Date Point 15y5m1d AV Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Lt. Col. Owen Powell
“Wuff!”
“Yeahyeah…’mup…”
He fell asleep again.
“Wurf!!”
“Uh? Sh’t. S’rry. ‘Mawake…”
More sleep.
“WURF!!!”
Powell went from asleep to awake and ready to defend himself from the hell-beast in his cave in less than a single pounding heartbeat. Bozo, panting, spun a happy circle and picked up his leash then parked his bum on the ground and thwacked his tail enthusiastically against the dresser while giving him a meaningful patient look.
Powell finally remembered how being human was supposed to go. “…Bloody fookin’ Christ.” He stretched then set about disentangling himself from his bedding. “Don’t you even want breakfast first?”
Bozo tilted his head and whined. Powell glanced at the wall clock and saw what the problem was. He’d slept in late. Acceptable, on a day off, but not from Bozo’s perspective apparently. It was the time of morning when his favorite bitch in town got walkies.
“Riiight. Your missus awaits…”
“WURF!!!”
Powell heaved himself out of bed and stretched. “I swear you’re some kind of Corti experiment or summat. No dog’s this smart naturally…”
Bozo grumbled in an annoyed manner and forcibly snuggled his muzzle against Powell’s leg.
“Arright, arright… Fookin’ ‘ell…”
He threw on sweats and a black tank top with the unit insignia printed over the left breast, trusted his home’s automation to lock up behind him, and jogged out down Demeter Way with Bozo happily charging ahead to investigate the perimeter as part of his solemn duty to Protect His Papa. It was another Folctha morning, pleasantly moist from the nightly rains and balancing on that sweet spot between brisk chill and pleasantly cool. Peaceful, if you ignored the pounding sounds of heavy metal and Heavy Metal emanating from the Dog House gym as the Beef Trio got their morning workouts in.
“I dunno,” he complained at the dog as Bozo paused to mark his territory, which was basically all of Folctha. “If ‘Horse caught me goin’ for a run cold like this, he’d have me squattin’ until I fell apart. You don’t know how lucky you are, mutt.”
“WURF!!!”
“Arright, we’ll see if we can beat the bloody Gaoians to the corndog stand this time…”
As a matter of fact, the Whitecrest component of the HEAT were nowhere to be seen for a change. The stand’s owner, Myrtle, had learned her lesson and kept stock aside specially for them, but this morning she was sitting on a plastic lawn chair next to her business, knitting.
“Well! At least one of you showed up!” she announced and dropped her project on the seat behind her as she stood. “Have your men forgotten how to eat, colonel?”
“I bloody hope not. I prefer my pigs firmly on the ground, thanks.”
She laughed, and took up spot behind her stand. “Well, at least Bozo can make up for them, can’t you boy?”
Powell rolled his eyes as Bozo rocked back on his hindpaws and begged with a stomach-thumping “WURF!!!” It looked beyond ridiculous.
“Ham,” he accused the dog fondly. “Who taught yer that one?”
Myrtle laughed again and indicated her wares as Bozo dropped back to all fours. “How many?”
“Two for me, three for the dog please.”
“He’s a bigger eater than you?” Myrtle asked.
Powell shook his head. “If I know Bozo he’ll carry one off and give it to somebody special.”
He was proved right. Bozo scarfed down two of the corndogs with much flashing of teeth and flapping of jowls, but the third was picked up delicately and carried proudly, with his tail up and his ears forward.
“Y’know…” Powell told him as they jogged, “When half a dozen Gaoians randomly forget about breakfast, I smell shenanigans… I better not find my door hinged at the top again.”
Bozo’s ears pricked, but he was the ideal conversation partner in many ways. Especially when his mouth was full.
“Right, that was Murray wasn’t it…”
Bozo *“wff”*’d past his corndog and led him toward Riverside Park.
True to form, it didn’t take long for him to sniff down his better half. Hannah was out running with her owner and and…Wait, that wasn’t Ríos’ adoptive father…
Derek Coombes gave Powell a nod as they slowed to a halt together. “Morning, boss.” Like all the very best operators, he could be both respectful and familiar with his CO in a way that wasn’t exactly by the numbers.
“Morning,” Powell agreed. “Miss Ríos…” He stepped aside as the two dogs promptly began their happy welcoming dance, one which always threatened to trip people up.
