Tris took a seat and waited for Gavit to sit as well. “But I’ve never seen the Captain eat here, or most of the civilian staff. Where do they go?”
Gavit shrugged. “There’re a couple other mess halls aboard, and the Captain’s private mess. But most civilians just use their own kitchens or autocooks.”
Tris looked about the room. The officer’s wardroom was nicely appointed, the walls covered with faux wood panels, and on those holos of various broadcasts, or stills of the ship or the various craft it carried into battle. It was by no means a restaurant up to Tris’ caliber, but Gavit felt at home here. It reminded him of the little cafes at the small airfields he’d used to fly out of. He looked at Tris. She sat transfixed by either a holo of her own performance earlier that cycle or one of the ship itself. “So ugly.”
“I don’t think anyone noticed you trip there. You recovered well,” Gavit replied, looking at her performance.
Tris shot him a hard stare. “Not that! The ship,” she pouted, pointing to the holo. “This whole thing, all hard edges and dank corridors. Would it kill them to make it look sleek and pretty? Or to put down carpet in the hallways?”
“What? Tris, it’s a warship. It’s designed with function over form, and I think she’s a damn fine-looking ship. Also, they’re called passageways.”
Tris rolled her eyes. “But your fighters are pretty. All sleek and sexy.”
“Because they have to fly in atmosphere. Big ships like this, don’t.”
“Still, why not make them look nice?”
Gavit rubbed his eyes. She’d probably call Drashig ships gaudy, he mused. Drashig ships were sleek but they always featured bright, clashing color schemes. He flagged over a server, a young enlisted Boerkian in the customary white and grey server’s tunic. “Can we just have two of the specials?” he asked when he approached. The Boerkian nodded and hurried off. That was when Gavit spotted the most of the team behind him, everyone except Chris, Blazer, Marda, and Arion.
“Why didn’t you ask me what I wanted?”
Gavit turned back to her. “Because I have to grab some early rack time. I have first patrol next cycle.”
Tris let out an exasperated sigh. “That is so not fair. Why can’t you ask your Commander for some time off? I’ll only be aboard a couple more cycles and we’ve hardly had any time together.”
Thank God. Gavit put on a smile he didn’t feel. “I know, but we’re hunting down a major enemy ship, and all leave has been suspended.” That wasn’t entirely true and Gavit knew it. “How are the shows going? Where are you off to next?”
Tris began to explain and Gavit put an old skill of his to use, looking interested. It was all about responding with the right grunts and nods. Instead he looked over at the team. They looked happy, joking around and having a real conversation. To his amazement, even Zanreb was there. While he didn’t join in most of the frivolity, he did add a few comments here and there.
Gavit would have loved to have been with them instead. He wasn’t surprised that Blazer and Marda weren’t there, as they often took their dinner in their quarters with little Chrisvian, or in Marda’s medical facility. Arion would be busy with Alieha: he’d never felt as jealous of a couple as he felt about those two.
Chris’ absence, it wasn’t right. He hadn’t seen her since Tris had arrived and she’d even traded a mission with Zanreb to fly with Blazer instead of him and Zithe. Is she mad at me? And why do I care? Frag me, I miss her!
“Oh, my Gods! I can’t eat this!” Tris yelled, pulling Gavit out of his musings.
“What’s wrong?” he asked and looked down at his plate. A steaming pile of Folip Egg Noodles in a green Komin sauce lay before him. The chef on duty always made a mean recipe of the Drashig pasta, mixing it with Otlian and Corblick spices. If Gavit wasn’t mistaken by the shape of the lumps, it also had Lodran shellfish.
“This is all carbs! Do you know what this will do to my figure? Do I need to bring my own private chef on these silly tours?”
That was it! Tris’ entitled attitude had finally breached Gavit’s limits and beyond. Before he knew it, his hands were both palms down on the table, bracketing his dinner. He pressed so hard, that if the table hadn’t been fastened to the deck it would have flipped; he stared at her through the haze of steam. “Do you ever think of anyone but yourself? No, wait, don’t answer. I already know. You only think of others when it serves you, when you consider what they have to offer you, or how they benefit your career. So, what do I offer you, huh? Am I just the answer to some fantasy you had long ago? Or should I have Gokhead scan the private underweaves to see if you’ve been secretly posting about me?” he asked motioning towards the other table. Gokhead jerked and his arm raised mechanically with a double thumbs up. “I should have known.”
