Walter Williams - The Praxis

It was fully five hours before Martinez found out the enemy weren’t all dead.Majesty of the Praxis, Fanaghee’s flagship, fired a full twelve-missile salvo, each missile taking a wildly different track towardCorona. The different tracks meant they arrived at different times, and provided plenty of time for Kelly and Martinez, working together, to hit them all with the defensive lasers—all save one, which targetedCorona’s hitherto useless decoy and blew it up.

The missiles, fired from a standing start, never gained enough speed en route to successfully evadeCorona’s defenses. Knocking them down became sport: Martinez found that he enjoyed the kind of synchrony into which he and Kelly fell as they chose and destroyed the targets; and he enjoyed her broad grin as she aimed and fired, and her little contralto yelp of triumph when she scored a hit.

After the missiles were disposed of, Martinez ordered the acceleration reduced to half a gravity and called the cooks to ask ifCorona’s victory feast was salvageable. The cooks’ opinion was that the captain’s and officers’ suppers, with their delicate sauces applied liberally to the kitchen walls during the period of zero gee, were probably beyond hope, but that the heartier meal intended for the crew was probably capable of resuscitation. Martinez told them to get busy in the kitchen, and when they reported success, told the crew they could take off their vacuum suits and go in shifts to dinner.

He ate on the second shift himself, after appointing Vonderheydte officer of the watch and leaving him strict instructions to call if anything changed. There were only eight crew eating on the second shift, served by the three cooks, and all ate in the enlisted mess, officers and enlisted together. The few diners made a lot of noise, however, and the mood was exuberant, the crew loudly thankful they’d evaded danger. Martinez noticed only one quiet crewman among the others, the captain’s secretary, Saavedra, who spoke little, frowned into his meal, and chewed with solemn deliberation.

Martinez sat opposite Kelly. The lanky cadet was still wearing the broad grin she’d displayed when splashing oncoming missiles, and Martinez found himself reliving the escape with her, missile for missile, shot for shot. Exhilarated with relief and the memory of shared terror, they diagrammed shots in the air with their hands and talked in a rush, each sentence tumbling over the one before.

I’m alive!Martinez thought. For the first time he allowed himself to bask in this miracle.I’m alive!

“I was terrified you wouldn’t use the key when I tossed it to you,” Martinez said. “I was afraid you’d stand on regulations and refuse.”

“When eight missiles were heading for us?” Kelly laughed. “I’m as devoted to the regs as anyone, but devotion can only go so far.”

Alive!Martinez thought. Joy bubbled through his blood like champagne.

He joined Kelly in the elevator that took them to Command deck. “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks for working so well with me.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, and then added, “my lord.”

The elevator stopped and Martinez began to step out, then hesitated. Wild impulse fluttered in his chest. “I don’t mean to offend,” he said, “but would you like to drop another deck with me and, ah, celebrate our survival?”

The recreation chambers were one bulkhead below their feet. Kelly looked at him in surprise. “Aren’t our tummies a little full right now?” she said.

“You could get on top,” Martinez explained. “I wouldn’t have my weight on you that way.”

She barked a short, incredulous laugh, and gazed out of the elevator to the corridor outside, as if expecting an audience for this surprising comedy routine. “Well, Lord Lieutenant,” she said, “I have a guy on Zanshaa, and it seemsCorona’s going back there.”

“I understand.”

“And it’s a bad idea to get involved with a senior.”

“That’s wise,” Martinez nodded.

She looked up at him. Her black eyes glittered and her broad grin was still plastered to her face. “You know what?” she said. “The hell with all that. We’vealready broken all the rules.”

“That’s right,” Martinez agreed, “we have.”

The “biological recreational chambers”—so infamous outside the Fleet, and the subject of endless jokes both inside the Fleet and out—originated not in the lustful mind of some Fleet holejumper, but as an unstated confession of bewilderment by the Great Masters themselves. The Shaa, after their conquest of Terra, were perplexed by the varieties of sexuality displayed by their new conquests, and had wisely made no attempt to regulate any of its variety. Instead they’d insisted, in the most unsentimental, practical way, on minimizing the consequences: every Terran female had to be given a contraceptive implant at some point during her fourteenth year. Any woman having reached twenty-two, the age of maturity, could have the implant removed at any time by a physician, while younger women required the permission of a parent or guardian. The number of unwanted children, though not eliminated altogether, was at least brought within manageable levels.

The Fleet’s attitude toward sexuality was even less sentimental, if possible, than that of the Shaa. Though officially the Fleet claimed it didn’t care who coupled with whom, customs had developed over the centuries to restrain at least a few of the crew’s impulses. Division chiefs were discouraged from relations with their subordinates, because of the danger of coercion or of playing favorites. Relations between officers and enlisted were likewise discouraged, at least if they belonged to the same ship—Martinez’s connection with Warrant Officer Taen was well within the Fleet’s range of tolerance. And relations between the captain and any of his crew was not only considered a violation of custom, but bad luck as well.

A loophole served the officers, however, since they were allowed servants, with whom recreationals were unlimited. But this happened less often than an observer might expect: Martinez suspected that living with a paid companion in the close confines of a warship was too much like the least attractive aspects of a marriage—all the boredom and constraint of living intimately with a person one simply couldn’t escape, and all without the relaxation and charm of getting away from routine to visit a lover in her own place.

Coronahad eight recreation tubes, two of them forward and reserved for officers. Martinez properly logged himself into the recreation chamber so that Vonderheydte could page him if he was needed. Martinez was expecting missile launches or some other emergency any second, and there was little time for preliminary caresses or endearments. He was surprised at the desperate quality of his own desires, the unexpected fury of his lust. Kelly mirrored his urgency, lost in explosive pleasure nearly from the start, clutching at him with the little red-knuckled fists at the end of her long, slim forearms.Alive! he thought.Alive!

Afterward, with Kelly’s head resting on his chest, he wondered how long he dared remain here, how much he should permit himself to relax. He badly wanted to remain in the small tubelike room scented with the odors of clean sheets and the distant undertaste of disinfectant, to close his eyes, and to let the muscles bruised with high gravities relax into the mattress under the light weight of half a gravity. And he wondered how many of the other recreational tubes on the ship were occupied at that moment, with other crew celebrating their escape from death.

It wasn’t a call from Command that brought him to full alertness, but a nearby crash, a sound like the contents of an overfull closet spilling out. A crash that was followed immediately afterward by a long, bellowing laugh.