Lt. Reilly 2321

Chapter 3: One Night

I never realized just how good I had it in the military. The crew quarters on a starship for a low-level officer wasn't much to be happy about; an upper and lower bunk, two-foot lockers and a single writing desk. If you were lucky, your bunkmate would be on a different watch and wouldn't be around when you wanted to get some shuteye or enjoy a few minutes of solitude. Yet the recreational facilities on most of the military starports were luxurious by comparison. On a typical service rotation, I would get two weeks shore leave twice a year at whatever port of call our ship would be sent to for supplies and maintenance. We could leave and explore whatever planet we were on, but unless you had an unlimited amount of civilian currency, you were stuck staying in the base's accommodations. I would get a room to myself with a real mattress, clean sheets, full wall video screen with all the network channels and access, a full kitchen that had a direct grocer's terminal that could deliver whatever goods were available on a fleet allowance, through a mag tube delivery system, a full and private bathroom that often had both a bath and shower and a complete laundry and press unit built into the wall. Some of the other officers complained about how bland and generic the military accommodations were and how it was better to cash in some of their savings to stay in civilian resorts, but I just enjoyed the freedom of no duty for a couple of weeks. To be able to sleep in, eat a meal that I cooked myself and shower for a long as I wanted was all the vacation I ever needed.

The room Kayla and I walked into made my bunk on the T.S.S Orlando seem classy. This place that I had paid nearly a week's wages for one night left a lot to be desired. There was one full-sized bed with a stained covering on it and a stack of semi-clean sheets folded on top, next to bare and stained pillows. There was a dresser with two broken drawers, an eight-inch vid screen that required a fee to use and a hanger bar with two hangers that substituted for a closet.

“I've stayed in worse," Kayla said as she headed toward the bathroom. “Do you mind if I shower first?"

“Go ahead," I said, not giving it much thought. She smiled, darted into the bathroom, closed the door and locked it in less than a subtle way. I put my pack on the dresser, opened it like I was about to unpack and then decided it wasn't worth the bother. Kicking my shoes off, I sat on the bed and looked at the cost of watching a show on the vid, but it was more than I wanted to spend. So, I crossed my arms, leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes. There was a ringing in my ears that I always got whenever I was off the ship. I had become so accustomed to the hum and rattles of a starship that my ears strained against the silence when it wasn't all around me. Sometimes I could ignore it, but other times it was enough of a distraction that it was difficult to get a good night's sleep. Yet, on this day I was tired enough to eventually fade into sleep despite the noise.

I'm not sure how much time had passed, but the next thing I knew, Kayla was standing over me, running her fingers across my cheek and saying, “the shower is all yours."

I opened my eyes to see her, standing next to the bed, wrapped in a towel that was barely big enough to cover both her breasts and waist. She had beautiful long legs that glistened with the yellow light from the nightstand, her long blond hair was free of its braid, and she had it draped across her chest, brushing it, with my brush, from her shoulders, down over her belly. Her smile was warm, and her eyes seemed inviting. For a moment I wondered if she had second thoughts about the details of our arrangement, but only for a moment.

“I'm sorry, what did you say?" I asked. Having paid more attention to the gentleness of her touch on my face than the words she was saying.

“You can have the shower now," she said, still smiling down at me.

“I don't know," I said, “I'm kind of comfortable right here. Maybe I'll just wait until morning."

Her face cringed somewhat as if I had just said a bad joke. “If you don't mind, I would rather you took a shower now. You're kind of stinking up the place." She then tapped the top of my head like my older sister use to do when she felt I had said something stupid. Then she sat herself on the edge of the bed, continuing to brush her hair, concentrating on combing the knots out. I carefully moved my legs off the bed, my knee starting to bug me again, and forced myself to my feet, trying my best not to grunt like an old man. I was mostly relieved that Kayla didn't have any ideas that would change our arrangements. Yet a devious part of me was starting to surface, and I was having more than a few thoughts that would complicate things.

Making my way to the bathroom, I noticed why Kayla wanted to take her shower first. The planet was on water rations, which meant the sink, toilet and shower were all on a water recycling system. That also explained why the room cost as much as it did. Part of it was the purchase of 20 gallons of clean water. Unfortunately, the transparent tank that held the fresh water was empty, and the tank with the dark and cloudy dirty water was full. I pushed the filter button on the wall and a pump pushed the dirty water through a system that filters out most of the contaminates and filled the clean tank back up. Even with two or three uses, the water should have been crystal clear, but what I was looking at was cloudy and slightly yellow. “Just how long was she in here," I wondered. “Oh well. It's not like it's going to kill me," I muttered as I stripped off my clothes that were rather ripe from a very long day and stepped into the cylinder style shower designed to collect every drop used. With the push of another button, a harsh spray of water and chemical soap ran around me in a controlled wash function designed to give the maximum clean with the least amount of water and soap. The process took all of five minutes. With the fresh water tank drained a group of dryers came on, but not in the way they were supposed to. Some of the air nozzles sputtered and stopped blowing air, and the one on the lower half of my backside went on high with searing hot air. I jumped, slapped the off switch and exited the shower still dripping wet. Grabbing the one remaining towel, I dried myself, wrapped it around my waist and collected my dirty clothes into a plastic bag provided for such things.

