Fires of Man by Dan Levinson

Author:Dan Levinson
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jolly Fish Press
Published: 2014-05-18T16:00:00+00:00

22

KAY

Things had been better since Jackie.

It had taken her three days to call him, though from the start Kay was clear that they were friends, and nothing more. He’d accepted that without compunctions, and she found herself surprised he could be so carefree, so unlike Nyne.

Over the ensuing weeks, they often grabbed lunch or dinner or drinks, watched movies in the posh apartment he was subletting, or simply sat in the park. Jackie never pushed or pried. In many ways, he was everything Nyne was not.

When she said she could take care of herself, he actually believed her.

They had a good deal in common, she found. He was also a fan of pulp novels, cop shows, and film noir thrillers. It had galled her when Nyne had actually wanted to attend sappy romantic comedies, but Jackie would have none of that. There were no expectations with him, either. Their relationship was what it was, and he didn’t try to change it. They flirted and sometimes cuddled on the couch, but Kay didn’t let it go beyond that, much as she sometimes wanted it to.

Just knowing he was there made her feel more balanced, more together. There were many days when she was occupied with her duties, and he with his, but just the awareness that she could reach out to him was a comfort.

She still thought about Nyne, though less and less with each day. After two weeks, he barely crossed her mind. She still dreamed about him, though. As for Tiberian she couldn’t help wondering about him. Putting him out of mind had proven impossible because Orion Intelligence was still worked up over his appearance in the desert.

No one had found a trace of Tiberian, nor of Calchan forces mustering at the border. The information that trickled in from Intelligence was so sparse that they spent their days harassing her, as if some random fact from her childhood would unlock the mystery. Every few days, someone from OI would show up and ask questions, and it was all she could do not to scream.

There was another significant change in Kay; she’d begun thinking about her future. Before, she had only been marking time, waiting for the day when the military would lead her back to her brother. Now that it had actually happened, after a fashion, she realized exactly how empty that goal had been. Even if Tiberian waltzed back into her life, it wouldn’t change much. Perhaps not anything at all.

Jackie provided a good example for her. He had a career, a direction, a plan. It was admirable, and it made her reach the conclusion that she wanted the same thing for herself.

A short while later she found herself in First Sergeant Dobbs’s office. Dobbs was the “first shirt”—the presiding enlisted officer—for the Grisham Special Mobile Company, the official name for the Sandbike Squads. The GSMC was smaller than a standard company, only fifty soldiers in total, and Dobbs knew every single one of them well.

“Sergeant Barrett,” he said when she entered his small office.

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