wading into untested waters. She held back, almost frightened of where she knew she was headed, but not afraid, all at once.
“You’re what one might call an Alpha male. It’s not all that complicated a conclusion, you know.” Outside their small dining area, it seemed everything had stopped, that nothing and no one else existed any longer. Maeve felt her palms begin to sweat. This was not quite the reaction she wanted to be having.
“Humor me, I’m not all that bright.” Dmitry seemed to be turning up the confidence level, filling the air between them with false modesty.
“Somehow I doubt that. When I asked you to not address me by any title, you didn’t apologize the way other people might have. You’re cocky. And unless you have a wedding ring hidden in your watchband, if you’ll pardon me, it would seem you’re single, perhaps deliberately so.” He gritted his teeth momentarily. Not about to get into that story, not here, not now. Smiling guilelessly, he moved to outflank her yet again.
“How do you know I’m not married?” She shook her head, and pulled her trump card.
“You forget who I’ve been spending my time with. Your colonel talked about his girlfriend and you nonstop. I was beginning to wonder how you figured into their relationship.” He was cocky, hmm? Well, she was holding her own in good fashion, he thought dourly.
“So what does that make you?” Holding off on offering his own observations, he searched for a chink in her armor. He was curious about what opinion she might have of herself. This question was not the key. He watched her fix a thousand-yard stare onto the adobe walls.
“Me?” He nodded, though she wasn’t looking. “I guess I’m an Alpha too. Suited for someone of the same level of intensity only. I think I destroyed a few relationships on my way through the obstacle course of romance, if you could call it that.” She swirled her drink thoughtfully and brought herself to meet his eyes. “Maybe I should have a warning label. ‘Biohazard’, something like that.” She looked away again, and Dmitry chuckled.
“Seriously? That wouldn’t really have entered my mind about you.”
“The trick is knowing who you really are, but not letting anybody else see it.”
“Is that what my problem is?”
“I don’t think you know what your problem is.” She gave him a steel-edged smile. He choked a little on his third whiskey. Perhaps it was time to have a glass of water.
“Perhaps you should help me figure it out.”
He was being deliberately provocative, trying to draw her out of the reserve she was desperately clinging to, not unlike the jacket she was refusing to remove thus far. Against her better judgement, a certain part of her was getting sucked in by his goofy banter. The rest of her was choking back laughter, though she’d never have admitted it.
“You’re very humble too. A quality not often found.”
“My best quality is my humility.” This kind of exchange wasn’t usually his forte. He couldn’t explain why it was that he even interested in someone who was trying to match him, wit for wit. But there it was, instead of being put off, he was finding it to be a turn-on. This could be a problem. Tark’s last words to him echoed back to his brain. Screw it. What Tark didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
“Why don’t we get out of here? I haven’t had an official tour yet.” She grinned amicably while he stood up, just as the proprietor was entering to enquire as to their enjoyment of the meal, the ambience, so forth.
“You are leaving us, then, going to enjoy the rest of the evening?” He and the server gathered dishes, noting the absence of food anywhere to be seen. He was pleased. These officers would be back yet again, all three hopefully, maybe with more friends next time as well? Certainly, certainly.
“Yes, my good man, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I’ll recommend it to all, with honors.” Dmitry was feeling munificent, grandiose, even. He threw down a large amount of currency, snaked an arm through Maeve’s, and strode out self-assuredly.
He knew where he was headed, weaving a direct path through bodies across a brightly decorated square. As though they were sailing through open air, they came down to a section that reminded Maeve of European market squares. On a corner, between a Romanisch restaurant, and something like an alley, a recessed but open doorway issued forth familiar sounding noises.
“Am I completely off, or is this place a club of some sort?”
“You’re not off. This place has decent drinks when the barkeep is upright. Some dancing, some sitting; whatever you want, basically.” The thought occurred that he might point out what she actually wanted, but it was probably out of line. He didn’t want to take a haymaker to the jaw right then.
They walked inside, and found a blast of heat to greet them. The music was infectious, full of the essence of the station. People laughed, danced, and held each other, finding bonds; everyone making the night theirs in their own way. She checked what she was wearing against the unspoken dress code. She was nicely inconspicuous, the ageless color of her black clothes further blending her into the shadows. The bar was rampant with people, the air heavy and thick with the fetidness of so many bodies pressed into one small space. Dmitry tapped her, breaking her concentration.
“I’ll be back in a minute. What do you want to drink?
“Just have a glass of something red.” She scoped the scene further, deliberately unaware of Dmitry’s scrutiny as he waited at the bar. She crossed her legs, an act of holding herself in, but she did it slowly, drawing one leg up the other, not even conscious of her own movement. There were other thoughts insistently crowding her mind. She felt overwhelmed still, and yet, maybe it would help to cut loose and go nuts for once.