Tris looked taken aback. Before she could protest, Gavit spotted a quartet of men saunter into the room behind her. They were the same men he’d seen before. Only this time he could make out the logo on their jumpsuits, clear as air. The geared R and D of ROKMAS DYNAMICS. At the tail of the group, his face half-hidden by the macomms he carried in each hand, his earliest betrayer. “Dorik!!!”
This cycle seemed overflowing with unpleasant surprises. What’s next universe? Are you going to show me proof that my uncle is really my father, that he was a traitor, and that he killed himself?
Dorik looked over at Gavit. He smiled for half a cent before his face drooped. Gavit could only imagine how his one-time friend read the rage on his face. Gavit just waited there, hands still on the table, and realized he was standing, shaking with barely contained rage. They stood there for several tense moments, Gavit sizing up Dorik and his crew of engineers.
He glanced to the team; they were similarly eyeing the quartet. Except for Rudjick, he still had his eyes on Tris as she stammered and blathered at him. Gavit couldn’t care less about her in this moment. Before him stood the man who’d set him on this path as sure as the Geffers who’d started this war and had later killed his uncle.
Dorik handed his macomms to one of his engineers and then held up his hands, palms away from Gavit. The marriage loop on his hand glinted in the light, as did the three silver rings up its knotted spine. Gavit’s emotions ran wild. He couldn’t be sure whether to be angry or happy for that. At one time Dorik had been his best friend, but that was before Ilange had come between them.
She’d led Gavit on with promises of love and wealth as an aeroracer for Rokmas Dynamics, then as their chief test pilot, and more. But all the while she and Dorik had been together. It was Ilange who’d pressed Gavit to adopt the role of the misogynist to the media. She’d said she didn’t care if he gained pleasure with those beings either. All that mattered was that his hearts belonged to her in private. As the granddaughter of the company’s president, she couldn’t be seen to have any attachment to their sponsored pilot after all. Then, right before his last race, the truth had come out. She’d taken Dorik as her lover.
“Gavit?” his voice as soft as ever, just a few octaves deeper and broader than a woman’s.
Gavit looked up. He stood right there, at his table. Tris still fumed, but put on a smile to the stranger. “What are you doing here Dorik?”
Dorik shuffled, nervous, and stinking of excitement and fear. “I can’t say. Not here, but it’s exciting. Game-changing stuff.”
“You’re a civilian working for a Chelot engine company. What could they want you here for?”
Dorik shuffled again. Obviously trying to figure out how to tell Gavit what was going on without revealing it to those around them. “Your uncle’s legacy. The one he left us.”
Gavit felt his anger wane and his shoulders loosen. “Are you serious? My baby. She’s alive?” The last time Gavit had seen his racer it had been a burning wreck beside Kendry Canyon.
Dorik nodded. “We think we’ve cracked it.”
Gavit almost couldn’t breathe as he realized Dorik wasn’t talking about the racer but its engine. The implications were beyond
amazing. “How?”
“I can’t say here. But, Gavit, how’ve you been? It’s been what? Six annura?” He looked down at Tris and affected a false smile. It was the same one he gave to ugly pets. “I see you’re still dating such insubstantive beauties.”
Gavit would have laughed at the sideways insult if he didn’t think it would reveal the truth to Tris. Instead he smiled to Tris and stood up straight. “Tris, this is an old friend of mine. Please, just give me a few pulses. I’ll be right back.”
Tris pouted and started to get up before Rudjick just seemed to appear in Gavit’s seat. “No worries Gavit. I’ll keep her entertained,” he replied with a mischievous smile. He still stunk of his flight suit, his hair matted and his uniformed disheveled. Gavit didn’t care. Tris looked less than impressed as Rudjick leaned across the table to her. “Don’t worry miss. Once you go elf, you’ll see that we’re top shelf. I’ve already ordered you a new dinner,” he finished with a wink.
