The Shadow of Saganami

Chapter Fifty-Two

It was lonely in Snotty Row.

Aikawa was away in Copenhagen . Leo was still on Kornati. And Ragnhild was... gone. Only Helen and Paulo remained.

Helen sat in the observation dome, her heels on the edge of the seat cushion, her knees tucked up under her chin and her arms wrapped around her shins, and gazed out at the growing number of vessels in Montana orbit while she thought. It was very peaceful under the dome, and she let her eyes rest on Hexapuma's nearest orbital neighbor.

The heavy cruiser Warlock had been at Dresden when Ericsson arrived with Captain Terekhov's orders for any Navy ships in the system to join him in Montana. Captain Anders was junior to Captain Terekhov. As such, he'd had no choice but to obey, whatever he might think about his orders, and he and the destroyer Javelin had arrived in Montana two days before. Helen didn't know exactly what the Skipper had told Anders and Lieutenant Commander Jeffers, Javelin's CO, he had in mind. He might not have told them anything yet, she thought. But everybody aboard the Nasty Kitty had a pretty good idea by now, and she suspected the inter-ship grapevine must have carried at least a few hints to Anders and Jeffers.

Then, this morning, more ships had come in, this time from Talbott. Volcano had returned with Commander Eleanor Hope's Vigilant , another Star Knight -class cruiser, and the light cruiser Gallant , a sister of the Skipper's old Defiant , in tow, accompanied by two more destroyers— Rondeau and Aria , both old Chanson -class ships.

It was turning into a fairly respectable little squadron, she reflected. True, most of its ships verged on obsolescent, by Manticoran standards, but those standards were a bit high by anyone else's measure.

Of course, it was also, in many ways, a stolen squadron. All those ships were part of Rear Admiral Khumalo's 'Southern Patrol,' one of the mainstays of his anti-piracy strategy. Technically, the Skipper was within his rights to call them in, and communications delays over interstellar distances required that officers exercise their initiative. The more senior an officer became, the more initiative she was expected to demonstrate, but countermanding a superior officer's orders, and especially those of a station commander, wasn't something to undertake lightly. An officer who did so had damned well better be able to demonstrate that her actions had been justified.

Still, if she got herself killed in the process, she'd at least neatly avoid the all but inevitable court of inquiry her actions would provoke.

The thought made Helen smile with sour amusement. She wished she could share it with Paulo, but he was on duty. Which was one reason she'd come here now, when she could sit with her thoughts and the dim quiet without having to share them with him.

Her smile faded as she reflected on the fact that she was actually glad to be able to avoid him, at least for the moment. Not happy, just glad. Or, perhaps, the word she really needed was relieved . Although that, too, carried connotations that weren't quite right.

In some ways, she and Paulo rattled around like two lonely peas in Snotty Row. The midshipmen's quarters had been designed to house up to eight people. Just the two of them found themselves with almost too much space, although that was a concept they would have found difficult to visualize when they first joined Hexapuma's company.

In other ways, though, the space was entirely too confined. With no one to hide behind, there was no room for Paulo to be his old, standoffish self, even if he'd wanted to. Which posed complications of its own, especially in light of the Articles of War's ban on physical intimacy with other military personnel in the same chain of command.

The fact was that, now that she understood where Paulo's good looks had really come from, and even more since she'd gotten over her own silly prejudices and begun to know the person behind those features, she found him... attractive. Very attractive, if she was going to be honest, which she very much wished she could avoid. The comfort he'd given her after Ragnhild's death, she'd come to realize, was completely typical of him, despite his aversion to letting people get too close. Of course, Ragnhild had become his friend, as well as Helen's, but not in the same way. He'd known her for less than six T-months; Helen had known her for four T-years. He and Ragnhild had gotten just close enough for him to realize how much her death had hurt Helen, and for it to hurt him enough that he, too, had needed to draw comfort from another.

That sharing, when she'd wept on his shoulder and his own tears had kissed her hair, had changed the relationship between them. What had been growing into a friendship as close, in its own way, as her friendship with Aikawa and Ragnhild, had become something else. Something far more intense, and more than a little frightening.

Helen had been what she'd thought of as 'romantically involved' before. Several times, in fact. Sometimes it had been fun; other times, sheer frustration had made her want to kill the idiot. Like most Manticoran adolescents, she'd been reasonably well instructed in the basics of human sexuality, and she'd found those lessons valuable in those romantic involvements. That, too, had been fun. On occasion, lots of fun, she admitted cheerfully.

But none of those relationships had begun as whatever was growing between her and Paulo had. She hadn't started out disliking the other person intensely, for one thing. And the other person had never carried Paulo's history and background around with him. Never possessed near godlike handsomeness... and despised its source. There was an ingrained, intense suspicion in Paulo. A defensive reaction against the attractiveness designed into his genes to make him a more sellable commercial commodity. He didn't want people to desire him for his appearance, and that jagged, wounded part of him was always only too ready to assume anyone who did desire him was, in fact, drawn to his physical attractiveness.

Had Helen decided to pursue him aggressively, it would have been like trying to embrace an Old Earth porcupine. And, in the end, almost certainly as futile as it would have been painful. So it was possibly a good thing she wasn't certain she wanted to 'pursue' him at all. Yet she suspected that he, like her, felt the changes in whatever was growing between them. It was already too intense for Helen to call it mere friendship, but hadn't- quite-toppled over into anything else yet.

Yet.

She grimaced, looking out through the armorplast, and felt a reverberation of loss as she saw a pinnace separate from Vigilant and head for Hexapuma . It reminded her of so much, and along with the loss, she felt a stab of guilt. Ragnhild had been gone for barely three weeks, and it seemed grotesque that the death of one of Helen's two closest friends could have had such a powerful effect on drawing her and Paulo closer. It felt almost like a betrayal of her friend's memory. And yet there was a sense of rightness to it, as well. As if it were an affirmation that life went on.

She sighed, then shook her head as her chrono chimed softly.

It was time to report for duty herself, and she shoved herself up out of the comfortable chair as Vigilant's pinnace began its final approach to Hexapuma .

No doubt Commander Hope was coming aboard to find out what all of this was about, Helen thought, and smiled again, crookedly, wishing she could be a fly on the Skipper's cabin bulkhead.

* * *

'Well, I thought that went fairly well,' Terekhov said as the cabin hatch closed behind Eleanor Hope and Lieutenant Commander Osborne Diamond, her executive officer.

'You did, did you... Sir?' Ginger Lewis responded, and he turned to look at her. She sat in one of his comfortable armchairs, just to one side of Sinead's portrait. Terekhov was certain the juxtapositioning was a coincidence, but he was struck again by how much Commander Lewis looked like a younger, slightly taller version of his wife.

Which isn't precisely what you need to be thinking about your acting XO, Aivars, he told himself wryly.