Date Point: 15y5m7d AV
The White House, Washington DC, USA, Earth
Margaret White
Arthur was furious. And Arthur Sartori, while he was generally a gruff and straightforward kind of man, very rarely got angry. Seeing him genuinely livid was a rare and intimidating thing.
“Did the Gaoians know this?”
The latest update on their intel from Gao—and specifically, the captured Hierarchy agent being interrogated there—was being delivered today by Colonel Daniel Shiderly, who from what Margaret could guess hadn’t slept much in a day or two. Maybe he was just one of those men who worked until he fell down by nature.
“We think Daar knows some elements of it, or maybe some version of the truth. He’s kept his cards very close to his chest about it all but given his actions, and…really, the entire history of Stoneback, they were clearly protecting against something.”
“Meaning that Stoneback has potentially had inklings about the Hierarchy for…what, the last six or seven hundred years? Our years?”
“Maybe. We don’t know what exactly they thought they knew. It could have been something mythological. That era saw the virtual death of their mythology—”
“Oh,” enlightenment struck Margaret in the head. “Oh. Oh, actually, that explains something that’s been puzzling us.”
Arthur gave her a curious look. “What?”
“Daar is fascinated with Gaoian mythology,” she explained. “If the Stonebacks were preserving that mythology from antiquity then that would explain…certainly their indoctrination for young initiates, but a lot else besides. Look at the terminology! The Third Ring, the First Rite. Goodness, they have initiates. That’s not the product of an entirely dispassionate and rational people, that’s a mystery cult.”
“Well…at least I won’t have to break the bad news to him in full,” Arthur grumbled and sat down on a couch. “Christ, just when I think we’ve hit the bottom of the rabbit hole it opens up below us again.”
Margaret cleared her throat. “It does raise the question of just how much of the Hierarchy’s influence and potential we’ve really seen…” she said. “It raises other questions, too. Were they eying us as one of their Janissary species?”
General Kolbeinn was on video conference from Scotch Creek. “The fact is, we might never know,” he said. “But both Six and Cytosis corroborate each other that they only learned about us sometime around about the mid nineteenth century. Personally, I doubt it: The Gaoian male-female imbalance makes them pretty much ideal for breeding an army, if your idea of combat is just throwing a wall of bodies at a problem. We’re not as well-suited to that.”
“That’s certainly how the Dominion and Alliance fight…” Arthur muttered. He rose from the couch again and retrieved his thinking baseball from the desk.
“And you’ve seen how smart the Gaoians are about it, too. Hell, look at how fast they’ve learned from us,” Kolbeinn noted. “There’s a saying: Quantity is a quality all its own. If you can muster both quantity and quality…”
“…Good God. Think about that statement. Now, look at Daar again.”
A valid point, that. He was well-poised to head a military with all the advances the United States had gained in the twentieth century, and all the technological advantages the Gao had, and their sheer overwhelming numbers. A billion-strong army was nothing to sneeze at. Throw in that Daar was a HEAT-quality warrior himself, and amongst the best of them to boot…
That was a potentially unbreakable advantage the Gao had, if they wanted to use it.
“Fortunately for us, he’s singular. There’s only a tiny handful of beings who could match him in the first place and he’s the absolute leader of the Gao. He’s pretty much a one-time event. Still,” Arthur added, “Best to stay on his good side, I think.”
“And? What will he do with that opportunity?”
“Hopefully, he’ll do what he says he’ll do and retire once his work is done.” Kolbeinn sat forward, a little closer to his camera. “But truthfully? Once Daar’s work is done, if they wanted to the Gao could kick our asses. They have the logistics, the numbers…our physical advantages wouldn’t be enough in the face of that. We’re lucky as hell to have them for allies.”
“Cultivating their friendship was the luckiest thing that’s happened to us,” Margaret said.
Colonel Shiderly made a low whistle. “God. This makes that Warhorse character the most ‘strategic private’ of all time.”
“No kidding…” grumbled Sartori. “Thank fuck for Regaari, too…and Ayma, God rest her soul.” He turned around. “Let’s face it, PR doesn’t come much better than two people braving a deathworld because they’re worried about their friend. Those two made our people love the Gaoians just by showing up.”
“And Champion Genshi,” Margaret reminded him. “He clearly knows more than he’s let on.”
