He gently stroked her cheek, her neck, and began to trace her neckline lightly with his fingers. An involuntary inhale on her part sent him a message. What exactly that message was, she wasn’t sure herself, but before she could think he retreated and regarded her with a quiet gaze. She bit her bottom lip as she stared back at him, not wanting to leave the moment they were sharing behind, but very uncertain about going forward.
“It’s too soon,” he concluded without a hint of disappointment.
She caught him as he started pulling away from her and everything stopped. Ayan didn’t know how to say what was on her mind, articulating the problem without being embarrassed seemed impossible. With a sudden surge of courage she burst; “Everything is new again,” and was immediately mortified. She blushed so hard she was sure her hair was turning back to its old shade of red.
Jake held her silently for a moment before she felt him laugh more than she heard.
“Oi! Not funny!” she squeaked, pinching his arm.
Jake looked into her eyes, and in a gesture completely unfamiliar to her, he tipped her chin up with his finger and whispered; “There are no expectations here, only time.”
“What about people decorating your footlocker with frilly underwear if they find out we’re not there yet?”
“I’ll just pass them on to you.”
“Clever.” She said, kissing him as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him on top of her. A nervous giggle escaped her lips as he murmured his surprise. “Promise to wash them first,” she chuckled.
“Only of you model-“
“Ayan, a visitor from Drifton has come asking for you,” Lewis announced from her comm unit.
Jake pushed up and looked at her. “And I thought you were the one who would be getting some rest tonight.”
“I was hoping, though with the connections we tapped today, I should have known someone would come calling,” she sighed. “Who is it Lewis?”
“An Axiologist who claims to be of the Samaritan path, whatever that means.”
Ayan was surprised, inexplicably embarrassed and immediately eager to meet the rare earth trained religious man. She'd only met two before. The first was one of her guest teachers as a young woman in school, before she entered the Junior Academy. The second was aboard the Triton, Chief Grady. “He's a Catholic?”
Seeing her excitement, Jake smiled and rolled off the centre seat.
“I don't have much information on Axiologists, but considering the story of the Samaritan originates from the ancient Catholic bible, then I would assume-”
“It was more of a statement.”
“You know, I could meet him so you could get some sleep,” Jake said, watching her pull a thin hooded over shirt from her carrying bag.
She caught sight of his smirk as her head emerged from the smooth garment. “No, that's-” She stopped and shook her head. “Teasing me. You'll pay for that later. How do I look?”
“Too good to go out there,” Jake said with a wolfish smile.
“Flatterer, won't make up for teasing,” Ayan replied, straightening the neck of the blue over shirt. It wasn't what she'd prefer to wear while meeting someone of importance, someone educated and trained on Earth but it would have to do. The few articles she had brought with her from Freeground were still on the Triton, and with a fleeting thought she dismissed everything she owned as being too informal, or to practical to be fit. “It'll have to do,” she sighed.
Jake was already beside the door. “Well, when you get back from talking to our visitor, I'd like you to get some sleep here. I'm stimmed up, so I'll be helping with security, repairs and making sure everyone gets to where they're supposed to be.”
“Aye, Captain. How long is your dosage going to keep you up?”
“Another twenty two hours. Should be enough time to deal with most of the initial fallout I'm expecting when people find out I'm here.”
“That's a stretch. Are you sure it's a good idea?”
“That's more a question for you, since I'm going to leave you in command while I sleep it off for eight or ten hours, if I get the chance.”
Ayan had command training and experience, but she didn't feel ready to be in charge. At least not while everything was so tentative and disorganized. “Can you make sure a few of the Samson crew are ready at the same time I am? Especially Stephanie, I’d like to at least try to start building a bridge. Might be too soon, just yet, but I need her experience.”
“She's seen rough spots before, maybe more than I have. Still, I wouldn't have signed the Clever Dream to you, or sent you to Greydock unless I thought you were up to it. I think we'll do fine here for as long as we have to make it home port.”
“I wish I had your confidence,” she chuckled ruefully.
“You'll see, we'll be fine. Once the smoke clears we'll have enough people left to turn our luck around.”
“It almost sounds like you've given this speech before,” Ayan said with an exaggerated suspicious squint.
“Probably. I have a bit of practice at getting back up and dusting myself off, a lot of our people do.”
Of all the things he’d told her; that bolstered her confidence the most.
Chapter 35
Frost’s stump tingled again. It happened every few hours, after his shin started itching, then burning and then his vacsuit would administer pain medication and nanobots would repair the worn, irritated skin as soon as it broke and began to bleed. He almost wished he hadn’t checked his prosthetic during their last break. It might have been better if he wasn’t aware of the crack filled with blood and pus. When it cracked, he couldn’t have guessed, but it had been bothering him since they were first knocked clear of their wormhole.
The inside of his vacsuit stunk with the smell, and he quietly regretted turning down the replacement limb that had been grown in the medical bay. The thought of a nafalli in charge of the attachment surgery didn’t appeal to him in the least, but the stench of a wound that opened over and over again, combined with the irritation of walking for so many hours he’d lost count made having one of the hairy non-humans affixing the limb more appealing.
The Sol Defence Encounter Suit was the perfect infantry command platform. Even the intelligence expert, Jason Everin, who had become his partner in the boarding operation, used one whenever he could. It limited them both, however. The height of the suits restricted them to large storage areas and main hallways. If he didn’t have competent, well armoured teams backing them up, they would have had to leave them behind.
The gunnery deck crew along with a few security personnel made for one mean unit of one hundred twenty six men and women. They wore the heaviest vacsuits, and a third were in the smaller loader suits. They’d outfitted most of them with weaponry at the last minute, and it didn’t take them long to refine their jury-rigged solutions.
Jason Everin was a genious. Frost had worked with several infantry commanders, and considered himself fortunate to know Jacob Valance, but this man was a different breed. On the bridge the man seemed easy going and competent. Nothing seemed like much of a challenge while he was running communications and helping with security. Since the counter boarding action began Frost had formed a different impression. Jason Everin was colder than anyone he’d ever met. The crew of Enforcer 1109, the destroyer attached to the ship, was the enemy. There was no compromise whatsoever. He also improvised at a moment’s notice. Pride seemed to have no place in his thinking process, and recognizing that a plan had to change because an assumption or idea was wrong happened as though by reflex.
Frost watched as Jason and a quarter of their forces moved around one of the shorter hallways towards the main crew habitation area. It was a fitful firefight, with enemy crew members backtracking towards the largest berth on the ship. At its centre was a galley, several offices, showers, and the convenience store. “Second team, move up. Put down barriers for cover,” Frost commanded as the second quarter of their people moved in from the other direction. “Make sure they don’t split into another section of the ship.” He would never admit that he could feel a cold sweat on his palms as he watched the plan come into place.