Lyin guys, p.3
Lyin' Guys, page 3
On the other end of the conversation, Captain Loralee Kim kept her face a mask of implacable professionalism. She wore her everyday command uniform, the eagle insignia on her collar just visible in the closeup view. “Cardinal, I appreciate your concerns. However, we cannot allow broadcasting from the Nazareth until we’re back in ARGO space. And the repair crews we’ve sent over will need housing aboard your vessel for the present time.”
“But we have wounded. You have the superior medical facility. Surely, it would be wise to ferry over as many as possible to receive the finest care at your disposal.”
The Nazareth had doctors, but they were volunteers from various medical disciplines. They’d signed up to tend to the missionaries and the various everyday bumps and bruises of shipboard life. They also provided curatives for the minor diseases that crossed cultural barriers when xenos came aboard. Cardinal Belotti had dermatologists and pediatricians treating combat wounds.
“Your vessel is under quarantine. Anyone I send over stays there until further notice. Anyone coming back is out of the question.”
“But why?”
“I would like this information to remain between us.”
Cardinal Belotti scowled. He was a man well-accustomed to keeping confidence, but not without a reason. “Captain…”
“Surely, you must be aware of the scope of the magical incident aboard the Nazareth.”
The cardinal swallowed. Oh, how well aware he was. Natasha. It had been years since her last incident, but she still struggled to control her temper and her inner demons. Father Laszlo had been cagey, but the two men of God had an understanding. No one would know about her wizardry except the senior officers and the clergy. Captain Standish might be dead, but his people could be trusted to hold their tongues. Laszlo wouldn’t even utter Natasha’s name in connection with the events lest incautious ears overhear.
By all accounts, the only magical casualties had been among the invaders. Sins to be sure, but not a danger to the missionaries or Earth Navy. Captain Kim was within her rights to deal with dangers. Sin, however, was the province of the church.
“I am aware.”
“Well, the Convocation has gotten involved. They have an investigative team on the way, and until they clear every last person on your vessel, no one disembarks.”
The cardinal wet his lips. Mother Mary preserve, they were hunting her down. “Surely, the Convocation has more pressing concerns closer to Earth.”
Captain Kim cracked a mirthless smile. “The Convocation works in mysterious ways.”
An alert popped up inside Jamie Ramsey’s visor.
SHIFT CHANGE - SAILOR 3RD CLASS LUCRETIA J. FAREEK WILL RELIEVE
She tapped the side of her helm to dismiss the alert. On the far side of the visor, Fareek was already waiting for her in full kit. “Sector 4 is all yours.”
“How’s it out there?” Fareek asked. She had one of those grating colonial accents that Jamie tried not to hold against her. Wasn’t Fareek’s fault her parents had been isolationists.
“Natives are the least restless you’ll ever get. I’ve been blessed so many times I could probably fuck a priest and still come out ahead.”
Lucretia smirked. “Any of ’em worth it?”
Jamie scrunched her face. “It’s a big ship. I wouldn’t say no for sure until I took a shift in Sector 1.”
“That’s a no, babe. Yo, before I forget, guest quarters have showers with actual water.”
Jamie inclined her head in thanks for the heads-up. She bartered intel in kind. “The cafe coffee is rat poison. Stick to the chow line.”
“Copy that, sister.” The two women each closed a fist and tapped wrists.
Damn, a water shower sounded good. The security teams hadn’t come over prepped for an extended stay. Jamie didn’t even have a clean uniform to change into. Stripped out of her armor, she’d be left in the skintight undergarments that kept the gear from chafing. Certain enlisted personnel would love that. While nonstandard, the skivvies were emblazoned with all necessary Earth Navy insignia—including Jamie’s rank and surname—to function as temporary outerwear.
Before any of those issues required a decision, Jamie had a stop to make.
The Nazareth security detail had taken over the office of a Father Bartholomew. She knocked and entered, removing her helmet in the presence of her commanding officer.
