61

45 MILES NORTHWEST OF AMAMIO SHIMA ISLAND
0945 HOURS ZONE TIME; AUGUST 30, 2006

There are few private places aboard a warship at sea. A pair of such existed aboard the Cunningham, atop the superstructure. Aft of the exhaust stacks and partitioned from each other by the mast array were two wedges of weather deck. If a person, or a couple, came up to these isolated spots to watch the wake, the unspoken tradition aboard the Duke was that they were to be left undisturbed.

“Morning, Captain,” Arkady said, coming to lean beside Amanda at the rail. He glanced across at her questioningly, waiting, letting her set the tone for their conversation.

“Good morning, love.” She was in a mood for someone closer than a subordinate just now.

“What are you thinking about so hard, babe?” he replied, taking her cue.

“All sorts of things. Past, present, and future. Yours, mine, ours.”

“Such as?”

“Christine knows about us, Arkady.”

“Yeah, so?”

She lifted an eyebrow. “You know about that?”

“The subject has come up between Miss. Rendino and me. I repeat, so?”

“If Christine has figured it out, others are bound to eventually as well.”

Arkady nodded thoughtfully, the wind of the ship’s passage ruffling the dark hair beneath the edge of his aviator’s baseball cap. “Definite possibility.”

“So, what are we going to do?”

“Good question. One of these days, I guess we’ll need to come up with an answer for that.”

Amanda chuckled softly. “Maybe. Who knows. The whole thing might just resolve itself here presently.”

“What do you mean?” It was Arkady’s turn to cock an eyebrow.

“I’ve just been considering what comes next,” she replied, letting her eyes trail back along the white and jade furrow the Duke had plowed in the sea. “All of my life, I’ve worked for one thing: having my own ship. Well, I’ve got her. Professionally speaking, I’m at the peak of my career right now. But it’s not going to last forever. I’ve got a year and a half left on my tour aboard the Cunningham. After that, I don’t know.”

“Hell, babe. I don’t know what you’re talking about and don’t think you do either. You’re just getting started.”

Amanda shook her head slowly. “No. Not for what I want. Back in the old Navy, it was different. After you captained a destroyer, you had a chance for a cruiser. And after a cruiser, maybe a battlewagon. Now, though, it’s one combat command per customer, and the Duke’s mine.”

“You’ll be due for another ship when you get your fourth stripe.”

Amanda shook her head again. “AOE or a tender. At best, maybe an amphib. But not a ship of the line. An aviation officer like you can get a shot at a carrier. But for a surface-warfare specialist like me, your destroyer command is it.

“There’s nothing wrong in serving aboard a ship of the train, but I’ve already put my time in there. The next combat command that I could hope for would be as a rear admiral in command of a surface action group. I’d probably be in my early fifties at least, and that’s granting I get my flag. That’s another fifteen years on the beach, a whole second career. That’s too long, Arkady.”

“Then what are you going to do?” he prompted. There was a look in his eyes that indicated that he was suddenly intensely interested in the course this conversation was taking.

“Finish my time on the Duke. Then there are some doctrine papers I want to write. Then, I don’t know. Maybe take my twenty and out. Go somewhere and raise babies and petunias while I have a few ticks left on my biological clock. I don’t know.”

She was leaving Arkady a massive opening just then, and she regarded her young lover steadily, wondering how he was going to fill it.

He was, too. She watched as he studied the horizon for the duration of a dozen heartbeats before replying. “I’d say that you don’t have to decide anything yet. I think we have a little time left. Let’s use it the best way we can.”

It was as good an answer as any that she had come up with. Amanda leaned deeper into the straps of the railing and let her elbow lightly brush his in the covert caress they had developed. “Do me a date, Arkady.”

“Where?”

“Japan. And I’m going to hold you to this one. We’re going to be laying over there awhile to make repairs.”

“Japan, huh?” the aviator smiled reminiscently. “Now, that is one place I know my way around. Let’s see. Have you ever been to a real, traditional Japanese nosan”?

“I don’t know. What is it?”

“A hot-springs resort. I know this one place, owned by the same family for the past couple of centuries or so, totally traditional. The real Japanese cuisine. The rooms are all furnished with the classic sleep-on-the-floor-style futons, the traditional bathing pools, the whole nine yards. Not many non-Japanese can get a reservation, but I might just be able to swing it.”

“That sounds like fun. I … Wait a minute. Traditional bathing pools? You don’t mean the kind where men and women … total strangers … together!”

“Fraidy-cat, babe?”

“Is that a dare, Lieutenant?”

Arkady was right — they did have a little time left.

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