Still, even her baggy coveralls couldn’t hide the fact that she was an attractive woman, though she often seemed determined to ignore that fact completely.
“Seems strange to have this mausoleum so empty,” she said. “You think they’re going to sell the whole place off for scrap, or what?”
“Wouldn’t put it past them,” he said.
The last time he’d been here the decades-long war with the Kilrathi Empire had still been raging on, and Moonbase Tycho had been a busy hub of the Terran war effort. That had been only ten months ago, when the fortunes of war had been anything but smiling upon humanity. Bondarevsky had been rotated back to Tycho suffering from multiple wounds suffered during the desperate battle when the Terran Confederation’s monster weapons platform, Behemoth, had been destroyed by the Kilrathi after a traitor had betrayed details of its weaknesses to the Empire. The Coventry, flagship of his beloved destroyer squadron, had been heavily engaged in the fighting and nearly torn apart before the whole thing was through.
Back then, Bondarevsky had been sure the end was near for all Mankind. After a war that had gone on for so long that most of the combatants had grown up never knowing peace, the Kilrathi had been poised for a last strike that would have knocked Earth’s defenses out and left the Empire unchallenged in this part of space. And then, abruptly, everything had changed.
Bondarevsky’s gaze sought out the oversized video rig that dominated one wall of the reception area. He remembered watching the ISN news update while he and Sparks awaited the arrival of Admiral Geoff Tolwyns shuttle…the reports, carefully slanted by a worried Confederation government but all too clearly conveying word of a string of fresh defeats on the frontiers…the woman sitting beside him who cursed the Kilrathi and the Administration with equal vehemence as she listened to the newscaster…
And then came the bulletin. A daring raid with an experimental planet-busting bomb had penetrated deep into Kilrathi space, to the Imperial homeworld itself, and when the bomb went off it literally shook Kilrah apart. The Emperor and his power-hungry grandson had perished along with swarms of their subjects, and the shocked survivors of the Imperium had sued for peace, a concept alien to their warrior natures until that stunning moment of utter defeat.
That moment had changed everything. The peace talks had dragged on before a treaty was finally signed at Torgo, but from the moment of Kilrah’s destruction everyone had known the war was over at last. Bondarevsky remembered how the same woman who’d been cursing had started cheering, hugging and kissing everyone in sight. She’d embraced him so tightly that his shattered arm had hurt like hell, but in the general euphoria it hadn’t seemed very important. Mankind had won a splendid victory, and with the end of the fighting the citizen-soldiers of the Confederation could lay down their weapons and return to the plow, to the ways of peace.
Looking at the shuttle port now, Bondarevsky wondered if they hadn’t been far too hasty in their rush to renounce a lifetime of fighting.
The Confederation had started demobilizing even before the final details of the treaty were hammered out at Torgo. Ships were decommissioned; soldiers, spacemen, and marines were mustered out in droves. The Confederations military machine was transformed in an incredibly short time.
He’d stood through plenty of ceremonies, heard more high-minded speeches than he’d ever thought he could endure. Thank you…credit to the Service…conspicuous valor in action against the Kilrathi…heroic dedication to duty… But in the end it had been clear that the Confed Navy wasn’t looking for heroes any more. They wanted peacekeepers, timeservers, administrators and bureaucrats, men and women who knew how to carry out policy and show the flag, not fighters who would push the envelope in the name of winning at any cost. Bondarevsky hadn’t bothered to wait for the Navy to let him know his services wouldn’t be needed any longer. He’d put in for retirement, with a courtesy promotion to commodore, a half-pay pension, and the prospect of a long and frustrating recovery from his wounds.
He looked down at his right hand and flexed it, frowning. The doctors hadn’t been able to save the arm, and the bionic replacement still didn’t feel like it was really a part of him yet. But he’d been pronounced fit two weeks earlier. If the war had still been on, he’d have been bombarding the brass with daily requests for a chance to return to active duty, and devil take the physical therapist’s recommendations. But Bondarevsky wasn’t in the Navy any more. He didn’t belong any more.
Too many changes… In Tycho Moonbase, working on a complement less than a quarter of the wartime establishment. In the Confederation Navy, beating swords into plowshares with dizzying speed.
And in Jason Bondarevsky, who’d looked forward to the day the war ended for most of his life, but found he wasn’t equipped for the peacetime existence he’d always hoped for.
Sparks followed his glance to the plastilimb arm and gave him a quirky half-smile. “Afraid the warranty is running out?” she asked. “Don’t worry about it, skipper. You’ve nearly got it now. All you need is some more practice.”
“If I do, it’s because of your help, Sparks,” he said. She’d been aboard Coventry during the last battle as Damage Control Officer, and she had led the party that had saved his life after the Kilrathi missile had struck the flag bridge, killing the other six people in the cramped compartment. Bondarevsky would have perished with the others, from blood loss or decompression or lack of oxygen, if it hadn’t been for her quick thinking that day. And when he’d taken retirement after the treaty was signed she’d left the service as well, looking after him during his convalescence and overseeing his physical therapy. “I don’t know how I’d’ve made it without you.”
She shrugged and grinned, her very best “Aw, shucks” routine. “The way they were downsizing the fleet, skipper, I wouldn’t have lasted long anyway. During wartime a maverick can come up to officer’s country through the cargo hatch the way I did, but nobody wants you around in peacetime unless you’re an officer and a gentleman…or lady, as the case may be. I figured you needed the help.”
He studied her for a long moment. Sparks had served with him for a long time now, ever since the days of the Tarawa’s deep penetration raid on Kilrah back before the Battle of Earth. The relationship between a fighter pilot and his crew chief was almost always incredibly close, because the pilot put his life in the crew chief’s hands every time he took his craft out of the hangar. The two had hovered on the edge of a romance for a time following the death of Bondarevsky’s first love in Tarawa’s raid, but he’d pulled back from anything serious. Not only was it a bad idea for a ship’s captain to have a dalliance with one of his officers while on active service, but Bondarevsky hadn’t been willing to risk losing another Svetlana. Since that one brief kiss a few years back, he and Sparks had been friends unwilling to risk anything more.
But one way or another Bondarevsky had always placed absolute trust in Sparks, a trust that had carried over after she’d earner her commission and moved on to other duties. Somehow, though, he’d never really considered what drove her. Fact was, Sparks could have stayed in the service without any trouble at all. After the devastating battles of the decades-long Kilrathi war, technical officers with her talents were much in demand even with the Fleet’s downsizing program. But she had elected to follow him into retirement in the seaside home he’d purchased in Odessa…and now into what amounted to a self-imposed exile.