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

to learn much more than his name. Then Bradley, eyes still glazed, was spirited away by a matronly Staff Captain. “What the fuck is she doing here?” someone muttered, then plopped her face into the spilled beer on the table before her, muttering that the Dragon was a private preserve.
    “Ah, let h go,” someone replied. “He wasn’t going to do us any good.”
    I withdrew into myself, drank some, and rolled the camera behind my eyes. When in shock, record. I remained only vaguely aware that the Commander was sitting out the squadron’s diminution. Like me, he was a seated statue with folded arms. I tried to remember “Ozymandias.” I came up with some lines about rose red cities and then couldn’t decide if I had the right piece. Why “Ozymandias,” anyway? I couldn’t remember that, either. Must have been a reason, though. I ordered another drink.
    He was observing, too, our silent, gallant Ship’s Commander. Back when, that had always been his excuse for not partaking of our clique’s conversational buffet.
    It grew late. The mob thinned considerably. I shipped a bigger cargo than I thought. The room began to rock a little, and I to wonder if our friends upstairs had a drop on tonight. The Commander touched my elbow gently. “Eh?” At the moment that was the most intelligent thing I could say.
    “Somebody you might remember.” He nodded toward a tall, lean blonde doing a slow strip atop a nearby table.
    I stared through misty eyes. At first I only wondered about her age. She looked older than most of the women.
    “Got her own ship,” the Commander said.
    Fascination and horror, lust and loathing, gusted through my sodden soul. I recognized her.
    She looked so old!
    Sharon Parker. The Virgin Goddess. The Bitch Queen of Academy Battalion Tango Romeo. How I’d loved and lusted after her at a tender seventeen. How many nights had I 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 hunter-killers 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