“All of which means we can’t keep this secret from them. Look at them. They’re Deathworlders who are now recovering from literally millennia of suppression. I suspect that they’ll regain much of what they were sooner rather than later, and when they do they’ll still outnumber us by at least two to one.”
“Mm.” Arthur spun his baseball from one hand to the other a few times, then set it back down on the desk. “So in other words, there’s nothing Earth-shattering in this revelation, it’s just more evidence on why we should double down on our alliance with them.”
“That does raise the matter of Champion Sheeyo,” Margaret reminded the room. “He’s again requested that we send a representative to the Rich Plains…”
Sartori sighed. “…Given this revelation, I don’t think we can afford to frustrate our allies. If they want a representative, let’s send one. It’ll help the Ten’Gewek, too. But this time, I think we insist on heavy personal protection at all times.”
“I’ll start drawing up a short-list of candidates,” Margaret promised.
“Who’s the first name that springs to mind?”
“…Hmmm…” Margaret thought for a second. “Well, the two at the top would be General Tremblay and Admiral Knight.”
“Admiral Knight makes the most sense. He’s familiar with the HEAT and, being frank, someone like this Righteous fellow at his side might be the kind of intimidation we need.”
Margaret nodded. “I’ll see if he’s agreeable to it. Maybe we can help him with his daughter’s care needs, perhaps see if this Nofl fellow on Cimbrean can help…”
“Telling Daar will need to be handled carefully. He’s…” Sartori chose his words carefully, “Well, he’s intimidating, even when he doesn’t mean to be. I think I need to do it personally. This is too important to be left to anyone else and I suspect he won’t be too mad at me.”
“Your Secret Service detail won’t be pleased by that. He doesn’t…respect certain boundaries.”
“Just because he could kill my entire entourage in a heartbeat doesn’t mean he will. Don’t underestimate him: He’s a good man underneath it all.”
“A good tyrant,” Kolbeinn reminded them.
“Yes. Recall, however, that he never wanted that. He was created the Great Father.”
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely, Mister President. No disrespect intended.”
Arthur snorted and a genuine smile crossed his face and chased some of the wrinkles from his expansive forehead. “Oh, can it. I’m the President, which means I’m basically just a mushroom: I live in the dark and my Cabinet feeds me bullshit.”
“Mister President–!”
“Relax. If there’s one thing I learned from Daar, it’s how to not take myself too seriously.” Arthur leaned against the desk. “I’m not worried about him. He understands power better than most. But that said…let’s make sure his interests align with virtue. Is there anything else?”
“Not from me, Mister President,” Shiderly replied.
“I’m jumping out to Erebor this evening for a look at the new proposed Von-Neumann scouts. I’ll send a report.”
“Thank you both,” Arthur thanked them, and within seconds Margaret and he had the Oval Office to themselves.
“…Well. I guess that’s the interstellar matters dealt with for now,” Margaret said lightly.
“Sometimes I think we need a second President just to handle all that stuff,” Arthur replied, shaking his head. “At least it was a quiet domestic brief today. And as far as the Russians and Chinese arguing over Lucent goes, I’m happy to let them sort it out themselves.”
“None of our business, we have no opinion, et cetera.” Margaret nodded in agreement. “There was one other thing I wanted to raise with you. Nothing vitally important, but…well, interesting.”
Arthur stretched his back. “Oh?”
“You are aware of this Cruezzir-derivative, Gaoian-specific formulation the Corti have been supplying at effectively no cost, I believe.”
“Refresh my memory.”
“It seemed to function much like the Crue-D our own species uses, except tuned to Gaoian physiology. The lab report came back on the sample we managed to acquire.”
Arthur sighed. “Let me guess. They’re using the Gao as a test-bed?”
“…More like a clinical trial. Obviously we’re a long, long way behind both the Gao and the Corti in our biological sciences, but…”
“What…what did they add?”
“We…I’m waiting on Clan Openpaw’s opinion, they’re much better qualified to research it than we are…. But once I got past all the ‘telomere’ this and the ‘cellular composition’ that, the researchers think that one of the compound’s side-effects might be to counteract aging.”
Arthur’s head slowly tilted to one side as he considered that. “That…is very interesting. You mean Gao who use it will live longer?”
“Possibly. Anyway, this one’s an open research collaboration with the Gao, so there’s no need to brief Daar on it. He’ll know soon enough as well, if he doesn’t already.”