Gavit rolled his eyes and walked Dorik away towards the corner of the room. Dorik shook under Gavit’s hand. It was obvious that a part of him still feared what his former friend might do. As they reached a quiet area, Gavit stepped back. He still couldn’t quite resolve his feelings, but he sighed and took a look at Tris. Rudjick sat there having the time of his life. Tris, though, she seemed to appreciate her new meal, and seemed nonplussed. Without turning to face Dorik, Gavit found the question he’d wanted to ask. “How is she?”
Dorik fingered the back of his wedding knot. “She’s good. Too busy to come out here though, what with the kids, and the business.”
Gavit nodded, still couldn’t look at him. “Why did you keep it secret?”
From the corner of his eye, Gavit could see Dorik look away and begin to touch his fingers together. An old nervous habit. He would touch two together, cycling through all the combinations, then three, then four, and finally all five before starting again. “It was a slow burn. While you were out celebrating after a race, keeping up appearances, Ilange would come to the repair shop with me. She’d go over the data, help me with repairs, make sure I ate.” Gavit understood all of that, especially that last bit. It still looked like Dorik needed to have someone to remind him to eat. Skinny as a sapling his whole life, he’d get so enthralled by his work that it would always take an outside force to remind him to take care of basic bodily needs.
“I watched her leave with you more times than I could count. I was always jealous, but never thought that I stood a chance. You could have anyone you wanted. All I wanted, was her, from the moment I got to know her. I didn’t say anything because that’s the way it was. Then you stopped coming by, and she’d stay until I fell asleep. I even woke up more than a few dawns with her in the other cot. You know. Remember how you used to bring us breakfast, all guilt-ridden?”
Gavit nodded. In the beginning it had been easy to get away from the after-race parties. But, as his celebrity had risen, and the races had grown more important, it had become near impossible for him to slip away.
“We didn’t mean to hurt you. We didn’t even know we were in love until, until right before you found us that duwn.”
Gavit tried not to relive that duwn again. He looked back at Dorik. The sorrow in his friend’s face was genuine. “Are you both, happy?”
Dorik smiled and nodded. “Yes. We invited you to the wedding, wanted to apologize then, but you never even opened the invite.”
Gavit nodded. “I was deployed, couldn’t get leave, had a lot going on. And, I was still plenty angry.”
“I know. Our oldest son was born a few tridecs later...”
Gavit looked at him.
“We named him Toran Gavit.”
Gavit chuckled. “Even in death my uncle gets top billing.”
“We fought her family on that one for a while.”
“Wait, a few tridecs?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.
Dorik shuffled his feet for a moment. “Yeah, the duwn you found us. It was only our second time together, and well, we were kind of half-celebrating. She was pregnant.”
Gavit cocked his head in curiosity. Rokmas had no major Confed contracts because the owners of the company were Chelots, Confed sub-citizens that refused to meet the basic citizenship requirements like usage of conception blocks. That rendered them ineligible for access to certain centrally-funded services. But Dorik was a full citizen and Confederate on top of that. “How?”
“Remember the accident? When I got my junk cooked by that Lodran racer’s breached fusion bulb?”
Gavit nodded. That had been an amazing race, but the second-place finalist had overtaxed his fusion drive and Dorik was right next to it when the radiation shielding had broken away. He’d spent the better part of a tridec getting treated for radiation burns, and had been temporarily sterilized to add insult to injury. “Yeah, you were worried that you’d never be able to have kids after that.”
“Well, after I recovered the doctors advised me to not have my blocks put back in because of the risk. So, I didn’t, and didn’t think about Ilange being a Chelot when we first made love.”
Gavit chuckled. “First time and you’re a daddy.” He paused for a moment, still smiling. “I bet you’re a great one.”
Dorik nodded. “Thanks. They don’t complain much.” He motioned back towards Tris and Rudjick. “You’re not upset about that?”
Gavit looked. Tris still barely paid Rudjick any mind as he appeared to lay on his best moves. Gavit shook his head and smiled. “Not at all. Tris isn’t what I’m looking for.” To say that aloud caught him by surprise.
“What are you looking for?”
Gavit eyed his friend. “Had you two been honest with me back then, and had I not been such a hothead, I’d have married you both.”
