Solfleet: The Call of Duty (31 page)

“I know what
you told me before,” she said as she began slowly approaching him again, “but I’m
not buying it anymore. I saw you watching me undress by the lockers and I’ve
known for months that you feel the same way about me as I do about you. You try
to hide it, but you can’t. Not from me. Not anymore.”

“I wasn’t
watching you,” he told her as she inched closer. He knew he should back away
from her and not let her get too close. But he didn’t
want
to back away.
He wanted to hold her. He wanted to kiss her. Hell, he wanted to f... No. No,
not that. That was different. That was something a guy did to a girl he didn’t
care about—something he paid an escort for. He didn’t want to do that to
Marissa. He wanted to make love to her.

“Yes you
were watching me,” she insisted as she touched her generous, towel-covered
breasts lightly to his chest. “I saw you.”

“I just
happened to glance your way for a second. That’s all.”

“Sure you
did,” she said, making it perfectly clear that she didn’t believe him for a second.

She placed
her hands on his shoulders, then gently slid them together and laced her
fingers loosely behind his neck. Dylan kept his arms at his sides and nervously
clenched his fists.

“I like that
you were watching me undress,” she told him, smiling seductively. “You should’ve
kept watching. I might have given you something more to look at.”

He
swallowed. “Out there in front of everyone? You’d have been asking for trouble.”

“What about
in here?” she asked.

“Marissa...”

“I know you
want me, Dylan. And we both know I want you.”

Dylan licked
his lips and swallowed hard as he gazed into her deep brown eyes. “I won’t deny
that I’m attracted to you,” he said. “You obviously know that I am. But you
also know...”

She
surprised him with a kiss. Nothing more than a quick peck on the mouth, at
first. But when he didn’t protest or pull away, she pressed her lips to his and
kissed him more intimately,
much
more intimately, and still without any
resistance from him.

He felt a
stirring deep inside as he began to reciprocate. A stirring that caused his
heart to pound and his breath to grow labored. An old, familiar stirring that
he’d long thought dead. Then he felt himself responding to her on a more carnal
level.

He
unclenched his fists, and despite his better judgment, slid his hands slowly up
under her towel and over her smooth, curved hips. Their kiss burned with
passion.

What am I
doing?
he asked himself.

He wanted
her. He wanted her badly. He’d wanted her ever since he met her. She was so
beautiful. So beautiful. And she was giving herself to him—all of herself, if
that was what he wanted—because she wanted to. How could he not take her?

Pulling him
along with her, she backed into the wall. She untucked his towel and dropped it
to the floor, then eagerly wrapped her legs around his waist as he held her up
and pressed her against the wall.

What the
hell am I doing? This isn’t allowed! I have to stop. I have to stop!

“Make love
to me, Dylan,” she whispered.

The
brunette-tufted flesh between her thighs felt warm and soft against him, moist
with fervent anticipation, and it took all the will power he could possibly
muster not to cross that ultimate, heavenly threshold.

He let her down
and pulled back from their kiss, but still held her close. He gazed into her
beautiful brown eyes and whispered, “I’m sorry, Marissa. I can’t do this. I want
to more than you know, but...”

“I know,”
she regretfully agreed.

“I’m a
married man,” he reminded her again. “Unhappily married, but married just the
same. And more importantly, I’m your squad sergeant.”

She reached
up and gently stroked his cheek. “I know. But I can’t help that I’m so in love
with you.”

“You’re not
supposed to be in love with me.”

She grinned,
just slightly. “I know that, too.”

“Then why do
you let yourself be?”

“Why are you
in love with me?” she asked in return.

He started
to answer—started to deny that he loved her, but he found that had no words.

“I don’t
know, either,” she told him. “I just know that I love you.” After a moment, she
added, “I’m sorry.”

“No. Don’t
be sorry,” he said. “I’m not.”

A smile
appeared on her sweet, tender lips, even as tears of joy began to well up in
her eyes. “You’re not?” she asked.

He heard the
cautious delight in her voice—the joy that was building inside her. But it was
a guarded joy, he knew. It was as if she wanted so much to believe him, but was
afraid that he might not really mean what he said. And that meant that he had
one opportunity to qualify his words. One last chance to do what he knew was
right without tearing her heart out in the process. And this was it. The moment
was upon him. If he was going to stop their relationship from moving to another
level, he was going to have to do it right now.

He gazed
deeply into her beautiful eyes once more and found his answer within them, but
it wasn’t the answer he knew he should give her. He shook his head, ever so
slightly, and told her instead, even as he warned himself not to, “No. I’m not
sorry.”

Her chin
began to quiver. “It makes me so happy to finally hear you say that,” she told
him as her tears flowed freely down her cheeks.

Shit. He’d
really stepped in the deep pile now. Might as well dive in head first. “And it
makes me happy to finally say it,” he told her. Then he went even further down
what he still knew to be the wrong path and admitted, “My marriage hasn’t been
any good for years. I can’t even remember the last time my wife said she loved
me, or the last time I actually meant it when I said it to her.”

“I love you,
Dylan. And I do mean it.”

“I know you
do, Marissa.” He reached up with both hands and gently brushed away her tears. “And
I think, I
know
, that in time I could love you, too.”

She kissed
him again and hugged him tightly to her. “God, I love you so much,” she
whispered.

He returned
her embrace and asked, “So what are we going to do about it?”

“I don’t
know,” she said. Then she cleared her throat and looked up at him. “But right
now you owe me some coffee.”

They shared
a quiet laugh together. Then, after one more gentle kiss, Marissa slipped out
from between him and the wall and quietly stepped out of the cubicle, glancing
back and smiling at him once more as she closed the door.

Dylan looked
back at the mirror and sighed. “You’re an idiot,” he told his reflection, now
that he was thinking a little more clearly.

