Duty, Honor, Planet

“I’m all right, Daddy,” she assured him, patting his arm. “I promise, I’ll be okay.”

“Christ, I forgot why I came in here!” O’Keefe slapped himself on the forehead. “We just received a transmission from the satellite control center outside Capital City! They’ve done it! The Fleet has arrived! They’ve destroyed the Protectorate ships!”

“Thank God,” Glen sighed, his shoulders sagging with relief.

“Then it’s all over,” Valerie said.

“Well, hardly over,” her father replied, coming to his feet. “After all, aside from President Jameson and myself, there is no Republic government to speak of. Most of the cities have had their power feeds cut. There are still Protectorate troops on the ground on the North American continent, and God only knows what’s happening in the star colonies. No, we have a lot of work to do still.” He leaned down and kissed Valerie on the cheek. “I’m very sorry about your baby, honey. But maybe now when you and Glen decide to have another child, you’ll have a better world to bring it into.”

Valerie glanced at Glen, saw him looking at her and quickly looked away.

“Well,” Senator O’Keefe smiled, “I’ll leave you two alone—try to get some rest, honey.”

“I love you, Daddy,” she said.

“I love you, too, honey.” Then he was gone.

“If you want to go,” Val told Glen, “I’ll understand.”

“I’ll stay till you go back to sleep,” he said, slipping an arm around her.

She snuggled into his shoulder, arms going around his waist.

“What about after that?” she whispered so softly he could hardly hear her.

“After that,” he sighed, finding a smile creeping across his face, “I’ll stay a while longer.”

Val hugged him tighter.

Epilogue

“Perhaps the best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.”

—Dean Acheson

Jason leaned back in his chair and watched the construction pods flit to and fro on his office’s holographic viewscreen, slowly rebuilding republic Spacefleet Headquarters from the inside out. He glanced around his office, at once incredibly large and incredibly confining, and wondered for the hundredth time what the hell he was doing here.

All right, it had made sense. With the Snake dead, along with most of the Fleet officer corps, he was the logical choice to head Fleet Intelligence. But Colonel? For Christ’s sake, he wasn’t even thirty!

He checked his watch again. He had an hour till his ViR-conference with the Joint Chiefs and nothing at all to do till then. Was this what the Snake had done when no one was around? Sat back and looked out the window?

He nearly jumped out of his seat when his intercom beeped.

“Sir,” the young ensign outside announced, “Major Stark to see you.”

“Send her in,” he blurted, straightening up in his chair and smoothing down the front of his uniform.

Shannon strode in, her Intell blacks impeccable as always, the smile on her face a beacon that lit the dreariness of his office. She stiffened into a salute as the door closed behind her.

“Major Stark reporting for duty, sir,” she clipped off, her smirk belying the crispness of her words.

“Stop that,” Jason admonished her, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her into a kiss.

“Aren’t you going to return my salute?” she asked as they parted slightly.

“I think I am,” he replied with a wry grin. He shook his head. “God, I’ve missed you.”

“Aren’t you going to decorate this place?” She looked around at the vast emptiness of his office. “You’ve been here what? Three weeks?”

“I still can’t get used to having an office,” he admitted, shaking his head. “I think I’ve risen to the level of my incompetence.”

“The President has the utmost confidence in you,” she reminded him, kissing him to punctuate the statement. “And so do I.”

“How’s the recruiting coming?” he asked her, slipping out of her arms to sit on the edge of his desk. “Does Ari have a team together yet?”

“He’s getting there,” she told him. “It’s slow going, with so many holes to fill in the military. We picked up a couple recruits from that Cleveland Police emergency response team, and Ari brought in Clarke and a couple others from his platoon.” She sighed. “I think he still misses Gunny Lambert.”

“We all lost a lot,” Jason said quietly, a frown descending over his face.

Shannon stroked his arm in silent understanding. Jason had taken the loss of Valerie’s baby hard, harder than she would have thought.

“Have you talked to her since…?” she asked him awkwardly.

He shook his head. “I called the Senator yesterday. He said she and Glen are taking a long vacation at his house in Canada. I guess they’re going to try and make things work.”

“I’m happy for them.” Shannon took his hand, squeezed it. “And I’m happy for us. So,” she asked him, ”does our fearless leader have time for lunch with his executive officer?”

“Oh God, I wish,” he moaned. “But I have the Joint Chiefs in an hour.”

“What now?” she wondered. “Still arguing about the search project?”

He nodded, letting out a deep breath. “Antonov got off that ship,” he declared. “I know he did. We still haven’t found that wormhole in the belt, and even with Podbyrin’s cooperation, we may never locate it. We have to get scoutships out there and find that system.”

“There’s a lot of problems in the colonies,” she pointed out, “and we don’t have enough ships to cover them all.”

“That’s what Admiral Patel keeps saying.” Jason grimaced. “God, I already hate this job.”

“Well,” she laughed, “there has to be a downside to being the youngest Colonel in Republic history. Look,” she went on, straightening his collar, “you are probably the most respected—hell, revered—officer in the Republic military, you have the President’s ear anytime you want it, and I can get you a meeting with the Senate Majority Leader with one call.” She fixed him with a glare. “If there’s something you think should be done, don’t let Patel and Minishimi or any of those stuffed shirts in the Joint Chiefs push you around—go over their heads and get it done.” Her expression softened. “That’s what the Snake would have done.”

He regarded her seriously for a long moment before his face finally cracked into a smile.

“You’re right, as always,” he admitted. He looked around him and laughed softly. “Sometimes I think all this is the Snake’s ultimate revenge.”

“Well,” Shannon said, checking her watch, “you’d better get ready for that meeting. But I’ll tell you what— after you get out of here tonight, what do you say we take the shuttle to McAullife,” she ran her fingers through his hair, arching an eyebrow suggestively, “get a nice little suite and enjoy the weekend?”

“You got a deal, Major. I’ll meet you at my quarters in three hours.”

“I can hardly wait, Colonel.” She pushed gently away from him and headed for the door.

“Hey, Shannon,” he called, halting her as she reached for the door control. “I seem to recall,” Jason reminded her, “that you once told me you thought you should be in charge.”

“Jason,” she said, smiling broadly, “I am in charge.”

The door closed behind her, and Jason regarded it in bemused silence.