Paul took her shoulders so he could look straight into her eyes. "Jen, I know I want to be with you. The only thing I'm afraid of is losing you, of not knowing you'll be there, with me, always."
"That's what you say now. What about in five years or so, when we're maybe stationed on opposite ends of the solar system, so far apart we can't even carry on a conversation because of light-speed lag? When you're surrounded by sweet young ladies with sugary dispositions whose idea of heaven would be to spend the rest of their living days gazing adoringly at you? Are you still going to think abrasive, outspoken Jen Shen is the end-all and be-all at that point?"
"Jen, if I wanted a sweet young lady with a sugary disposition, I wouldn't have been attracted to you from the start." Jen tried to glower but ended up smiling. "We were friends long before we got serious, remember?"
"You were just desperate. You'd have been friends with a spiny-backed lobster if it'd been willing to spend time listening to you."
"Maybe, but you're nicer to look at than any spiny-backed lobster would have been."
"Not by much."
"Jen, you're beautiful."
"You're so delusional." Jen shook her head, looking away. "Paul, things have been going pretty well between us. But this isn't exactly a normal life. We see each other for brief stretches when both of our ships happen to be in port, and we always have stuff to talk about because we're living the same lives as crewmembers on warships. What about once that's over? When we've both got different jobs?"
Paul spread his hands. "Jen, I really think we'll always have plenty to talk about."
"And what if spending lots of time together makes us crazy? What if after six months of being there for each other every day we're ready to choke each other?"
"The only way we'll know the answer to that is to try. Maybe we will need extra space for ourselves, but that's not hard."
"Not hard? Have you seen the size of married living quarters on this station? We'll be bumping into each other every time we turn around."
"I like bumping into you."
"Stop it! We really need to think about this, Paul. Need to think about whether there's more to you and me together than just lust and someone convenient to talk to. Don't say it. I know some people get married for those reasons. I won't. I'd rather you left me than stay with me just because you were afraid you'd never find anyone else to share a bed with you."
Paul shook his head. "That's not what I'm thinking, and I hope you aren't, either. What are you saying? That you're not happy? That if your ship gets back and I'm not waiting on the pier, and instead you get a note from me saying that I've found someone else and it's over between us, that you'd be fine with that, Jen?"
"No, I wouldn't be fine with that. I love you. So I'd hunt you down and rip your lungs out. But wouldn't you prefer getting that kind of treatment from an ex-girlfriend instead of an ex-fiancée?"
"I'll have think about that."
"You've got three months to think about it. And so do I."
Paul felt his jaw tightening as he stared at the deck. "This wasn't how I expected things to happen, either."
"You mean just now or in general? I'm sorry, Paul. I know you're this big-time romantic who deep-down believes in true love and dreams of happily-ever-afters, but that doesn't really happen. You haven't got Cinderella. You've got me."
"I'm not exactly Prince Charming, either."
"No, but you'll do." Jen giggled as Paul gave her a sour look. "Sorry. And I do love you for who you are. Really. But tell me something honestly. If you're afraid to wait three months for an answer, or maybe longer, doesn't that mean you're really not all that sure of things? What's the rush?"
"We've been dating for about a year, now."
"Not in real time, Paul. Add up the times my ship's been out and your ship's been out or we've been on duty and couldn't see each other and you probably have only a couple of months of actually being together."
"Jen, I don't want to lose you."
"No, you don't want to
risk
losing me. Right?" She came close to him, looking straight into his eyes. "Be the guy I fell for and I won't go anywhere. Okay, I'll go wherever my ship goes, but I'll always come back."
"So will I."
"Then what's the problem? Don't answer. I know. We're both not absolutely sure if that's always going to be true. Probably we never will be. But this isn't a decision I have to make tonight. That's Jen speaking, not Cinderella. If you love me, you'll respect my reasons."
"How could I respect and love you and not respect your reasons?" Paul threw up his hands. "Very well, Lieutenant Shen. I will stand-by for further instructions."
"You will not. You will live and think and take time to decide something important to both of us. Just like me. Problem?"
