Strength and Honor by R.M. Meluch Read Free Book Online Page B

John Farragut operated on the same harmonic. He figured it out instantly.
    “Don’t tell Commander Dent I said that,” said Hamster. “She’ll sic her hair on me.”
    She bounced the basketball.
    It was the middle of Glenn Hamilton’s night. She ought to be in bed, with her husband. “All not happy in the rose garden?” Farragut guessed. “Plant the rose garden!” said Hamster. She took another shot. Bounced off the rim. “I am not going to sleep wflh that.”
    She flipped the bird at her absent sweetheart.
    Farragut seized her impudent digit in his fist and walked Glenn by the finger over to a data terminal. He pressed her fingertip to an authorization pad. Her hand was dainty and tiny in his big paw. Her fingernail formed a neat little oval peeking out the bottom of his fist. He let go of her finger. The authorization pad showed green. He’d given her access to the captain’s quarters. “You can rack out at my place,” Farragut told her. “Be out of there by eight bells.” Glenn collected the basketball. She tossed it from hand to hand, agitated, considering the offer. Farragut intercepted the ball, kept it. He nodded sideways out the hatch. “Get some rest.” Glenn let her chin drop to her collarbone, suddenly very sleepy. “Thank you, sir.” She left the deck, her little red ponytail swinging side to side.
    Farragut forgot about the encounter until mid watch, ship’s night, which everyone called the Hamster watch. The delicate smell of someone else, someone female, lingered on his pillow.
    Had the damnedest dreams.
    “Word is Lady Hamilton spent the day in the captain’s rack,” Carly arrived in the forecastle with the latest gossip. Gossip had already got there ahead of her, and Darb said back, “Yeah, she did but the cap’n didn’t. He was on duty.”
    “Crap,” said Kerry Blue, disappointed. “Hamster should dump Doctor Pat and make the captain happy.”
    “Never happen, chica linda” said Carly. “They’re officers. Officers take that skat serious.”
    “It’s not like officers’ zippers don’t go down like everyone else’s,” said Cain Salvador.
    “Yeah,” said Dak Shepard and added with a snigger, “They just make a real loud sound when they get caught.” Kerry Blue’s stomach fluttered. That was exactly nothing she wanted to hear.
    “Hamster ain’t right for the captain,” said Ranza Espinoza.
    “You think?” said Kerry Blue.
    Ranza lifted a sneering lip. “Nah. She’s not for him. She’s just here. Farragut needs a hen, and that chick don’t lay eggs.”
    “Somebody told me Farragut had a wife,” said Cain Salvador.
    “Yeah,” said Dak. “Named Maryann.”
    “So Farragut is married?” said Cain, surprised.
    “Was,” said Dak.
    “A while ago,” said Kerry Blue.
    “She offed herself,” said Carly.
    “Really?” said Cain. “Damn, I never found him that tough to be around.”
    “That’s the point,” said Cariy. “He wasn’t around.”
    “She did it because he wasn’t around?” Suicide was alien to Kerry Blue and she made a face, looking around for anyone else who thought that was weird. “Seems a little drastic,” said Cole Darby to her frown. “Couldn’t she just have an affair with the stable boy?”
    “I wouldn’t,” said Kerry Blue.
    “Wouldn’t what?”
    “Kill myself,” said Kerry.
    “We know that, chica,” said Carly.
    “Kerry would do the stable boy,” said Dak.
    Kerry didn’t ever want to know what she would do.
    Merrimack looked down from the observation deck at the devastated world of Telecore. It was getting time to leave.
    Captain Farragut loathed giving ground to the enemy. As a soldier, he wanted to kill them.
    It galled him to know that exterminating an entire Hive was as easy as flipping a switch. He had destroyed the two original Hives with two resonant pulses. They died in an instant.
    It was pathetically easy.
    And impossible at the moment.
    Repeating that feat required identifying the specific harmonic