Red Sky At Morning - DK4

by Melissa Good

  “Now, Kerry, listen.” Ceci leaned forward. “I’ve known Dar a long time.”

  “Um...I know that.”

  “She has her moments, and I’ve seen most of them, but deep down, I think she’s a good person.”

  Kerry’s forehead rumpled. “I think so, too. Listen, Mom—”

  “So whatever it is you’re having problems with, think hard, and don’t give up on that kid too easily, okay? I did, and look where it got me,” Ceci told her very seriously.

  Kerry’s eyes closed, then reopened, and she reached over to take Ceci’s hands in hers. “Mom.” She drew a breath. “The only thing that’s going to ever make me leave Dar is one or the other of us dying.” She paused. “And even then, I’m not so sure.”

  Ceci blinked, now confused. “Oh. Well, that’s fine then,” she murmured. “Sorry, I thought—”

  “I should have just talked faster.” Kerry smiled. “No, what I’m worried about is our relationship being front and center at dinner tonight.”

  Ceci thought about that. “Oh.” She freed one hand and muffled a laugh. “I hadn’t even...oh, boy. Yeah...” Now the laugh escaped. “Oh, my goddess, those stuffed-up military—” She stopped and cleared her 182 Melissa Good throat. “Ahmm...I mean, well, yes, Kerry, you do have a point there.”

  Her face struggled to remain serious. “But don’t worry about it—if they say anything, Andy will pick them up and toss them out the window, and they know it. If there’s one thing everyone at that table already knows, it’s don’t mess with my kid in front of her daddy.”

  Kerry nodded in relief. “Okay. I was just worried about it. I know Dar has strong feelings about how she grew up, and I didn’t want to cause her any pain.”

  Ceci sighed. “Kerry, you’re so nice you should be regulated by the EPA.” She reached over and patted the younger woman’s cheek. “Did you ask Dar if she wanted you to give this a miss?”

  Kerry nodded.

  “And she said no, right?”

  Kerry nodded again.

  “So don’t worry about it. C’mon, let’s go see if Andy’s gotten the seaweed out of his ears and gotten dressed. Then we can take off.”

  They stood, and Kerry suddenly took a step around the table and pulled Ceci into a hug. “Thanks.”

  Oh, good goddess. Ceci returned the hug and patted Kerry on the back. I’m becoming a mother...Eeeeeekkkk!

  THE COFFEE HELPED. Dar had also detoured to her car and tossed back a half handful of Advil, and now she was prowling around the barracks looking for her friend the petty officer.

  The base was quiet, otherwise; most of the active groups were out on some kind of maneuvers, and only the new recruits and the usual business units at the base were out and about and doing their daily tasks.Dar entered the long wooden barracks structure at one end and looked around the empty interior for a moment before she walked down the large central aisle. To either side were partitions with bunks in them, each bunk with its footlocker and open set of shelves made from what looked to her like old orange crates. Now that the new recruits had settled in, shirts were folded and in place, and the beds had obviously just been made.

  Dar smiled. Probably remade a half-dozen times before the petty officer had been happy with them, the dark blankets tucked with meticulous neatness around the thin mattresses. She remembered watching the new groups come in and peeking through the window as they’d been badgered and badgered by the admitting officers.

  Not her, she’d decided once. She’d have done it exactly right the first time out. After all, hadn’t her daddy taught her to make a regulation bunk and fold pants and shirts when she was only six years old?

  With a smile, Dar continued through the room and out the other Red Sky At Morning 183

  side, exiting onto a long, wooden porch with shallow steps that led down to the muddy ground. She looked to one side and spotted her little targets, now dressed in their new clothes, struggling to follow the orders of a new, different petty officer.

  Dar wandered over and watched for a few minutes, until the new officer noticed her and walked over. This one was a woman, with short, crisply curled dark hair and an efficient attitude. “Ma’am? Something we can help you with?”

  With a better attitude, at any rate. “No, just observing,” Dar replied.

  “Where’s the guy you relieved?”

  The woman cocked her head in question. “Petty Officer Williams?”

  She waited for Dar’s nod. “Off duty, ma’am.”

