Supernova (17 page)

“Cabin,”
he corrected.

“Whatever.
I just put Anya in front of the vidscreen and Jonn’s at his poker game. I
called Dad and he said you were docked at Rubidge for a couple of days.” She
grinned. “You know what I want to know.”

He
really wished she would stop reading the tabloids. “There’s nothing to tell,
Nalia,” he said. Fleet’s ability to monitor every message was never far from
his mind.

“Oh,
come on. Even Dad told me that everything in the press is lies and there really
was a frozen body found on a patrol ship with crappy life support.”

“Nalia!
Shut up!” He could tell her what life support actually was later.

“You
happen to be commanding a shit-hauler with a notorious reputation and you’re
one of three ships that docked at a Fleet base since the story broke. One of
the others was a newer patrol ship, the other a battleship. Am I right?”

“Damn
it, Nalia.” He really wished he could cut off visual on messages and use the
kind of telephone technology Lily had told him about. He pinched the bridge of
his nose and tried to remember how often Fleet monitored messages sent from
captains’ offices. Never, as far as he knew. And if their father had been
talking... “How did you figure it out?” he asked quietly.

“I didn’t.
I was messing with you. You just told me.” She sounded positively gleeful.

Aggravation
clenched his gut. “Are you trying to get me court-martialed? That could happen,
you know.”

“Military
channel,” she said automatically. “I think you’re safe.” She rolled her eyes,
and Rian uttered a silent prayer to the gods that she would finally grow up
soon.

“
Sabi
eabht ermabt releabvart a eabh ro ealish
?” Nalia asked devilishly.

For the
gods’ sake. It was the secret language she and Rian had created as children.
Is
the time traveler a he or a she?
“I can’t talk about that now, and please
stop acting like a child on my office computer,” he said. But he knew Nalia and
her persistence. Her refusal to stay out of anyone’s business was one of her
qualities that made a Fleet career impossible. He had to distract her somehow. “I
met someone,” he said suddenly.

Nalia
raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? You never tell me about your girlfriends.”

“She isn’t
my girlfriend.”

“Now who’s
acting like a child?”

She had
a point there, but he was doing it out of necessity. “This is very new and I
don’t know if it’ll go anywhere yet,” Rian continued. That much was the truth. “I
feel very...differently about her than anyone else.” Also the truth.
Manhandling women in lifts wasn’t something he usually did.

“What’s
she like?”

“She’s a
pharm tech,” he lied. Half-lied. She would be one soon. “Very smart and
outgoing. She has a great sense of humor.”

All
true. Lily didn’t hide herself at all. He liked that very much. No pretensions
about her.

“Is she
pretty?”

She was
more than that. “Yes,” he finally said. “She’s beautiful.” That word still didn’t
convey her smile or the curve of her hips.

“Is she
on board the
Defiant
?”

Rian
didn’t answer immediately. Nalia’s jaw dropped, and he got a bad feeling that
she had just put two and two together. “Oh my gods!” she gasped. “What happened
to Mr. Captains-Don’t-Get-Involved-With-Subordinates?”

He
breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t come up with four. “I didn’t know she was
going to be joining the crew,” he protested.

“A
patrol ship has a pharmacy now?” she asked suspiciously.

Damn.
He thought quickly. “She works
in the infirmary dispensary,” he said. “And we’ve only been out to dinner a
couple of times.”

“I never
thought I’d see the day my by-the-books little brother broke his own rules.”
She snickered. “What’s her name?”

Rian
hesitated.

“If you
don’t tell me, I’ll know you’re making her up,” she warned.

Lily was
an uncommon name in the Commons, but not unheard of. He could tell Nalia the
truth, and he did.

She
leaned back in her chair and gave him a sly smile. Rian tensed. He knew that
look. They were kids again, and he had been caught passing around a bottle of sala
with his friends at their boarding school. He was about to be blackmailed.

“Don’t
you dare,” he hissed.

“Mom and
Dad will be thrilled.”