Ríos giggled at them and got out of their way. “No more puppies, you two!” she chided them. Bozo whined at her, which gave Hannah the opportunity she needed to grab him by the ear and the two went hounding off in a play fight.
“Seconded,” Powell agreed fervently. He’d come to something of a truce with Ríos over the years. Both the Arés men vouched for her, after all, and he trusted their judgement. He doubted if he was ever going to like her or trust her integrity—even ignoring her history, she was still a journalist—but she’d never tried to inappropriately interview him and he could definitely respect her actions in Egypt.
It didn’t hurt to be polite, anyway. “Not running with yer old man today, Miss Ríos?”
“He has some kinda business over in the Alien Quarter today. Besides,“ she smirked and rapped her knuckles on Coombes’ chest in a way that was a little beyond familiar. “Running with Dad was getting too easy. It’s nice to have a challenge sometimes.”
“Don’t you have that thing later, Coombes?” AEC wanted an assessment of how well the Ten’Gewek performed in wilderness survival situations other than their own home planet before committing to any kind of long-term relationship. General Kolbeinn was allegedly enthusiastic about the idea, but his job was to cover all the angles. With JETS team 1 down to just one member now—Daar having gone back to Gao, Walsh having gone back to the HEAT pipeline and Coombes having stepped back from field work to serve as NCOIC of Joint ExtraTerrestrial Scouts—Hoeff was being put through his paces as a trainer bringing teams 2 and 3 up to standard while candidates to fill up Team 1 were headhunted.
Coombes hadn’t missed the opportunity to train JETS Team 2 up at the same time. That entire side of the SOR was going to be out at the training range in the Peake Lowlands for a day or two, starting soon.
“Sure do, sir. And y’know, something about the thought of spending a few days stuck in a small space with Chimp made me wanna go for a run first,” Coombes said.
Powell snorted a small laugh, and fished the Pig out of his running bag. It was an incredibly robust blue toy made out of recycled rubber, and rather than squeaking it made a whoopie-cushion oinking sound when squeezed. There was nothing and nobody more important in Bozo’s life, and the second its farting grunt sounded he was sat quivering at attention in front of Powell’s feet, Hannah forgotten.
The Lads had trained him well, there.
“Arright, fair enough. Go. Have fun,” he said. “C’mon, Bozo.”
Running always helped him think, but truthfully there wasn’t much to think about. He trusted Coombes to know what he was doing, and that was that. Whatever was going on there… well, it wasn’t any of Powell’s business and hopefully never would be.
They looped back along the “dry” side of Riverside Park, with Bozo, as was his wont, charging well ahead and scouting the area for any Suspicious Characters, or perhaps Friends Who Scratch His Ears. He’d come back to Powell’s side every few minutes, wurf happily, then bound off to perform further reconnaissance.
Once upon a time, Powell might have tried to curb the dog’s patrols. Nowadays, he understood just how much spare energy Bozo had and how much it needed burning off. A half-marathon in the morning was just about enough to mellow the big bugger out a bit.
As always, Bozo’s furthest-ranging scout ahead came as they reached the final stretch on Demeter Way. Usually, Bozo would go haring off at breakneck speed and then wait for Powell on the doorstep.
This time, however, he came barreling back almost immediately and impatiently attempted to lead Powell along faster, far too excited for any normal day.
Naturally, Powell was immediately suspicious. He picked up the pace as well, followed the dog back down the road and came to a stop on the corner of the green space that was kind of the unofficial SOR shared lawn.
He paused, took a minute to consider the masterpiece in front of him, then sniffed, turned, and jogged across the turf to the Dog House’s back door.
He had the code to get down into the “special” play area in the basement, the one with the supergravity panels and weights that’d make a comic book character balk. It was a haven of terrifying masculinity where the Beef Trio pushed themselves far past limits that other performance athletes would never even approach, but he didn’t interrupt them. At their level, unscheduled stops could be bloody dangerous so instead he picked a floor mat and worked on his stretches and flexibility.
Warhorse, Baseball and Righteous emerged from the basement about half an hour later with their muscles boiling under a layer of sweat. The first thing they would generally do would be a jog in the cool morning rain if they could but on this occasion they noticed their CO quietly minding his business in the corner and paused.
Powell sprang lightly to his feet and gave them a friendly nod. “Mornin’, Lads.”