  Uh-huh. Dar looked over her shoulder at the recruits, surprised to find her slim blonde friend looking back at her. The gray eyes met hers and sparkled, then the girl looked straight ahead, her body stiffening into an efficient attention. “Good group?”

  The new officer, whose name was apparently Plodget, looked behind her, evaluating the question seriously. “A few of them, ma’am.

  It’s always the same. Most aren’t much use, but we always do find a few that’ll make it.”

  “What’s your dropout rate?”

  A guarded look fell over the woman’s face. “I wouldn’t know, ma’am.”

  “Ballpark,” Dar pressed. “I’m sure you’ve got a feeling as to how many of these poor saps you lose.”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t,” Plodget assured her. “We only get them for the first two weeks, then someone else takes over.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s just how it’s done, ma’am.”

  Dar nodded slowly. “Where are their admitting records?”

  “Haven’t gotten here yet.”

  “Why not? You guys use a computer system to recruit. What’s the holdup?”

  Unemotional dark brown eyes met hers squarely. “That’s just how it’s done, ma’am.”

  “All right.” Dar straightened. “I’ll just go see if I can’t change that for you.”

  Dar turned and walked away, feeling the eyes on her back as she headed for the Admittance Center. She ducked inside with a feeling of relief and went to the computer console, seating herself in front of it and cracking her knuckles slightly. “Okay. Answer time.” She logged in, and this time, instead of going through the regular channels, she keyed in a master code. “Idiots.” The code still worked, and dropped her to a command line. “Where do you want to go today, hmm?”

  Master database was where Dar wanted to go, and a string of commands got her there. She accessed the file structure and entered it 184 Melissa Good through a back door, watching as the screen filled with line upon line of file records. Dar watched it for a few minutes, her eyes flicking back and forth searching for a certain pattern.

  Ah. One long finger stopped the display. “Gotcha.” She keyed in another command string and accessed the recruits’ records, bringing them up and comparing them.

  Her brow creased. “What in the hell?” Of the twenty, ten were, as the petty officer said, fairly standard, pretty much ordinary kids from lower-class backgrounds, with bad grades and poor ASVAB test results—destined, if they did make it, to be shipped out as seamen or women in whatever grunt job the Navy needed when they spit them out of training. Dar had known hundreds like them. Some might, she admitted, if they worked very hard, break through the ranks and ascend higher, but most would happily fill a berth and take three squares a day for as long as the US was willing to give it to them.

  “What in the hell?” she repeated, then shook her head and captured the data, opening a second command page with a flick of her fingers.

  She snagged the files she’d been studying and zipped them, then sent them up the network path into her own, now specially protected file space.

  Dar drummed her fingertips on the keyboard for a moment, then searched another file, working from instinct and an innate knowledge of these systems, the core of which she’d helped design all those years ago.

  There. She stared at the results. I thought I saw something wrong. I thought those accounts didn’t match. One column of the screen showed a normal series of general ledger list
ings, the other a list of twenty accounts that weren’t linked anywhere she could find. She called one up, looking at the account balance, which was well into seven figures.

  The entries were regular, and substantial, and manually keyed, because there was no equivalent ledger account to charge them off against.

  A bucket. A bucket full of money, which nothing in this system could account for.

  Dar sat back, her heartbeat picking up. What in the hell have I found?

  “Hey, Dar!”

  She almost jumped at Chuckie’s cheerful greeting. Her eyes lifted to see him approaching, and she quickly closed the file and sent it to her file space, then closed out of the command windows she was using just as he rounded the console and peered over her shoulder. “Hey.”

  “Whatcha doing?” He looked curiously at the innocuous admitting records. “New spuds?”

  “Yeah.” Dar licked her lips, then signed out of the system. “Just checking them out. Interesting group.” Her peripheral vision focused on his face, but saw nothing but benign interest. “You ever see what they’re bringing in these days?”

  “Nah.” Chuckie slung a long, powerful arm over her shoulders.

  “Hey, we were figuring to go over to the Longhorn steakhouse tonight, Red Sky At Morning 185

  that okay by you? Your daddy’s a steak man, if I remember right.”

