Queen of Heaven

by Michael Orr

  “I see lieutenants and commanders and such all over the Asherah,” Trish observed, “but no majors or colonels.”

  “There’s two branches of star service.” Commander BenKotch took over. “Those who manage the ships are mariners, including Captain Yusuf, myself and the lieutenant commanders here. The colonel and his majors direct the warrior branch, mastering the fleet’s offensive and defensive capabilities. As the Asherah has no weapons, she has no need of warriors.”

  “You make it all sound simple.” Trish met his eye over a steward’s serving arm. “And lieutenants?”

  Colonel Harriman spoke up with a little humor. “Lieutenants ’n sublieutenants, like the enterprising trio who managed t’smuggle you here, are specialists still mastering their trades.” He enjoyed the chuckles that obliged Trish to play the good sport. “They’ll only choose a specific branch on promotion out of the lieutenant grades.”

  Trish found herself checkmated and could only yield. “I see my exploits’ve preceded me. I hope the gentlemen in question won’t suffer for it?”

  “Not at all,” the colonel assured her. “EarthFleet values initiative in its officers. Resourcefulness is a key ingredient in outmaneuvering an enemy. You might say we cultivate such traits.”

  Nash sensed the opening moves of Harriman’s attack and wondered why a colonel would stoop to such a thing.

  Trish blushed, finding her attempt at a gracious surrender only painting her as a silly girl...no more than an item.

  “I’m pleased t’hear it, Colonel.” She glanced around the smirking table, appealing to their sympathy. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, gentlemen. I might’ve proven better company had I been aware of my own publicity.”

  “Take heart, Miss Thierry.” Nash rode onto the field like the cavalry. “Your grace under pressure puts current company to shame, and we’re a well-tested lot.”

  She nodded to him gratefully and hid behind a sip of wine at the table’s chorus of “hear hear”.

  “In any case,” she redirected, trying to muster herself again. “Your structure seems so clean. Everyone knows right where they belong. It’s nothing like that in my world.”

  “Oh, I dunno...” Colonel Harriman eased back into his chair now that he was assured of the battlefield. “I’ll wager nobody sets foot on your stage but you.”

  Nash grinned at the compliment, but it felt out of place. Glancing at Harriman, he caught the sneer of a hyena for just an instant. He jolted — fortunately not enough to draw attention to himself — but the vision was sharp. Vivid. He suddenly realized what the colonel was getting at.

  What the hell?

  Harriman was a highly decorated man and well beyond petty jabs, veiled or otherwise. Or at least, Nash had always thought so. Didn’t he realize the girl was outnumbered; alone and outclassed?

  Then it dawned on him:

  Harriman had no patience for an entertainer putting on airs. He was offended by her presence at this exalted table, and attacking her was a way of chastising Captain Yusuf for extending such a misplaced invitation. Nash hoped Miss Thierry could see it wasn’t about her.

  Meanwhile, Trish swallowed down the insult-masquerading-as-olive-branch without the benefit of wine or water. She wasn’t used to verbal warfare and couldn’t be sure her hand was steady enough to reach for a glass. This colonel was a master, and he offered her no quarter whatsoever. But words were already coming out of her mouth without her willing them. She had no idea what she was about to say, but whatever it was, it brought damnable hiccups with it.

  “Oh, I ca^n hardly take credit for that, Colonel. In my line of work, pop^ular opinion always has the final say.”

  Harriman was silent. Was he stunned? She saw something behind his eyes. Everyone could. There was a moment’s limbo as the rest of the table hung on their invincible colonel’s next move.

  “Miss Thierry,” he lifted his glass, “may the public remain so wise.”

  Trish felt a flush coming on and had no power to stop it. His toast was jab, trap and truce all at once, and it was up to her to decide which.

  Choosing the better part of valor, she abandoned the field of battle and simply offered the colonel a polite smile.

  Nash exhaled despite the tension writ large on the girl’s face. She’d been soundly put in her place, but Harriman hadn’t expected her measure of class in defeat. And to be fair, even Captain Yusuf found the colonel’s verbal lance a challenge.

