Page 74 of Fought and Found

"Morrison's office?"

"Yes."

"Good luck, mate." He walks away shaking his head.

The purr has not stopped. I am standing in a civilian corridor on a space station I have never visited, wearing tactical gear that marks me as something that should not be here, purring at a frequency that makes the overhead lights vibrate, with an AI at my shoulder that is providing unsolicited emotional support while denying that it is providing unsolicited emotional support, and I am waiting for a woman to come out of an office and tell me we can go home.

Home. The word has a shape now. Before her, it had none. Home was an SRS designation: temporary quarters, rotational assignment, the bunk on whatever vessel was currently transporting me to whatever target was currently assigned. Home was not a word I used. Home was not a concept the Dens permitted.

Home is currently a ship named after a flower, decorated with fairy lights, crewed by a woman who shoots at two and a half inches and anAI that has migrated from her shoulder to mine. Home is wherever she is. This is not a tactical assessment. It is something simpler and larger and I do not have a framework for it and I no longer need one.

I wait. Sprout hovers. The purr fills the corridor.

She is in there. She is fighting. She will come back.

Tonight we own the clock.

I wait.

20

The Pat

Flossie

Morrison’sofficehasn’tchanged.

I don’t know why I expected it to. The desk is the same reinforced steel she requisitioned eleven years ago because “standard furniture is designed for people who don’t throw things.” The coffee mug is in its place by the comm array — black, chipped, the words WORLD’S OKAYEST DISPATCHER faded to gray. I gave her that mug my second year. She threatened to recycle it. She has used it every day since.

She’s standing. Not sitting. Standing behind the desk with her arms folded and her blue eyes already doing the inventory. Steel-gray hair, practical bun, not a strand out of place. Mid-fifties and built like a bulkhead — compact, immovable, the kind of presence that makes a room smaller by taking up more of it than physics should allow.

I know Morrison’s tells the way I know my flight controls. Coffee mug in hand means she’s in control. Coffee mug on the desk means she’s about to shout. Arms folded means she’s holding something back. Left eye twitch means the shouting is four seconds away. And when Morrison goes quiet — when the voice drops and the blue eyes go flat and the room loses its air — that’s when you should be genuinely afraid, because quiet Morrison is Morrison who has stopped managing her feelings and started managing yours.

Right now: arms folded. Coffee mug on the desk. We’re in shouting territory.

Her gaze starts at my face. Tracks down. Finds the bite mark at my collar — the place where his mouth was, where his teeth grazed, where the skin is still tender and flushed and I didn’t cover it because I am done covering things.

Morrison’s left eye twitches.

Four seconds. I count.

“Sit down, Florence.”

Full name. Nuclear. Morrison has a temperature gauge, and it runs on my name: Flossie is warm, Knight is professional, Florence is furious, and Florence Amelia Knight is a detonation I have heard exactly once, after the Kessler Point hull breach, and I do not wish to hear it again.

I sit. The chair in front of Morrison’s desk is deliberately uncomfortable — hard seat, no armrests, positioned so the light from the viewport hits your face. Morrison designed this office for debriefs. Every piece of furniture is an interrogation tool. I’ve sat in this chair after the Kessler Point run with my hands still shaking. I’ve sat in this chair after a courier opened sealed cargo and accidentally psychically bonded herself to the contents. I’ve sat in this chair after oneof our pilots crash-landed on a warlord’s fortress and Morrison had to negotiate with an alien military commander who kept calling the courier his “gift.” I have sat in this chair so many times that the seat has a Flossie-shaped impression and the impression is a map of twelve years of debriefs, each one beginning with Morrison’s arms folded and ending with Morrison’s coffee mug in hand and me walking out alive. It is also, this morning, prosecuting a case against several muscle groups that were doing something entirely different in a different chair a few hours ago. I keep my face professional. The chair knows. I know. Nobody else needs to.

Her eyes haven’t left the bite mark.

“Morrison —“

“Don’t.” One word. The tone that stops bar fights and dock disputes and once, memorably, a Corsairian boarding party. “Before you explain. Before you charm. Before you say ‘lovey’ and make it sound reasonable.” She unfolds her arms. Places both palms flat on the desk. The posture of a woman bracing for impact. “Business first. Then we discuss the Xarthian-shaped situation you have brought onto my station.”

Business first. Morrison’s love language. Fine.

Through the wall, at the very floor of hearing, the purr. Steady. Waiting. It settles into the bite mark like a hand. Morrison’s left eye twitches — not at me, at the wall — and neither of us says one word about it.

“Drask,” I say.