Conversations on the Fortune’s Fist: Thirteen

"Well, you be captured by the Angels, then, and I'll rescue you!"

Camille Roth's voice sure does have a carrying power, Luisa thought to herself as she closed the door to the secure container holding Pilot's hab-unit behind her. Just as well, if she ends up being a marine like she's got her heart set on.

Ain't no-one going to mishear an order  she gives, for sure.

"In the holos, it's usually the  girl who gets rescued." The second voice belonged to Jamie, and it still gave Luisa a start, a little lift of the heart, even all these weeks after Pilot had come to her and suggested, in that soft, diffident way Pilot had about her, that maybe Gwen and Jamie might stay a little while here at Lustrevik, given how far away they all were from State space these days, given how important family was. 

Luisa had told Pilot stiffly that it wasn't necessary, thank you very much, she was well used to not seeing them above once or twice a year, thinking  And I'm not going to be any rich podder's charity case, even one as stupidly sweet-natured as you.

Pilot had nodded, and said  Mmhmm, and talked for a little while about how much she worried that Camille wasn't seeing other children except at school because of all the security issues, and how nice it would be if there were other children living inside the perimeter, and how she wished awfully that some of the crew had families here on station, and somehow Luisa had found herself turned around and offering to ask Gwen if she and Jamie could stay a little while, and Pilot nodded and smiled and said how kind it would be of Luisa to do that, and how much she'd appreciate the favor, and it wasn't until she was out the door that Luisa had realized just how thoroughly she'd been conned. 

Vague and wishy-washy as Pilot was, Luisa reflected as she made her way up the path towards the pretend-Gallente house in its pretend-countryside setting, there were times when talking to her was like what Luisa had once overheard a couple of pilots say about trying to catch and kill a Helios.  Fragile as a cobweb one had said. Get one good hit in and you just know it'll go to pieces. But every time you think you're closing in, the damn thing disappears and pops up on the other side of you.

"Only in the  stupid holos," Camille said firmly from the other side of the garden. "In the good holos the girl rescues herself!And everyone else!"

"Can't I rescue myself too?" Jamie asked.  

As Camille said reluctantly "O- kaaaaay", Luisa spotted Pilot sitting under one of the pretend-trees in pretend-shade from the pretend-sun, a stack of hard-copy next to her, studying one of the pages with her bare feet stretched out in front of her. Luisa noted with a mental snort that Pilot had found time to paint her toenails all the colors of the rainbow. Typical Gallente foolishness.

Pilot caught her gaze and wiggled her toes with a smile. "Camille felt creative," she said. "Better my toes than the walls of the house, eh?"  
Luisa had to admit, if only to herself, that yes, it probably was. "I've got my recommendations on those roster changes for you, Pilot," she said. 

"Oh, good, thank you." Pilot rose to her feet with, Luisa noted, the ease and grace of someone too young to know arthritis as more than a word. "Come inside, let me get you a cold drink and we'll talk about it."

"I'm fine, Pilot," Luisa said.

"Well,  I'm thirsty," Pilot said. About to turn toward the house, she paused, and looked across the pretend-garden, shading her eyes against the pretend-sun. "I do hope Camille isn't pushing Jamie around too much. She can be very, uh, decisive."

"If she is, it'll toughen him up, is all," Luisa said. 

"But he's so sweet! Why would you want him toughened up?"  

Luisa blinked. Pilot's eyes were wide and blue and genuinely puzzled. "Let him know what life's going to be," she said shortly. "While he's still young enough to learn from the lesson."

"Oh," Pilot said, and Luisa could tell this particular  oh was what she herself classified as number seven. Oh, I don't understand what you mean but it would be rude to say so. It was close, but not identical, to number thirteen, Oh, I think you're completely wrong, but it would be rude to say so. "Well, come and have some lemonade, and tell me about the rosters."

Luisa followed Pilot into the house, the thick stone walls shutting out the pretend-summer outside. She waited, hands clasped behind her back and shoulders square, as Pilot opened the refrigerator and took out a tall jug of something, poured two glasses and carried them to the battered table.  

"Please, come and sit down, have some lemonade," Pilot said, taking a chair herself, legs curled up under her like a kid. Luisa's own rules about dealing with a Captain who made requests rather than issuing orders meant she had to treat that invitation like a direct instruction, and so she took a chair opposite Pilot and picked up the glass. The lemonade was tart and sweet at the same time, and Luisa could recognize the tang of real fruit and the smoothness of sugar from a ...  Wonder where real sugar does come from, now I think about it?

