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The decking thrummed with a rhythm one could never escape, but hardly ever noticed unless one tried. Or was a rank newbie. Which Aran Rabb hadn’t been in a very long time. And which had more than earned him his Yuletide leave.
By the time he’d reached Deck B in Lobe C, he’d become thoroughly turned around. It didn’t help that the station’s database hadn’t been updated.
He finally skidded to a stop in front of what should have been the correct door, barely avoiding a pair of technicians.
“Hey,” one said, “watch where you’re…” His eyes went wide and they both snapped to attention. “Sorry, sir,” he said.
Aran nodded in return. “As you were, Ensigns,” he said.
Both snapped off salutes and half-scurried off down the corridor.
Damn, he thought, and I thought I had trouble when I was still a Lieutenant.
He returned his attention to the door, a titanium sheet set into a recess, exactly like thousands of others on Arnot Station, save for the alpha-numerics engraved onto the bulkhead.
He pressed his palm against a recessed pad below the engraving for a few moments until the reader chirped, then stood with one hand behind his back and the other on the strap of his duffel bag in an approximation of parade rest.
The ensuing moments stretched into long seconds, a waiting game that should have been no stranger to a man used to hanging in deep space awaiting an enemy that half the time failed to arrive. Just when he’d half-convinced himself that he had the wrong quarters, the door slid open on a familiar face.
Lena beamed at him and he nearly drowned in her deep green eyes. Eyes just a shade darker than they’d been the day they’d met as orphaned refugees aboard a fleeing shuttle in the early days of the war. She might have had a couple of well-earned lines, but otherwise she hadn’t changed appreciably in the better than two years they’d been apart.
He grinned. “I must have the wrong quarters,” he said.
She cocked a thumb at herself and rolled her eyes. “Sister?” she teased. She looked him over from head to toe and raised an eyebrow. “Commander, is it?”
“No good deed goes unpunished, Captain,” he retorted.
She blinked in a way he’d only seen her do around him and her smile broadened if that were at all possible. “Would you care to come in? I waited up all night.”
“Don’t mind if I do. It’s a long way from Arcturus.”
Aran felt he’d stepped not only out of the corridor, but also out of time and space.
The interior mimicked, as precisely as could be, the main living space of a turn-of-the-twenty-first-century middle-class home in what had been the United States of America on Earth.
He recognized the furnishings and various accouterments. He’d seen surviving images from that time, probably more than most. Every historical reenactor had. So had every history student at the Academy. Some of the objects in the room fell into that category, known only to students of history, but otherwise faded into obscurity. Others had changed a little, their forms having morphed over the centuries, the changes mitigated by the preference of function over form. A few persisted almost entirely out of tradition.
“Impressive,” he said. “Really, I mean it.”
“Well, you know Mom and Dad.”
He rolled his eyes. “You know I love them, but if I had a credit for every time I’ve heard either of them say, ‘It’s not Period…’”
“You could buy a battlecruiser.”
He snorted. “I could buy a small moon.”
An object caught his eye. “Is this...a La-Z-Boy?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I haven’t seen one of these in years. And it looks like real leather. Haven’t seen that in a while either. I’ve never seen a build like this.”
“It’s not...a build.”
He looked sharply at her. “You’re kidding. This is an original?”
She nodded.
He let out a low whistle. “This must be, what, three centuries old?”
“More like three and a half.”
“How did…?”
“You know how Dad is about trading favors.”
“Do I want to know?”
She shrugged. “It’s classified.”
“I bet.”
She laughed that musical laugh he’d missed. “I promised you something,” she said.
He dropped his duffel on the end of a sofa while she retreated into the credible reproduction of an early-twenty-first-century kitchen. A fair bit of rummaging ensued. After a few minutes, the distinctive fragrance of coffee tickled his nose.
“Real coffee,” he said.
“The other dark meat,” she added.
He chuckled.
Moments later, she handed him a white ceramic cup filled with dark brew. He inhaled deeply, letting it flood his senses and held his breath as if to embrace it. An eternity later, he opened his eyes and met her gaze in a new eternity.
“Good?” she asked.
“You have no idea. Folgers?”
“What else? They have a new Holiday Blend.”
“Arabica?”
“Inaugural harvest from their new plantation on Tau Ceti Three.”
“Beats the hell out of the sludge they serve shipboard. No coffee is worse than bad coffee, but still.” He set the cup on the stone slab called a ‘counter’ for some unfathomable reason and pulled a festively-wrapped oblong box from his duffel. “I brought you something from far away,” he said.
She took it gingerly, pulled off the bow and stuck it to his chest.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“You’re my present,” she teased.
He chuckled and nodded toward the box. She undid the fastenings and pulled off the lid. She gasped. She reached into the nest of packing paper and pulled out a sturdy knife.
“I forged it myself,” he said.
She examined it at length before whispering, “And you’ve drawn blood with it, too.” She met his gaze. “Alien blood.”
He nodded.
“I have something for you, too.” She picked up an even longer box and handed it to him.
He undid the twine and popped off the lid, and lifted out a blade, this one the length of his forearm and made of a strange iridescent green material. He gasped. “Zharkovi blade.”
His gaze slid from it and locked onto hers. Somehow, he’d always known that her Special Forces traditions and his own combat pilot ways would intersect like this.
“Aha,” said another familiar voice.
Damn, he thought.
The couple he and Lena had called parents for the better part of two decades emerged from a short connecting hallway, both clad in early-twenty-first-century pajamas.
“Well,” said Dad, “it’s about damned time.”
“Us,” said, Lena, “or the coffee?”
“Both,” said Mom.