Chapter Twelve: Connections

I didn't even know what to say when I was faced with Hayden's wife in front of me. I had no idea if she'd already heard the news or not – and if she hadn't, I really hated to have to be the one to tell her. Instead I stood there awkwardly for a moment before I reverted back to formalities, returning her salute.

"At ease, Commander," I said. "It's good to see you again."

"And you as well, ma'am." True to her nature as a spook, her tone revealed nothing. She turned to face her colleague Lieutenant Lloyd. "Lieutenant."

"Commander," the other ONI operative acknowledged.

"I'll be meeting with you separately later, son. Keep an eye on your datapad for my message."

"Yes, ma'am." Then he looked to me. "By your leave, Colonel?"

I nodded. "Go ahead, Cal. You're dismissed." That left only Major Brewer, so I faced her next. "Major, we'll be in contact again soon as well. In the meantime, go through the report I sent you, and then we'll meet back up with the spooks before I return groundside. We'll discuss what to do with your battalion for now, where we should deploy Commander Hayden here, and when we'll start disembarking supplies form the Excalibur."

"Understood, Colonel," Brewer replied.

The newly arrived battalion commander came to attention again and saluted, then promptly left the hangar bay, following Lloyd out the doors into the hallway. I wondered fleetingly if she'd get up the gumption to talk to him – I'd seen no ring on her finger, and since Cal was the equivalent of a Marine captain in terms of rank, only one pay grade separated them.

But right now, that was far from the first thing on my mind. Right now, I needed to find out if I had to tell a good friend that she had become a widow.

Surprising me, Courtney Hayden gave me a small smile as soon as the major and the spook were gone.

"Well, I'm glad that's out of the way," she said. "I hate stuffy formalities. How are you? It's been some time."

I shrugged. "Can't complain, for the most part. Willis and the kids are all doing well, and groundside operations are a bit hairy at the moment, but nothing too crazy yet."

"And you were promoted, I see."

"Yep. More out of necessity than anything else I think, but everyone insists I earned it."

"I have no doubt you did, Cooper. You've always been young for your rank and a gifted field officer. Congratulations."

"Thanks." I shifted uncomfortably then, knowing I should tell her what I knew sooner rather than later, but finding that the words were hard to say aloud. I swallowed. "Listen, Courtney, there's something…maybe we should…"

It was the first time I noticed the hint of something flash in her eyes, and her tone of voice seemed to change almost abruptly, though in a very subtle way.

"It's okay, Natalie. I know. I…found out on the ship on our way here." She chuckled humorlessly. "Sometimes being a spook and having first access to everything isn't…pleasant. I was so excited to learn that Oliver and I were getting posted together, and then – "

For a moment I watched her struggle to maintain her composure, but she got it back. Then she looked at me again. "Were you there, when he died?" she asked quietly. "Did you see it?"

"Yeah."

The single word came straight out, and the memory flooded my mind at the same time: my best friend shouting orders at his Marines as we fought the Storm in the forest on the mainland along with the rebels. I'd turned my head when I'd heard his voice and looked, just in time to watch him take a full burst from a Storm rifle right in the chest and gut. I'd screamed his name in the pouring rain and rushed over to him, even amid the chaotic fighting going on all around us and at my aide's protest, but by the time Doc Reynolds had gotten there, Major Oliver Hayden was already dead. The lethal plasma rounds had killed him instantly.

And just like that, our joint command had come to an end. And my best friend's life was over.

Lieutenant Commander Hayden dropped her gaze to the deck now at my brief response and covered her eyes for a second. "Christ, Cooper. What happened?"

"He…" I paused, swallowed a second time, and continued, "It was the Storm. He took too many rounds, burned through his chestplate during our big assault in the forest. It was instantaneous. He got hit, lights went out, and…he was gone. I'm so sorry."

