Federations

“No. That’s why now is a good time to check everything in detail. After you and the other pilots start flying missions, we’ll need them—that isn’t the time to find out something’s wrong.”

“That makes sense.” He paused. “Would you like to join me for some tea, if you can . . . and, if . . . ?” How could he ask what he really wanted to know?

She smiled, amusedly. “Are you trying to find out if I’m committed to someone in some way? I’m not. And yes, I’d love some tea, even what passes for it in the wardroom. Then, we’ll see . . . ”

Ghenji hadn’t made that offer, although it was what he had in mind.

II

The space service was practical, but not given to more than acknowledging that humans, particularly with mixed crews, did require a certain privacy. Cubicles for one officer would fit two, but not with all that much room to spare.

Rokujo, lying in Ghenji’s arms, or on his right arm, looked up. “Officers’ cubes have a cross-section that’s almost bell-shaped.”

“It helps get rid of excess heat,” he replied languidly.

“Or traps it . . . my not-so-monkish lover.”

He stroked her short, silky, brilliant white hair.

“I need to go,” she said. “I do have the med-section mid-watch.”

“You didn’t . . . ”

“I wasn’t about to. Your monkish concern with duty would have had you protesting that you didn’t want to interfere with mine.” Almost absently, she licked her lips, before smiling at him. “This way, you’ll get a good night’s sleep.”

He had to admire the seemingly boneless way in which she slithered into her uniform skin-suit and shipvest before leaving him and the cubicle.

He lay back, amazed at what had happened. In a way, she had almost coiled around him, he reflected, yet cool as she seemed, and as cool as her touch was, she also radiated warmth. How could anyone look so cool, even feel so cool, and then pour forth such heat? But then she had said that her nature was both hot and cold.

Later, alone in his small cubicle, he finally drifted into an uneasy sleep, knowing that before long he’d be in suspension in transit to the combat zone, even if he had no idea where it was or exactly what the mission would be.

He dreamed, and the dream was like all the others. He was awake and trapped in his cocoon, and, just as the shakes and shivers began to subside, the temperature began to plunge once more. He could not move, and at that moment, the face of a woman with flowing white hair and skin as white as porcelain, and lips like cherries appeared above him, and bestowed a loving kiss upon him—and the ice encased him with whiteness.

He woke, not sweating, but chill. The face in his dream had been that of Rokujo. The chill in his soul intensified as he realized that it had been her face all along. Every dream about life-suspension he’d ever had was exactly the same—and it had always been her face. He just hadn’t known it.

Surely, he was just back-projecting. He had to have been. He’d never met Rokujo Yukionna before embarking on the Amaterasu.

III

Ghenji didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed when the cocoon opened and a thin techie glanced down at him. “Signs are green, Flight Captain. You know the drill, ser.”

“Thank you.”

Ghenji eased his way out of the cocoon and sat on the stool, sipping the special post-suspension “tea,” waiting until the monitors showed that he was clear to resume duty.

After the evening spent with Rokujo, he hadn’t seen her again before he’d entered suspension, not because he hadn’t looked, but because their work and watch schedules had simply not coincided in any practical fashion.

He checked the ship-link—three point four standard years since they’d pushed off from Kunitsu orbit station two, and who knew how many more before they returned? If they returned.

Four stans later, he was in the squadron ready room with the other flight captains, listening to Operations Commander Togata.

“ . . . In less than forty hours, we’ll begin the attack on the first Mogul station. Flight Captain Nokamura will lead Kama-one . . . . Flight Captain Yamato will lead Kama-four . . . . Full briefings are on all consoles.” Togata gave a brisk nod to the flight captains, releasing them to study the attack profiles.

The briefing consoles were enclosed booths set against the bulkhead on the starboard side of the flight operations center. Ghenji sat down in the not-totally-comfortable padded seat and lowered the hood, waiting while the ops system verified his identity and then began the briefing.

The mission itself was simple. The Mogulate had already begun to change the planetary dynamics of the uninhabited system into whose outer reaches the Amaterasu had recently emerged. If the Parthindians completed the re-engineering, they would disrupt the clear-link-comm line used by the Republic that connected the upper galactic “west” section to the “east” section of the inhabited Republic solar systems.