“Nalia,
don’t. If and when I decide Mom and Dad need to know, I’ll be the one to tell
them.”

“But you
never tell them anything,” she wheedled.

“There’s
nothing to tell.”

“You
have no idea how pissed off Dad was when he heard about your promotion through
military channels.”

Actually,
Rian did. He had received an angry message from the retired Captain Marska two
days after he took over the
Defiant
. “He only did it to make a fuss and
remind me he’s my father. This technically isn’t a promotion, and he knows it,”
he pointed out. “I’m still officially a commander.”

Nalia
dismissed that comment with a wave of her hand. But then, she wasn’t military.
She didn’t get it.

“Just
tell them,” she said, an uncharacteristic softness in her eyes. “They worry
about you.”

Rian
snorted softly. Their parents were Fleet through and through. They had gone
months at a time without seeing them when they were kids, only remembering they
were parents when school administrators notified them about achievements and
punishments. Nalia couldn’t even offer a token excuse like the expectation of
grandchildren—she had that covered with her toddler, whom they had barely seen
in her two years. Nalia’s husband’s parents, owners of a freighter company,
doted on the little girl instead.

But Rian
knew if Nalia told their parents about Lily, there would be calls just to be
difficult, an investigation into her background, and then all hell would break
loose.

“If this
goes anywhere, I’ll tell them,” he promised. He paused. “I’d like to be in a
position where I have to.”

“I know
you,” Nalia said. “Remember our deep, mystical twin connection. You really like
her.”

“I have
other concerns, too,” he began.

She cut
him off. “Rian, you told me you met someone. You even described her in terms
broader than ‘she’s female.’ You never do that.”

Rian’s
hand hovered over the “disconnect” icon on the screen before she could wrestle
more information from him. “Nalia, I have security issues with a known alien
terrorist faction to worry about. I have to go now.”

“Good
night,” she said. “Call me when you get the chance, or I’ll tell on you.”

* * *

Lily
surprised Taz in their weapons training.

“It’s a
laser rifle,” she pointed out. “It’s easier to aim with a charge instead of
bullets.” Her father had taught her to shoot with pellet guns and a hunting
rifle, putting bullets in rows of Diet Coke cans balanced on a fence.

The
Defiant
had a target shooting simulator on board, and Taz had set up a program that
projected moving human-sized targets across a screen along its back wall. He
had prepped a few weapons for her and she had hit a few targets on his command,
making the projections explode into pieces before a new one took shape.

“This is
easier than the laser pistol,” she said. “I learned to shoot on something
similar.” One of the targets shattered as the charge, set to stun, hit its
mark.

“Remind
me never to piss you off,” Taz remarked. “Let’s try two.” He adjusted the
projection from a console and a pair of black outlines raced across the screen.
Lily felled one immediately, but the other was being difficult. Its form shrank
as it ran towards nothingness and dashed side to side. She fired three more
charges before it finally exploded. The status light on the top of the rifle
changed from green to yellow.

Taz
noticed it. “This’ll have to be charged soon,” he said. “And I have to clean up
before a few security officers come in to try out some new toys they picked up
on station. They’ll be here in a half-hour or so.” He took the rifle from her
and clipped a charger to its stock before stashing it in the weapons locker.

“They’re
training at eleven?” She remembered military time. “Twenty-three hundred hours,”
she corrected herself.

“Patrol
ships never sleep.”

“What
are you patrolling, exactly?” Whenever Lily looked out a window, all she could
see were endless stars and, in the distance, the occasional abandoned satellite
or rare ship.

“Nothing
while we’re orbiting around the station,” Taz replied. From the control console
he turned off the projection. “We’re heading to the Fringes, the area where
people don’t start firing at Commons ships, to drop off that science team and
keep watch for smugglers. If we find any, we call in a larger patrol ship, like
Bishop’s Pride
, or a battleship to take care of the rest.”

“Everyone
keeps talking about the Fringes. What are they?”