  “So, what comes next, Miss Thierry?” Yusuf reasserted himself without a hint of the recent skirmish. “I know the future looks a long way off from your vantage, but d’you have something in mind?”

  She forced herself to smile into the table’s rousing mirth. “t’Be honest, Captain, like any woman, I have hopes of being queen of the galaxy by then, and beyond such concerns.”

  That brought outright laughter and the banquet progressed in much improved spirits, with talk of Asherah and her impact on Earth’s status in the Alliance. The conversation was accompanied by a multi-course meal, and Trish struggled to maintain her wit under the influence of delicacies and generous pours of wine. She was profoundly relieved when Yusuf finally set down his last digestif to resume the role of captain. He drew his men up with him as he stood:

  “Miss Thierry, your presence blesses us, and I wish you great fortune. I hope I can press you to a performance for the men before you leave. I expect a mutiny would be universally pardoned should they be deprived of the pleasure we’ve enjoyed here tonight.”

  “Overpraise, I’m sure, Captain.” Trish’s voice had gone low and scratchy from the evening’s tensions. “But I wouldn’t think of leaving without saying farewell t’the men who keep us safe. G’night, gentlemen.” Her eyes rebounded off Harriman’s just as Nash came to escort her away. “This has been the kind of evening a lady keeps warm by in her ages.”

  Nash endured her claw-like grip on his forearm without protest as they made their way to guest country. She seemed paler than he remembered, but that might be the corner of his eye distorting his glance.

  He would’ve broken the sound barrier and inquired about her had she not fortified herself behind a wall of false composure. Whatever was going on inside Miss Trisha Thierry, neither he nor the rest of the world were invited.

  JAY 1

  * * *

  NEWPORT BEACH – EARTH – MAY 22, 2004

  Jay Ellis sat in the saddle on his black-and-yellow gixxer, lined up broadside with his buds as they surveyed the still-sparse beach. Bikinis broke the monotone sand here and there like flakes of glitter, but it would still be another few weeks before schools let out and the sand disappeared beneath a quilt of towels. His t-shirt was growing damp in the heat and he wondered if there was somewhere else to be.

  “I might’a been in love once.” Len’s voice was a lullaby on the ocean breeze as he opened an old topic.

  “Do tell.”

  “I was goin’ through Modoc an’ there was this one local. She was in a cowboy hat. Y’know, drivin’ a hillbilly convertible? I dunno why we stared at each other. I ain’t inta cowgirls. Anyway, it was a thing.”

  “And?”

  “Nuthin’. We both just kept drivin’.”

  “Tha’s love, huh?”

  He shrugged. “Hadda be there.”

  The others shook their heads at the sad of it.

  “No no...tha’s love.” Phat was aiming his eyes at something curvy down on the sand.

  “Dude, ya got yer speak on wrong,” Mikey corrected. “Tha’s luuuv.”

  Phat leaned back. “Z’at a saunter, or a sashay?”

  “’At’s a wiggle,” Jay decided, and the observation brought a round of rumbling agreement.

  “Man, that’s one nubile bitch,” Davis ventured.

  Everyone fell in with nods and ‘uh-huhs’ and Jay wondered if he should stick his neck out.

  “Ya know ‘nubile’ means ready for marriage, right?”

  “Uh...”

  “Yeah...” he
waxed knowledgeable. “s’Got fuck-all t’do with sexy unless yer all about bein’ a dad.”

  The looks on the other guys’ faces were more than enough reward for risking his cool by knowin’ shit.

  “Chick like that...” he breezed, “I use ‘edible’.”

  Now he was the man of the hour as they studied the girl. Any one of ’em could’ve sprung up and dashed out to the sand in hot pursuit, so the only stately course of action was to lie back like they’d all had too much to eat.

  Moments came and went with the languor of summer clouds. Distant waves rolled in and out with the rhythm of a rocking chair, creaking soundtrack provided by the echoing squeal of seabirds. This was ‘beach’ — a gestalt of sun-drenched life overflowing with it’s a good day t’be me.

