The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [92]
Selma snickered as she began doing some standing stretches. “Bless her heart. Gotta love anybody whose best military advice amounts to ‘Run away, find a hole to hide in, and pull it in after yourself.’”
Kemper felt Elena fidgeting on his shoulders, so he gave her a few quick bounces to settle her down. “Well, I suppose we haven’t got to the part where we pull the hole in after us. At least not yet.”
Selma froze in mid-motion and studied him, a grave look on her olive-toned face. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Nelson?”
He nodded slowly. “Earth is under direct threat from these Romulans, Selma. In spite of that, we seem to be taking Naquase’s advice, even though we’re both trained warriors who know better.”
There. He’d finally laid his cards on the table, or at least most of them.
“I thought we settled this after the thing with the freighter out in the Gamma Hydra sector,” she said with a weary sigh. “We might both be trained warriors, Nelson, but we’re also both new parents.”
He paused to shrug, then continued bouncing Elena, who responded by releasing a happy cry. “The Romulans don’t seem to think much of anything’s been settled,” he said. “They’ve taken Deneva, Selma. I had cousins living there.”
Her expression darkened, her cheeks flushing with what he recognized as anger, though it was restrained as tightly as the superheated plasma in a warp nacelle.
“I lost a couple of old classmates on Tarod IX,” she said. “What’s your point?”
“I’m not trying to compare my grief to anybody else’s,” he said, raising a placating hand.
She appeared more or less satisfied by that, and seemed to stand down. “And I want to get out there and stop the Romulans just as much as you do. But we have Elena to think about.”
I am thinking about Elena, he thought as he prepared to toss his final card onto the table.
“So we both want to take the fight to those bastards,” he said. “I just can’t put it aside any longer, Selma. Not since Deneva. I have to go back out there.”
Now that the words were out at last, like so many slow-motion meteors painting the sky with lingering traceries of fire, he braced himself for her reaction. This time it was going to turn out differently. Unlike all the previous occasions when they’d had precisely the same argument—right after the attacks on Alpha Centauri, Calder II, Tarod IX, and the Kobayashi Maru—he had his talking points lined up, prepared and polished like rows of dress boots. This time he was ready to argue that the best way to safeguard Elena’s future would be to do everything possible to turn back the Romulan tide.
Then Selma put him almost entirely off balance by failing to object. Instead she merely gazed silently into his eyes for a seeming eternity.
Very quietly, she said, “All right, Nelson.”
“Come again?” he asked, unable to keep the confusion and suspicion out of his voice. This was exactly the sort of rhetorical jujitsu that always seemed to give her the crucial edge in any argument.
“I said, ‘All right.’ I can see that your mind is made up.”
He blinked in incredulity. “You’re going to let me go? Just like that? You’ll stay behind and look after Elena?”
She put a hand flat against his chest. “Not so fast, Sergeant. I want to go just as badly as you do, remember?”
“But we can’t both go,” he said, his confusion only deepening. “Like you said, we have Elena to think about. We’ve been imposing on the Marvicks way too much for child care as it is.”
Nodding, she said, “Right. And who said anything about both of us going? You just said that one of us has to go and fight, and I said ‘All right’ to that.”
It finally came to him what she was suggesting. “I outrank you, Corporal Guitierrez.”
Elena grew restless again, prompting Selma to reach up and take her down from his shoulders. “Not while we’re both retired and wearing civvies, Sergeant Kemper,