“What’s up, boss?” Firth asked. Again, he’d mastered that delicate balance between informality and respect.
“Nowt much, just wanted to show you a little masterpiece I’ve uncovered. Personally, I reckon it’s a work of bloody genius.”
The three of them glanced at each other then shrugged.
“…Lead on!”
Powell let himself out the back and extended a hand to indicate his house, clearly visible on the far side of the open green space behind the gym.
Every square foot of the roof was liberally inhabited by garden gnomes, garnished here and there with an occasional plastic flamingo.
“The strangest part is, I’m buggered if I can think of anywhere in this town that even sells garden gnomes,” he remarked.
Firth crossed his ridiculous arms and whistled low. “That weren’t there this mornin’ boss. We’d thought of invitin’ ‘ya for a spar but…”
“You were sleeping so nice,” added Burgess with an enthusiastic nod from Arés. “And you never take days off.”
“…How did you know I was sleeping?”
“I still have your door code, sir.” Firth shrugged hugely. “Also I’ve been practicin’ my sneak.”
Powell gave the giant brute a slow, expressionless stare. “…Right. Well, my rest certainly wasn’t disturbed, and I didn’t notice that lot when I left to take Bozo down the corndog stand on Peach Street…”
“She was open?” Firth raised his eyebrows. Powell could see the slow delight of an NCO figuring out who he got to Motivate at work behind his otherwise carefully neutral expression.
“Oddly enough, yes. Complained that her usual Gaoian customers were a no-show.”
Burgess and Arés made theatrical disapproving noises and shook their heads.
“How’s a nice abuelita supposed to make a living if her regulars abandon her?” Arés asked. “Seems downright criminal to me, sir.”
“Cold-hearted,” Burgess agreed.
Firth nodded solemnly. “A sin.”
“I was shocked myself,” Powell deadpanned. “I do hope our Whitecrests haven’t forgotten their responsibility to reflect well on the unit in their interactions with the public…”
“It’s a heavy lifting day for me,” Adam bounced on his toes and sent tremors through the ground while Powell was inspired to wonder if it ever wasn’t a heavy lifting day for him. “I could definitely use some extra help…”
“Mm.” Firth nodded at him, then returned his attention to Powell’s fanciful new roofing. “…You gonna keep the gnomes, sir?”
“Well, they brighten up the place…” Powell conceded, “…but they’re not really my style.”
“I’m sure somebody’ll know what to do with them.” Burgess said.
“Aye, I’m sure somebody will,” Powell muttered. Those were details he happily delegated to his NCOIC. “Just as long as it doesn’t impact mission readiness.”
“Yessir.”
“Well. Have fun, then.”
There was something deeply disquieting about several tons of Beef Trio chuckling darkly to themselves at the prospect of Motivation. No matter. He was ostensibly on leave after all, and he desperately needed to catch up on his reading.
And his sleep.
He woke up two hours later to the muffled sounds of gnomes being evicted from his roof, chuckled to himself, turned over, and went back to sleep with Bozo draped over his ankles.
It had been ages since he slept in past nine.
Date Point 15y5m2d AV Air Force One, En Route to Seattle, USA, Earth
President Arthur Sartori
“So you’ve had an idea?”
Sartori was lying on a couch tossing a baseball idly from hand to hand to help him think. He always had a lot of balls to juggle in the metaphorical sense, so tossing a real one around gave him something to focus on and grounded him.
Especially when it came to interstellar politics. Earth politics wasn’t simpler exactly, but at least his international opposite numbers were human. He kept worrying that alien psychology would trip him up, and the Hierarchy ultimatum was proving to be a little splinter in his sock that he couldn’t quite ignore. He stood by his decision, but he kept worrying that there was a more elegant way to handle it.
He’d quietly asked Margaret White to give the matter some closer thought with the aid of a few high-level thinkers from various Agencies, Committees and stuff.
Now she was on a video call looking glum.
“About the best we’ve come up is the possibility of putting the Hierarchy in a Catch-twenty-two,” she said. “You’ll probably have objections.”
“Lay it on me anyway.”
“So the idea is that if they want to play the ultimatum game… well, we can play it too by demanding a show of good faith.”
Sartori nodded. “Quid pro quo, huh? I can get behind that, but what kind of a good-faith gesture can we demand of them?”