Where-ever it came from, a tree or a flower or some animal, it was a luxury,  although not to podders, I guess. 

Luisa gave herself a few seconds to savor it as Pilot tasted her own drink and smiled with satisfaction.  

Those three seconds of self-indulgence past, Luisa swallowed and spoke. "Master Gunnery Sergeant Jadat thinks you should promote Private Alpassi."  

"Helmi? Why? And to what?"

"His report says she's got real natural talent at close personal protection. And she's hard-working, and dedicated. Plus she's about the right age, and the right gender, to work close-in, in civvies. She'd look like a friend, to anyone else, you see?"

"A friend?"

"You go shopping, she goes with you, two girls off on an outing. Anyone looking to try anything, they'll clock your detail, have a plan for them. Alpassi would be the nasty surprise they didn't plan on."

"Is that dangerous?" Pilot asked.  

Luisa paused. "Alpassi isn't the one I'd pick, all in all," she said carefully. "Taking everything into consideration. But Jadat doesn't know, and  Alpassi doesn't know, what you and I do."

Pilot looked puzzled for a moment, and then shook her head. "Oh. No, I mean, is that dangerous  for her. Is it a dangerous job, being ... that person?"

"Yes," Luisa said baldly. "I expect she'd be wearing some kind of light armor, nothing visible, you can talk to Jadat yourself about the details, but there would have to be limits, I'd expect, if she's passing herself off as an ordinary civilian."

"Oh," Pilot said, and Luisa recognized it as  'Oh' number nine, Oh, you've just told me something I'd have preferred not to know. "And what does Helmi think about it?"

"It's not her job to have opinions about the best way she can serve her Captain, her ship and her crew," Luisa said.  

"Oh," Pilot said,  number thirteen. "Well, I'd like to know, all the same. I'd rather have someone volunteer, especially if it's dangerous. And we should promote her?"

"You should, yes." Luisa eyed her glass of lemonade, then allowed herself another swallow. "I've given you Jadat's report on restructuring security, separating out your security, and hanger security. Those marines will need different training, a different roster, different reflexes and priorities, to say, boarding parties. Jadat says, and I agree, they're specialists. Either way you go with Alpassi, Jadat says she ought to be on security duty, not general. It'll take a restructure, and that'll mean some promotions anyway."

Pilot nodded. "All right. If you think that's the best way to go about it, and Demen does, then ... " She shrugged.  

"It's whether  you think it's the best way to go about it, Pilot."

Pilot scratched at the table with her thumbnail. "Well, it's not like I know anything about security," she said. "That's why Ami sent Demen, after all."

"He's a gunny from another ship, you're the captain of this one. Take his advice, if you like, but the decision's down to you, Pilot."

Pilot pulled a face, and for an instant Luisa was reminded so strongly of Gwen, a few years younger than Pilot was now, faced with mathematics homework, that she could almost  see the cramped kitchen in their tiny flat on the Ishukone Logistics station in Haajinen, smell the greens simmering on the stove, hear the front door open and close and a dear and familiar voice callI'm home, finally! - 

She shut the door on memory, hard and tight. Pilot wasn't a teenage girl struggling with algebra, Pilot was a captain and a podder and wealthy beyond imagining, Pilot held thousands of lives in her hands every time she undocked, Luisa's among them, Pilot  took tens of thousands of lives as a matter of course in her chosen profession. 

Pilot needs to act like a Spirits damned grown-up, from time to time.

Not pull faces like a spoiled teenager asked to clean her room.

Pilot looked up from the table. The opalescent light cast through the fake windows by the pretend sun blurred and softened her features, and despite herself Luisa was forced to acknowledge  She is barely more than a kid, after all. 

Not so very much older than the girl running around in the garden outside.  

Just a little bit older than I was, when I got my papers cut for the  Sapphire Star.

Hard to remember, that girl,  Lulu Kamajeck, hard to see past five long years in the dark. Kid when I carried my duffel up the companionway.

No kid when I walked back down, that's for Spirits- damn sure.

Luisa looked at Pilot biting her lip and scratching at the end of the table and wondered what five years in the dark would do to her. 

Wondered if they'd both live long enough to see.  

Maybe. If she starts paying decent notice to her own security, for the Ancestors' long-suffering sake.

"Pilot," she prompted, gentler than she might have.  

