Lacuna: Demons of the Void (13 page)

“How
did
you take it?”

“Heh, I punched him in the face. Pretty good, too, lots of blood.”

James refilled her drink, then their glasses met with a light
clink
. “That’s the way,” he offered encouragingly. “I’ve always said that if you’re going to hit someone, might as well make it good. No sense half-arsing it, give it to him right in the nose!”

The Chinese woman laughed. “That’s exactly what I did!”

“Excellent.” James paused, regarding her. “So, after he’s learned his lesson, got his face fixed up and spent some time in the brig... will you allow him to return to duty?”

Liao’s levity slowly evaporated. She tilted her glass, shaking her head. “...no. He blew his chance. There are plenty of other officers chomping at the bit to serve on my ship. I’ll give the position to someone who does it justice.”

Grégoire frowned, nodding. “That’s your prerogative, but I’ve got to ask... Sheng’s record is – well was, before this – very good. He was a career officer and most everyone who’s served with him had good things to say.” James tipped up his glass, sipping absently. “So what’s going to happen to him now?”

“I don’t know. I guess he’ll be reassigned to a surface vessel... In the meantime, I wanted to drag him out of the brig and put him to use, so I had him assigned to prisoner escort; He’ll be walking with Saara as they move her around the ship...”

“He won’t like that. He’s prideful and ambitious... but, anyway, as I said it’s your choice. Still... it’s a pity about what happened. A lot of people aren’t happy about it from what I hear... He has influential family.”

“I know.” Liao poured herself another glass, taking a hearty swig. “But I had to do it... I don’t have any regrets on that front. About plenty of other stuff, but not about that.”

James gave her a sideways glance. “Seems like you’re drinking a lot for someone who’s convinced she made the right choice.”

She glared at him, and James held up his hands defensively. “I know, I know,” he offered. “I’ve hit the sauce more than a few times myself after a hard day, but you’re going at it like a woman on a mission... especially since half the fleet considers you a war hero, someone who stood up to the aliens and won.”

“What about the other half?”

Liao stared across at James and swirled the drink, already feeling light-headed. She felt her face flush red – not from embarrassment, but just from the first glass of booze as it began to enter her system. She wondered if, subconsciously, she really was having second thoughts about Sheng.

James leaned forward slightly. “Let’s not talk about the other half. Sufficient enough to say... there’s a certain element of the task force who feels you overstretched yourself in the engagement, that you should have waited. That it was an unacceptable risk and that you endangered yourself, your ship and your crew unnecessarily. That you gambled everything and, yes, it paid off, but we didn’t get anything particularly valuable and we could have lost everything.”

Liao gave a snort. “That’s it?”

“…Well, of course, there’s the fact you keep the alien around like a pet instead of giving it a bullet in the brain then airlocking the body.”

There was a heavy silence at this point as Grégoire waited patiently for Liao to ask the question that he knew she was going to ask. Finally, it came.

“What do
you
think?”

Grégoire considered, bringing his hand to his chin.

“You could say I’m sitting on the fence. I support your command, Melissa... You’re smart, tactically orientated, very pretty, and you take risks. But... I also think that Sheng did have a point... in some way. It was a risky move back there, engaging the scout ship, and there wouldn’t have been any harm done if you had let it go. Yes, it might have reported back, but that would have taken some time... and now any chance of diplomacy with them is probably gone. Plus, well, they’re bound to come looking for their lost ship eventually...”

Seeing her disapproval, Grégoire smiled at her. “...Still, I believe that when it comes to the command of men in combat, that fortune favours the bold.”

Pretty? Grégoire thought she was
pretty?
Despite everything James had said about her and her command, those were the words that stuck in the forefront of her mind.

Despite herself, she felt a warm flush come over her, and this time not just from the extremely high proof scotch. Liao was highly amused by the idea that she was into her thirties now and, as the man himself had said, a war hero, but a few kind words from Grégoire could get her blushing like a schoolgirl. Melissa let a smile play over her lips, nodding her head a little as though she had heard everything else he had said.

“Fortune favours the bold... they
do
say that.”

The Chinese woman mused to herself, playing that little saying over and over in her mind... did James
really
think that? She took a breath, grinning.   “So you really think I’m pretty?”

Although she feared he would have a poor reaction to that, James didn’t seem flustered and just leaned forward on his chair. “Well, I think you’d have to be blind to miss it,” he admitted, giving a wide – but friendly – smile. “And I think we established that your prettiness was why you were sent to Sydney in the first place... I mean, right before the attacks.” He paused. “You don’t mind me thinking so?”

Melissa grinned. “As long as you grant me the same courtesy, I guess I don’t mind at all.”

“You can think of yourself as pretty if you like.”

She smirked, playfully reaching over and swatting his knee. “Oh, you
knew
what I meant!”

James laughed, shaking his head. “Oh, well, in that case I think we can arrange for a mutual understanding of some sort. You permit me to think that you’re pretty, and I permit you the same about me. It all works out. Ahh, the art of compromise!”

Melissa made a somewhat unsteady toast with her half-filled glass. “It all works out.” As she did a drunken, giggly laugh fell out of her lips, and Grégoire couldn’t help but join in.

“You really are a lightweight, aren’t you?”

“You have no idea! I haven’t had this much in-... in a while!”

The laughter continued for some time, followed by idle chatter about supplies and more glasses of scotch. When the chatter and the bottle’s contents sank away into nothing, Melissa sipped coyly at the last of her glass, grinning across James’ heavy wooden table to the man on the other side. She folded her legs, wiggling her toes, her boots long since discarded and tossed in an untidy pile near the door.

“So... you know the crew thinks we’re sleeping together, right?”

