He'd opened his mouth. Now he closed it again and tilted his head to one side as he studied her expression.
"They have?" he asked, finally.
"Well," she said with painful honesty, "they would have been, if I hadn't been so busy suppressing them. I hope you won't take this wrongly, but now that I think about it, you're actually kind of on the attractive side."
"I'm what?"
"Oh, maybe not exactly handsome," she said pensively. "But cute—definitely cute. And, now that I think about it, you've got nice buns, too."
"With the captain's permission," Hawthorne said through teeth which weren't—quite—gritted, "it occurs to me that I may have been just a bit too quick to dismiss the Governor's attitude towards the expedition's military commander. The thought of spankings has a certain definite appeal at this particular moment."
"It does?" She considered his statement gravely. "Well, I've never actually tried it, you understand, but ..." good.
"My God," he said, softly, smiling at her, "you do know how to laugh."
She sobered almost instantly, but it was only a case of stepping back a few paces from the bright bubble of mirth he'd touched to life inside her, and her huge blue eyes softened as she contemplated him.
"Yes," she said finally. "Yes, I do. But I'd ... forgotten. It's ... been a while."
"Is it something you want to talk about?" he asked gently, and she shook her head.
"No. Not yet. Maybe—probably—later, but not just yet."
She could tell that a part of him wanted to press, but he didn't. He only nodded, and she gave him another smile, this one with more than a touch of gratitude for his understanding and patience.
"May I assume, however, that you aren't going to have me up on charges?" he inquired after a moment.
"Well, it is most improper of you, and undoubtedly prejudicial to discipline and proper maintenance of the chain of command," she said thoughtfully. "On the other hand, since you're the senior Navy officer present, preferring charges might be just a bit awkward. Especially if your defense counsel put me on the stand and asked whether or not your feelings were reciprocated." She shook her head. "No, under the circumstances, I think we can probably deal with this situation short of a formal court-martial."
"And just precisely how do you intend to 'deal' with it, if I might ask?"
"Given the fact that neither one of us has had the good sense and gumption to say a single word about this to the other one, I propose that we approach the situation like mature adults," she told him, and the gravity of her tone was only slightly flawed by the twinkle in her eyes. "I rather doubt that anyone is going to complain to higher authority, under the circumstances, whatever we choose to do about it.
Still, there are proprieties to observe, and a mature and adult woman such as myself prefers to test the waters first. To ascertain what she herself is feeling and thinking. To determine whether the possible object of her affections—or, at least, hormones—truly has the personal qualities she desires in a potential, um, significant other. To—"
"All right, Captain Trevor, ma'am!" he interrupted. "I get the picture. And you're right; I'm an idiot for not having opened my mouth sooner, I suppose. So, Captain Trevor, might I have the pleasure of your company for dinner? I have a really excellent auto-chef in my palatial quarters, with a truly masterful touch with the delicious standard meal number seventeen scheduled for this evening. I promise, we'll almost be able to forget that it tastes like recycled boot soles. And," his voice got at least a little more serious, "I also have three bottles of a rather nice wine stashed away in my private mass allowance. I was saving them for our arrival at our destination."
"If you brought them for that, then you should save them," she told him, but he shook his head.
"At the time I brought them aboard, it hadn't occurred to me that anything equally worth celebrating might come along," he said, and this time his voice was much softer and warmer. "But, then, I hadn't met you yet, either, had I?"
3
"I'd say that was a masterful bit of understatement," Maneka replied in judicious tones.
They stood side-by-side on Thermopylae's command deck, gazing into the visual display along with every other member of Hawthorne's bridge crew as the big transport ship settled into orbit around the planet they had come so far to find.
The G0 star they had named Lakshmaniah blazed with fierce, life-giving light and heat, bathing not one, but two habitable worlds in its brilliant glare. At the moment, Thermopylae was approaching the innermost of the two, the one they had named Indrani, which orbited the primary at just over nine light-minutes. The average planetary temperature was a bit higher than Maneka would have preferred, but, then, she was a native of Everest. The other habitable planet, the one they had named New Hope, with an orbital radius of just under fifteen and a half light-minutes, was much more to her taste.
Which, she thought wryly, puts me in a minority of one.
She couldn't really blame the rest of the expedition, from Adrian Agnelli down to the youngest child, for preferring Indrani. After over a full Standard Year and a half packed into the overcrowded confines of their transports, that planet looked like Heaven made real. With a climate most resort worlds would have envied, a gravity of 1.05 Earth Standard, and a surface that was eighty-two percent water, it floated against the blackness of space like a huge, incredibly gorgeous, white-swirled blue and green marble.
Even without the endless, wearying journey which had brought them here, that planet would have been one of the most beautiful things she'd ever seen in her life.
"In position, sir," the helmsman announced from Astrogation, and Hawthorne nodded.
"Ms. Stopford, please signal done with engines," he said.
"Aye, aye, sir," Thermopylae's engineer said, and Hawthorne looked at his communications officer.
"Inform the Governor and Brigadier Jeffords that we're preparing to deploy the pod," he said.
"Aye, aye, sir."
Maneka listened to be crisp rhythm of orders, the instant snap with which his people responded to his commands, with what she realized had become rather proprietary pleasure. As her senior Navy deputy, Hawthorne had taken over almost all of the unending details of managing the convoy's ships. Like her, he'd had no choice but to grow into the responsibilities which had landed on his shoulders, and she was devoutly glad she'd had him. He was actually much better when it came to dealing with people than she was, and she'd come to rely upon him as a quasi-ambassador, as much as her senior naval officer.
The way she'd come to rely upon him in a much more personal sense, as well, was simply icing on her cake.
And a rather nice cake it is, too, she thought wryly. Because he really does have an awfully nice butt. Among other things.
She'd decided that their relationship wasn't quite against Regs. Lazarus had helped her research the Articles of War and relevant regulations, and she'd found at least three loopholes which might plausibly be stretched to cover the situation. But all of them had to be stretched rather industriously to pull it off, and even so she knew they hovered on the brink of an outright violation, so the two of them had very carefully not moved their things into the same set of quarters. Everyone knew, of course, but this way everyone could pretend they didn't, and that made them all much happier. It was wonderful that humans were such ... adaptable creatures.
"Well," she said, quietly enough that his bridge crew could treat it as a private conversation between the two of them, "I guess I'd better get saddled up for my perilous mission."
"Yeah, right!" he snorted, equally quietly. "If I thought you might really end up in some sort of trouble down there, I'd probably be nervous. As it is—"