"Oh," Pilot said, and Luisa recognized and welcomed  'Oh' number three, the one than meant Oh, now I have to do something I don't want to, but there's no getting out of it. "Yes. I'll read Demen's report, Luisa, before I make any decisions. And I want to talk to Fisk, too."

"Over comms?"

Pilot shook her head. "Face to face. I know it's harder for him. But I want to see his face when I tell him Helmi might be going to spend her working life standing next to me with a gun."

Luisa nodded. "Thank you, Pilot," she said formally, and got to her feet.  

Pilot smiled. "Thank  you, Luisa," she said. "Won't you finish your lemonade?"

Politeness gave Luisa the excuse to pick up the glass, then, and take the last few swallows of liquid, sour and sweet and tasting of seasons she'd never seen for herself on worlds she'd never go to.

Outside, she could hear Camille and Jamie still running and shouting in the garden, playing one of their drawn-out games with arcane rules that they changed according to whim. Pretend battles in a pretend garden under a pretend sun.

That was all right for kids, she supposed.  But one day you have to learn that rules don't change because you want 'em to.

When the pretend sun goes out, in the dark behind the stars.

She set the glass down carefully. "I'll let Hurun know you want to see him."

Pilot nodded absently, gaze on the thin line she'd scored into the tabletop with her thumbnail. Luisa waited a few seconds to see if she'd say anything else.  

But it seemed Pilot had nothing more to say, not even an  Oh, and so Luisa left her there, in the middle of that carefully-built illusion, expensively constructed to give the impression that nothing had really changed, that Pilot's world was just as it always had been, with drinks made out of fruit that had ripened beneath an open sky, and sunlight that might even feel real if you were careful to not notice the faint shimmer of the joins in the holo-screens against the container walls. 

All right for kids, Luisa thought again as she made her way to the doors that would let her out in the hanger, into the familiar world of deckplating and canned air and the smell of machine oil. 

But I'm no kid.

And neither is she, know it or not.  

And none of this is a game.

The Arderonne Occupation

It was Thursday when they came for us. 

It was four days after the ATVs had rolled in, disgorging rows and rows of troops faceless in their helmets, bristling with armour. The first day, we cowered inside as they strode up and down the street, expecting the door to be kicked in any minute. The second day, we began to think that maybe if we stayed inside we'd be safe. The third day, a few brave souls ventured out, driven by hunger and thirst.  

On the fourth day, they came for us.  

All of us, kicking in every door, shouting and grabbing and hauling and herding us out into the street. 

They separated the men from the women. At first I thought they were taking the men to work for them, building something, a road maybe, I don't know.  

But then they told us that the children would go with the men. Boys, girls, babies, with their fathers and brothers and grandfathers.  

Babies can't work.  

It didn't go smoothly. Up until then the hope that compliance could buy survival had made it easy for them. After they started to pull children away from their mothers and push them across the street to the group of men ...

They used the stocks of their rifles. When that didn't work, they shot a few of us.  

There were more us than of them, but they had the weapons, and those armored suits, that made them strong. They got us into the groups they wanted, and they marched the men and children away. Then they marched us away in another direction.  

The bodies they left in the street.

They herded us into the school hall, and they told us they had a special job for us to do.  

Our world was theirs now, they said. Things had changed. It would be a new society.  

They lined us up and told us, that was their job for us.  

To be the mothers of the new society.  

They took us, one at a time. I could hear the woman they took ahead of me screaming.

When it was my turn, I didn't scream.  

I lay there, and went away inside my head, not to anywhere in particular, just to a nowhere where I couldn't feel them.  

Couldn't feel them making me a mother of new Caldari Arderonne.

Conversations on the Fortune’s Fist: Twelve

((Co-written with Silver Night))

Master Gunnery Sergeant Demen Jadat of the Utopian Ideal leaned on the catwalk railing and looked down at the deck of the drone bay of the Dominix-class battleship Fortune's Fist. Today, as for the last three days, it held no drones. Today, some thousand or so of the crew of the Fist wandered around the huge, echoing space, casually dressed in civilian clothes. Making their way through the crowd was a small knot of people, also casually dressed, but not wandering: one small woman deliberately chosen for her resemblance to Ciarente Roth, and six of the marines assigned to Pilot Roth's close personal protection detail. 

And somewhere in that crowd of a thousand were three or four of Demen's own people, also in civilian clothes. They were not there to add to the numbers of 'bystanders'.

They were assassins, or at least, pretending to be.  

