Charlotte Boyett-Compo- WIND VERSE- Pleasure's Foehn (2 page)

Davan nodded and got up quickly, anxious to put distance between her and Orion. She walked to the captain’s door, placed her hand against the ID inset and the door opened soundlessly.

Captain Bolivar’s eyes widened and his lips parted as Davan came in. “What the hell is wrong with your hair?”

Davan shook her head. “I don’t know,” she replied. Her cheeks were flushed a dull red.

The captain snapped his mouth shut. “Well, do something about it. It is very disconcerting.”

“Aye, Sir,” Davan agreed as she reached up to try smoothing down her errant follicles.

“Very disconcerting,” the captain repeated, motioning for Davan to sit down. Taking a seat before the captain’s desk, Davan’s shoulders slumped. She started to reach up to try to smooth down her hair but let her hand drop to her lap. 7

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

“And did we enjoy our morning beverage a little too quickly today?” the captain inquired, leaning back in his chair, steepling his fingers under his chin.

“A bit of a mishap in the elevator, Sir,” Davan told him. “I apologize for my appearance and would have gone back to change but I was already running late and—”

Waving away the explanation, the captain resumed his prayer-like position. “Just do something with that hair, Doc. It is very disconcerting.”

Davan sighed again. “Aye, Sir.”

“Well, let’s get down to business.” The captain cocked his head to one side. “How is Lieutenant Majib this morning?”

“He was resting comfortably when I looked in on him at 0600,” Davan answered.

“It’ll be a day or two before he’s up and about.”

The captain echoed Davan’s sigh. “What could the man have been thinking mutilating himself in that manner?”

“It is part of their culture, Sir,” Davan reminded him. “To us it is self-mutilation but to the Esvar, it is a rite of passage for young men who wish to join the monkhood after completion of their military obligation.”

“But to slice off your penis…” The captain shuddered. “Just the thought of it makes me ill. It is very…”

“Disconcerting,” Davan provided, striving to keep a straight face.

“Precisely!” the captain declared.

Davan looked down at her hands, which were folded primly in her lap. She knew she was about to get a new assignment and was afraid it would be back to Centauri Prime instead of to the warfront where she longed to be.

“And Khadeeja’s wounds? Are they healing without difficulty?”

“We had a bit of a problem with one of the wounds, but there shouldn’t be any further worries.”

“What the hell is my crew thinking?” the captain grumbled. “Majib snips off his dangly. Lieutenant Chid stabs her bunkmate with a meat fork and Counselor Khadeeja pulls out plugs of her hair in a fit of pique!”

“I believe it was more than a fit of pique, Sir. The Counselor was enraged when she learned her father had betrothed her to a Satyrian.” Davan frowned. “I think I’d be enraged, too.”

“They are not as bad as people think,” the captain snapped. “I spent four years on a Satyri outpost. They were nothing but polite and respectful to me.”

“That may be true, Sir, but Satyrian men are not known for being faithful to their spouses, and they have a tendency to expect their wives to pleasure their friends as well. To a woman of Counselor Khadeeja’s, ah, sensibilities, such a fate was devastating.”

8

Pleasure’s Foehn

“Well, see, now that is disconcerting as well!” the captain said, pouncing on Davan’s explanation. “It is unnatural for women to mate with other women. Khadeeja’s father most likely felt the deep shame of his daughter’s abnormal predilection and that is why he betrothed her to a strong male like Governor Hadib’s son.”

Davan flinched. “Sir, lesbianism isn’t abnormal. Studies have shown—”

“I don’t want to hear it!” Captain Bolivar interrupted. “Discussing such aberrant behavior makes me ill.”

Clamping her lips closed against the narrow-minded intolerance of her captain, Davan looked back down at her hands, tightening the grip her left hand had on her right.

“At any rate, we’re here to discuss your new temporary assignment,” the captain said. He stared intently at Davan until she looked up at him. A slow smile eased over his thin lips. “You got your wish, Doc. You’re going to the war zone, TDY for six months.”

Davan’s eyes lit up. “May I ask when, Sir?”

A twinkle glinted in the captain’s pale blue eyes. “Oh, the orders are effective immediately. You need to get there as quickly as possible for the physician you are replacing is anxious to leave. He is retiring at the end of the month. A shuttle is being fueled for Aduaidh Quadrant even as we speak and I took the liberty of having a steward pack up your things for transport later.”

