The Admiral and the Assistant

Grimthorn fumed, pacing back and forth across his quarters.

How dare she call him a liar? How dare she? He was the most honest man in the Imperium!

He didn't even understand what she was so mad about. So he hadn't told her about the history of SSes or Imperial law. So what? Was he supposed to be a walking legal text, leaping to educate her about the finer points of citizenship at any moment?

His broad hands flexed, anxious to release his angry energy. He seethed. His urge was to lash out, destroy something.

In an earlier time, he might have thrown the chair across the room. Or dramatically swept all the stuff off his desk.

His pacing slowed. If he did that now, he'd run the risk of damaging the prints she'd hung on the wall. Or knocking over her flowers.

He was angry, but he didn't want to damage her things.

He clenched his teeth. No outlet. And punching a wall was simply not a thing that was done on a Navy ship, at least not more than once; unlike civilian structures, the hardened steel structure of the Swordheart would easily crumble the dainty bones of a Terran fist.

Absent any other outlet, he laid his palms against a bare patch of wall and pushed against it, his thoughts whirling in angry confusion.

He couldn't make her happy. Give her the galaxy and she got mad about her people on Takkar. It wasn't like he could do anything about it anyway. Hadn't he helped her get citizenship for herself? They'd gone to the very Emperor of the Imperium! Why couldn't she be happy with that?

Nothing was clear in his mind. He tried to force the thoughts away, but they slid effortlessly around his barriers and back into his forebrain, circling endlessly over the same topics, the same arguments. He thought of things he could have said, thought about how unfair it was. The more his thoughts and hurts chased each other, the angrier he got.

He stormed out of his room. He made a beeline for the fitness center. It was late, so the gym was empty. He stepped into the hack squat machine and started doing squats. He didn't count or do reps, he was simply pressing out the fire in his belly.

After some time in the rack, he stepped away. His limbs were trembling with exhaustion, and the edge of his fury had blunted a little. He walked back to his quarters.

In an effort to keep his indignant thoughts at bay, he sat at his desk with his scanner. He planned to read through some technical documents he'd been putting off, but as he spun through the data, he happened across a movie he'd pulled down a couple days earlier. It wasn't anything he enjoyed, but he'd gotten it to watch with Kinnit.

He began playing a little of it.

It was a dumb slapstick comedy. His mouth tightened. He didn't understand what was so funny about people acting like fools, or farting, or running into each other. But he knew she would be cracking up, filling the air with her tinkling laughter. Hot pinpricks of tears stung his eyes as the comedy rolled on.

He swiped the movie away and dropped the scanner on his desk. Maybe he just needed to sleep.

He laid down on the bunk. It was a roomy berth for a Navy bunk, but with both he and Kinnit in it, the bunk was always a little crowded. Now it felt huge and empty and cold.

He laid on his side, staring at the wall. She usually slept next to the wall. Now, only the blank steel of the Swordheart stared back at him. With a huff, he rolled over.

He rarely had trouble falling asleep, but now sleep didn't even glance his way as he tossed and turned in the bunk. The quarters were quiet and lonely. He stilled and stared at the ceiling.

It wasn't his room any more. It was theirs. Without her here, what was even the point?

He frowned. Thinking back, there had been a couple opportunities for him to talk to her about SSes and the Imperium. He'd known it would be a hard conversation, so he'd always let the topic slide by.

His frown hardened into a grimace. He was a Navy man. He knew better than that. He knew that you couldn't fix a problem by ignoring it. It wouldn't work with the fleet, why had he thought it would work with his wife? He'd avoided the hard conversations, and now he had a worse problem to deal with. She'd way overreacted, but he'd given her something to overreact about in the first place.

He sat up on his bunk, deep in thought. Finally, he stood and walked out the door.

Grimthorn padded down the hall. There was no traffic, this late at night. He'd been to the mess hall, and their nook, and even the office, but Kinnit hadn't been any of those places. There was only one place left he could think to look.

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Down in the berthing area. Her old room.

He tapped on the door.

There was a long silence. Perhaps she wasn't here, either. He considered using his administrative override to open the door and check if she was there, but realized that would be monumentally counterproductive, whether she was there or not.

He tapped again.

No response. He sagged. Earlier, when his fury was up, he'd wanted to confront her, yell about how wrong she was. Now he just wanted to talk.

With heavy resignation, he turned away from the door. It slid open.

She stood there in the doorway, and a flood of emotion filled him. Hope, relief, anger, annoyance.

"Oh," she said coldly. "It's you." As if anybody else would be knocking on her door at four in the morning. "What do you want?"

Her sharp tone stirred his agitation. His immediate inclination was to bark back, punish her for her words, but he forced his upset back down. Responding to her tone wouldn't help.

He took a deep breath.

"Kinnit, I'm sorry," he said.

She looked down at the floor, her lips tight, but she didn't respond.