He’d wanted
her something awful. He’d resisted that final act of consummation, though just
barely, but that didn’t make any difference. As far as he was concerned, he’d
just cheated on his wife. No, worse than that. He’d confessed his attraction to
another woman—to
the
other woman. This wasn’t just cheating. This wasn’t
just a one-time encounter. This was only the beginning. This was first step toward
having an affair. Perhaps even a long-term relationship, complete with all the
emotional baggage that such a thing would inevitably create.

And that
presented him with a very serious problem. Not because of what it meant to his
marriage—that was already in trouble, regardless—but rather because of their
positions within the platoon. If he was going to pursue a relationship with her—if
he was going to ‘fraternize’ with her, so to speak—then he had an obligation to
transfer her to another squad immediately. In addition, because he was married,
they were going to have to keep their relationship a secret, so he was going to
have to come up with a fictitious reason for that transfer as well.

But he didn’t
want to transfer her. She was a good Marine and a damn good Ranger. She was too
valuable to the squad to lose.

He gazed
into the mirror again. “Nice going, jackass.”

Admiral
Hansen sat motionless behind his desk and stared in the general direction of
the list of messages still displayed on his comm-panel’s small screen, though
in reality his eyes were focused on some intangible point somewhere beyond that
display and his mind on some other place far beyond that. Two of the messages
were dim, barely contrasting with the background—he’d already reviewed them—but
the third still glowed brightly, waiting to be played. He just wasn’t ready for
it yet. The heartbreaking, gut wrenching contents of the last one were still
far too prevalent in his mind.

All those
dead Tor’Kana. Such a tragic, senseless waste of precious lives.

Fewer than
seven thousand Tor’Kana were known to have escaped the invasion of their home
system, and fewer than twenty-seven hundred of those survivors, including the
four hundred seventy-seven who had subsequently been found dead aboard the
vessel the
Rapier
had just salvaged, were females. Due to their
inability to survive for extended periods of time outside their own natural
atmosphere—even their own scientists couldn’t reproduce it adequately enough to
support them indefinitely—those females who had been rescued alive, something
over thirteen hundred of them, were currently being held in protective custody
aboard their vessels by some of the gelded males of their race. According to
their long-time ambassador to Earth, those vessels had all been pumped full of
their world’s atmosphere prior to their exodus, so the females would be able to
live aboard them for several months if they had to.

It sounded
to Hansen like they were being held prisoner, but he couldn’t argue against the
necessity of it. The fact was they simply had no other choice. To release them
would be to kill them, and to kill them would mean to doom their entire species
to extinction.

But would a mere
thirteen hundred females be enough to propagate that species? Would the Tor’Kana
people ever flourish again? Hansen was no scientist. He had no idea how large or
how diverse a gene pool might be needed for an entire species to thrive. He
could ask someone, he supposed. Professor Verne probably knew someone among his
many colleagues who could enlighten him if he really wanted to know the answer.
Thirteen hundred? He couldn’t be sure without asking, but had his doubts.

He glanced
at his watch and was surprised to find that he’d been sitting there lost in
thought and staring into space for so long. More than half an hour had passed
since he’d played Lieutenant Johnson’s message.

He finally
focused on the screen, where the third message still waited patiently for him,
the only line on the list still glowing. Hoping and praying that it didn’t contain
even more devastating news, he leaned forward and touched his finger to it.

After two
weeks of spending every day and most of the nights in thick, sweat-absorbent
field socks and heavy combat boots, the smooth, cool plasticrete steps that led
from the basement gym and locker/shower facilities back up to the first floor
felt like blocks of soothing ice beneath Dylan’s bare feet. Unfortunately,
regulations prohibited going barefoot in the barracks’ common areas, so as he
reached the top of the staircase he paused to pull on his old, worn leather
sandals. Funny. Nearly all of the deadliest forms of cancer had been both preventable
and curable for nearly a century and a half, yet athlete’s foot could still be
contracted all too easily. Just as easily cured, of course, but contracted all
the same.

He made a
U-turn at the top of the stairs and headed down the wide central hallway,
noting how the overhead lights reflected brightly off the surface of the always
highly polished tile floor as he passed by the company commander’s and other
administrative offices. Then he made a right and exited through the rear
blast-proof door—one of two that opened out onto the large ground-level patio.

Made of the
same blast-proof material as most of the rest of the building’s exterior, the
patio ran the entire length of the building and extended out from the back wall
for about ten meters. The infantry company that occupied most of the building sometimes
used the patio as a sort of makeshift training classroom if the weather was
nice enough, but usually reserved it for recreational activities, such as unit
parties, barbecues, and so forth.

For this
morning’s return to garrison the morale officer had set up about half of it to
resemble an old Parisian outdoor café, complete with padded wrought iron
chairs, checkered tablecloths in red, white, and blue, and oversized umbrellas
to shield the ‘customers’ from the sun when it rose. Recorded accordion music
even played in the background, loud enough for those who might want to listen,
but discreet enough for those who might not. The only thing missing was a team
of waiters and waitresses, but the fancy buffet set up in the patio’s center
made for a pretty nice substitute.

Someone had
gone to a lot of trouble.

The mountains
off to the west still shielded the base from the rising sun’s direct assault—watching
the sun rise in the west and set in the east had taken some serious getting
used to—but they couldn’t stop its rays from painting the thin, low-lying
clouds in long broad strokes of golden yellows and oranges and brilliant reds and
violets as they slowly drifted by, scratching their bellies across the highest
of the gray stone peaks. The sky directly overhead had brightened to a dark
blue-green but still faded to violet blackness low along the eastern horizon.
Just off the patio’s edge, thin wisps of gray-white fog were beginning to form
above the thick blue lawn, foreshadowing the morning dew’s impending death by
evaporation.