Jason grinned.
“How about a job aboard an escort carrier as a squadron commander?”
“Here, sir?”
“Sure, right here. I’d like to make your assignment permanent and have you run the Rapiers.”
“Sir, I’d love it.”
Smiling, Jason slapped Kevin on the shoulder.
“We’ll talk more about it later.”
Grinning with delight, Kevin raced back to Chamberlain, the two laughing and slapping each other on the back.
Jason turned and walked away.
As he reached the doorway into the main corridor leading aft he stopped for a moment to look at the roll of honor.
Two hundred and eighty-three names were on the list. So many of them he didn’t even know, so many were just barely remembered faces and names, learned in the heat of combat. He could not even recall now the names of his young and so attractive combat information officer, the lowly cook who had dragged the wounded out of a shattered corridor, finally pushing a jammed airlock door shut, with himself on the vacuum side, or the deckhand who had waded into a wall of fire to shut down a ruptured hydrogen fuel line and died saving the ship. So many names, so many letters to write in the days to come.
He walked down the corridor which was blackened from fire, squeezing past a work crew, realizing that he still had on a borrowed uniform which was now stained and filthy.
He reached his cabin in the flight crew quarters and looked around. Fourteen people left. The other rooms now empty, quiet, personal effects stowed and waiting to be shipped home.
He went into his room and closed the door.
The bed seemed to float up and he collapsed upon it, not even bothering to undress. There was still a faint scent of perfume to the pillow case and the memory of it all brought the tears close to the surface.
“Damn this war,” he whispered.
He only sighed her name once, and then, blessedly, Captain Jason “Bear” Bondarevsky drifted off into a dreamless sleep of peace, from which he would awaken the following day—ready to return to the war against the Kilrathi.
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