See Disclaimer Information in Part One
Christy watched McQueen exit the bar, and slumped back in her
seat. “Whew! I thought I was gonna get it.”
“What for, you didn’t do anything,” Cooper told
her.
“I know, but everyone’s acting like I did.”
Mark said, “You’re just embarrassed, Christy. Look, I
can understand how you wouldn’t want to say anything in
front of Crazy Judy, or worse yet the Colonel, but if you want us
to go convince those guys to leave you the hell alone, believe me
they won’t bother you any more.”
“What am I, everybody’s baby sister this week?”
Mark laughed. “I already told you, I always wanted a sister,
so I’m gonna adopt you. You don’t have anything to say
about it.”
She smiled. Cooper could see the same closeness between Christy
and Mark that existed among the Wild Cards. Cooper was often
confused by those emotions, afraid he’d make a wrong step in
a minefield and hurt someone’s feelings...just as he had
with Shane yesterday. But Christy seemed so confident and
self-assured. She said, “I don’t want you guys to get
in a fight with those idiots. Nothing happened. If you start
something, it’ll just look bad on us. Besides, if you got
hurt, it would be my fault, and Coop already has a sore
hand.”
Insulted, Coop said, “We wouldn’t be the ones getting
hurt.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ, I am *not* going to get into a discussion
about who can whup,” she said. She took a swallow of her
cooler. “Now maybe you guys can explain to me what the
Colonel was talking about.”
Cooper said, “Let’s just say...I know a few dirty
tricks. I can’t get into where I learned them, but it’s
stuff that’ll get you out of jams like that.”
“What are you, some kind of a ninja?”
“Not exactly, but something like that, okay?” Cooper
answered very quietly, looking around the bar to see if anyone
was near enough to overhear their conversation.
“You’re serious. Okay, I just won’t ask. But I
don’t know what you guys are thinking. I’ve been in the
gym while you and the Colonel were sparring a few times,
I’ll never be that good!”
“Look, that’s exactly what he was talking about, okay?
That was *his* style. In a straight up fight, he could take me
any time. The only way I’d have a chance is if I got to use
some of the dirty tricks I know how to do. McQueen would never
let me have an opening like that. But those guys today, if
they’d been serious and you’d known a few of the moves
I’m talking about, you’d have had a lot less to worry
about.”
“Well, okay, but...” She looked back and forth between
them. “I guess we better hit the gym, huh?”
Mark said, “Coop, want me to tag along for a sparring
partner? I wouldn’t mind learning some of this myself, and
you’re not going to be doing too much with that hand messed
up.”
Coop asked, “Are you sure? One of these days somebody might
ask you where you learned it.”
Miller laughed, and asked, “So what should I tell ‘em,
besides how far they can shove it?”
“These ain’t the kind of people you tell to shove
it.”
The Navy aviator gave Cooper a thoughtful look before he replied.
“A while ago, I might have agreed with you, Cooper. But
after that fire...you know what, I don’t think there’s
anyone I wouldn’t tell to shove it, if I had a good enough
reason. You can only die once, and when it’s supposed to
happen, it’ll happen. In the meanwhile, I’m just not
gonna worry about it. I’m sure as hell not about to hide
under my rack because someone that I’d probably like to kick
in the ass anyhow might ask me a few questions.”
Cooper had to agree, that was a pretty good way to look at
things. Mark sounded a lot like Nathan, in a way. He could see
why Christy liked him. “Meet you in the gym in twenty.”
*****
Christy pulled her hair back into a ponytail and looked around
the gym. Not too many people were here right now, she waved at a
couple of nurses that she knew and ran over there to join them at
the exercise bikes, jumped on one to get warmed up. “How did
it go?”
“We shipped the worst ones from the docking bay hit out to
the Nightingale this afternoon. There's room to turn
around now!”
“Good!”
“What are you doing on the bike, I thought you liked to
run?”
“I do, but--oh, it’s a mess. Some guys were bothering
me earlier, and Col. McQueen found out about it, so now I have to
learn karate.”
