“To run,” she finished for him. “Duty calls.” She glanced around. “If you take another off-day to come out here, or anywhere, let me know. I’ll be there.” She exhaled a long sigh. “Or I’ll come out to the base to see you. If they’ll allow that.”
“They will,” he promised, greatly relieved. “Just call first and make certain I’m there. Love you.”
“I love you too.” Jessica shook her head. “Damned if I know why sometimes.”
Raul grinned at her sudden start, Jessica realizing the opening she had given him again. “Because you have wisdom beyond your years,” he teased. The base shuttle blared its horn again. “That’s for me!” He dodged over to the replacement driver, gave him a sketchy outline of the work he had managed to get done, and then sprinted for the shuttle. He was seated, belted and in the middle of catching his breath before he remembered that he had never looked back, or waved once, to Jessica.
Jessica Searcy watched her man dodge up the shuttle bus steps. For all his energy there at the end, she had seen the deep-rooted exhaustion beginning to pile up behind Raul’s dark brown eyes.
The medical doctor in her couldn’t help looking for symptoms and trying to diagnose people. Raul suffered from wounded beliefs. He seemed lost to her—trapped between what he had thought he wanted out of Republic citizenship and what he was getting. If he wasn’t careful, she worried that the Republic would chew Raul up and spit him aside. Always assuming, she shuddered, that the Steel Wolves didn’t first do the job in a physical sense.
“Over here,” someone shouted, dispelling the dark gloom blanketing her thoughts. “Hey, we have a live one!”
The call wasn’t for Jessica, but she responded to it out of a habit born from several years of medical internship and residency. She saw a large crane lifting an armored tank from a collapsed underground area—a basement or tunnel? Someone rode on top of the vehicle, waving frantically for attention. Jessica was one of several people who ran over, arriving just as the tank settled to the ground. Workers forced open a large hatch at the rear of the large metal juggernaut.
The waving man jumped down. “He crawled back into the ammunition storage locker trying to find a way out. Poor bastard’s been half-buried for two days.”
Half buried and half dead by the looks of him. Jessica shouldered her way in. “I’m a doctor,” she said, backing off several larger men with an air of authority. Pulse was thready but there. Aside from multiple contusions and an obviously broken clavicle, the only thing he had to worry about was internal bleeding. “Get a blanket on this man and call in for an emergency pick-up. He needs a chopper right away.”
“You’ll have one in ten minutes,” a man promised. He was one of the men she’d shouldered aside, and had a rough but competent look to him. “I’ll call it in myself.”
Jessica spitted him with an exasperated glare. “Call it in to the spaceport and we can have it in five,” she said, nodding at the distant terminal on the far side of the tarmac. “They’ll have a helicopter somewhere over there.”
The foreman nodded and made it happen. Water and blankets were brought, and a VTOL emergency transport thundered across the landing field to set down only a few minutes later. Jessica helped two corpsmen get the patient aboard, gave them her evaluation, and then ducked clear as the fast-copter leapt back into the sky and made a beeline for River’s End.
As was common after any emergency situation, the fading adrenaline rush left Jessica empty and lost for a moment. She wandered back toward where Raul had left her. The foreman caught up with her there.
“Hey. I wanted to thank you for your help.” He sounded frustrated, having to make that admission, but manners won out over pride. “No one thought to have paramedics out here two days later.” He took in Jessica’s civilian clothes with a quick glance, measured her, and then made a guess. “You need a ride back to River’s End?”
“I have a car,” she said haltingly. Then, “But I’m here, and already filthy. What can I do?” It wasn’t in her to simply turn her back on work, even physical work, now that she was here. Not to mention her recent emotional investment.
“I don’t know,” the foreman said. He had tangled blond hair and a scar at the edge of his left eye. His voice was respectful, especially after her earlier help, but held no time for games. “What can you do?” he asked.
“Besides be on hand for injuries?” Jessica smiled thinly. “I can drive simple vehicles, organize shift schedules, and apply bandages as necessary to bruised egos.” She remembered her cooler, found it where Raul had set it down. “I have a cooler full of sandwiches and apples, and I know where I can get more.”
The foreman laughed, then nodded. “You’re hired. Pull anything you need from the spaceport and I’ll sign my name to it. And thanks again for coming out.” He glanced with a readable amount of disdain toward the distant capital of River’s End. “Most people don’t want to get involved.”
Including her. Jessica did not tell him that, though. As she’d said, she was here and there was work to be done, and it wasn’t in her to turn her back on people who needed help.
Not so different from Raul after all, she decided.
Perhaps.
Officer’s Club, Achernar Militia Command
Achernar
The militia’s base facilities were limited but had all the basics, including an officer’s club.
After checking back in with the duty officer, Raul barely had time for a shower before he met Tassa Kay coming off a work shift. His dark curly hair was still damp, and he had grabbed nothing more casual than the utility fatigues all militia members preferred for everyday routine. His one concession to comfort, and maybe to Tassa’s presence as well, was to roll his sleeves up to the elbow. Raul had strong arms, and his tawny coloring shone with a burnished hue under Achernar’s bright sun.
The two placed an order at the bar for food and drinks, then chose an outside table. A late afternoon breeze worked its way over the low wall that protected the club, stirring the edges of the tablecloths. Raul nodded toward a table with an umbrella awning well away from other dining groups. Most others sat alone, or in subdued pairs talking about the hard press being dealt out by the Steel Wolves, and Raul did not need their dark moods coloring his talk with Tassa.
Taking his seat, Raul spread his hands on the table, suddenly nervous and still feeling a little guilty that he’d left Jessica at the spaceport. He hadn’t lied to her. Not exactly. Relieved by the new driver, his standing orders required him to report back to the base. And this wasn’t a dinner date. It was dinner, and the chance to finally learn something more about Tassa Kay.
Okay, so Tassa was attractive. Raul didn’t see any reason why that should make him feel guilty. Except that it did.
“You look bothered by something,” Tassa noticed. She pulled the sweatband off her head and used it to tangle her hair back in a makeshift ponytail. Tassa wore dark leathers and looked perfectly at ease, an attitude Raul wished he could adopt as easily. “I hope it’s me,” she said with a sly grin.
Digging some money out of a pocket, Raul threw it on the tray as a server brought their drinks. “I had to rush away from the spaceport to make it here. I may have left… a bit of a mess behind me.”
“I have noticed that about you, Ortega.”
Raul tasted his drink, grimaced. The iodine taste burned all the way down his throat. The bar whiskey was not Glengarry Reserve. “Then why are we here?”
Tassa stirred her drink by sloshing the ice around in a quick circle. “I didn’t say that was a bad thing.” She took a healthy sip. “I came along to see who you were going to upset today.”