Theirs Not to Reason Why 5: Damnation (18 page)

“Then . . . what? Why are you afraid to go home, Ia?”

She closed her eyes. “Because once I go there, that means I’ll have to leave . . . and once I leave, I will
never
go back.” Her arm bent at the elbow, hand cupped near her ear, body swaying faintly in pulse with her blood and her thoughts. “And I can hear the relentless ticking of time as the seconds bleed and bleed and bleed away, until I
have
to go home, and then I’ll
have
to leave . . . and go do everything I will
have
to do after that . . . and never go home again. Home will be lost behind enemy lines, and will have to
stay
lost for two whole centuries, or everything—
everything
—will be ruined. As bad as, or worse than, when we lost Private N’Keth.”

“. . . Melancholy,” Bennie stated lightly, if assertively. “I’ll prescribe you some chocolate.”

Ia sat up at that, scowling. “This is
not a joke
!”

Leveling a finger at the younger woman, Bennie spoke flatly. “You have already used that line, young lady.” At Ia’s frown of confusion, she clarified. “When Private Sung screwed up? That big speech in front of the whole crew, with the ship in lockdown while docked at that Battle Platform after the big Helix Nebula fight?”

Rolling her eyes, Ia flopped back into the embrace of the overstuffed easy chair.

“Eating chocolate will boost your serotonin levels and fill out the hours with something more pleasant than listening to a clock tick. If we had any clocks on board that ticked,” the redhead allowed in an aside. “I think they’re all digital.”

She barely even had to think about it. “Corporal Charles Puan, 3rd Platoon, has a small collection of pocket watches. Mechanical ones, which he knows how to fix and repair. He only works on them at moments like these, when he knows we’ll be in transit FTL for several hours, because the little gear thingies are too dangerous to let loose while we’re maneuvering at insystem speeds. Jewels. Whatever they’re called.”

“Well then, you’ll just have to avoid going into his quarters. Which would be a violation of the rules and regs anyway if you didn’t have just cause, so you should be covered, right?” Bennie asked.

Ia slanted her a look, then sighed heavily. “Are we done, here?”

“That’s up to you. You’re the one who scheduled this session,” her friend and counselor pointed out.

Sighing again, Ia twisted onto her side, tucked up one knee, squirmed a bit more, then made each muscle group relax with a slow, deep breath. “We’re done, here,” she muttered between breaths. “Yeah, I’m done.”

“If we’re done here, then what are you doing?” Christine asked her, quirking one auburn brow.

Since her eyes were shut, Ia couldn’t see the older woman’s expression, but she could hear the confusion in Bennie’s voice. It pleased her. She curled and wiggled a little more, pillowing her cheek on the thick-cushioned arm of the chair. “I’m going to take a nap in this chair. I’ve always wanted to, and so I am going to. Right now.”

“Right . . . So you’re going to take a nap. In my office. Shall I fetch you a blanket, then? Perhaps one of those teddy bears Private Bethu-ne’ makes in his spare time?”

“Yes, please, but just the blanket.”

For a long moment, the other woman didn’t move. Finally, she sighed and rose, walking away. Ia kept her eyes shut, listening to one of the doors quietly hiss open and shut. Several seconds later, Bennie returned through the same door. Soft warmth draped over her. Fumbling for the edge of the afghan, Ia pulled it up over her head. Not because she was cold but because the gesture touched her, warmed her from the inside out. It also threatened to push out more tears.

“What time do you need to be awakened?”

She didn’t want to think about that, but she had to. “Seventeen thirty-five . . . I’ll need twenty-five minutes before supper to wake up, work out the kinks, and grab a quick shower.”

“I’ll set an alert on my workstation, then go tell Floathawg and Sunrise we’ll be meeting in the amidships briefing room one deck up. That way you can rest in peace for the next few hours.”

“I set them up, you know.” Ia hadn’t meant to confess that much, but there it was, out of her mouth and into the chaplain’s ears. “I set up a
lot
of the pairings on this ship. A few caught me off guard—Spyder and Mishka, for one—but I knew which couples could make a go of it in the long run . . . and I set them up so they’d have some small happiness in all of this.”

“I know you did. Though I’m calling
shakk-torr
on not knowing about the lieutenant and the doctor,” the chaplain quipped.