  Dar took a breath, and released it. “Yep, he sure is. My mother’s going to pitch a fit, but I guess she can get a potato or something.” She managed a smile. “She’s a vegetarian...unless they’ve got fish there.”

  “Fish?” Chuckie snorted. “You must be kidding. But, yeah, they’ve got potatoes, and I think they’ve got some kinda green beans or something. How ’bout your main squeeze, he a veggie lover, too?”

  Something twitched in Dar’s brain. “She.” The word came out in a calm voice, unexpectedly. “And no, Kerry’s as carnivorous as I am.”

  Chuckie went very still, his eyes fastened on Dar’s face for a long, long moment. Then he slowly removed his arm and stepped back.

  “What?”

  Dar allowed a hint of amusement to reach her lips, and she turned on the stool, leaning against the console with one elbow. “You heard me.” She watched his face, watched the expression go from consternation to uncertainty to a detectable disgust, then back to a stillness. So. Dar felt vaguely disappointed.

  “You’re gay?” Chuckie asked stiffly.

  “That’s right,” Dar confirmed. “Don’t worry, you didn’t cause that,” she added with a faint smile. “C’mon, Chuck. Rise above your redneck roots.”

  He looked at his shoes, shock evident in his posture. Then he lifted his gaze and met her eyes, briefly, before he shook his head. “That’s fucked up,” he said, then turned and walked out, not looking back even once.Dar sat back and folded her arms over her suddenly aching chest, surprised at just how much that had hurt.

  KERRY PULLED UP to the gate of the base, rolling her window down and preparing her argument for the stolid-looking guard who approached.

  “Hey, No Neck, open the damn gate,” Andrew rasped from beside her, poking his head truculently out at the hapless man. “’Fore I get out of this here car and break it.”

  The guard stopped, stared, then his eyes lit up with unmistakable joy. “Commander Andy!” He almost tripped over himself trying to get the barrier open. “Wow, I didn’t know you were comin’ down here!

  Wait ’til I tell the guys!”

  Hmm. Kerry watched amusedly as the man waved like a child at her passenger. Guess it does depend on who you know around this place. “He wasn’t nearly that nice to Dar,” she commented. “She had to get rough with him.”

  Andrew leaned over her and pinned the guard with a pair of ice blue eyes. “That right, No Neck? You give mah kid a hard time?”

  The guard looked terminally wounded. “Not after she said who she 186 Melissa Good was, sir! If she’d have just said right off, we’d have let her right in!”

  “Uh-huh.” Andrew sat back. “G’wan, Kerry. Let’s get this land boat parked so I can see what a mess they made of this here joint.”

  “You got it, Dad.” Kerry drove on, finding Dar’s Lexus in the lot and selecting a spot right next to it. She was glad she was here. Her stomach upset had been getting worse for the last while, and she was seriously looking forward to seeing her partner and satisfying her curiosity as to whether she was the cause. She got out, waited for her passengers to do the same, then locked the doors. “Dar has a little office upstairs in the big building. I’ll go find her if you guys want to check this place out.”

  “She take you over to our old place?” Andrew asked.

  “Sort of.” Kerry grinned. “I’ll explain later. Be right back.” She trotted off toward the headquarters building, leaving her in-laws behind to revisit old memories. The guard respected the ID she’d clipped to her collar and opened the door, and she made her way up the stairs and down the hall. The door to Dar’s temporary office was closed, and she paused, then knocked lightly on it.

  For a moment, there was no answer, then Dar’s voice responded.

  “Yeah?”

  I knew it. Kerry pushed the door open and stuck her head inside.

  One look at Dar’s face and she quickly stepped past the portal and closed it behind her, crossing the floor and circling the desk to kneel at her lover’s side. “Hey.”

  Dar had her head propped up on one hand. “Hey,” she answered softly. “Hope your day was better than mine.”

  Kerry put a gentle hand on Dar’s knee and rubbed it. “What’s wrong?” She could see the tension and unhappiness written all over her partner’s face, and she stood and perched on the desk edge to get closer.