“…Something to chew on during my evening walk, at least,” Arthur decided. “Is the team ready?”
One of the most difficult points of high office was the constant security. He didn’t begrudge the Secret Service their needs—they’d saved his life several times already, though the public didn’t know—but it did mean he didn’t have the freedom to simply go for a walk, even just around the Rose Garden.
“They know your routine. I daresay they were ready an hour ago.” Margaret stood up, smoothed down her skirt and collected the few items she’d brought with her. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Sure enough, she passed his security team as she left the Oval Office and headed for her own, smaller and much less famous office down the corridor.
They really were not going to enjoy another meeting with Daar so soon after the first…
Date Point: 15y5m8d AV
Rob Rollins Dairy Farm, Peake Lowlands, Cimbrean, the Far Reaches
Rodolfo Hernandez
Mama never would have imagined her son would grow up to be a farmer.
…Actually, she never would have imagined a lot of this. Farming on an alien planet, having a bull literally ripped apart and eaten by alien cavemen, and now those same cavemen were back looking very sorry and promising to put in some work as repayment.
That wasn’t going to bring Odin back from the dead, nor was the twenty thousand pounds in compensation promised from AEC. Until that arrived Mister Rollins would have to make do with imported genetics until they got a new bull, and the whole program was going back to square one. They were breeding dairy cows for a low-gravity planet, that was a whole headache all by itself.
On the other hand…the hay bales were getting stacked at record speed. He hadn’t counted on them moving the round bales by hand but hey, that just meant Rodolfo could use his payloader for something else, like digging a new wallow for his growing herd.
They helped with that too, once he’d explained it to the…well, smaller seemed the wrong word. Younger, nuclear orange crested one, anyway. He had questions about everything.
Julian Etsicitty was with them too which was something to write home about all by itself. He was a much bigger sumbitch in person than he’d looked on TV, which honestly was saying something, but he seemed like a regular guy and had hands that told a life story of hard work. Rodolfo could appreciate that. Julian took one look at the state of the farmstead, pulled off his shirt, and set to work on the smaller bales in the calving barn. For a guy who’d gone to Mars and spent time on late night talk shows, it turned out he know a heck of a lot about farming livestock and he almost didn’t need any direction.
Julian sent the other two down to deal with the second set of huge round bales, and in the meantime he and Rodolfo worked up a hell of a sweat getting things squared away in the calving barn. He’d almost have felt insulted at the casual way Julian just tossed the big rectangular bales up into the hayloft like it wasn’t any big deal, but honestly it was nice to finally have someone else who was strong enough to get some hard work over and done with. Too strong, maybe: Rodolfo had to damn near kill himself to keep up with him. A few hours later and Rodolfo was completely tuckered out, so Julian lightly flung himself upstairs and set about stacking the hay to the rafters to make more room for bedding straw.
Rodolfo decided he should at least fix some lunch for everyone and left Julian to it. When he returned with three huge platters, Julian had already managed to throw all the straw into the hayloft by himself. If it weren’t for him being so darn friendly, Rodolfo would have found himself shamed by it all; a celebrity Julian may have been, but he was big as hell, strong as shit, and could work damn hard without stopping at all.
He finally took a breather when the promise of food was made, but held off on eating until the Ten’Gewek were done and chatted over a drink mid-afternoon, when Julian was looking downright nostalgic. Rodolfo always had a beer with lunch but Julian politely declined and settled for a jug of ice water, which he downed almost all at once.
“I take it you grew up on a farm?”
“Nah, but I grew up in farm country.” Julian scratched at some of the strawdust clinging to his chest. “Had lots of dairy too, or at least there used to be. Now they mostly do corn, soy, beets, alfalfa, that sorta thing.”
“No livestock?”
“Not too much anymore, no. Most of the dairy scattered across the region. I don’t remember exactly why, but it was in decline when I was still a kid.”
“There was still some, though.”
“Yeah. Hell, I remember when I was…thirteen, twelve years old? This big-ass storm came through and next door was calving three heifers in the middle of the night. Grandpa took me round there and I held the light for ‘em. Then I helped him pull two of ‘em.”
“Fun.”
“Eh, it was work and I got paid. Every little bit for new shoes, y’know?”
“No shit? I always figured you came from money.”
