by David Adams
Liao looked to Yu, nodding her head in encouragement. “Voidwarp...? You mean the jump drive?”
[“Yes... what you would call ‘jump drive’. Agree to abandon it and we may have peace... The Toralii have diplomatic relations with many species who take this path, especially the Telvan who are not warlike. Trade alliances, social alliances... military alliances are theoretically forbidden by our laws, but we protect our allies in practice. Although, again, this is assuming they make no moves to possess Voidwarp technology."]
Liao shook her head. Her tone was understanding and just a little sad, but resolute. “Unfortunately that won’t be possible. Could you share with us your knowledge? We could work together, move beyond what has happened and-”
["Then I believe our peoples will always be at war, Captain, until one of us is defeated.”] Saara turned away from both of them, staring absently at the plain metal of the bulkhead. [“I am sorry, Captain Liao. What you say makes sense, of a sort, but if you understood... you would not ask such a thing. For what it is worth, you strike me as a kind and noble person, even if you are my enemy. In another life, I think you and I could have been... good friends."]
“Agreed...” Liao answered softly, her voice tinged with regret. “...in another life.”
Chapter VI
“Beginnings and Ends”
*****
Docking Umbilical
TFR Beijing
Mars/Jupiter Asteroid Belt
Four weeks later
The TFR Tehran completed her docking with the Beijing, the first time the great pillars had ever physically joined. Liao made her way to the docking umbilical. She was afforded the Captain’s privilege of being the first to disembark from the vessel.
From the moment she stepped off the cold steel of the Beijing’s decks, she was accosted by a throng of reporters who fought and shoved to be the first to ask her a question.
“Captain Liao! Captain Liao! Shreya Bose from IMC-TV, may I-”
“队长，你能不能告诉我们任何有关外星人-”
“Any words for the people back home, Commander Liao-”
“Captain Liao, what can you tell me about Commander Sheng-”
“A word for the BBC, Captain – is it true the Beijing was nearly destroyed?”
“Captain, is it true you are keeping an alien warrior as a prisoner in your bri-”
She held up her hands to silence the din. Staring down the business end of dozens of microphones, recorders, lights and video cameras thrust in her face, Liao squinted to see.
She cursed Sheng's squealing hide. The press were here because of him.
“One at a time, one at a time... okay. First of all, I can say that it’s very heartening to see that the Tehran was able to meet us in the asteroid belt, and-”
The voices all sprang up again, shouting over each other to be heard. Liao stepped back, overwhelmed briefly, until a booming voice cut over the din.
“Attention everyone! Your attention please. Thank you. Now, a press conference will be held at 0930 hours, Zulu time, in the main conference room on deck ten. Absolutely no questions will be answered until then. Captain Liao and her crew are very tired and they need rest. Answers will come, but unfortunately they will come later.”
Liao peered through the bright lights of reporters’ video cameras, spotting a familiar face. James! Smiling widely, the man took Liao’s hand in his and – with a significant degree of roughness – shouldered his way through the wolf pack of hungry reporters, leading her further into the belly of the Tehran. Despite James clearing the way, the reporters followed, proving utterly unable to be deterred like predators stalking a wounded beast... until Grégoire lead Liao directly to his quarters and locked the door, closing the decompression seal with a hiss.
Liao gathered herself and took a breath. “Thanks, James.”
They stood there in silence, arm in arm, until Grégoire finally broke the tension.
“Quite the adventure you’ve had, or so I’ve heard.”
She laughed, somewhat reluctantly disentangling herself from him, grinning ruefully. Reaching up to her head, Melissa took off her hat and carefully hung it on James’ hat rack.
“Yes, quite. Why did you let them on board?”
James shrugged, unbuttoning his jacket and throwing it over a chair. “I didn’t have a choice. TFR Command said that the Battle of Jupiter – that’s what they call it these days, you know – was a huge publicity and recruitment victory and they want to milk it for all it’s worth. Unfortunately, that means you’ll have to face them sooner rather than later, but...” he grinned. “...not today.”