“Ramsey?” Lt. Bergeron posed it as an all-encompassing “why are you here?”
“Permission to discuss a personal matter, sir? I’d like your advice.”
Lt. Bergeron kept his low-key intact. “Will you be filing a harassment report?”
“No, sir.”
“Should I be expecting one about you?”
“Um. I would hope not, sir.” She had to be careful on that count. No profusion of apologies had been enough to stop Wilson getting her written up the morning after that New Year’s party.
“What is it, then? I’ve got enough to worry about without babysitting every sailor who needs laundry from the Nairobi.”
“It’s about my brother, sir.”
Lt. Bergeron relaxed in his chair. “The hero or the toddler?”
Jamie’s face warmed. The anonymity of the service had allowed her to curate what her unit knew about her family life. Some sailors talked nonstop about their siblings, parents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. For all most of her buddies knew, Jamie could have been hatched in a lab. But that was before they’d wedged themselves into a mission and become public personae.
“All three, I suppose, now that I think about it.”
“I’d like you to finish thinking about things before bringing them to my attention.”
Shit! She had to make her point quick, before the word “dismissed” ended the conversation prematurely. “Sir, I don’t think my parents are fit guardians.”
That drew a chuckle. “Join the club, Ramsey. There’s only three kinds of enlistees: kids with messed up families, kids from families with a history of service, and kids who think it’ll be fun blowing up aliens. Category 1 gives rise to category 2.”
“And category 3 gets shipped over to the Marine Corps. I’ve heard that one, sir.”
Lt. Bergeron spread his hands. “My point is: if I stepped in to—I don’t even know what you think I can do—for every sailor under my command…”
“Custody, sir. I’d like permission to file a request through Galactic Child Services. I thought about it all night. I knew they took risks, but I can’t ignore the fact that I’m here to defend the galaxy so they have a safe place to grow up, and I can’t do that if my own fucking parents—pardon my language, sir—if my own parents get them killed chasing a cheap terra or a few free meals.”
The lieutenant nodded grimly. “I understand your frustration. The two years between me enlisting and my brother heading offworld for college were the most stressful of my career.”
She was losing this argument to a brick wall of polite apathy. “But… just look at this whole situation.”
Sitting surrounded by religious iconography and plastisheet copies of the Bible, he could hardly deny their current mission. “I see it. Lotta good people got caught up in this. No fault there aside from maybe some naïve optimism. Maybe your folks are bad parents. Not a crime. Unless your parents are guilty of a crime…”
He hung it out there like a target on the firing range.
Jamie had never caught them at anything. Chuck was dirty as a hot tub in a brothel, but she’d never seen proof. She’d wised up at a young age, and from then on, Chuck danced around his activities like a shady superhero committing crimes as an alter ego. Becky… Well, getting her into confined rehab for a few months while they cleaned her blood and organs and deprogrammed her million addictions would just result in Chuck being a single dad for a while.
From what Jamie had heard, even the good rehab programs on Phabian, with liver replacements and blood filtration implants, only had a 30 percent success rate long term. Becky seemed like a 70 percent gal.
She had nothing to act on. This wasn’t the time. She needed a plan.
“No, sir. Sorry to bother you, sir.”
“Not at all, Ramsey. Dismissed.”
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” Chuck intoned solemnly. It was dim in the confessional. Light filtered through a wooden lattice that might have cost more than the Radio City. There was a stiff, dusty odor that tried its best to block out the reek of military-grade bio-hazard cleanser in the cathedral but failed. “It’s been three hours since my last confession.”
Father Dougan played along gamely, since there was no real anonymity to be had. Chuck had seen the priest enter his side, and Chuck was fully aware that he had an unmistakable charisma. “What sins have you come to confess?”
“Father, I’ve stranded my family on a missionary ship, and I can’t leave until I get paid for the work I provided.”