“Independent
republics. The further away from the Commons they are, the more they hate
civilized space.”

“And you
don’t arrest anyone yourselves?”

“Not
often. Depends on the pirate and his ship. A ship like the
Defiant
mostly
just points to the bad guys and lets others take the credit, and in between
does the crappy jobs no one else wants to do, like hauling museum artifacts.”
He double-checked the weapons locker to make sure it was secured. “Lights!” he
barked harshly, and the room’s illumination decreased. “I could teach you some
hand-to-hand combat,” he offered.

Lily
regarded him for a moment. He wasn’t quite as tall as Rian, and almost skinny.
If she didn’t know he was a soldier, she wouldn’t have considered him
threatening at all. “I don’t know,” she said. “Most of you in Fleet are twice
my size. You also have a desk job. Is there even a point?”

Taz
looked offended. “I’ll have you know I graduated from the academy with a
concentration in engineering
and
an award for hand-to-hand combat. I’m
only stuck in communications until I’ve decided to stop enjoying myself at my
job. And I’m sure what you meant to ask about is if there are there effective
self-defense methods besides kicking someone in the balls. There are. That’s
the first place we anticipate being attacked by a woman. You have to catch them
off-guard.”

“You
sound like you speak from experience.” Knowing Taz and his attempts at
womanizing, he likely was.

They
left the room, and he palm-locked the door behind them. He was quiet; his
expression darkened. She had hit a nerve.

“Yeah,”
he said. “My ex-wife’s mother.”

They
waited for the elevator, and Lily tried to process this new information. “Wife?”
she squeaked out.
Ex-wife?
He wasn’t even twenty-five.

He shook
his head. “You won’t believe me, but I’ll tell you. Alcohol is required.” A few
guys bearing security insignia and carrying gun cases stepped out. Taz ordered
the elevator to the mess. He was quiet until they sat at the bar, beer in front
of him and a glass of blue wine for Lily.

“I got
married when I was seventeen,” he finally said. “Arranged marriage. They’re
common where I come from. Vu’saar,” he explained, seeing the question on her
face. “It’s a small planet in the Hefronn Galaxy. If the
Defiant
was
heading there at top speed, it would take about four months, to give you an
idea of how far away it is. It’s beyond the outer Fringes, minds its own
business, and hates technology.”

“Vu’saar,
then. Aren’t you human?” she asked.

“Humanoid,”
he corrected. “Same as you, with a few subtle differences. Most Vu’saarns have
telepathic or empathic talents. My empathic talents are very weak, and my
ex-wife has none. Our parents were elders there, and probably still are. It’s a
position you’re born into, similar to royalty.”

“So you’re
a prince.” The idea of Taz being royalty would have made Lily giggle if he weren’t
so unusually serious.

“I
was
,”
he said. “I was the oldest child in the family and entitled to take a place as
an elder, except I’m not a telepath. They don’t look kindly on non-telepaths in
the ruling class. Another elder family had the same problem with their oldest
daughter, so they decided we should marry and live as commoners. I was fine
with that, and so was Maranda.” He took a long drink from his beer, and Lily
followed suit with her wine.

“We got
along fine. We didn’t love each other,” he stressed. “But we got along well
enough. I knew she was seeing someone else behind her parents’ backs, and I was
okay with that.”

Lily
nodded, pretending to understand.

“It was
a political alliance, Lily. Our parents were mortified that they made children
who had to speak to be heard, and they wanted us out of sight. Anyway, one
night Maranda went out with her boyfriend and I was out with my brother. I came
home first, and at dawn Maranda was dragged home by her mother, who was enraged
that she was having an affair and I didn’t care. We never...” Taz had the
decency to color. “Um, you know. Knew each other that way. We were just friends
sharing a house. My mother-in-law beat the shit out of both of us, and we were
disowned by our families. Me, Maranda, and her boyfriend got on a freighter to
a planet on the Fringes-Commons border. They joined the freighter crew, I
joined Fleet. I haven’t been back to Vu’saar since.”