See Disclaimer Information in Part One
Hawkes still wasn’t convinced about the necessity of
going to medbay with a sore hand, but he wasn’t about to set
Shane off again. Not after this morning. Crap. He hadn’t
thought about it since before the fight...he wondered if she was
still mad at him.
Vansen and McQueen. It was so hard to believe...but then, looking
back, maybe not. A lot of things started making sense. They way
they’d acted after Marged, for one thing...the look in their
eyes had scared him for a long time. And it had only got better
when they were together. He’d thought it was just a matter
of having been through things together, godawful things, that no
one else could understand. But now he knew the truth.
At first he was a little mad they hadn’t told him. But then
he thought, that was stupid. If you had to keep a secret, you
didn’t go telling people. NO-body. He understood THAT. He
hadn’t told anyone except McQueen about that monitor...just
thinking about it now still scared him. It had been
self-defense...but he was sure that wouldn’t matter. It
wasn’t like Shane and the Colonel had killed anybody...but
still....
He decided that the trouble they could get in was what was
bothering him the worst...but McQueen had been a survivor for a
long time, he wasn’t likely to do anything to get caught.
Shane had proven she could keep a secret as well. So, when
McQueen went back on active duty, Cooper would just have to trust
that they’d be careful.
Sickbay was crammed. He saw the new guy from the 83rd in the
corridor, the one who’d been hurt--he had burns and he was
waiting in the corridor for the doctors to get to him. He looked
like he was pretty well out of it. His wingman, also a newbie,
was staying with him, his face was gray and drawn with worry.
Coop stopped for a while. “How’s he doing?”
“I don’t know. They just left him out here.
There’s no beds in there...there was a bunch of people in
that bay when it was hit. Man, it looks like hamburger in
there--but the doctor said most of them are gonna live. The
emergency doors closed in time.” Cooper saw his tags, he was
Lieutenant Sam Smith.
“That’s good! It must not have hit right where they
were.”
“Billy has got to...it wasn’t his fault what happened,
it was mine. I should’ve been watching better, I
should’ve been there!”
Coop shook his head. “No way, I saw the whole thing,
remember? You didn’t have time to do anything before they
were all over both of you. Anyway, he doesn’t look too
bad.”
“Not for IVs like us, no--but he’s an NB!”
Coop didn’t tell the kid he hadn’t noticed who was what
until just now. “Oh, yeah, that’s just burn gel, it
looks like that. He’s breathing okay. When you get a bad
burn, that’s what they worry about first. And if he’s a
natural-born, that’s lucky in a way. They have lots more
kinds of medicine they can use on them. Did you guys go through
basic together?”
“Yeah, at Cherry Point.”
“We were at Loxley. What are you doing in the Marines?”
“It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t take it. I was going
to buy a battery off of these guys, I didn’t know they stole
it out of a car. But they saw the cops and ran off, I got caught
with the battery. I think the judge kind of believed me. She said
she thought I could make it in the service, so she gave me the
choice between enlisting and jail.”
Coop nodded. “I got in a fight with some guys and busted the
windshield of a cop car. The other guys started it.”
“Billy volunteered, he wasn’t in any trouble with the
law.”
“One thing, it isn’t how you get in, it’s what you
do after you get here...and you two did okay for yourselves out
there today.”
“Yeah, if you don’t count getting shot up,” Sam
said. He was trying to sound tough and sarcastic, but he
couldn’t quite pull it off looking at his friend.
“You came back,” Hawkes pointed out.
Christy Ames came out. Coop was glad that she and the survivors
of her outfit, Gloria Fallon and Mark Miller, had been assigned
to the Sara. Christy was a lot of fun to be around.
“Hi, Coop. I didn’t know you knew Billy. But only one
of you can stay here with him at a time, otherwise we’ll
have too many people out here when everybody else starts thinking
all their friends can stay too.”
Hawkes said, “Major Vansen sent me down here to get my hand
looked at, but we didn’t know you were so busy. I can come
back later.” He sounded hopeful.
