Surefoot 48: Immaterial Girl

You have one more evening on Donatu V; you must depart before 0600 Hours Local Time if you wish to successfully rendezvous with the Surefoot. Enjoy yourselves... and do not damage any more archaeological sites if you can help it."

T'Varik's image disappeared.

The group began to disperse, moving back to the runabouts and their shelters and cooking units. The Squad Leaders moved together, Jexa regarding Zir. "Thank you for your support. If you need anything, anything at all, you just have to ask."

Zir smiled. "Thank you for your support. And I'll help you make up those credits."

"I- I would greatly appreciate that, Zir."

Zir held out her hand.

Jexa accepted it.

Francis smiled. "Well, if you two can put aside your differences and make up, then maybe this War won't be so bad..."

*

As part of the appeasement towards the Federation Archaeological Bureau, the cadets had complied with their requests to leave the original site and move elsewhere, choosing one of the more temperate zones of Donatu V, near an ocean that offered cool, refreshing salty breezes from a blue-green ocean that crashed gently along a huge stretch of virgin white beach, strongly illuminated by a large golden-white moon pockmarked with craters.

Zir, sitting on a grassy dune beside Peter, wished she could have enjoyed the view more. But now she was busy in an impromptu Counseling session with Peter... whom, she admitted, was proving pretty good at it. "I still don't get it. Why did that interphasic being help me face my fears? Was it just altruism? Or was it just like it said, that it was distracting me long enough to stay in one place and let my friends get me back?"

Peter reached for the container of water half-nestled in the sand between them. "Let's go for the first one; it's the Optimist in me." He drank from it before continuing. "And what was it like, finally running into Hazaak Sur... or the next best thing to him?"

She stared out into the ocean, as if the answers lay on the darkening horizon, and took the bottle to have a drink herself before responding. "It was stupid. I'd killed him. I'd known I'd killed him. I'd come to terms long ago with the fact that I'd killed him. And that I'd never encounter him again.

But I still feared him."

Peter nodded. "Him... or what he represented to you?"

"Which is?"

"What do you think?"

She grunted. "Yeah, you're definitely going to be a Counselor." She drank again, considering the question. "I've been seeing him more often lately, since... since I've been getting close with Niles-" She glanced at Peter again. "This is just between us, isn't it?"

He nodded. "As both your friend, and your Field Counselor."

She nodded back, looking back out to the ocean again. "I want to be intimate with Niles. But he doesn't know the... specifics of my past. He doesn't know how sexually experienced I am, what I've had to do to escape my people. I don't want to keep any secrets from him. But I'm scared. Scared of how he'll see me if I do tell him."

"And how might he see you?"

A shiver ran through her, as if from an errant evening breeze. "Fulfilling every stereotype of Orion women: dirty, sensual animals, born whores-"

"Hogwash."

She looked at him. "What?"

He drank from the bottle now. "Hogwash. Something Doc Masterson likes to say." And in a close approximation of the CMO's Western drawl, he illustrated, "'That's a load of old hogwash, Pardner'. It means 'Nonsense', apparently, though I haven't worked out what that has to do with washing hogs."

He looked sympathetically at her. "You said it yourself: 'what I had to do'. There's a world of difference between the relationship that your young, vulnerable self had with Hazaak Sur, and any relationship your mature adult self might wish to have with Niles, or anyone else.

Calling yourself a whore because of your experiences with Hazaak Sur would be like calling Captain Hrelle a murderer for being forced to fight and kill in the Orion Deathmatches when he was a slave... or like calling me straight, because my first sexual experience had been with a woman instead of a man."

She made a sound of acknowledgement. She understood all that, deep down; it had been touched upon more than once in her Counseling sessions. But still... "What if Niles doesn't see it that way?"

"Has he given you any reason to think he might?"

She didn't answer.

"If you tell him," Peter continued. "It'll either won't make a difference to him, or it will. If it doesn't, then that's fine. If it does... then he's not worthy of you. Of course, you don't have to tell him. No one would blame you for wanting to bury your past... except, of course, it hasn't stayed very well buried. Personally, I think that, if you did tell Niles, he wouldn't judge you negatively."

She still didn't reply, content to look down the beach and see the other cadets finally getting that huge bonfire of driftwood lit up, while music played and people danced and drank and went for moonlight swims.

Peter reached out and squeezed her hand. "Come on, Squad Leader, we're wasting valuable Downtime sitting here on a dune getting sand in our boots."

She smiled, grabbing the bottle and joining him in standing up, trudging down the sandy dune and along the firmer surface of the pristine beach, noting the row of shelters set up by the cadets for themselves, spread far enough apart to afford privacy.

But Zir was lost in her own thoughts, the memory of her time in the transphasic realm, and the entity which, for whatever reasons, chose to confront her as Hazaak Sur... and make her face her personal demon.

And in facing him, reminding her that she was stronger than him. Stronger than any of the other Hazaak Surs she might still face in the future.

Closer to the bonfire, she saw some of her friends, dancing, drinking, eating and, in the case of Stalac, using his acidic secretions to melt the sand into glass sculptures. She stopped, smiled at Peter and leaned in to kiss his cheek. "Thank you."

He flushed a little, but smiled back. "Anytime."

"Should I be jealous?" asked a new voice.

Zir turned to the approaching Niles... and launched into his arms, kissing him full on the lips, ignoring the good-natured jibes from those witnesses around them. She wrapped her own arms around him, holding onto him tightly, her passions rising within her.

She pulled back, just enough to look into Niles' stunned expression, as he gasped, "Wow. I guess it's true what they say about the sea air-"

She drew him in again, but this time to bring her mouth to his left ear. "I want to go somewhere private with you. I want to talk. And, if you want to, I really, really want to make love with you." She felt him react, and playfully licked his ear. "Would that be okay with you?"

Niles' eager nod of agreement almost made her laugh. Instead she kissed him again, feeling more confident and in control of herself than she had ever done.

Still, as they kissed again, a part of her waited for the inevitable response.

There was a brief flash of memory, of a leering face and voice.

But then it was gone. A brief, forgettable flash. Unimportant.

Immaterial.

THE ADVENTURES OF THE SUREFOOT WILL CONTINUE IN... EX MORTIS