“We know… or, well, we have very good reason to believe that the Hierarchy’s influence is at work behind the decline and approaching extinction of the OmoAru species,” Margaret reminded him.
“So… what? We demand that they reverse the process?” Sartori sat up and held the ball in both hands. “Is that even possible? My impression was the poor bastards are pretty far gone…”
“That’s just it. They almost certainly can’t heal the OmoAru at this point, or at least won’t. In which case we get to claim that they’ve given us no reason to trust them or show any quarter.”
“But if they can and do, then we end up with another humanitarian crisis on our hands,” Sartori predicted. “Not to mention a security hole in the form thousands of refugees we literally can’t de-implant.”
“And there are those objections I mentioned.” Margaret smiled primly.
Sartori grunted. “I haven’t even started. So let’s say we get the OmoAru released from their cybernetic shackles, the technology…dissolves or whatever and they’re free to be their own species again. That won’t bring their culture, history, scientific knowledge or expertise back. It’s an intriguing angle, but I don’t want to gamble with them calling our bluff. We can’t afford to babysit an entire species of recovering junkies.”
“To play devil’s advocate for a moment, that does mean letting the OmoAru go extinct.” Margaret pointed out. “Some will argue that we have a moral obligation to at least attempt to save them…”
“Yeah, they’ll argue that,” Sartori agreed. “But the OmoAru made their bed a long time ago.”
He sighed, stood up and prowled the office. The whole room was in the camera’s field of view, so Margaret had no problem watching him pace as he thought.
“You really don’t like the idea of total war, do you?” she asked.
“If I did, I wouldn’t be fit to be a small-town mayor,” Sartori opined. “The idea of wiping out even one species, let alone two, just sits wrong with me. Even if they’re monsters. Never mind how cold we have to be to let…God knows how many fall by the wayside as collateral…” He paused in the middle of the floor and fidgeted with his baseball some more.
“…I guess I should count myself lucky it won’t be my job to pull the trigger,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we aren’t realistically going to wipe out the Hunters before I leave office. And the Igraens are…” he shrugged and didn’t finish the thought. “…That reminds me. How did that proposed state visit to Gao go down?”
“Daar was receptive to the idea. Extremely so, in fact,” Margaret’s signature crimson lipstick always looked so strange when she smiled. She didn’t do it often. “He’s a man of action. He practically offered to come back through the jump array that evening and save you the trip.”
Sartori snorted. “He doesn’t seem the type to turn down an adventure.”
Margaret made a soft, faintly amused noise of agreement. “Mm. You never did explain why you want to meet with him so urgently, Arthur.”
Sartori glanced at the monitor, then corrected his gaze to the camera. “Answer me this, Margaret. How confident are we that the next guy’s going to follow the course I set? It doesn’t matter whether he’s a Republican or a Democrat or even by some miracle an independent. Can we be certain that the next administration is going to see the interstellar conflict through all the way to the end?”
Margaret thought about it. “I… wouldn’t care to comment. I don’t even know who the likely candidates are yet.”
“Exactly.” Sartori returned to his couch. “Now isn’t the time for uncertainty. We need the will to wage war and we need it to last longer than my presidency, however long that may be.”
Margaret frowned at him. “You’re worried your successor might pull out of a war for survival?”
“Tell me it’s impossible,” Sartori dared her. She didn’t reply.
He returned his baseball to its usual resting place on his desk and rounded the desk to sit. The office, tracking his movements, automatically put Margaret’s image on the desktop monitor rather than the wall.
“So what do you have in mind?” she asked.
“It starts,” Sartori said, “with puncturing Daar’s faith in humanity…”
Date Point: 15y5m2d AV Mrwrki Station, Erebor System, Uncharted Space
Lewis Beverote
Sleep wasn’t usually a problem. It was hard to have trouble sleeping when he spent the whole day working his ass off on intellectual projects then got home to a thoroughly physical girlfriend who had ways both pleasant and productive to work off any excess energy he may have left over, and who preferred to be the big spoon.
Ever since the Coltainer had been released, though…
He snuggled gently into Lucy’s arms and tried, really tried. But sleep just wasn’t happening tonight. Something was bugging him, and he had no idea what.
Eventually he extracted himself from the bed, took a shower and got dressed. He ordered SAM to pass on an apology and his location to Lucy if she woke up and wondered where he’d gone, and went for a walk.
