The first stages of sensory deprivation were never too bad. It was relatively easy, especially with preparatory training, to hold on to yourself. Doing it in true zero-g was tough. The traditional tank of water still had some definable sense of down, however small. The gurney actually helped. It would have been worse without it. She could work her hands and feet against the straps and feel the pain. They hadn't blocked her ears with white noise, or gagged her. She could run her tongue across her teeth and feel the edges. She could hear her heartbeat. With enhanced hearing, she could hear it very well, and keep her breathing paced. It gave some sense of the passage of time.
It's gotta be about three or four in the morning by now. Counting the time is an upside to not being able to sleep, I guess. But it's so tempting to just watch the colors go by. Red, electric blue, chartreuse. What the hell is chartreuse, anyway? Oop, lost count again. Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub . . . one, two, three, four, men are running in the door, seven, eight, nine and ten, then they're carried out again. . . .
Ireland. An American official on vacation. Tourism never died, it seemed. No witnesses, but he's all in black, a player? His neck cracks so easily, and he rolls as he falls, and it's white it wasn't supposed to be white what why was he here? God, no. No.
Shit, that's weird. It didn't happen that way. That was two hits. The official wasn't in Ireland at all. He was on a golf course in Arkansas. The priest was in Ireland, but he was a young guy, an idealist, about to go public on "infiltrators" in the Church. That had to be, what, twelve, thirteen years ago? That one was so sad. But it hasn't bothered me in years . . . has it? Oh, crap, I lost track of time again.
But why the guy on the golf course? Putt-putt, and down through the bottom of the windmill, sailing out of the tunnel down into the Quarter—Mardi Gras parade, no war, no training, freedom for a long weekend. Strings of cheap plastic beads and hurricanes, and a young-looking soldier of the Ten Thousand who looks like he puts in a lot of time in the weight room. She's Lilly tonight and laughing up into his face and she tries not to go this time but she always does, and now it's morning and he's telling her—me—about his wife, again, and she's trying and trying to get off the bed and kick the bastard in the crotch, but she can't move, and she's—uh—I'm—back in survival training in Minnesota, and the snow falls, and what the fuck?
Oh. I remember that creep. It was a hell of a rotten way to lose my virginity, but I was lying to him, too. This is just too weird. Sensory dep in SERE training back with the Sisters was never like this. But I guess I didn't have nearly as many personal ghosts then. But I don't have ghosts now. I sleep like a baby—don't I?
Florida. Swimming with dolphins. Mom's with me. She's proud of me. And the water's cool, and the sun hot. Silly Herm—why is Doc Vita P standing on the beach? And what's he holding? There's something really odd about this dream. Something's not right.
Okay, hold it. I'm not even asleep. My broken bits ache and I'm on a gurney in zero-g, this is the Fleet Strike prison dammit. Even if the bastards they have working me over are Fleet, the place and the regular people are Fleet Strike. Hell of an irony, that. What'd I figure last time? About three in the morning? Surely it's got to be four or so by now. Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub . . . How the hell long has it been since I've been to confession, anyway? Can't even remember why I quit going. It's not like Father O'Reilly wouldn't gladly hear it, and with no risks to security. You know, it's morbid as hell, but if I ever get out of here, that's something I need to do. Maybe something I could do with my copious free time at the moment is make a list. Uh, maybe not. Bad for morale. Better to do that after they get me out, if they do. Sister Mary Francis always said God understands. Back to my anchor. Even if I can't dance on the floor, I can dance in my head. Here we go. . . . Waitasecond . . . this one's loose—oh, it wasn't before probably, but with the break and the blood being slippery—probably pass out for a bit—one good yank.
"Sir, recommend we cut the gravity back in at Titan ambient levels when we turn on the lights. It would be unfortunate to have her fall on her head or have some other premature fatal accident." It was difficult to tell if Senior Chief Yi Chang Ho was speaking to his lieutenant or to General Stewart himself. The lieutenant's nod was just a fraction behind his own.
"Do it," the general ordered. The chief was one unpleasant piece of work, and Stewart wasn't going to give him another crack at Cally if he could help it. Cally. It suited her.
