Free Trail of Evil - eARC by Travis S. Taylor Page A

deck doing her best not laugh out how big a geek the CHENG was. “Best one in the fleet,” she said to herself.

    Dinner had gone well. Joe ate like he hadn’t eaten in two days. Come to think of it, he realized that he hadn’t. He then realized he hadn’t showered in as long either. He excused himself from Rondi to hit the shower. As one of the senior staff Joe managed one of the quarters with its own shower so there wasn’t too big a disruption to his date with Rondi.
    The CHENG had been seeing the Marine for most of the expeditionary mission and every time she went out on a job he felt his heart in his throat until he saw her come back. He couldn’t imagine how the general handled seeing his daughter go out on dangerous missions day in and day out. And on this last one she lost a hand and was cut up pretty badly. Joe had hard enough time watching Rondi go out and they were just, well, mostly having a lot of sex together. But Joe liked the Marine a lot. The kind of like that is beyond “boat cute” it was the kind of like that you consider retiring and getting a house somewhere together—though they had never discussed it. Joe used the general as his rock. If Moore could send Dee out into the muck and still function, then he could watch as Rondi went out.
    Joe turned his back to the falling water and let it wash away the stress and grime from keeping the ship together, repairing the shuttle, and a million other things. He looked up as the shower door slid open and Rondi slipped into the tight space with him. She reached her arms around his shoulders and kissed him softly. Joe stood back as far as he could get in the tiny shower and took in the view. The movement of Rondi’s arms resting on his shoulders and her slight wriggling movements as the water splashed against her body exaggerated the brilliant red, black, and blue cobra high resolution laser printed tattoo that curled around her left leg three times from the knee, up between her legs from behind and over her pubic area, across her rippled abdominal muscles, and around both breasts with its mouth open and fangs showing on the left side of her midsection. The red and blue were nanofluorescent and retroreflective causing them to glow brilliantly in the low lighting of the shower.
    To Joe it was clear that she didn’t need the UCU top to keep her “at attention.” The muscular nature of her body and the firmness of her breasts did that all by themselves. Her arousal, or either the water was too cool for her, showed that she was as attentive as she could be.
    Joe felt her hand grasp him and he realized that the Marine wasn’t the only one standing at attention. He pulled her to him and kissed her.
    “You are beautiful,” he whispered.
    “Shut up,” Rondi replied as she worked him into her and wrapped her left leg around him.
    Joe shut up.

    Rondi lay on her side looking across Joe out the small viewport to the outside of the ship. The stars were always breathtaking to her. Rondi was smart, but not smart enough to be a CHENG or a navigator or one of the bridge team she knew that. She was smart in a different way. She understood tactics and weapons and she understood how to stay alive when shit got bad. She really understood her physical limitations and how to push them beyond what most people knew how to do. To her, it was amazing that a smart guy, a senior officer, like Buckley liked her the way he seemed to. The way she hoped he did. She knew he worried about her when she was on maneuvers, but at the same time Rondi knew that Buckley had nearly been killed in engineering during space battles as well. Engineering wasn’t really all that safe what with all the radiation and high voltages and no telling what other things in there could kill you.
    “Spacetime motivator equations my ass.” Joe mumbled in his sleep. Rondi sighed slightly through her pursed lips as Joe continued. “The Ricci tensor doesn’t . . . no sir . . . yes sir . . .