Terminal Run

The convulsions hit him then, their impact continuing as his body trembled and his lower body seemed to light up with a hot warmth, and he could feel himself pouring into her as she began to convulse herself, a small tremble at first growing to a violent shaking and a gasping cry in his ear as her teeth bit his earlobe and she said his name over and over, and soon the world grew dim at the borders and all of him was now a part of her and she of him, and his legs trembled with weakness as he sank slowly to the deck, her bare smooth legs still wrapped around his waist. He pulled his fingers through her hair and kissed her, gently this time, her breathing slowing from a desperate gasp to deeper breaths, an angelic smile coming to her face.

She took a deep breath and shut her eyes, opening them to look deeply in his eyes, her dark gaze shifting from his left eye to his right as if she were looking for what he was thinking. He smiled at her and said her name.

“That was great,” she said, her eyes half shut, her dark eyes gazing at him from under her long eyelashes.

Suddenly the deck tilted far to port and dipped forward, the battle lantern skittering down the deck. The room began to vibrate, an odd trembling. Alameda’s expression immediately changed from that of a woman romanced to the ship’s chief engineer.

“What?” Pacino asked.

“We’returning and going deep,” Alameda said, pulling herself off him and lunging for her coveralls. “And speeding up to flank. The deck only shakes like that when we’re on a flank run.”

The deck became level again, but the shaking of the hull grew worse, Pacino’s teeth buzzing as he donned his coveralls. He grabbed her panties off the deck and wadded them in his pocket, then retrieved the battle lantern.

“DSV, Control,” the speaker box suddenly crackled.

When Alameda toggled the switch, it was as if she had left, and he was alone again.

“Engineer,” she said in the iron voice she’d had when he first met her.

“Engineer, Control, OOD wants you to close out the DSV and report to the conn.”

Pacino blinked as he tried to adjust to the new reality. Pacino straightened his hair, wondering if anyone would know when they saw him. Alameda zipped her coveralls to her throat and slipped into her sneakers as she hit the toggle switch to reply.

“Engineer, aye. Powering down the DSV.” She looked at Pacino, not the glance of a girlfriend but of a full lieutenant looking at a midshipman. “Follow me.”

She rapidly clicked through the checklist to power down the DSV, the lights extinguishing except for a dim light at the inner hatch. He followed her to the airlock and stood out of the way as she shut the hatch. She glanced at him for an instant.

“Obviously, Mr. Pacino,” she said, her voice still that of the chief engineer, “this never happened.” She stepped into the access tunnel. He followed her and she shut the hatch, the sound of it seeming to lock the events that just happened inside a vault, and in the harsh light of the access tunnel it seemed like what had happened had been a dream.

“Control, Engineer,” Alameda said on the tunnel side speaker box “DSV powered down and rigged for dive by me, checked by Midshipman Pacino. Tunnel secure.”

“Conn, aye,” the speaker squawked.

Pacino followed Alameda down the tunnel to the forward compartment, unable to avoid watching her move, wishing they’d met under different circumstances. She was right, he told himself. There was no way they could acknowledge what had just happened even to each other. He tried to convince himself that it had just been their bodies fulfilling a human need, but he knew there was more, and the worst part of this was that now he felt more alone than he could ever remember feeling.

The control room was crowded. For an instant Pacino’s stomach tensed, wondering if they had been found out, but everyone in the room was looking at a printout of some sort, Captain Catardi in the center of the crowd of officers. He looked to see them approach, a serious expression on his face. “NSA found the Snare,” he said. “Obviously they didn’t tell us how, but they know she was at Pico Island in the Azores and will be heading south. If we can sneak up on her before she hears us we can fill her with holes and get going to the Indian Ocean.”

“How far away is Pico?” Alameda asked, her voice deep and authoritative.

“Two hours at flank,” Navigator Crossfield said.

“Where will we slow down? And should we cut the corner and attempt an intercept on Snare’s southern track?”

“We were just going over that,” Catardi said, looking up at Alameda, then back to the navigator. “Nav, get together an op brief in fifteen minutes in the wardroom.”

As Alameda hurried out of the control room Pacino caught her eye, but the look on her face still belonged to the chief engineer.

Victor Krivak climbed carefully onto the horizontally reclined couch in Interface Module One and shut his eyes as Dr. Wang gently put the interface helmet on his head. There was nothing but darkness.