“Smashing. Looking forward to that. On a related note, got any of that quality scotch left?”
“For you, old friend, of course I do... even if I have to fly back to Earth to get it myself.”
“If you do that your arms will get pretty sore,” Liao observed wryly, giving a wink. James laughed.
“Perhaps, although I’m remarkably fit, so I doubt it’ll be much of a problem for me. Anyway, have a seat... I’ll get you whatever we have left.”
Sinking into his wide couch with a relieved sigh, Liao felt the stress of her encounter with the reporters slowly melt away. Grégoire certainly had an excellent sense of both style and function; the cushions were relaxing and comfortable, and as soon as she eased herself into them she immediately realized how tired she was. Based on Grégoire’s sympathetic grin as he returned with the promised glasses of scotch, her exhaustion was readily painted on her face.
“You look like you could use two of these,” he observed, handing her the glass. His eyebrows raised in surprise as the small glass was immediately upended, its golden liquid disappearing down her throat within seconds.
“More like two dozen,” she commented, her words followed by a series of rough coughs, the consequence of downing so much hard liquor in so short a time. Grégoire sat opposite her, his dark hands on his knees.
“I heard you had Sheng relieved of his position.”
“I did, yes.”
James’ voice was sympathetic. “That couldn’t have been easy...”
Liao’s voice held a certain gravity about it that gave weight to her statement. “It was not, no. Sheng helped me a lot when I first took command... helped me settle into my role as Captain far better than I would have without him. I trusted him despite not knowing him all that well, and... all the time he was envious of my position. It’s... a little shocking, and I think that’s why I didn’t take what happened too well.”
“How did you take it?”
“Heh, I punched him in the face. Pretty good, too, lots of blood.”
James refilled her drink, then their glasses met with a light clink. “That’s the way,” he offered encouragingly. “I’ve always said that if you’re going to hit someone, might as well make it good. No sense half-arsing it, give it to him right in the nose!”
The Chinese woman laughed. “That’s exactly what I did!”
“Excellent.” James paused, regarding her. “So, after he’s learned his lesson, got his face fixed up and spent some time in the brig... will you allow him to return to duty?”
Liao’s levity slowly evaporated. She tilted her glass, shaking her head. “...no. He blew his chance. There are plenty of other officers chomping at the bit to serve on my ship. I’ll give the position to someone who does it justice.”
Grégoire frowned, nodding. “That’s your prerogative, but I’ve got to ask... Sheng’s record is – well was, before this – very good. He was a career officer and most everyone who’s served with him had good things to say.” James tipped up his glass, sipping absently. “So what’s going to happen to him now?”
“I don’t know. I guess he’ll be reassigned to a surface vessel... In the meantime, I wanted to drag him out of the brig and put him to use, so I had him assigned to prisoner escort; He’ll be walking with Saara as they move her around the ship...”
“He won’t like that. He�
�s prideful and ambitious... but, anyway, as I said it’s your choice. Still... it’s a pity about what happened. A lot of people aren’t happy about it from what I hear... He has influential family.”
“I know.” Liao poured herself another glass, taking a hearty swig. “But I had to do it... I don’t have any regrets on that front. About plenty of other stuff, but not about that.”
James gave her a sideways glance. “Seems like you’re drinking a lot for someone who’s convinced she made the right choice.”
She glared at him, and James held up his hands defensively. “I know, I know,” he offered. “I’ve hit the sauce more than a few times myself after a hard day, but you’re going at it like a woman on a mission... especially since half the fleet considers you a war hero, someone who stood up to the aliens and won.”
“What about the other half?”
Liao stared across at James and swirled the drink, already feeling light-headed. She felt her face flush red – not from embarrassment, but just from the first glass of booze as it began to enter her system. She wondered if, subconsciously, she really was having second thoughts about Sheng.
