Finally, the transport arrived, its squat shape heaving into view while it jockeyed for position next to the extending boarding tube. The repeller field shimmered against the ground as the gaily painted – in red, white, and blue, no less – shuttle settled on its seven landing struts.
After what seemed to Jodi to be an interminable wait, passengers began to trickle from the gateway. She tried to get closer, but a solid wall of babbling people prevented her from seeing anything more than bobbing heads.
“Goddammit,” she muttered in annoyance as a Navy commander pushed past her to embrace a squealing woman from the shuttle. The two of them, oblivious to the rest of humankind, solidly blocked the aisle with their wet and sloppy reunion. Jodi thought she was going to gag.
“Pardon me, please,” a deep voice said from among the debarking passengers trapped behind the commander and his bimbo. The request had been gentle, but was nonetheless the voice of one accustomed to being obeyed. The babbling among the nearest waiting friends, relatives, and others suddenly ceased as the man, now revealed as a Marine captain in dress blue uniform, stood silently, waiting.
The commander released his significant other and gave Reza a hard stare. “Aren’t you forgetting something,” the commander said, pointing to the three full gold rings around his sleeve, “
“Not at all, commander,” Reza replied, returning the man’s stare. He pointed to the single ribbon – a cluster of white stars set against a field of azure blue – that made up its own row above the seven other full rows of combat decorations, five more rows than the Navy officer could boast, that adorned his uniform.
The Navy officer stared at the ribbon for a moment, before slowly lifting his right arm in a salute. While he outranked Reza, centuries-old tradition dictated that a bearer of the Medal of Honor was entitled to a salute first by his or her fellow service members, regardless of their rank. In the war against the Kreelans, there had been many Medal of Honor winners; unfortunately, since most of them were awarded posthumously, pitifully few recipients survived to enjoy the courtesy that tradition granted them.
“Good day to you, sir,” Reza said pleasantly as he smartly returned the salute and stepped past the man and his open-mouthed companion.
“Reza!” Jodi cried, throwing herself into his arms, burdened as they were with his two flight bags. He didn’t even have time to utter her name before she covered his mouth with hers in an unexpectedly passionate kiss. Reza could not see, but behind him, Jodi made sure that the Navy man saw the three stripes on her sleeve as she put her arms around Reza’s neck. When they made eye contact, Jodi gave him a wink. A moment later, she drew away from Reza, who still stood there, stunned.
“Jodi!” he breathed, his face flushed with – mostly, he knew – embarrassment. “What are you–”
“Just welcoming you home, is all,” she said, a devilish smile lighting up her face as she took him by the elbow and led him into the main terminal.
“Commander Mackenzie,” Reza said with a smile as he sensed the Navy officer behind him fuming in embarrassment and not just a little bit of jealous envy, “you are a bloody liar.”
Jodi laughed. “No doubt. But hey, let’s get a move on – we’re late and we’ve got a long way to go.”
“So,” Jodi said when she had gotten him settled into her skimmer, “how was your trip?”
Reza grunted. “Long. Boring. And I am convinced that not one single galley in the entire human fleet – outside of my own ship, of course – can properly prepare meat for a Kreelan warrior.”
Jodi laughed. “Well, don’t get your hopes up here, either. Tony bought one of those silly barbecue contraptions not long ago. I guess he didn’t like the processor food, and now he’s convinced himself that he can cook with the thing.” She shook her head. “I guess you can eat anything if you put enough of that weird sauce of his on it, though.”
Reza made a face. “I will cook,” he said with determination.
The skimmer shuddered lightly as it pulled away from the ground. A moment later, the landing gear retracted and Jodi turned the craft southwest. Reza watched the ground fall away. The spaceport complex soon faded from view as the skimmer gained speed and altitude.
But his mind was not on the lush trees and velvet green landscape rushing by below. He was thinking of Jodi. The happiness that had bubbled from her at the spaceport seemed to have evaporated. Beneath the crumbling veneer he saw fear and, more than that, a growing mountain of loneliness. There was silence between them for a time, but Reza could feel her pain, and it reminded him of the wound that still bled within his own heart.
