Month 12 Day 14
2212 Hours
Smythe
“Yes?” She turned her chair to face him, and he stared at her
huge belly.
“What happened?” he heard himself ask, even though the answer
was obvious.
She rubbed her roundness. “MacG says it’s twins. One from
each of them, I suppose.”
“It doesn’t work like that!” he exclaimed.
Green eyes looked up at him intently. “Doesn’t it?”
“Even I know better than that,” he told her.
She stepped closer, until she was only inches from him. “Why
don’t you show me how it does work?”
There was a sudden lump in his throat. “What do you mean?”
She leaned closer, pressing her delectable body against his in
the moonlight. “You know what I mean,” she whispered, and raised her face to be
kissed.
A gentle ping intruded.
“Oh, yeah.” His hands found her firm derriere. “I have a lot
to show you.”
“Let’s get started,” she suggested just before their lips
met. He gave in readily, pulling her close and preparing to enter her.
A gentle ping intruded.
“Don’t answer it.” She pulled him back. She was obviously
ready for him, and—
“Blast!” He slapped the button on the
alarm in aggravation, and then lay in the darkness again, breathing heavily,
the dream still fresh in his mind. Another
wet dream about her. What did I expect? That’s the only kind of dream I have
anymore.
A gentle ping came from his living room.
I
turned that off! No, wait, that wasn’t my alarm clock. What in space is it?
A gentle ping came from his living room.
He asked for, “Lights, one quarter.” As
his bedroom lightened, he sat up, realized he had fallen asleep fully clothed.
Probably right after supper, which he hadn’t even tasted. He stared forlornly
at his clock. At least there’s no dance
tonight for me to be missing. Hard to celebrate Valentine’s Day when you
officially have to discourage fraternization.
A gentle ping came from his living room.
What
is that?
He went to the doorway to his living room, realized his computer screen was on.
When did I turn that on? “Lights,” he
requested, and blinked when they came on full force.
A gentle ping came from his computer.
That’s
a message has arrived! I’m seldom here to hear it, and it isn’t supposed to
ping but once. He sat down at his desk and acknowledged
the message, then studied the screen in confusion. There’s no indication who sent it. There’s only 2 or 3 people aboard
who know how to do that. But why would they?
A gentle ping came from his computer.
“Blast!” He opened the message in
frustration, stared at it. There were no words, just a piece of the ship’s
schematics with an ‘X’ shown blinking at a junction of 2 jeffries tubes. “What
in space?” he muttered to himself. Is
something going on there that I should know about? Why not send me some word
about what’s wrong? Wilson knows better than to play games.
He punched for engineering. “Wilson!”
“Good evening, Mr Smythe. How can I help
you?”
She
doesn’t sound distressed. “Did you send me a message?
Several minutes ago?”
“No, Mr Smythe. I don’t have anything to
report. No reason to send a message.”
“I see. Thanks.” He broke the
connection. Which jeffries tubes are
these? It took him a few minutes, but before long, he left his quarters and
headed for the junction he had identified.
It was a T-junction, where a horizontal
tube met and stopped at a vertical tube. Smitty was climbing down the vertical
tube, but as he approached the horizontal tube, he saw no one, nor anything
indicating repairs were needed. “What in black space is going on?” he wondered.
He caught a glimpse of movement in the
vertical tube, and as he continued down to see what it was, a soft voice said,
“Hello.”
He knew that voice. Recognition made him
race down the next few steps until he could see her face. And her cleavage, for
she lay prone on the floor of the vertical tube, raised up on her elbows.
“Colleen,” he breathed as lilacs tickled his nose.
“Evening, Smit,” she greeted him with a
smile. “I wasn’t sure you’d get my message before I had to report for duty.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Hoping to talk to you.”
“Why here? There’s plenty of other
places where we could... talk.”
She sighed. “That hasn’t worked out.
Either I get distracted, or someone interrupts us.”
There’s
not a lot of chance we’ll be distracted here, he thought.
“That’s what I was hoping,” she stated.
Apparently, he had spoken out loud.
“Was there something specific you wanted
to talk about?”