The station’s 24-hour work cycle bore no relation at all to Mrwrki’s actual day-night cycle. The station was now permanently part of the icy lunar landscape and lots of engineering work had gone into converting it from a space-based habitat to a surface-based habitat. The moon—Thrór, one of the innumerable satellites of the gas giant Durin—took three days to complete an orbit and was tidally locked to its parent.
Right now, it was dawn outside and would be for the next four hours or so. Noon—roughly sixteen hours away—would be punctuated by a spectacular solar eclipse and from there they’d fall back down into the long evening and more than a day of twilight lit by Durin’s reflected sunlight, ten times brighter than a full moon on Earth.
Lewis never got tired of it, nor did anybody else. There was a reason the station’s recreational areas all had commanding views to the outside. The icy terrain around them might be lifeless, but it was far from bleak.
Someday, when the existence of Mrwrki and the Erebor system were declassified, the holyfuckabytes of data they’d gathered about Durin’s atmosphere and moons would give the lucky planetologists who first saw them a series of shattering orgasms.
“Hey, Beverote. You’re up way past your bedtime.”
Lewis tore himself away from the view. One of the station’s programmers slash digital security slash everything software-related experts had his feet up on a nearby table and a tablet in his hand. Davis. Lewis knew the surname but for the life of him he couldn’t remember the dude’s first name.
“Like, that makes two of us dude.” He set his coffee down opposite Davis and sat. “You can’t sleep either?”
“Insomnia. Had it my whole life.” Davis shrugged and offered a self-deprecating smile. “Good thing I enjoy my work.”
“Gotta be honest dude, I don’t remember which team you’re on…” Lewis prompted.
“Project Motoko. The digital sapient program.”
“Right.” Motoko was an application of the old “know thine enemy” schtick, dedicated to picking apart the secrets that let things like the Igraens survive outside of an organic brain. They had a few basic ideas about how the creepy fuckers worked, but that was about it.
Most of their information came straight from the Gao, who’d managed to capture a Hierarchy agent in the opening days of the war. Apparently it was holed up in a research bunker somewhere undisclosed being carefully watched through every instrument Clan Longear and Clan Shortstride could devise between them.
“How’s that coming?” Lewis asked. Davis shrugged ruefully.
“With luck, hard work and some more intel from captured sources we might even see a breakthrough this century,” he joked. “I tell you this though, I ain’t gonna be the Wegner for it.”
“The…what?”
Davis waved a hand. “It’s from my NSA days. Some Navy dude got super salty one time and basically gave his colleagues carte blanche to kill him with some of the cyber shit they were working ‘cuz he figured that was the only way to get management to understand how dangerous some of the stuff they wanted was. They called it the Wegner Protocol in his honor.”
“Huh.” Lewis sipped his coffee. “So, like, if we do somehow get brain uploads going, you ain’t volunteering?”
“Shit no. I know too much about how it works, too many philosophical questions.”
“Probably smart, dude. But man, sometimes I wish we could’ve Bobbed the Coltainers…”
It was Davis’ turn to raise an eyebrow. “Bobbed?”
“Bob Johansson. Main character of a book series that came out in twenty-sixteen. Brain in a computer, running a Von-Neumann colony probe just like our shit.” Lewis chuckled. “I tell ya, if we could pull that stunt then half my job woulda gone out the window two years ago.”
“I read the summary. You’re expecting a ninety-five percent failure rate on software limitations alone?”
“Yeah. Kinda crappy, ain’t it? There’s probably a bajillion viable colony sites out there that’ll get overlooked by the Coltainers ‘cuz they ain’t inventive enough to see the possibilities if they just tweaked the plan…” Lewis grumbled and swirled his coffee. “But Oh-Tee-Oh-Aitch, if it had the power to adapt it’d be even scarier. I don’t really wanna trust the power of exponential replication to anything smarter than my toaster, y’know?”
“Not even if there was a real human mind in the driving seat?”
“Especially not then, my dude. If a computer goes wrong, it’s just because it’s powerfully dumb. People go wrong because power corrupts.”
“What about your mind?” Davis pressed. “Don’t you trust yourself?”
“Dude.”
“…I guess you have a point there.”
