Nina Osier: Matushka

But then, that was the nature of being a scrambler. They were people who had started with nothing, who had signed on as ordinaries during their youth and who had risen from there on merit alone. They hadn’t started with a Catherine Romanova’s land and money and genealogy behind them, nor with a Lincoln Casey’s highly educated (although always impoverished) parents.

They were exemplary officers in almost every case, and being obliged to send his favorite Academy College charges home to their old lives before they had had a chance to reap any of the benefits of their new ones had been what had broken Lincoln Casey’s health. Or so Casey’s wife still firmly believed, now that they were far from the storm center that was Fleet Command on Terra and now that her lover and best friend was himself again.

Was even a little bit bored, lately, although he hadn’t yet realized that himself. Nor had she chosen to bring that fact to his attention, there were some things you kept in your own thoughts even in the most intimate of telepathic relationships.

“They only know he salvaged a Fleet lifeboat,” Kane said. “He didn’t retrieve me from it until just before he sold it back to the goddam Fleet. And Hansie was the only one who even knew there was a stasis tube aboard it, all the time the boat was under tow.”

Romanova sighed, because that bit of news was a relief to her. Johanna Braeden was the only one of Dan’s partners she knew personally, and the woman could be trusted. She and Dan went back to the days of Ewan Fralick together, Hansie would die slowly before she would do anything to hurt Dan or someone Dan loved.

Or at least cared about and felt responsible for. Did Dan love this gen, this woman who had been his bed partner and his superior officer during his final posting before the Service had thrown him out like so much garbage?

That didn’t matter. Kane was here now, Dan had chosen to honor his obligation to her, and he had a perfect right to expect his foster parents to share that obligation with him.

“Ad—I mean, Katy.” Rachel Kane was looking at Catherine Romanova with speculative eyes. “I’m curious. Dan calls you ‘matushka.’ What does that mean?”

Romanova shook herself, coming back from a brief reverie. She answered with a small grin, “It’s a bad joke from my field duty days, back when Dan was a kid in his twenties and he was part of the fleet I commanded at Mistworld. I was carrying my daughter then; I was about to go on maternity leave, and I couldn’t because we were diverted for that emergency. So I acted as commodore until that engagement was over, and then I hung around and handled the peace negotiations until the Diplomatic Corps could get their people all the way out there. By that time I was wearing civvies on the bridge, because I couldn’t fit into even a maternity uniform.

“‘Matushka’ means ‘little mother,’ in Old Earth Russian. And while I’ve never been all that interested in Terran history, so I’m just repeating what I’ve heard and not anything that I’ve bothered to verify, I’ve been told that my surname Romanov belonged to the Russian Imperial family that was last on the throne when there was a monarchy on that part of Terra. I do know that the ‘matushka’ was what those people called their empress, probably to be sarcastic; but my troops were being at least a little bit sarcastic themselves when they called me that! Anyhow, I liked it and I didn’t mind when it stuck. At least with people Dan’s age and older, with those officers who’ve been around long enough to remember Mistworld.”

She was about to add that when Ewan had started bringing Dan Archer home with him on every leave, she had grown annoyed at being addressed by her rank in the privacy of her residence. She had asked the young man to call her something, anything, that was comfortable for him that wasn’t “commodore” or “captain” or “group leader.” She’d somehow been sure he would not be able to handle “Katy,” not when he still had to make the transition back to formality when all of them returned to duty. But Dan hadn’t come up with anything at that time, not until they were in the thick of battle at Mistworld—not until after Ewan was dead, and with him Marcus and Bryce.

It was then that Dan had started calling her “Matushka,” and his comrades had been delighted with the nickname’s appropriateness. But no sooner did she start trying to explain all that to Rachel Kane than she realized this wasn’t the right time, that the younger woman didn’t need to hear it now and probably wouldn’t understand half of it if she did; and the front door’s gentle buzzing intervened anyway.

That would be Cab Barrett arriving, and Linc would let her in. Good, confirming Kane’s state of health and that of her unborn children definitely needed to be the next order of business.

Whether to stay in the bedroom like a hovering mother once she had introduced her personal physician to Rachel Kane, or to leave doctor and patient discreetly alone, was a question Romanova didn’t have to answer. She knew before Casey rapped at the door that he was coming to get her, and why. But she pretended, from long habit when others were present who might not understand the nature of the bond between them, that his summons was news to her when he said, “Katy, I’ve got two calls for you. If they can spare you in there…”

“They can,” Romanova decided, as soon as both Kane and Barrett gave her nods. The young Star Service officer (or former officer that would be, now) looked apprehensive, which was understandable; after all, it was unnerving enough to be pregnant for the first time even when a woman had expected and wanted that all her life. Under Kane’s circumstances it must be—Romanova honestly could not imagine how it must be, and admitted that to herself. And of course Barrett wanted the third person out of the way, physicians usually preferred that even when the third person had a clear right to be there. Which Romanova did not.

One of the calls she wanted, it was her cousin Johnnie out on the Romanov Farmstead. The other was from someone she didn’t particularly care to hear from at the best of times, and that he had picked now to bother her was typical even though of course he couldn’t know how annoying his timing was.

Her ex-husband, blast and damn the man she once had loved so passionately and so tenderly.

She said, “Linc, make George wait. He hates talking to you, but that’s what he’s going to do if he wants to stay on comm instead of hold until I’m ready for him. I won’t make Johnnie wait, not for that bastard!”

“Understood,” Casey answered, in a deliberate echo of his manner from the days when he had been her executive officer and George Fralick had been her husband; and none of the three of them had been able to imagine that those familiar relationships could be anything but permanent. But he grinned as he moved toward one of their home’s two communications screens while his wife moved toward the other. Plainly his usual compassion didn’t extend to feeling sorry for the man who long ago had hurt Katy so brutally, and then had left Linc to pick her up and put her back together.

Romanova watched as her cousin’s familiar image formed in the holoscreen, and she smiled at him. “Hello, Johnnie,” she said, in a gentle tone that she didn’t realize she never used with anyone else.

Not far away her husband realized it, but didn’t mind a bit. Katy’s early love for her cousin had become something else entirely during the first few years Casey had known her, and he understood just how it was between them now.

“Hi, Katy-love,” Ivan Romanov said in a similar tone, within his own wife’s hearing and without the least self-consciousness about using that endearment. “What’s going on with you? Linc made it sound urgent.”