Read Strength and Honor Online
Authors: R.M. Meluch
The admirals asked Calli for her prediction. Calli shook her head. All things being equal—and things were never equal—the Senate should elect Gaius. She answered, “I guarantee Rome will surprise me.”
———
Jose Maria de Cordillera came later in the evening to offer his congratulations to Rear Admiral Farragut and to kiss Kathy’s hand.
Jose Maria and John Farragut toasted Augustus, because no one else would. “Augustus finally found his way to the Outer Darkness,” Farragut said sadly. He and Jose Maria used to speak of such things. Rather a lot of alcohol was usually involved in those dialogues. Jose Maria offered one more opinion, “I believe not.” John Farragut objected, “Augustus was obnoxious, but I can’t think he belongs in
hell.”
“Neither can L” said Jose Maria. “I believe he is with God in heaven.”
“Isn’t that completely at odds with your creed?” Jose Maria demurred, “It is a core belief of Catholicism that Man was given free will. Augustus did not have it.” Augustus had been altered and programmed. His choices were not entirely his own. “What does that make Augustus?” Kathy asked. “An agent of God’s will,” Jose Maria proposed. “Perhaps sent to stop the Hive from destroying all God’s children. God shall take his angel back to Him.”
“Augustus? An angel?” Farragut’s eyebrows could lift no higher. “That’s some real creative theology there, Jose Maria.” But Farragut drank to the idea anyway.
When Kathy left John Farragut’s side to fix her brown hair, which was kind of all over by now, his eyes followed her till she was out of sight.
Gypsy asked, “You going to marry that girl, Admiral?”
“Yes, I am.”
“She know that yet, sir?”
“Not yet.”
“How long have you known her?” Farragut checked his chron. “Nine hours now.”
“What’s taking you so long?” said Gypsy. Gypsy’s husband, Marshal Dent, widened his eyes at that question, silently asking his wife,
Long?
Gypsy, Calli, and Farragut explained to the civilian Marshal Dent in unison, “See the target, acquire the target, secure the target.”
There was no time for fox-trotting around in between.
Farragut said, “I’m just not sure I’ve got a lock on the target.” Gypsy patted his broad shoulder. “Oh, you have tone, sir.”
The band chose that moment to play one of those songs to which anyone who had someone special must take the floor. That left Calli on the sidelines while John Farragut danced with his young woman, Gypsy Dent with her man. TR Steele, not here, was out somewhere breaking all kinds of rules to be with his someone.
As the celebration wound down, Calli told John Farragut like an afterthought, in a bad attempt to sound casual, “While I was in the burn tank I kept having a recurring dream. Kind of funny.” She made a motion to slide a long lock of hair that wasn’t there anymore behind her ear. “I dreamed Rob Roy was reading to me.
Through the Looking Glass,
if you can believe it. Then it was
Vingt mille lieues sous les mers,
I think. Different books, but the dream was always that Rob Roy was reading to me. What do you think that means?”
“You weren’t dreaming, Cal,” Farragut told her.
Unfamiliar expressions moved across Calli’s new face.
John Farragut saw Kathy home. Walked her to her door.
They had come to that moment which probably hadn’t changed ever since the invention of doors. They lingered at the threshold.
Kathy uttered the words, “Do you want to come in?”
Farragut looked up at the stars. “There is a God.”
In the morning, when Kathy looked stellar wearing just his admiral’s jacket, John Farragut asked her to marry him.
She asked him what took him so long.
The new captain of the
Merrimack
marched into the Navy lawyer’s office in the main station of Fort Eisenhower, dropped documents straight down on his desk so that they made a decided slap upon landing. “Orders,” she said as the lawyer looked up from his writing. “You’ve been reassigned.”
His face was very very young for a thirty-eight-year-old man.The beard stubble did not age him. His opaque brown eyes assumed a quizzical expression that made him look even younger. He recognized her immediately, though last time he had seen her, she had no skin.
Rob Roy Buchanan set aside his stylus and considered the top document. “I see there is a provision in the budget for a legal officer on board an RBS.”
RBS. Really Big Ship.
Merrimack
was one.
No one had asked Rob Roy if he wanted to be reassigned from his post at Fort Eisenhower.
Merrimack
had gone a long time without finding need for a legal officer. “Why does
Merrimack
need a legal officer now?”
“Captain wants one.” Rob Roy looked up from the orders. “This could be construed as harassment, Captain.”
“Yeah?” said Calli. She sat on the corner of his desk. “Read the next one.”
She was wearing tailored trousers. One long leg crossed over the other. Her foot twitched like the tip of a cat’s tail. Calli never twitched.
Rob Roy read. Read again. Brown eyes moving back and forth.
Calli’s foot was really twitching now.
Rob Roy stared at the document.
“Speak now, Robbie. There can be no hesitation on a space battleship.”
“It’s not hesitation. It’s—” looking for a word. And it better be a good one. “Wonder.” He picked up a stylus and signed his name to the second document. He handed it up to Captain Carmel. “Don’t call me Robbie.”
She slid off the desk. She gave her head a habitual toss as if she still had long tresses to swing over her shoulder instead of those cowlicked tufts that lay in a sassy mess on her head. “Can you find us a judge? I need to buy a dress. I think I want to look like a girl for this.”
There was no waiting period in the Deep End.
“You didn’t come prepared?” Rob Roy said, rising. “Inefficient, Captain.”
“I wasn’t sure what you’d say.”
“You were sure.”
“I can get scared.”
“I can find a judge before you can find a dress.”
It was nearly a tie. Calli appeared outside the judge’s chambers wearing a short champagne number. Legs same as ever, only with softer skin. She found Rob Roy waiting, clean shaved, in dress blues. Flowers and a ring box in hand. He tried to stand up straight, which made him as tall as she was in heels.
She took the flowers, took his arm.
“Is this your dream wedding, Calli?” Rob Roy asked.
A crease appeared in her smooth forehead, considering. She nodded. “Pretty close. My dream wedding was Dad’s holding the ladder and Mom’s holding the shotgun.”
“Do we have vows?”
Calli shook her head. “Let’s go traditional. Honestly, all I can think of is, ‘See the target, acquire the target, secure the target.’”
Epilogue
M
ERRIMACK’S
NEW LEGAL OFFICER
reported to the space battleship. The quartermaster showed him to the captain’s quarters, where he saluted the captain. A courier had brought a small package wrapped like a wedding gift addressed to the captain of the
Merrimack.
“We got a wedding gift from Rome,” said Calli.
“Are we sure we want to open that?” said Rob Roy.
Because it originated on Palatine, it had been through all the scanners. Twice.
It was heavy for a small box. Calli pulled back the gilt wrapping to reveal a life-sized solid gold locust. “Son of a bitch.” Calli picked it up. It had the heft of solid gold. She turned it over.
Greek characters, engraved in the golden locust’s thorax, read:
To Callista.
“Son of a bitch,” she laughed. Inscribed in Greek as it was, her name was not her name but the inscription on the golden apple—the infamous gift at the wedding of Peleus and the goddess Thetis that started the Trojan War.
Translated, it really read:
To the fairest.
Calli was not sure if he was calling her beautiful or picking a fight. “Son of a bitch.”
Rob Roy took the card that came with it. It bore only the signature, engraved in gold. Made his eyes go wide.
“Oh, that can’t be a surprise,” said Calli, reaching for the card. No one in this universe would give her a locust but Numa Pompeii.
“Oh, it is a surprise,” said Rob Roy. “A little anyway. It seems you’re not the only one with a new title, Captain Callista Carmel Buchanan.” He passed her the card.
The gold letters identified the sender:
CAESAR NUMA.
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