“I’ll look at it in a minute.” Christy examined
Billy, and gave Sam a big smile. “He’s doing fine. He's
asleep because of the pain medicine, but he’ll be okay in a
couple of weeks. You ought to get back to your squadron and tell
them. Then get some rest. He won’t know you’re here
today. Come back tomorrow when he’s awake and needs the
company.”
“Well...okay, I guess.”
“Check back around afternoon watch, he should start waking
up by then.”
“Will anybody tell us if...if he needs us?”
“Yeah, but if I know your C.O., he’ll keep checking
anyway.”
Sam reluctantly allowed himself to be talked into leaving.
Christy asked, “Cooper, what was that about your hand?”
“Nothing, really. I hurt it somehow in a high-g turn, I
guess I must have hit it on something. But you're swamped, I can
come back."
She looked both ways and answered softly, “No, it’s
better to take care of it now. I’ll make sure you see Dr.
O’Leary instead of one of the other doctors. Some of them
you don’t want to go to. Just Dr. O’Leary and Dr.
Walker.”
“Tell me about it. Some doctor got me hooked on drugs
once.”
“You’re lucky they didn’t poison you. Commander
Holsinger used to warn me about some of those civilian doctors
but I never--just wait here, act like you’re with Billy if
anyone comes along.”
Cooper shrugged and held up the bulkhead for a while. Billy
wasn’t much company, as Christy had said he was sound
asleep. The guy on the next gurney kept mumbling something about
“Die Chiggy.” He could relate to that.
About ten mikes later a woman poked her head out the hatch.
“Hawkes? Busted up your hand in a g-snap?”
“Yes, ma’am. Dr. O’Leary?”
“That’s right.” She was an older woman, Hawkes
would have guessed early fifties, with eyes the color and
brilliance of emeralds. She was tired, and some unruly wisps of
salt-and-pepper hair escaped a bun on top of her head.
“Come on in, this won’t take half a mike.” She sat
him down in front of a scanner. “Just lay your hand on the
plate...hmmm. Nothing’s broken. Some soft tissue damage
though. What you’d commonly call a sprain. Ace bandage and a
cold pack, comin’ up.” She expertly wrapped his hand,
swiped a wand across his tags to get his ID and ordered
“light duty left hand, next exam 3 days”.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” She grinned.
“No, ma’am. Ma’am?”
“What is it, son?”
“When do you think Lt. Ames will be getting off duty?”
She laughed. “Tomorrow! Look at this!” Her hand swept
the corridor outside. “Haven’t had ‘em backed up
like this since we pulled the survivors off Demios. We’re
all going to be working overtime down here tonight, that’s
for sure.”
Hawkes wasn’t sure if she was going to pat him on the head,
or draft him and put him to work as an orderly. Either way, he
decided that a strategic retreat was the wisest course. He
excused himself and, followed by Dr. O’Leary’s good
natured laughter, he made a beeline for the nearest lift.
*****
Vansen finished filling out the reports on the mission and got up
from her chair, stretched until the kink in her back popped, and
sighed with relief. Nothing like one giant furball after another,
followed by a whole damn watch of filling out forms! Nathan and
Vanessa had already left, finding something to do to wind down
while they were off duty. She got her diary out of her locker.
It was lucky Coop had been the one to find it. If she’d left
it lying around and some stranger had happened to be in
here...for instance, the guy who was supposed to fix the
hatch...God, how could she have been so stupid! Vanessa had
promised to fix the problem, and ten minutes later had given her
a chip, told her to slot it up and run the program on it. She did
so now.
After that, her notebook always opened up to her bank account. To
get to the diary, she had to type in a password. Security could
always be broken, but at least there wouldn’t be any more
accidents like this morning!
For a moment, she almost got rid of the diary entirely. But then
she thought, there was no proof of any actual wrongdoing in
there. It was all dated after Ty had left for Earth. And after
that close call, she certainly would not write down anything
incriminating. As for a scandal, well...anyone who went to the
trouble to find and break into her diary would have to already
suspect there was something in there worth reading.
