Hope's Folly (15 page)

“No.” He thought he'd already said that, several times. “Who told you Chaz and Sullivan are coming in to Seth?” That would be great news and would certainly solve his hidden-Farosian problems.

“No, no. God, Philip, I'm sorry.” She ran one hand over her face. “I misunderstood something Tramer said. He pulled a relief shift on the
Meritorious
years ago.” She stopped. “That was her ship?”

“The
Meritorious?
Yes. Tramer knew Chaz?” He still wasn't sure what was going on in this conversation.

“And Sparks, the engineer. Tramer told me he thought if Sparks was coming to Seth, your wife was too. Except that she's not your wife.”

And that pronouncement, Philip noticed, seemed oddly to make Rya happy.

She'd also stopped calling him “sir.”

“So Tramer just got his story wrong,” she continued. “I'm sorry.”

She didn't look sorry. She was smiling.

He didn't understand any of this. It must be the drugs.

The shuttle's lower deck was packed and noisy, the influx starting shortly after Rya had come below to pepper him with her strange line of questions and increasing the closer they got to the shipyards. Their arrival added the
Folly's
officers to the mix.

Now Commander Dina Adney—a slender, dusky-skinned woman with short, tightly curled black hair— was calling orders to her people working with Seth stripers. They were locking sonicuffs on the wrists of the two Farosian agents, who were looking alternately glum and sullen or defiant and sullen. Sub-Lieutenant Sachi Holton was directing three crew acting as baggage handlers, dispersing the duffels to small anti-grav pallets for transport to the
Folly.
Commander Martoni, head bowed, was listening intently to something Captain Ellis was saying. Philip hadn't realized how short Ellis was until he saw her standing next to Martoni. Sitting in her captain's chair, grinning gleefully as she brought her GRT-10 cannon online, had made her seem taller.

Of course, the nearly eight-foot-tall Takan, Dargo, standing behind her didn't help his perspective on her height. But he doubted Ellis was much over five foot.

Not like his strapping subbie, who was … there, yes, talking to Willym Tramer and Con Welford, standing at an angle to them both. She did that a lot, Philip noticed, gun hand free and clear.

Shouldering his duffel with its much-coveted Norlack, he leaned on the cane Burnaby Mather—one of Jodey's people—had brought him and limped toward Rya.

No, not Jodey's people. Burnaby Mather was one of his people now, just like Holton, Welford, Tramer, and more names he had yet to commit to his drug-hazed memory, including—unless his instincts were widely wrong—Martoni.

Rya, well … Every instinct Philip had told him to get her on the next shuttle back to Kirro or Calth 9. But he couldn't do that, because, in order to do so, he'd have to provide some logical instance where she'd failed in performance of her duties. He couldn't. The reasons he wanted her on the next shuttle out were purely personal.

And he was not about to put something like that in writing.

He was stuck with Sub-Lieutenant Rya Bennton, and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it. So he might as well torture himself a bit longer and go stand next to her in the chilly cargo bay, so that her smile could warm him, so that the touch of her hand on his arm would heat him. And so that Con Welford and Will Tramer would stop staring at his subbie's chest.

Goddamned Fleeties. They were all animals. He should know.

“Let me take that, Admiral Guthrie, sir.” A tall—

well, they were all tall—young Takan stepped up to him, pointing to Philip's duffel.
Corvang,
the tag on his gray coveralls read, but Philip could have guessed that anyway from the almost devoted, wide-eyed expression on the young male's face.

Another subbie.

“I have a number of valuable weapons in there, Lieutenant,” Philip said. “This doesn't leave your sight until you put it in my quarters on the
Folly.”

“It won't leave my
side.
Promise, sir. Admiral, sir.”

Philip grabbed the duffel's wide strap and passed it to Corvang's eager hands. Honestly, other than Rya, Corvang was the only one he'd trust with his duffel. Rya because she shared his passion for the weapons. Corvang because, once a Takan took hold of something, it was damned near impossible to get it away.

“Thanks, Lieutenant. Good to have you here. Captain Bralford spoke very highly of you.”

“Yes, sir. You have no idea, sir. The pleasure is all mine.” Corvang's long face bobbed, sharp teeth bared in a typical Taken exuberant grin. “With your permission, sir.” With one more nod, he loped away toward the airlock.

Things—people, baggage—were progressing in small, chaotically organized clumps out the shuttle's airlock and toward the
Folly,
berthed two levels down. Prospective crew and their baggage first, to be cleared by those crew already on board who'd been cleared by Adney. After that, Philip and his key people, which, yes, now meant Martoni, Holton, Tramer, and Rya.

Speaking of the latter, Con Welford was holding her hand. Philip put a little more force behind his limp and joined the group quickly, restraining himself from knocking Con on the knuckles with his cane.

She was
his subbie,
but she wasn't
his. Get your libido in line, mister.

But Con wasn't for her either. He was, what, thirty-seven, thirty-eight? Okay, built solidly, with a face Philip knew woman found “ruggedly attractive.” All Philip saw was a broken nose and scar on the man's chin, but that wasn't his area of expertise.

Con was almost ten years her senior.

And Philip had been ten years older than Chaz and was sixteen years older than Rya.

Stow it, Guthrie.

But he had his silent promise to Cory to look after her. He'd fail if she fell into Con's clutches.

“Admiral.” Con acknowledged his presence with a grin and released Rya's hand.

Good. Won't have to make your knuckles bleed.
“Welford,” Philip said. “I hear helm's computers are a nightmare.”

“She's Stryker-class.”

Well, yes. That said it all.

“But I have some ideas,” Con continued.

“Report on my desk in the morning?”

“Already there.”

Not surprising. He'd been as efficient on the
Loviti.