Julian chuckled softly, “Oh dude, I was a poor ass fella growin’ up. I get it, man. I had to work hard and save up for half a year to get shoes every fall, ‘cuz Grandpa couldn’t afford it and I sure wasn’t going to school in moccasins or something like that. Every dime he made went to food, upkeep, and property tax.”
“I never had it anything like that bad. Kudos.”
“Eh, to be fair I’ve got really big-ass feet so I couldn’t exactly go shopping at Walmart or whatever, but still. I also spent more on food than I needed to, I guess. Commods aren’t exactly a fine dining expe rience. Now beaver tail, that’s something worth suffering for.”
In the field, Yan hoisted a whole wrapped haylage bail up onto one shoulder, took aim, and with an insulting degree of ease he tossed it onto the top of the stack. It landed perfectly at the apex. He looked around and apparently decided that nobody was watching, because he promptly danced a celebratory little jig. Julian grinned and Rodolfo stifled a laugh.
“Don’t let him know you saw that. He’s supposed to be all dignified and stuff.”
Rodolfo chuckled. “See, that almost makes up for Odin all by itself.”
“…Yeah. I feel like I gotta apologize for that a little too. I should have been there to stop them.”
“Well…It’s Mister Rollins who really bore the brunt of it in the end. He was a good bull, though. Even-tempered, docile…”
“Not the way Vemik tells it…” Julian noted. There was a mischievous side to him, then.
“Yeah, you see how docile any bull is when it’s attacked.”
Julian shrugged those massive shoulders of his. “No argument here. Still. There is something we could all learn from this, y’know? Take Vemik over there. He’s a hell of a bruiser, right?”
“Yeah.” The big man wasn’t kidding. Vemik was busy rolling those bales over to Yan like he was having the time of his life. It didn’t seem like it was hard work for him at all.
“Neither of them really need to do any of this,” Julian said. “They don’t need to be here, they don’t need us now that we sealed up their world, they didn’t need to spare us when we first met, either. And no matter what Allison says, Yan would absolutely have torn me apart before she could have done anything. But here they are, being civilized and stuff.”
“…It’s hard to stay mad at him, I’ll say that,” Rodolfo admitted. “The money helps, too.”
“These two are literally the only members of their people who understand the concept of money. And of farms or livestock at this point. And burgers. I made the mistake of giving Vemik a handful of twenty-pound notes a little while ago and he’s very carefully kept every pence…so he could spend as much of it on cheeseburgers as he could. And sketchbooks. But mostly burgers.”
Vemik’s ear twitched at that word, and he stood up tall to call back across the field. “We burging?”
“Nope! We need to watch your diet, too! All burgers’ll just make you fat!”
Looking only a little bit dejected, Vemik returned to his task.
“…Burging?” Rodolfo asked.
“It’s a language thing. He got it in his head that you use a burger when you want to burg, and a hammer when you want to ham, and…so on.”
“…I kinda like that.”
“Yeah, me too. I’m pretty sure he knows better at this point but he’s a sly fella when he wants to be. He’s been attracting a lot of attention at the park when he goes off to adventure. Especially from girls, apparently.”
“Wait, what?”
“Don’t ask me!” Julian chuckled and scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. “I’d not wish the wrath of Singer on any of ‘em…Anyway I’m not gonna stop him from making friends. He’s here to learn and represent the Ten’Gewek, so…that’s what he does. Pretty well, too.”
“What about the really big guy?”
“Yan? He’s their chief and I suppose Vemik’s minder, too. Yan likes to visit the park too, but mostly he just wants to show off for the kids and talk to people.”
“About what?”
Julian shrugged. “Anything and everything. He gets to know them. It’s amazing how folks open up to him.”
The last bale was stacked and ready and Julian finished his water with a touch of smugness. “And they know a thing or two about hard work, too. Anything else you need done?” The way he said it suggested he really wanted the answer to be yes.
Too bad, really. “No, no more. We got a lot done today.”
“Darn,” he chuckled and went to go soak his head. “Vemik! Yan! C’mon back!”
Yan knuckled himself back at a leisurely pace, while Vemik couldn’t help but explore every little detail as he bounced along the path up to the barn.
Julian returned with his torso soaked clean and his t-shirt over his shoulder. “Just remember, that big fella? Yan is the Chief of the Lodge. He’s the leader of his entire species, so…y’know.”
