Peter Vanderberg contemplated the young major in front of him, from the slightly long for regulation hair to the precise fit of his silks and liked what he saw. What he primarily liked about David Morrison couldn’t be seen on the surface. Alert, competent, smart. Attentive to detail without getting bogged down and overcome by trivialities. Good delegating authority. All these were reasons for the man to have obtained the exalted rank of major at the unusually young age of thirty-six.
His 201 file was virtually perfect, as was true of almost all of the new breed of young Fleet Strike officers.
“So. Now that our intel is confirmed, I expect a finalized operational plan for capture of the targets ready to brief in the participants by eleven hundred tomorrow. You can use my briefing room, since I’ll want to be there. Look at me, David.” He caught the major’s eyes as they dropped slightly to meet his own. “I can’t emphasize enough how important this mission is. Use whatever you need to get it done.”
“Yes, sir.” He nodded. “My preliminary plan is for a solid team in civilian clothes backed up by a substantial number of uniformed MPs who can be thoroughly concealed and held under radio silence until and unless needed.”
“Reasonable. Get on it. I’ll see you tomorrow. Dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.” The about face was clean, but relaxed, confident. Good man. As soon as Stewart was out in the open, he was definitely sending him a mixed case of Havanas and good scotch, and damn the cost.
“So he didn’t notice that you had your buckley do all those time-wasting reports he wanted?” Stewart had doubled back to the office, since Sinda didn’t have to be at the asshole’s quarters until his wife left at nineteen hundred.
“Well, he did comment that they were a bit pessimistic.” She trailed a finger down his chest, grinning conspiratorially. “I blamed it on PMS.
“So,” she took a finger and tapped him on the chest, “we’ve just about exhausted the possibilities of the regular office but you,” she tapped him again, “have access to the locked room off of Beed’s office. Is there any… interesting furniture or anything in there?”
Her breasts were just barely brushing against his chest, and he could feel her nipples hardening through the thin fabric. Her breath was warm against his jaw line and smelled of cinnamon.
“Well, there is a recliner back there. And a large vidscreen. I don’t think he wants the rest of the office to know he uses them.” He ran a hand through that silky, bright hair. She had great hair.
“A recliner? Lead on, Macduff,” she said.
If she thought she was going to be in the driver’s seat like last night, she was in for a surprise. Not that it hadn’t been fantastic, just, well, they didn’t have a lot of time and he didn’t like why. Oh, it wasn’t her fault at all. Which was why he was in the mood to wring every last bit of sensation from her and leave her sated and limp as a rag doll. The asshole might get her acting ability, but he had her real passion, and he knew it. It was his aim to make her unable to forget it for a second of her sad pantomime with that unfit, corrupt flake who he was more and more looking forward to relieving of command and career.
The promised recliner was upholstered in a rather hideous green and black plaid. A faded leopard-print pillow scavenged from who knew where was squashed into one corner of it. A couple of other pillows and a red and white blanket with a soft drink logo were piled neatly to the side of the chair. A box of holocubes with the logos of commercial entertainment companies sat by itself on a small end table. The color scheme was the same institutional green and battleship gray of the rest of the office.
As the door slid shut behind her he pulled her hard against him, kissing her deeply. He didn’t know what it was about this woman, but a kiss or a touch and he was just gone.
Now her legs were up around his waist and the drive came boiling up in him. It turned out that the pillows and blanket combined to provide just the right height boost to support her when he bent her over the arm of the chair. He had both hands free, and he could reach everything, and did, as he felt the convulsions begin to take her. Yesterday had been pretty great, but all in all, Stewart preferred to drive.
He had worked his way through two and was recovered and starting on three, gotta love that juv stamina, when he thought he heard a noise in the outer office. He clapped one hand over Sinda’s mouth, “Shhh!” and they both dived for their PDA’s. She made it first.
“Buckley, who’s out there?” she hissed.
“It’s Sergeant Franks! He’ll tell the general and we’re all gonna die!” it whispered back.
Only Franks. Wonder what he’s up to? Stewart breathed a sigh of relief and put a finger over his lips.
Sinda nodded.
He quietly murmured to his AID-in-drag to listen for Franks until he left the headquarters complex. He and Sinda sat very quietly, staring at each other, until it announced softly that Franks was gone and, other than themselves and the MP standing guard in the outer corridor, the headquarters area was now empty.
“You get damn good performance out of your buckley,” he said.
“Yeah, so do you,” she observed absently. “Boy that took the mood right away, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, but I bet we could get it back pretty quick.” He looked down and shrugged, running a finger up her thigh.
“We already damn near got caught once tonight. Let’s not make that a certainty, okay?” She stopped his hand with one of her own and grabbed her silks, smiling regretfully.
“Yeah,” he agreed reluctantly, grabbing his own clothes. It really wasn’t her fault. If it was anybody’s fault it was his for having the power to relieve the bastard and failing to do so. Okay, so his own orders didn’t allow it yet, but if he wanted to get her out of the asshole’s bed all he had to do was hurry up and catch Franks or whoever the sonofabitch plant was. As soon as that was done, he could relieve Beed and ship his scumbag butt back to Earth and away from her.
He kissed her and waved her on out to go do what she had to do as soon as she had her hair and clothes straightened while he finished cleaning up.
It wasn’t actually impossible. It wasn’t as if working in CID or an MP Brigade was her life’s ambition. He could get her a transfer somewhere on base. Once they were no longer in the same chain of command, and she was in a job less outright crazy than this one, there wouldn’t really be anything to keep them apart, would there?
On the shuttle for the freighter, Jay and the others generally wore liners of the same material as military silks under their heavy cotton jumpsuits. They had to. Landing control wouldn’t have tolerated the heat leakage that would have resulted if they’d kept the inside at a comfortable temperature.
Besides, they weren’t supposed to be sleeping on it in the first place. Covering that had meant renting a transient’s room and having someone in it enough of the time to make it look well used. Jay liked this arrangement because it gave him excellent cover for his independent ventures when it was his time to use the room.
And his turn was supposed to be today, but Papa O’Neal had asked to swap, and he hadn’t had a graceful excuse to say no.
So here he was stuck on the shuttle freezing his buns off with Sunday. Well, okay, the silk longjohns helped a lot. He’d still rather be alone and warm and ready to go. Not that Sunday was a bad guy, it was just that he had so much money he couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to grow up in the lousy BS. Oh, most of the kids had just accepted it. They never knew any better. But him being a doctor’s kid, he’d seen the difference between himself and the other doctors’ kids. He knew full well what his life would have been like with a lot less fucking BS. Sunday could have never understood, but he was just getting back the life that always should have been his in the first place. And if the BS suffered, well, it just balanced the scales, didn’t it?