A small hand rested lightly on his arm. “It’s just a closet, Branden.”
“Yes. Yes.” A closet – a cabin he shared with Tasha Sebastian. “It’s just that I don’t fully remember much of this.” Things were coming to him in snatches, like the twinkle of stars viewed dirtside – unlike stars in space, which didn’t twinkle but were unchanging points of light.
His life right now felt like those dirtside twinkling stars working in triple overtime.
The best and the worst of it was Tasha. He remembered fully now their first meeting twelve years before on the Bogue, and in detail from there how he surreptitiously followed her career from lieutenant to commander on the Asterion’s Star . He risked his own career paying agents exorbitant sums to keep track of her and obtain images of her. He even wrote her love letters that he never sent but kept securely buried in his very secure files, of course.
Though not all that secure. A few months ago, she had admitted finding them, when she was assigned to his flagship as part of the now-defunct U-Cee-Triad Alliance. He didn’t remember any peace accord between the Triad and the U-Cees, short-lived though it was. Nor did he remember Tasha’s attaining the rank of U-Cee captain. But he would remember, a Lieutenant Jameson assured him. Those rapidly twinkling stars of data would soon solidify into real chronological events. For now, his memory banks were in overload; his restore firmware still hunting and deleting the last vestiges of the coded worm the Faction had inserted into his mind through a devious trap within a rigged Trojan in the TZ-Four fighter’s AI systems.
“At least you remembered the most important thing,” she said with a wry smile, referring to the trigger phrase that had restored him to her. “It would have been nice, though, if you’d clued me in that you’d made that your override phrase.”
He cleared his throat because the words he wanted to say – I hate reminding you that I’m not fully human – seemed to be stuck there, as they always were. He settled for: “It’s not often I underestimate the enemy.” And that enemy included himself – something he had admitted to an angry Ralland at Lightridge Station, in a brief conversation they had had an hour before.
“What worries me, Sass,” Branden continued, his voice still rough, “is that right now the enemy knows me better than I know myself.”
The hand on his arm moved to his waist. With a sigh, Tasha drew herself against him, head on his chest. “It’ll all come back to you eventually, flyboy. Don’t stress yourself out over it.”
But while he waited for “eventually” to happen, he felt clumsy and stupid. He loved her so much. And she knew exactly how to move against him, how to touch him. Everything was so effortless when she did so.
He kept waiting for her to bolt away like the prosti on Mining Raft 309 when he’d been much younger, and drunk and shamed. The woman, seeing the scars on his chest and the synth-derm mesh on his hands, had recoiled, horrified.
Gingerly, he rested those same synth-derm mesh hands on Sass’s shoulders.
Another sigh from her. “It’s late.” Her soft voice vibrated against his chest. “Actually, it’s really early.
We’ve missed a whole shipnight of sleep.” She lifted her face. “Let’s—”
“I don’t need much sleep. But I’ve kept you awake too long. I can,” and he motioned aimlessly toward the main room of their quarters, “spend time with my databases catching up on my, um, life.”
Her hands slid down to grab the waistband of his pants. “Bed, Branden. Now.”
Oh sweet gods. He had a very clear feeling that “bed” and “now” did not involve sleeping. And just because his body knew what she meant – and was announcing its intended cooperation with embarrassing enthusiasm – did not mean he had any skills, any methods, any godsdamned techniques in his databanks to honor her, to please her, to love her as he so very desperately wanted to do.
It would be – he would be an abysmal failure.
He cleared his throat. “Tasha.” He paused.
“Branden.” She paused.
“You need to understand that I’ve never been with . . . well, I’ve never wanted to. Not with anyone else. Just you. And you weren’t . . . on my ship. We aren’t – weren’t on the same side. So I’ve never—”
“You have.” She pinned him with a hard stare, but her mouth was twitching.
“I have?”
“We have. Lots of times in the past seven months.” She stood on tiptoe, her breasts brushing his chest as she touched her lips to his. “Lots.”
His blood heated. His breath stuttered. His emo-inhibitors went fully offline. “What if I don’t remember . . . how?”
She yanked on his waistband again and guided him down to the bed. “Then you’ll be the only man in the history of the galaxy to lose his virginity twice,” she said, straddling him as she worked on the seal-seam of his uniform shirt. “And I’ll be the luckiest woman in the galaxy who gets to claim that honor. Twice.”
“Sass?”
“Flyboy?”
“Make love to me.”
“Is that an order, Admiral?”
“It is.” He swallowed hard. Oh, those clever, clever fingers of hers!
“My pleasure.”
“No, really.” He gasped. “The pleasure is all mine.”
Oooh. MommySass loooves Brandenfriend!
What? Telepathic furzels still startled him.
Tank! Sass telegraphed through that same link in his mind. Privacy, please!
Oops! O-kay. Tank go blink!
He reached for her face and brought it close to his. “Tasha,” he murmured. “Come kiss.”
Memories of Gravity
Patrice Sarath
The news of my grandfather’s death reached me three months after the event, the transmission hindered by distance and garbled by the solar flares that mangled radio signals from Earth to the middle planets.
Those of us on Bifrost Station in orbit around Jupiter were resigned to outdated mail and stale news; I preferred it that way. Piloting a shuttle between Bifrost and the research center on Ganymede required all my concentration, or so I told myself.
Still, the automated pinging of the transmitter with my code piqued my curiosity even as it triggered a strange reluctance. Who would be contacting me? I didn’t have anyone on Earth I cared to correspond with, not since I’d been emancipated as a teen and made my own way in the solar system. I had left everything behind, and the only people who would care for me were dead. But I lived my life according to one principle: face the unpleasant head-on. That way you always see it coming.
After docking my shuttle and shedding my suit, I pushed toward my quarters to pick up the transmission.
Still stinking of eight hours in a pressure suit, I sat down at my spartan desk in my spare quarters and called up my mail.
Transmission to: Captain Beatriz Sabatini, Bifrost Station Date: 26 May 2237
From: Maher, Craven, Edelweiss, and Stroheim, Attorneys at Law Dear Captain Sabatini, We regret to inform you of the death of your grandfather, Richard Aldo Sabatini, on 10 May 2237.
Almost at once I was thrown back into my childhood, reliving memories I had tried so hard to bury – so hard that I had fled off-world from them, and halfway across the solar system. The adults at the funeral home had whispered over my head as I had sat kicking my chair, sad and frightened, not even the pretty dress and the shiny shoes making up for what I knew.