I’m not used to Halley’s unabashed display of affection in front of junior personnel, but I don’t object to the proposed course of action, so I follow her as she takes me by the hand and pulls me into the corridor beyond the CQ booth. Behind us, I can hear the corporal on duty chuckling softly.
Halley doesn’t seem to be in the mood for preliminary chitchat. As soon as the hatch of her berth locks behind us, she makes good on her declared intent and undoes the buttons of my uniform with impatient urgency. Her one-piece flight suit is more convenient to unseal, and I tug on the zipper to peel off the baggy green outfit the pilots call a bone bag.
My formerly neat Class A outfit joins the flight suit on the floor of Halley’s berth. Her cabin is cluttered with books, manuals, printouts, and other school-related debris, a disorderly state that is highly unusual for my overachieving by-the-book girlfriend. As long as I have known her, Halley has always been a hundred-percenter on every test, and by every military standard. The Halley I knew in Basic wouldn’t have left so much as a dirty sock on the floor of her berth. This Halley has three different uniforms spread out on her bed and the little foldout table next to it, and a full laundry bag in the corner of the room. She pulls me over to the bed and sweeps all the clothing laid out on it onto the floor. Then she takes me by the shoulders, tosses me onto the bed, and climbs on top of me.
Our coupling is fast, furious, and urgent. Halley is a lot more rough and aggressive than I remember her. By the time we have spent ourselves on each other, I have gouges on my back and blood on my lower lip.
“Whoa,” I say, still out of breath and slightly dazed from the experience. “Don’t use me up all at once. I have a few days left on this leave.”
“If you think that’s all you have left, then get your ass out of my bunk.” Halley grins. “Go find me the young studly private who could go three times in a row back in Boot.”
“He’s right here,” I protest. “He’s just a little tired from heroically trying to save the Commonwealth.”
“Don’t worry so much about the Commonwealth,” she says, and kisses me on the corner of the mouth. Then she gets out of the bunk and walks over to the bathroom, kicking discarded clothes and paper manuals out of the way. “Just worry about staying alive. I’d hate to have to look for a new boyfriend at this point.”
“Like you’d have a hard time finding a replacement,” I say. “Fleet’s lousy with studs in tight flight suits who would love to, uh, fly close formation with you.”
“And that’s the problem,” she says from the bathroom. “Pilots are all overconfident, self-centered adrenaline junkies. I want one of those, I can just date myself. Less hassle that way.”
I look around in Halley’s messy little officer berth while I listen to the sounds of water splashing in the shower. In the last five years, she has lost her by-the-book valedictorian uptightness when it comes to rules and regulations. What she hasn’t lost is her hypercompetence. She doesn’t keep her medals and commendations on the walls of her berth, but I know the abilities of the average junior officer, and Halley is one of the best drop-ship jocks in the fleet. I know there’s a Distinguished Flying Cross tucked away in her locker somewhere, and she made the jump to first lieutenant after the absolute minimum required time in service. I have no doubt she’ll be a twenty-star general someday, if she decides to become a lifer and the Lankies let us all live that long.
In the bathroom, the two-minute timer shuts off the shower. A few moments later, Halley comes out drying herself with one of the scratchy standard-issue fleet towels. Her dog tags jingle softly on their chain as she starts drying her short dark hair.
“You hungry?” she asks.
“Somewhat,” I say.
“Drop Ship U has a pretty good rec facility. Class One galley. Come on, get dressed and let’s get some chow. I want to talk to you about something.”
The dining room of the Fleet School’s rec facility has a real viewport, a huge slab of triple-layer polyplast that takes up a ten-meter section of one of the walls. When Halley and I sit down at an empty table with our meal trays, we can see Earth—one of its hemispheres, anyway—rising above the built-up lunar horizon in the distance. The fleet complex on Luna was built before they deemed the inclusion of complex exterior viewports an unnecessary expense and just went to camera-fed screens instead. It seems slightly obscene to be eating what must be a two-thousand-calorie meal in view of the North American continent, where two-thirds of the population have to make that many calories stretch all day.
Halley pulls two bottles of soy beer from the leg pockets of her flight suit. She pops the caps off both, then pushes one toward me.
“Officer privilege,” she says. “You’re on leave, and I am off duty until tomorrow morning. Drink up.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I sketch a salute and take the bottle from her. I don’t particularly like soy beer—it tastes like fermented tofu with a bit of a fizz—but it’s one of the few alcoholic drinks we can get through the official supply chain.