The girl two bikes over said, “You mean from that dream-boat
you were talking to the other night? He is so good
looking, I saw him with Mark a minute ago. Oooh, where can I find
some guys to bother me?”
“Oh, Sandy--!” All three nurses started giggling.
Christy said, “That isn’t all, we’re playing
paintball Friday.”
“Christy, those guys--they didn’t really-- are you
okay?” Asked Melissa.
“I’m fine. Crazy Judy caught them at it, you should
have seen how fast they disappeared.”
Sandy said, “You should have reported them. Sexual
harassment is serious.”
Christy made a sour face. “They weren’t harassing me
because I’m a woman. They were harassing me because I’m
a tank.”
Sandy said, “That shouldn’t happen, Christy. I’m
sorry that it does.”
Melissa made a disgusted noise. “They should be thinking
that you are a *nurse.* An SAR nurse at that! Some people just
have no appreciation.”
Sandy looked over toward the locker room and whistled softly.
“Speaking of appreciation, girls, here’s Christy’s
karate instructor.”
Christy bounced off the bike. “You just remember I saw him
first!” She joined Coop and Mark over at the ring.
Mark held the ropes up so Coop could get into the ring easily
with just one good hand. Christy asked, “Now. What am I
supposed to be doing?”
“Just minding your own business.”
“Huh?”
“Just walking down the street, minding your own
business,” Coop told her. He glanced at Mark--who grabbed
her around the throat and started dragging her towards the other
side of the ring.
It was *Mark*, after all, so Christy was more surprised than
scared. She caught on quickly, though. She got her weight
balanced and threw him over her shoulder, jumped clear.
“Now, while that mugger is getting up, I run for it!”
She told them.
Coop asked, “What do you do if there’s nowhere to
run?”
Mark got up and dusted off his dignity. “Hey, I want another
try at that!”
This time, since he was ready for it, Christy had a little more
trouble getting away from him, but she knew that judo throw very
well, and once again Mark found himself on the ground. This time,
though, before he got the chance to get up, Christy was down on
the mat with him where she could kick with impunity. She had been
taught well, that a woman’s strength was mostly in her leg
muscles. That and In Vitro reflexes were a powerful combination.
Mark, on the other hand, didn’t know how to counter that
kind of an attack. What he did finally was grab her ankle and
twist. She yelped -- that hurt, even if he was going easy on her
-- and yanked loose by sheer strength. She followed up with a
kick with the other foot, that would have hit him in the eye if
she hadn’t stopped just short. Realizing she did not dare
let him get his hands on her again, she kept up a barrage of
kicks until Cooper stopped them.
Mark sat up, looking at her with a new respect. “Okay,
squirt, you didn’t tell me they got some of your DNA from
Bruce Lee!”
She laughed. “I told you I’m not helpless! I’m
really not afraid of one guy. But there were six of ‘em,
what was I supposed to do about the other five while I was
kicking the crap out of the first one?”
Cooper said, “Well, you’ve got to narrow the odds fast.
You’re right that you don’t have time for this kind of
stuff if there’s a bunch of them. You were going for a
knockout. You can’t afford to do that against a gang.
You’ve got to do something that’s going to put at least
one of them out of the fight real fast, either kill him or hurt
him so bad he’s won’t be giving you any more trouble.
That’s going to give you an opening to get out, most of the
time. It doesn’t matter who wins, you just want to
live.”
Christy nodded. “I can see that....”
For the rest of the session, they concentrated on things Christy
could have done to get out of the situation she’d found
herself in that afternoon. Cooper found out teaching was a lot
harder than he'd thought it would be. He didn't want to act like
the damn monitors had when they’d been teaching him.
They’d yelled and made him feel stupid even when he’d
done his best, that wasn’t right. He found himself trying to
teach the way McQueen did -- just going over and over it
patiently until you got it right.
They quit when the gym started to fill up, hit the showers then
went for pop and chips. They found a quiet table in the rec room
and Cooper told Christy, “You learn really fast.”
“You would too,” she pointed out.
