Singularity

It had damned near gotten him court-martialed.

Not because he’d considered having sex with her. At the time, he’d been a lieutenant and she’d been an ensign, and officially, physical relationships between people of different ranks were discouraged. An officer handing out special favors or status in exchange for sex from a subordinate was very bad form, though it did happen, of course. But Gray and Schiff had kept their playtimes secret and, in any case, he’d been a pilot while she worked in the avionics department. He might outrank her, but he was not her boss.

But a couple of other pilots in Gray’s squadron, Howie Spaas and Jen Collins, had run into them while they’d been at a place called the Worldview, a bar-restaurant next to the spaceport at the SupraQuito space elevator. They’d started hassling him about being a Prim and a monogie in front of Rissa and he’d lost it, had decked Howie Spaas. Commander Allyn, the Dragonfires’ skipper, had come that close to sending him up for a court martial, closer still to kicking him out of the squadron.

He still liked to imagine that the extra duty, the anger-management therapy, and the ass-chewing he’d gotten from the skipper had all been worth it.

Lieutenant Spaas was dead, now—killed trying to bring his damaged Starhawk down on America’s flight deck at Eta Boötis. Collins was still in America’s sick bay, broken physically and emotionally at Alphekka. Commander Allyn was still in the sick bay as well, her brain damaged by oxygen starvation after her fighter drifted for three days through the Alphekkan debris field.

Riss had more than once indicated that she was still interested in Gray … and when her promotion to lieutenant came through on Earth four months earlier, even the technical barrier of their respective ranks had been removed. Gray had come very close to taking her to bed then … but he’d run into Angela at a big political function at the Eudaimonium in New New York and that had raised once more all of the doubts and self-searchings. Damn it, he’d thought Angela was dead after that Turusch impactor had sent a tidal wave thundering up the Hudson Valley.

Somehow, it had never happened.

And then Commander Allyn had been injured at Alphekka, the Dragonfires had suffered 75 percent casualties, Gray had been given temporary command of VFA-44 … and Schiffie had volunteered to transfer from Avionics to a replacement slot in the squadron. Now he was her boss, and he was responsible for her training.

The situation, clearly, had changed.

“I was wondering, Trev, when you were going to have some downtime. I’d still like to see you. Like we talked about, y’know?”

Gray leaned back in his chair, his lunch, half-eaten, forgotten now. Their table was near one of the compartment’s viewall bulkheads, which curved all the way around to create a 270-degree panorama of the starscape outside. The cameras transmitting the image were mounted on America’s nonrotating spine or shield cap, so that the star field didn’t move with the turning hab modules—which included the mess deck—through a full circle.

In the distance, several of the battlegroup’s members were taking on water—the United States of North America and the Abraham Lincoln, both Lincoln-class fleet carriers slightly smaller than the America. They looked like toys at this distance, gleaming in the hard white glow of the distant HD 157950. The supply ships Mare Orientalis, Salt Lake, and Lacus Solis drifted close by the carriers, each tucked in close against its own kilometer-wide floating iceberg, converting them to reaction mass and organic volatiles for the fleet’s nanufactories.

“Riss,” Gray said, “it can’t be like that. Not now. I’m your CO now.”

She laughed. “Geez, get over yourself, Trev! I’m not talking about monogie, here! Who’s going to know?”

“Me, for one,” Gray said. He’d not intended his voice to sound so cold.

Her voice turned cold as well. “Very well, Lieutenant,” she said. She stood and picked up her tray. “I apologize for bothering you.”

“Aw, sit down and eat your chow, Riss!”

But she was gone.

Monogie …

After three years, he was still having trouble fitting in.

Trevor Gray was still a Prim, raised in the cast-off wreckage of the USNA’s Periphery, specifically in the Manhattan Ruins. Squatties in the Periphery didn’t have access to the high-tech toys of full citizens, like cerebral implants and Net access, and they didn’t have the social entitlements—like medical care—of citizens either. That had been why he’d agreed to join the service: to pay for the med service when Angela had had her stroke.

Cut off from the social mainstream, Prims also had a completely different take on society. The garbage that passed for art and music, the truly bizarre fashions both in clothing and in body, the spoiled and pampered decadence of ordinary citizens, all of those were so far beyond the ken of Prims struggling just to survive within the old and flooded coastal city ruins that there seemed to be no point to social contact at all.

One major difference had been the mainstream’s attitude toward sex—casual, recreational, and often with little or no emotional commitment. In the Ruins it was different. Couples paired for life, a survival strategy in an environment where one hunter-gatherer partner watched the other’s back.

Throughout much of the human population, now, the mainstream view held that monogamous pairings—“monogies”—represented an archaic and flawed twist in human behavior. A few religious sects still required monogamous sexual relationships, while a few—the NeoMorms and fundamentalist Muslims, especially—allowed polygamy, but not the reverse, polyandry.

Damn. He’d not wanted to make Rissa angry.

Maybe when the Skipper came back and took over the squadron again. Or maybe someone else would be transferred in. Squadron CO was a commander’s billet; Gray wouldn’t even be looking at a promotion to lieutenant commander for another four years or so, and commander was a good four or five years after that, generally.

And maybe he should just forget about having a private life at all. There were always sex feeds, downloaded through your implants. Virtual sex was as good nowadays as the real thing. …

What Gray missed, he knew, was not the physical release so much as the companionship, the closeness, the belonging. When you were a part of a closely bonded pair …

Damn it all to hell. …

Standing, he took his tray to the mess deck entrance and tossed it and his half-eaten lunch into the converter. The Dragonfires were due to go on duty in another six hours, flying CAP just in case the Europeans went back on the hastily organized truce.

He wondered if the problem with Rissa was going to screw the flight scheds.

CIC

TC/USNA CVS America

Kuiper Belt, HD 157950

98 light years from Earth

1530 hours, TFT

“Message in from the Illustrious, Admiral.”

“Thank you.”

Koenig opened the channel, and Harrison’s face appeared, grinning. “Good afternoon, Admiral,” he said. “Thought you’d like to hear the news.”

“What news is that, Ron?”

“Some of us have finished up with our council of war. Looks like Admiral Giraurd is going to be going home by his lonesome.”

“Really?”

Harrison nodded. “Illustrious, Warspite, and Conqueror were with you from the get-go. You knew that.”

“I did. And thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. I’m just glad to get that weasel Coleman off my ship. She smells a lot better now that he’s gone.”

Willard Coleman had been the Confederation political officer on board the Illustrious, a civilian reporting to Hans Westerwelle on the Jeanne d’Arc, and tasked with keeping an eye on the loyalties of Confederation officers in the British squadron.

“In any case, we’ve been talking with the other commanders in the Pan-European squadron,” Harrison continued. “Except for the Jeanne d’Arc, they’re with us. Captain Michel, on the Arc, would have been too … but old Giraurd does need a way to get back home.”

“Good God. …”

“Don’t know about the Chinese, yet,” he went on. “But you can count on the rest of us. Nineteen ships, including two light carriers.”

“And that,” Koenig replied, “is the best news I’ve heard all day. Welcome aboard.”