James leaned forward slightly. “Let’s not talk about the other half. Sufficient enough to say... there’s a certain element of the task force who feels you overstretched yourself in the engagement, that you should have waited. That it was an unacceptable risk and that you endangered yourself, your ship and your crew unnecessarily. That you gambled everything and, yes, it paid off, but we didn’t get anything particularly valuable and we could have lost everything.”
Liao gave a snort. “That’s it?”
“…Well, of course, there’s the fact you keep the alien around like a pet instead of giving it a bullet in the brain then airlocking the body.”
There was a heavy silence at this point as Grégoire waited patiently for Liao to ask the question that he knew she was going to ask. Finally, it came.
“What do you think?”
Grégoire considered, bringing his hand to his chin.
“You could say I’m sitting on the fence. I support your command, Melissa... You’re smart, tactically orientated, very pretty, and you take risks. But... I also think that Sheng did have a point... in some way. It was a risky move back there, engaging the scout ship, and there wouldn’t have been any harm done if you had let it go. Yes, it might have reported back, but that would have taken some time... and now any chance of diplomacy with them is probably gone. Plus, well, they’re bound to come looking for their lost ship eventually...”
Seeing her disapproval, Grégoire smiled at her. “...Still, I believe that when it comes to the command of men in combat, that fortune favours the bold.”
Pretty? Grégoire thought she was pretty? Despite everything James had said about her and her command, those were the words that stuck in the forefront of her mind.
Despite herself, she felt a warm flush come over her, and this time not just from the extremely high proof scotch. Liao was highly amused by the idea that she was into her thirties now and, as the man himself had said, a war hero, but a few kind words from Grégoire could get her blushing like a schoolgirl. Melissa let a smile play over her lips, nodding her head a little as though she had heard everything else he had said.
“Fortune favours the bold... they do say that.”
The Chinese woman mused to herself, playing that little saying over and over in her mind... did James really think that? She took a breath, grinning. “So you really think I’m pretty?”
Although she feared he would have a poor reaction to that, James didn’t seem flustered and just leaned forward on his chair. “Well, I think you’d have to be blind to miss it,” he admitted, giving a wide – but friendly – smile. “And I think we established that your prettiness was why you were sent to Sydney in the first place... I mean, right before the attacks.” He paused. “You don’t mind me thinking so?”
Melissa grinned. “As long as you grant me the same courtesy, I guess I don’t mind at all.”
“You can think of yourself as pretty if you like.”
She smirked, playfully reaching over and swatting his knee. “Oh, you knew what I meant!”
James laughed, shaking his head. “Oh, well, in that case I think we can arrange for a mutual understanding of some sort. You permit me to think that you’re pretty, and I permit you the same about me. It all works out. Ahh, the art of compromise!”
Melissa made a somewhat unsteady toast with her half-filled glass. “It all works out.” As she did a drunken, giggly laugh fell out of her lips, and Grégoire couldn’t help but join in.
“You really are a lightweight, aren’t you?”
“You have no idea! I haven’t had this much in-... in a while!”
The laughter continued for some time, followed by idle chatter about supplies and more glasses of scotch. When the chatter and the bottle’s contents sank away into nothing, Melissa sipped coyly at the last of her glass, grinning across James’ heavy wooden table to the man on the other side. She folded her legs, wiggling her toes, her boots long since discarded and tossed in an untidy pile near the door.
“So... you know the crew thinks we’re sleeping together, right?”
James stared. “They say that on the Beijing too?” The man seemed genuinely surprised, shaking his head. “The crew gets up to all kinds of gossip on the Tehran... much of the same drivel. I suppose you should be used to it by now, though.”
“Sheng assumed we were, and nothing I could do could convince him otherwise. He seemed fixated on the idea – not that it’s any of his business who I take to bed, of course. That damn arsehole can say what he likes... doesn’t matter to me one bit.”
An impish grin formed on James’ face. “To me, that sounds like a good case for double jeopardy.”