“What are you going to do, Jodi,” he asked quietly, turning to her, “after Nicole is wed?”
“I… I don’t know, Reza,” she said, trying to keep her voice even as she switched on the autopilot. “I know that three’s a crowd, but I haven’t had any brilliant flashes of insight as to what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. Not after… not after she leaves me.”
“They would let you stay–”
“Yeah, right,” Jodi interrupted. “Come on, Reza, what am I supposed to do? Be the live-in nanny for the kids they want to have? How about Tony’s public relations rep? Or maybe Nicole’s manicurist. Yeah, I can see that one: Jodi Mackenzie, shoots down alien fighters by day, does nails by night.” She was silent for a moment, and then hammered a fist against the flight console. “Fuck it,” she shouted angrily. “Just fuck it all to hell!”
She made to pound on the unoffending console again, but her fist found only Reza’s palm, which gently enveloped hers. He drew her to him with irresistible strength and held her as the tears came.
“I know that she doesn’t want me,” she said as she fought against the painful tide in her heart, “but in my mind I kept thinking that, maybe someday she’d come around. I mean, not even to sleep with me – I knew from the first that that was always going to be just a fantasy. But I thought that maybe I could be her companion, someone she could share her life with.” She closed her eyes and buried her face against Reza’s chest, her tears streaking his uniform. “But now, it’s all over. Sure, we can still be friends,” she said bitterly. “And what the fuck does that mean, Reza? That maybe she’ll remember my name after the first tour we have to spend apart? That maybe we can squeeze in a quick lunch now and then – if we happen to be in the same star system – so she can tell me all about Tony and their oh-so-wanted kids? It’s not enough for me, Reza,” she choked. “It’s just not fucking enough.”
She shuddered against him, holding him tighter, and she could not see the tears in his own eyes as he thought of Esah-Zhurah. He had never stopped thinking of her. Never. The pain was not so great as it once was, but it ebbed and flowed like the tide.
After a while, her sobbing eased, then stopped. Her arms loosened slightly from around his chest, but only a little. “I doubt I’ll be lucky enough to grow old, Reza,” she whispered, “but if I get that chance, I don’t want to grow old alone.”
“Jodi,” he told her, “the loneliness you fear is what has filled my heart since I left the Empire… since I left behind the woman who owns my heart. The only things that have sustained me since then have been my memories of her and the friendship I have been shown, by you more than any other. You are right when you say that it is not enough, to just be friends when your heart cries out for something more. But sometimes it has to be enough. Fate is neither kind nor fair; it simply is. But no matter what happens, remember that I will always be there for you. No matter how many stars apart we may be, I will always be there…”
Tony Braddock did everything he could to resist the urge to pace back and forth before the altar. The patient beauty of the chapel that had been the gleaming centerpiece of the otherwise bland Ridgeway Military Reservation was in stark contrast to the anxiousness he felt. The chapel had stood on this spot for over four hundred years, silent witness to countless baptisms, weddings, and funerals. But to Tony, waiting for the remaining members of his tiny wedding party to arrive so he could finally marry the woman he loved, the last forty minutes had seemed every bit as long as the chapel’s four centuries.
“Where can they be?” he wondered aloud for what must have been the tenth time. He glanced yet again at his watch before looking out at the guests who now filled the many pews behind him. Neither he nor Nicole had many friends here, and they originally had wanted a small, private ceremony. But by the time they had invited their few real friends, Nicole’s squadron-mates, and finally made the obligatory invitations to members of the Council – plus the spouses of all of the above – the chapel had been filled to capacity, with nearly five-hundred people in attendance.
Such an event, of course, also drew the attention of the media. Nicole’s combat record, and her current score of nearly two hundred kills, was well known, and Tony was a member of the Council. While their wedding was not