"No problem." He kissed her, the gesture lingering. "What have I gotten myself into?"
"You knew who I was when you volunteered for this relationship, sailor. Come on. Let's get back inside before somebody notices we're both missing and thinks we're, like, involved or something."
They went back inside Fogarty's and had a few more drinks. Then Carl got maudlin again and they all had a few more drinks. Then Carl cheered up and they all had a few more drinks. Eventually, closing time came around, Fogarty's staff threw them out, and the ragged remnants of Carl Meadows' farewell party staggered back to the
Michaelson
, pausing only to drop Jen off at the quarterdeck of the
Maury
.
The next morning, the strung-out survivors of the farewell discovered to their horror that a no-notice "fast cruise" had been scheduled so that Captain Hayes could evaluate how well the crew handled a variety of situations. A fast cruise involved pretending the ship was underway instead of actually getting underway, but otherwise involved plenty of stress, plenty of demanding work, and plenty of alarms sounding to simulate emergencies.
Paul, like the other members of the farewell, was still sobering up when the emergency drills began. His hangover building rapidly, Paul gripped his command console in the Combat Information Center so hard his hands turned white under the pressure as the strident clamor of the general quarters alarm pounded repeatedly into his brain. He imagined his face looked just as pale as his hands at the moment. The alarm finally halted, replaced by an amplified voice booming details of the "emergency" they were to practice dealing with.
"Paul?" The voice over the comm circuit was a pained whisper.
"Yeah. Kris?"
"I think so. I'm in incredible pain."
"Me, too."
"I'm going to kill Carl."
"He didn't know they'd have all these drills today."
"I don't care. When I feel this bad, someone has to die. And I can't very well threaten to kill the captain."
"No. That always looks bad. How's Mike Bristol?"
"Last I saw, he was pretending to be alive. He wasn't too convincing, though."
"How about Carl?"
Her answer was forestalled by another urgent announcement. "This is a drill! All hands brace for collision!" A moment later, the piercing squeal of the collision alarm drove daggers into Paul's head. The alarm finally halted, leaving Paul staring cross-eyed at his console as a follow-on announcement heralded the next phase of the drill. "This is a drill. Collision has resulted in decompression of all compartments on 01 level. I say again, collision has resulted in decompression of all compartments on 01 level. All personnel on 01 level assessed dead from decompression. Damage control parties prepare to reenter 01 level and reestablish air-tight boundaries."
Paul glanced up as Chief Imari tossed aside her headset. "You heard the announcement, folks. We're all dead."
I'm dead
? "Really?"
Chief Imari looked at Paul, failed to conceal her reaction at his appearance, then shook her head. "No, sir. It's just part of the drill."
"Okay."
"Do you need some aspirin, sir?"
"How many have you got?"
Paul and the rest of the sailors in CIC spent the next hour lying on the deck pretending to be dead as survival-suited investigators, and then damage control teams, picked their way across the compartment. An occasional snore testified to some of the sailors taking advantage of the opportunity. Chief Imari's aspirin slowly brought Paul's pain level down to a tolerable level, and he managed to catch a few minutes of sleep himself.
All good things, of course, come to an end. "All hands secure from collision drill. Stand by for next event."
Chief Imari stood, stretched and roared at the sailors sprawled around CIC. "You heard the word! On your feet, you useless gaggle of neutrons."
Paul replaced his own headset, then called up the chief on a private circuit. "Neutrons, Chief?"
"Yes, sir, Mr. Sinclair. Neutrons got practically no mass."
It took Paul's still-hungover brain a moment to get it. "They're lightweights."
"Yes, sir."
"Thanks for the aspirin. I notice they've run drills in engineering, weapons and damage control so far. I bet we're next."
"I wouldn't be surprised, sir."
General quarters sounded once more, the bongs somehow penetrating the calming aspirin to hammer at Paul's head again. "This is a drill! Multiple contacts inbound."
Paul's console lit up with close to a hundred unknown contact markers, each on a different path and each radiating different information which had to be evaluated in order to guess at its identity.
