That Slow Awakening by Laurel Beckley

Author:Laurel Beckley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Lesbian, Military, Military SciFi, PTSD
Publisher: NineStar Press, LLC
Published: 2023-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

“FUCK.”

Trudi flung her stylus across the room. It flew over the counter and bounced ineffectively next to the door. She almost tossed the paperwork too, but then she’d have to bend over and pick it all up again, and where would that bring her?

It wasn’t like she had an assistant to do the lifting on her high pain days.

She closed her eyes, willing the tears away. Hating her weakness.

Fuck.

Five weeks. Five fucking weeks since that fucking shuttle went missing.

The search teams had turned up nothing. It was like the entire thing had vanished in midair. There was no trace of a crash along their flight plan, and any mention of deviation from the projected path had been rejected without negotiation by a blithering assworm in the shape of Root Elihu, who had taken over as head of security with Dar’Tan’s disappearance.

Trudi bit her lip and ran her hand through her hair, now grown out to black, centimeter-long stubble after she’d shaved it all off in mourning.

She had done everything possible to harden her heart after being stationed here, in the ass end of the galaxy, away from everything and anything and anyone she cared about. She had fucking chosen this station, to escape from her past failures and set herself on a new path.

She’d been successful, at both goals. No one knew who she was—she wasn’t IASS-famous, not like some other people had been—and few guessed at what she had been in a past life. And she was damn good at her mindless, soul-crushingly boring job, issuing and receiving gear from the dumb-fuck space turds who tried to keep them all safe.

She’d kept out of the way. Had never interfered with anyone else. Hadn’t stuck her nose—her lips turned up at the inside joke—into any official business beyond her annual budget submission and fulfilling purchase requests. Had stayed the fuck away from embassy operations and the IASS’s strategic position on the planet.

People came to this hellhole.

People left.

Trudi stayed.

Almost twenty damn years, doing the same ass-munchingly boring thing.

She’d been so fucking successful.

And then that asshole had arrived and made her feel again, dammit. Had wormed her little fucking away into Trudi’s heart, had actually been a friend. Someone she could help, who needed the advice and support Trudi had needed and hadn’t received all those years ago, after her own semi-discharge during the Redelki Wars.

And then she’d gone and gotten herself killed.

Trudi’s hands clenched into fists.

She smelled Elihu before she heard his footsteps down the hall. His familiar hunter-green combination of Fleet body wash, rosy musk, complete with grade-b vin-vin alcohol top notes and a whiff of desert and sand from his home planet he’d never been able to erase, although he’d hidden all other traces of his origins.

No one could ever hide from sniffers, though.

Not their origins. Not their vices. Not their feelings.

She could smell it all.

It was why everyone avoided her as much as she avoided them.

Well, everyone who knew what a sniffer was. Most didn’t, anymore, not

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