'Ms Roth' and her guards had made it less than twenty feet into the room before Demen's trained eye had picked out the first two 'assassins', noting the tell-tales in their stance that said  concealed weapon, the hidden purpose to their apparently-aimless movement through the crowd. 

"Do you see them?" he asked the man beside him.  

Fisk Hurun nodded tightly.  

Demen didn't take his gaze from the crowd below, mentally dividing the deck into quarters and checking each one in turn, letting his subconscious sort out what was normal, what was usual, what was dangerous.  There's the third. At the same time, his peripheral vision showed Hurun's hands white-knuckled on the railing, muscle jumping on the back of one, and he registered the other man's breathing: short, rapid, strained. 

Checking the relative positions of the 'assassins' to 'Ms Roth', he casually moved a little further away from Hurun, giving himself a little clearance.  Just in case. 

Not for the first time since he and his people had arrived to give Ms Roth's security teams what Commander Invelen had described as 'a little extra training', Demen reflected that it was a good thing the standing orders on Ms Roth's ship's prohibited all but checkpoint from carrying sidearms as a matter of course.

Not a man who should have a gun handy, he thought with a glance at Fisk as the first 'assassin' worked his way through the crowd to less than thirty feet from 'Ms Roth'. 

The Commander had given him a heads-up on Ms Roth's CTO,  Recently shot. Newly wired. Jumpy. Three things that, put together, did not in Demen's experience bode well. 

And an instruction, along with the description.  Let me know what you think of him, Gunny. Whoever's running Cia's security has gotta be up to the job. I want you to treat this like you're training my protection detail, or Captain Night's.

A flurry of movement down below broke into his thoughts.  

Without the neural wiring Demen wouldn't have been able to sort out what happened, training or no - it was that fast.  

The first 'assassin' drew a 'pistol' - actually a laser-tag gun exactly like the kind Ms Roth's little sister played with - and aimed towards 'Ms Roth'. Even as Demen saw the movement, one of the marines guarding 'Ms Roth' was turning, her own weapon coming up. The 'assassin' didn't have time to aim before a bright splotch of light appeared on his chest.

Demen concentrated, opening a channel on his internal comm to the marines below.  

Who was that?

The marine who'd fired touched a finger to her ear-piece. "Alpassi, sir."

It didn't surprise Demen. Private Helmi Alpassi had been the stand-out since the day he'd arrived, having every procedure memorized before the others had even finished reading it, her speed and accuracy with her sidearm telling of many long hours practice, with a cool vigilance that would have been remarkable in someone with twice her training and four times her experience. What tipped you off? he asked. 

Alpassi's answer sounded abashed. "I don't know, sir."

Think about it, Demen said. At the end of the exercise you'll be telling your team-mates how it was that you saw the shooter before they did."

"Sir, yes si - "

'Assassin' number two took the opportunity of Alpassi's distraction to make her move. The knife that appeared in her hand as she dived between the marines at 'Ms Roth' was of course blunt.

So was the steel-capped toe of the boot that caught her in the solar plexus before she was anywhere near in range.  

Demen heard the  thud over Alpassi's open comm line and the Sorry! that followed it from the marine who'd dealt the kick. 

You okay, Tiroshi? he asked. 

She grunted, and it sounded vaguely affirmative. As Demen watched she rolled over and looked up at him, opening her shirt to show him her light body-armor cracked down the front.  

"I'm sorry, sir," the marine said over the comm. "I didn't have time to pull it or - "

That's why she's wearing armor, marine, Demen said. So you won't learn the bad habit of pulling your punches.

The marine nodded, and Demen saw him bend to help Specialist Tiroshi to her feet, made a note to mention it at the end of the exercise.  Sloppy. Loss of focus, when 'Ms Roth' is still in an open, unsecured space.

"Pay attention, Legeen!" Alpassi snapped. Demen pursed his lips a little. Legeen was  Sergeant Legeen, and Private Alpassi shouldn't be using that tone to him, regardless of the legitimacy of her rebuke. 

He caught enough of Legeen's response, combined with the body language Demen could see from his vantage point, to know that Legeen was making just that same point.  

Focus. Demen thought of reminding them, but that would have defeated the purpose of this particular exercise. They're not going to have a Gunny hovering like God above them when it's the real deal. 

He saw the movement. Saw the rifle coming into view, saw Alpassi see it too,  felt Hurun lock up beside him like a clenched fist. Demen did the geometry in a half-a-heartbeat, the clear line of fire for the 'assassin', the people obstructing Alpassi's own shot, the rest of the bodyguards-in- training seeing the same thing now, but too late. 

