Rogue(13)

I made a little noise and entered. Chel was upstairs by the time I reached the shop room, and Silver was near one of the machines.

“This arrived for you,” she said, and pointed.

It was a meter-long, narrow box. It didn’t match anything I remembered ordering. I pulled out my knife and grabbed it, and stopped.

Return ID was Alan David. That was Naumann’s name.

Deni’s personal effects.

Deni had a family. There was no ill will that I’d ever heard of, but she, or he, had saved this for me. If she, I was even more touched, hurt, raw. It meant we’d both known we were lovers and been unable, and afraid to admit it.

If Naumann was behind it, I couldn’t know if it was an honest gesture, or manipulation. I suppose that depended in part on whether or not he’d seen the contents.

I slit the binder tape and it snapped back. I took a breath, opened the box . . .

Her sword, which I’d suspected. Combat fittings at one end, dress fittings on the blade inside the crushed linen wrap. An Eaves custom wakizashi, of the style we favored in the unit.

There were a couple of printed pictures of her, which I flipped over quickly. A last generation memory zip, which I’d have to get decoded and run through my system to read. Some souvenirs, a few of which I recognized, from various planets, including a prisoner receipt from a drunken brawl in which we’d gotten arrested, some coins and notes, a grenade pin and some small gems and carved wooden talismans.

I found the note. It was basic paper from a desk pad.

“I’m sorry this isn’t on nicer material. I don’t plan ahead that well. That’s why you’re the officer.

“As I write this, you’re across the op room from me, finishing boarding plans for the mission. We’re both pretending not to notice the other, not to need each other.

“You’re reading this, so I’m glad one of us made it. If we both make it, I’ll show you this, and make a ritual of burning it. Then we’ll formalize things. Then we’ll be in bed about a week.

“I love you. Beat you to it.

“Deni.”

Well, at least I knew Naumann hadn’t seen it. He’d never have let me have it if he had.

Yes, I loved her. She loved me. We knew that and could never admit it, because we served in and out of the same unit, and supported each other, and at the end I was her commander. And I knew it when a stressed-out mission and a weird schedule found us alone for an hour, and our daughter was conceived.

And I loved my daughter, but part of me hated that bitch Deni for sticking me with her, because it meant I’d had to stay alive, facing what I’d done, and now I had to go back there.

This stuff would mean more to me later. For now, it could go in a closet.

McLaren was good at reading people. She was on the far side of the shop studying my on-hand material inventory. I was as alone as feasible.

I carefully closed the box and carried it upstairs, where I could wrap it and hide it, even from me, until I was up to dealing with it.





I gradually shipped incoming jobs to other shops around the port, and even over to the harbor area. I completed the ones I had, and kept the machines running on stuff I came up with, just for the hell of it, so when anyone came in I was busy as hell and could claim overbooking as a reason not to take jobs. That also justified my publicly expressed desire to take a vacation. My standard line was, “In a few days.”

The worst part was playing the love-smitten single father. In public, Silver got felt up and caressed every little while, and we threw a few kisses in there now and then. Damn, but that woman could kiss. She accepted the role as camouflage and ran with it. Little gifts, occasional comm messages. Then soft, chewable lips brushing mine, with hands on my chest and shoulders.

I made it a point not to go to bed until I’d gotten some kind of release from somewhere. Otherwise, I couldn’t have slept, with her next to me.

But I wanted the human contact. When I’d been working sex for quick startup cash, that was the one part that I really enjoyed. I knew the clients needed and wanted that contact, and I could accept that as valid human touch, even if I hated myself too much to have any emotional involvement. Their need filled mine.

There was no way I’d emotionally involve with a subordinate I might have to order to die. Not again. Not ever again. But I wanted that body. I couldn’t have it.

I’d found a situation where a smart, sexy woman made things tremendously worse and more depressing than I’d started with.

I didn’t want to consider that I could reach lower emotional depths.

Silver did good work. Her qualifications were honest. She arranged multiple usable IDs for several systems, faked up plenty more that were decorative only, converted cash into various other exchange media, built concealed weapons, tools and scanners for us. She could rip circuitry and code and rebuild faster than anyone I’d ever seen. That’s always been my weak point. I’d been machining a decade, largely self-taught, but I did it full time. She could keep up with me. I wasn’t worried about explosives. If she couldn’t swing that, I could.