time. Strange how events in the real world could sometimes intrude on one’s dreams. Dreams could be so bizarre sometimes. So bizarre...
* * *
They were in his bed, making love for the third time that night. They’d long since tossed the blankets aside and opened the skylight to the cool night air. Beth mustered what strength she had left and rolled him onto his back, clinging to him tightly, keeping him deep inside her. She kissed him passionately and then sat up, licking her lips, her hips slowly gyrating as he clutched them in his hands. Long tendrils of damp, jet-black hair stuck to her forehead and cheeks and danced about her shoulders as she swayed, producing beads of sweat that glistened in the soft white moonlight as they trickled down over her breasts.