Alpassi dropped her gun and dived as the 'assassin' pulled the trigger. The marine hit 'Ms Roth' hard and slammed her to the ground, her own body between her and the 'assassin'. Legeen and the other marines returned fire, belatedly. The 'assassin' lit up in four different colors, telling Demen that at least one of the five who'd fired needed more range time. 

"No, no, no - " Alpassi said, her voice breaking. "Oh, no, no..." She pushed herself to a sitting position and the movement let Demen see 'Ms Roth', her forehead lit with the trace of a laser-tag that told the world that Alpassi had been a split-second slow.

Looks like we still have a bit of work to do, Demen told them all. Briefing room, five minutes.

He watched as Legeen helped 'Ms Roth' and then Alpassi to their feet. The young private seemed shaken, but she regained her composure as the general announcement of the end of the exercise began to send the crew-members playing the crowd on their way.  

"Work to do still," Demen said. "But we're making real progress."

Hurun didn't answer.  

Demen turned and saw the other man standing rigid, the railing buckling beneath his grip, tremors running through him. One leg twitched, then a shoulder, augmentations trying to respond to chaotic neural instructions.  

"Hurun," he said. " Fisk."

The face that turned to him was blank and white, eyes wide with desperation. "Sh-sh-sh ...  out." Hurun said. "G-g-g..."

"Take it easy, man," Demen said quietly. "You've got to calm down. You're full of hardware that you can hurt yourself with if you don't. Can you hear me?"

"N-n-n  safe," Hurun blurted. "N-n-n ... h-have to g-g-g ... back."

Demen tried to open a connection to Hurun's internal comm, got a blast of static that made his head ring. "Your Pilot's safe, Fisk," he said. "She's down-planet. There's a security net around her that  I couldn't get through. Calm down, and you can call her and talk to her and see for yourself. Calm down, now. Breathe in and out. Calm down, marine."

He kept talking, the same reassurances, waiting for a sign Hurun had heard him, waiting for a sign the potentially lethal panic was easing. Long minutes, until the twitching and the shuddering stopped, until Hurun's gaze focused on him, until finally the other man gave a short nod and released his death grip on the railing.  

"I think maybe you need to take a break, Sergeant Hurun," Demen said, phrasing it as a suggestion rather than the order it would have been on the  Utopian Ideal because this wasn't his ship and Hurun wasn't his man. A suggestion - but his tone said it was the kind of suggestion that a senior NCO might give to a fresh Lieutenant right before they walked into an ambush.

Hurun shook his head. "N-n," he said. "P-p ...  Roth's. S-safety. M-m ... job."

He turned abruptly and began to make his way towards the stairs at the end of the catwalk, still a little unsteady on his feet.  

Demen watched him go. He couldn't order the CTO of another crew to stand down or have him removed from active duty.  

All I can do is report to Commander Invelen, he thought. 

And I'd better make that a priority.

Because Pilot Roth's safety might be Fisk Hurun's job ... but right now, from where Demen Jadat was standing, the biggest threat to that safety might be Fisk Hurun himself.  

Conversations On The Fortune’s Fist: Eleven

Luisa Kamajeck cursed the twenty years of riding out grav-fluxes on unforgiving cargo-hold deckplates as she bent her aching knees to peer into the cupboard in the officer's mess. No fancy new joints for Ishukone's cargo-jockeys, she thought sourly.Not worth the expense. Not a 'hazardous job'. No matter that a snapped safety cable at full thrust can take off an arm as easy as any plasma charge.

It was an old complaint, worn thin and familiar with repetition, one that she'd kept on the inside of her teeth for forty years and would for forty more  if the spirits give me that long.

It seemed unlikely.  Still, there was a time I gave up on seeing twenty-five. Days on the Sapphire Star towards the end that I didn't think I'd see the next morning, let alone the next birthday. Luisa found the bottle she was looking for, hooked it out along with a glass to go with it, and straightened, barely suppressing a groan. Never can tell, Lulu, what's around the corner. Never can tell.

Spirits know I never saw  this job coming.

The mess door opened, the lack of a knock telling Luisa, if not who it was, then at least that it was one of the other three people with business here, this time of night.  

"'lo," Michael Mitcheson said, letting the door hiss shut behind him.  

Luisa grunted an acknowledgement and poured herself exactly one finger of vodka.  Invelen's gift, podder largess, better than I've ever had or will again.