Melissa laughed right in the middle of sipping from the half depleted glass, which caused a little of the booze to splash, barely noticed, on the front of her uniform. “Oh?” she asked, smirking and wiping down her front with the back of her hand, “what’s that, mmm? I’m being accused of – and essentially convicted in absentia by the fleet’s gossip mill – of having sexual relations with you, so... I might as well partake of your, uhh, spoils... on the grounds I’m going to be punished for doing so anyway?”
He laughed. “You said it better than I could. You should just get on with it... I’ll have to somehow endure. I’ll just... lie back and think of Brussels, I suppose...”
Melissa gave a playful snort. “You are assuming I would just permit you to undress and fuck me, you know.” She inclined her glass towards him, settling back in the couch. “Quite the stretch!”
Grégoire brought his glass to his lips, grinning like a jackal. “Given how endowed I am, I’m guessing it will very well be.”
Laughing at his audacity, Liao threw a cushion at him, hitting him square in the face despite her drunkenness. “‘Will be’? Hey, don’t you be talking like it’s already decided-”
“Mmm? It’s not? Why ever not, my dear?”
Liao just snorted and laughed, shaking her head. “You must be kidding me! As tall, dark and handsome as you are, old friend, I’ve never slept with another officer before... let alone my – albeit indirect – superior. That’s career suicide for a woman in the People’s Navy... or hell, any navy...”
“Really? Fascinating... didn’t you say you went to a co-ed boot camp?”
“Uhh... well, I mean-”
James waggled a finger towards her. “And, just so you know, so did I... so I know what goes on there. Lots and lots and lots of humping in the ammo storage lockers when the Commandant’s not looking. We used to call it ‘Interoffice Networking’, or ‘Interpersonal Relationship Management’... It’s very healthy, a great way to – uhh – bond, and it’s an excellent way to blow off some stress...”
Liao snorted with laughter. “Hey, okay, okay... yeah. Yeah, there’s usually a lot of playing around, a lot of ‘networking’, and I did my fair share, but never wit
h the other officers, let alone-”
“Never?” asked Grégoire, a teasing, playful twinkle in his eye. “Never never?”
“Never never, ever!” A slight pause, then, “...Weeeell, except that one time...”
James clapped his hands, grinning like a kid. “See! See! I told you!”
“But that doesn’t count,” Liao protested, drunkenly waving her glass around, “it was an exchange program, and they had this... this sculpted Adonis from Spain come over, and I tell you what, he was gorgeous. He had a chest that looked like it was carved from marble, like one of those superheroes Rowe reads about in her stupid comic books. God, he really knew how to 刺痛我的阴道 if you catch my drift... mmm, mmm. Yummy.”
James appeared to be sitting beside her now, something Liao hadn’t noticed. “Well,” he began, slipping his arm around her shoulder with an exaggerated yawn, “you know I just so happen to speak Spanish, right? The international language of sexy, sexy space lust?”
“Hah! Yeah, sure you do! Spanish my arse...” Liao made no attempt to remove the arm, but did give it an amused look out of the corner of her eye.
“¡Bonita mujer asiática y pequeña! ¡Quiero tener sexo contigo!”
Melissa blinked, followed by more snorting laughter. She rested her head against her friend’s chest. “Well, fuck me, you do speak Spanish!”
“Hah. Well, not really. Just that sentence and another sentence explaining that I don’t really speak Spanish after all if they press me about it.” He winked. “And, well, don’t mind if I do!”
It was the strangest thing, but at that point Melissa felt that the madness of the weeks since the Battle of Jupiter (if that was really what the press were calling it now) had gotten to be too much, as though all the stress and adrenaline and sleeplessness had drained her resolve completely. Before she truly knew what she was doing, her hands were on him, tearing clumsily at the buttons of his uniform. Laughing the whole while, a sincere, genuine laugh that came like a wave of manic excitement, the woman pushed James onto his back, wiggling herself out of her top. Her hands found his chest, sliding him free of his uniform.