Dorik shifted uncomfortably. “Um, you know I’ve never…”
Gavit held up a hand. “And Ilange is a one-man woman. I know. But, now, I know I don’t want Tris, or anyone like her,” he said looking not so much at her, but past her. “I want someone who I don’t need to put so much upkeep into. Someone I don’t have to worry about, who I can rely on to, to…” Gavit trailed off, his mind replaying the events of the past annura, every mission, every battle, every time he and Chris had covered each other. Every not quite romantic and tender moment. Every time those around them had hinted at it.
Dorik waved a hand in front of his face. “A woman you can rely on to what?”
That duwn so long ago came back to him. It hadn’t been a dream. He’d just been too pain-addled and out of it to realize. Even the link sessions with Tris where her image had shifted to someone else came into sharp focus. “I need a woman who can pull me out of the fire, and let me do the same.” Gavit took one last look at Tris then turned back to Dorik. He reached out and kissed the man full on the lips, the embrace more heartfelt and compassion-filled than any he’d shared with Tris. “Thank you for opening my eyes!” He didn’t wait another moment and ran out of the officer’s mess.
PQ-451
The door chimed a third time as Chris wrapped her pillow around her head. How many times do I have to tell people that I want to be alone? She thought, her teeth grinding together. The door chimed again and her micomm buzzed. Even set to off, it would alert her to incoming messages if the priority were set high enough. The chime ceased and now whoever was there started banging on the plasteel barrier.
She huffed and rolled out of bed. She wrapped a towel around her waist. Though she didn’t go nude much anymore, she still spent her sleep that way. “I’m coming!” The pounding stopped. She tucked the towel in place and keyed the door open. “The ship had better be under attack or someone had better be dying!”
Gavit stood there, panting, his eyes wild yet soft. Before she could say a word, he stepped in, took her face in his hands and kissed her. She resisted at first. Who was Gavit to just barge in and kiss her? Her knee twitched, ready to slam his scrotum into his throat. Then Chris realized that she’d begun to return the kiss.
Gavit was here, with her, not that showy tramp. She wrapped her arms around him and forced her tongue into his mouth. The two muscles wrapped around one another, danced about as they gasped for breath. She felt her core warm, urge her to go on, her nipples scraping against his uniform, and then he broke the kiss.
She stared into those deep brown eyes for a long moment as he stared back into hers. It was like a mirror. She saw all her pain, all her joy, every emotion she’d ever felt, or ever would feel projected there, and saw his own as well. Her Gavit breathed heavily, blowing his exhalations over her shoulder, and it made her skin prickle in a good way. “We need to talk,” was all he said, all he needed to say, before they stepped back against her bed and the door slid shut.
UCSB Date: 1005.281
VFA-143-014, Combat Air Patrol, Tormuld’s Star System
The way in which Federation Overcommand thought was a mystery that Anthony Nerant would never understand. It had made no sense to him to establish themselves in this way. Deep in enemy territory, they’d tied themselves to a Lagrange Point and had set about rebuilding a ship that Tony had written off as scrap at first glance. Of course, he would never dare voice that opinion.
Tony’s first assignment had been to the GFS MacReady, a Carpenter class carrier. That siege carrier had spent the better part of three decades patrolling the saltwater oceans of a captured Confederation world before it had been towed back into space. It had nowhere near the corrosion on its hull than the Barker he approached did. Whole sections of hull had had to be removed from the ship ahead. Tony had never seen such metal decomposition in his life, except in pictures. The quartet of mobile drydocks, expanded into the massive scaffolds that now enveloped the ship, set about replacing not only those deteriorated sections, but shipboard systems that had been outdated decades before he’d even been birthed.
“Dog Four, Dog Six, what’s the ETC on that ship?”
Tony looked over his shoulder at his wingman. His brand spanking new F/A-229 Wildcat still sparkled in the dim starlight filtering through the massive accretion dominating this young star system. Tony was the leader of this particular patrol, earning that right after one of their recent raids. “Another two or three months at least is what I’ve heard from the engineers. The Inferno’s been deep in Confed territory since before the armistice, so I hear. I wonder why they don’t just cycle it back instead of doing this crew swap and repair.”
Hell's Razer Page 29
