East Coast Gazette

To answer a quick few things people have thrown out there: I’m not really avoiding anything other than other writing projects that aren’t entertaining me as much as this one — and — this isn’t *really* an AU of the ridiculously meta story I wrote anymore, as you can see how there aren’t any real references to the Ancients here, but it was definitely the inspiration of said story.

“It’s white cotton,” Holland said, rolling his eyes.  “They’ll have immediate flashbacks to all the girls they knew in the fifth grade, and the ones who get off on that are not the ones you want to be dating, Dr. Noreen.”

She gave him a dyspeptic look.  “Forgive me if I don’t trust your romantic judgment.”

“The last date you went on, you got nervous,” Holland said, numbering the points on his fingers, “you got extremely drunk, and then you fell down an escalator and destroyed your knee—I think anybody can give you better romantic advice than you give yourself.”

After she threw him out of her apartment, she went and sat in her living room to gaze out at the peaks of the city and the spikes of tall buildings.  Laila lived in a sprawling upper-story penthouse crammed between a piano bar that swept over the floor below and a manuscripts library that stretched out overhead, and so when she wasn’t listening to the echo of Holland’s voice in her hangar she was listening to the hush and murmur of feet above, the tinkling of music underneath her rugs.

It had been a little over five years since the war had ended, and every day, the Alliance patched yet another corner of itself.  The Babylonian Gardens had opened the second year after, the canals had been put back into work a few months after that.  A few weeks ago, there’d been a cheer throughout the galaxy after the curfews and document requirements for interplanetary travel had been formally dismissed.  The scars of the Twenty-Five Years’ War were still there, but they were fading, and each day the shattering memories were growing dimmer and dimmer.  People were back at their old jobs, opening stores and buying cars, traveling, falling into and making love—people were living again.

Laila had been born the day the first shot of the war had been fired, and all she’d ever known had been shaped by war.

She’d never known pleasure cruises of spiral galaxies or taken afternoon trips to resort moons, vacationed in the gray desert craters or swam in the hotsprings that welled up from still-molten cores.  She’d never gone to primary or secondary school or fretted over a junior high dance—the first time her heart had broken was at seventeen when the first love letter she got from her father’s best agent was also the last, his status always to be missing in action.  Laila had never known anything but Nibbana—it’s hugeness and its defenses that up like the wings of birds and sank as deep at the bottom of the sea, the entire city an articulated fortress.

She had grown up at her mother’s knee, crouched in an ocean of dangerous machinery and live wires, watching her mother feel through the guts of metal warships and weapons, as casual and unafraid with death machines as she’d always been with Laila.  Her father had been a cryptographer, and she remembered sitting in his lap as he worked over pages of dots and squiggles, plates of colors, a kaleidoscope of color and sound and images and languages that were all wartime secrets, the language of spies, her father had told her.  Despite the accolades and attention over the Ganymede, Laila had never bought into her own exceptional nature; she’d simply gotten an early start and extraordinarily good genes—the Ganymede warships had been written into her DNA as surely as her lactose intolerance and hair color.

Laila’s mother died first, killed by one of her own creations and her father had followed four months after, captured by Vorian guerillas while passing a message to their agents on the Northern Plain.  No one was ever old enough to be an orphan, Laila knew, because even though she’d never really been a child, she’d been too young nineteen to be completely alone, and it had been a year before she had gathered courage to open the deposit box her parents left her.  She was half-crazed from lack of sleep and burning for revenge, still hollowed out by grief, when the bank agent had handed her the container.

They’d left her a book of pressed flowers, the delicate lace of purple violets flat on the pages, peonies, roses, a daisy.  They’d given her their wedding rings—Laila had always wondered if they’d ever had them; her mother said they got in the way at work, and her father said he never wore one because he was susceptible to peer pressure—and she had cried and clutched at them, trying hard to breathe around the hugeness of the loss.

They’d left her a letter written in a mesh of Greek and hieratic and English and the shorthand of a mother and father to a child—written in apologies.

Laila drew her hand across the wide glass windows in her living room, touched the blur of lights outside and thought about everybody in their homes, laughing with their lovers and fighting with their husbands and teasing their siblings, letting the suffocation of war slide slowly from their shoulders.  Downstairs, the piano flirted with a trumpet, coy, and if she walked out onto her terrace, she could lie on the terrascaped grass and let the pink flowers from her neighbor’s magnolia trees drift into her face—she could take one and press it into her parents’ book, ready another bank box just in case.

She closed her eyes and leaned against the glass.

Laila had the sudden, silent thought that she hated war, that she would always wear it like an ugly scar on a beautiful woman, and that of everyone she’d ever met, Laila thought maybe Colonel Helion would understand best if she were to say it out loud.

