An Officer’s Duty (33 page)

Bennie pushed away from the door, swaying forward with a glare of her own. “If you expect to become a
successful
officer, that means you
cannot hide
from your own emotions!” She pointed at Harper, who swayed back from her jabbing finger. “If you want to get out of here without this session being recorded and going on your permanent record, you will
look
at Cadet Harper and tell him
exactly
how you feel about him!”

“Excuse me,” Meyun interjected, “but can I join this conversation, or should I just pretend that I’m not actually a part of this?”

“Stand down and wait your turn, Harper,” Bennie ordered, pointing her finger at him. “Ia has the bigger problem at the moment.”

Ia closed her eyes, struggling for self-control…and the strength do it. She
knew
Bennie wasn’t bluffing. With Harper standing next to her, there was nothing she could to but comply, in order to navigate the invisible rocks that threatened to overturn all her work. But it wasn’t that simple. It could have been so easy, to just tell him—and Bennie—the truth of her work. Tell them both about her gifts, and the future she was driven to save.

But Meyun Harper was the Great Grey Mist in her mind, his actions obscured, his motives unsure. She had no way to foretell
what
he would do with that information. That meant she could not risk telling him any of it…and by extension, that meant keeping her friend and chaplain in the dark as well. Letting it all go, Ia breathed deep and opened her eyes again. She glanced at him. He was busy giving the chaplain a dark look; somehow, that made it easier to confess what she had to say.

“Meyun Harper…you scare the
shova
out of me.” That shifted his gaze from Bennie’s face to hers. She looked into his dark brown eyes and continued. “I find you brilliant, funny, handsome, sexy, companionable…I stand in awe of your technical genius, and since you’re a heavyworlder, I don’t quite feel like I’m going to break you in half if I so much as sneeze on you. I
can’t
predict what you’ll do or say, and that scares me,
yet it fascinates me at the same time, since I never know what you’ll do next.
But.
”

“But?” he repeated, folding his own arms defensively over his chest. “But, what?”

“
But
, I am going into pilot training after the Academy. Every sign indicates I will be posted to a Blockade Patrol, where I know I can do some real good in the Service…and I
cannot
be assigned to the same ship as you. Not on Blockade.
Everything
about you is a distraction to me.” She glanced at the chaplain waiting patiently by the door, then back to Meyun. “Don’t mistake my meaning. I
do
want to get to know you better…on several levels…but I cannot afford it.
You
cannot afford it. Between the rules against fraternization between cadets, and the fact our career tracks are taking us off in two different directions, we have no viable future together.

“So I was
ignoring
it,” she groused, shooting Bennie another dark look. “
Not
running away, just ignoring it. I apologize if that spilled over into ignoring you. I’ll try to be less of an asteroid in our quarters from now on. That is, presuming all of these ‘confessions’ don’t disgust you.”

“Oh, they don’t disgust him,” Bennie interjected, earning another glare from Harper. “He’s already confessed to me that he’s fallen in love with you.”

The blood left Ia’s face. In fact, it looked like it went straight to Meyun’s. Tan cheeks reddening, he sputtered a moment, glanced between the two women, then growled at Benjamin, “Ia’s right. You
are
a two-fisting—!”

Ia’s rare sense of humor surfaced, at that. Smirking, she met Bennie’s scowl. “As you said when you arrived here, Bennie, I have a quick, keen grasp of most situations. Pain in the asteroid, isn’t it?”

Bennie scoffed. “Except when it comes to your own heart, you don’t. Meyun, look Ia in the eye and tell her how
you
feel.”

Like Ia, it took him a few seconds to gather himself before he could look her way. She held herself still, waiting to hear what he had to say. Wanting to hear it, and dreading it.

“
Exactly
how you feel,” he murmured. “I feel it, too. I like you, I’m surprised by you, and you make me laugh. I enjoy just sitting in the same room with you, both of us working on whatever… but I don’t like being ignored. That hurt.”

Ia nodded slightly to acknowledge his pain. She looked down, only to glance up sharply again as he continued.

