Flowers in the Black - Part II
26 Jun 2018Jellicoe
"Marry you?" Jellicoe replied almost choking on his wine, "Why?""Because you love me of course, and don't even think about denying it I know you too well."
Jellicoe looked at the woman shaking his head in astonishment, a look of open mouthed shock on this face. Just how did she know him so well? How did she know exactly how he felt before he even realised it himself? Love? He'd never have used that word, not even to himself but the instant she did it hit him like a sledgehammer, the feeling of utter wretchedness as he had watched her ship leave, the agonising emptiness she'd left behind and the terror and panic mixed with wild soaring hope when she appeared at his table. Was that love?
"Not in one of those dreadful churches of yours," Kira continued as though discussing nothing more important than what to have for desert, "and don't even think about asking me to take your name, but I want it done as soon as possible."
"And why would you want to marry me?" Jellicoe asked regaining some of his composure.
"Because I have shocking taste in men and can't resist a bad boy," Kira replied with a teasing smile on her face, then the smile faded and her voice because serious, "because for the first time I thought I'd never see you again, that I'd chosen never to see you again and I hated it. I always knew that you'd always come back to me, even when you vanished for all those years I knew you'd turn up again, don't think that means I sat pining for you but I always knew, and I always knew that I could find you if I wanted but after what happened in Alioth I never wanted to see you again, that you were an addiction I needed to kick and if it hadn't been for poor Mhera it might have stayed that way, but, well, after Pegasi I hated then thought that I'd never see you again. I don't want to live with you or tear you away from your beloved ship, I couldn't stand having you under my feet all then time, but I do want to know that we'll always come back to each other."
"There's something else," Jellicoe said thoughtfully, his meal forgotten, the urgent bleeping of his PDA ignored. It was rare indeed that Kira Goméz let her mask slip, and even then he could not read her nearly as well as she could read him but he knew her well enough to know that there was something else. Kira gave a sad smile and spoke again.
"I'm frightened Stannis. Not for me for our son, those things in the Pleiades, they're everywhere, they're powerful and we can't stop them. The whole region's littered with the wrecks of our ships and none of theirs, if the worst comes to the worst I want Corrin to know his father, and I want his father to make sure he survives, even if that means escaping to Colonia." Kira's speech grew faster and more agitated while she twisted a strand of hair between her thumb and forefinger.
"Are things really that bad?" Jellicoe asked, concerned. He put his hand over Kira's and gave a reassuring squeeze, usually she would have hated such a public display but her only response today was a worried grimace.
"Yes Stannis they are. Hudson's blustering away as always and the Empire are trying to reassure their people, but they've taken a hammering and not a single enemy ship down, these Aegis people say they've got new weapons on the drawing board but we need them now." she paused and collected herself, "If they attack the bubble billions will die, I want to make sure my son... our son lives."
"I'm a combat pilot Kira," Jellicoe replied gently, "if it comes to a fight and we are that badly outmatched then I'm far more likely to be killed than you are."
"You're a father Stannis, and for the first time in your life you're going to act like one. That boy didn't ask to be brought into this galaxy, we did that for him and that comes at a price - that you put him first, before what you want, before your ego before anything else and if there's any scrap of the man who helped create him left you'll understand that."
"Of course," Jellicoe replied abashed, "Where is he now?" He had never seen Kira like this, she was always so composed, so in control, whatever she had seen in the Pleiades it must be serious."
"He's in Inara, Citi Gateway. He's safe there the Nexus are good people."
"You do know that if the Thargoids are as dangerous as you say then the two of us going poking around out there is probably the best way to make him an orphan?"
"Don't patronise me Stannis," she snapped, then softened, "if anything happens to us Mira is on standby with a long range Asp and instructions not to stop till she reaches Jacques, I know people out there who'll care for him. Look I'm not saying we should hide and do nothing, but if anything should happen to me then you make sure you do everything you can to get him to safety."
"It's they overrun the bubble," Jellicoe said grimly, "who's to say Colonia won't be next?"
"Then we run again." Kira said with a burning intensity. "Somewhere, something will survive, humanity will survive and whatever happens to us I want our child to survive."
Stannis Jellicoe and Kira Gómez were married the following day at a short ceremony in Finney Ring's administrative district, the local prefect presided while Claude, Vik and Harry Soames were then witnesses. Afterwards the wedding party had dinner in the le Mousquetaire restaurant before the happy couple retired to their hotel. Later that night Jellicoe stood at their viewport watching the ships come and go. Here, about as far from the Pleiades as one could get in the bubble life went on as normal, the Thargoids still just a vague and distant menace, little more than a footnote in the news casts, but that would change and Jellicoe wondered if what they had done was being repeated across human space just as it had been for millennia, right back to humanity's earthbound infancy, couples committing to each other before war brought separation, hardship or worse.
"Switch the light off and come back to bed." Kira called sleepily, reminding him of words uttered centuries ago, when humanity stood on the brink of catastrophe in ancient times, normally Jellicoe took solace from the wisdom of ages past but now it only filled him with a dark foreboding.
"The lights will soon be going out all over the bubble," he paraphrased, "I wonder if any of us will live to see them lit again?"