“Aduaidh Quadrant,” Davan repeated in a voice filled with awe. Her heartbeat had already sped up at the news that after two years she was being transferred off Bolivar’s flying cargo ship the
Andraste
and into the war zone, but to find out she was being sent right into the thick of the fighting made her heart thud almost painfully in her chest. She felt giddy.

“I will, of course, hate to lose you, but I know you have been itching to get out where you believe your abilities can be better utilized.”

Davan grimaced at the flippant way in which the captain dismissed her surgical training. She had graduated with high honors at the top of her class and had been proclaimed a brilliant diagnostician and skilled laser-surgeon by the academy’s Dean of Surgery—no mean feat by any physician’s standards.

“To which warship have I been assigned, Sir?”

The captain pursed his lips then hid them behind the camouflage of his steepled fingers. It was apparent he was trying not to laugh and a niggle of concern slithered down Davan’s spine.

“Sir?” she questioned as the silence stretched out uncomfortably. “Which warship?”

The captain’s cheeks tightened as he pressed his lips together tightly “Warship?” he finally queried. “You’re not going to a warship, Doc.”

Davan tensed. “A troop transport, then? A medivac shuttle?”

The captain shook his head slowly at each inquiry.

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

“A field hospital?”

Captain Bolivar could contain his laughter no longer and let out a choked-off guffaw. “You’ve been assigned to the
Foehn
!”

Davan felt as though someone had thrown a cold fish into her face. The name of the ship propelled her back in her chair—her eyes flared wide, her jaw dropped. She couldn’t have spoken if her very life depended upon it. All she could do was stare at her captain as the man chuckled, reaching up to wipe the tears of humor from his eyes.

“I know, I know. I couldn’t believe it, either, when the orders came down,” the captain told her. “Not exactly what you were hoping for but you will be in the middle of the war zone.”

“A pleasure ship?” Davan whispered. “I’ve been assigned to a flying brothel?”

The captain seemed to be making a supreme effort to control his mirth for his jowly face went through a succession of strained expressions before it finally settled into a smirk.

“They call them R&R vessels,” he stated. “Well, actually the troops call them F&F

for—”

“I know what they call them, Sir!” Davan said. Unthinking, she shot up from her chair and began pacing, her eyes shifting from side to side as the implication of her assignment weighed her down.

“Actually, it’s a rather cushy assignment, Doc,” the captain told her. “I know several men who’d give their left nuts to get assigned to the
Foehn
or her sister ship the
Samiel
.”

“Aye, well, I’m not a man!” Davan snapped.

Captain Bolivar shrugged. “We all have our crosses to bear, don’t we?” he joked. Davan stopped pacing and faced him. She knew there was no way she could refuse an assignment. Every available warm body was needed to run the war machine. Her home world of Breasal along with its neighboring planets in the Aneas Quadrant had been engaged in fierce battle with the traitors from Aduaidh Quadrant and their Supreme Emperor The Burgon for six long years. Her parents had been aboard a medivac transport when it had been blown apart by a Skyraider warcruiser from Aduaidh Prime, The Burgon’s home world. Each of her nine siblings and over thirty of her cousins had been drafted to fight. Two of her brothers had been lost to the fighting, one brother and her only sister were interned on Amerigen in a prison camp, and another was missing in action. Only the gods knew where the rest of her family had scattered.

“Look, Doc,” the captain said. “I can only imagine the horrors our boys see every day of their lives out there on the front. Those who aren’t maimed beyond their ability to enjoy life need the services provided by the R&R ships. They deserve a little rest and relaxation at the hands of a pretty female. Do you begrudge them that?”

“No, but—”

10

Pleasure’s Foehn

“It’s only going to be for six months. That’s the normal rotation for personnel on the pleasure ships.”

“I understand, but—”

“And it is our responsibility to make sure those girls don’t have something nasty lurking between their legs they can transmit to our boys.”

Davan squinted, the thought of that
something nasty
making her look as though a bad smell had entered the office.

“I know I don’t want any son of mine to come back from the war with a galloping case of pox or…worse yet…a hemorrhagic disease that might eventually kill him.”