“Ready to leave this bucket?” Philip asked Rya. He hadn't originally intended to have her accompany him. He was fully aware he needed a breather from her, until the drugs were out of his body and he was more in control. But he wasn't going to let Con Welford or Tramer escort his subbie to the
Folly, and
with the operation here on the shuttle winding down, the options for escorts were dwindling. At least if she went with him, he knew she'd be safe.

He caught that train of thought. Safe? Most people would need protection from
her.
She was ImpSec and had two laser weapons he knew of on her body. God only knew what else she had, and where. Though Philip would love to—

Down, boy.

“Ready,” she said, her face and her beret decidedly jaunty.

“If we're lucky,” he said as she fell into step with him, “no one will shoot at us between here and the
Folly.”

They were lucky.

The adrenaline rush that had kept Rya almost supercharged and hyperfocused since Kirro suddenly flagged as she stood in her cabin. Part of it was relief, and part of it was exhaustion. But a lot of it was reality.

She'd won, yet she'd failed.

She'd won because she was on the
Folly,
her father's old ship, having been through two hours of processing, identity clearance, and the typical military datalogging.

She'd failed because her cabin was not next to Philip's, not even on his deck. She knew the
Stockwell's
—the
Folly's
layout intimately from hours of sitting at her father's desk, or in his lap, as he explained his ship's schematics to her. She was in Crew 3—crew's quarters, Deck 3 of the
Folly's
six decks. One deck below the captain's—now admiral's—quarters and private office, as well as the first officer's quarters, where the private executive mess and two auxiliary cabins were located, on Deck 2 Forward. Either one of those auxiliary cabins would have suited Sub-Lieutenant Rya Bennton just fine. Philip was injured. He needed protection. He needed her.

But she was in Crew 3, Cabin 8—a small bedroom with a two-cushion brown couch in the sitting area and a workstation with the ubiquitous deck-locked swivel chair. And a tall, narrow rectangular viewport, where she perched now—jacket still on because Crew Deck 3 was like a fucking ice cube—watching Seth's moon blot out the twinkling of lights peppering the big, wide darkness.

She sniffed.

Oranges. The scent came and went, stronger in some areas of the ship than in others. Though she'd not been through the entire ship yet.

“Cannot find them anywhere,” Con Welford had told her as she followed him to her new quarters, her duffel slung over her shoulder. “Commander Adney and I searched the whole damned ship, day one. We can smell 'em. But we can't find 'em.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, leaning her head against the viewport's frame. It had been one fucking hell of a day. She was bone-tired, should be stripping down to get some sleep.

She couldn't.

Philip wasn't married. He had been, but he wasn't, and his ex was happily married to someone else.

Rya knew it was ridiculous for her to even care about such things.

But she did.

Maybe come shipmorning she might not. Maybe this insane crush that had blossomed full bore on Kirro—somewhere between “My leg thanks you, but my ego is severely deflated” and “Subbie, on three, ready?”—was just a temporary aberration. It would settle down to good old-fashioned respect for a charismatic senior officer. Admiration for the man who was going to set things right, punish those who killed her father.

Right now, though, it didn't feel like it.

She pushed herself away from the viewport, the cabin's chill closing around her as she peeled off her jacket and headed for the lav. A hot shower and a few hours’ sleep were what she needed to clear her head.

Her heart she'd deal with later.

Philip had no idea how long he'd been awake or when he'd last slept. First was two and a half hours with Adney while the prospective crew that came in on the Kirro shuttle were processed, accepted, or rejected, and while station stripers vied with Alliance Legal over custody and interrogation rights of the two Farosian agents. The attack had been made on an Alliance officer but on a civilian ship.

Then another hour and a half at the shipyard's sick bay—the very tall Corvang and the short and rotund Mather his escorts—while the doctors there swapped charts and his med-stats with Doc Galan on the
Nowicki
through a top-priority deep-space transmit link. There was a lot of frowning, head shaking, and grunting. Though he couldn't hear her, he could well imagine the usually mild-mannered Christine Galan swearing. He'd managed to undo most of her best work.

Then back to the
Folly,
where Adney met him with the news that they had a working and cleared crew complement of seventy-four, not including Sparks and his three subbies arriving soon. Tomorrow. Today. Whenever.

And he hadn't even yet officially read himself on board, taking legal command of the
Folly via
formal ceremony in front of Adney and the crew. There hadn't been time.

A Stryker-class heavy cruiser usually shipped out with a crew of one hundred forty. One twenty, maybe one fifteen if times were desperate.

Times were desperate. He had seventy-eight plus himself.

“I'm still waiting for some callbacks,” Adney said, sitting in one of two low-backed black chairs across from his desk. Like most of the
Folly's
officers and crew, she was in gray fatigues, pants tucked into dark boots secured by cross-straps. Her sleeves were rolled up and, as she spoke to him, she absently ran long fingers through her thick dark curls. “Another ten, maybe fifteen. As for the rest, well, there's always Ferrin's. It's a much larger station and, after what happened on Corsau, more people may rise to the call.”

“Or run away.” Tage might be a despot, but he was a known despot in a sector with jobs, security, and— Philip sniffed—clean air. “You really can't find the oranges?”

Adney sighed. “It comes and goes. I think it's that we're sitting still. Once we get moving, systems working, air-recyc and all … ” She shrugged.

“It could be worse,” she added, biting back a grin, giving her face an almost impish quality that made her look younger than the forty-two years he knew she was. “They could have been hauling manure.”

He couldn't stop himself. “No shit.”

“Captain Bralford said you were bad.”

Philip grunted.

“That too,” Adney said.

He tapped his deskscreen. “Welford has the helm computers cooperating now.”

“Mather still has problems with encryption on outgoing priority communications, so I'd work through archivers until he tells us otherwise.”