“I
want
your eyes on me. I want your mind on me, your hands on me. I’ve probably spent three out of every seven showers playing with myself, thinking about you—”

Oh, dear god
…She blushed so hard at his confession, it felt like her feet were going to faint.

“—and the other four banging my head against the wall of the stall. I
know
you’re headed for a Blockade Patrol, whereas I’ll get whatever duty post the system throws at me,” Meyun admitted, his own face red. “I admire your devotion to duty at the same time that I hate it, because I
want
to keep you to myself, yet I couldn’t keep you here and keep you the woman that…the woman that I’m falling in love with.”

Taking a step closer, Meyun caught one of her hands, sending a thrill of excitement and fear up her nerves from the warmth of his fingers cupping hers.

“You’re absolutely right, this could torpedo our advancement possibilities if it gets out of hand…but the bitch of it is, Chaplain Bennie is
also
right. If we don’t confront this, get it out in the open and
deal
with it, we won’t stand a chance at effectively leading anyone under our command.” Holding her hand a moment longer, he squeezed her fingers and released it, stepping back. Tucking his hands into his trouser pockets, Meyun shrugged. “So. The question is, where do we go from here, and how do we handle this…attraction…between us?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had to deal with this situation before,” Ia admitted honestly. “I’ll try not to ignore you in our quarters, but…I
won’t
compromise the rules.”

“If I may make a suggestion—and no, you may not say I’ve already suggested enough,” Bennie interjected, “I’d like to point out that there is a narrow window of opportunity that both of you are overlooking.”

Both Ia and Meyun gave her bemused looks.

“Just because your careers are headed in different directions doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun before parting company,” Chaplain Benjamin pointed out. “After all, most cadets are given a week of Leave after graduation before being shipped out.”

“I was planning on saving that week for later, so I could
have more time to get back home again in a few years,” Ia pointed out.

“I’ve done the calculations. The next round of the flight school you’ve picked doesn’t start until five days after you’re scheduled to graduate, or twenty-five days after, and I know you’ll be aiming for the earlier session,” Bennie said. “Factor in a day for travel to the Academy Saturnia, and that gives you four whole days with nothing to do. It’s not like you can offer to do guard duty around here in the interim, like you did back on the ship,” she added pointedly. “Take the vacation, take each other off somewhere, and take some of the edge off your sexual tension—if nothing else, it’ll be a good test of your characters, holding off when you know you
do
have something to look forward to,” she finished.

Twisting his mouth, Meyun pulled his hands out of his pockets. Eyeing Ia, he fisted his fingers, gesturing forward and down with both arms in silent insult. Ia snorted and nodded in equally silent agreement. Watching them both, Bennie tightened her mouth for a moment, then flipped her hands at the seats in the room.

“Sit down and talk it out. Whatever you decide to do is whatever you decide, but ignoring it
won’t
make it go away.”

Meyun eyed Ia, lifting his brows. She smiled mock-politely at him and gestured toward the seats. He mock-bowed in return and took himself back to the chair he had been occupying upon her entrance. Following suit, Ia dropped into one of the thickly cushioned chairs across from his and curled up her leg, tucking her ankle behind the other knee. Both of them ignored Bennie, who remained leaning against the counseling room door.

“Alright. Fine. How do we go about resolving this?” Ia asked him. “It’s not like we
can
do anything about it while we’re still both cadets, roommates or otherwise.”

“Well, it
is
the elephant in the corner of our dorm room,” Meyun agreed. “I like having you as a friend. I enjoy talking with you. But we can’t go any farther than that. So…let’s just keep a watch on each other’s conduct. I want to talk with you, but if we start straying into the wrong topic, or look too long, we just say…‘elephant’ I guess.”

“A code word?” Ia asked. He nodded, and she nodded as well. “Yes…that could work. I do miss talking with you. It
was just easier to do it when other people were around. I was always aware about not going beyond the bounds of propriety with them there.”

