Passage at Arms by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online Page B

lain with my good right hand and imagined those creamy thighs clamping me?
    The memories were embarrassing. I'd been so much a fool that I'd declared my undying passion....
    She'd been as cold and remote as the dark side of Old Earth's moon. She'd teased, taunted, promised forever afterward, and never had delivered. For me or anyone else, as far as I knew.
    Torturing me became her pet project. I was more obvious and vulnerable than my classmates.
    "No. Let it be."
    Too late. The Commander waved. She recognized him. She left her little stage and came over. The Old Man kicked out an empty chair. She seemed slightly embarrassed as she settled into it. The Commander can have that effect. He seems so competent and solid, sometimes, that everyone around will feel second-rate and clumsy. I always do.
    She gave me one indifferent glance while crossing the room. Just another Lieutenant. Navy is infested with Lieutenants.
    "Good patrol?" the Commander asked.
    "Shit. Two old tubs that belonged in a transport museum. One escort destroyer. Only one tub confirmed. One lousy baby convoy. Twelve ships. We got off our missile flight, then the hunterkillers hit us. Thought it was the Executioner for a while. Took us nine days to shake them."
    "Rough?" I asked.
    She shrugged, gave me another of those indifferent glances.
    I watched the light dawn. She turned bright red, shed the drunken table-dancer avatar like a snake sloughs skin. For one long moment she looked like she had a hot steel splinter under her fingernail.
    "You." Another moment of silence. "You've changed."
    "Haven't we all?"
    She wanted to run so bad I could smell it. But it was too late. She'd been seen. She'd been caught. She had to face the consequences.
    I was both pleased and a little frightened. Could she value my good opinion that much?
    "Civilian influence," I said. "I was out for a while. You've changed too." I wanted to bite my tongue immediately. Not only was that the wrong thing to say, it slipped out sounding bitter. My brain was on vacation. My hands had made too many connections with my mouth, carrying too many drinks.
    "I heard about the accident." Bravely bearing up, that was her attitude. "You making it okay now?"
    "Good enough," I lied. Twelve years of Academy had done nothing to ready me for a sudden shift to civilian life. I could have gone on, I suppose, in a desk job, buried in Luna Command, but my pride hadn't permitted it. I was Line, and by damn that was what I'd stay, or nothing. "I like the freedom. To bed when I want, up when I want. Go where I want. You know. Like that."
    "Yeah. I know." She didn't believe a word.
    "So. What've you been doing?"
    "Climbing the ladder. Got my own ship now. Forty-seven Cee. Bravo Flight, Five Squadron. Seven patrols." I couldn't think of anything to say. After an embarrassed silence, she added, "And finding out what it's like to be on the dirty end."
    The conversation lay there awhile, like a beached whale too exhausted to struggle.
    "I'm sorry. For everything I did. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what you could do to somebody."
    "Long ago and far away. Like it happened to somebody else. All forgotten now. We were just kids."
    "No."
    I'd lied again. And again she'd read me. It didn't hurt as much now, but the pain was still there.
    There're those small places where you never grow up.
    "Can we go someplace?"
    The thrill again. My libido recalled antediluvian fantasies. "I don't think..."
    "Just to talk. You were always the best listener in the battalion."
    Yes. I'd listened a lot. To problems. Everybody had come to me. Especially Sharon.
    It had been a way to be near her. Always, back then, there'd been the Plan. Move after carefully calculated move, to seduction. I hadn't found the nerve to make the most critical, daring end-game maneuvers.
    There'd been nobody for me to cry on. Who confesses the confessor?
    "I'll only be gone a minute." She scrambled after discarded clothing. I watched and was more baffled