I walked back into the room covered only with the towel around my waist. Kayla was still sitting on the corner of the bed brushing her hair when she looked back at me. Her nonchalant expression changed to surprise and pity as she saw the scars on my right arm, leg and chest. To me, they didn't seem so bad considering how much of my flesh was lost at the time of the enemy attack that ended my career, but she had never seen me before in any state of undress and was unprepared.

“What the hell happened to you?" she asked, as she stood and walked over to me.

“I told you that I was injured during the war," I replied as I grabbed my sweat-shorts and put them on before removing the towel to preserve some modesty. She continued to walk up to me, readjusting her towel that nearly slipped off as she moved.

“Does it hurt?" she asked reaching out to the most significant scar the covered most of the left side of my chest.

“Nope," I answered. “The docs are pretty good about fixing people up. At least the muscle and tissue damage is mostly gone. The skin is something the military doesn't spring for, but they say once my Vet benefits kick in I can have the cosmetic surgery done at a civilian clinic."

“How did it happen?" she asked. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't discussed it with anyone outside of the shrinks at the military hospital. I hated being psychoanalyzed by a bunch of recent med school grads with fake sympathy smiles who never saw a day of combat, yet all insisted that they knew what I was going through. The truth was they were looking for clues in every little thing I said and did to determine just how messed up I really was. Yet, standing there in front of Kayla was different. She wanted to know, not because it was her job, but because she really gave a damn. So, I grabbed a t-shirt, pulled it on, opened the other bottle of beer that she bought and made my way over to the bed. Once I had myself propped up against the wall in a comfortable position, I opened the beer, took a drink and gestured for her to sit on the other end.

“Um... I don't suppose you have any clothes I can borrow?" she asked modestly.

Most of what I owned was in a storage locker back on Earth, including civilian clothes. What I carried with me was a couple of pants, a few shirts and a week's worth of t-shirts, boxers, and socks. I didn't need much more as when I was working, I would be wearing whatever uniform coveralls the ship provided.

“Help yourself," I said feeling a little more generous with my feet up and half a beer in my belly.

She fished through my pack and then stopped and turned back to me. “Close your eyes," she insisted.

I considered pointing out that the towel she was currently wearing didn't leave a lot to the imagination, so closing my eyes wouldn't make much of a difference. But I decided that being obnoxious with her wouldn't make the evening go any more smoothly, so I did as she asked. After a few moments, she sat on the edge of the bed and told me I could open my eyes. She had put on a pair of my boxers that were too big for her and one of my sleeveless t-shirts that barely contained her top half. “So, what happened?" she asked going back to her question about how I got hurt.

“About a year and a half ago I was on my fourth tour aboard the Orlando. It's a deep space battle frigate. We were on patrol in the Procyon sector when we responded to a distress call from one of the colonies out there. I can't remember which one. Not that it makes any difference. There aren't any windows down in engineering, and the Captain never discusses tactics or battle plans with us. All I know is the alarm for battle stations sounded, the ship took several impacts from the enemy ordinance, and at one point the regulator system for engines number two that I was working on blew up in my face. The next thing I knew I was waking up in the hospital on the Biloxi Base. I had lost two weeks and half my right leg."

She looked down at my legs to see if she could tell the difference between the real one and the artificial one.

“Oh, it's as real as they come. They took some of my own stem cells and reprogrammed them to grow an entirely new leg from the knee down. It took three months on my back in a tissue stimulator bed, but they grew it back."

“If it's as good as new, why can't you walk on it right?" she asked.

“Well, apparently there was some nerve damage that they didn't identify before they programmed the stem cells, so there are parts of the new ligaments that didn't mend. They say it's kin to having a birth defect. I can have surgery to fix it, but again, I have to wait for the government to get my benefits approved and active. The reality is there are millions of other vets out there in much worse shape than me who need the help. So, I don't mind waiting my turn."

She ran her fingers on the underside of my foot causing it to twitch, making her jump at the same time. “Sorry, I'm a little ticklish," I said.

“So, why did you sign on to Gerald's ship?" she asked.