“Can I say something without you getting mad?”
“I guess so.”
“Look, those guys followed you from the cafeteria, right?
Okay. You’ve got to keep your eyes open for stuff like that
all the time. I mean, you’re usually not by yourself. But
when you are, you just have to keep in mind that there are some
people who think like that. Watch your six.”
“Yeah...I guess I just never thought about it. Back home in
Aspen, if I’d been walking down the street at night,
I’d have been careful. But here...I guess I felt safe. I was
wrong.”
Mark did a slow burn and crushed his potato chip bag into a very
small paper wad. He said, “You know, that says a hell of a
lot about us. I mean, that’s really something for the Navy
to be proud of. I’ve got to tell you, I’m proud to be
a Navy aviator. And I’m not happy with the way those guys
acted, it reflects real badly on the rest of us that are just out
here doing our jobs!”
Christy said, “Not everyone’s like that, Mark,
nobody’s blaming anyone except those few guys. I mean,
let’s get real, I’ve heard remarks and jokes before,
but come on, most people just don’t know any better. There
aren’t too many people like those guys.”
Cooper said, “A hell of a lot of people are. Not as many in
the service, though. Here, at least most of the time if you do
what you’re supposed to be doing that’s all that
matters. But when I was back in Philly, there were plenty of
people who were prejudiced. Plenty of people.”
“I’m not going to live my whole life paranoid, though.
I mean, I know what you’re saying about keeping my eyes open
in case people are following me, but still...”
“Yeah, right, if you get so down on natural-borns that you
don’t even give them a chance, then...well, the bigots win,
I guess. ‘Cause we go off in a corner and don’t talk to
anyone except each other.”
Mark took a long drink of his soda. “Yeah, that’s what
they’re trying to accomplish, all right.”
*****
Vansen ran her hand over the smooth lines of her fighter. The
hangar bay was cool and quiet. She had exchanged salutes with the
lieutenant on duty in the launch control station when she first
came in, but they had ignored one another afterwards. She had
noticed that her controls were a little stiff today, her crew had
done their usual efficient job of finding and correcting the
problem.
She switched off the trouble light she was using. The bay was
otherwise dark, except for the walkway lights. She heard a hatch
open and looked up. She smiled across the bay as McQueen walked
in. He stood at the railing and waited for her to join him. She
stopped a proper distance away, but the warmth in her eyes
bridged the space between them. “Have you seen Cooper this
evening?”
“He’s with Christy,” McQueen told her. He informed
her of the day’s excitement.
Her lips compressed to a thin line. “I’m sorry that
happened.”
“Don’t waste your time apologizing for damn fools like
that. What are you doing this evening?”
“Sim session,” she replied. “Want to come along?
You can watch me be bored for the next two hours.”
He laughed. “Sure, why not.”
Flight simulator sessions were important, Vansen knew that as
well as anyone. It gave them a chance to see what ever-changing
tactics the chigs had taken to using recently. But Shane had
found over the last months that the simulator was no longer
capable of giving her a real challenge. Anyone could be taken
down in a sim session, but the computer beat her now by throwing
sheer numbers of enemies at her.
McQueen watched from the sim controller’s booth as she
settled into her unit and went through a quietly competent
pre-flight checklist. He watched her sail through most of the
simulations they tried. She only had trouble when she was faced
with clearly overwhelming odds, and even when she lost, she made
her virtual enemies pay a high price for their victory. Finally
she asked over the radio, “Come on, Mitch, is that the best
you’ve got up there? A troop of Brownies could take me out
if there were enough of them.”
The sim controller, Major Mitch Valence, touched the mute button
on his pickup and pushed back in his chair to look at McQueen.
“She’s right, sir, the sims can’t keep up with
her. She’s as good as anyone we’ve got on the flight
line right now.”
Valence didn’t say it, that he was better than anyone on the
flight line. McQueen hadn’t been in the sims since the
Battle of the Belt. There didn’t seem to be any use in it,
he’d never been much for video games. That was all the sims
were to him now...a video game that reminded him of everything
he’d lost. That had been nearly two years ago. Sooner or
later, he had to let go.... Maybe now, with the chance to show
off a little in front of Shane, it was high time.