The lights flicked on and Cally and the gurney bounced gently to the floor. She immediately rolled to her feet and into a ready position.
"Holy fuck, how'd she get out?" one of the MP's, Keally, breathed.
"I think I might be able to break her. I'd like to try before you boys get started. At best, she'll start talking and it'll save us all some time. At worst, it should make her more . . . receptive to your efforts." Stewart looked down at her. Her being loose could make this a lot easier. If she didn't kill him on sight on general principles.
"She was your lover, wasn't she?" Yi said. Coming from a rate, it was gross insolence, but taking offense wasn't in his plan.
"I was hers. It unmasked her in the end." He shrugged. "Too bad you boys couldn't have tried one of her blow jobs." He grinned wickedly as the other men chuckled.
"General, I am most concerned that she would harm you. Especially with your previous injuries—" the Fleet medic began.
"Right. Good thought. Keally, Baker, come with me. No weapons—can't take the risk she'd somehow get one away from us, can we?" He wheeled his chair around towards the service lift, "Oh, this shouldn't take long. Either it'll work and she'll start talking, or it won't. I'll try Good Guy first, and if she doesn't talk, I'll play with her head as much as I can before handing her back to you."
He stood at the door, waving off his men.
"Don't nursemaid me, son. I'm only in the chair today to placate the damned medics. And I'll be right back in it in a couple of minutes." He cleared his throat, covering his mouth with one hand. "Listen up. I'm going to hang back with you when we first go in the door. I won't walk forward unless I'm reasonably sure it's safe, but if I do approach her, I need you men to stay back at the door."
"General Stewart, sir, I'm very uncomfortable with this plan," Baker said.
"Noted. If she rushes us, you can cover my retreat." He palmed open the door, which immediately recognized the Brigade CO and slid aside obediently. Inside, as Baker and Keally spread out to flank him, Cally eyed them warily. He took two steps forward, waving the men back and suppressing a wince at the red-brown smudges that stood out so clearly against the white floor. The room smelled of sweat and rust and something vaguely chemical.
The gurney was tipped over on the floor, on the side of the room away from the observation lounge. He turned his head slightly toward it and winked one eye. Baker and Keally couldn't have seen it. To those in the observation lounge, if they had seen it, it would have looked like a blink. Only Cally could see both eyes. If she had noticed, she gave him no sign.
"Sinda, please, honey, don't make them do this to you. If you don't talk, I can't protect you. If you tell them everything, honey, I'm a major general—I can cut a deal and make your part of this all go away." He took a step towards her.
One of her eyebrows quirked upward, skeptically, above a black eye. She stood her ground.
"Honey, they don't want you, they just want the ringleaders. All these horrible things, they're so unnecessary—but I can't protect you if you won't talk." He closed the distance, brushing an unbruised section of cheek with one hand, and praying she didn't blame him for what they'd already done to her. Well, she didn't kill him outright. Good sign.
He leaned forward and kissed her, arms going around her ever so gently. None of the onlookers could see the pill he moved from his mouth to hers. She'd have to crunch it before swallowing, but Tommy had told him she'd guess that much.
"Please, sweetheart, what's your real name?" he asked for the cameras.
She stiffened in his arms and he couldn't tell if she'd just bitten down or not. Apparently. She swallowed hard.
"No," she said.
He pushed her away, roughly, and strode back to the door, turning in the doorway.
"What, you thought you were a good enough lay that I'd get you out of this without you telling what you know? Sorry, sweetheart. Oh, you were enthusiastic enough, but I've had better." He looked her naked and abused body up and down. "Oh, and no more fun and games with the men. When you get horny enough to talk, maybe we'll let you have one back. But not me. I'm not a fan of damaged goods."
Baker and Keally barely managed to yank him out and get the door shut before she bounced off the other side, swearing creatively enough to draw an appreciative whistle from the private.
If she hadn't stood there with her mouth hanging open for a second, they never would have made it.
"I think you made her mad, sir." The MP helped him back into the wheelchair.
"Yeah, Keally, it does sound like it. Back up to the lounge." He wheeled off to the lift, hoping she'd understand why he'd had to say the worst things he could think of. He didn't look back.
