Elizabeth Moon - Change of Command

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“Nor I, you.”

“It’s not fair to blame you for what some ancestor of yours did—”

“ If they did,” they said in unison.

“For all they know,” Esmay said, “I’m actually the last living heir of that family, whatever its name was. Maybe they should be cheering me on, instead of hating me.”

“They don’t hate you. They’re just confused. It’s all Personnel’s fault anyway.” He reached out and touched her hair, a touch so light she could hardly feel it. Even that was risky in public; she felt her face going hot.

“Personnel’s fault?”

“Well, if they hadn’t put the rejuved admirals out of work, Grandmother wouldn’t have been bored in the family archives. Imagine what it must have taken to get her to look at a row of children’s books.”

Esmay couldn’t help giggling. “After she’d sat on the porch—is there a porch?”

“Oh, yes. She sat on the porch and looked at the lake, I’ll bet. Then she took a walk. Then she read the newsflashes, and then she thought she should do something useful and improving . . .”

“Like read children’s books.” It was hard to imagine the redoubtable Admiral Serrano reading children’s books. She must have been very bored indeed.

“I don’t want to read children’s books . . .” Barin gave her a long look.

“No . . .” She stared into the ice cream, trying not to blush again. She knew exactly what he wanted, and what she wanted.

“Esmay . . . everything’s against us—both families, the mutiny, maybe a war, the whole universe doesn’t want us to get married. They’re so sure they know why we shouldn’t, what we should do to be happy ten or twenty or fifty years from now. But I want to marry you. Do you still want to marry me?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s do it. In spite of them, in spite of the mutiny, in spite of good common sense . . . let’s do it.”

A rush of warm glowing joy suffused her, banishing embarrassment. “Yes. Oh, yes! But how?”

“If nothing else we’ll hold hands over a candle, but we have an hour—maybe more—before the ship gets here. If we don’t waste it—”

“Let’s go.”

When they looked on the board, the Rosa Gloria was seventy-two minutes from undocking. Seventy-two minutes. Finding a magistrate with the authority to perform the ceremony took thirty-three of them. Persuading him to do it—both of them talking, proving their identification, showing all the paperwork—took another twenty-six. Thirteen minutes left . . . they stood hand in hand, and the magistrate rattled through the legal requirements as fast as possible, then added something Esmay presumed was a blessing in his religion, though not in hers. Signing and stamping and sealing the various documents took another eight minutes, and they were both racing back to the Fleet side of the station as fast as they could.

“We’re crazy,” Barin said, after they’d signed through Fleet Gate. His hand felt as if it were welded to hers.

“I love you,” Esmay said. “I—rats, it’s gone yellow—”

“Come on .” Hand in hand, they ran for it, stride and stride, as faces turned toward them; people stared, someone yelled—she didn’t care. They hit the far end of the access tube just as the light turned red, and a very disgusted petty-major held her fist on the controls to let them in.

“Welcome aboard sir . . . sirs.” Her tone would have preserved fish for a century.

Behind her was a major; Esmay got her hand untangled from Barin’s, and they both saluted.

“Jig Serrano and Lieutenant Suiza, I presume?”

“Yes, sir.” She hadn’t had time to think about whether she wanted to change her name.

“You cut it rather close, didn’t you? We almost had you down as possible mutineers.”

“Us?” Barin said. He sounded outraged.

“You,” the major said. “We’re treating no-shows that way—what did you expect?”

“Sir, we need to report a change of status.”

His brows went up. “We?”

“We,” Barin said firmly.

“I assume you mean a change of status that could affect billeting,” the major said. He rolled his eyes. “All right. For now, we’re assigning transient officers half-shift duties. You’ll be on second shift, second half for now. Let’s see—Lieutenant Suiza, we’ll be meeting Navarino when the battle group is formed, and you’ll be rejoining her—she’s in jump transit right now. Jig Serrano, you were about to leave Gyrfalcon , but the ship you were assigned to has gone over to the mutineers, so your assignment’s still up in the air.”

“ Goshawk went over?”

“So I hear.”

“But it wasn’t anywhere near Copper Mountain—”

“Serrano, I don’t know any more than I’ve said. For now, you can wait for your chance at Admin and the captain in the junior officers’ mess.”

“Yes, sir.”

The junior officers’ mess was a buzzing hive of ensigns, jigs and lieutenants, who were much more interested in the latest news than in personal matters. Once they found that Barin and Esmay had not spent the two hours onstation watching newsvids, they went back to rehashing Fleet gossip. Barin and Esmay were able to sit together in a corner of the room, shoulder just touching shoulder, as they watched the status board for their turn to report to the captain.

“You’ve what ?” Captain Atherton said.

“Got married, sir,” Esmay said. As senior, she had made the announcement.

“But—but you didn’t tell anyone.”

“No, sir.” Never mind that her CO, and Barin’s, were perfectly aware of the engagement.

“Your paperwork’s not even complete.”

“No, sir.” She didn’t explain about that, either, or the unlikelihood that it would be complete any time in the foreseeable future.

“You know this could be voided by Personnel—”

“Yes, sir.” She heard the stubborn tone in her own voice. Personnel could void what it wanted, but in her heart she was married, and nothing could change that.

“Why—no, never mind why. Because you’re both idiots with dung for brains, pulling a stunt at a time like this.”

“That’s why, sir,” Esmay ventured. “Things keep happening and we wanted—”

“This is not a romance storycube, Lieutenant. This is a warship in time of war. I don’t care if you two are in love or if someone spiked your cocktail . . . we don’t have time for this. You shouldn’t even be on the same ship.”

Esmay stole a glance at Barin, who stole a glance back. They hadn’t been on the same ship when they weren’t married, since the Koskiusko .

“Why couldn’t you just have had mad passionate sex and gotten over it? Why did you have to get married?” Atherton turned to Barin. “Do you have any idea what your grandmother’s going to do to me when she finds out?”

“It’s not your fault, sir.” Barin looked a little grim, and Esmay knew what he was thinking. It wasn’t the captain of this ship who would bear the brunt of Admiral Serrano’s anger.

“No, it’s not, but she’ll blame me for not stopping it. You—” He stopped in mid-bellow. “You’re not laughing, are you?”

“No, sir,” they said.

“Good. Because while this entire situation is so bad that laughter is the only sane response, I don’t like to be laughed at, and I’m not laughing, so you can’t laugh with me.” He shook his head at them. “This happens in every crisis we have. I don’t know what it is about youngsters—and you, Lieutenant Suiza, are really too old for that category—but every time there’s a military crisis, a bunch of you decide to leap into the sack, and a few of those leap into marriage. It must be some atavistic quirk from the childhood of humankind.”