“She’s not as good as I am. See if you’ve still
got my file in there.”
McQueen had a customized file of parameters, to account for his
faster reaction time and his ability to pull more G’s than a
natural-born pilot. A little too quickly, the sim controller
pulled it up...like he’d known where to look. He must have
realized one day McQueen would be wanting it again, and saved it
for him. McQueen remembered that Valence had once been a pilot
himself. “Thank you, Major. Set me up on unit two. And
don’t tell her it’s me.”
“Yes, sir,” Valence grinned. He figured it
wouldn’t take Vansen long to figure it out, but it sure
ought to be a good show. He turned his pickup back on.
“Stand by, Major Vansen. Your next sim will be pirate
suppression.”
“Roger, control. Standing by.”
Vansen looked over the briefing while she waited for the next sim
to start. She had to admit, the computer did a pretty good job of
making the sim realistic, when it didn’t have to play her
opponent. It was a straight-up one on one, the setting was a
system with a hot rockball, an asteroid belt, and a gas giant
with an assortment of moons. Her patrol sector was the gas giant
and its moons.
Her opponent almost had her before she knew it, she juked as soon
as her lock-on alarm sounded and a pair of missiles streaked by
so close her cockpit windows flared with their jet wash. Ignoring
that, she pulled into a spiraling turn that made her the worst
possible target until she could find out what the hell was on her
six. He’d come from behind one of the smaller moons.
Well, she reflected, she’d probably located the “pirate
base”, if she lived to report back to the carrier with that
information! She pulled a tight Immelman, and as her VR screens
darkened to indicate that she was right on the edge of blacking
out, got him in her sights. Neither of them hit that pass. As she
came about, she had a close eye on her LIDAR. Damn, he could turn
faster than she could! She didn’t have time to speculate
about who she was up against. She’d complained about being
bored!
West and Damphousse came into the control booth, they had a
session as well. But Valence motioned them over, his finger to
his lips. West did a double take. “How did that start?”
“Major Vansen was complaining about the sims being too
easy.”
West and Damphousse exchanged a grin and then settled in to
watch. Not too long after that, Hawkes showed up and joined the
audience.
Vansen wasn’t able to stay out of trouble much longer than
that, although McQueen had to admit it had been a long time since
anyone had given him that good a run for his money. He realized
when text scrolled across a screen that she still hadn’t
figured out who he was. “Thanks for a great sim. Would you
like to make the next one more interesting?”
He replied, “Anything.”
Vansen wasn’t stupid enough to take an anything bet from an
unidentified person who was clearly better than she was. But then
West’s voice came over her headset. “What’s the
matter, Shane, don’t have the nerve for it?”
There was laughter in his voice. She vowed that, if West steered
her into something she’d regret, she’d make him regret
it. She typed her reply, “OK, anything.” She heard
Vanessa and Cooper join in the laughter over the open pickup in
the control booth, before it went dead again.
Well, she probably was going to regret making that bet,
but it sounded good to hear her friends having a good time, so it
was worth it.
Then, she realized something. She’d heard Mitch Valence and
the other Wildcards over that open mike -- but she hadn’t
heard Ty. That meant....oh, hell, no wonder she’d lost.
Well, he was going to have to work just as hard for the next one!
Actually, knowing who she was up against gave her a little more
of a chance, because she could anticipate a little better. But
the result was eventually the same. Even so, she was in a good
mood. She was wondering just what Ty was going to come up with to
collect that bet...!
Vansen laughed quietly. She hadn’t known West had that
streak of the devil in him. Egging her on to accept an anything
bet from McQueen -- right!
As McQueen got out of his sim unit to make room for Damphousse,
he heard Vansen’s soft laughter. They had a lot of material
from the battle the day before to cover during the rest of the
session, so everyone got down to business. The word
“anything”, however, was guaranteed to bring
down the house for the rest of the evening.