Danger Close (Drop Trooper Book 3) by Rick Partlow

Author:Rick Partlow [Partlow, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2020-06-22T16:00:00+00:00

15

I hesitated with my finger hovering over the call button, afraid.

What the hell are you afraid of?

What I might find out, maybe? Maybe I just didn’t want to know what was wrong with me. Maybe she’d just tell me I was a shitty human being.

But would that be any worse than living with the guilt? The guilt of letting Carson and Delp kill the prisoners, the guilt of Valentine’s death, the guilt of not being able to save those people on Demeter and Vistula…hell, I even felt guilty for ruining Breanna’s first night out on the town since the invasion, as absurd as that seemed. I felt like I should go back and apologize to her, but I was too embarrassed.

I glanced around in the hallway of the makeshift headquarters of the temporary Fleet base on Calliope to make sure no one else was around, then I touched the button.

And waited.

“Come in.”

I didn’t know what the office had been before, but whatever previous identity it had possessed had been stripped bare down to white plaster walls and left that way, as if the current resident didn’t believe she’d be here long enough to make them her own. She sat at an ancient, metal desk, the chair upholstered in what might have been faux leather or, given the fact we were out on one of the outer colonies near the ass-end of nowhere, it might have been real leather.

The woman sitting in the chair was as plain and severe as the office, her uniform unadorned by decoration or achievement, marked only by her Fleet rank as a Lt. Commander and the badge of her branch, medical corps.

“Dr. Atherton,” I said, tentative and quiet, “I’m Lt. Alvarez. I’m one of the Marine Drop Troopers. Can I come in?”

“As I am currently between patients,” Atherton said, the corner of her mouth curling upward in dry humor, “please. Be my guest. Close the door behind you.”

I’d been planning on it. As much as I was hesitant to come in myself, I as even more worried about someone from my unit seeing me here.

“You don’t have any other patients?” I asked, pushing the door closed. “Do people not…come to you for anything?”

“What you’re asking,” she said, eyeing me with shrewd discernment, “is whether any other Marines have been desperate enough to come see a Fleet psychological counselor. And the answer is yes, plenty have. But I honestly don’t think anyone knows where my office is yet. I’m surprised you found it. Please have a seat.”

The chair on this side of her desk was nowhere near as comfortable as the one she had, which was a surprise. I’d expected something soft and inviting. I settled into it anyway and it creaked beneath my weight.

“So, um, how do we do this?” I wondered. “Are there like alpha wave detectors or sonic stress analyzers built into the office or something?”

Her peal of laughter was genuine and loud, and warmth flooded my face.

“I’m not trying to interrogate you, Lieutenant,” she said, the laugh cycling down into a chuckle before it died.

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