Page 31 of Starfighter’s Salvation

She stared. “What?”

“Honey. Sugar. Sweetheart. My cipher translates them as edible substances.”

Gina dropped onto a cargo crate and laughed, head back. I hadn’t intended to be amusing. Her laugh rang off the bare bulkheads and found me under the engine noise, and I felt it somewhere behind my sternum. I want that sound on my ship. I wanted to hear it on my deck after the mission. After a hundred missions.

“It isn’t a classification system,” she said.

“Then why?”

“Scared people are all six years old on the inside. Doesn’t matter if they’re sixteen or sixty. You talk to the scared kid until the adult can think again.”

“And the equipment?”

“I work long hours. Sometimes the equipment is my only company.” She went back to packing the case. I should have resumed preflight. I stayed where I was and watched her hands move over the supplies instead.

“Have you assigned me a classification?”

Her smile returned. “I'm thinking about it."

The case in my hands nearly slipped. Heat climbed the back of my neck. The mark at my nape woke with it, a low warmth that was becoming more and more difficult to ignore. Gina looked pleased, either with my reaction, or pleased with herself. I looked away before my face gave away just how badly I wanted to hear one of those sweet food words directed at me.

Fucking ridiculous. I was a warrior, not a child.

She carried another med case up the ramp and I stood beside my ship and watched the way she moved in her new Elite Starfighter uniform — the roll of her hips, the line of her back, no part of her soft curves built for a warzone, and none of it possible to look away from.

Mine. There's a classification. It appeared in my mind before I could stop it, and I didn't have the will to argue.

We finished loading hours before launch, and the bay emptied around us. Gina sat on the lowered ramp and drank water because I had put the container in her hand and stayed there until she did. The ramp held the day’s stored chill, cold through my uniform when I lowered myself beside her. Her shoulder hung a hand’s width from mine, close enough to feel where her heat ended and the cold began. Somewhere in the bay, a torque driver whined and stopped.

“Tell me about Callis,” she said. “It's in your game bio and Captain Wroxxon mentioned it.”

I stared at the ship's exterior plating.

“You don’t have to tell me everything,” she added. “But I need to know what happens to you when you fly.”

“Nothing happens to me.”

“That is not true and not helpful.”

I set down the scanner I'd been holding. She waited. Gina was good at waiting, and I assumed her profession had taught her that particular skill. She paused without filling the silence. I had spent months watching her work her magic on the wounded in training. I had not expected her patience to disarm me as well.

“Renn was my crew chief for eight years,” I said. “He was my oldest friend. Callis was one of the most populated civilian space stations and manufacturing facilities. It was attacked during a shift change to ensure the maximum number of casualties. When we arrived, the landing bay was falling apart, but we found a sealed compartment with twelve survivors trapped behind an air lock."

“You got them out.”

“Renn got them out. I flew the ship.”

“Same thing. You were a team.”

“The metal support beams in the landing bay were literally molten. Melting. Explosions everywhere. I knew it wasn't going to hold. I ordered him to return to the ship. He ignored me and went back for the last one. The support frame collapsed under his feet as he got her back to the ship. She made it. He fell into an inferno. There was nothing I could do." I could still hear his voice in my head, arguing with me every step of the way.

“So, you saved lives and brought twelve people home.”

“I left him.”

“You saved a ship full of people.”

“I left him to burn.”