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See chapter one for disclaimers
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War Bride
by Julie Watkins


Chapter 2. Date: October 2245 (four months after Dukhat's death)

-*-


"You have quite a brother there, Liz."

Anna Sheridan, Revelations


-*-

"Congratulations," Dr. Clary said. He was one of the doctors from Djakarta, the ship that had answered Eagle's distress call. "Near as we can tell, you were on the low end of oxygen consumption. That's unusual for someone as tall as you are."

"How much time did I have left?"

"A few hours." Clary shrugged and smiled broadly. "Long enough." John got the impression Clary was happy he wasn't looking at a corpse. "The others we rescued had better luck with their emergency supplies, and radios. So they got picked up first because they were yelling. It's the way things go. You did good."

"Thanks."

"Thank you."

John vacated, letting Clary get back to his work. The injuries were mostly burns, it looked like. The medlab was overflowing; the patients were all his crew mates. He did and he didn't want to know who was on the beds. Some of them weren't going to make it.

-*-


Walking the corridor, he wondered where he could find a vibe shower, and hoped there was a laundry unit in the same room. He had left his spacesuit in a neat pile in the locker room area. Everything else he owned he was wearing: his flight suit. It -- and he -- was pretty ripe.

Djakarta had been built from the same basic plan as the Eagle. It was an eerie feeling -- ghostlike -- to be walking near-familiar corridors when just under the surface of getting-the-job-done efficiency his emotions were in turmoil: his ship was dead, he saw it dying. He was a dead man walking in a dream.

He tried to remember anything he knew about this ship. Anthony Milborn was the captain. John had that confirmed by overheard conversation, as Milborn's crew reacted to orders coming over the comm system about the rescue. Like every other command officer in Earth Force, he'd served in the Dilgar Wars. He'd been part of the attack on Balus. Making rescues there as well. It seemed to be a habit.

John made guesses, continued walking. People passed him from both directions. Earth Force uniforms, overlapping orders and replies from the comm speakers. None of it applied to him. Amid the unfamiliar faces, he saw fellow Eagle pilot Dennis Ireland turning a corner.

"Denny?" he asked, too quiet for the surrounding clamor. He repeated the name in a loud call, losing control of his voice.

Ireland turned. John moved faster, dodging around strangers, caught the man in a bear-hug. He was taken back to reality. It was a strange ship, but part of home and family remained.

"God, Denny, what happened -- "

" -- There you are!"

Their words overlapped, " -- does anyone know what happened?"

It was the first ride down the roller coaster of tears mixed with joyful reunions. The Djakarta crew had been near overwhelmed, racing against time, trying to save everyone they could. Ireland had been brought in four hours earlier, had already had several reunions, and was emotionally on a more even keel. He walked John the rest of the way to the shower room and told him the ropes and what news he could as he cleaned up.

The Eagle was down and dying. Arko had sent a narrow-beam distress signal toward Earth Force Command when the attack began. The Minbari had not returned for the kill. Perhaps they were hovering in their "invisible" ships, observing the human's strength and rescue resources. There was no sign that any of the Minbari fighters had been hit, much less destroyed.

About half the crew was saved, from what Ireland could tell. John had been one of the last, and Ireland figured all the Djakarta crew were finding now were bodies. The captain (their captain) was dead.

"How?" John could scarce believe it. He had seen the Eagle torn by explosions. But if Denny was here, if there were survivors, how could Captain Arko not be alive?

Ireland looked away as he explained, his voice heavy with unjustified guilt. The bridge of the Eagle had been well protected, but Arko had been hurt in the rush to get all the injured into "safe" areas, and he'd been lost. What was left of the old ship was a dangerous place, poison fumes and jagged metal. All they could do was explode what remained when the search teams were done.

"They strapped him down where they found him, closed his eyes and crossed his hands on his chest. He'll go down with the ship, along with the unrecoverable dead."

"She's for skuttle?" Less for the minbari to learn from.

"Yeah. Milborn had mines set with a short fuse. He'll start the countdown when we warp out."

-*-


It would be another five hours before the final lists would be posted, and the wait time was surreal. More reunions, more control each time. Maybe it would be better to say increasing numbness. Coffey and Dieker had the preliminary list on the wall, but he didn't look at it as he checked in. Medlab had already sent down his name, which he verified. There was a faint dead smile in Dieker's eyes as she changed the flag on his name to green. Coffey asked if he'd seen McCord. He hadn't.

It was crowded. Shuffling between the mess and assembly area was difficult, and some people were vainly trying to find hidden corners to collapse. These were most of the unconfirmed that Coffey was trying to track down.

The Eagle's crew complement was 400. On a good day he knew everybody's name, and could match names with faces of the support and technical crew. It was not a good day. All anyone could know were the people they talked to. Seeing wasn't always believing. Royden Tolzien from Djakarta looked like repair tech Kevin Hajek from Eagle, at least from the corner of his eye. So when he'd read Hajek's name on the "dead" list he'd gone to sleep thinking 'that can't be right.'

-*-


Gamma Station.

He was starting over with nothing but his flight-suit … and his life, and his memories. It had been two days to the station, the funeral on the evening of the first day. It was the last gathering of the Eagle crew, but they had already begun to fragment under the strain of losing Captain and ship and nearly half the complement. One hundred eighty-six killed in battle, another twelve had died in medlab after rescue and four more were still in critical condition. Funerals shouldn't be lists of names. They all stood, some weeping, and 'family' fell apart. The survivors would be reassigned to twenty different ships.