"You're right. I should have told you. About the SSes and the Imperial law. I... I knew it would be a difficult conversation, so I kept putting it off. I shouldn't have. I'm sorry."

Slowly, she turned her face up to his. Her wide, luminous eyes were rimmed with tears. Her jaw was clenched, but her lips were trembling.

"Kinnit, I love you. Would you forgive me?"

She launched herself bodily at him, grabbing him in a tight hug. She began bawling.

"I do!" she sobbed. "I'm sorry too! I was so mad! I don't like being mad at you!"

He folded her in his arms and began stroking her back.

"Shh. Shh. It's okay now." He glanced up and down the hall.

"It just hurt so much to think you'd lied to me, like you thought I was too stupid or weak to know the truth. I thought you didn't care about Kobolds. Didn't care about me."

"It wasn't that, Kinnit. Never that. I know that you're smart and strong." He looked around again. "Come, let's go inside before we start rumors."

She nodded, sniffling, and pulled him into her old room, still holding tightly to his waist with one arm.

As she drew him in, he realized he'd never really been in her room. Before, out of discretion, and after, because they'd had his quarters for her to move into. Some movie posters hung on the walls, and the desk was covered with slips from the office-- work she'd been doing after hours. On her slim bunk lay a picture of Grimthorn. It was one of the recruitment cards produced by the Navy. He stared at the cold glare that stared back at him.

Kinnit clung to him, weeping. He held her close, occasionally wiping at his own eyes.

After a while, her sobs tapered off. He drew her to the bunk to sit. She quickly stuffed his picture under her pillow when she saw that it was still laying out.

She turned up to him, her eyes still spilling over.

"Grimthorn, are we going to make it?"

He sat back in surprise.

"Of course we are. What do you mean?"

She sniffled.

"We've only been married a couple months and we're already fighting. Are we-- are we gonna--"

He pulled her into a rough hug.

"Hey, it's not like that. Of course we'll be fine." He thought for a moment. "Do you remember Captain Sloan?"

"Isn't he the one you gigged for insubordination?"

Grimthorn nodded. "I did. Do you remember why?"

"He shouted at you when you were handing out fleet disposition assignments."

"Yeah. He thought his ship should be closer to the first wave of combat ships, even though he doesn't have the experience to-- well, I'm not going to re-litigate that. But he was upset. Do you recall how I reacted?"

"You told him to suck it up, stop acting like a man-baby, and to remember that he was a Naval officer. Then you called him something else, but I didn't recognize the word."

Grimthorn colored slightly. "Ah, I just meant 'recall' in general. I didn't mean for you to bring up the specific wording of-- anyway, I reacted poorly."

"You weren't wrong," she said.

"That doesn't matter. My reaction didn't improve the situation." He took a deep a breath. "He and I talked later in my office."

"I didn't know that."

Grimthorn nodded.

"He apologized for his outburst, and I apologized for my, um, colorful metaphor. I recognized that he's a valuable Captain, and he recognized that his role is important to the fleet. He didn't quit or put in for a transfer, and I didn't drum him out. We disagreed, but we both recognized that having him in the Ninth Fleet is important enough that we had to work through our disagreements."

He tapped her nose, and she wrinkled her snout.

"Kinnit, just because we're married and we love each other, that doesn't mean we'll never disagree. It doesn't mean we won't screw up. But we both recognize how important our relationship is." He cupped her cheek. "You're the most important thing in my life. As long as we can talk about it, we'll be able to work it out. "

Kinnit leaned her face into his hand and let out a watery sigh of relief.

"I don't want to fight with you," she said quietly. "I'm sorry I was ugly to you."

"I'm sorry I was ugly back," he said. He lifted her face and captured her lips in a gentle kiss. Her lips were hot, flushed from her weeping, and soft beneath his.

They shared a long, quiet moment of understanding, apologizing to each other beyond words.

Elias Rhade sat in the back of the shuttle, filled with inexplicable nervous energy.

He didn't know why. He was free of the Oracle, on his way home, no longer part of... whatever it was that thing was doing.

No more madness. No more screaming. No more daily subjection to the awful psychic pressure of the thing's presence.

So why were his hands still shaking?

"Good to get a commission," said the pilot cheerily. "Ain't been any traffic from Brolla for a good week or so. I was starting to worry about my paycheck!" He laughed.

"I'm just going home," Elias said quietly, willing his shaking hands to stillness. "Home."

The pilot began whistling a happy tune.

Elias had a decent amount of money from his stint with the Oracle. It had paid well, at least. It should, the Oracle was making literally a million credits a day.

But... maybe his next job would be something quiet. Something peaceful. Something where he wouldn't be expected to hurt people ever again.

He looked up as the planet Brolla appeared on the portal. He tried vainly to find the relief he knew he should feel.

Now he could rest at home, in peace.