Free Trail of Evil - eARC by Travis S. Taylor

and then an, “Oh shit. Goddamnit. Where the hell are you, Amari?”
    The boots were attached to a set of red engineer’s coveralls that were in turn on the Madira’s chief engineer, was lying on a hover creeper doing God knows what up underneath the thing. Rondi put her hands on her quite terrific hips, tapped her right toe against the deck plating, and raised an eyebrow as the creeper started to slide from underneath the ship.
    “Firstly, I suspect PO1 Amari has sacked out, like most normal people. Secondly, what the hell, Joe?” Rondi said in her best hurt voice. “We were supposed to chow over two hours ago! I’ve been waiting and I’ll be damned if I’ll let you stand me up!”
    The CHENG looked up at the sleek muscular Marine in her Universal Combat Uniform (UCU) and Rondi was certain that he was thinking several things all at once. The first thing she hoped was that the fireproof fabric conformed around her Marine hardened midsection and pushed up her more than ample breasts into a very nice supported position. The common description of the female UCU tops was that they always kept “things” at attention. The compression shirt had been designed to fit skintight as a lightly armored fireproof paper-thin layer. And it did. The shirt not only wicked away sweat and moisture, conformed to most environment color schemes, would repel low order shrapnel, resist fire, and compress the muscles improving the wearer’s performance, but it did it in a way that made the person wearing it look damned good. And Rondi knew she looked damned good in them.
    The other thing that Buckley had better be thinking was that he was fucking sorry for standing her up and was in fear of getting a knot jerked in his ass.
    “Uh, sorry about that, First Sergeant.” Joe stammered. “Somehow or other I promised the general I’d have this ship ready in two days and that was a day and a half ago.”
    “How does that affect me?”
    Rondi knew damned well how it did. There were at least five generals on board the ship, but when somebody said “the general” everybody knew they meant Alexander Moore. Everybody on board the ship also knew that when the general expected something from you that you’d better deliver it. Knowing all that didn’t mean she couldn’t have some fun with Buckley though.
    “Well, Marine, you want to crawl down under here and give me a hand we could get to that chow sooner than later.” Joe smirked at Rondi. She could tell he was having a hard time looking her in the eye so she knelt down beside him.
    “Is that an order, Commander?” Rondi raised an eyebrow flirtatiously.
    “Negative.” Joe paused for a long moment and then sighed. “I’m brain dead right now anyway. I really should stop for a bit. Maybe some chow and then a nap in my quarters.”
    “Is that an invitation?” Rondi almost laughed. “I’ve heard more enticing ones.”
    “You know it is, gorgeous, but I really do have to get this thing flying in perfect order.” Joe rubbed at the stubble on his chin. Rondi wondered just how long he’d been at it. “I really should finish calibrating that QMT grid panel while it’s apart. Just not a good time to stop.”
    “How long will that take?”
    “An hour at best. By then I’ll be starving and cross-eyed from lack of sleep.” Joe frowned a bit. Rondi could tell he was pushing himself too hard. Having only a skeleton crew in engineering must have had him doing several jobs all at once.
    “Tell you what. You crawl back in there and fix the QMT thingy and I’ll go get us some dinner. Meet you in your quarters with it in an hour. Sound good.” Rondi put her hand on his shoulder and smiled warmly at Joe as she stood up.
    “Great. An hour. That’s just enough time.” Joe leaned back on the hover creeper and slid back up under the shuttle. “That’s enough time to straighten out the wavefunction correlator with the pattern buffers in the . . .”
    Rondi turned and walked toward the chow