Mitch grinned. "I see you missed me, then."

"Yeah, but one of these days my aim will get better," Luisa told him, recapping the bottle as Mitch pulled a chair out from the table. "Hope you came back ready to work, Chief. Didn't put your back out or anything."  

"Well, I had the best medical care," Mitch said, straight-faced.  

Luisa snorted. "Is that what you decadent Gallentes call a double-enten-whatsit?"

He let the smile show then. "Possibly."

"Well, cut it out," Luisa told him. "Don't think you'll be getting any extra leeway around here because you're a married man, Michael Mitcheson."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Mitch assured her. "Although, thanks for the new quarters."

"Don't thank me," Luisa said. "Pilot's idea."  

Mitch rocked back on his chair, balancing it on two legs. "Pilot's idea, your work orders, right?"  

"Maybe," Luisa admitted. She glanced at him, sipped the fine Pator vodka. "So you happy with how your little plan worked out?"

" My plan?" he asked. 

She shrugged. "Wasn't Nerila's, was it? Doesn't take eyes like Fisk's to see the only way you'd get a ring on  her finger is with a gun to her head. Metaphorically speaking." Luisa sipped her vodka again. "What are you going to do? If your wife finds out she's not the only one on this boat who knows how to deal from the bottom of the deck?"

Mitch shrugged. "Tell her the truth." He let the chair settle square on all four legs again and grinned at Luisa. "That it was your idea."  

She gave him her best and blankest noncommittal stare, the one that usually saw her walk away with the pot  in any game that doesn't have Fisk and Nerila in it. "Can't have senior officers flouting regs, can I?" Luisa heard more of an edge to her voice than she'd meant as the words came out and couldn't think of a way to soften it, waited to see if Mitch'd take offence. 

No. He kept grinning. "Oh, so that was why, was it?"

"Well, and I'm a soppy romantic at heart, of course," Luisa said, dry as vacuum. "Like the rest of us from the State. Let nothing come in the way of true love, all that stuff? Very Caldari, you know." 

"Oh, sure." Mitch reached out to open the cold storage without getting out of his chair. "Fortune, we're not short of left-overs, are we?" He tugged out a plate of pastries and set it on the table. "But, you know, I wondered. Why  that way. At the party. You could have just reported us, would've worked out the same."

"Yeah, I could've." Luisa selected a pastry and peeled off a flake of crisp sugared dough.

"So why? Why the scene?"  

"Knew she wouldn't let it go," Luisa said. "That girl ... she  is a romantic. Wasn't going to see the mean old XO sacking two crew for falling in love, was she?"

He studied her. "Pilot calling you on something in front of the whole crew, wouldn't have thought ..."

Luisa looked at him levelly. "It's  her boat, Mitch. Not mine." 

"Well, I  knew that."

Luisa shrugged. "Now  she does." She contemplated the pastry and peeled another flake. 
"Not going to be here forever, Mitch. There'll be day Pilot's got to say no to her XO and mean it and there'll be more at stake than, excuse me for saying, the over-heated nether regions of couple of Gallente fools." She shrugged again. "Better she practice when it doesn't matter than fail when it does. I've seen that, I know where it goes." Goes real bad. Real fast.

She shivered at the memory, looked up to meet Mitch's gaze and could tell she hadn't entirely managed to hide it.  Don't ask,her stare said, best XO tool she had, that stare, flat and cold and promising a short,cold walk to anyone who crossed her. Don't ask. Don't presume I'm going to indulge you further than our interests run in common. Don't push your luck. 

Don't think for a second we're friends.  

For one long moment she thought Mitch was going to ignore the warning, and then the door opened and he closed his mouth on whatever he had been going to say.  

"Hope you brought  folding money this time," Nerila said, pulling a deck of cards from her pocket as she slid into a chair. 

"You feeling lucky, then, I guess?" Luisa asked.  

"One way of putting it," Nerila said. She cut the cards one-handed and began to shuffle as Fisk followed her in. "Gonna share that, Luisa? Or you getting stingy or something in your old age?"

"Or something," Luisa said, sliding the bottle down as Fisk fetched two more glasses and took his seat.  

"Yeah," Mitch said, watching Nerila's hands as she fanned the cards and gathered them up again. " Or something is right."

One Woman Jack Madison Should Have Married, But Didn’t

97

"Move-move-move," Jack yelled through back through the door of the 'pit. The 'lifter shuddered with the impact of boots as the medics hauled the injured over the lip of the hatch with brutal speed.  

