Solfleet: The Call of Duty (61 page)

He grinned
and nodded his head. “Okay, you win. You’re not a Cirran traitor or a Sulaini
spy.”

“And?” she
coaxed.

“And, yes, I’m
related to Richard Graves. He was my father. Why do you ask?”

“Just
curious,” she answered. Then she looked away, down at the ground, and quietly
added, “I lost my father to the Veshtonn, too.”

“I’m sorry.
What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“He was the chief
of engineering operations aboard the Boshtahr Jumpstation when the Veshtonn
destroyed it.” She looked up. “My God. Has it really been over twenty years
already? I was on Earth with my mother at the time, for my grandmother’s
hundredth birthday. We were all going to stay for a month but my dad was called
back early.” She sighed. “Mom was never quite the same after he was killed. She
just sort of...died inside. If only your father could have beaten them. Maybe
then...”

“I know!”
Dylan snapped defensively as he practically jumped up from the bench and
stepped away. “Maybe then the Veshtonn wouldn’t have been able to occupy this
system. Maybe then they wouldn’t have discovered bolamide. Maybe then they
wouldn’t have launched the sneak attack on Boshtahr and destroyed the jumpstation.”
He turned and faced her. “I’ve heard all of that about a thousand times before.
It’s not fair to blame my father for...”

“No!” she
exclaimed, looking at him with surprise and shaking her head as she, too, stood
up. “No, I’m not blaming your father, Dylan! I’m not blaming him at all! He
bloodied their noses real good before they...” She hesitated to say it, but
then reminded herself that he obviously knew what happened, “...before they destroyed
his ship. I know that. How many of them did he take out in that battle? Two?
Three?”

After a
moment he answered, “According to publicized Intelligence reports, four.”

“Four!” She
sat back down. “No, I don’t blame your father at all. On the contrary, I think
he was one of the best starcruiser captains I’ve ever read about. If there were
too many of them for
him
to defeat...”

Dylan’s
anger quickly subsided, and as he sat down next to the girl again he even felt
a measure of pride on behalf of his father. Pride? In his father? How could
that possibly be? His father had abandoned the family almost twenty-three years
ago. He’d chosen the captaincy of his precious starcruiser over the love and
companionship of his own wife and children, including a newborn infant, and had
gotten himself killed shortly thereafter.

Dylan had quickly
grown to resent his father, even to hate him—his mother had often told him that
he’d grown up angry—and that hatred had become so deeply rooted that throughout
most of his teens and early twenties he’d refused even to think about him. It
was only in the last few years that he’d managed to come to terms with his
painful past and forgive his father. Or had he? He liked to think so, but truth
be told, sometimes he still wasn’t too sure. Hatred? Yes, once upon a time. But
no longer. His desire to forgive him had vanquished it. Resentment? Maybe
still, to some extent. But pride?

“Your father’s
actions in the face of the enemy were probably the only thing that kept them
from swarming across the border right then and there and plowing their way
through Earth-controlled space in full force,” the girl added. “He was undoubtedly
one of the biggest heroes of that period of the war.”

Dylan had no
idea how to respond to that. Like most everyone else he’d ever known, he’d read
the stories of his father’s bloody battles against the Veshtonn. Hell, he’d
read all the stories about his father’s career that he could find, both fact and
fiction. Some of them fairly recently, too. He’d read about his days as a cadet
at the Solfleet Academy, about his years as a junior officer, and about his
eventual rise to the captaincy of his own vessel. And he’d read every news
story that had ever been written about his attempt to rescue the crew of that
ill-fated Cirran shuttle. Still, there were times he couldn’t be sure if ‘hero’
was the word he would have used to describe him. He had a few other words in
mind, even now.

He sighed.
True forgiveness was proving to be a lot more difficult than it sounded.

“This war
has gone on too long,” he commented, intentionally changing the subject. “Too
many people have died.”

“I’d hate to
think of the alternative.”

