Editing Story:ROAD TRIP! (Warhammer High)/Part Five (section)

===Questions and Answers===


That evening, as Kines secreted himself into her cabin, Remilia asked him a question she had wanted to ask before.  “Chuck, are you going to be on Mars long?”

He sat on the edge of her bed.  “At least two months.”

“Do you think I could come and see you while you’re up there?” Remilia asked.

Kines wistfully shook his head.  “I don’t think so.  What if you got caught?  You’d be crucified in the press.  Plus, Haarlan would lose his patience after that long.”

“Yeah, but I’m gonna miss you,” Remilia admitted.

Kines smiled.  “I’ll miss you too, but I think it would be better if we kept this a summer fling.  You know.”

She sighed.  “I guess I understand.”  She curled up on the bed behind him.  “It’s been worth it, though, hasn’t it?  So far?”

“Absolutely,” Kines said.  He leaned back on his elbows so he could make eye contact with her.  “It’s been great.  Seriously, this is the best thing that’s happened to me since I got conscripted,” he said cheerfully.

Remilia giggled.  “That’s kind of you.”  She uncurled and scooted over to him, as he rested his head in her lap to stare at the cabin overhead.  “Can I ask you something that just occurred to me?” she inquired.

“Sure.”

“How come you’ve started to treat the others like just normal passengers?  I mean, more than just not using titles,” she said.

Kines shrugged.  “Shouldn’t I?  You specifically asked me to call you by your given name.  Venus doesn’t even have a last name, that I know of.”

“No, she doesn’t, and it gave her a headache every time she had to fill out a multiple-choice test with those answer bubble sheets,” Remilia said with a laugh.  “I remember she just started putting ‘Venus Na.’”

“‘Na?’”

“Yeah, N A, for Not Applicable,” Remilia said, remembering.  “We called her Na for like a month after that.”

Kines chuckled.  “To answer your question, though, I just call you that because that’s what you wanted.”

“Right, but I mean in conversation,” Remilia said.  “Just you and me.”

Kines blinked.  “I guess I don’t understand.  Should I stop?”

“Oh, no, I like it,” she said.  “Even at school, most of us were referred to with such…formal language by so many faculty.  Like they were afraid of us, or our parents, or something.  Which was dumb since so many of the other students were crazy rich and powerful too,” she said.  “I like it.”

“Yeah, now you’re slumming it,” Kines said drily.

“Slumming it, in a VIP cabin on an interplanetary road trip, ayuk yuk, listen to you,” Remilia said.  She flicked his ear for his temerity.

“What?  It’s true!  Living in a suite with only two rooms, deigning to grant the occasional dirty fuck to an O-2 Lieutenant, having a servitor do your laundry instead of an OW!” he said as she flicked his ear again, harder.

“You, shut the fuck up,” she said sternly.

He sighed.  “You never let me have any fun.”

Remilia sniffed.  “I let you have my virginity instead, that has to count for something,” she said haughtily.  She reached down to run her hands through his hair.  “Really, though, Chuck, I only ask because I appreciate it.  It’s really nice to have someone to talk to outside of the family and school people.  It makes a difference.”

He smiled as she stroked his hair in her lap.  “I enjoy it.  Around here, the guys feel like they all have something to prove.  I mean, there are guys on the crew I feel I can talk to as friends, but it’s nice to have someone from outside the military, too.”

“Which is hilarious, given my parentage,” Remilia observed.

“True, I should really be saluting every time you open your mouth,” Kines quipped.  He looked up at her from her lap.  “Can I ask you about that stuff?  How people treat you, what it feels like to be transhuman…that kind of stuff?”

“I guess,” Remilia said.  “What, specifically?”

Kines thought for a moment.  “Well…did your super-senses manifest at birth, or what?”

“Yeah, always been there.  It’s got its benefits,” she said.  “Nobody thinks to block things they think other people can’t sense.  So if someone’s whispering in the same room as me, they’re only going to be as quiet as they think they need to be so a room full of normal people can’t hear them, but I could probably hear them just fine.”

“That’s really interesting,” Kines said.  “I bet living in a world built for people with lower sensory thresholds must get annoying after a while, though.”
“Annoying?”  Remilia wondered about that.  “No, it’s not annoying.  It’s just more noticeable at some times than others.”

