"My my. You've sure taken up this Diego's cause in a short period of time. I thought he was in shock and half out of it."
"He's not. He's just worried about his da and nobody will believe him."
"What's he look like, Bunny?" Yana asked her.
"He has really dark eyes, very big, and his hair is- Yana, you're laughing at me!"
"Yep, I thought so," Yana said. "He's cute, is he? 'Sokay, Bunny. So you like this boy and nobody will help him and Giancarlo was his usual charming self to your buddy, so you're glad I told him off and you came to tell me so? Or did you really just come down to cook me dinner so I wouldn't starve to death?"
"Well, I was talking to Clodagh…" Bunny's face grew a little sly as she turned and pulled two steaming and fragrant fish out of the pan and arranged them on a plate. Carefully she picked the third one up by the tail. The cat was no laggard and had snagged it out of her hand before she could lay it on the floor for him.
"What I told Clodagh…" Bunny began, managing to stand between Yana and the fish.
"What?" Yana said, sobering now so that Bunny stopped playing and settled into the chair, handing Yana the knife so she could carve into her fish.
"Was maybe you could help Diego. You know, maybe you could ride in with me to SpaceBase next time I have a run and like wear your uniform and maybe Arnie's boyfriend would help you get a message to that man you said would help Charlie. Maybe he could let Dr. Margolies know what happened and-well, you did say he was in deployment. Maybe he could get him down here."
"Military deployment, Bunny."
Bunny shrugged. "It's all just PTBs anyway, isn't it? Can't they pull strings or something?"
"Hmm. Maybe they can. If anyone could, Ahmed could. Or if not, he'd find out who could." And in the back of her mind, it occurred to her that she could also use her full uniform and access to SpaceBase as an opportunity to "requisition" some of the equipment necessary to the duties Giancarlo seemed to think she was so derelict in performing. If at some later date he actually got around to issuing her duplicates, she could trade the items for other locally produced items. She wasn't really qualified for this kind of subterfuge, having never actually been a supply officer, but she figured necessity was going to have to be the mother of invention in this case.
Yana was very popular that evening. Bunny hadn't been gone more than a half an hour when there was another knock at her door. She opened it to find Scan Shongili leaning against the doorframe, astounding her again with how much less bulky he was than everyone else.
"Come in," she said. "You'll catch your death. A virus or something…"
The silvery eyes glinted with amusement and his mouth quirked at the corner. She had an unauthorized urge to brush back the lock of silver-brown hair that fell boyishly forward onto his forehead.
"I hear you've been taking on the Intergal high command," he said, stamping his feet outside and entering, shrugging off his light jacket before even closing the door.
"Oh, that." She waved her hand dismissively, pretending more nonchalance than she felt. She was probably going to have to do a little creative groveling over that sooner or later if she was going to be able to help the boy-or maybe not. She was no longer feeling so smug. The smart thing for Giancarlo to do was to cooperate with her if he wanted results; but, although he was far from stupid, for someone in his specialty, he did not seem to have learned the value of cooperation, though no doubt he found it in himself to cooperate with those of higher rank. She would worry about it later, she thought, realizing at the same time that the effects of the cough medicine's overdose hadn't quite worn off. She was using a lot of her mental energy to keep from throwing her arms around Shongili's neck and planting a kiss on the warm smile with which he was favoring her.
"Uh, sit down," she said, brushing her own hair back from her face and hoping her hands had gotten washed somehow in the midst of all of this and she wasn't resmearing herself with ashes. "Can I burn you some tea?"
"Please. I just got back from running with the search party."
"Any trace of the others?"
He shook his head and sat on the bed. She lifted a finger to tell him to wait, ducked outside, dipped up a pan of snow from a high drift, where animals hadn't been able to reach it, and returned to plop it back on the stove.
"No," he said. "Not a trace. And it started snowing hard again, so we had to give up for the time being. If your friend the colonel would just release Lavelle, I'll bet Dinah could help. She's the best leader of all of the dogs, and if our people are still findable, she'll locate them. We've been out for three days now."
"You must be exhausted."
"A little. I just came by to ask if you'd finished with the recorder yet."
"Oh, frag! No, I haven't, really. Clodagh came by once, too, but I completely forgot to ask her when she wanted to do the song for Charlie. If you need it, maybe I could-"
"No, no, that's okay." He peered over her shoulder. "Your water's boiling."
"Thanks."
He took a deep breath and said, "What I actually wondered was, well, while you've got it, have you given any more thought to making the song about Bremport?"
"Oh, Scan," she said, sitting back down hard. To her annoyance, she began to cough again, not because she had to but out of reflex. "Scan, I just can't do that. It's too soon. A lot of it's classified. And I just don't want to think about it. People here don't want to hear it, either, trust me."
He reclined on the bed, propping himself up on his elbow, and gave her a long hard look. "I could say the same thing, Yana. Trust me. You need to do this. We need to hear it."
"Sean, I can't. I'm no songwriter and I can barely stand to talk about it. Anyway, I only saw one small, awful part. The rest I've put together from what I was told before or since about Bremen"
"I'd like to hear about it," he said, quietly insistent.
"Did you have someone there? Did you know someone there?" she asked.
"You," he said, making and holding eye contact. "At least, I'm trying to know you."
That unsettled her for a moment. She put some of Clodagh's herbs in a bag and steeped them in the tea water while she thought. Maybe she should talk about it, not only because Shongili wanted to know, but because she was still furious about the whole thing. She couldn't keep popping off at superior officers on whose goodwill she was dependent and get away with it.
"Okay," she said. "Since you think it needs to be told to everybody else, let's turn on the recorder. I don't believe I could go through this twice." He said nothing, but raised his eyebrows inquiringly and she said, "My coat. In the pocket."
He moved with natural, lanky grace, rolling across the bed and onto his feet, striding the step or two to the doorway and extracting the recorder, rolling back across the bed with the machine in one hand. He set it on the table beside her chair and punched in the recording sequence.
She put the cup of tea beside him, then realized it was her only cup. Giving a shrug, she carefully raised the pan in both hands and sipped the tea from the lip before settling down again.
She could have gone next door and borrowed a cup, perhaps, but she didn't know the people and she felt that if she interrupted this moment, it wouldn't return. She might never again have the courage to discuss it. She certainly would never again have the kind of total attention she had from Scan Shongili.
"I'm not sure what's classified," she said to begin with. "Except that I'm not supposed to tell you how the terrorists infiltrated the station." She shrugged. "Hell, I don't know that for sure anyway, though I could speculate. The thing is, Scan, the deaths were unnecessary. None of those people had to die. None of them should have. The terrorists were after food, medicine, and supplies."