McCollum - GIBRALTAR STARS (16 page)

He moved to the bar, found a real glass bottle… no auto-dispensed spirits in this bar… pulled the stopper and filled two crystal goblets two fingers high with golden yellow liquid.

The room they were in was against one wall of the glass pyramid that was fleet headquarters. It looked out across the Black Forest, which glowed in the light of the moon that was just about to set. The ground was thick with snow and the trees bore the same blanket that they had seen out the bubble of the bullet car. Apparently, the whole Lake Constance / Bodensee region had been dusted heavily in white sometime during the past few days.

They stood side by side, sipping their wine in silence, drinking in the beauty of the night, content to be home once more, when a quiet hissing sound behind them signaled that the door had opened.

Thinking it was Renaldi, Mark turned to look. It was Admiral N’Gomo, whose skin was almost the same shade as his uniform.

“Ten’hut!” Mark said as he attempted to twist around to face the Admiral, making a mess of it. He recovered enough to stiffen his back and throw out his chest just as N’Gomo reached them. For a disoriented instant, he frantically searched his brain for the military protocol suitable for getting caught by the brass with a wine glass in one hand.

Lisa reacted almost as quickly as her husband, but with considerably more grace. After a quick glance over her shoulder, she pivoted gracefully on one heel and snapped to attention.

“At ease,” the Admiral ordered in a gravelly voice leavened by a barely suppressed chuckle. “This is a social occasion.”

“Admiral, we didn’t expect you!” Lisa said.

“Relax, Commander. I told Enrico… that’s my aide, Lieutenant Renaldi… that I would retrieve you. The banquet is just about set up. You will be sitting next to me at the head table to my left,” he said, nodding toward Mark. “And you, my dear, will be on my right.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you two had a chance to decompress a bit from the whirlwind we put you through today?”

“No, sir,” Lisa said. “We still can’t believe it. As I told Lieutenant Renaldi, we were just doing our jobs.”

“Piddle!”

“Sir?”

N’Gomo’s expression suddenly turned serious. “Don’t you two know how important you have been to the war effort?”

“We’ve done our part…” she said, stopping in response to N’Gomo’s raised hand.

The Admiral continued. “Done your part, young lady? I should say you have. Without you, we wouldn’t even know we were in danger until a Broan battle fleet materialized on the outskirts of the Solar system. Everything we know about the Broa, we have learned through your efforts.”

He turned to Mark. “As for you, Commander, our whole strategy was your idea.”

Mark opened his mouth to make his usual objection that a lot of other people had turned his harebrained scheme into a workable strategy. The Admiral stopped him with the same gesture.

“So you see, you two brought this on yourselves. You’ve both earned promotion and decoration many times over. I just wish we could have shown our appreciation earlier. We waited this long because this is the earliest we could lay our hands on you. Nothing like having the people you want to pin a medal on some seven thousand light-years distant, is there? We couldn’t just call you home for this evening, now could we?”

“No, sir,” Lisa said. “The Long Jump doesn’t leave a lot of room for commuting.”

“No it doesn’t. Luckily, we seem about through with that stage of the war. And none too soon. How long will our people at Brinks wait before they send another ship through the gate?”

Mark blinked, thrown off for a second by the change in topic. Then he answered: “Three months, sir.”

The admiral nodded. “There’s no way they can possibly know your jump was successful. For all the commanders at Brinks know, you could have ended up in the middle of a sun. So they will try again. Moreover, they will keep trying until they get word that
Amethyst
or one of the ships to follow reached Earth, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Since you did, in fact, make it, why don’t we limit the exposure of the ships scheduled to follow you. I propose we get word to them that you are safe, and do it before that next ship jumps.”

 “How, Admiral?” both Rykands asked together. That was another habit they had picked up living in the confines of a single small cabin aboard ship.

“We haven’t been idle here, either,” N’Gomo replied. “The technologists have completed three stargates based on the data we found in the planetary database. Our gates are bigger than Broan gates, by the way. We were about to haul one out to Asgard and run it through a test jump when we received word of your arrival.