A red-headed woman with the winged patch of a pilot stitched to her sleeve and the callsign 'Firetail' on her nametag followed them, pushed past to the 'pit.  

"What took you so long, Pruzza?" she asked with a grin, swinging herself into the empty co-pilot's seat beside him.

"Stopped for a bit of sight-seeing," he said drily, glancing out the window at the marines now retreating toward the 'lifter, falling back in pairs, laying down suppressing fire as they did. " Garghikor River's very pretty this time of year, you know, with the defoliants and all."

She laughed, harder than the joke was worth. "Drop your second seat out the window as you banked for a better look?"

"Must have," Jack said.  Running for the hanger with control yelling co-ordinates over the com, "Firetail's down, she's down, taking fire ... Milko's on his way, Prudence, hold on the runway, hold, hold!"

Fly this bird single-handed on my  worst day. 'cestors take me if I'm going to hang around for Milko to get his fly zipped.

"Gonna owe you a drink later," Firetail -  Gina - said.

"Big enough to swim in, love," Jack told her. "Maybe it's time you learnt that full-throttle isn't the only way to fly."

Gina laughed again, a full-throated chuckle that Jack could have found distracting if it hadn't been punctuated by the low thump of artillery fire coming closer as the enemy gunners found their range. "I'm plenty sweet on the stick when I want to be," she said.

"Not what your call-sign tells me," he said.  Come on, boys and girls. Twice as many of you as this old crate is rated to lift. Gonna be wallowing around over the top of the trees for too long as it is. Hurry it up, now.

"Oh, that," Gina said, leaning around on her seat to look back into the cabin. "Nothing to do with flying. Clear, let's go, go!"

He pulled hard on the stick, gunned the engines, the old 'lifter too simple for her systems to succumb to jamming, answering to brute force and subtle manipulation in equal parts.  Come on, sweetheart, help your Uncle Prue out here, up, up, up ... good girl. "How'd you get it, then?"

"Buy  me a drink and I'll show you," Gina said, still looking back into the cabin as they gained a few feet of altitude, engines straining with the load. 

"Show me?"  Come on, now, good girl, up, over the trees, not into them, there's a love ...

She turned to face him, eyes dancing, and Jack thought that even with her face half-over grease and dirt and her hair falling into her face, she was just about the prettiest thing he'd ever seen. "Well, Pruzza, carpet matches the  dra-"

Whomph

Can't see can't hear I'm hit I'm dead this is it too early I had things to do I've got a kid for - 

He could feel the 'lifter slewing sideways through the air, vibration through the stick telling him port-side engine was gone, pulled up, up, up, no idea where he was but knowing  down was guns and trees and death and up was open sky. Blinked, cleared a little red from his vision, saw a tilting treeline through his shattered windscreen and spat a curse he couldn't hear.Up, up, up, sweetheart, do it for your Uncle Prue, come on, come on ...

Blinked again as the trees disappeared beneath him, felt the starboard engine  thump and miss a stroke, held his breath and felt it pick up again. Indicators showing fuel hemorrhaging somewhere, red lights blinking all over the board. Up was safe and he pulled back on the stick, nursing the limping engine with a delicate tap-and-touch on the pedals that gave the lie to his second wife's complaint that he was the world's worst dancer. Up, sweetheart, up, up ....

It was the wind whistling through the shattered windscreen that made him realise his hearing had returned.  But that's all I can hear...

"All right back there?" he shouted.

Silence.

"You blokes all right back there?" He glanced away from the blue sky in front of him to turn and look back into the cabin and saw -

Jerked his gaze back to the instrument panel.  Gonna be in trouble in about five minutes when the fuel's gone, he thought.Think about what you're gonna do then, Jack. Think about that. Don't think about - 

He swallowed hard, took one hand off the yoke, and pushed what was left of Gina 'Firetail' Gerraci out of his lap.

Five Women Jack Madison Shouldn’t Have Married, But Did

One: The Childhood Sweetheart. (84)

"If the army accepts your application," Tirria said, propping herself up on one elbow, "We'll have to get married."

Jack laughed, looked up at her and saw she was serious. " Married?"

"I looked it up," she said. "Spouses get housing, relocation allowances when you get posted to ... to  wherever. Gotta be married, though."

"Bit of a big step, eh?" Jack said. "I mean, don't you think ... we should wait a bit? I don't think it's even legal until I'm eighteen."