“I fail to see how your situation warrants confession.”
“You guys are this close to getting a 1-star review on ComedyYak. You won’t be able to book a licensed comedian from Sol to Sector Sigma once they found out how you’re stiffing me for a thirty-hour performance.”
Father Dougan sighed. “It was—and still is—a 7-day engagement. There are sailors from the navy ship helping with repairs and restoring order; they might use a good laugh.”
A wiggled finger in his ear didn’t make those words sound any less like bullshit. “Wait-wait-wait. You’re telling me you expect me to go out there and do further damage to my vocal cords with no prospect of reimbursement?”
“Your voice seems fine to me,” Father Dougan replied in that sly, smartass way the priests had while maintaining perfect decorum.
“Fighting through the pain. Thanks. Not the same as putting on a full show. I ought to sue for… for… for mental anguish and suffering.”
“Allegheny v. Pope Paul IX. The One Church cannot be sued in civil court for emotional damages.”
Chuck scowled. “I don’t like how you know that off the top of your head.”
“Seminary isn’t just the study of the Good Book,” Father Dougan retorted. “And you’re not the first to attempt blackmail to bend the church to your wishes. Now, unless you fancy the idea of leaving confession with more sins than you brought, I’d like you to—”
The confessional door slammed open. Chuck stormed out.
Perform?
For Earth Navy?
Sure, they were the ones who brought the lifeboats in case this whole clown fiasco had gone crazy-straw-shaped, but Mort had done the saving. Now, Earth Navy was keeping all the vessels docked aboard the Nazareth from leaving, and the damn One Church was holding his honorarium hostage. Fix one problem, and maybe he could deal with the other. Between the both of them, the navy and church were getting Chuck’s goat. And how.
As a man who had a ready-to-improvise plan for every occasion, he was momentarily at a loss for how to worm his way out of this one with all the terras he was owed.
Brad puffed his cheeks with a giant sigh. It was the longest comm he’d ever written, rivaling the worst essay assignments he’d ever been given during his brief forays into formal education. Blinking bleary eyes, he gave the text a cursory skim.
…eyes bright as a pair of ion thrusters…
…make my stomach feel like I just pulled a sudden dive with no G-compensator…
…I realize I played it silky smooth, but that was a supernova on a sunny day…
…don’t care what our parents think…
…run away together and start living a real life out among the stars…
Brad nodded along with his own inner thoughts. This was summing it up pretty good. Pouring his heart out. That’s what girls wanted, right? It went on for screens and screens as he swiped along, making sure he didn’t say anything that might offend her and ruin everything.
“Damn, I’m good.”
He hit SEND. A processing indicator spun.
Panic set in as Brad watched. The text hung there waiting to whisk off across digital space and plant itself with a gymnast’s flourish on May’s next datapad. Holy shit. What was he thinking? What if May read all that?
OMNI CONNECTION NOT FOUND
Brad huffed and panted as the quick surge of dread passed.
DELETE
The text vanished.
Ugh. He was no word-weaver, no poet, no Cyrano Da Burgermon.
Brad was a planner. He couldn’t go into this blind. He needed recon, intel, sources.
Up until now, he’d chosen to respect May’s privacy. He’d trimmed out the extraneous personal fluff from her contacts and ignored the stored pics and her sent comms.
Why?
She must have known he’d be tempted to look. Was it a test, or had she wanted him to have it all as a way to get to know her better? The two of them had spent plenty of time together, trading stories and keeping each other company, but it was still only like a day and a half.
Absolving himself of any guilt since she either wanted him to see the content of her datapad or had no intention of ever seeing him again, Brad opened her picture gallery.
The file system was massive. It was nearly all flatpics, like some kind of art school project, but there were so many that it might as well have been a stop-motion flatvid of her life.
Adults were few and far between, but he picked out May’s mom by context. Mrs. Belotti had the look of a woman who took motherhood as a job with an employee handbook and dress code. She smiled dutifully toward the datapad as May grinned, often alongside her school friends.