“We have cures for all the known hemorrhagic diseases, Sir,” Davan mumbled.

“True, but do we know what other vile things those bastard Aduaidh Quadrant scientists may have discovered in their horror labs?” He leaned forward and braced his elbows on his desktop, his fingers threaded together beneath his sagging chin. “Or what they might be brewing up?”

The thought of the strange experiments she’d heard the Aduaidh Quadrant traitors were conducting on Riezell Nine made Davan shiver.

“I know it isn’t the assignment you were hoping for and I feel bad you think you’re going where you believe your talents will be wasted, but remember our boys, Doc. They are more important than ego, don’t you think?”

“Ego?” Davan questioned. “It isn’t ego, Sir. I—”

The captain’s Vid-Com clicked on and Yeoman Orion informed them the shuttle was fueled and ready to leave for Cengus in the Aduaidh Quadrant.

“Have a pleasant trip, Doc,” the captain said, his face schooled into an emotionless mask. “Take good care of our boys out there.”

Knowing she was being dismissed and there was nothing she could do from this end, Davan clenched her jaw. “Thank you, Sir. Will that be all?”

“Ain’t it enough?” Captain Bolivar chuckled.

Spinning on her heel, Davan marched to the door, barely able to contain the fury, which lashed out at her with barbed thongs. As she passed Yeoman Orion, she snatched her orders from the other woman’s hand and continued out the office door, her spine rigidly straight as she stomped down the corridor.

“The shuttle is harnessed in Bay Five!” Orion called after her. “It’s the
Toradh
!”

Davan threw up a hand to acknowledge she had heard but did not turn around. Her eyes were narrowed, her lips pursed tightly together and her breathing a harsh rasp dragging into her lungs, exploding as it was expelled. Those who passed her hardly noticed her mussed hair for the expression on her face was lethal. Once in the elevator that would take her down seven decks to the docking bays, Davan stared at her reflection in the stainless steel doors and saw an image she barely recognized. The woman glaring back at her looked like something out of the history 11

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

pages of an old-fashioned textbook. She resembled the illustration of an ancient berserker warrioress of the Ghaoth Province she had once seen.

“A pleasure ship,” Davan bit out from tightly clenched teeth. “A damned flying whorehouse!”

The elevator doors shushed open on the lower deck and Davan stepped out, mindless of the frenetic activity going on around her as she turned left and made her way to Bay Five.

“I’m going to a fucking brothel!” she complained loud enough for a technician standing close by to ask, “Is there any other kind?”

Davan turned a fierce scowl to the technician who had the good sense to hurry on about his business.

From the looks she was getting as she passed, her new assignment was common knowledge aboard the
Andraste
. The male crewmembers were grinning broadly and the female crewmembers were looking back at her with sympathy. To make matters worse, it was Lieutenant Ja’Klyn who was standing outside the doors to the shuttle docked in Bay Five. Obviously, he was to be the pilot who would fly her to her shameful new job.

Davan groaned for Ja’Klyn had a wide smile on his handsome Farisian face. Ja’Klyn unfolded his arms and placed his hands on his lean hips as Davan drew nearer. “Wanna ride, lady?” he called out.

“Get bent, Veesi,” Davan snarled as she pushed past the lieutenant and marched onto the shuttle.

Ja’Klyn entered behind her and moved over to the command chair of the two-seat console. “Don’t you want to ride up front with me?”

“I want to scream,” Davan plopped down in one of the three jump seats ranged along the starboard hull. “I want to hit somebody,” she growled as she hooked her safety harness. Glaring up at a man who had been more than just a friend over the past year, she gave him a baleful look. “I don’t think you want to be that close to me right now!”

The lieutenant whistled. “That pissed, huh?”

“Pissed doesn’t even begin to describe it, Veesi!”

“Veesi,” Ja’Klyn repeated. “When you call me by my surname three times in one day, I know you are not a happy traveler.” He worked his way through the engaging controls and the powerful engine roared to life.

“Why me?” Davan whined. “What the hell did I do to deserve this?”

“It might not be so bad, Davie,” Ja’Klyn said.

“It’s a fucking brothel!”

“I’m like Hurst. I didn’t know there was any other kind,” Ja’Klyn said, his lips twitching as he recalled the technician’s comment.