“…Mind my manners?”
Julian stretched his t-shirt over his head and gave Rodolfo a sympathetic look. “I would appreciate it. I know you didn’t wanna be dragged into all this intergalactic bullshit, but…”
“I get it. And…it means a lot that they came back to apologize.”
“Tell them that yourself. Here they come.” Rodolfo again wondered just how young Vemik really was, because no grown man had that much bouncy energy or curiousity. He paused to investigate and experiment with the wrought iron hinges on the gate, looked at them intensely, then looked at Julian with what could only be a snarly grin and charged at an alarming clip—
—And leapt into the air, and tackled Julian like a linebacker leveling some doddering abuelita. It was definitely to Julian’s credit that he only staggered back a single step, then turned on the balls of his foot and slammed Vemik to the ground with a hell of a thud; Rodolfo would have been flattened and likely hospitalized by either of those two.
“Jooyun!” The young alien struggled to break free of Julian’s grasp but he was having none of that and bore down hard with a grunt of effort. “Ow! I saw a strange animal!”
“Oh?”
“Long, thin! Urf, No legs! Grrrrmphf… Like in story!”
“Ah!” Julian chuckled and let Vemik go, then they detangled and helped each other stand with noogies added for fun. “I bet that was a garter snake. They’re from where I came from!”
“Really?!”
“Yeah, buddy! They’re pretty harmless though. They just eat small critters like mice and worms. Or, I suppose baby Bibtaw if they got loose on Akyawentuo.”
“They good to eat?” Yan swaggered up seeming pleased with himself and the hard day’s work. All three of them would be awesome farm hands, really.
“Eh. It’ll keep you alive. Snake’s not my thing, though. I guess some people like it.”
“Good enough for me!” Yan declared, then turned his attention to Rodolfo. “Good work. Interesting. Can see how keep animals close is useful.” There was something in the big dude’s tone that seemed…diplomatic.
“But?” Rodolfo immediately regretted his question but Yan didn’t seem offended.
“But. I think, we be careful. Hunting, Important. Prey should live, fight for self.”
Rodolfo paused and thought carefully about what to say next. Julian stood by with his arms crossed and a faint little smile on his face, watching to see what happened.
“I think there’s smart words there. But there’s eight billion of my people. It’s hard to feed that many.”
“Billion.” Yan frowned, glanced at his fingers, then at his feet and twitched his tail in circles. “Is…nine zeros. Yes?”
“Uh…yeah.”
Yan thought about that for a while and glanced at Vemik, who shrugged. “Is too big number to think about.”
“No argument there.”
“Maybe, we commune with gods when we one billion, ask about prey. I will be very dead by then.”
“We all will. Anyhoo,” Julian took charge of the conversation again, “I hope we were helpful today. We didn’t mean to hurt your breeding program and on behalf of, well, everyone but especially myself…I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well…” Rodolfo stuck out his hand. “You repaid it.”
Julian stuck his rough paw out and they shook hands like men ought to. Hopefully, feeling would return to Rodolfo’s fingers by Friday. Yan and Vemik’s handshakes were just as rough but merely very firm, thankfully.
Then they finally ate their lunch. Rodolfo wasn’t sure which one of them destroyed their plate the fastest, but it was clear all three of them were in the habit of eating big and eating often. Then they opened up the food they’d brought with them and devoured that as well. Rodolfo was a long-time farmhand, he could get behind that.
They thanked him for the food and minutes later they were back in their van and gone, three days of unfinished work finished up in one morning.
Rodolfo sighed, looked at his watch and thought for a moment. He had a solid four hours before any chores had to be done. May as well send a video message back home.
It wasn’t every day a guy met people like that.
Date Point 15y5m8d AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Master Sergeant Derek “Boss” Coombes
Sometimes, rank didn’t matter one little bit. One of those moments came when Coombes felt the ground tremble beneath his feet, looked behind him and saw Technical Sergeant Adam Arés approaching him with his broad, goofy smile plastered across his face.
“Hey, Master Sargn’t, can we talk in private for a bit?” He draped one of those arm-slabs of his around Coombe’s shoulders, damn near sent him to his knees by the sheer weight of it, then effortlessly man-handled him towards a quiet corner in the gym and spun him around.
