Hospital Ship (The Rim Confederacy #5) (10 page)

"Not my problem, cousin. You may have all the time you need—as long as the vaccine gets to us before the Barony gets it ... understood, cousin?" he said and his smile was like it was painted on.

"As soon as we hear that the Barony has the vaccine, you will have lost your chance to redeem your family. I want you to remember that every day, cousin," he said as his hand slid toward the console and the screen faded to full black.

He was shocked, but there had been that conversation he'd heard just a week ago.

He'd have to check, and to do that, he'd haunt the cafeteria for the next little while. He smiled for a moment too, as he knew someone down in purchasing who was in charge of the purchase of test animals, so he might be able to get a handle on the research lab animal usage.

He shook his head. This was going to be hard. .

####

Nathan shaved slowly, savoring the feel of the blade slowly gliding across his beard as he stood at the sink in his quarters and smiled at himself for the fifth time in as many minutes.

Shower went fine, and he'd had to shampoo today, as his hair after three days got a bit oily. Sometimes he even shaved in the shower but not today. Today was different as today, he wasn't alone, and the sixth smile on his face appeared, and he had to stop shaving again to not cut himself.

The head was a bit misty and all, and he wiped his hand across the mirror above the sink once more, and as he did he glanced sideways and saw Nancy in the doorway wearing his shirt. Just his shirt, and he smiled for the seventh time.

"Morning, my scientist," she said, and even with the sleep still in her eyes, her blonde hair messy, and her voice a bit crackly, she was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Of that, he was sure.

He smiled at her and nodded over to the shower.

"It's warm in there, and yes, you can use it—anything, really," he said and she nodded back to him.

His shirt dropped to the floor, and she strode by him to the stall and reached in to start up the water and get the temperature right for her.

As she did, he moved his position over a bit so he could stare at her great rear end in the mirror, and he swiped the glass a couple more times to clear it off more. After a moment, she spun and popped across the few feet of tile to give him a quick kiss on the shoulder, and then she was in the shower and under the spray.

Finishing up his shave, he tucked a brand new clean towel—
wait,
he thought,
one wouldn't do,
and he got another off the shelf above the vanity and put them within reach for her.

Five minutes later, he was struggling to get into a pair of khakis when she appeared in the doorway to the head. She toweled off her blonde hair with one towel, and the other was wrapped around her.

"Shouldn't have given you two towels," he said as he lost count of his smiles this morning.

She was bent over to the side, trying to get some water out of her ear it looked like and that made him stop the kidding.

"You okay, Nance? Ears okay?" he said, and his worried voice was louder than he'd wanted it to be. Those ears were brand new, and he had no idea what a shower might do.

She nodded and then straightened up and continued to towel just the ends of her locks.

"Not a problem there, Nathan—just making sure that all the water is out. Something they recommended me to do after every shower is all ..." and she smiled back at him too.

They were both
, he thought,
surprised at exactly how quickly they had become a couple
. They'd been dating for only three weeks, and now, she came to spend most of her evenings here in his quarters. The fact that her own was a shared space with another navy woman was a part of the issue.

But the big part was that they—and he knew no other way of thinking about this—were so dang good together. She took him seriously, he knew. She had opened up to him on their third date about her past relationships and how they had started and ended. For the most part, she said that as she was a navy woman, she'd be away often, for long lengths of time—so anyone who wanted to be her "main squeeze," as she called it, would have to accept that.

And he did. Others hadn't, but she was honest enough to say that.

One of the reasons
that he was falling in love with her.

A scary thought for a thirty-four-year-old bachelor, but then again, he knew he'd never find another like her.

The prettiest woman he'd ever seen, the best kisser, and his nights were full of satisfaction he'd never found before, and she loved him.

Of that, he was sure.

"I love you," he said right out loud for the first time and stared at her.

She stopped the towel—
froze more like it
, he thought—and then she slowly straightened up and turned to face him from a few feet away.

Her eyes, her beautiful green eyes, stared at him, her pupils dilating as she took a step and then another closer to him.

She came right up to him, and one hand reached down to grab his. She was only a few inches shorter than he was, so she stepped up on tippy-toes and gently placed a kiss on his lips. A soft, light kiss. A kiss that said much more than what it was, and she leaned back as he took her into his arms.

"And yes, my research guy—I love you too! You have made me so, so, so happy ..." she said and her voice was tremulous but still he knew she meant it.

"This is all so new and sudden and perfect," she said, as one hand snuck in between them to undo the towel which fell to the floor.

Perfect is right.
He kissed her long and hard and again and again.

####

The Master Adept looked down on the ruins of a farm just a few miles away. The barn leaned sickly and the farmhouse was without a roof. Past that, the previously orderly corrals and paddock fences held a rail or two, but for the most part, they looked like they had been left to deteriorate for years. She had out the same window of her building on Eons and looked at this same farm for almost a hundred years.

She had thought often about the view that one might see for a full hundred miles down that valley: forsaken farms, outbuildings, and all the detritus of once flourishing farming and the small communities, mile after mile. No matter where one looked on Eons, the climate was so unfavorable to agriculture that all around Dessau, the capital city, the blue sunlight had killed the planet. For a full three hundred years and a bit more, the radiation from the huge blue star around which Eons revolved had made things as difficult as possible—until the radiation level changed.

Eons was still on a climatic hiatus where the lands suffered.

Technology helped, people helped, and other worlds helped—yet for the most part, Eons still was at the mercy of her star.

We
, the Master thought,
are the most advanced race when it came to telepathy and our abilities were still developing; yet we suffer a home that is the most difficult of all to live under.