*

The Faberge Eggs had been on the Telemachus for less than an hour before Egg 2 managed to corner Argent near the medical labs and confess his love, complete with damp eyes and trembling lips—sans glittery lip gloss today.
“I’m flattered, really,” Argent tried.  He could hear somebody trying to stifle high-pitched laughter just behind him in the infirmary and vowed to kill them with his bare hands after all of this was over.  “But I’m all old and grizzled from war, and you deserve somebody somebody better and smarter and other things.”

Holland made a bleating noise.  “But the way I’m feeling—it’s real, Colonel.”

Argent inched incrementally further away along the steel wall and narrowed his eyes.

“You don’t have some kind of strange military fetish, do you?” he asked, and then regretted it immediately when Holland seemed to consider it and then find the whole idea exciting.  “Forget I said that,” Argent commanded.

“Just give me a chance,” Holland pleaded.  “I’m the age of consent!”

“Not my consent,” Argent countered.  Where was Laila?  Wasn’t she supposed to keep a leash on this kid?  Did she just let him wander around strange warships and proposition commanding officers, destroying their sense of detached cool with their subordinates left and right?  No wonder General Zhang had sent that I Heard About Dr. Noreen; I’m So Sorry basket of fruit shaped like flowers.  “Holland, I’m sorry, it’s just not going to work out.”

The kid looked like he was two beats away from flinging himself at Argent and just hoping for the best and most nude outcome when Laila zoomed suddenly down the hallway, snagging Holland by his back collar as she went and calling back over her shoulder:

“I’m just borrowing him to fix your heat dispersion unit!”

“Colonel!” Holland wailed back at him.  “I’ll never love again!”

Argent called back, “Keep him!” before feeling a pang of sympathy for his engineers.

There was another muffled laugh from inside the infirmary and Argent decided that retreat was probably the better part of humiliation management here and sneaked away to the bridge to lick his wounded dignity and nurse his mortification.  More than gray hairs or falling asleep during the seven o’clock news or inexplicable joint pain, Argent thought the true sign you were getting older was that tipping point where getting sexually harassed by cute teenagers failed entirely to be flattering and went straight to creepy.

“Roy,” he said, pinging his second, “I think we’re just about ready for launch.”

“So you’re doing hiding from Egg 2?” Roy asked, sounding entirely too innocent.

Argent scowled.  “You know it’s technically illegal to monitor the ship’s security feeds  for fun like that and violate everybody’s privacy.”

“You’re right, sir,” Roy agreed, voice bright.  “I’ll just tender my resignation and leave your enormous pile of paperwork on your desk then.”

“Shut up and have a cup of coffee ready for me when I get to the bridge,” Argent muttered, and felt an increasing sense of despair about his ability to control his own crewmembers.  His entire engineering crew would probably be ready to mutiny by day two if Laila and Holland kept pulling, well, Laila and Hollands on them.

“What’s our progress?” he asked as soon as he stepped onto the bridge, heading for the Telemachus’ systems monitors.  Roy cleared his throat and handed Argent a coffee, saying:

“The Telemachus is fully loaded with armaments, the shields have been checked and rechecked, and all fifty-six fighters in the east and west hangars are functional and prepped in case of altercation.  All crew and civilians on board are present and accounted for and supplies are loaded, with payload coming in within the one ton margin of error.”

Argus took a sip of the coffee and winced.  “This is vile.”

“I made that, sir,” Roy said, frowning, and continued, “The rest of the escort—made up of the Orpheus and Tithonus cruisers—have also reported in and are ready to launch at your signal.  The grand council has pinged four times to ask what’s taking so long, and the head of the apprenticeship program at the ISA sent a fourteen page email detailing Holland’s potential food allergies.”  Roy glanced at his watch.  “Also, we’re now running thirteen minutes late.”

“Awesome,” Argent decided, tossed his now-empty cup at the nearest recycler, and said, “Let’s get this clusterfuckery on the road then.”

By lunch, Holland was trailing after one of the ship engineers, Private McLachlan, like he’d never felt such a timeless passion, and Argent couldn’t help but think the kid was a little bit of a shit for somebody who’d professed his hot, panting love just four hours ago.

Laila sat down next to him in the mess, knocking her shoulder against his.

“I wouldn’t feel too bad about it,” she counseled, smiling kindly.  “Holland’s extremely seventeen years old—they’re all like that, I think.”

Argent flushed.  “But he—”

“I know,” Laila interrupted.

“And he—” Argent tried again, waving his hands in the air.  “He cried.”

There was a blur of people around them: officers, enlisted men and women, scientists, diplomats, a wave of chatter in a dozen different languages and dialects rising up in a smog of talk.  His crew was friendly but always wary, and the lightheartedness on this trip, the lack of anticipation, was a good look on his people: they looked happy, proud, and he kept seeing everybody cluster in small groups to gossip about their first meetings with Laila, with Holland, and Argent couldn’t help but to feel happy and proud for them, too.  The Telemachus was the finest military escort in the Alliance—no other crew would have been trusted with the greatest mind in the four galaxies and her wayward ward.