Lewis sighed and swirled his coffee some more. It was good stuff, but ideally he wanted to go back to bed soon. A load of caffeine would do nothing to help him sleep. “…I guess I’m just anxious,” he said. Davis gave him a look that asked for more, so he elaborated. “About the Coltainers. Now that they’re away, I keep worrying about what I coulda or shoulda done different or if there was a better way to do something I did do, or…”
“Your kid’s all grown up and off to college,” Davis said.
“…Guess that’s part’a it, yeah. Like, the Coltainer project took five years of my life, man. And now it’s… done. Guess I just don’t know what happens next.”
“You could always work on Project Motoko,” Davis suggested. His grin said he wasn’t entirely serious, but that he wasn’t entirely joking either. Lewis laughed, then thought about it.
“…I guess. I mean, It’s interestin’ stuff. Or I could focus on nanofac technology, or FTL propulsion or… dude, there ain’t nothin’ I can’t turn myself to. And that’s the problem. The thing that really grabbed me is done with. There’s some side projects in the works but really when you finish designing one V-N probe, you’ve designed them all. Like, literally.”
Davis had no compulsions about draining his own coffee. “You must’ve had ideas from other people.”
“Yeah. The ETs keep droppin’ hints about the Hunters like there’s anything I could do about that shit. I mean, I could. Weaponizing the probes would be goddamn trivial. Then we just have to sit tight for ten years and drop a megafuckzillion RFGs on them, an’ I don’t want to be the guy who releases that on the galaxy.”
“I get where you’re coming from… but if you don’t, somebody will,” Davis pointed out. Lewis blinked at him, and he shrugged. “What, you thought you’re the only guy with the keys to the garage? Dude, somebody was always gonna build a Von-Neumann. Somebody’s gonna weaponize it, eventually. The question is, do you trust any other fucker to do it?”
Lewis blinked at him again, then looked at his coffee. It was slightly too hot to slam down like it was a shot, but he did so anyway and stood up.
“…Good chat, dude.”
“Anytime. Hope that’s your last sleepless night.”
“Dude. You too.”
Davis shrugged, and waved his hand at the view. “‘Least it’s never dull out there.”
Lewis raised his watch to his mouth as he headed for his workshop. “SAM, update message for Lucy. I’ll be in my workshop.”
“Roger-dodger, dude!”
“…SAM, who the fuck taught you Roger-dodger?”
“Nobody here but us chickens.”
That meant SAM had got it from Lewis himself. He was going to have to refine its vocabulary at some point. “…Whatever, dude. Copy the Coltainer schematics into a new folder for me, and name that folder…”
He hesitated long enough that SAM got curious.
“What’s the name, dude?”
“Call it… Call it Project Parker.”
He dusted his hands as SAM acknowledged the order and confirmed the file copy. It was a three-minute jog to his workshop, and he felt awake in the best way.
It was good to have focus again.
Date Point: 15y5m2d AV Rooney’s Bar, Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Senior Airman Rihanna Miller
“Christ, Miller. Where the hell do you put all that stuff?”
It was a girl’s night out. They’d even coaxed Martina Arés to waddle down the street with them, and promised to make up for the fact she couldn’t drink with a baby on board by drinking her share. Miller had no idea why she’d agreed to that particular bargain, but she seemed to be having fun.
Rooney’s, as the unofficial SOR hangout, was the obvious destination of choice. Probably some of the Lads and the other techs would show up later but for now they had the place more-or-less to themselves. It was still pretty early in the evening.
Miller put down her third empty beer. Folctha, it turned out, had amazing beer thanks to a combination of excellent mineral water and a huge agricultural sector. “This? Nah, this is just the warmup act.”
Arés gave her a dubious look over her Coke, then shrugged and took a sip.
“Warmup for what?” Deacon asked.
“More drinking!” Miller softened when she saw their expressions. “Relax, I know my limits.”
“Famous last words…” Deacon grinned and finished her own drink, which was more colorful and probably a lot stronger than beer.
“Weren’t you out last night as well?” Arés asked.
“Eh, swing and miss with Jack…He isn’t gay, or ace or whatever, is he?”
“Jack? Oh no. No. Nooo.” Arés shook her head. “No, definitely not.”
“Didn’t think s— wait.” She gave Arés a suspicious look, prompting her to take another straw-sip of Coke. “What’s ‘definitely not’ mean?”
Arés cleared her throat. “Let’s just say Adam had to warn him to stare someplace else.”