“Yeah, you’re
right about that. If we were ever forced to withdraw from this system, for
example, it would likely be the next one to fall...again. The Cirrans are a
good people. I think the Sulaini are, too, to tell you the truth, despite their
aggressive nature. I don’t relish the thought of seeing any of them enslaved by
the Veshtonn again. Or worse. I just wish there were another way. All this back
and forth slaughter is so...so stupid. Tragic.”

She looked
at him curiously. “You surprise me, Dylan.”

“How so?”

“Your
attitude. Most of the soldiers and Marines I’ve met seem to wish the war would
escalate even further than it already has, if that’s even possible. It’s like
they have some kind of sick fascination with it or something. It’s really disgusting,
if you ask me.”

“They’re a
small minority, I assure you. I’ll bet none of them had ever even
seen
combat when they said whatever they said to give you that opinion of them.
Trust me, no one hates war more than a soldier who’s fought one.”

“My mother
told me once that my father used to say that same thing when they were young,
every time he came back from a forward deployment.”

“He was
right.” Another, more humorous thought struck Dylan and made him grin. “You
know, when I was growing up I swore I’d never join the military service.
Sometimes I’m still not sure why I did. Other times I think...”

He paused.
Something had distracted the girl and she wasn’t listening. What was it she’d
said? She’d mentioned what her mother had told her and then her attention had
wandered. Maybe she was still thinking about her mother. “So where is your
mother these days?” he asked.

She drew a
deep breath and let it out slowly while she gazed down at her folded hands in
her lap. “She died a few years ago.”

Dylan laid
his hand gently on the back of her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“So was I at
first.” Her eyes met his once more. “Not long after she died I started reading
her private diaries, and I began to realize just how painful her life really
was after Daddy died. She wrote that I was a constant source of joy for her,
but deep down inside she still agonized over his death. She cried herself to
sleep almost every night.

“One night
when I was seventeen she wrote an unusually long entry about not wanting to
face that inevitable day when I would leave her, too.” her eyes fell to her
hands again. “She died in her sleep that same night. I miss her, but at least
she’s at peace. She’s buried in her hometown, back in Korea.”

As Dylan sat
listening to the girl—to the young woman—he became acutely aware of the
beautiful angles of her face, the sheen of her long black hair under the
ghostly glow of the spotlight behind them, and the gentle curve of her shoulder
beneath his hand. An overwhelming feeling of being drawn to her washed over him
like a warm sunbeam on a cloudy day.

“I’m glad you’re
both at peace,” he said. She looked back to him again, and as he gazed into her
eyes as though for the very first time, he felt as though he were looking into
the depths of her very soul, and somehow he knew that she was the one—the one with
whom he was meant to be.

What the
hell was he thinking? Except for their conversation when he and Carolyn first showed
up looking for a place to live, which had been strictly business, he’d only
just talked to her for the first time. How could he possibly have come to feel
that way about her so quickly? And where did that leave Diane, his old high
school sweetheart—the only girl he’d
truly
ever felt that way about,
though only long after it was too late? The only girl he sometimes still
thought about in that same way, and for whom he still harbored some very strong
and not so deeply buried feelings?

He had to
lighten the moment, and quickly.

“May I ask
you one more question?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He paused
for just the right effect, then asked, “What’s your name?”

She looked
dumbfounded as the realization that she hadn’t already told him washed over
her. “I am so sorry,” she said, putting a hand over her mouth in embarrassment
but still smiling behind it. “It’s Bethany. Corporal Bethany DeGaetano. My
friends call me Beth.”

“Bethany
DeGaetano,” he repeated, pleased that his little verbal maneuver had taken her
mind off her parents and cheered her up, at least a little. Not to mention what
it had done for him. “DeGaetano. Sounds Italian.”

“It is,” she
confirmed, dropping her hand back to her lap. “According to my uncle—my mom’s brother—my
father was
very
Italian.”

“What does ‘
very
Italian’ mean?”

“I don’t
know,” she answered, shrugging her shoulders. “I think it had something to do
with the fact that he couldn’t seem to talk without using his hands.”

“You seem to
be doing all right.”

“I guess I
never got into the habit.”

“Well, there
you go. So much for stereotypes.”

“But I’m
only
half
Italian.”

“Ah,” he
responded. “That must be it.”