Those friends were the recurring supporting cast of May’s life story. Brad recognized them from the one Bible class he attended with them. He browsed the captions until he learned their names. Elizabeth—or Betty—was the taller one. The one with her teeth in magneto-retractors was Joan. Lastly, the one made of freckles was Kristi, who spelled her name like she was sold by Friendli Foods.
Nearly every image had May in the foreground as if angling the datapad back at herself. In his time with her, Brad had mostly seen May either trying to act grown up when showing him around or half scared to death. This self-curated version showed a goofy, carefree May always having a blast with her friends.
He swiped through pic after pic, pausing at the highlights.
The four friends waved goodbye as they stood in front of a shuttle window with the Nazareth visible in the background.
They posed in matching one-piece bathing suits, with swim goggles pushed atop heads covered with skull-hugging rubber caps. Given the civic pool setting and the gathered crowd with school banners, he figured they were all on a swim team together.
In another pic, the four of them sat with a group of teenage tesuds—or what passed for teenage among the long-lived tortoise people, maybe fifty or sixty?—trying giant salads. The setting was some kind of outdoor eatery, maybe a commercial version of a picnic on Keru. Brad was pretty sure they had those on Keru, didn’t they?
A petting zoo.
A skiing trip.
Various restaurants.
Sleepovers.
School events.
Brad’s mind started wandering. He tried to imagine what his gallery would look like if he’d done the same. Different people in every picture. Dad in the background trying to scam someone into free fuel or a free meal. Card games. Hardcoin terras. Dusty planets where the cost of living stayed low because no one wanted to be there.
Closing out of the gallery of happy memories, he fleetingly wished he’d been in there, somewhere near the end, just as a keepsake. They hadn’t so much as taken a flatpic together. Maybe that had been an oversight; maybe it was intentional.
Brad continued browsing, checking her music catalog after recalling a pic of May, Betty, Joan, and Kristi attending a concert, all wearing Purity Pop Parade t-shirts. If there had been a turnoff anywhere on the datapad yet, it had been listening to ear-grating, boppy nonsense on minimum volume so the family wouldn’t overhear from the living room.
God, her taste in music was shit.
A cursory scan of her other apps turned up some throwaway time-killer games, several of which Brad planned to try at some point, and weird flotsam like a daily Bible verse randomizer, fashion planner, and something called Baby Maker.
For such an obvious prude, Brad couldn’t imagine it was what it sounded like.
It wasn’t.
Baby Maker was a genetic predictor app. Simple stuff, really. It wasn’t looking for DNA samples, just pics.
“Why not?”
There were plenty of May to choose from. Brad found one where May had clearly handed off her datapad to someone else to snap the pic. She stood in her school uniform, grinning as she held a small bronze trophy in the shape of a quarter note. It was also among the few pics where only May was visible.
Since May hadn’t taken any pics that included him, Brad snapped himself quick and matched it with hers.
The app didn’t take long. Within seconds, he was staring at an infant that was a mix of the two of them. Below the image, a slider bar let him select the age.
As Brad slowly swiped his finger across the datapad’s screen, the infant became a toddler, became a preschooler, a grade-schooler, and before he knew it, a young adult that bore a striking resemblance to him without being a clone.
He stared and stared.
Swiping his finger back, the young man reverted to a swaddled baby with its eyes closed.
The app had a million little addons and options, everything from a gender slider to hair and clothing accessories.
“Is this what girls do in their free time?” he wondered aloud softly.
As he’d watched the child’s life flash before his eyes, he also saw his own. For all he knew, that baby would be real before he turned fourteen.
One of Becky’s hands clutched a smaller version of itself. The other supported the weight of a toddler balanced on her hip. Normally, she let Rhi bop along at her own pace, but currently the Nazareth was no place for a child to run loose.