“He does that,” she assured him.  “When he was ten, he became violently in love with me and beamed sonnets all over the sides of buildings in most of the North Quadrant weeping of his unrequited feelings—child protective services actually had to come and make sure I wasn’t like, molesting him.”

“He told me he would never love again,” Argent concluded, feeling stupider with every word that came out of his mouth.

Laila winced.  “I heard.  I have got to stop letting him watch so much TV.”

Holland’s addiction to bad television and the gossip rags was epic, and even having known him for less than a month Argent knew the kid was practically wired into an entertainment system.  Everybody who came into contact with Holland Rels heard either about the explosive sexual appetites of monarchs in the country of Naal on Abidine or started fighting with him about who deserved to win the latest cycle of Survivor: Menlo Ice Tundra.  (Holland said DaQuira clearly won it on dignity, vision, and the ability to scratch peoples’ eyes out alone; Argent privately thought Juu had more than fairly earned his tiara, but figured that clinging to what remained of his dignity as a battle-worn warship commander was more important than picking that fight with a seventeen year-old.)

“When does he even find the time?” Argent asked.  “Doesn’t he work for you?”

“Well,” Laila said, frowning across the room to where Private McLachlan was starting to look like she might break Holland in half if he didn’t leave her alone.  Holland simpered some more, and Laila sighed deeply.  “He does, and he works a lot, but Holland’s a genius—things that could take us hours or days only take seconds for him.”

Argent was unconvinced.  “You’re supposedly a genius, too.”

“I’ve peaked,” Laila said, risking another glance across the room to see Holland staring across a mess table—fatuous expression on his face—watching McLachlan pick at her food.

Argent snorted.  “Sure—because anybody could have designed the ship that ended the war with one shot.”

They’d all heard, anecdotally, that the war council had an ace up its sleeve, that the money he’d pleaded for his troops and had been denied was all being funneled into a project that might end the war.  “Might?” Argent remembered roaring at somebody in the budgeting office.  “We’re betting the lives of my men on ‘might?’”  But he also remembered the morning the rumors started circulating among the enlisted men—the murmur that had started from the frontline infantry up to the armored brigades all the way up the brass until one of Argent’s men had burst into the control room of the Telemachus and said, “Sir, you have to see this.”

“There were plenty of bullets before,” Laila reminded him.

“Laila,” Argent said to her, trying to temper the shiver he still got at the memory of seeing the Ganymede the first time.

“There’s a reason most soldiers salute when they see you in the street.  I wrote you a letter after that ship was unveiled.”

She blinked at him, looking very young.  “You did?”

He had.  He remembered the tense, silent thirty-four hours after the Ganymede had sailed into the ocean of stars in the last crags of the contested region.  It’d been enormous, hard to wrap his mind around the size and spectacle of it—gleaming and sharp-edged, dangerous as it prowled through the wargrounds, where other spaceships and warcraft had simply parted in its path.  Argent remembered being pinged by the Ganymede’s commander, standing on the prow of the Telemachus and feeling exhaustion to his bones after holding the front lines for a week and a half.  When the communication link had been established, there was just the image of General Hopper’s familiar face as he said, “Colonel, how about we tag you out?”

“Sir?” he’d asked, gaping at the stars and medals on the man’s chest.  They didn’t send generals this far out into the warzone and hadn’t for as long as Argent could remember.

“Don’t worry, Colonel,” the general had reassured him, winking.  “We got this covered.”

The Vorian faction ship had fired, and the Ganymede had fired back after sending one simple message to the rest of the Allied fleet:

Raise your shields to maximum power and take defensive cover.

There had been a few skirmishes after, mostly for show, and an agonizing diplomatic process into which he’d been conscripted by Hopper, who claimed he was “grooming” Argent but mostly felt like a punishment.  All in all, it’d been another six months after the Ganymede had destroyed the Vorians’ most deadly warship with one shot before he’d set foot back on Nibbana for any significant length of time, and the first thing he did was write Laila a letter.

“I did,” Argent confided, smiling at her.  “I wrote to thank you, for not making me send any more young men to die.”
She blushed and said, “Oh.”

Argent stared at her for a long minute, watched the pink creep down her cheeks and the smooth curve of her neck, disappearing underneath the white collar of her button-down shirt before he cleared his throat and turned back to where Holland was still sighing loudly, eyes starry with young love.

“Has he ever managed to scam anybody into returning his affections?” Argent asked.

“Not really,” she said mildly, “although he did harass one of the ISA’s legal interns into going to the New Year’s party with him last year.”

Argent smiled.  “Baby steps, Dr. Noreen.”

“Indeed,” she agreed, yelped, and leapt to her feet to run across the mess when she saw Private McLachlan make a grab for Holland’s neck, shouting, “Private!  Private!  Stop!  He has a sickness!  He can’t help himself!”