Ia flopped the edge of the afghan down out of her way, lifting her head in protest. “I didn’t!”

Already on her way to the front door of her counseling office, Bennie turned and walked backwards. “
Shakk. Torr.
If I’m a two-fister, you’re a manipulative bitch. Just remember, Ia,” she added, tapping the controls for the door, “
yes
, you may bully some people, but you
also
set up a lot of others for love and happiness. You’re not an evil monster. Melancholic, but not evil.”

Debating how much energy it would take to make a rude gesture, Ia gave up and slumped back onto the armrest.
Melancholy . . . I’d cry
“shakk-torr”
too . . . except she’s right. It’s a polite word for depressed . . . and I don’t want to get up and do anything right now . . .

She flipped the knitted blanket back over her head, fussed with it a bit, then gave up with a rough sigh. Knowing that Time was ticking away, her thoughts kept trying to race to all the things she had to do, all the things she could fit into every spare second to be had.

Ruthlessly, she deliberately emptied her mind. Listened only to the rush of air in and out of her lungs, the faint thumping of her heartbeat, and the whispering of the air vents pumping fresh air from the nearest life-support bay. Focused on nothing at all, just to snatch just a few hours of rest.

“Commander Harper to General Ia. I need to speak with you about the special new project you want me to work on, sir. Do you have a spare hour or two?”

. . . Slag.
She winced and buried her face in the cushions, but only for a few seconds. Giving up, she rolled face up and electrokinetically prodded her command bracer.
“I’ll be there in just a few. Ia out.”

It was her own fault, too. Or rather, her instincts, her gifts. She struggled up out of the overstuffed chair and disentangled herself from the blanket. Not wanting to violate the privacy of her chaplain’s quarters and mindful of the Spacer’s Law, Ia settled on folding the blanket and webbing it onto Bennie’s desk.
So much for my one hour of peace . . .

Another prod of her bracer reopened the commsystem.
“General Ia to Chaplain Benjamin, that alternative location will not be necessary at this time. You are free to resume your normal schedule as I apparently have more work to do. Ia out.”

MARCH 4, 2499 T.S.
THE TOWER
KAHO’OLAWE, EARTH, SOL SYSTEM

The moment Ia boarded the shuttle and the airlock door sealed shut, closing them off from the bustling underground hangar bay built into the side of the island’s caldera, she yanked at the buttons of her Dress Black coat. Two of them popped and shot across the airlock, clattering off the hard, gray-enameled surfaces. Her first officer sighed heavily and stooped to gather them off the deckplates.

“Lock and Web it, Ia. Get your temper under control,” he ordered her. Around them, the ship hummed with the distinct tenor rumble of compression pumps filling the shuttle’s air tanks.

In reply, she whipped off her Dress cap and flung it through the inner airlock door as it opened. It smacked into Chief Yeoman Patricia Huey’s chest. The brunette caught it belatedly, one brow rising upward. “Is everything alright, sir?”

“Politicians!”
Ia snapped, struggling out of her coat. Before she could fling it, too, across the room, Harper grabbed it and held on to the weighted fabric.

“Yes, he
was
obnoxious;
no
, you don’t get to stay mad at the idiot. He has punishment enough ahead of him, reciting the Oath of Government Service until he sobers up,” her first officer stated. “Now, let me take that from you, nice and easy . . . and I’ll stow it in a cargo-hold locker . . . and
you
can repair those buttons in your spare time. You, yourself.”

She shot him a dark look. He leveled a pointed one back at her. As much as she wanted to snarl at someone, Ia refrained from snarling at her first officer.

“Remember what Rzhikly said back at the Academy, Ia?” Meyun reminded her. “An officer leads by
example
. Be a
better
example.”

Her smile was more tooth than charm. “And am I
not
allowed to get
angry
at being asked to perform like some sort of trained
dog
, or . . . or
circus clown
?”

“Yes, you can get angry. But not destructively.” Carefully using the wadded-up, medal-lumped fabric to cushion his touch, he pushed on her back to get her to move into the rest of the ship. Their newest pilot eyed both of them warily but did back up out of the way. Harper kept talking in a soothing tone. “I know you want to string him up by his garters, plus the three that were urging him on, but
politician
isn’t the dirty word it once was three or four hundred years ago. And the others did come down hard on him when they realized he was being obnoxious.