“I can understand that,” he acknowledged. “It was a pain in the asteroid, because I didn’t know why you were being so friendly in public and so…not…in private, but it makes sense. So. The rest of the term is covered. What about Bennie’s suggestion for the days immediately after? Would you care to get a hotel room somewhere nearby and go at it like a pair of rabid rabbits for a few days? Get it out of our systems?”

Ia blushed at the suggestion.

“It’d be something to look forward to,” Harper offered lightly. “A way to deal with the elephant in the room, even if it’s a delayed one.”

“Harper…I haven’t
ever
‘gone at it like rabid rabbits,’” she warned him. “I’ll probably be lousy at ‘it.’”

“Nonsense, you’ll do fine,” he dismissed, flicking his fingers. “Everything else I’ve seen you try, you’ve picked up quickly and competently.”

Yeah, but that was with the forewarning of precognition guiding me,
she thought. Sighing, Ia rubbed her forehead with one hand. The idea of finally getting her hands and other things all over him was too appealing to resist.
I’ll have to contact the priests back home, see what tips they can give me for locking down my gifts during intimacy so they hopefully won’t trigger. Or rather, find something in the Nets that’ll give me a clue, since my calls are probably all monitored as a “cadet of interest” to the DoI, and a conversation
that
blatant would give everything away. My gifts, our attraction to each other…

“Besides, I could always try teaching you. Not that I’m the best myself, but practice does make perfect,” Meyun joked.

That coaxed a rueful smile out of her. “Only a few days’ worth…I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

A snort from the far side of the room drew their attention back to the other elephant on hand. Bennie pushed away from the door, approaching the two of them. She rolled her green eyes at Ia. “If you give yourself enough time to talk yourself out of a solution as simple and elegant as this, Ia, you
will
regret it. Your restraint while in the Academy is both admirable and necessary. But once you’ve graduated, so long as one of
you isn’t placed in the chain of command over the other, such restraint will no longer be necessary. If you talk yourself out of this and turn him down, so help me…”

“Excuse me, but my sex life is
my
own business,” Ia reminded the older woman. “
Or
the lack thereof.”

“But don’t you want to know?” Meyun asked her. Ia looked back at him. “Don’t you want to know what it’s like to make love with someone who cares about you? I don’t know about you, but if I don’t take the chance, I
know
I will regret it for the rest of my life.”

Ia flushed, unsure what to say. Duty demanded she ignore her desire and focus on the future. Desire demanded she take that handful of days for herself, as compensation for everything else both her conscience and Time itself were forcing her to give up.

“What was it you said in our Ethics course two months ago?” Meyun muttered. He lifted his chin after a moment. “That you’d rather be damned for something you
did
, than something you
didn’t
do?”

Ia winced inside.
Everything
she was doing, she was doing because of exactly that: She knew she’d be damned, one way or the other, but it was far better to be damned for what she had to do, than to do nothing at all and be damned by the consequences of her failure to act. To hear him using her own words against her like this was a lower blow than he could possibly imagine.

A resolve-shattering blow. Giving in, Ia sighed roughly. “You’re right. And I probably
will
be damned for this, since we do have to part company afterward…but you’re right.”

He frowned at her. “Oh, gee, thanks for making lovemaking with me sound like a trip to the guillotine!”

She made a face at him, sticking out her tongue a little. “I’m not talking about the act itself. I’m talking about the possibility that either of us could end up wanting a lot more than our career tracks would permit. Just…I don’t want to hurt you, Meyun. Ever. If nothing else, please believe that. Whether it’s out of friendship, or love, or whatever, I don’t want to hurt you if we try hopping on the back of this particular elephant together.”

“And I don’t want to hurt you,” he returned, tapping the table between them. “But I’d rather be damned for giving it a try—in the
right time and the right place, obeying the letter of the regs—than be damned for turning my back on this chance and walking away.”

Silence fell between them. At least it wasn’t as strained as before. Shifting her hands to her hips, Bennie nodded. “Well, then. That’s better. A lot better. The two of you are finally working through your differences, confronting your feelings and figuring out how to handle them in a responsible and mature manner.”

Meyun dropped his head onto the padded back of the chair, while Ia rolled her eyes at her chaplain friend.