“Must be,”
she playfully agreed.

“Bethany
DeGaetano,” he repeated again after barely a second, just to avoid one of those
uncomfortable moments of silence. “Bethany. That’s a pretty name.”

“Thank you.”
she said shyly.

And before
he could stop himself, he added, “For a very pretty young woman.”

She appeared
to be pondering something as she gazed silently into his eyes for a moment,
then asked, “Do you know anything about that statue behind us?”

Maybe those
awkward moments of silence made her as uncomfortable as they did him. Or was it
his compliment that had brought on the sudden change in subject? Either way,
Dylan was glad for it. “Sure I do,” he answered, glancing briefly over his
shoulder at the statue. “It’s off-white, made of a very hard stone, and I don’t
think my mother would want me staring at it for very long. She’d be afraid I
might go blind.”

“What?
Really?”

He laughed
and shook his head. “No, but she’d probably tell me something like that. She’s
always loved art, but that thing with all its anatomical detail would probably
be nothing more than pornography to her.”

Beth smiled.
Such a beautiful smile. “That
thing
, as you call it, is Eul’tiran, the
Cirran god of lovemaking. It’s no accident that he was placed right here where
the garden’s two main paths just happen to cross. Where
our
paths just
happen to have crossed.”

“Just
happen
to have crossed?” Dylan asked, using his expression and the inflection of his
voice to make his suspicions as obvious as possible.

“Well,” she
grinned, admitting, “I
may
have planned it. Sort of.”

“That’s what
I thought,” he said, grinning back. “So who’s the woman?”

“The woman?”

“Yeah, the
woman. The one old Eul’tiran up there is teaching the birds and the bees to.”

“Oh. That’s
Satah’ra, a mortal woman who just happened to be in the right place at the
right time and caught his eye. Legend has it Eul’tiran was roaming the surface
of the mortal world one night when he saw her bathing in a natural pool.
According to the story he thought she was the most beautiful mortal woman he’d
ever laid eyes on, so he hid in the trees until she finished and let her get
dressed, then tore off her clothes and raped her right there on the banks of
the pool. When he finished he made her the goddess of fertility as penance.”

“Lucky
woman. Well, sort of.”

“I think so,”
Beth agreed, although the way she said it led Dylan to believe she wasn’t
talking about the statue anymore. They gazed deeply into each other’s eyes once
again. Dylan knew what was coming next and he began to wonder if he had
completely lost his mind. But he couldn’t resist the desire that was driving
him closer to her.

She leaned
in to him, closed her eyes, and welcomed his gentle kiss, but her response was
tentative at best. Something was obviously bothering her. “What about your
wife, Dylan?” she asked nervously, answering his question before he asked it.

“I don’t
have a wife anymore,” he told her. “We divorced a few weeks ago.”

“Oh,” she
said, withdrawing slightly. “I’m...”

“It’s okay,”
he told her, relieving her of the need to tell him she was sorry. “Considering
what our marriage has been like for the last few years, we’re both better off.”

“All three
of us,” she pointed out.

Dylan
smiled. “Right. All three of us.”

She kissed
him again. And then, after a brief silence, she asked him, “Feel like going for
a swim?”

“Isn’t it a
little cold for that tonight?”

“Only when
you get out. The water’s nice and warm. Almost like a bathtub.”

“Well, I’d
like to,” he told her, “but I’m still recovering from some pretty serious injuries.
I wouldn’t want to aggravate anything.” He was only teasing. He fully intended
to go swimming with her, and was in fact looking forward to it.

“So we’ll
take it easy,” she countered, a touch of disappointment finding its way into
her voice.

He smiled,
and a moment later, realizing that he’d been pulling her leg, Beth smiled back
and slapped him playfully on the arm. But then he remembered that he wasn’t
wearing any underwear. If he did go swimming with her, would she be offended if
he swam naked? Perhaps he should go up to the apartment and put on his trunks.
Skinny-dipping
might
have been exactly what she had in mind, but then
again it might
not
have. He considered both possibilities, then decided
that to err on the conservative side was probably the wisest course of action.
Especially considering all the apartments that overlooked the pool.