“Since your gate is focused on the New Eden system I propose we move one of our gates there for the test. We’ll see if we can get a link between the two. If we do, we’ll send through a construction party to erect a second human stargate and we’ll start flowing war materiel through in a big way. Logistics Command indicates that we will eventually need at least six transfer corridors to make the plan viable.”

Without a break in his delivery, the admiral caught them off guard once more. “Have you any plans now that you are home?”

“We have thirty days accumulated leave coming,” Mark replied. “We thought we would just tour Earth for awhile.”

N’Gomo nodded. “A good plan. You know what they say about ‘all work and no play…’” Then his face got serious again. “I know it is an imposition, but we need you to postpone your leave for a couple of months. We have a near-term need for your continued services.”

“Impose, Admiral?” Lisa asked. Suddenly, the tension she’d exhibited en route was back in full force. Mark doubted the admiral noticed, but he’d lived with this woman too long not to know her body cues.

“Yes, I’m afraid so. The orders will be delivered tomorrow at noon. You, Lisa, will go directly to Vancouver to join the rest of the star gate people. We need your talents to translate the data as your team teaches our home team all they need to know to get the gates operational.”

“Yes, sir,” she responded, none too enthusiastically.

If N’Gomo noticed the change in her tone, he showed no sign.

Mark felt a little dizzy at how fast events were moving… or possibly it was the wine. His next question was pro forma. “Do I go to Vancouver, too, sir?”

“Not right away. Have you heard of Project Trojan Horse?”

“No, sir.”

“Not surprising. We have the project classified so high that
I
probably shouldn’t know about it. Trojan Horse is our name for the group building the small starships we will be seeding throughout the Sovereignty. It is the reason why we have to get our gate network up and running. If we are to sow confusion among our enemies, we need to get started as soon as possible. I want you in New Mexico, Commander, to give the program a good inspection.”

“I’m no engineer, sir.”

“We don’t need more engineers. We’ve got our best people working on the most convincing decoys possible. But none of them have ever been on a Broan world. You have. I want you to look over what they are doing with the eye of a veteran. Check out the design of the ships, their strategy for deployment, everything. Dig down into the minutia. See if there is anything that will give us away, or which might be improved.”

“For how long?”

“You be the judge. Take a couple of weeks. After that, spend another week writing your report.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Chief of Operations noticed the tone of resignation and chose to address it. His talent for judging people was one of the major qualifications for his job and he was good at it.

“You don’t want to be separated from your beautiful lady that long. I don’t blame you. No one says you can’t write the report in Vancouver. After you are done, the two of you can go on that leave we owe you.”

“Yes, sir!” This time the acknowledgement was enthusiastic.

The admiral looked at an old fashioned chronometer he wore on a bracelet. “I’ve kept you two talking overlong. Renaldi will have my guts for garters.” Turning to Lisa, he asked, “Care to accompany me to the banquet, Commander?”

“Delighted, Admiral.”

N’Gomo held out his arm to her. She took it and let him lead her toward the door, with Mark bringing up the rear.

#

The banquet was everything the Admiral had promised. After a sumptuous meal made even better by its contrast to ship food, they danced until midnight… not with each other. Lisa found a steady stream of handsome young officers vying for the privilege of steering her around the marble floor. Muscles depleted by long living in microgravity began to protest toward the end.

Mark, too, had an endless supply of dance partners. It seemed that every pretty young fraülein in Meersburg was in attendance.

Finally, they were deposited in the V.I.P. section of Headquarters and left alone. Despite the fatigue of their travel and of a day already twice as long as normal, after enjoying an orgy of hot water in a communal shower, the two found themselves entwined in a long, languid bout of lovemaking. Afterward, they lay in each other’s arms, feeling an odd combination of satiation and alertness that kept them from falling asleep.

“So, darling,” Lisa whispered with a giggle, “how was your day?”

“So so,” he replied, planting a kiss on her forehead, which was the only part his lips could reach, still connected as they were. “Now that it is over, care to tell me what you were so nervous about this morning?”