“I bet that went well…”
“He’s still alive isn’t he?”
Deacon laughed and finished her own drink. “Adam must like him a lot.”
“It’s kind of a little brother, big brother thing.”
“Very, very big brother.”
Arés rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well. They were in school together, Jack’s older sister was Adam’s best friend…”
“Yeah, what actually happened there?” Miller asked. “Everybody clams the fuck up whenever she’s mentioned. I know she died, but…”
“Not tonight. It’s a sad goddamned story.”
“See, that’s exactly what I mean,” Miller sighed.
“Kinda explains why Jack might turn you down, though,” Deacon mused.
“…How come?”
“Well, I mean…” Deacon waved a hand up and down her. “You’re a few years older than him, got some more life experience, you’re more confident, you’ve kinda taken him under your wing a bit…”
It took a few seconds for her meaning to percolate through the combined haze of being jilted and being buzzed.
“…Fuck. Really? Like…? Aww man, I don’t wanna be his surrogate big sister!”
“I think it’s too late for that. But to be fair,” Arés played with her empty bottle, “I think he’s got good taste in siblings.”
“…Thanks, I guess. But I need another beer now.”
“I don’t blame you,” Deacon stood up. “I’ll get ‘em. You too, Arés?”
“No thanks.”
“You sure?”
“You try drinking Coke with seven pounds of baby wriggling on top of your bladder, sometime.”
“Ew.” Deacon grimaced and headed for the bar.
“You have a talent for making pregnancy sound like a whole lotta not fun,” Miller commented. Arés shrugged.
“It ain’t,” she said. “But I definitely wouldn’t take it back, either.”
“Gettin’ that warm glow of motherhood yet?”
“Well…I will say this. Adam sticks to me like a woodtick these days. He’s practically smothering me in doting affection. Which is nice, but…”
“He doesn’t do anything halfway.”
“Nope!” Martina laughed in an exasperated sort of way.
“Looking forward to the birth?”
Martina pulled a complicated shrug. “He’s a big’n. Charlotte—that’s my midwife—says he’s above the ninetieth centile for weight. So that’s gonna be… fun…”
“You can’t have been surprised, though. I mean, look at the father.”
“Look at his grandfather though!” she retorted. “Gabe’s not a big guy. Though, uh… I guess my dad is. And Adam’s mom wasn’t exactly petite from what I hear. But I’m not big, and my mom’s even smaller, so…”
“…So basically, you have no idea what Diego will be.” Miller finished.
“Nope!”
“Well, at least you have a few weeks to go yet…Thanks, Deacon.” Miller accepted a new drink as Deacon rejoined them
“Trust me, that’s not comforting. I feel heavy enough as it is.” Arés smiled and looked down at her belly. “But I can’t wait to meet him.”
That got a synchronized “Aww!”
“What about you?” Marty asked Deacon. “Any action?”
“Ugh, don’t get me started,” Deacon snorted. “Every available guy in this town is either on the base or he’s some kinda soy-latte organic food hipster type. I’d sooner date a Gaoian.”
“Come on, that can’t be right,” Miller tried to buck her up. “There’s like fifty thousand guys in this colony and a lotta them are farmers. Can’t you find some ranch hand from out west?”
“Yeah, and then you find hay in weird places for like a week afterwards…” Deacon chuckled. “Actually, I’m being unfair. There’s this marine biologist over at New Penzance who’s pretty cute. Problem is, he’s oblivious.”
Miller nodded. She knew that story. “Lemme guess. British?”
“Yyyup. And a geek. It’s like a head-on collision of girl-stupid.”
“Maybe you should reconsider that rule you have about not dating guys from the unit…” Marty hinted.
Deacon shook her head vigorously. “Ohh no. Not happening.”
“Why not?” Miller asked.
“I like my job. I don’t wanna ruin it by having to see my ex every day.”
“You won’t have to if he’s not your ex,” Marty pointed out, but Deacon shrugged.
“Plan for the worst, hope for the best,” she said. “Though, maybe if Murray was younger…”
Miller’s eyebrow arched all of its own accord. “Wow. Murray? Really?”
“Careful,” Marty warned. “You never know when he’s around…”
The three of them carefully checked the area for Herculean Scottish ninjas.
“…Murray, though?” Miller insisted, once they were reasonably sure of his absence.