The delayed-effect pill kicked in between four and five hours later, just as Stewart had been promised. The Fleet bastard was doing unspeakable things to her fingernails when she started to go into shock. Her condition rapidly went downhill, despite everything the medic did trying to revive her. He wouldn't have known, but Mike's dad had told him that this particular pill pretty much exactly mimicked the torture cases where a previously unsuspected heart condition causes the victim to just shut down.
The medic was obviously desperate. And with good reason. His ass was almost certainly on the line for failing to detect the "heart condition." Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
They tried transferring her to the infirmary which was a mass of hospital green Galplas and surgical steel. It had all the GalTech equipment a physician could want, but somehow still managed to smell of disinfectant. By the time they got her there, she had flatlined. Not even GalTech could bring somebody back from that.
The attending physician shook his head and waved over a couple of orderlies to take her down to the morgue. He wasn't sure, but the red-haired guy might have been new. The big, dumb-looking one certainly wasn't the type to find manual labor a hardship.
After they wheeled her around a corner, nobody noticed the needleful of Hiberzine antidote the redhead stuck in her leg.
The morgue was one corridor over from an emergency air lock. The flat, institutional beige of the Galplas walls contrasted with the blinding shine of the polished white tile floor. The astringent smell of the infirmary had faded to the faint but unavoidable burnt pork whiff of the morgue's crematory.
They'd cremated Jay this morning. Not only were system records on the equipment poorly protected, they also revealed the morgue was rarely used—Tommy had checked. The first thing he did after getting her down there was to change the time on that cremation to the current time. The second thing was to retrieve the very sincerely labeled box of Jay's ashes from behind the table and put them on the shelf where her ashes would have gone had she really been dead.
They had her stuffed into a black ship jumpsuit and heavily padded boots by the time she started coming around. Then Papa ran interference long enough for them to get to the lock, put on their pressure helmets and parkas, climb into the waiting power sled, send the preprogrammed command to make the lock forget they were ever there, and they were gone.
One of the few good things about the rabid fascism of the Darhel was the effect it had on the operating rules of most starports. The standard rule was that you filed for a departure time slot on a first-come first-served basis. Then those times were saleable on whatever terms the slot-holder wished. In practice, it meant that landing was free, but taking off cost money. It also meant that Darhel never had to wait for a takeoff slot, nor were they constrained by any hard and fast departure times.
Today, Darhel fascism suited Tommy fine. As per instructions, the real freighter crew had her hot and ready to launch as soon as they loaded, and there was another freight shuttle more than happy to make a quick buck off someone else's impatience.
They were airborne an hour after leaving the prison air lock.
Two and a half hours later, they had Cally on the slab in the Indowy portion of the freighter, in a room that had housed six Indowy crew before the freighter was commissioned for this trip. The freighter's human leaseholders had no awareness of the room. Nor did the holding company's Darhel owners. After the freighter next docked, the equipment would be offloaded to disappear wherever it was needed next, six Indowy would be onloaded, and no one who did not already know of the room's presence ever would know.
After two hours on the slab, Cally was up and around in her room. Unfortunately, she'd need to spend the rest of the trip in her cabin with himself or Papa bringing her her meals. There was no help for it. The freighter crew had gotten a look at her when she staggered onto the shuttle and there was no acceptable explanation for her rapid healing. He had explained it away as a bad mugging, but when they offloaded at Selene Base, on the Moon, he figured it was going to take splints, bandages, makeup, and careful planning to get her off the ship without raising crew eyebrows.
It was probably for the best. He'd noticed that Cally didn't tend to have her very best interpersonal interactions with strangers in the first days after a rough mission.
Cally looked up brightly as Tommy came in with her supper, giving him a big smile. The contents of the big bag of cosmetics and toiletries and other girl stuff that he'd put together before the extraction, knowing in advance that she'd need those old-fashioned tools of feminine camouflage, but not which ones and how much, were strewn out across her bunk. She had a look of slightly guilty pleasure, like a kid caught opening the Christmas presents a day early. She swept them back into the bag as if they didn't really mean a thing, but her eyes were bright and misty.
