In Her Name

gleeful ejaculation. She turned to the comm panel and ordered the ever-patient computer to connect her with Reza’s room.

“One moment, please, madam,” responded a pleasant automated female voice.

“Hurry the fuck up,” Jodi grated, not knowing how much longer her courage might last.

“There is no answer, madam,” the computer finally replied.

“Is Reza Gard in his room?”

“The room is currently occupied,” the machine answered, refusing to give out any other information on who might be there.

“Try again.”

“One moment…” There was a longer pause this time. Jodi figured the computer must have been programmed to try and accommodate idiots like her by trying longer the second time. Jodi wasn’t going to bother with a third. “There is no answer, madam. Would you like to leave a message?”

Jodi didn’t bother answering. She was already halfway to the door, a full bottle in hand.

She hadn’t bothered to check the time, partly because she wouldn’t have cared, and partly because she was too drunk to think of such a thing. But she was happy that it was late enough for the hallways to be empty. She knew she must look like hell – her uniform jacket gaping open, champagne spilled all over her blouse, her hair going wild – but she couldn’t have cared less. In fact, had she encountered someone who would have made so much as goo-goo eyes at her, she probably would have tried to whack them over the head with the bottle that she was working on even as she shuffle-staggered toward Reza’s room. They were on the same level, but in different towers, and it took her a while to realize that she had already passed his room twice.

“Christ, Mackenzie, you couldn’t find your ass with both hands and a compass,” she muttered to herself as she finally reached his room, number 1289. She pounded on the door, eschewing the more polite method of using the call panel. “Reza!” she shouted, heedless of the people in four adjacent rooms whom she had just succeeded in waking up. “I know you’re in there! Open this fucking door!”

She waited. Nothing. She was about to pound on the door again, when a sudden flash of inspiration brightened her alcohol-shrouded mind. She pressed her hand against the access panel, hoping that Reza had keyed her into his room’s access list.

Apparently, he had. The door hissed open to reveal nothing but darkness. Jodi staggered inside just as someone two rooms down poked his head out into the hallway to see what the fuss was about. The door whispered closed behind her.

She stood there a moment, leaning against the wall of the foyer, fighting against the sudden sense of vertigo that was a gift of the alcohol coursing through her system and the total darkness of Reza’s room.

No, she thought, it wasn’t totally dark. Toward the far side, through the ridiculously large – at least, it seemed that way to someone used to a warship’s spartan accommodations – living room suite, she could see some faint points of light: stars in the sky, showing through the sliding clearsteel door that led onto the balcony outside.

“Reza?” she called. No answer. The room was totally, almost unnaturally, quiet. “Reza, are you here? Answer me, dammit!” She groped forward in the darkness, not thinking to turn on a light. The silence in the room was unnerving, and she felt little pricks of fear along her spine. It didn’t feel as if no one was here, she thought. She just wasn’t sure who was, and suddenly she thought that she had made a bad move by coming here.

Her shin suddenly came in contact with something very hard-edged and quite unyielding, and she let out a yelp of pain that she was sure had somehow given her away, as if her earlier shouting had not.

She was just about to turn around and bolt for the door when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him. At least, she thought it was him: a dark figure kneeling in the middle of the expansive balcony. He was in his Kreelan armor, its black surface mirroring the stars in the sky above. But his head was not turned toward the stars; it was bowed as if in prayer.

“Reza,” she said quietly as she stepped onto the balcony, ignoring the throbbing pain in her shin where she’d hit the coffee table, “are you okay?” She still felt a tingle of fear, and she now knew why: the Reza she was looking at was a Kreelan warrior priest, not merely a captain in the Confederation Marine Corps. That is why she had felt so strange just a moment ago. Something inside her had known that he had let slip his human mask.

She shook the feeling off, trying to concentrate as she knelt beside him. “Honey, what’s wrong?” she whispered, tentatively reaching out to touch his arm. It was so hot that it was painful to her touch.

“I… I cannot go on,” Reza rasped through gritted teeth. “The pain, Jodi… I thought I had banished it forever with Nicole’s help, but the pain has returned. My blood is fire, my heart an angry wound, for I cannot clear the memory of my love’s face from my mind. I would rejoice for Nicole’s happiness, but it has brought back too many memories. Molten steel sears my veins… it is too much.”

It was then that she saw the knife that he held with both hands. It was the weapon he was most fond of, a beautiful but deadly dagger that she had never known him to let out of his sight.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked bluntly. “Just kill yourself and be done with everything? Is that how Kreelan warrior priests get out of tough spots – just ram a knife through their throats?”

Reza turned to glare at her, and without the booze she might have wilted under such a withering assault from his swirling green eyes, but not now. Not tonight.

“Let me tell you something, tough guy,” she went on, moving closer to him, their noses only a hand’s breadth apart, “you don’t have a monopoly on heartache. How do you think I feel after watching the only person I’ve ever really loved marry a good friend? And how do you think I feel about being jealous as hell of him, so jealous that I couldn’t even bring myself to say goodbye to either of them before they left for their honeymoon? And I was her maid of honor! What a fucking joke that is!” She tried to laugh, but strangled on a sob as she reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders, ignoring the heat that burned its way into her palms from the metal armor and his searing flesh beneath. “So I don’t want to be hearing any of this shit about how your heart is tearing itself to pieces, Reza, because mine is, too, and I need you now, damn you, I need you so much, you’re all I’ve got left. You promised me you’d be there when I needed you, Reza. You promised me, dammit! Don’t you leave me, too. Don’t you dare…”

Then she reached for him, wrapping her arms around his neck as if she were drowning, just as she had when he had pulled her from the river on Rutan so many years ago, and he was honor-bound to save her. Careful not to tear her clothing or skin with the talons on his gauntlets, he drew her to him, shielding her with his arms as he commanded his body to cool while fighting a savage battle with the loneliness that burned in his blood. The knife he laid carefully beside him. He still longed for its cold metal touch, for the release from the hell that his existence had once again become. He was so happy for Nicole and Tony, but what he felt reminded him too much of his life with Esah-Zhurah, as if he had been forced to relive it. And with those thoughts, those feelings, once again had come the burning agony of loss that was as powerful as when he had first left the Empire.

Silently, he cradled Jodi in his arms as she cried, doing his best to isolate himself from the past, closing off the universe beyond this woman, his friend, to whom he owed a debt of love.

Jodi didn’t realize that she had fallen asleep until she noticed that she no longer felt the hot steel of Reza’s armor pressing against her. Instead, her body was nestled against something warm and firm, but made of flesh, not metal.

She opened her eyes to find herself still out on the balcony with him, but he had taken off his armor and gathered her up to lay beside him in a padded chaise built for two. He had one arm wrapped around her, holding her to him, with her head resting on his powerful shoulder. The night air was warm enough that she didn’t need a blanket, Reza’s body providing all the warmth she needed. Above her, the stars still shone, and she guessed – hoped – that only a little time had passed, and that the night had not yet begun to wane toward morning.

“Reza,” she whispered, “are you awake?”

“Yes,” he replied, instinctively holding her just a bit tighter. “I have not yet found… sleep.”

Peace, she thought he meant. He had not found the peace he was looking for, and probably never would. Just like her. A thought, quite alien to her way of thinking, began to uncoil in the back of her mind, stretching like an awakening lion. She reached out and touched Reza’s face, much as he had done to her on the day that he had first appeared before her like an unholy apparition in Father Hernandez’s rectory. How lonely he had been then; how lonely they both were now. “Tell me about her,” she said, gently turning his face toward hers, “tell me about the woman you love.”

Reza hesitated, but only for a moment. What does it matter? he told himself