It took Valentine a moment to regain his equilibrium. "You shouldn't have to die for anyone. Least of all me. Risking your life, weighing it against what you are trying to do-it's something any man does."
"Any man worth the iron in his blood."
"But you feel differently now."
Post waited a moment, but Valentine made no gesture to hurry him. The words would come when his lieutenant was ready.
"If your idea of the right thing to do is machine-gunning sailors who've had their ship sunk from under them, I want no part of it. You can cite precedents all you want, wrong is wrong."
"I had to make sure all the Kurians were dead. For all we knew, there was a Reaper squatting in the magazine with a hand grenade, just in case the Thunderbolt got the upper hand in the fight. If a Kurian has his puppet pull the pin and hug a couple of shells in his arms with the grenade under its chin, it's going to do it. Sometimes it is just as dangerous to beat the Kurians as it is to run from them. They'd rather destroy than let another own something that was theirs. The Reapers were clawing through to the Chief in the stern. I had to disorganize them, quickly, and that's the only way I had to do it.
"Remember, Post, they were serving the enemy. That's war."
Post shook his head. "I was serving the enemy. As soon as you gave me a chance, I switched. I bet a lot of those sailors would have done the same as that fellow we pulled out of the water. When you were shooting them, it was like you were shooting me."
"I understand. But I don't know how I'm going to get along without you. But go with my friendship. Shake on it?"
His lieutenant pursed his lips, then took his hand. "Could be you have what it takes for the kind of war this is and I
don't. Sorry, Val, but I can't see death like that again. I'm afraid I'd shoot you, or myself, or maybe both."
"Drop it, Will. Serving our side's different from working for the Kurians. I'll give you your choice, and wish you well when the Thunderbolt sails away. One thing, though: even if I did the wrong thing, the quickwood has a better chance of getting back to Southern Command if you come with it. Having it could turn things around, make a difference in a lot of innocent lives being saved. What happened at the bow was wrong, I'll grant you. But weigh it on the right scale. How wrong is it when a Reaper takes a six-year-old girl, because the Kurian running the show wants a different-flavored aura?"
Post shook his head. "That's a maybe. I'd rather deal in certainties, and those bodies floating in the diesel fuel were real, not supposition." He turned away.
"Will, if you're going to hate me, hate me for a good reason. Ask me sometime how I became a captain in the Coastal Marines."
Post would not, or could not, see that Valentine would have preferred to rescue the Sharkfin's survivors. But the risk to the mission, to losing all their lives and even more time in the quest to get the quickwood into the hands of Southern Command required him to act as he did. Valentine had learned long ago not to second-guess himself where matters of life and death were concerned, or he would never be able to make a decision again. He had made right decisions and wrong decisions, and sometimes had to bury the bodies of those who died for no other reason than his bad judgment. Like Gabriella Cho, the night he left her alone and wounded in the confusion of a battle, or his old company's Master Sergeant Gator, lying in a hilltop grave in eastern Oklahoma.
Struggling with his own memories as much as he had with the Kurians, David Valentine went to bed.
Carrasca, Valentine, and the Chief decided the ship should be refitted before exploring a potentially hostile
coastline, and two months in drydock at Jayport would allow the Chief to consummate a long-desired overhaul. There was the added incentive of replacing the losses from the encounter with the Sharkfin, so in the end Valentine agreed with yet another delay in his return to El Norte.
They returned to the harbor to a mixture of cheers and curiosity over their topiary. There were the inevitable problems with safely storing their precious cargo and finding living space for the crew during the refit, hampered by the occasional tropical storms and hurricanes brushing the island.
Valentine, Post, Narcisse, and Ahn-Kha were left with the leisure to recruit Jamaicans to join his marines, reduced to a bare handful in the fight against the Reapers. Valentine was shocked to see a soccer field filled with Jamaicans who wished to follow the Crying Man to sea, off their sunny island and into peril. In the end, he selected fifty for the short run to the coast; the Thunderbolt would be cramped, but it gave him a core of willing men to accompany him on the long trip back to the Ozarks.
There was also time with Carrasca as the Chief worked on the bow. Long rides into the countryside, talks with me locals, trips to sporting events and lunches made of market-square purchases filled the mornings. In the afternoon when the rains came, they talked or laughed or made love as the mood struck, and waited for the cool of the evening to walk back to the ship. Sometimes they spent the night at the commodore's house, joining him for mah-jongg or cribbage depending on the availability of players. The weeks passed like a dream. Valentine had never known so many idle days in all his years serving Southern Command. There was time to know another person, not as a comrade, superior, or underling, but as a friend and lover.
He learned her moods, and in turn she learned his. They pretended that the respite would never end by not discussing it, talking instead of the perfect hillock for a beach house or whether Valentine would make a better fisherman or planter.
Valentine was more than half-willing to take these conversations at face value.
Reality intruded when the Chief refloated the ship, and they had to make ready for the last voyage. Then the idyll was over.
"You're a wanderer, too," she said as they lay together.
"What's that?" Sex always made him wool-brained.
"You wander. Is it so you don't have to put down roots?"
He rubbed his eyes. "I'm not blown around. It's more like a current."
"Even coconuts wash up, by and by. What keeps you at sea?"
"Same as you. Duty." He would have added something about his dreams of a better future, dreams made almost realistic-sounding thanks to the quickwood, but his lover sighed.