"Aye, aye, Sir." She smiled, but her words were sincere. So, he thought. She understood the limitations of her own expertise and how to take orders as well as giving them. That was more than he could say for some officers he'd met.
She sat in the other corner of the cockpit, leaning back into the angle of the transom, and breathed deeply. He felt a stab of irritated envy for her youthful vitality, and knowing it was strengthened by his own reaction to her naked, shapely legs and the way the tee-shirt molded itself to her under her bulky life jacket shamed him slightly.
"This is nice," she said wistfully. "I always wanted to learn to sail, but Midgard's too dusty, and by the time I got off-planet I was too busy."
"It can be a lot less relaxing sometimes, but days like this make up for a lot," he agreed. He remembered the can in his hand and half-raised it. "Would you like a beer?" he asked.
"No, thanks. I'm afraid alcohol doesn't agree with me." She gave a strange little smile, and he shrugged. Silence stretched between them-not tensely, but quietly. It was strange how comfortable he felt with this wanderer from an alien future, he thought.
"Have you decided to believe me?" she asked, breaking the silence at last.
"Yes," he replied without hesitation, and her shoulders relaxed minutely. It amused him, and he grinned. "What's the matter, Colonel? Did you expect me to ask the local witch doctor to exorcize you, instead?"
"Well, maybe just a bit," she admitted. "I tried putting myself in your place to see what I'd think. The answer wasn't very comforting."
"Be of good cheer. We happy primitives are just naturally credulous."
"Ouch! I think you just paid me back for that leader crap."
"Me?" He raised his sunglasses to give her the full benefit of his innocent expression. "You wrong me, Colonel!"
"Like hell," she snorted.
"Well, maybe just a bit," he said, deliberately using her own words as he slid the tinted lenses back in place. She made a face and slid more comfortably down onto the end of her spine. The tee-shirt rose higher, and he hastily transferred his attention to the wind-swollen spinnaker.
"So what do we do now, Ster Aston?" she asked.
"First," he said, "you explain what the hell a 'ster' is."
"Excuse me?" She blinked at him, then smiled. "Sorry. I suppose I ought to be saying 'Mister' Aston, shouldn't I?"
"Thought so," he said thoughtfully. "You chop off syllables in the damnedest places, Colonel. I think that's one reason I believe you."
"But I'd better get over it."
"Why worry about it? No one's going to be too surprised if someone from the future sounds a little odd."
"That's the point-the fact that I'm alive can't be made public." Her intensity surprised him.
"Why not?"
"Unless your noises are a lot different from mine, that should be pretty obvious," she said tartly.
"'Noises'?"
"Oh, damn! I mean your blabs." His eyebrows rose, and she made a frustrated face. "Your ... newsies? reporters?" He nodded in sudden understanding, and she sighed in relief. "I know how ours would react if someone turned up from the past, and that Troll certainly has the capacity to tap your news networks."
"I see." He eyed her thoughtfully. "Why would that matter?"
"I wish I knew how it would affect his thinking," she said pensively. "As I said, Trolls aren't very sane by human standards, so I don't know what this one is planning, but I do know that he's certain I'm dead." He raised an eyebrow, and her lips tightened. "No Troll would have passed up the chance to kill me; that's one of the less pleasant things about them. One of them turned back to kill my com officer when she blew out, even though he knew it would give me a chance to kill him. No, St-Mister-Aston. He was positive I was dead, or he would have blown Sputnik apart to make certain."
"So why didn't he do it anyway?"
"Arrogance, I think. We don't know enough about how their minds work, but one thing we do know is that they seem to pride themselves on their own infallibility. Only they do it in their own skitzy way-almost as if they're out to prove something to the Kangas."
"In what way?"
"Kangas are logical, first, last, and always, and any Kanga would have wiped the wreckage just to be cert. A Troll will kill anything that even looks like it might be alive, but if they decide its dead, they won't attack. It's almost like ... like a way to show contempt for an enemy."
She paused for a moment, as if searching for a better way to put it, then shrugged.
"Anyway, we try to play the angles when it comes to saving our people's lives, and Sputnik was equipped with a new escape program." Her eyes darkened with a trace of sadness. "From what you've told me, it worked."
"How?"
"Hm?" She shook herself. "Oh. The techies built in a jammer to block Kanga scanners and programmed the escape computer for a delayed blow-out. You said he followed me down for a while?" He nodded, and she shrugged again. "He was probably scanning the wreckage to make sure we were all dead-and that's exactly what his systems told him. Then Sputnik waited till the last minute to zerch herself and blow the cockpit. The computers must have spotted you and homed on your boat." She smiled tightly. "If we'd been in deep space, the program would've aborted and I'd be dead. There's no point evading in an environment where long-term survival is impossible, and Fleet doesn't want to flash the capability when it won't do any good."
"So he's certain you're dead," Aston mused. "But how would it affect his plans if he found out you aren't?"
"I don't know," she said, frustration sharpening her tone. "Look, the Kangas came back to wipe us before we could become a threat, and he damned well knows it. But he's in a position no Troll's ever been in; there aren't any Kangas to order him around, and he 'knows' he personally killed the last humans from his own time, which means no one in 2007 can have the least scan of who he is or what he wants. For the first time in history, a Troll may be free to make his own decisions." She paused for a long moment, her eyes unfocused as she thought.
"Who can say what that means?" she continued finally. "The Kangas' programming may carry over on him, or he may be entirely on his own. What I suspect is that he's in a position to make plans of his own and that he's still considering his options. What I know is that if he finds out he didn't kill me after all, he'll feel threatened. In which case-"
"In which case," Aston interrupted thoughtfully, "he may do something we'll all regret."
"Exactly." She shivered slightly. "You have no concept of what his hate is like, Mister Aston, and of everyone in the galaxy, he hates me most. Add that I'm the one person on this planet who really knows anything about him ..." She gave a tiny toss of her head. "He'll come after me," she said softly, "and he won't care how many other people he kills to get me."
Aston felt his shoulders tighten and forced them to relax. The bright sunlight felt icy, and he suddenly realized his inner chill was personal as well as intellectual. It was important to him that this young woman survive, and not simply because of the information source she represented.
"All right," he said, forcing himself to sound cheerful, "we just have to make sure none of our 'noises'-" he grinned as he used her term "-find out about you."
"It goes a bit further than that, Mister Aston. You see-"
"Please," he interrupted again. "We've introduced ourselves, and my name's Richard-Dick, to my friends. I wish you'd use it."
"All right, Dick." She smiled, and something inside him gave a little shiver he hadn't felt in years. "But only if you stop calling me 'Colonel.' My name is Ludmilla-or, as you'd say, Milla, to my friends."
"Thank you, Milla," he said, careful to keep his smile friendly, without a trace of the attraction he felt. Damn it, she was a third his age-too damned young for the thoughts he was thinking. He tried to tell himself it was being alone with her, but he knew better. Her features were too severe ever to be beautiful, but they had something far more important. They had strength and character, and her eyes were beautiful ... and wise. Too wise for her years... .