“Yeah. Why not?”
“He’s kinda scary.”
“Exactly. Any guy I dated would have to deal with Big Brother Firth. Murray could.”
“I…didn’t realize he was that protective of you.”
“Yeah, since basically the first day. Don’t ask me how or why. Besides,” Deacon sipped her drink before continuing, “You gonna tell me Moho wouldn’t do the same for you?”
Marty nodded, with a fond smile. “Yeah, the Lads kinda have two modes: Smash or protect.”
“I guess…” Miller thought about it, then drained half her beer while thinking about it some more.
“Coombes too, I guess…” Deacon said thoughtfully, then gestured to Marty. “Except he only has eyes for your sister-in-law.”
“Yeah, what’s with that?” Miller demanded. “Isn’t she, like, persona non grata?”
Marty shrugged. “She saved his life.”
“…You’re shitting me.”
“Nope. The whole subject is kinda thorny. Probably best to leave it be.”
Miller smirked. “That just makes me more curious. But okay.”
“Besides, she’s a good person,” Marty said, a touch defensively.
“She’s your husband’s ex and she cheated on him,” Deacon pointed out.
“Yeah, she fucked up big. And I still say she’s good. Besides, she’s family now.”
“…Right.”
“Deacon…” Marty warned.
“Right!” Deacon backed off. “Okay, okay…”
Miller cleared her throat. “Change of subject?”
Marty nodded. “Actually, I’m kinda getting to the point where I’m gonna need something to occupy my time. I can’t exercise right now, Adam won’t let me cook, I don’t really like movies… My mom wants me to take up crochet.”
“Hey, crochet’s fun!” Deacon objected.
“…You do crochet?” Miller asked. It as hard to believe, somehow. Deacon’s civilian style was a collision between skater punk and tomboy, and she had an impressively extensive set of E-tattoos covering pretty much her whole chest, her upper arms, her back and her stomach.
Deacon’s answer was to pluck at the off-the-shoulder sweater she was wearing and grin.
“Huh.”
“And hey! You could make baby stuff! Made from nice soft Naxas wool!” Deacon enthused.
Marty sighed. “Fine…Never let it be said I won’t try anything once.”
Deacon gave her a sidelong hug. “We can make ‘Horse a Christmas sweater!” she declared with, Miller thought, malicious glee.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I want. My man so overheated and musky the apartment’s air gets chewy.”
“It’s fine, you can turn the aircon on full and you’ll have like a billion handmade blankets and stuff to snuggle under,” Miller suggested.
This earned an encouraging grin from Deacon, and a nod. “A white Christmas, indoors!”
“And if he ends up smelling like a reindeer, that’s just more authentic!”
Marty was trying her hardest not to laugh. “That’s ridiculous. You’re both ridiculous.”
“Okay, but now picture little Diego dressed up as an elf,” Deacon suggested.
Marty snorted. “That’s child abuse!”
“Oh hush, he’ll never remember it,” Miller assured her. “Until years later, when he brings his first girl home and you whip out your fifty-pound baby album!”
“…Wait, like, an old-school physical album? Why?”
“More embarrassing. Just slam that bitch down on the counter and flip pages.”
“No! I’m not gonna be a hell-mom!” Marty objected. “I’ll be the kinda mom who breaks out the cookies and milk.”
“What if he’s a hell-boy?” Deacon asked. “Any baby you two have can’t be anything but a heartbreaker.”
Marty smiled. “All the more reason to be nice to any girl who can handle him—oof,” she hiccuped and patted her belly, “…That was a good one.”
“I guess we’re not doing much drinking tonight, huh?” Deacon asked.
“Hey, you two can have fun without me…” Marty said.
“Nuh-uh, bitch. I wanna teach you how to crochet now! Party at my place!”
“Heck of a party,” Miller snorted, but she finished her drink and stood up. “But shit, why not? I’m not in the mood for anything crazy tonight anyhow.”
Being perfectly honest, needlework sounded a lot like torture…but it was at least a les ser grade of torture than drinking alone after striking out. Besides, she was hungry and Deacon’s apartment was on Delaney Row, right next to the supermarket with its 28⁄7 deli. And hey, if the girls wanted to spend all night knitting sweaters and snarfing jalapeño poppers, who was she to say no?
There were worse ways to spend a night.