Rose, I know you're gonna hate me, but . . . .
____________________________________
“Enter!” Sir Aivars Terekhov called as the admittance chime on the flag bridge briefing room’s door sounded. He looked up from his conference with Commander Pope and Lieutenant Commander Lewis and smiled as the door opened. “Helen!” he greeted the newcomer. “Already finished beating the schedule into submission?”
“I’m afraid not, Sir,” she replied, and his smile vanished instantly as her tone registered. The adjective which came most readily to mind where Helen Zilwicki was concerned was “sturdy,” and in far more than merely physical terms. Yet today she seemed . . . brittle, and her eyes were suspiciously bright.
“What is it, Helen?” he asked in a much gentler tone, feeling Pope and Lewis look at each other and then at him and his flag lieutenant.
“Lieutenant Archer just screened me with a message from Admiral Gold Peak, Sir,” she said in an unnaturally level voice. “We’ve received amplification on the flash dispatches from Manticore. Apparently, the original casualty estimate was low.”
She paused, and something about her manifest unwillingness to continue sent an icy chill through Sir Aivars Terekhov. He’d had two T-days to come to grips — intellectually, at least — with the devastating attack, but all of them had been dreading the more detailed dispatches they knew would follow once the Admiralty and the Grantville Government had time to begin sorting out the true extent of the damage.
“How low?” he asked.
“According to Lieutenant Archer, we lost between eight and a half and nine million people, Sir, and Weyland’s destruction’s been confirmed. And —” her voice wavered ever so slightly “— so has the Kitty’s.”
“What?”
Terekhov heard his own voice ask the question, but he didn’t remember telling it to. All he could do was stare at his flag lieutenant, understanding — now — the bright sheen of unshed tears, while his mind tried to cope with the totally unanticipated shock.
Why are you so surprised? a corner of that mind asked itself. You knew she’d be in yard hands for months. Where the hell else did you think they’d send her for that? Of course she was at Hephaestus! You just didn’t want to think about that, did you?
No, he hadn’t. But now he had no choice, and he drew a deep, steadying breath that seemed to help remarkably little.
“Personnel losses?” His question sounded preposterously calm in his own ears.
“Total, Sir.” The first word came out in bits and pieces and she blinked hard, fighting to control her voice. “Some of her people were probably out of the ship,” she continued huskily. “I don’t know how many . . . or who. And even if they were,” despite her hard-held control a single tear trickled down her cheek, “they were probably just somewhere else in Hephaestus and . . . .”
Her voice trailed off completely, and she stood there, gazing at him through a silvery shimmer of tears.
Terekhov’s jaw tightened. He seemed about to reply, but then he stood instead and crossed the briefing room deck in two strides. Her eyes began to widen in question, but his arms went around her before she could speak.
She stiffened. Embracing one’s flag lieutenant wasn’t exactly forbidden by Regs, but the service’s traditions came pretty damned close to that, for a lot of reasons, most of them very good ones. But Terekhov didn’t seem to care, and all Helen felt in that moment were the arms of the father who couldn’t be there for her — the father who was all too probably as dead as the men and women of HMS Hexapuma. She tried to draw the Navy’s formalities about her, reached for the armor of an officer on duty, and they crumbled in her hands.
“I know, Helen.” His voice rumbled in her ear, and the tears burst free as one hand rose to gently cup the back of her head. “I know.”