She paused a long time before answering: Finally, she said, softly, “It was the speed with which everything was happening, I guess.
Amy
’s engines didn’t even have time to cool off before we received orders to get our butts dirtside. Then that ensign waylaid us at White Sands and we were on our way here. It was almost like they were intentionally trying to disorient us, not give us time to catch our breath.”

“So?” he asked. “That’s the Navy way.”

“That was precisely what I was worried about,” Lisa said, her words becoming more earnest by the second. She buried her face into the valley between his pectorals and biceps. Mark thought he felt dampness in the region of her eyes.

“I’m still not with you.”

“Don’t you see?” she asked. “When we were out at Brinks, they had to keep us together. We were so isolated that it made sense for the service to pair us up for companionship. Otherwise, we might have committed suicide, or gone over to the enemy or something…”

“We paired ourselves up when we said ‘
I do
’ to one another. It’s policy for married couples to serve together.”

“It’s policy out at Brinks. That doesn’t mean that it is policy here on Earth. I was worried that they might pull that ‘needs of the service’ crap and separate us. In fact, they did pull it, didn’t they?”

“It’s just a couple of weeks. We survived a lot worse getting ready for the jump.”

“I know, and I don’t
ever
want to go through that again, Mark. I missed you!”

“I missed you, too, dear.”

“Spoken like a man!”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means that it didn’t sound sincere!”

He didn’t answer out loud. Rather, he lifted his hand to her chin — difficult to do considering where her chin was — tilted her head back, and planted a kiss on her lips. It was a long kiss, one that left them both out of breath.

“Did that sound sincere?”

“It did,” she sighed. “I guess I was just letting my fears get the better of me.”

They lay together for a long time without speaking, enjoying the feeling of warm flesh against flesh, synchronized breathing, even hearts beating in concert.

Finally, Mark lifted his head and craned his neck to get a look at the glowing display of the wall chronometer.

“What time is it?” Lisa asked.

“Zero three hundred,” he replied. “We’d better get to sleep. I have a premonition that we’re going to be back in Zurich Terminus in a few hours.”

She moved a hand to signal with a firm grasp that sleep was not what she had in mind.

“We can sleep on the plane. Methinks what remains of the rest of the evening would be better spent storing up memories.”

#

Chapter Sixteen

As the admiral predicted, Mark and Lisa’s orders came through while they were having lunch the next day. The short communiqué stated that Lisa was to report to Project Stargate in British Columbia by the first available transportation. Mark’s screen directed him to New Mexico to audit a project specified only by a coded number.

Having been forewarned, their kit bags were in lockers at Headquarters Station. The trip by bullet car back to Zurich was a bittersweet one, followed by a two hour layover. If anyone found it humorous to watch two Space Navy commanders acting like a pair of lovesick teenagers, they had the good sense to keep their smiles subdued, their eyes averted, and their comments to themselves.

“I’ll miss you, darling,” Lisa said as she desperately kissed Mark the second time her flight was called.

“Love you,” he whispered when their lips parted. “Now you’d better hurry.” Gesturing to the new insignia on her shoulders that they had purchased that morning in the Fleet Exchange, he continued. “You don’t want the brass to take away that shiny new set of maple leaves.”

“Call me!”

“Once a day. I’ll only be one time zone over.”

With that, they disentangled themselves and Lisa disappeared through the transfer tube.

Mark waited another hour for the suborbital to White Sands. Upon arrival, he descended two levels and boarded a bullet car to Albuquerque. A corporal met
him and drove him 45 minutes out into the desert.

“We’re here, sir,” the corporal said as they passed through a final security fence topped with anti-personnel laser pods. The car stopped in front of a low, hexagonal building whose roof was covered in solar collectors.

“Where is ‘here’, Corporal?”

“Project H.Q. I’ll deliver your kit bag to your quarters. Mr. Pembroke will see that you get there after your interview.”

Pembroke was indeed waiting for him. The administrator was a portly, balding man with the air of a bureaucrat. It wasn’t until Mark grasped his hand and looked him in the eye that he decided first impressions might be deceiving.