"Hey, hero. You guys got me out of the spot from hell," she said. "Oh, and thanks for the stuff."
"Yep. We did at that. Papa'll be in in a little while. The crew naturally don't know you two are related, and he got his arm twisted into a game of spades." He saw her face. "No, really. It would have looked conspicuous as hell if he'd run off here. They think you're my girlfriend."
"What?" She looked dangerous, standing and folding her bunk up into the wall and taking down and unfolding the stool that stowed securely in a rack under the bunk.
"Whoa! Hang on! It wasn't my idea—and Papa would have felt just too weird even pretending to the crew to be hot over his own granddaughter." He set the tray down on her fold-down table and folded the guest stool down from the wall, holding up his hands placatingly as he sat.
"He's pretended to be my date before." There was a slight note of outrage. "I mean, okay, ick, but he has!"
"For a day here or an evening there, but you have to have noticed it's . . . a tough role for him," he finished tactfully.
"Okay, okay. I guess I just miss him after all that. They were real amateurs at the whole torture thing, it's just I was so sure I wasn't going to get out of there alive." She shuddered.
"And you finally had something to live for?" he prompted.
"He helped. He had to have been sympathetic. Are—when are we going to get him out?" There was a glitter to her eyes he hadn't seen before. Her cheeks were flushed, too.
"Oh, yeah. Special delivery." He grinned and handed her a message cube.
"Is that from—why didn't you? Nevermind." She looked around frantically for her PDA, then remembered. "Buckley. I lost buckley."
Tommy was surprised to hear a note of real grief in her voice. People weren't supposed to get attached to the personalities of their PDAs the way they did to real AIDs. Then again, almost everyone he knew used a personality overlay. He didn't know anybody who'd used the base personality as much as she had. Maybe he grew on you after awhile.
"Here, use my AID," he offered. "Sarah, help her, okay?" Since clean AIDs were somewhat less persnickety than the originals, he could trust her to behave.
"Thanks." She stuck the cube in the reader slot and it immediately displayed. Oh my God, they've got him in a wheelchair? Fleet Strike medicine's better than that. Oh. This must have been made yesterday. Yeah, I guess if they've got him up and around instead of sleeping through regen he would have to be taking it easy. That bastard Beed.
"Cally, my love. Your name suits you. If you're seeing this, we made it. We got you out. Good. If so, I hope to be joining you soon. Without a prisoner, I'm only here long enough to promote the XO and then it's back to Earth for me. Tommy and your grandfather have told me how this whole thing works. As soon as I've got my affairs wrapped up they'll be bringing me in, sooner rather than later. At some point the Darhel will wonder, even if Fleet Strike won't, whether I slipped you a suicide pill. So I'll see you soon, love—and I hope that you'll be looking forward to that as much as I will. Tell Tommy it's okay if he talks about me. Vaya con Dios, Cally." The hologram disappeared.
"We'll be staying in orbit another two or three days so we can take information about his intended travel plans back with us," Tommy said.
"Good. You know him? From where? You didn't say anything in the pre-mission briefing," she said.
"Cally, I'm sorry. I fucked up. I knew him forty years ago in ACS and when I heard 'lieutenant,' I just didn't make the connection. Not until we saw the CO change after you were captured." He tensed for the storm he just knew was coming.
"Okay. What was he like back then?" she asked.
"What?" Okay? I fucked up and got her captured and tortured and her answer is "okay"? Damn, she is in love. "Oh. Well, first, his name wasn't always James Stewart. That really is his name now, and was back then, but his mother named him Manuel. . . ."
Mary's Diner was not the sort of place anyone would associate with the tongs or anything other than cheap meals for out-migrating colonists on a budget. They got all kinds at all hours. They had a break room for staff—unnecessary because the only staff were Mary and her husband. Mary was an incessant gossip—about everything that didn't matter. She also made a mean cup of tea.
All of which was why James Stewart was sitting in her break room over a cup of tea, talking to the dai dai lo of the Black Dragons Tong.