John had a few days layover. His former crewmates were scrambling to accumulate new kits. What he got for himself was some time alone on a terminal and he wrote letters.

It was time for reflection, and he though about what he had discovered, floating in that white light in the darkness. When I lay there thinking I would die, he wanted to tell Dad, I had one regret --

-- The censors would not let him write that. He couldn't mention the attack, and he didn't want to worry them anyway. But he could tell Dad his hope, not telling him why he felt it: When this is over, I want to marry Anna, if she'll have me. Ambition isn't important any more. He couldn't say Don't tell Mom; I don't want to make her cry. He'd have to tell both or neither, so he left it. Keep an eye on her for me, can you? he asked.

What could he write to Anna? I've had time to think out here. Sorry I forgot a Christmas card -- he began, never minding that she hadn't send one to him. My birthday adventure was a "Rolling Good Time." The only thing that could have made it better was if you had been there with me. Scott Borgia had found a Latina restaurant with a back room be could monopolize and Denny, Kevin Hajek (he's one of the repair crew for our 'furies), Wayne and Robin were there, and more as the night went on ...

John looked at the time mark and sighed. It had taken him fifteen minutes to complete four sentences. It was hard to write about the leave as if it were fresh in his memory. So much had changed in six months.

His squad mates had talked Captain Arko into changing the itinerary so his leave could be on his birthday, not four days late, and it was no big deal to bend the schedule and route that way. The friends he had laughed and joked with -- half had been killed and half he might never see again. All the survivors were being reassigned to different ships.

I hope your studies are going well, he said in closing. I'll write again soon. Always your friend, John.

-*-


Who the hell cares if there were twenty different Narnish words to explain why one Narn hated another Narn? I should be completing that field report, not trying to memorize the sliding hierarchy of who one should assassinate first. What a brutal language!

Anna came in from classes exhausted. It had been a hard time concentrating. She put off her studying to check mail.

A letter from John Sheridan. At first she was surprised, and then she remembered: Earth Alliance was at war. The media didn't want to talk about it much, and that was as frightening as anything else. There had been no formal declaration from the Minbari, it took a long time for anything beyond rumors to come out of the Senate. Each rumor contradicted the last: They attacked. No, we attacked. Why would we attack?

No one knew a thing.

Life tried to go on as normal. What else was there to do? But it had been a cold certainty growing in her belly: Nothing would be the same. ... And suddenly Scott had ad lib a material science explanation for why there had to be at least two sub-basements to balance the tower's height. It's funny what crazy things 'situations' can lead to ... What did John care about materials science? It was enough that ships could fly. His letter was trying to talk cheerfully as if nothing were wrong. For all he was trying to avoid the subject, that avoidance made the war all the more oppressive.

John, it seemed, had had a bout of serious thinking. That was what life was like for a soldier in war, wasn't it? In peace time you made plans. Learned stuff, prepared. All you could do in war was be alert and wait. Daydream about the future and play "might have been."

And John -- Hot Shot Johnny -- had decided he'd rather be married.

She knew John didn't mean the letter as a proposal. He was being considerate, rational. Now was not a time to ask such a thing. But it was easy for her to read between the lines to know his intention. It was a sudden flutter inside her to realize she had been waiting for this, had been trying to call up the nerve to take the first step. I should have bought him that card.

She started to write an answer: yes. Yes, I will love you, she thought. Come home to me. But then she read again the words there on the screen: keep alive.

How can I ask that?

How can I be so selfish as to ask him to put his life before what might have to be done?


All the fear of the war came back to her, redoubled, crushing her new-found happiness. It might be that he must die to defend Earth. She swallowed, not knowing how she might continue under such a weight of regret and might-have-been.

Slowly she deleted the words. There was nothing else for it: she could not ask for such a promise. She deleted the words, and then the whole letter.

She remembered a night in Denver, and wiped away her tears. Tears never helped.

She put her hands on the keyboard and began to write again. Yes, John, I'll marry you. If I can.

-*-


John signed in at his station after the 1500 mail dump. He was on the Courir now, training his wing on what little had been learned in the Eagle attack. There was a letter from "Anna", and the system supplied her last name, "[Mathieson]."

He smiled. That was fast.Dearest John, the letter began. In these perilous times we should not be shy to speak what we know to be true. His eyes opened wide as he read the rest of the paragraph. What is unsaid today, Fate may not let us say tomorrow. It's all right to say "I love you." ...

He began to laugh. You're not a subtle man, Johnny, he told himself. Rather transparent, I'd say. He laughed again, but softly. He didn't want to make explanations to the curious just yet.

Further on her phrasing became less vague, then she popped the question without ambiguity. I remember how you held me that night. The mountains so bright in the moonlight. A sweet memory. I want to tell you how happy it made me feel when I understood your hesitant words, that you wanted to wed me. How honored I was that you chose me. The letter continued for some length and ended on a prayer. May God stay near to you, my love.

He was happy she wasn't angry at him for asking, even though he hadn't realized he had. He was happy he'd made the right choice. He wondered if she had heard him when he had called to her, or maybe the war had changed her, just as it had changed him, falling on them both without a warning. It was some kind of stupid cosmic joke that they felt this strong and were too stubborn to admit it. At least now they knew. It was a melancholy comfort.

Denver, huh? he mused. Not San Francisco? "Married." He tried the word. Liked it. Dearest Anna, he began.


=== end chapter two ===