“Is this the man daring enough to take the Alliance fleet to Sancere?” Rione asked in a mocking voice. “The hero of the fleet? The man who stood facing the mouth of hell? And he cannot bring himself to risk accepting a friend for fear of the possibility of loss?”
“You have no idea what this is like,” Geary stated angrily. “When they revived me, every single person I’d known was dead. All of them.”
“Are you the first to ever lose someone they cared about? Or everything they cared about? Let yourself live again, Captain Geary!”
“You don’t know-”
Her face turned furious for a moment. “A man I loved more than life itself died, Captain Geary, one more victim of this endless, ugly war! It happened more than a decade ago, but I can still see him clearly if I close my eyes. I had to decide whether to let myself die inside or try to live again. I knew what he would’ve wanted. I won’t deny it was hard, but I have lived.”
Geary just stared at her for a moment. “I’m sorry. Very sorry.”
The fury faded, replaced by weariness. “Damn you, John Geary, no one else has ever been able to make me lose control. Not since he died.”
“Why do you care?” he asked, feeling bewildered now. “Why do you care what I think? Why do you care what happens to me?”
She took a moment to answer. “I do care. You’re a remarkable man, Captain Geary. Even at your most infuriating.”
“You hate me!”
“I have never hated you!” Rione shot back at him. Then she grimaced. “That’s not quite true. When I thought you’d betrayed the fleet, believed that you’d lied to me and used me, I did hate what I assumed you were doing.”
“You accused me of betraying you personally, as well as the fleet.”
Rione nodded. “I told you that I thought you’d deliberately manipulated me. It wasn’t just my pride that was hurt by that. I’d let myself believe in you. I’d let myself…grow to care for you.”
Geary shook his head, feeling baffled again. “Do you actually like me, Madam Co-President?”
Rione looked upward as if beseeching aid. “You are so wise in the movements of fleets and such a dolt in reading the feelings of others. I’ve liked you for some time, Captain Geary. I wouldn’t have been so angered by what I thought was your betrayal if I hadn’t become fond of you, despite my instincts that warn me away from someone like you. My instincts that tell me you are not to be trusted, that you cannot be sincere.”
Geary wondered if his puzzlement showed. “You don’t trust me but you like me?”
“Yes. I will never trust Black Jack Geary,” Rione explained. For some reason she was smiling wryly at him. “But I’ve come to like John Geary. When he isn’t driving me insane. Who are you?”
“John Geary, I hope, Madam Co-President.”
“Madam Co-President? Is that who you wish to be here? If you care for me at all, if you consider me a friend, call me Victoria, John Geary!”
He stared at her again. “Care for you? I do. I hadn’t realized how much I’d grown to enjoy your company until I was deprived of it for a while.”
“I’m waiting,” she stated.
“Victoria.”
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Geary uttered a small laugh, then sat down again. “It was very hard.”
“Try saying it again. It may get easier.”
He watched her, trying to figure out what Rione was doing. “All right, Victoria.”
She sat down next to him, her face somber now. “You’re not the only lonely person in this fleet, John Geary. Not the only person in need of comfort with few places to turn.”
“I know that. But I only knew my feelings. I missed not seeing you and not talking to you.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me that?”
Geary shook his head, smiling ruefully. “You know the reason as well as I do. Aside from the fact that you were refusing to talk to me, I’m the commander of this fleet. I can’t do anything with anyone that isn’t professional and business-related, not unless I know they want it. I have too much power for it to be otherwise, even if every person under my command isn’t already off-limits for other reasons.”
“And every single person in this fleet is under your command,” Rione noted. “Save one. I’m not off- limits.”
“No, but…even you can’t forget the authority I wield. No one can look at me and see just me. They see the fleet commander. They see someone who could misuse their power to coerce or to reward for the wrong reasons. I have to avoid even appearing to misuse my authority that way. That’s just the way it is.”
“Many of them look at you and see Black Jack Geary,” Rione noted.
“Yeah.” Geary shrugged. “Being perfect in every way, Black Jack wouldn’t even consider doing the wrong thing, I’m sure. No matter how much he liked a woman.”
“Oh? Do you like me so much, John Geary?”
He couldn’t help grinning. “When you’re not driving me insane.”
“Then why do you fear to show it even now? Will you just talk, or will you act?”
He had thought there had already been plenty of surprises, but that startled him even more. Geary stared at Rione again. “What?”
To his further surprise, she smiled. “We’ve already agreed that I’m not off-limits to you. We’ve already agreed that we’re both lonely people in need of comfort, people who have both lost those we cared about. We’re both people who have responsibilities that they cannot share. Therefore, I’d like you to show me how much you like me.”
Geary had been prepared for many things to possibly happen while the fleet was in Sancere Star System, but this hadn’t been one of them. Caught totally off guard, he just stared at her.
Rione shook her head, still smiling. “You act like you’ve never kissed a woman before.”
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.