"You know what you're asking for is very expensive, don't you?" The other man savored his tea. His host had excellent taste. He preferred to drink his imported oolong while it was hot. The room was pleasantly appointed, with a miniature fountain burbling and plashing gently along one side, and a branch of silk cherry blossoms in a crystal vase on the table. It was a good place to do business.
"Oh, come on. I know how this works. Where else are you going to make any profit at all on this? Don't you think I'm worth it?" Stewart grinned.
"Perhaps. I won't promise anything, but I'll ask my grandfather," he said.
"That's all I ask. When do you think you can give me an answer?" The former gang leader turned general sipped his own tea.
"Tomorrow. I'll know tomorrow," he said.
"Then I'll see you tomorrow." Stewart excused himself politely and left. He had a promotion to announce.
At the diner, after Mary had poured their tea and left, the dai dai lo handed him a ticket, glancing at the AID sitting on the table.
"Your passage to Earth is confirmed on our inbound combination liner, the Kick 'Em Jenny from Dulain. We are not embarking or disembarking passengers, except for Uncle's favorite nephew for a vacation. If he doesn't show up, you shouldn't panic. The boy's a bit scatterbrained. Your shuttle leaves at eight thirty-five tonight," he said.
"Thank you. I'm very grateful. This has been an upsetting trip and I'm looking forward to getting back to work on Earth as soon as possible." The general rose, taking his ticket and AID from the table.
"Of course. If there's ever anything else we can do for you, don't hesitate to call on us again. Have a pleasant voyage." He shook the other man's hand, palming the cube hidden in the handshake.
As the general left, he spoke briefly to the cigarette-pack-sized machine.
"Diana, please transmit my travel itinerary to General Vanderberg. God, I can't wait to get home." He walked out and the dai dai lo could just hear the musical female voice as the door swung shut behind him.
"Yes, James. Transmission complete," it said.
It was too bad Cally couldn't be up here. The crew lounge was probably the most comfortable area on the whole ship. The chairs were upholstered in a really good imitation of brown leather, and a holographic fireplace crackled merrily against one wall. A discreet air freshener at the bottom corner of the fireplace's vidscreen released a faint, homey odor of hot wood smoke. There were several small tables that could lock together in groups, or not, and they actually had a decent wet bar. Of course, the coffee can for donations and their immunity to alcohol dampened the fun of that, but you couldn't have everything.
Tommy looked up from a game of backgammon with Papa O'Neal as the navigator came into the lounge and approached him.
"Sir, we just received a short-range encrypted transmission from a neighboring ship. The message header said it was for you." He handed Tommy a data cube.
"Thank you." He set it beside the backgammon board, ignoring the man's hesitation until he apparently gave up on the possibility of snooping and wandered off in the direction of the bridge.
"I think I'll go check on Felicia, if you don't mind interrupting our game." She'd kill him if she didn't get to see this message as soon as it was decrypted. Not that he blamed her. If it was Wendy down there, he'd be biting his nails, too.
The branch of the access tube leading to the shuttle's cargo hold, which he was going to have to use instead of anything off of the main cabin, was absolutely frigid. His face and nose were all he'd left bare to feel it, but it was still damn cold. Less worn areas in the gray tube showed it had once been blue. It was probably damn near fifty years old, and reeked of leaking hydrocarbons from outside. Fortunately, he only had to put up with it for a minute or so.
"Diana, I'm going to add you to my case until we get up to the ship. I haven't been sleeping as well as the medics would like, and I think an uninterrupted nap on the way up would do me a world of good." He tucked the AID into the case among his uniforms.
"Certainly, James. Anything that will help you get well soon. I'll see you on board." She sounded almost like a mother tucking her child in.
"Goodnight, Diana."
"Goodnight, James."
He closed the case and tucked it into the cargo bay of his shuttle.
"Okay, here I am, back as promised." Tommy stepped through the door balancing two trays full of food—and not a corn product on it.
Cally was obviously making good use of the necessaries bag he'd scraped together from somewhere, cotton between her toes and an obviously fresh coat of bright red nail polish on fingers and toes. At least she didn't have any of that thick green goop Wendy sometimes used caked all over her face.
"I thought you might like some company for dinner tonight," he said. "Should I set Sarah up for a two-player game? She does a pretty mean Space Invaders."
