“Allie, you’re—” he started, but she squeezed again and he shut up. She was angry, and he saw it. She liked that she was angry. She liked that he saw it.
“In this room, I am Aliana. You are Tristan,” she said, speaking slowly, making sure the drugs weren’t slurring her words. “Outside that door, you are Corporal Reeves, and I am Colonel Tanaka. Those things can never be confused for us.”
“I know,” Tristan said. “I was just kidding.”
“No kidding. No jokes. No slipups. If you make a mistake, if you forget the strict discipline that allows this to exist, I will at minimum be dishonorably discharged.”
“I’d never—”
“And you,” Aliana continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “will not like the version of me that comes calling on you then.”
She stared down at him for a moment, waiting until his sudden fear turned into understanding. Then she let go of his wrists and climbed off of him, lying back down on her side of the bed.
“Get me some water too, would you?” she said.
Tristan didn’t answer, just got up and left the room. Aliana watched him go, enjoying the clenching of his thighs and ass as he walked, the gentle V of his back and shoulders. He was very, very pretty. When the thing they had inevitably ended, she was going to miss him. But that didn’t change the fact that it would end. They always had before. That was part of the joy.
A few moments later, Tristan returned carrying two glasses of water. He paused at the foot of the bed, looking unsure. Aliana patted the sheets next to her.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” she said.
“It’s okay,” he replied, then handed her a glass and sat down next to her. “I’m sorry I slipped up. Still want to fuck?”
“In a minute,” she said. They both gulped water for a while.
“Will I see you again?” he eventually asked. Aliana found herself gratified by the hopefulness in his voice.
“I should be on Laconia for a while this time,” she replied. “And I do want to see you again. We just have to be careful.”
“I understand,” he said. And she knew he did. She liked her toys to be much younger and much lower rank. It kept things simpler that way. But she didn’t waste her time with stupid men.
Her thirst gone, the warmth in her lungs was spreading down to her belly in a very pleasant way. She reached over and put her hand on Tristan’s thigh. “I think we should—”
The handheld on her nightstand chimed. She’d set it to do-not-disturb, which meant the device thought the incoming call was important enough to ignore that. She’d had it a long time and trained it well, so it was probably right. She lifted it to check the connection request. It was coming from the State Building. She accepted the connection without visual. “Colonel Tanaka here.” Tristan slid out of bed and reached for his pants.
“Good afternoon, Colonel. This is Lieutenant Sanchez with scheduling and logistics. You have a debriefing at the State Building in two hours.”
“First I’ve heard of it,” she said, reaching for the side table and her sobriety meds. “Can you tell me the agenda?”
“I’m sorry, Colonel. I don’t have access to that. You were added to the attendees by Admiral Milan.”
The party was over.
When she reached the State Building, a light rain was falling. Tiny droplets turned the paving dark and shiny at the same time. The low mountain at the edge of the grounds looked like something from an ancient ukiyo-e print. Yoshitoshi or Hiroshige. An attaché from the Science Directorate was waiting to meet her with a cup of coffee and an umbrella. She waved both away.
Tanaka knew her way around the State Building. Most of her assignments were in the field, but she’d made enough friends and professional connections in the highest ranks of power that when she was on Laconia, she was often here. She hadn’t been back since the siege of Laconia, the destruction of the construction platform, and the maybe-kidnapping, maybe-autoemancipation of Teresa Duarte. There weren’t any physical changes to the building. The poured concrete was as solid as ever, the cut flowers in the vases as fresh. The guards in their razor-pressed uniforms were as stolid and calm. And everything felt fragile.
The attaché guided her to an office she’d been in before. Yellow walls of domestic wood with the blue seal of Laconia worked into them, and two austere sofas. Admiral Milan—acting commander in chief while the high consul was in seclusion and Admiral Trejo was in Sol system—sat at a wide desk. He was a broad man, with a heavy face and salt-and-pepper hair shaved tight. And a crusty old sailor from the Mars days, impatient with bullshit and quick-tempered as a badger. Tanaka liked him immensely.
At one sofa, a lieutenant with a signal intelligence insignia on the standard Laconian blue naval uniform stood. Beside him, Dr. Ochida of the Science Directorate sat with his hands on his knee, fingers laced together. The silence had the awkwardness of an interruption.
Admiral Milan was the first to speak. “We’re running a little long here, Colonel. Have a seat. We’ll be done soon.”
“Yes, sir,” Tanaka said, and took the other sofa for herself. Admiral Milan looked to the standing lieutenant—Rossif, to judge by his nametag—and drew a circle in the air with his fingertip. Get on with it.
“Gedara system. Population just shy of two hundred thousand. High concentration of fissionables in the upper crust, so they’ve been trying to get deep-crust mining operations going for the last several years. Agriculture exists but it’s a decade away from self-sustaining.”
“And the incursion?” Admiral Milan said.
“Twenty-three minutes, eleven seconds,” Rossif answered. “Total loss of consciousness. Some accidental fatalities, some damage to infrastructure. Mostly people crashing vehicles or falling off of things. And logs show that just seconds before the incursion, two unscheduled heavy freighters passed through the ring and went dutchman.”
Dr. Ochida cleared his throat. “There was something strange this time.”
“Something stranger than everyone’s brain shutting off for twenty minutes?” Admiral Milan said.
“Yes, Admiral,” Ochida answered. “A review of instrumentation during the event shows a different kind of time loss as well.”
“Explain.”
“Short version,” Ochida said, “light went faster.”
Admiral Milan scratched his neck. “Did the word explain change meanings and no one told me?” Tanaka suppressed a smile.
“Simply put, the speed of light is a function of basic properties of the universe. Call it… the fastest causality can propagate in vacuum,” Ochida said. “For twenty-some minutes in the Gedara system, the nature of space-time shifted in a way that altered the speed of light. Made it faster. The light delay from the ships at the Gedara ring to the planet at the time was slightly less than forty minutes. Logs of the event show that during the incursion, it decreased by nearly four thousand nanoseconds.”
“Four thousand nanoseconds,” Milan said.
“The nature of space-time changed in that system for twenty minutes,” Ochida intoned, then waited for a reaction he wasn’t getting. He looked crestfallen.
“Well,” Milan said. “I will certainly have to think about this. Thank you for the briefing, Lieutenant. Doctor. You’re both dismissed. You stay, Colonel.”
“Yes, sir,” Tanaka replied.
Once the room was empty, Milan leaned back. “Drink? I’ve got water, coffee, bourbon, and some herbal tea shit my husbands both drink, tastes like grass clippings.”