Oh, this is going to be ugly
. "All right, everybody. I want a threat evaluation for all contacts based on current trajectories, then threat IDs for all contacts, then a threat hierarchy based on trajectory and probable ID. Don't depend on the targeting and tracking systems to get all that automatically. They're sure to have thrown in some curves that'll confuse the automated systems."
"You heard the lieutenant!" Chief Imari added, then she quickly divided up the tasks among the operations specialists.
The next fifteen minutes passed in a blur of activity. Paul tried to monitor everything his sailors were doing without trying to do their jobs for them. With all the information at his fingertips, it was entirely too easy to focus on the details of one small part of the job instead of keeping an eye on the big picture.
A majority of the contacts had been assigned identification when Operations Specialist Second Class Kaji called in. "Chief? I've got something funny here."
"Show me. Give the lieutenant a copy, too."
Paul frowned as his display focused on a small segment of the incoming contacts. "What's up, Kaji?"
"Sir, right here." Kaji highlighted an almost invisible contact. "It's very faint."
"What do you think, Chief?"
"I'd call it a system echo off the stronger contacts, sir. Except this is a simulation and they don't show echoes because the sims assume the systems work perfectly."
"Then what is it?"
Petty Officer Kaji spoke up. "It could be a warship, sir. With all masking systems operational."
Something clicked in Paul's memory. "It's a Pile On Maneuver."
Chief Imari sounded puzzled. "A what?"
"A Pile On Maneuver. It's a theoretical plan I got briefed on in one of my classes at the Academy. You shove a lot of debris toward your objective, then hide your own approach inside the apparently natural shower of space objects."
"Sir, how the hell would you get so much junk flying on the trajectories you need? That sounds cool in theory, but it doesn't sound very practical."
"That's why it's still a theoretical plan, Chief. But simulations don't have to worry about real-world practical considerations. I think Kaji's spotted the joker in this deck. Good job."
"Real good," Chief Imari agreed.
Paul tagged the faint contact with a 'possible warship, identity unknown' symbol, then called the bridge to verbally pass the information as well. The drill spun on for another thirty minutes of frantic activity before the screens displayed an "exercise completed" message. While Paul was still wondering how they'd done, the command circuit sounded with the voice of Captain Hayes. "Good job, Combat. You nailed that one."
Paul grinned at Chief Imari, who offered back a thumbs-up, while the enlisted trackers exchanged high fives.
After another hour of hearing drills being run elsewhere on the ship, the euphoria of doing well had faded for Paul.
Man, there's so much else I could be doing right now, but I don't dare try in case Kwan or Garcia is checking our terminals to see what we're up to. How long are we going to have to stay at general quarters
?
His headset sounded again. "Paul? Kris."
"Here. You sound better."
"I had to either get better or die. Thank God for aspirin. Have you seen Lieutenant Silver?"
"Who?"
"Lieutenant Silver. He's Carl Meadows' relief, remember?"
"Oh, yeah. No, I haven't seen him. Why would he be up here?"
"I don't know. But he's not anyplace else. Surely he reported onboard this morning."
"Why not try the quarterdeck? It's still crewed."
A brief pause followed. "Duh. I guess my brain's not working all that well, yet. Wait one." Paul waited, a task made easier by the fact he had nothing else he could do at the moment. "Okay. Chief Hadasa is officer of the deck inport. Lieutenant Silver showed up about half an hour after the fast cruise started. Since the brow had been sealed except for emergencies, they had to tell him to leave and come back later."
Paul found himself laughing. "Lieutenant Silver certainly has a remarkable sense of timing."
"You can say that again. At this rate, he and Carl may never meet. See you at lunch. If general quarters is secured by then. Maybe we'll have to eat battle rations at our combat stations."
"Ugh. Good thing Sykes got rid of the oldest rations."
"Do you really think that'll make any difference in how they taste? Later."
A weary half-hour later, the bosun mate passed the welcome word to secure from general quarters. A small cheer erupted in Combat. Paul took off his headset, rubbed one ear where the headset had rubbed it, then looked around at his division. "Good job, people."