  “Wherethefuck’s Modoc?” someone blurted, but new movement caught everyone's attention.

  “I know her...” Jay realized, watching this new chick wiggle her way toward them.

  “Yeah? Been scopin’ the playground again?”

  “Maaaan...” he griped. “I’m pretty sure she’s in the apartment behind me.”

  “Butterface, dude,” Mikey complained. “She all ‘Cousin It’...’dat hair.”

  “Whatchoo want, little girl?” Len broke out.

  The girl stopped cold, paralyzed.

  “Need money t’call yer mom?” Mikey jabbed.

  The scene shifted and now Jay was outside himself, looking on from a new vantage. He and his buds were cackling like hyenas and the girl became a gazelle. She stared, helpless. He saw it. Felt it. But there was no getting the others to back off.

  The world closed in around the gazelle as yipping hyenas encircled her. She tried to speak. Couldn’t get her tongue to work. One of the hyenas lunged and they all fell on her with bared teeth.

  “The schoolyard’s down on Fifteenth, babe. That-a-way...” One of them gestured.

  Jay watched the girl unravel, but “chill, man” was as much as the situation allowed. Nobody else cared.

  “Nothin’ t’say?” Someone’s jaws bit into her...burrowed headfirst into the gazelle’s gut and came up for air caked and matted with gore. It licked the glistening red from its snout and the girl’s throat snapped shut.

  Before Jay could muster his voice, she scampered off across the pavement in fear for her life.

  33

  * * *

  EFS ARCTICA – GRENADINES OF HEAVEN – JUN 30, 2371

  Now safely deposited in her guest quarters and beyond the field of honor, Trish settled onto the sofa and allowed her body to purge the tremors stored up over the course of Colonel Harriman’s assault.

  After several minutes of detox she forced herself up to the mirror, noticing her discarded party dress in the reflection. The exuberant pink thing had been the embodiment of fun when she left Asherah, but now it looked cheap and stupid.

  “z’That who I really am?” she asked her reflection, catching sight of her white-haired doppelganger again in the split second before the door chimed.

  Distracted by the vision, she bit her lip and wondered who would feel the need to stab the bloody corpse of her self-esteem further. But this wasn’t her cabin on the Asherah; she was a guest aboard EarthFleet’s flagship, and a certain level of decorum was expected.

  “Come in...” she shuddered.

  EFS ARCTICA – GRENADINES OF HEAVEN – JUN 30, 2371

  “A little humiliation is good for the soul,” Colonel Harriman countered a matter being raised by one ardent lieutenant commander. “She’s an entertainer, Nash. A dancer. She should know her place.”

  Nash had spent the remaining hours of his shift contemplating whether to confront Harriman, and against his better judgment he felt obligated.

  “Her place, if you’d given her a chance to reveal it, sir,” he had serious trouble managing his tone, “is a sincere respect and gratitude for the whole fleet — from corporals ta colonels. I’ve spoken with ’er. That girl understands what we do and what it costs. But you just showed her the fleet couldn’t care less whether she knows...whether she’s grateful or even exists at all.”

  “She’s a party on legs, Nash.” Harriman studied the chess moves in his mind more than he did his accuser. “She’s got no business at a formal table. Though she, at least, could admit it.”

  “She had little choice, Colonel,” Nash blurted out, only then recognizing the implications he was placing on Captain Yusuf. The next thing out of his mouth could very well cap his career right where it was. But awkward silence was no better. The colonel had him over a barrel and Nash dangled there, face-to-face with whatever Harriman’s true nature might turn out to be. Was he a catch-and-release sportfisherman, or was he hungry?

  The creases on Harriman’s intimidating face relaxed. “You want ’er, Nash? Go get ’er. Nobody here’s in your way.”

  The words poured over Jerrett like a bucket of ice water. His own nature was spread out between them like a diagram. Harriman had no intentions of hanging a fellow officer over something as trivial as tail so long as the officer in question didn’t do it himself.