Her past was cloudy, but she knew that fun had never been very high on her list of priorities. The flashbacks had receded for a while, leaving their fingerprints all over her brain, faded photographs of memories. If she thought back, painfully hard, she could not even recall the last time she’d worn a dress, or acted like a woman. She had an idea that, despite her contentment with the way her life used to be, she needed to crawl out of the wreckage of what she had been. At that, she decided to set reminiscence aside, and stay in the present.
Dmitry leaned against the bar. He found himself thinking about what was under the dress. And then whether he should be thinking like that. She’d been up and moving around for such a short time. Never mind that Tark would probably kick his ass. Perhaps these things just ought to play themselves out. His thoughts settled, he plucked up their drinks, and headed back to the table. The glasses thunked onto the tabletop. Maeve looked up at him quizzically.
“Let ‘em mellow for a minute. Let’s go dance.” She looked up at him, and his hand. She took it, stood, and squelched nervousness. He had a firm grip, and a possessive embrace. She had some difficulty surrendering control, however, and he noticed.
“Are you going to let me lead, or what?” He gently guided her into the proper positioning. He noticed nervousness behind her confidence; it was peering through the shrouded distance between them.
“I’ll let you know. I haven’t done this in…ever.”
۞
Elsewhere, situations were rising like a tide. The other five former human popsicles (as they had taken to calling themselves) had split off into their various chosen activities for the evening. Jemi and Leif were collected by O’Leary and his long-suffering, involuntarily appointed companions. Jemi’s sense of humor seemed particularly tried that evening as Tim bounced alongside them, flitting through subject matter with breathtaking rapidity. He hardly gave anyone a chance to respond to one question before asking the next five.
Finally, after assuming that his excited state was due to lack of food (or oxygen to the brain), they turned themselves toward a casual eatery. At least with his mouth full, they figured, he would be forced to talk less. Another of his friends met them there. Haleh Rahimi, a young first lieutenant in the infantry patrol forces. She was O’Leary’s direct opposite in temperament and a welcome and calm presence, in
Jemi’s opinion.
۞
A Buddhist temple awaited Josh, Grace, and reluctantly, Antonio, in the arboretum. Josh was a little in awe of the structure, made even more impressive by the flanking vegetation of mangrove and papaya trees. It was cut from asteroid rock; ancient stone that seemed to give off its own energy. The monks were working in the monastery’s garden, but they broke off as soon as their visitors arrived for the evening meal. The gentle sounds of chimes and the natural setting surrounding them draped a sense of contentment over them. Only Antonio was having difficulty relaxing. He was sharing his concerns with Grace, as they ate.
“We have rules of engagement, right? I mean, they’re in the computer or something, all we need to do is get into it and figure out how they apply to our current circumstance.” Grace frowned the frown of the overly conscience-laden.
“That’s really Maeve’s thing. She’s the leader, we’re the led, that sort of thing?” Antonio waved an impatient hand at Grace.
“Yeah, well, she’s not all pieced together right now, is she?” He held the hand up still, to ward off comment until he was through. “I mean, she isn’t exactly remembering things the way they all thought she would. She’s been glad-handing the colonel and all, I give her that, but instead of being with us now, where is she?”
“How would I know that?”
“My point precisely. There is nothing I’d want more than to have her out in front doing her thing, because she was supposedly unparalleled in that, but she’s not who she was.” Josh overheard the last part of the conversation, and interjected fiercely.
“Not to put too fine a point on this, but you don’t know who she was before.” Josh was trying to restrain himself in public, as Grace waved her fork at him pointedly, but Antonio remained skeptical.
“And you do? All you know is what Leif has told you. He’s not exactly impartial, and if I recall, there were quite a few concerns…not least of which was four little letters.” Antonio was beginning to be a bit red in the face. Grace stood to place herself between the two men. Josh was on his feet in an instant, leaning over the table to respond with an intense whisper.
“You can secure that shit right now, man. I’m the one with experience in that field, remember? What was going on with her then is obviously not at play now. This isn’t when we thought we were going to be revived anyway. So just…stow it.” Antonio clamped his mouth shut in response, but it was obvious that he was far from satisfied with the outcome. He stayed silent, as would befit a “team player”. They were distracted from their high emotion by one of the monks, who invited them to join in evening meditation after dinner.
Josh and Grace elected to stay when the meal was over, feeling much like Maeve and her scarcity of desire to sleep. By then, Antonio was disgusted with himself, and chose to go back to his quarters. He wondered half-heartedly what Leif and Jemi were up to as he flung himself on his bed to read away his sorrows, and hopefully fall asleep.
۞
Tim was off-duty the next day, and suggested a nightclub, something of an old familiar to Leif. Reticence on Jemi’s part was to be expected, she was more of a homebody. She was reluctantly coerced into it at the promise of a “relaxed” atmosphere. If she hated it, she could easily leave. This in mind, she ambled along with her increasingly noisy companions. It was brilliant just to be soaking in the amazing environment of the Nimitz. In spite of its stark military function, a chaotic architectural style flowed throughout the whole of the civilian side.
A spectrum of design, form, and function discarded anything that might appear haphazard, or ungainly.