Incursion Vector

004

 [▲] Irwin City, Luna

Half a pint in Nim decided that Guinness wasn't quite her idea of what beer should have tasted like. When she mentioned it out loud the bartender gave her an incredulous look and the explanation, "Guinness isn't beer, kid—it's a food group."

This had garnered a laugh out of everyone who had heard it, including the Captain, who had finished his first pint in almost the same manner as Karda had downed his. It was strange to be sitting next to the commander of her ship and chatting with him like he was just another friendly face at a bar. Not too long ago he had been chewing her out for bypassing security protocols to execute intricate shipwide pranks like a father furious over his child's immature behavior in front of important company. Granted no actual father had legal authority to space their children for disobeying house rules, which was, now that she thought about it, probably why it was so utterly weird to be laughing about the whole thing a year later with the man who could have pressed the button.

Still, she had to admit, it was the kind of atmosphere she enjoyed being in. Except for the cigarette smoke. That she could do without.

Apparently the Captain was going to see his son who worked at Leonov Medical Station, a large private facility situated at the L1 point between Luna and Terra Core. Doctor Michael was a civilian medical researcher (though the way the Captain talked about him he was the most brilliant medical mind born in the last two centuries) and had not been speaking much with his father since his parents divorced. She didn't pry; it was odd enough to be talking about family with her Captain and he didn't seem too keen on relating all the details anyway. Both she and Karda would be reeling from the revelation that their Captain had once been a married family man as soon as the alcohol buzz wore off. The carefully constructed cadet theory that he was assigned to the Heinlein as a disciplinary measure after getting caught sleeping with an admiral's wife had just been blown out the airlock.

From what Nim had seen happy military marriages like the ones her parents shared were pretty rare; that her mother and father also shared a love for wandering deep space was probably why they had been married nearly forty years without separating once. Her sister Lyall was the kind of woman with a man in every port to sate every itch, but she was married to the Agamemnon and her crew and that had always been pretty clear. Her brother Aries had almost tried the marriage thing, then found his fiancee was pretty much like his older sister insofar as faithfulness went and swore it off after the classic "fiancee's in the rack with the best man" discovery. Truth be told he never seemed all that broken up about dumping the slut, either, and Nim had never liked her to begin with.

It wasn't too long after Captain Michael had finished his second beer and Nim had managed to make it halfway through her first that the age-old rivalry between the Navy and the Vanguard reared its beastly head and killed the camaraderie.

"This is a Vanguard bar," announced a male voice from the direction of the door. "Ain't no leathernecks or tubers allowed in here."

Michael glanced over his shoulder, then pushed aside his empty mug and settled his tab with the bartender. Thinking twice, he handed the man four times what their beers and been worth as he stood up. Dropping a surprisingly weathered hand on Nim's shoulder he said, "Don't break anything that belongs to the bar."

Blinking in surprise she stared at him for a moment. "Uh... sir?"

He flashed her a sly and shockingly mischievous grin, one that she would have expected to see on another cadet and not the captain of her ship. "You're a Marine in the Navy now, MacNamara. Stand with your flight."