  The colonel’s strategic mind had no trouble teasing out the distinction between matters of weight versus whim. In his eyes, Nash was a solid officer who served the ship well, and if both he and his captain were momentarily smitten by the dessert à la mode, it had no bearing on their overall value. Harriman just wanted to make sure everyone involved knew it as clearly as he did.

  Nash gawped at the formidable man, shut his mouth and left.

  EFS ARCTICA – GRENADINES OF HEAVEN – JUL 1, 2371

  Trish sat in the middle of Arctica’s guest suite, drained and spent and losing herself in the anesthesia of perfecting her nails when another *gling* came. Apparently, guests were something of a novelty aboard a warship. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been entertaining drop-ins for the last several hours.

  Her most recent visitor had been the most trying of all. How could an apology be so disdainful, as if she were somehow to blame for deserving one?

  When in god’s name will it end?

  She sucked in a lungful of ‘get it over with’ and mumbled, “Come in.”

  Only then did she remember that the gown was hanging in the closet and she was half a breath from slipping beneath the sheets in next to nothing.

  Too late.

  “Oh...” Nash recoiled at the sight of her. All of her.

  Framed by the elegance of the guest suite, Trisha Thierry made a spectacular vision with her extraordinary figure straining against the barely-there fabric of a sheer nightie. Her burgundy hair fell loose and free, primed for bed.

  Nash went into shock. In this setting she was a woman, entirely unlike the snow-blown girl he’d brought aboard.

  “Forgive me. I never meant to intrude. I’m–”

  “At ease, Commander.” She offered a weary smile to her one ally in this war zone.

  “I only wanted to apologize. What Harriman did... that was–”

  “His wife’s gown,” Trish said.

  Nash halted. Digested the news.

  “The colonel stopped by and did for himself what you’ve graciously taken on your own shoulders. Thank you for your kindness, Commander Nash.”

  “I...” Jerrett was stumped.

  “Please, come in,” she entreated him, feeling her nudity like a constant ache. “You’re entirely welcome.”

  She kept wanting to reach for something to put on, but knew there was nothing. Even so, the difficult evening had reawakened that empty chasm inside. Her lieutenants had each hoped to do something about it but never got the chance, and she was feeling the full force of her loneliness.

  Nash backed away. “I really shouldn’t’ve come.”

  “Why not? I can offer you a nightcap. The bar’s well stocked.”

  Nash hovered in the doorway. Another mumbled apology.

  “Commander...” She approached the hapless officer, taking his arm with all the feminine guile the late hour allowed. “...give a girl
some hope.”

  Jerrett lay on one side of the bed, more troubled than ever. The slumbering softness beside him was the embodiment of everything hazardous about women. Fragile. Fiery. Fabulous. Things that made it so difficult once the flames of passion were quenched. There was no explaining it. As soon as a man spent himself those fires didn’t just simmer, they thoroughly blew themselves out, leaving only charcoal behind.

  Just when a woman felt closest, the man was ready to get up, shower off and go make a meal or watch a game or invent a widget. Anything besides intimacy. There was nothing defective about him; it’s the way he was designed. They all were. A sick joke evolution had played on women over eons of human existence.

  He listened to the shallow rhythm of her breath, damned by the sense of trust in that soft sound. She didn’t know him from Adam. Had no idea what he was about. Yet here she was, nestled against him in perfect peace. And the terrible thing was, he’d get up in the next few minutes and sneak back to his quarters simply to resume his proper station. Meanwhile, all his passions would return full-force by breakfast.

  If he waited it out he’d have no will to leave, and that was out of line. He was a senior officer aboard EarthFleet’s flagship. Decorum demanded that he maintain proper conduct in all cases. This brief lull in desire would be the only reliable window for reaffirming his sense of duty.

  With his conscience on hyperdrive, Jerrett slipped from the gentleness of Trish’s bed and restored himself into a man of the fleet.

  EFS ARCTICA – GRENADINES OF HEAVEN – JUL 1, 2371

  Dancing for Arctica’s crew the next morning was a tonic for Trish’s black mood. It was no fun waking up to an empty bed after such a night. Did she do something wrong? Say something? Was she a disappointment? All looks and no skillz?