That was a good question. I had told myself it was because the old lady who owned the shipping company was willing to pay more to have an experienced Alliance engineer on her son's ship, but that wasn't the reason. I took another liberal sip of the beer and considered the question for a moment. “I guess I didn't know what else to do. I joined the service right out of high school and was trained in everything there is to know about starships. But in the civilian world that doesn't mean a whole lot. I don't see myself sitting at a desk all day, and with my knee, there isn't a whole lot of service jobs I can do. So I looked for someone, anyone who needed an engineer for a ship. At the time the deal with the Glacier Runner seemed as good as any. I could have headed back to Earth, stayed with a relative and waited for something better to come along, but that isn't me. I hate being a burden on anyone and running my own engine room was as close as I was going to get to being my own boss. So if it wasn't the GR, it would have been something just like it." I took another drink of my beer and asked, “How about you? Why did you sign aboard?"

She looked away and then down at the hairbrush. Picking a few strands of hair from it, I could tell that she was trying to decide if she wanted to share. After a few moments, she said, “About three years ago I was serving on a Holongen yacht as a chambermaid. The owner was King Kilony. He wasn't a real King, but his family was so rich that they owned a couple of planets, so he declared himself King. He would cruise his yacht around the star system that had his properties to collect his profits and would often invite his friends and people he was doing business with to join him. What I didn't know when I signed on was that he expected his maids to entertain him and his guests doing whatever perverted desire they had." She took another drink and wiped a tear away from her face. “There had been times when I let a guy take me home for a night to get a hot meal and to get out of the cold. But that was because I didn't have a choice. I never did that stuff for money, and I refused to be a w***e for that bastard. I was able to do my job, cleaning rooms and serving food for the first couple of weeks without being called upon to do more as the other girls were more ready and willing. But then one of Kilony's friends came on board and took a liking to me; a fat, bald old man whose smile made my flesh crawl. He requested that I bring a platter of desserts to his stateroom. When I got there, he told me to get on the bed naked and to cover myself with the food. So, I smiled and threw the cheese knife at him. I ran and tried to hide out in one of the cargo bays, but they found me and had me arrested at the next port for attempted murder."

“How did you get out of that?" I asked.

“When they realized that my statements as to why I did what I did would be public record, they decided to drop the charges and throw me out into the streets. Of course, they took off with all of my belongings still on their ship." She pulled at the label on her beer container and stopped talking for a while, but I could tell that she had more to say.

'Then what?" I asked.

“I begged for a while and then eventually got a job in a bar where I worked for tips. Some nights I would make enough to eat and a place to sleep, other nights I would have to choose one or the other. I lived like that for about six months. Then one day I met Tommy. He was the engineer before you. He told me that he was looking for an assistant. Even though I didn't know anything about fixing things, he was willing to teach me. So, I said yes and for the next couple of years it was great. I learned anything anyone was willing to teach me, from how to hack into the food processors to increase our ration allowance to how to fly the ship. Then Gerald showed up and fired the Captain. It was downhill from there. He started treating everyone like crap and one by one all of my friends left to find better work. I didn't have that option, so I stuck around and tried to make the best of it."

“Huh," I said, as her story was somewhat different than the rumors that I heard about her.

“What?" she asked.

Quickly I fibbed and said, “Never heard of anyone owning their own planet before."

She laughed and then tickled the bottom of my foot again. I jumped and then threw a pillow at her. She screamed and laughed as she retaliated by trying to splash the last of her beer on me. I hit her with the other pillow, and she fell back over the corner of the bed and onto the floor. As she got to her feet still laughing the boxers, she was wearing slipped right off her slender hips and to her feet. Quickly she grabbed one of the pillows to cover herself and then said, “Look away damn it."I wondered if she was genuinely feeling shy or just acting that way so I wouldn't judge her. Either way, it didn't matter. I was determined not to let anything happen despite the demon on my shoulder whispering dirty thoughts in my ear.

“What do you say we call it a night?" I said as I got up and turned my back to her to give her a chance to pull the shorts up and tie a knot in them to keep them on. I then pulled the comforter off the bed and folded it in half and laid it out on the floor as a makeshift sleeping bag. I then grabbed one of the pillows and dropped it at one end. “You go ahead and take the bed."

“No," she said. “You paid for the room; you should get the bed. That was our arrangement."

“Yeah, well, I can never sleep on soft beds anyways. The floor will be better for me."

“Are you sure?" she asked, looking hard at me to determine if I was bullshitting her or not.

“Absolutely," I said in a tone that was less convincing than I was going for.

“Okay," she said pulling the sheet back and climbing in. “You really are a nice guy Reilly."

“Yep, that's me. Mr. Nice Guy. The story of my life." I switched off the light, carefully lowered myself to the floor and made myself as comfortable as I could, trying not to think about the beautiful blond woman sleeping in the bed next to me.