Tirria settled back down beside him, mop of auburn curls tickling his jaw. "Yeah," she said, tracing a circle on his chest with one fingernail. "But do you really want us to be spending all those long months apart?"

"Well, no," Jack said.

"If we don't get married, we will be." Her hand drifted lower. "And I'd  miss you, Jack."

He caught his breath. "And if we're married, the army will bring you with me?"

Tirria nodded.

"Right," Jack said. He stretched, snagged an empty tinnie from the bedside table and snapped the ringpull from the top. "Tirria Arbias, will you do me the honour of becoming Mrs Tirria Madison?"

She held out her hand to let him slip the flimsy scrap of tin over her ring finger. "Why Jack, I thought you'd never ask."



Two: The Ballroom Dancer. (88)

"So how'd you get that nick-name?" Jeppie asked, leaning back against the bar.

"Prudence is my middle name, love," Jack said. "Jack Prudence Madison. Pleased to meetcha."

"Oh, yeah?" she said, sounding unconvinced. "Prudent, are yah? Gotta tell you, Pruzza, 'prudent' ain't even my dictionary." She grinned. "Everything from 'probably' to 'prune' went the night I couldn't find any other paper to get the fire going."

Jack took a long swallow of his beer, watched the way her throat moved as she did the same. "What fire?"

"Long story," Jeppie said. She glanced around at the crowd, then turned back to him, playing with a lock of ginger hair behind her ear. "Hey, you want to get out of here? There's a place down the row with a real sprung floor, live band."

She's decided I'm the best on offer, Jack thought, amused. For a slow night in small town.

"Can't dance," he said.

"I'll teach you," Jeppie offered. "And you can teach me about prudence.  All about prudence."

He grinned. "Sounds a fair deal."

Jeppie tucked her hand in the crook of his arm and tugged him towards the door. "You and me, Pruzza," she said. "I reckon we'll make quite the team."

Three: The One With The Ex (92)

"Hey, careful there!" Jack stooped to snag the toddler before he could run past him and into the traffic. "Where do you think you're going, little man?"

"Oh, thank you!"  

The woman's voice was flustered, but when Jack looked up he met the gaze of a tall, slim strawberry blonde who looked like she'd keep her cool on the hottest day of the blazing end of summer.  Like a tall glass of iced milk, he thought, swinging the toddler up and depositing him back in his mother's arms.

"No worries, love," he said genially, taking the opportunity to look for a wedding ring on her hand. "Got a few myself. They move pretty bloody fast at that age."

She laughed. "A 'few'?"

"Two," he said, then corrected himself. "Three. Four, if you count the one I found out was the other bloke's."

"And do you?" She shifted her son to one hip and shaded her eyes with her free hand, looking up at him. "Count that one?"

Jack shrugged. "She's gonna grow into a beaut sheila one day. May as well take all the credit I can, eh?" He held out his hand. "Jack," he said.

She hesitated, and then lowered her hand, squinting against the glaring sun. "Machai," she said, putting her long, cool fingers into his. "Machai Tennigal."

"Mrs Machai Tennigal?" Jack asked, holding her hand just a little too long.

Machai shook her head, her sleek bob flaring slightly with the movement. "Miss," she said. "Now."

"Buy you a milkshake, Miss Machai Tennigal?" he asked.

"Buy  him a milkshake," she said with a gesture to her son. "Buy me a beer."

Jack laughed. "I think you might be my kind of sheila, Machia," he said.

She gave him a sly sidewise smile as she stepped past him toward the pub. "You know, Jack," she said. "I think maybe I might be."



Four: The Marine (98)

"I could kill you with one hand," Arlinna said, tucking a lock of hair dyed blood-red behind her ear. "Does that turn you on?"

"Not especially, love," Jack admitted. "It's more the rest of the package."

She laughed and leaned forward, bringing the  rest of the package within reach of his eager hands. "You know, Pruzza, if we got married, we could do this every night."

"Sign me up," he said hoarsely.



Five: The One With The Tattoos and the Headlights.(101)

Jack rolled over, winced, and swallowed hard.  'cestors, how much did I have to drink ... last ... night?

Cautiously, he opened his eyes.  Looks like my room, he thought. That's a good start. It's not a gutter. Well done, Pruzza.

"Hey, honey," a voice from the other side of the bed said.

He rolled over and stared at the redhead smiling at him. "G'day love. You would be?"

She raised her hand and displayed the gold band on her ring finger. "Mrs Jack Madison," she said.