He wasn’t trying to be intimidating. Adam didn’t have to try at all, he just did it through the sheer power of being himself. Before he knew it, Coombes was trapped in a corner and being towered over by an utter giant of a man. Adam bounced in place and grinned, clothed in nothing but his laughably tiny Ranger panties while “freshly” dripping-wet from his third daily round at the weights. He looked like a hairy comic-book caveman and smelled like he’d just personally wrestled a herd of bison into a trailer with his bare hands, off to be slaughtered for his daily protein.
The trademark goofy smile just didn’t gel with that at all. In fact, he looked extra pleased about something. Best to keep things civil.
“Is there something I can do for you, Technical Sergeant?”
“You can call me ‘Horse if you want! Can I call you Boss?”
Coombes relaxed and chuckled. He had to admit, the young man was good at defusing his own innately terrifying presence. “…So long as you get to the point, maybe?”
“Ha!” Adam had two laughs. The first was an entirely incongruous lengthy wheezing Muttley snicker, which honestly belonged on a man a ton or three lighter and fifty years older.
This one was his other laugh: the seismic bark. If Bozo were a human, he’d be Adam.
…Or was it the other way around?
Anyway. “What’s up, ‘Horse?”
“You’ve been hangin’ out a lot with Ava.”
…Fuck. Coombes felt his heart leap in his chest.
Visions of “sparring” suddenly danced before his eyes, probably like someone on the verge of death who was re-living his boring, uneventful life…maybe one where he wasn’t crushed to death by a pretty-much literal superhero who could shake buildings with his every step.
Fuck.
Coombes racked his brain for an escape from his predicament. “Well, uh, let me—”
“When you gonna ask her out?”
That was…entirely not the question Coombes had been expecting, and it probably showed on his face, too. His heart hadn’t stopped trying to explode yet, but at least he remembered how to breathe.
“…Say what?”
That seismic rumble of his, again. Well, that one was different. It was…a chuckle. A darkly amused chuckle. And a very smugly dominant one, too. Well, shit.
“You heard me. You gonna ask her out? If you leave it any longer I’m gonna start thinkin’ you’re leadin’ her on.” He drove the point home by tilting his big blocky head on that absurd, leg-thick non-neck of his until it popped loud enough to echo in the corner. He sighed happily, then instantly tensed every slab-like muscle in his entire body.
“I mean, you ain’t, right?”
The kid could teach a master class in intimidation. Christ.
Still, somehow Coombes found it in himself to stand up a little straighter. “…Start from the top. You want me to ask her out?”
“Come on, the two of you hang out literally every day, an’ she’s crazy about you…An’ I’m pretty sure she made an impression too, huh?”
“…Well…uh, yeah. Hell, I—” being flustered was kind of a new one on Coombes. “But I mean…you and her—”
“Oh, bro! You ain’t gotta worry ‘bout me. Ava and me, we have…uh, a weird relationship. I wish it didn’t end like it did but I don’t hold it against her too much. I was kind of a dick to her for years and I didn’t even know it. Also,” he grinned smugly, “The little shit she cheated with is puny as hell and has a fuckin’ disaster of a life, so whatever. Her loss.”
Coombes cleared his throat. “…The age gap doesn’t bother you?”
“Bro, that’s between you and her. She don’t mind none.”
Coombes noted in the back of his head that Adam wasn’t using his customs and courtesies properly. “Bro” was not how one addressed a senior NCO, at least not outside some very unique circumstances. But then again…Coombes wasn’t going to push his luck at the moment. Adam had started bouncing on his toes again and that frenetic energy of his was legendary. Nobody wanted to be in line-of-sight when he decided on a little personal training for his next “client,” and right now he was sizing up the hopeful boyfriend of a woman he obviously loved dearly.
Well, there wasn’t any escape for Coombes. He relaxed and decided to open up.
“…Hell, you’re right,” he sighed. “I’d have asked her on a date months ago if it wasn’t for all the personal shit around her and the Lads and…everything…Let’s face it, she kinda saved my life. That made an impression, y’know?”
“You let me worry about that,” Adam offered. Once again, it was the little details. Just a quick motion across his ridiculous body to convey exactly how he’d take care of that problem, and Coombes felt both cowed and relieved. Tip-toeing around the Lads would have been a no-go.
Still. “Okay. I just need to be absolutely sure. You are okay with me pursuing Ava. You are, in fact, asking me to. You are going to make it completely fucking clear to everyone you are okay with it. You are not going to yank the rug out from under me over this.”