We need to irrigate everything we grow, and the groundwater table grows deeper and deeper every decade.

We have the RIM's biggest desalinization plants and the RIM's biggest import of water by far.

We owe the DenKoss planet almost a thousand years of indentured service for their seawater, shipped here weekly.

We owe Juno almost as much for their Academy here on Eons, which would mean that the stipend for our training of our Adepts to serve in the RIM Navy had been non-existent for almost two years. They go out as lieutenants, and until they make full commanders, they get no pay at all, as those funds get returned to the RIM Navy payroll accounts because we've borrowed against them.

She shook her head and watched over the farm out the window as a hawk, or maybe it was a falcon, cruised the edges of the overgrown fields, looking for something to kill for their lunch. It coasted and floated above the edge of the rail fence that long ago had fallen into disrepair; one part had no rails at all, and judging by the lack of real crops, there were no rodents for the bird of prey to find to feed on.

Like us,
she thought.
We too have little to live on—yet we survive.

That did not bring a smile to her face, yet she somehow knew there was a change in the wind.

Call it telepathy, call it intuition, call it a sixth sense ... no matter, but it was there and it was strong.

We are in trouble and today, we may have a small way out of some of our issues, if one can believe what we've been told so far.

She looked over at her aide who sat in the chair closest to the doorway that was now closed and she nodded.

Moments later in the all brown room, a vision in pink came flouncing in and the Baroness was in front of her smiling as she was here selling something.

Something the Master Adept was going to have to accept and yet somehow try to turn it to Eons' advantage.

She smiled back up at the Baroness and swept her hand to the seat beside the love seat in which she had moved to after her time at the window.

"Baroness, it is a pleasure to have you visit in person, for the first time, here on Eons. I welcome you on behalf of the Issian people," she said and dipped her head low to show her respect.

The Baroness was surprised, and she too dipped her head back at the Master Adept.

"I am honored to finally visit the city of Dessau and the Issian village too," she said and sat respectfully on the chair she'd been offered. Her blonde hair was in an updo, with a solemn style, and she wore little jewelry. Her coat was pink in color, but beneath it, she was in shades of brown that were complimentary to her overall look—that of a Baroness. At least that was her mindset, the Master Adept could easily see, and that made her think even more about what was about to happen.

If the Baroness was to be believed, she had to try to hide her real thoughts, her real feelings, and her real raison d'être—yet she was wide open.

Mind readers were used to someone they were talking to trying to hide their real thoughts by repeating in their minds over and over a nursery rhyme or something similar. The Master Adept was used to it and was able to get around that top-of-mind façade most of the time, but this time the Baroness was wide open. She could see issues that lay in her consciousness like budget issues over on Zadra with the latest force field technology costs and on Throth with the costs that were running high as well.

She smiled at the Baroness. "What can we, the Issian people, do for the Barony, Ma'am?" she said.

No better way to challenge someone than asking them right out front.

The Baroness sat back in her chair, gathering herself.

She knows she is speaking to a telepath—the best telepath on the RIM
, the Master Adept thought,
so this should be interesting
.

"Master, I come to you today with an idea—plainly as yet undeveloped, but still an idea of how the Barony and Eons might work together to help the RIM to help the planet of Olbia. I ask your support at the upcoming executive committee meeting and our attempt to force the Caliphate to accept a referendum—instead of war."

She stopped then.

And her brain was empty, the Master Adept could see, well, as empty as any brain on pause could be.

Plainly, the issue was that if Eons supported the Barony push for a referendum on the issue of Olbia and its rebellion away from the Caliphate, then the Barony would owe Eons.

The Master Adept nodded, rose, turned away from the Baroness over to the window, and looked out at the farm in the near distance. She looked for the hawk again but could not see it in the air, and she wondered if it found something to prey upon. Most likely not ...

She turned back to the seating and moved slowly toward the Baroness.

"We can support you and your request to ask us to work toward the referendum. But as always, Baroness, what can we get back in turn? And yes, I am sorry that I have to ask in such a pointed fashion, Baroness ...

The Baroness knew then, the Master Adept realized, that the deal had been struck, and that it was only a matter of some minor items to discuss. She sighed loudly.

"We ask only for your support; and in return, we will offer to Eons the introduction of an addition of a whole new Academy Program, where we will deliver new students to the Academy on an annual basis. We will offer ten years of one thousand new students to the Academy each of those first ten years, and we will pay full Academy college rates for same. These students will at first be our own Barony citizens, but we will soon add in the new Throth planet and their own citizens too. This is an offer that we think is fair, for both the Barony and Eons. Ma'am," she said and then she waited.

The Master Adept knew this would be the offer—she'd seen it moments before it came out of the Baroness's mouth.

She also knew the college rate for a student alone would be high—times one thousand would be a real boon to Eons.

There appeared to be nothing behind the offer—other than the offer—which was also right out there to look at it.

She would accept this offer. She knew that. She saw the Baroness would now know that too.

She looked back at the Baroness and nodded her assent.

"We will fully support your referendum push, Baroness—and if you allow me to speak first, as an Issian can often sway the discussion with the first strike," she said.

She nodded over to her aide who had sat quietly well away from the conversation, and that brought in a small group of people who moved in some catering carts with wine and refreshments and some hors d'oeuvres too.

It was time to celebrate.

There was a deal with the Barony in place.

The Issian planet of Eons would gain some much-needed capital and for now, a solid alliance with the Barony.
What could be better today …

####

He looked over at the far wall and wondered if he could see well enough to count the rivets in the bulkhead panels and was unhappy to learn there was not enough light in his room to let him try.