The Lost Fleet: Fearless

There couldn’t be any doubt. She meant it. He’d resigned himself to a lack of physical contact to match his emotional isolation, but it seemed he had been wrong about that. “I have, but it’s been a century since I did that last.”

“I trust you haven’t forgotten how.”

“I hope not.”

“Then show me. For a dashing hero, you can be very hesitant at times.”

Oddly enough, the kiss did feel to Geary as if it was the first in almost a century. “What’s going on, Madam Co-President?”

Rione shook her head, looking upward again, this time in apparent despair. “Madam Co-President will not answer.”

“I’m sorry,” Geary stated with mock formality. “Victoria, what’s going on?”

“I’m trying to seduce you, John Geary. Haven’t you figured that out yet? How can you be so oblivious with me when you can guess what the Syndics are going to be doing three star systems down the line?”

He gazed at her for a moment longer before he thought of an answer. “The Syndics are easier to figure out. Why, Victoria?”

She sighed. “You must be the only sailor in the universe who’d ask a partner that before the act instead of after. I don’t know why. Maybe because we both gazed into infinity today and ended up surviving the experience. Why does it matter?”

Geary took another moment to answer. “I guess it matters because I think you matter.” Rione smiled in a very genuine way, which made her look very nice, so he kissed the smile. Before he could pull away again, her arms were around him, and he decided that he didn’t want to move away.

As it turned out, kissing wasn’t the only thing Geary remembered how to do. By the time Victoria Rione’s body arched beneath his, Geary had recalled a few other things well enough to satisfy his partner. As they collapsed together, spent, Geary realized that this was the first time since being thawed out from the survival pod that he couldn’t sense any trace of ice inside his body or soul. The discovery both elated and frightened him.

EIGHT

HIS communications alert sounded and Geary jerked awake, rolling to slap the control and remembering only at the last instant to keep the video off so no one would see he wasn’t alone. “Geary here.”

“Sir, Captain Desjani sends her respects, and wishes to inform you that Colonel Carabali is expressing concern regarding the movements of Alliance fleet Formation Bravo.”

“Concern?” Every time to date that the Marine had been worried she had been proven justified. “I’ll talk to her in a minute. Ask the colonel to hold on.”

“Yes, sir.”

Geary sat up carefully, trying not to make noise.

“Did you actually think that didn’t wake me up?” Victoria Rione asked.

“Sorry.”

“I’ll have to get used to it, I suppose.”

Geary paused in his movements and looked over at her, seeing her lying on her back and gazing at him as calmly as if they had woken up together like this a thousand times before. “You want this to be long-term?”

Rione raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you saying you don’t?”

“No. I’m not saying that. I’d like to try it. I think long-term could make me…”

“Happy? It’s all right to be happy, John Geary. It took me a long time to realize that after my husband died, but in time I did.”

“How long did it take?” he asked quietly.

“Until tonight. Now go speak with your colonel and for the living stars’ sake make sure you’re dressed before you do.”

“I’m sure the colonel has seen worse,” Geary noted. But he hastily pulled on his uniform as he went to the desk in his stateroom and activated the communications terminal there, trying to shake his mind clear of what had happened with Rione earlier that evening so he could concentrate on his job. “What’s bothering you, Colonel?”

Carabali bore signs of fatigue, which made Geary feel guilty about his own rest. The Marine commander pointed at a display next to her. “Sir, your ships are moving close to the fourth world. That’s not my business normally, but it’s my job to warn fleet officers about planetary threats.”

“Planetary threats? We bombed the hell out of that world. There shouldn’t be any functioning antiorbital weapons left.”

“Shouldn’t be,” Carabali agreed. “That’s not the same as aren’t. Sir, we hit everything we could see from a few light-hours out. But that’s a densely populated and heavily built-up world. It’s not as easy to see things when there’s so many other buildings and installations around. On top of that, the impacts stirred up a lot of dust and water vapor into the upper atmosphere, so we can’t see the surface worth a damn right now. We don’t know what we haven’t seen, and we don’t know what’s down there now.”