“Engineering.”
“What about it?”
“Well, I—” She stopped to raise a hand
to the back of her neck. “Sorry. I didn’t realize how... painful it would be to
talk for any length of time in this... configuration.”
No,
craning one’s neck to speak to someone is never comfortable.
He took another step down the tube. Their heads were nearly even now. He could
see every faint freckle on her face, could almost taste her lips, they were so
close. “Is this better?”
“Some,” she admitted.
“What did you want to say?”
“Umm.” She lowered her eyelids and
licked her lips, caught the lower one momentarily between her teeth. “What
would you suggest I study next?”
“Next! You’ve finished the manual on the
engines?”
Now she seemed flustered, embarrassed.
“Some time ago,” she admitted.
“Who tested you on it?”
“Well, nobody. I figured it wasn’t
anything that I officially needed to know.”
“I like my people to be cross-trained.”
Her brow furrowed in confusion. “But how
does one get trained? If I go back to the Academy, I might not be able to return
to the Fireball.”
“The Academy! You don’t go to the
Academy for cross-training. You do it here. Hands-on training.”
She raised her head in surprise, ducked
as it hit the top of her tube. “Oww!”
This
isn’t working. “Come out of there so we can talk
properly,” he decided, and grabbed her upper arms to pull her forward.
Her face was next to his, her hands on
his shoulders... and then her mouth was pressed against his and the temperature
of the tube steadily rose as more and more points of contact between them were
made. Eventually, their lips parted, and she had completely emerged from her
cross-tunnel, was pressed against him as much as she could be. One of his legs
was bent to use a higher stepping point than the other, and she was actually sitting
on that bent leg. Both his legs were beginning to ache from the weight they
were supporting.
“I think—” he began, but then his mouth
found hers again, and there were no more thoughts, only emotions, and plenty of
them.
This
isn’t real, he realized. This is
all a dream.
A strident buzz intruded.
See?
There’s my alarm, my blasted alarm, trying to wake me up for another bleak day
of— Oh, this feels so good, so right. Forget the alarm. I’ll just be late.
A strident buzz intruded.
He fumbled at her uniform, trying to get
her out of it without losing his balance on the foot rests in the vertical
tube. It was one of the new uniforms, with the new closing mechanisms, which he
hadn’t entirely mastered on his own uni—
A strident buzz intruded.
Her mouth muttered against his. He could
hear the words, but didn’t understand them. Small cool hands found their way
under his shirt, and he didn’t care what she was saying.
A strident buzz intruded.
Smitty threw his hand out to slap the
button on his alarm, but that hand met a lot of hard resistance and pain! “What in space,” he declared, but
her mouth covered his again.
A strident buzz intruded.
That’s
not my alarm, he realized, and wondered what it was. “What is that
noise?” he managed to ask, and tried to push her away a bit, but was hampered
by a painful hand. Plus, the tube’s size didn’t leave much room for her to go.
“Colleen,” he whispered.
“Yes,” she whispered, and surged
forward, kissed him again.
A strident buzz intruded.
Now he insisted on pushing her as far
away as he could. “What is that noise?” he asked. “You do hear it, don’t you?”
A strident buzz—
Her face red, she pulled her hands out
from under his shirt and touched a small button on one sleeve. “My personal
alarm. I didn’t want to be—” Her eyes grew huge and her face went white. “—late
for work!” She looked around, as if determining where they were, and how best
to leave, then started lowering herself down the tube.
“Wait!” He grabbed her arm before she
got completely out of reach. “Do you want to learn engineering?”
She stared up at him in incomprehension,
then grinned blissfully. “Yes!”
“I’ll take care of it,” he promised, and
let her go.
Long after she left, long after the
sound of her boots faded into the distance, he stayed where he was, waiting for
the fire of their encounter to cool. It had been fiery, had nearly consumed
them in a mesmerizing tangle of heat and lust and—
And she wanted to learn engineering.
And he had promised that she could.
Obviously, he could make the arrangements.
And just as obviously—after what had just happened—he could have nothing to do
with teaching her.
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