  “Sweetheart?”

  Dar exhaled and put her head down on Kerry’s thigh, wordlessly seeking comfort. She closed her eyes as the blonde woman responded, threading fingers through her hair and rubbing the back of her neck.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I told Chuck about us.”

  “Oh.” Kerry’s own eyes closed in sympathy. “Not a good reaction, huh?”

  “No.”

  Kerry leaned over and kissed the top of Dar’s head, giving her as much of a hug as she could in their somewhat awkward position. “I’m sorry.”

  Dar exhaled. “I don’t even know why I should care, Kerry. I haven’t talked to him in what...ten years? It’s not like he’s a close friend, even.”

  She put a hand on Kerry’s knee and rubbed her thumb against the denim covering it. “Damn, it stung, though.”

  “I know.” Kerry kept up her light massage on Dar’s neck, moving lower as she felt the tension knotting her shoulders. “I wish you’d have Red Sky At Morning 187

  just let them...”

  Dar shook her head. “No.” She lifted her head up off Kerry’s lap and met her eyes. “You are my partner, and God damn it, if they can’t deal with that, to hell with them all.” Her blue eyes glinted fiercely. “I am not ashamed of this.”

  Kerry stroked her cheek gently. “I know you aren’t. I’m not either.

  It’s just hard, Dar. We both know that. We’ve both been so lucky there have been people in our lives who do accept us, who accept this without question, to balance the idiots who don’t.”

  Dar sighed and put her head back down for more soothing. “Yeah, I realize that.” She closed her eyes. “My folks here?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Kerry paid particular attention to a knot she could feel in Dar’s neck and saw the wince as she pressed on it. “You need a chiropractor, love.”

  “Hot tub,” Dar countered. “With you in it.”

  Kerry rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “You are so stubborn.”

  “Family trait.”

  “You’re lucky I love your family.” Kerry leaned over and kissed the spot on Dar’s neck, then nibbled her earlobe, getting a soft grunt of surprise in return. “Come on, let’s get this dinner over with. I missed my snuggle this morning, and I’ve been cranky all
day.”

  Finally, Dar smiled, turning her head and peering up at Kerry’s face. “Me, too.” She sat up and gave Kerry’s knee a squeeze, then stood.

  “You’re right. Let’s get this over with.” Her voice paused as she shut her computer down. “Because tomorrow, we’re going to find out just exactly why this place stinks to high heaven.”

  IT WAS OBVIOUS that Chuckie had told his father. Even at a distance, Dar could see the discomfort in the three people waiting for them. She took a breath and tugged on her father’s sleeve. “Dad?”

  “Yep?” Andrew finished closing the door and peered at her.

  “What’s up, Dardar?”

  “I think we’re going to have a problem.” She lowered her voice, glancing across the car where Kerry and Ceci were getting out on the other side. “I...don’t think Jeff and his family appreciate my lifestyle.”

  Andrew looked over at the waiting group, then at her. “’Cause you drive a fancy car?”

  Dar rubbed her nose. “Not that lifestyle,” she amended. “I meant Kerry and me.”

  Her father considered that. “Huh. That might be true,” he admitted. “Jeff never did take to anyone who didn’t fit his idea of what was right and natural.” They walked slowly around the front of the car, joining Kerry and Ceci. “C’mere, kumquat.” Andrew put a genial arm across Kerry’s shoulders and the other over Dar’s. “Let’s go.”

  Ceci gave him a curious look, then caught on and slipped to the 188 Melissa Good other side of Kerry, tucking an arm around her waist. “All righty, then,”

  she agreed. “Ah. A steakhouse. How Republican.”

  “Hey,” Kerry objected jokingly. “I’m the one who eats vegetables.”

  She poked a finger at Dar. “Unlike her.”

  They chuckled and walked toward the restaurant. Dar felt a little silly, but she could see the exchange of glances as Jeff took in their posture, the look on her father’s face, and the very obvious acceptance of both her and Kerry inherent in their body language. Sometimes, she mused, I underestimate my parents. The thought made her smile, and she slid an arm around her father’s waist and gave him a squeeze.