"And that's why none of it makes any sense!" Hastings protested. "Why fight in a less than ideal environment? These were space ships, for God's sake! Even if you assume they just sort of wandered into our solar system from Out There, why fight in atmosphere?"
"Maybe we've been invaded," Morris suggested only half-humorously.
"It's a mighty strange invasion, then," Hastings snorted. "I've never had much patience with the notion that we're so important that mighty alien fleets are just lining up to conquer us, but even if they are, where is the fleet? And does the fact that there were obviously two sides mean one of them is friendly to us?" She shook her head.
"All excellent questions," Mordecai Morris agreed, standing and reaching for his jacket with a weary sigh. He draped it over his shoulder and grinned crookedly. "Do you have an opinion?"
"I don't know, yet," she said, nibbling her knuckle again. "At first glance, I'm inclined to think we were just more-or-less innocent bystanders who got caught in the crossfire, but there're too many unanswered questions for us to assume that. And at least one side's probably a bit ticked with us. Any better refinement on the kill data?"
"Nope," Morris said. "Turns out our 'nuclear hardening' isn't quite as effective as we'd hoped, especially when the task force didn't have time to implement doctrine for surviving a nuclear attack. Most of Admiral Carson's electronics had fits from the EMP when whoever the hell it was nailed the Kidd, and every radar and almost all the computers went to hell when the pulse from that big bastard hit. But it looks like Antietam and Champlain managed to guide most of their SAMs into the targets before the big one flat-out killed their target illumination aerials, and the RAMs and AMRAAMs were on internal seekers. Visual estimates are that we got two, possibly three, out of the first group, with possible hits on a couple more. Obviously we didn't get them all," he added with a crooked smile.
"Obviously," Hastings agreed. "So we don't know who they were, how many of them we got, who killed what after we engaged them, who won, or where the survivors-if any-went afterwards!"
"Except for one thing," Morris said softly, and she quirked an eyebrow at him. "One thing everyone's agreed on-nobody tracked any of them headed back out. I suppose it's possible they wiped each other out, but I tend to think one side or the other probably won. And if neither side blocked our radar on the way in, why do it on the way out?" He shook his head.
"You mean one side, or possibly both of them, is still around?"
"I think we have to assume they could be," he agreed, slipping into his jacket. "And if it's only one, we'd better hope it's the side we didn't get any of. In either case, it looks to me like we'd better find out where they wandered off to, don't you think?" He headed for the door, then paused and looked back with an exhausted smile.
"Thanks for volunteering to write the brief, Jayne," he said. "Try to tie up all the loose ends nice and pretty. If the boss likes it, I'll take the blame-otherwise, you get all the credit."
He vanished out the door before she produced a fitting reply. enemy n, pl. -mies. 1. One who evinces hostility or malice toward, or opposes the interest, desire, or purpose of, another; opponent; foe. 2. A hostile force or power, as a political unit, or an individual belonging to such a force or power. 3. Something destructive or injurious. [Middle English enemi, from Old French inimicus: in-, not + amicus, friend.]
-Webster-Wangchi Unabridged Dictionary of Standard English
Tomas y Hijos, Publishers
2465, Terran Standard Reckoning
CHAPTER SEVEN
Richard Aston opened his eyes and stared at the checkered oilcloth tablecloth an inch from the tip of his nose.
He grimaced and straightened, suppressing a groan as his spine unbent, then blinked in surprise as his brain roused. He'd fallen asleep with his forehead on his crossed forearms, which, unfortunately, hadn't been unusual since his "guest's" arrival. That much he'd grown accustomed to, but the cabin was full of daylight, and her incessant demands for food should have waked him hours ago.
They hadn't, and he turned his head quickly-only to freeze in shock.
She was awake. More than that, she was lying on her side, head propped up by the fist curled under her jaw, and watching him with bright, calm eyes.
He sat motionless, staring back at her, and the moment of silence stretched out between them. Somehow it had never occurred to him that she would wake while he was sleeping. He'd envisioned offering her a mouthful of food and watching awareness slowly filter into her eyes. Or perhaps it would have happened while he was tenderly wiping her forehead with a damp cloth. He felt he could have handled either of those with comparative aplomb after all this time.
He most emphatically had not expected her to awaken and just lie there, self-possessed as a cat, patiently waiting for him to wake, and he felt almost betrayed by her aplomb. It registered only slowly that it was because her calm watchfulness violated his mental image of her-which, he thought wryly, was based on the way she ate. Patience wasn't something he'd associated with her, and that understanding brought amusement in its wake.
She watched gravely as he grinned, and then, slowly, her generous mouth curved as she took in his weary, unshaven appearance. Her wry, apologetic smile woke a gleam in his own eyes, and their mutual amusement seemed to feed upon itself, aided, in his case, by a vast relief that she had survived to wake up despite his ignorance about how to care for her. He began to chuckle, and she chuckled in response.
Their chuckles became laughter; and that, he later realized, was the moment his last, lingering fear of what she might be vanished.
He never knew exactly how long they laughed, but he knew it was a release of intolerable tension for both of them, and he surrendered to it gratefully. There was probably an edge of hysteria in it, he decided later, but it was such a relief the thought didn't bother him at all. He leaned back in his chair, roaring like a fool, and her rich laughter-no giggles for this girl!-answered him.
But finally, slowly, he regained control, managing to push the laughter aside without relinquishing the bright bubble of amusement at its core. He shook his head at her, wiping his eyes, and sat up straight.
She seemed to catch his change of mood, for she sat up, too, perching tailor-fashion on the bunk, and he just managed to keep his eyebrows from rising as the sheet fell down about her waist and she made no move to recover it. Instead, she bent forward, eyes and fingertips examining the faint, raised scar of her wound unself-consciously. Well, he'd always thought his own culture's nudity taboo was one of its less sane aspects.
"Ah, hello," he said finally, speaking very slowly and carefully. He'd spent the few waking hours in which he wasn't shoveling food down her considering what to say at this moment. He'd scripted and discarded all manner of openings, unable to settle on a properly meaningful first greeting to an extraterrestrial. But when the moment came, none of his laborious compositions seemed in the least fitting after their shared laughter.
He bit his lip for a moment, watching her narrowly and wishing he were a trained linguist. Establishing communications was going to be rough, he thought. But then she opened her own mouth.
"Hello, yourself," she said in a velvet-edged contralto as clear and cool as spring water.
Those two words stunned him, for it had never occurred to him that she might speak English! He gawked at her, and she looked back as if surprised by his reaction, but then a gleam of renewed humor touched her eyes.
"Take me to your leader," she said with a perfectly straight face.
His gawking mouth snapped shut, and he frowned indignantly. He was trying to be serious, and she was making stupid-! But then he realized exactly what she'd said, and his eyes narrowed. Her people must have spent a long time studying his for her to know how that particular clichО would affect him.