Banking the Coals
The radio room’s light was still on. At oh-dark-thirty shipboard time—time was relative out in the Black; you just set your clock to whatever was most convenient or whatever planet you’d come from or were headed to and reset or tweaked as necessary—there shouldn’t have been anyone still awake except the third shift, the people on watch while the rest of the crew slept. Harry wasn’t on watch, but she also didn’t sleep much. Altering her path from a course that was taking her forward to the galley and bridge, she headed for the radio room instead. There she saw their contact, boots propped up on the console, chair tilted back, sound asleep. It looked like a precarious position, but he didn’t seem in any danger of keeling over, so Harry turned to leave.
She paused in the doorway, though, studying him. The man looked, in that moment of repose, not as old as she would have expected based on the glimpse she’d gotten earlier—he’d looked far more mature, harder, awake. Jason, their medic, was righteously ticked off at both Nika and this man for their treatment of the ‘guest’ on board, but Harry’s issues were far more personal.
Brian had stopped off at her quarters before crashing for the night. The information that Nika, who had been the epitome of a good officer up to this point, had broken the fraternization regs Shyla had in place bothered the Asian woman. Not because of the regs themselves but because it was out of character for the young pilot. She’d been with the ship a year, and sure, she’d had her moments of mild insubordination. You couldn’t live in close quarters for months on end without some fights breaking out. But Nika’s involvement in such scuffles fell within the norm of the blonde’s behavior—this didn’t. And that rankled Harry.
Her dark eyes rested on Carter as he slept. Part of her wanted to kick the chair out from under him and demand to know what the gorram hell he thought he was doing, taking advantage of Harbinger’s pilot like that. The longer she stood there, though, the more she studied him, the more she wondered if it was less a matter of taking advantage and more a matter of … what? Certainly not love. The man was a soldier through and through. A truly tormented soul, in Harry’s assessment. A case, then, of “right place, right time?”
Carter shifted in his sleep, as if sensing her scrutiny. The fact that he didn’t wake—something she’d have expected from a man who did the job Carter did—told her that he felt safe. Safe enough to let his guard down and sleep deeply, perhaps for the first time in a while. And that trust made her think better of him. Brian’s assessment of the situation was that Nika was in rough shape. She thought he was overreacting; she’d seen Nika just as the shift was starting and the girl seemed just fine. But he’d come to Harry out of concern, hoping that perhaps she would be able to offer something to the blonde that she wouldn’t accept from him and Harry’d promised to check on Nika during the watch. And now Harry found herself smiling faintly. The longer she continued to stand there and absorb a sense of him, the less concerned she was about his motives. He was a good man, of that she was certain. The rest? As long as Nika was okay, that was all that mattered.
Harry stepped out of the radio room to pick up a blanket out of a supply closet. She brought it back and dropped it lightly across the sleeping freedom fighter before turning out all but one light. That he never even twitched, merely slitting his eyes for a brief moment when the blanket touched him, spoke volumes. They had another three hours before their rendezvous with the ship that would take Carter and the resource, Li, off their hands. The man deserved whatever sleep he could get.
Harry walked out of the radio room and started forward. Briefly stepping into the galley for coffee, she glanced up the corridor to the bridge, her next destination. It wasn’t often that the hatch to the bridge was closed, and the anomaly caused Harry to backpedal. That wasn’t a good sign. So much for coffee.
When she reached the hatch, Harry realized it wasn’t closed all the way and hesitated. The quiet sounds coming through the barely cracked door were harsh, ugly, painful. And they were sounds the small woman was not unfamiliar with. Resting her hand on the hatch, Harry shook her head a little. Brian had not been exaggerating. In spite of whatever release Nika’s foray with Carter had given her, the pilot was clearly not as calm about it all as she’d seemed when Harry ran into her earlier. It was a rare moment for Harry—she had a pretty uncanny knack for reading people. She was wrong; he had reason for his concern. The small woman slipped into the bridge and closed the hatch tightly behind her.
* * *
The feel of the gentle hand stroking the back of her head was the first inkling Nika had that she was no longer alone on the bridge. She jumped, pulling away and raising her face from where it had been buried in her hands. She looked up to see the ship’s weapons master standing behind her. Mortified, she averted her eyes and scrubbed at her face with the back of her hand. “Harry,” she said quietly, part greeting, part groan at being caught.
“You’ve set the ship abuzz today,” Harry observed mildly.
Nika’s eyes jerked back over to the other woman as she sat in the co-pilot’s chair and leaned back, her tear-swollen face showing worry. “How so?” Nika had never been certain how old Harry was—the woman’s looks were ageless—but she had a notion that Harry was older than most would expect. Harry tended to be relatively maternal in her dealings with the crew—assurances and kicks in the ass went hand in hand.
“You can’t expect to cut a man up, have him treated by our oh-so-sweet medic, and not have it get around, Nika.” Harry’s tone was calm, matter-of-fact. “I think perhaps your active role in this interrogation was a surprise to Shyla. You’ve never shown much interest in that type of operation.”
Nika wiped at her face again, chagrined that she couldn’t stop the waterworks. “Doesn’t matter whether I was interested. It needed doing.” She shrugged a little at Harry, admitting when she looked at the small woman, “I volunteered. I think Carter would have happily gone with the ‘beat on the woman’ tactic, and I’d have let him. It would have been fine. But I was feeling … a little wild.” The adrenaline that came with the escape hadn’t released her yet. “So I volunteered for the psychobitch routine. I didn’t expect it to… be what it was.” She bit her lip. “Is Shyla angry?”
Harry listened quietly, merely letting the blond young woman talk, and ignored the last question in favor of asking one of her own. “Which bothers you more, the fact that you did it or the fact that part of you enjoyed it?”
With a startled look, Nika stared at the tiny Asian woman. Shame caused tears to well up again in her eyes. “I …” She bit off the rest, her face crumpling as she looked away.
Harry smiled gently, her dark eyes fathomless in the low lights of the bridge. “I have been there, Xiao Mei.” She moved to stand, putting herself behind Nika both to give the blonde some measure of privacy and to give herself the freedom to stroke the back of Nika’s head once more. The damp braid made her smile faintly, though Nika couldn’t see it. “The capability for violence lives in each of us. It is how we direct it that matters. You have already begun to find a way to manage it. You will be all right.”
Nika dropped her face into her hands and started to cry again. Her sobs were quieter though no less harsh this time. “I told that man that I would cut him—that I liked cutting men, that it turned me on,” she whispered with something akin to horror in her tear-filled voice. How could Harry call her ‘little sister’ after that?? She felt … dirty. Like she’d done something that was wrong, that she should feel guilty for—which she did!—and yet, it was the right thing to do. She’d done a good job. Trying to reconcile it was making her a little crazy. “And then I went from that to…” She trailed off, unwilling to confess to Harry the other part—that she’d offered the man a hot shower and a soft bed only to find herself offering a different kind of creature comfort as well. Not that she was in any way ashamed of the passionate encounter; the perception of herself as someone who got turned on by torture was the problem.
Harry allowed her hands to continue their gentle movements, soothing the pilot gently. “You went from that to sex,” she commented calmly. “There is no shame in subverting adrenaline into an affirmation of humanity, Xiao Mei. The things we do in this war are not all black and white, good and evil. If you have not had to do something ugly in order to do the right thing until now, then you are very lucky. It will not be the last such choice you make.”
There’s a sound like a strangled laugh. “That just plain sucks, Harry.”
The tiny warrior wrapped her arms around Nika—heavens, the blond was so young. So many of those fighting this war were so young—and just let her cry. Sometimes a woman just needed that kind of tension release.