Adam frowned and looked faintly hurt. “Nah bruh, I say a thing, I mean it. I want her to be happy. I also like you and being honest, I think you both kinda need it, too. She needs somebody she can rely on, and you ain’t dated anyone since I’ve known you. And you’re an old-school operator, I know how it goes. Believe me.”
Coombes has heard the rumors on that front as well. In the span of less than a year, the bouncy hulk had pretty much literally plowed his way through the entire receptive population of Foltcha about four times over and somehow engendered no ill will for it, either. Coombes had no idea how Martina had tamed a man like Adam, but he wasn’t going to question life’s little mysteries.
Coombes was no wallflower himself, but his belt didn’t have anywhere near that many notches. Especially lately. “…I haven’t dated anyone since my divorce,” he confessed. “And that was back before EMPTY BELL.”
“Oh, hell. Okay. This bit is maybe overstepping the line a little, but can I offer you a tiny piece of advice, Master Sergeant?”
Ah. Adam had distinctly moved from one mode to another and done so masterfully. Honestly, he very clearly knew how to control a situation. Coombes knew exactly what Adam was doing, knew exactly why, and felt absolutely no will whatsoever to call him on it. Adam had definitely been paying attention in class. Hell, he could teach the class.
…That was maybe a thought for later.
Coombes decided to keep it friendly, and invite him to do so as well. “Go for it, ‘Horse.”
Adam grinned at that, happy and genuine. “Okay! Look, man. Most of the HEAT is still single. The regimen keeps us all like young men, so…y’know. Anyway, it’s really just me and Righteous who have any long-term thing going on right now, so why don’t you go down to Rooney’s this weekend with the Lads, get your pipes cleaned out, and see if you still feel the same way? I don’t want you starting shit with Ava unless you’re committed and you’re goddamned sure.”
Coombes’ gut did something interesting—it balked at the idea. Just hearing the suggestion made him feel guilty, which if he stopped to listen to himself meant he already knew his own mind.
…And Adam knew. Coombes could tell just by the way those dark brown eyes bored into him.
“…Or not! You could just go for the ambiance. Only reason I don’t go is ‘cuz I love Marty too much, y’know? She’s gonna pop any day now, and it’s been months…”
…Ah. That explained everything about Adam for the last few months, and was probably the reason everyone’s training across SOR had progressed so much, especially his; Adam was a fanatically attentive personal trainer and had been inescapable since the beginning of the year.
“Don’t want the temptation?”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t ever, not after what happened between me and Ava but, y’know. Also there ain’t no point in me blue-ballin’ myself. More.”
“Yeah.”
“Anyway!” He’d shifted mode again, and now somehow he was a light, bouncy engine of happiness who led Coombes out of the corner and effortlessly directed him toward the serious end of the gym, with himself sauntering comfortably alongside; the man was so utterly fucking huge that a confident, leg-swinging swagger seemed to be the only way he could thump along. Clearly, this conversation wasn’t going to end before he’d exercised his authority to PT people to death.
Like a condemned man commenting on the weather as he was led to the gallows, Coombes ignored the impending unpleasantness in favor of a more agreeable topic. “…Got any more advice? Say, about what she likes?”
“You’re askin’ entirely the wrong man. Shit, you probably know better than me.”
“…No…uh, um…” Shit. How would he broach the subject—?
“Good, hard, as long and as much as you can stand. You gotta compete with me after all!”
…There was a mental image he hadn’t really wanted. There was a twinkle of mischief in Adam’s eye, too. Martina had clearly rubbed off on him, a little too much.
…Maybe that was the wrong turn of phrase.
“Also!” Yet another strategic shift. “One thing I’ve noticed is you’re not particularly flexible and you wind too easily under load. Big part of that’s your diet—you eat like shit, Master Sergeant—but the rest is your training. We’re gonna fix that. Tonight, let’s get you stretched out properly,” He squeezed his fists closed and cracked his knuckles, “And then we’re gonna work on your endurance…” There was the trademark Arés Grin of Pain. “…You’re gonna need it.”
Coombes sighed, but didn’t object. Nothing good ever came without a payment…And for this, he’d gladly pay his ton of pain.
At the end, though, Adam was kind enough to carry him upstairs to a clean bed. Whaddaguy.