“Individuals can be asteroid heads, but he does recite the Oath every morning. After a while, it does sink into your head,” he told her. “Which you’d know if you had to do it over and over and over.”

She rounded on him. “That is
exactly
what I do, Harper! Every single morning, I wake up, I review where I’m supposed to be going with the timestreams, and when, and what tasks I and everyone else needs to do. If that isn’t an Oath, then I don’t know what is—but for God’s sake!” she exclaimed, raking her hand through her neatly trimmed hair, disarranging the chin-length locks. “I told him ‘no’ politely over and over, and he wouldn’t stop pestering me to see the future! What was I supposed to do, shove it down his mental throat?”

“Did you want to?” Both officers turned and looked at the noncommissioned pilot. Huey shrugged and folded her arms across her chest, one hand still holding on to Ia’s Dress cap. She repeated herself diffidently. “You know . . . did you
want
to shove this meioa-o headfirst into those ‘timestream’ things you see?”

“Yes!”
Snatching her cap, Ia turned and stalked into the cargo bay. She found an empty cupboard without more than a toe dab in the possibilities of Time, and shoved in the cap, then her jacket . . . after waiting for Harper to stuff the two loose buttons into one of its pockets. “And yes, I’ll slagging well fix them myself.” She looked up at Yeoman Huey, who had followed the two of them. “Does that surprise you, Yeoman? That I feel violence and rage at being harassed?”

Mouth quirking in a lopsided smile, the yeoman shook her head. “No, sir. In fact, it’s actually rather reassuring. You remind me of a knight I knew back on Scadia. Loved to fight, but hated to win, because winning comes with political consequences back home. One of the best teachers I knew, but couldn’t stand the pressure of being asked to win Crown.

“But he also once said it’s rare for anyone to get really upset over just one thing, sir. Usually it takes a couple things to get, well . . . button-snapping mad. So, what else are you mad at?” Huey asked her, leaning her shoulder against the frame of the compartment door.

Ia stared at her, then looked at the decking. She glared at the plates, closed her eyes, dragged in a deep breath . . . and let it go. “Today . . . is my birthday . . . and the last thing I wanted was to be annoyed and pestered on my birthday.”

“It’s also Thorne’s birthday, too, isn’t it?” Meyun asked her. He tapped the side of his head at her sharp look, reminding her of his eidetic memory. “Half brother, you said, and half an hour older, but still a birthing-day twin. And we’ll be there in just a few more days.”

Dragging in a deep breath, she held it, then let it out slowly. That was indeed part of the problem, if only a small part. The rest, she still couldn’t tell anyone. “Four days, three hours, fifty-seven minutes, meioas. Presuming you’ll return to the cockpit and prepare for takeoff, Yeoman?” Ia asked their shuttle pilot. “I’d take the helm myself, but I’m a bit
angry
still. I may not be completely comfortable with the literal worship I get around the V’Dan, but even among the Terrans, my abilities are not normally considered a goddamned
party trick
.”

Nodding, Huey turned to head toward the cockpit. Harper held out his arm, blocking Ia from following her. He waited until they both heard the cockpit door hiss shut, then spoke. He knew as well as Ia did that they would have at least a few more minutes before Yeoman Huey received clearance to lift off from the Tower’s landing pad. “Bennie told me that you’re dreading going home.”

“Shakk,”
she muttered. “Still telling tales to you, is she?”

“Don’t be a two-fisting bitch, yourself,” he warned her, pointing at her. “She cares, she knows that I care, and she knows that I can get through to you sometimes. Ia . . . if you don’t think I don’t know what you’re feeling, after all these years of knowing you, of seeing the future possibilities, and being smart enough to figure out where you’re aiming the future, and
why
you’re herding everyone that way . . . Well, you’d be pretty damn stupid. And contrary, since
you’re
the one who keeps dumping complex engineering problems in my lap.”

“Oh, sweet-talk me some more,” Ia retorted, rolling her eyes. She sighed and strove to let go of more of her anger, and some of her fear. The first, she managed. The second . . . not so much. Pinching the brow of her nose, Ia breathed deep. “Fine. I’m upset because of that, too. Things are snowballing on Sanctuary, slightly askew of what they should be. There’s an almost even-odds chance now that Rabbit will be in serious trouble by the time we get there.