“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “Tell Penny to ignore the silly girl.”
Molly gave him a sardonic look. “And were you so easily able to ignore taunts when you were a child?”
Kurt scowled, recognising her point.
“They’re just driving me mad,” Molly added. “I almost slapped Penny this morning, after she started to throw a tantrum. Please… when are you coming home?”
“I don't know,” Kurt admitted. “I…”
“You’re a goddamned hero,” Molly snapped. “Can't they gave you a few days of leave?”
“All leaves have been cancelled,” Kurt reminded her. “We aren't allowed to leave our posts…”
“And yet they let you down to London,” Molly thundered. “How many girls did you eye there?”
Kurt gritted his teeth. “Molly…”
A window flashed up on the display, warning him that his session was about to expire. “Molly, I will be back as soon as I can,” he promised. “But I don't get to choose my timing…”
The session expired. He swore out loud as the screen went blank, then stood up and left the privacy cubicle. He’d have to write out an email or record a v-mail… and then hope that she was in a forgiving mood. Molly bore grudges for eternity, digging them up at the worst possible moment and rubbing them in his face. The last thing he wanted was her screaming at the children because of him, not when the family was already under so much stress. It was one of the reasons most junior naval personnel were not advised to marry. A military family could be torn apart by constant separations and not having any real control over their own lives.
“You don’t look well, sir,” Rose said, as he entered their quarters. “Bad news from home?”
Kurt sighed. “What do you say to a teenage girl who keeps picking fights with her teacher and who fell out with her best friend, purely because her father is a starfighter pilot?”
“My father would probably have yelled at me for an hour,” Rose said, after a moment. “But I had to work desperately just to meet the requirements to enter the Academy. What’s her problem with the teacher?”
“She isn't very good,” Kurt sighed. “Once, she was proctoring an exam and she changed the examination papers, midway through the session.”
Rose blinked. “Is that even permissible?”
“She seems to have gotten away with it,” Kurt observed. “I think she was the one who wrote the exam too.”
“I see,” Rose said. “It strikes me that you could file a formal complaint…”
“It was a little hard to do it when Penny got in so much trouble,” Kurt admitted. It had smacked of blaming the victim. Kurt’s father had been a firm believer in not trying to hide behind excuses, no matter how accurate they were. “But I suppose you’re right.”
“Tell your daughter to concentrate on her book studies if the teacher is such a bitch,” Rose added. “And then promise her a reward if she passes and a punishment if she fails.”
“It's hard to punish her these days,” Kurt confessed. “I’m here, Molly spends half of her time at work… the kids have just too much leeway to get into trouble.”
“They do get better,” Rose assured him. She stood and headed towards the hatch. “Good luck, sir.”
Kurt scowled after her, then picked up his terminal and started to write, feeling the age-old frustration bubbling up within him. Molly was a wonderful person, really she was, but when she got the bit between her teeth she was almost intolerable. The kids could drive her to the edge of a screaming fit — and, when it wasn't the kids, it was everything from money to how much time she could spend with her husband. He couldn't even remember the last time they’d had sex.
He finished writing the message, then scrolled through the message log. As always, a handful of messages had arrived in the buffer while the carrier was on deployment, held at Earth until they returned home. Half of them were untraceable spam — spammers could be fined a pound for every unwanted message, but the bastards were very good at remaining untraced — but the remainder were various messages from the press and other organisations. Some of them wanted interviews, some of them wanted permission to interview his children for background news — he wrote back categorically denying permission — and a couple invited him and his pilots to Sin City.
They’d love it, he thought. Even now, two hundred years after settlement, the moon was still a patchwork quilt of tiny settlements, with no overall authority. Sin City prided itself on allowing anything, as long as the money was there, from whores to gambling and illicit VR simulations. Rumour had it that travellers could get anything there, as long as they had the money. And discretion was part of the package.
It was tempting, he had to admit, if he could convince the XO to let them go. The pilots needed some reward for their efforts, something more than the respect of their formally sneering peers and mentions in dispatches. But at the same time… he had no interest in gambling or semi-legal VR games. If he went, he'd want to see a whore…
…And that would be betraying Molly.
Part of his mind insisted that wouldn't be a bad thing. Their relationship had changed; they were no longer the horny teenagers who’d fallen into bed together. Molly was too tired for sex most of the time and, in all honesty, investment banking had killed Kurt’s fire too. It wouldn't hurt her if he went to Sin City for a few hours of pleasure with a whore. The rest of his mind insisted that it would be disastrous. Molly hadn't given him permission to sleep with anyone else; she'd be heartbroken — or at least very angry — if he cheated on her.
“Damn it,” he muttered out loud. Starfighter pilots chased women like there was no tomorrow… because, quite often, there was at least the prospect of there being no tomorrow. Now, after the aliens had sliced apart the defences of New Russia, it was quite likely that the rest of the starfighter pilots would die too, along with the other officers and men. He’d been horny as hell when he’d been an active duty pilot… and now he was such a pilot again. “What the hell do I do?”
He found himself unsure of what to say. He didn't have to go to Sin City; it would be simple enough to arrange the trip, if there were pilots who would want to go. Besides, there was a war on. It was quite likely that permission would be refused. He could claim that he’d asked the XO and been turned down.
And what, he asked himself, is the difference between that and your reluctance to suggest to the headteacher that Madam Capet be held to account?
Angrily, he reread the message. There was no official flight from the Royal Navy’s yards to Sin City, not when the Luna settlement had such a bad reputation. But there were plenty of ways to reach the settlement from Armstrong City or Baxter Base. They could go…
Irked, he forwarded the message to the XO — let him handle it — then started to write out a new message to Penny. Maybe he could talk some sense into her. Or maybe she would just do whatever the hell she felt like, anyway. At her age, listening to authority was an overrated pastime. But one day, he feared, she would go too far. For all the money parents like him invested in private school, there were still some pupils who ended up in prison before they were even old enough to legally drink.
And then he started to write another letter to Percy.
“I suggest we insert a handful of additional rail guns here and here,” Anderson said, tapping the paper schematics. James wasn't sure why the ancient engineer insisted on using paper, rather than holograms, but it certainly added novelty to the experience. “We lost the guns here fairly quickly, which could have been disastrous. It certainly will be next time.”