Hayden's wife just stood there for a long moment, digesting the information. No doubt she'd already gotten a general sense of how her husband had perished in combat, but hearing the details was always different and likely reopened the very fresh wound of his death. She didn't say anything for several minutes, and all I thought of in that time was how I would've felt if the situation had been reversed. I wouldn't have taken the news half as well as she had if Willis had been the one who'd been killed instead of Oliver.

Finally, she spoke.

"You know what I kept thinking during the rest of the trip here?" she asked me then. "I thought about my boys back home. I wondered how the hell I was supposed to tell our three sons that their father was gone. Now I won't even get to see them until this is over."

I didn't know what to say in reply to that. Willis had scared me a few times too over the years, and I'd wondered the same thing to myself about our own kids. The difference was that to me, it'd always just been a hypothetical thought. To Hayden, it was a reality. This had truly happened to her now, and when she got home, she'd really have to tell her boys the ugly truth.

She glanced back up at me then after a while and sighed, the pain clearly visible in her eyes. With her ONI training I knew she could've hidden it from me if she wanted to, but she didn't.

"I want to see him," she said suddenly, resolute. "I want to see his body. Will you come with me?"

"Courtney," I answered gently, "Oliver's…down in the morgue now aboard ship. You know that. He got shot up pretty bad in the chest. I don't think – "

But Lieutenant Commander Hayden shook her head. "Just his face, Cooper. I just want to see my husband's face one last time."

I followed Courtney Hayden down the Affair's elevator to the penultimate deck, where the dead were kept in their own separate steel boxes in a giant freezer to preserve their bodies until they could be transported back home to their loved ones. It was a more efficient storage system for those killed in action than using bulky cryotubes, which were instead reserved for the living. I didn't envy the morgue techs or the burial squads their jobs, but I knew someone had to do it.

The Navy lieutenant in charge saluted Hayden and I when we approached and inquired as to why we were down there.

"I'm Lieutenant Commander Courtney Hayden, ONI," the spook said, as if her uniform didn't already show what she was. "I'm here to view my husband, Major Oliver Hayden."

"Ma'am, he's – "

"I know, Lieutenant," Hayden replied. "I won't be long."

The morgue tech sighed, having no choice but to admit her. "Yes, ma'am." He glanced down at his datapad in hand. "His body's stored in aisle sixteen, row nine, box four. I can raise the temperature a bit while you're inside, but you've only got five minutes, Commander."

Hayden's wife nodded and we stepped inside. I'd never been in the morgue of a ship before, so the cold was startling. I pulled my uniform jacket's collar up to cover my neck and hugged myself a little as we walked. My battledress clothes seemed slow to compensate against the huge temperature drop.

Hayden, however, almost didn't appear to notice. She trooped ahead of me fast, finding the right aisle and row in less than a minute. Then an enlisted technician came around the corner on the other side and pointed out the correct box.

"Here's where the major is, ma'am," he said to Hayden. "Would you like me to open it up for you?"

"Yes," she answered without hesitation.

"Very well, Commander."

I stood back and off to the side while the tech used a code to unlock the box. Slowly he gripped the large handle with both hands and pulled it out. On the thin slab of steel was a frozen body, covered with a light blue sheet. The tech looked to Hayden again, who was suddenly stony-faced.

"Ma'am?"

"Pull back the sheet, Chief," she ordered. "Just the head."

"Aye, ma'am."

The tech did as he was told and I turned away. I'd seen dead bodies countless times before on battlefields across the galaxy in my career, but this wasn't how I wanted to remember my best friend. I wanted to remember Oliver as the vibrant, funny guy I'd loved like a brother, not a frozen, lifeless corpse on a cold piece of steel.

I heard his wife's sharp intake of breath then, and I shivered. Shortly after that, I heard the lieutenant commander fall to her knees beside her husband's body and begin to weep. Her unrestrained sobs filled the dark, cool narrow halls of the morgue and made the place all the more morbid and full of sorrow than it already was.

By the end of it, I wished I hadn't agreed to come.