"Sure. I'd like that. Truth to tell, I've been a little stir crazy today." Her grin was infectious. "There's so much to do when I get back to get all my affairs in order and, well, you know, start making plans." She looked uncertain for a moment.
"You do think he meant he wants marriage, don't you?" she asked worriedly.
"Back in ACS, despite being a real hardass when he wanted to be, he was as Catholic as you are. There's no doubt in my mind his intentions are marriage. Hell, with the relatives you've got, girl? Not to mention being pretty formidable yourself," he laughed. "Wendy and Shari will just be in heaven helping you plan it."
They were halfway through the third game when it froze.
"Tommy, I'm afraid I have bad news," the AID broke in.
"What?" he asked. Cally's fist was clenched against her mouth.
"Ship instrumentation has detected an explosion in Titan's atmosphere. Traffic control confirms it as the FS-688 bound for the Kick 'Em Jenny. Rescue crews have been dispatched, but . . . it doesn't look good. I waited until I was sure. I'm so sorry," it finished miserably.
"Cally?" Tommy looked over at her. Her hand had sunk back down to the table, and her skin was an awful mottled shade of gray. He tried hugging her awkwardly, but she might as well have been a block of wood.
"Cally?" he tried again. "Come on, honey, you're scaring me. We don't know anything for sure yet. Come on, snap out of it." No response. He did the only thing he could do—left the cabin at a hard run to get Papa O'Neal, finally running him down where he was watching an old movie on his PDA.
"Tommy? What the hell is the matter? You look like you've seen a—" He stopped cold.
"There's been an accident. Ca—Felicia needs you. Now," the younger man said.
When they got back to her cabin, she had stacked the trays outside the door and was inside on her bunk, facing the wall, and nothing they said or did could move her.
Over the next few days, they took it in shifts to sit with her, trying never to leave her alone. She didn't speak. It was all they could do to get her to eat a few bites and take fluids. They did their best to get the best options the galley offered, but for all the response they got it could have been sawdust.
Finally, on the third day, she picked up a towel and a change of clothes. Papa O'Neal made sure the way to the head was clear and stood guard while she took a sponge bath and changed into fresh clothes.
He took it as a hopeful sign and tried to talk to her, but she only shook her head.
That afternoon, while Tommy was spelling him for a bit, he went up to the bridge and bribed the communications tech to let him call Earth and download all her favorite music. Compressed, it didn't cost all that much. Well, not really, anyway.
The rest of the afternoon and evening, he had his PDA cycle through everything he could remember her liking. She still wasn't talking, but he didn't think it was his imagination that some of the tension had left her body. That was, until it cycled through to that old war-time Urb band. When it hit their stuff, he heard a sniffle. His eyes shot to where she lay on her back, eyes closed. A tear leaked slowly from beneath one eyelid. Then another. Then another. Finally, when she broke into full-force sobs he sank down onto his knees next to her bunk and held her until she cried herself out. It took a long time. Then again, his granddaughter had a hell of a lot of her crying saved up.
When she was through she still didn't seem to want to talk. He grabbed a box of tissues he'd tucked away more out of hope than faith and let her clean herself up.
As the weekend approached, her appetite had improved, almost back to normal, more or less.
She still wasn't talking, but he'd managed to get her interested in playing a few old movies and holovids by the simple expedient of disappearing for awhile and leaving his PDA next to her on her bunk.
By early in the week, she was watching movies practically nonstop. Another massive download had gotten him the complete combined works of Fred and Ginger, along with an inexplicable smattering of old Three Stooges episodes. But hell, if she'd asked for 1970s soap opera archives he would have gotten them for her, and damn the cost.
Granpa's PDA said they had reached the Moon. The schedule said they'd be here for a few days unloading and reloading freight from the hybrid Human-Indowy factories. Granpa was snoring on the floor of her cabin. He needed to reapply his depilatory foam. Badly. The red stubble looked downright strange after all these years of getting used to him smooth-jawed all the time.
