Re-edited... Thanks, ED, for the review and commentary. )
Oops... PS- Mature Content
61: Target Acquired
Endurance-
The locator screen on his wrist comm (which he'd taken to wearing again, full time) placed Linda in the ship's tool room. John propelled himself along with occasional kicks and handholds, soon reaching the cabin in question.
He wasn't certain why his wife would have gone there… it wasn't used to store med supplies or anything… but at least the tool room was private.
She was hovering by a mineral collection rack when John drifted up to the hatch. Doing nothing, at first, Linda reached blindly for the nearest checklist the instant she caught sight of him. And here was the weak point in his 'confront the neglected female' scenario; he had no idea how to begin operations. Start with 'hello', maybe?
From the hatch, he said,
"Um… Hey, Do… Linda. Got a minute?"
Very stiffly, not taking her reddened eyes from the checklist, she nodded. He gave himself a little push-off into the tool room. It wasn't a large space (about the size of an average mobile-home kitchenette) and mostly jammed with dusty mining equipment. Half the LEDs were out to conserve power, casting the cabin into twilit semi-gloom. John braked with a hand to the shovel and pick-axe shelf. It rattled slightly in protest, but Linda still wouldn't look up from her inverted list.
Well… what he knew about female emotions was pretty limited, but as Scott had once told him, 'when in doubt, apologize; even if you haven't the damndest notion what for'. Besides, something else pointed out, she always does this: goes off by herself to be emotional, and then comes out ready to reason a few hours later.
…And, yeah; it was his fault.
Bracing himself to prevent drift (or painful ricochet), John put a hand forth and caressed the top of her head. Brown, wavy hair sifted between the fingers of his left hand, which then stroked downward along the side of her pointed face; blushing cheek, sharp little chin.
"Okay. I'm sorry. I've been busy the last three days, but…"
"Your other job?" she cut in, keeping an admirably level tone.
John nodded, pleased that she understood the situation.
"Yeah. Some complications have arisen back home that I'm still trying to sort out… and it's eating up a lot of memory. But I, um… didn't mean to ignore you."
She relaxed a little, unfolding her arms and looking up at him. There was something promisingly familiar about that expression…
John took the laminated checklist from her unresisting hands and pressed it back on its Velcro pad. Her brown eyes were wide, reflecting the pale LEDs and his own tall silhouette. Her breathing had changed, roughening slightly.
He pushed forward some; kissing first forehead then parted lips. That deepened after a moment as her arms went up and around his neck and she brushed close against him.
One hand remained on the shelf as an anchor, while the other moved slowly from face to shoulder to gently swelling breast. Beneath her blue tee-shirt he could feel the lace of a bra; one of those satiny half-things that he very much liked removing.
He had limited experience with wives, but assumed that it was still polite to ask, first. Ending the kiss, John pulled away a bit, just enough to give her a brief, questioning glance. Hot and confused as a first time conquest, she blushed. Right. All he'd needed to know…
His mouth went to her throat and then, through the cotton tee shirt, to her breast, which he softly, half-playfully bit at. She made a small noise and clutched at the back of his head, pulling him closer.
(Still green across the board, then. So far: go flight.)
Gone was the notion that this was only their second time, glossed by the memory of many previous touch-and-goes at this particular landing strip.
He slid a hand under the tee shirt, encountering smooth skin, gentle curves and a silken camisole; all the pleasant things typically wrapped up in a female surprise package.
Shifting targets, he went back to kissing her mouth, but kept his movements at first soft and exploratory.
(It had been awhile, and he was just barely out from under the dark cloud of contamination. Proceed with caution.)
Very gently, he pushed one side of the bra up and off, leaving his hand in its place. Slight squeeze, then, stroking with the thumb as the kiss went deeper. No ring there, or in her navel, either, but that had… wrong female.
Her own hand groped downward and she began caressing him through the cloth of his exercise pants.
And she now had his absolute and undivided attention. The slim, moving hand felt very good, but what he really wanted was…
…Not the ice-water buzz-kill shock of a wrist comm alert.
There were over 6,900 known human languages, most of them endowed with appallingly graphic curse words. John made an immediate, earnest attempt to recall and apply each one. Setting his wife aside, he released his grip on the tool shelf and brought his arm up for a glance at the comm screen.
General alarm, of the 'Guys, I'm in serious trouble, here,' variety… from Alan. Knowing that it was futile, that he was too far away to do any good, John Tracy pressed the response stud.
Linda, meanwhile, gazed at her extremely handsome, once more preoccupied husband, and realized two things:
One; that she was never, ever going to come first, with him.
And, two; that she loved and needed John with a wild, aching ferocity, but was too proud to make a fool of herself over it.
Looking at her husband, Linda made a dispassionate catalog of attributes, while he struggled with his watch to reach someone named 'goddam Alan'.
He'd lost weight again, but somehow managed to look as good as ever. Better, maybe, because he now had that slightly aloof ("You can feed me, if you want… not that I'm asking,") stray cat air about him. All silvery-blond hair, blue-violet eyes and chiseled features, damn it. It seemed altogether safer not to get too attached to someone like that, as his sort had a tendency to wander off at night on business of their own, and turn up dead on the road by morning.
Sighing, she readjusted her mussed clothing and decided to put herself back on schedule before Pete came looking. First, though, Linda slapped him on the rear, which sent John flying in one direction and her (faster) spiraling away in the other.
John caught himself and looked her way, saying,
"Sorry. New development at home. But, later… okay?"
Sure thing, Sunshine. His attention was back on the glowing watch face before she even had time to reply; nor did he seem to notice when she left the small tool room and drifted away.
Having no luck reaching Alan, John decided to check his computer's progress in cracking those files. Linda had gone off somewhere, probably returning to the med-lab to update her logs. Roger was up front, brainstorming power-down techniques with Pete. And Cho…was out in the galley.
Meaning that he had some time to visit his sleeping compartment and have a look at the busy laptop. So, back to the crew living quarters he went. Being somewhat paranoid, he'd hidden his decryption and cracking applications behind an innocuous-seeming desktop, and had to punch in several long codes to retrieve them. (Closed the bunk curtain, too.)
John stared at the results for a time, paging down in absolute, white-blank silence. 'Trouble' didn't even begin to cover it; for himself, for Autumn Drew, the mission and International Rescue.
Stirling and Genovese were assassins, as he'd suspected. They'd been hired by the Red Path to eliminate several marks, including his wife and crewmates. John himself was to be 'acquired' for interrogation… as Drew already had been. His father was scheduled for termination, and there were unnamed targets at Wharton, as well. The kids? Alan and Fermat?
John would have sworn that he felt nothing at all beyond a sort of red-edged, tunnel-vision nausea. But…
Okay, genius… plan and prioritize, come up with f-ing something. Some way to keep everything and everyone that mattered safe. Trouble was, he couldn't do it alone. Not from here.
International Rescue and Endurance might not be the Red Path's primary objective… WorldGov had that signal honor… but the terrorists intended climbing over a mountain of broken bodies to get what they wanted: the end of civilization.
They had Autumn. (She'd hated that name; claiming that it all but doomed her to be sad.) They were after Endurance… Linda and the baby… his family, friends and world. And their sleepers were already in place throughout the Earth and moon base, poised for a massive, coordinated strike. One wrong message, one hint that they'd been discovered, and the plot would go forth, each cell acting on the coded instructions of a quietly murdered courier.
John had thought to himself, not long before, that he would sell his soul to defend wife and daughter.
What had she said…? That she'd rather work with him than against him? Yeah. Shoving all the jagged pieces back into place, John called Penelope.