She laughed and flopped back on her rack, looked at her pictures
on the bulkhead. Nothing suspicious there--the only picture she
had of Ty was one taken with the whole squadron, and they
hadn’t even been standing next to one another.
Her eyes traveled to the next picture, of herself and her sisters
at Anne’s wedding. What would they think of all this? Anne
would be a little scandalized, a LOT amused....serious,
hardworking, (boring) old Shane, sneaking around sleeping with
someone. Imagine that! Lauren, on the other hand, would think it
was all terribly romantic, like the situations the heroines of
the fantasy novels she read always seemed to get into. Sometimes
Shane thought Lauren was waiting for her hero to come riding up
on his white horse and sweep her away from UCLA.
The last picture was of her parents. She had obtained that one
from the Marine Corps after enlisting, and sent copies of it to
Anne and Lauren. Like nearly all their belongings, they had lost
every original family picture they’d ever had in the foster
home shuffle. Shane had her dad’s pool cue, Anne had her
mother’s wedding ring and Lauren had the family Bible. One
thing for each of them...to show for a lifetime. Shane knew what
her mother would have said about that. Their children were their
legacy.
She wondered what her parents would think about her and Ty. They
had met in the Corps, and her father had transferred out of her
mother’s squadron before they got married. Maybe they had
gone through the same thing before that. Not for the first time,
she wished she could sit down with her parents over a cup of
coffee and talk things over. One thing was sure, they would
understand about love that lasted a lifetime....
She heard the hatch, recognized the sound of McQueen’s step
and smiled. “I’m back here.”
“That’s what Damphousse told me, when you weren’t
at Tun’s with everyone else.”
“Just filed the reports a minute ago,” she said.
“OH, God, I don’t need too many more days like today.
Where were you when we got hit?”
“In a meeting with the Commodore and a couple of other
people, let me tell you we really felt it, too. But there
wasn’t any damage outside the docking bay itself,” he
hastened to assure her.
“Ty, there’s something you need to know. Cooper found
my diary. He knows about us.”
“What was Cooper doing with your diary?”
She shook her head. “Just being Coop, he didn’t mean
any harm. It was my fault.”
“The hell it was, he knows better than that. So what
happened? Have we got a problem?”
“I...don’t think so,” she said cautiously.
“He was worried we’d land in the brig.”
“That’s reasonable,” McQueen said. “If we
were serving under anyone other than Commodore Ross, I’d say
it was even likely.”
“Well, when general quarters sounded, the first thing out of
his mouth was to swear to God he wouldn’t let anyone find
out from him.”
“I believe him, Shane. Did you know that Nathan’s been
onto us from the start?”
She nodded. “We never talked about it, but...I never thought
I was pulling anything over on him. What, did he say something to
you?”
“No...not exactly. After we got back from Vesta, he
just...sounded things out to make sure there wasn’t a
problem.”
Shane laughed. “You mean he was asking your
intentions?”
“Something like that, I guess,” he replied. “He
was concerned about both of us.”
“Oh, God.” She rolled her eyes towards the ceiling, her
trademark why-me expression.
“We knew we couldn’t keep this a secret from the
‘Cards for very long,” McQueen said reasonably.
“Ty, what are we going to do when this mess with your
military status gets straightened out? We’ll have our
newbies by then, it won’t be just the five of us
anymore.”
“A lot of cold showers for the duration, Shane, you know
that as well as I do. We’re not going to risk ruining both
our careers, or worse, over a roll in the hay.”
She gave him that minxy look of hers, the one that could melt a
hole clear through the bulkhead. “You might have to keep
your hatch locked to make that one stick. And you’d better
put a chair up against it while you’re at it, because I
think I know where there’s a master key for that
corridor....”
He laughed and reached across the distance between the two bunks
to catch her hand. “I never said it was going to be
easy.”
“A lot of things fall under the category of ‘not
easy’, Ty. Staying away from you is going to be damn near
impossible.” She drew his hand to her lips.
“Easier than staying away from you,” he told her.
“Maybe we should save up while we aren’t breaking any
regulations,” she said.
“Give me ten mikes. I won’t have my hatch locked.”