James stared. “They say that on the
Beijing
too?” The man seemed genuinely surprised, shaking his head. “The crew gets up to all kinds of gossip on the
Tehran
... much of the same drivel. I suppose you should be used to it by now, though.”

“Sheng assumed we were, and nothing I could do could convince him otherwise. He seemed fixated on the idea – not that it’s any of his business who I take to bed, of course. That damn arsehole can say what he likes... doesn’t matter to me one bit.”

An impish grin formed on James’ face. “To me, that sounds like a good case for double jeopardy.”

Melissa laughed right in the middle of sipping from the half depleted glass, which caused a little of the booze to splash, barely noticed, on the front of her uniform. “Oh?” she asked, smirking and wiping down her front with the back of her hand, “what’s that, mmm? I’m being accused of – and essentially convicted
in absentia
by the fleet’s gossip mill – of having sexual relations with you, so... I might as well partake of your, uhh,
spoils
... on the grounds I’m going to be punished for doing so anyway?”

He laughed. “You said it better than I could. You should just get on with it... I’ll have to somehow endure. I’ll just... lie back and think of Brussels, I suppose...”

Melissa gave a playful snort. “You
are
assuming I would just permit you to undress and fuck me, you know.” She inclined her glass towards him, settling back in the couch. “
Quite
the stretch!”

Grégoire brought his glass to his lips, grinning like a jackal. “Given how endowed I am, I’m guessing it will very well be.”

Laughing at his audacity, Liao threw a cushion at him, hitting him square in the face despite her drunkenness. “‘
Will be
’? Hey, don’t you be talking like it’s already decided-”

“Mmm? It’s not? Why ever not, my dear?”

Liao just snorted and laughed, shaking her head. “You must be kidding me! As tall, dark and handsome as you are, old friend, I’ve never slept with another officer before... let alone my – albeit indirect – superior. That’s career suicide for a woman in the People’s Navy... or hell, any navy...”

“Really? Fascinating... didn’t you say you went to a co-ed boot camp?”

“Uhh... well, I mean-”

James waggled a finger towards her. “And, just so you know, so did I... so I know what goes on there. Lots and lots and lots of humping in the ammo storage lockers when the Commandant’s not looking. We used to call it ‘Interoffice Networking’, or ‘Interpersonal Relationship Management’... It’s very healthy, a great way to – uhh – bond, and it’s an excellent way to blow off some stress...”

Liao snorted with laughter. “Hey, okay, okay... yeah. Yeah, there’s usually a lot of playing around, a lot of ‘networking’, and I did my fair share, but
never
with the other officers, let alone-”

“Never?” asked Grégoire, a teasing, playful twinkle in his eye. “
Never
never?”

“
Never
never, ever!” A slight pause, then, “...Weeeell, except that one time...”

James clapped his hands, grinning like a kid. “See! See! I told you!”

“But that doesn’t count,” Liao protested, drunkenly waving her glass around, “it was an exchange program, and they had this... this
sculpted Adonis
from Spain come over, and I tell you what, he was
gorgeous
. He had a chest that looked like it was carved from marble, like one of those superheroes Rowe reads about in her stupid comic books. God, he really knew how to
刺痛我的阴道
if you catch my drift... mmm, mmm.
Yummy
.”

James appeared to be sitting beside her now, something Liao hadn’t noticed. “Well,” he began, slipping his arm around her shoulder with an exaggerated yawn, “you know I just so happen to speak Spanish, right? The international language of sexy, sexy space lust?”

“Hah! Yeah,
sure
you do! Spanish my arse...” Liao made no attempt to remove the arm, but did give it an amused look out of the corner of her eye.

“¡
Bonita
mujer asiática y pequeña! ¡Quiero tener sexo contigo!”

Melissa blinked, followed by more snorting laughter. She rested her head against her friend’s chest. “Well,
fuck me
, you
do
speak Spanish!”

“Hah. Well, not really. Just that sentence and another sentence explaining that I don’t really speak Spanish after all if they press me about it.” He winked. “And, well, don’t mind if I do!”

It was the strangest thing, but at that point Melissa felt that the madness of the weeks since the
Battle of Jupiter
(if that was really what the press were calling it now) had gotten to be too much, as though all the stress and adrenaline and sleeplessness had drained her resolve completely. Before she truly knew what she was doing, her hands were on him, tearing clumsily at the buttons of his uniform. Laughing the whole while, a sincere, genuine laugh that came like a wave of manic excitement, the woman pushed James onto his back, wiggling herself out of her top. Her hands found his chest, sliding him free of his uniform.

She did have
such
a soft spot for dark-skinned men.

*****

Outside James Grégoire’s Quarters

TFR
Tehran

The next morning

Commander Kamal Iraj cleared his throat to get their attention. “Unfortunately, I have to ask that you step away now. I know you are waiting for Captain Liao to exit so you can interview her, but regrettably, what we have to speak about is classified.”

The reporters crowded silently around the door to Captain Grégoire’s quarters, like scavengers searching for tasty meat, were finally ushered away. Now Kamal stood alone before the grey steel door straightening his uniform for the last time. He was satisfied now that everything was in order and it was time to finally meet his new CO.

Her whereabouts were no secret. The reporters, along with many crew, had seen the two of them retire to Grégoire’s quarters that night and nobody had seen them leave... Their stakeout had made sure of that. Iraj had no opinion about her fairly obvious liaison; In fact, he welcomed it. Liao’s apparent “encounter” with another ship Captain reduced the risk that she would be fraternizing with anyone on her own crew, which might impair her judgement. It was best that she and her playmate have the vast gulf of space between them so that their heads were clear.