This cabin was getting pretty rank, too, now that she thought about it. It would have been bad enough that they tried to feed her fish somewhere along the trip and the odor had lingered. Her sheets smelled. She wouldn't have noticed the always-familiar air of Red Man in the mix, except that it was a bit stale. Still, there was something solid and a bit comforting about it.
The light blue of the Galplas in the cabin probably would have been okay if she hadn't been staring at it for the whole trip. Somebody had come up with a green scrap of carpeting for the floor from somewhere and glued it down. She could see the bits of it that extended out past Granpa. The shade clashed horribly with his hair, but it was probably marginally more comfortable than bare Galplas.
She felt a bit guilty. She'd been having herself a good mope, but Tommy and Granpa had obviously been worried sick. She was going to have to at least, well, talk and things, so that they could go get some sleep and do whatever they needed to do.
After all, she had a whole rejuvenated lifetime to look forward to. Oh, joy. She pulled her mind back from the pit by main force. One day at a time.
She peeked out the door. She wasn't supposed to be seen by the crew, but she didn't really care at the moment. Fortunately, none of them were around. She grabbed a laundered jumpsuit, a clean towel, and a few of the jumble of toiletries Tommy had gotten her. She wrinkled her nose at her own stink. She needed a shower. She really needed a shower.
Fortunately, freight crew who didn't have the night shift weren't exactly early risers. Well, this crew wasn't, anyway. Good. No underwear, but it couldn't be helped. She could buy some stuff down on Selene Base. If she didn't get some fresh underwear, she was gonna kill somebody. Okay, well, not literally. She sighed. It was going to be a hell of a long road back.
Granpa didn't wake up until almost nine thirty. She only got him to go off to his own cabin for some real sleep by faithfully promising to say more than two words a day to him when he came back.
"I'll . . . be okay eventually, Granpa. Well, mostly. Just, not yet. I can't be okay yet. Go get some real sleep. I need to catch the shuttle down and buy some stuff."
"I'll go with you," he said.
"Granpa, I need some shop time alone. Call it retail therapy if it makes you feel better. Look, I promise the very first thing I'll do is buy myself a PDA and call you and give you the number, okay?"
"If this is what you need, but Cally if you do anything stupid or dangerous I swear I'll hunt you down and haunt you."
"I'm . . . not even thinking about something that dumb. I just need time. Uh, Granpa?"
"Yeah?"
"Could I borrow a credit card?"
It had been a hard day of shopping. She had dropped most of her packages off at the freight loading zone. The shuttle pilot had asked about her injuries. Fortunately, she'd been able to explain them away as injuries from the mugging—mostly sprains and bruises that had looked worse than they were. They hadn't seen her at all in over a week, so it wasn't out of the realm of possibility.
Granpa had quit worrying so much once she checked back in and he had her back on e-mail and knew her plans.
She had set herself one firm homework assignment for this evening. She had never been less in a partying mood in her life, but by God she was going to sit in a bar and take one full drink, without chugging it, before she found quarters for the night. The freight shuttle wouldn't be taking its next load up until early afternoon tomorrow.
Hell, she might just stay dirtside for a few days. Or not. One day at a time.
She was standing in front of a bar the new buckley said was commonly frequented by freighter crews and others on the way from here to there. Her black catsuit was likely to get her quite a bit of attention, but she had seen it in the shop and hadn't been able to resist it for sentimental reasons. This one fit a little better than the last one—she'd lost weight over the past two weeks, between one thing and another. One day at a time. Hell, one minute at a time. I will go in and order a drink. One drink in a social place. Then I can go find some quarters to hide in for the night.
It wasn't the happiest drink she'd ever had. She found herself ditching the occasional pest who tried to pick her up and desultorily sipping at the strawberry margarita in front of her, resisting the temptation to guzzle it just so she could leave. I should have known it was too good to last. No, dammit! One day at a time.
She heard another damn pest walk up to interrupt her drink and sighed.
"Is this seat taken?" he asked.
"It is unless you can lick your own eyebrows!" Oh, God. Why did I have to say that.
"How do you think I do my hair?"
Her sudden grip on his hand was white-knuckled for a few moments before softening. There had to have been a good reason. After all, there often was for this kind of thing.