“Does it hurt to have people talk to you at conversational levels when you can hear things so quiet?” Kines asked.

“Not at all.  It’s more like…like I can pick up a wider range of sounds than just increased sensitivity,” she said.

He digested that.  “Are your other senses super-powerful?”

“Kind of.  Touch and taste, not really, but smell and vision, yeah,” she said.  “But really, it’s not like I have anything else to compare it to.”

“Yeah.”  He raised his head as she sat up against the headboard and beckoned him over.  He obligingly shifted to rest his head on her crossed legs again, and she slid her hands over to rest on his shoulders.  He couldn’t feel the warmth of her hands through his evening uniform he had worn to the bar, but he was sure she felt as good as she always did.  “You know, some of the guys are starting to wonder what exactly I’m doing when I come over here and don’t wind up back in my bunk,” he said.  “If we were docked over a planet, I’d be worried.”

“But you aren’t here?” she asked.

“Nope.  When we’re in the Warp, the higher-ups sort of let it slide.  They know if they don’t allow fraternization between grades and genders on a mixed-sex ship, there’ll be trouble,” Kines said.

Remilia nodded.  “But in port?”

Kines sighed.  “Well, I could be a cynical twat and say that in port we’re more likely to be entertaining visiting officers, but in reality, we’re just so much busier that the difference in time between how long it takes to get from your woman’s bay to your own really can make a difference, so they actually check to see where we are.”

“But you’re not a cynical twat,” Remilia deadpanned.

“Exactly,” Kines said.  He smiled up at her, upside down.  “I dunno.  It’s just that on a warship, EVERYBODY needs to be able to rely on EVERYBODY,” he said.  “If the fourth-battery fire response squad doesn’t have the total confidence that the corridor is secure during a boarding, or if the flight deck controllers don’t have every single one of their emergency fuel dump crew in place at ALL TIMES, we could lose the entire ship, because of one little distraction.  Nobody really minds the restriction when we’re actually at risk.”

Her light brown eyes met his much darker ones, and she smiled back.  “It’s good that you can be objective about it.”

“Nobody coddles the conscripts.  Shit, the volunteers do have it worse, I admit, because they’re expected to have perfect morale right off the bat, but the conscripts get it on day one: no warship is a ground crew, no warship officer is an island, and every man needs to know where you are without looking.  We need to be able to come out of the Warp with every single cannon and torp-tube and lance and fighter catapult ready to vent and lock, in under four seconds.  We can’t get that done if the fire control team leader is of getting laid,” Kines chuckled.  “The one advantage to being an officer in a position where I have absolutely zero subordinates: I get to be the last one to die in case of an actual fire because the team leader stands at the back of the row of guys in the corridor.”

“Unless the fire is behind you,” Remilia pointed out.

“You ruin all my fun, like a wheat thresher, cutting down a field of my idle fantasies,” Kines accused.  Remilia smirked, recalling his passionately informing her how many of his idle fantasies, exactly, she’d managed to fulfill on the trip so far.

It must have sounded lame, even to him, because he coughed and hastily redirected his line of inquiry.  “So, how about your pretty self?  Looking forward to college now that you’ve had some time to think about it?”

“I really am,” Remilia said.  “It’s scary, but I want the challenge.  Right away they throw us in the dorm, although I got a single room.  Not by request, so either someone saw my name and wanted to do me a favor, or I lucked out.”

“Do you want to live alone?” Kines asked.

“I think I do, really.  Privacy when I want it, more storage space…I like that,” she said.

“I had a double, but my roommate slept at the fraternity house, so it wasn’t crowded,” Kines said.  “Just get to know your RA.  Become her best friend.  It will come in so handy when it’s time to vacuum your room or to assign exit paths during a fire drill or something.”

“Hah!  Friends in high places, I like that,” Remilia laughed.

He reached up to rest his hands over hers on his chest.  “Yeah, it’s something I’m good at,” he said.  “Bartender’s gotta be everyone’s friend.  Gotta remember all the brassholes’ favorite drinks, so when they come in and ask for ‘the usual,’ you don’t give them a vodka martini when they wanted a lager or something.”