Emerald Flight: Star Wing (continued)

The distance from the bridge to her quarters was short, but it was enough time for Devereux to consider her growing uneasiness. She had felt it even before the report from Hawkes. Attributing it to restlessness fostered by the current monotony of their journey, she had paid it little heed. The mysterious sensor readings had done nothing to fan them. Yet, there was something . . .

Entering her quarters, she palmed the lights up to a brighter daylight level. Activating the “Do Not Disturb” indicator, she began to strip out of her workout clothes. Pulling her shirt off over her head, she caught a whiff of her dried perspiration. Other than for Hawkes and Pyrafox, no one else on the bridge had been close enough to smell her.

It’s not that bad . . . Devereux thought, reasoning that she had only just started her workout when she had been called to the bridge.

She pondered again, though, on Pyrafox’s reaction. Although he had a reputation among the junior crewmembers as being a bit of a prankster, he had never, to her knowledge, demonstrated anything but total and appropriate respect toward the senior officers. He had not seemed to have even been aware that he was doing it.

Or had he?

Pulling off the rest of her clothes, she wondered how he managed to tolerate the collective scents of the rest of the crew. It was not unreasonable to assume that one of the traits that he had acquired as part of his vulpine genetic heritage included an acute sense of smell.

Stripped naked now, Devereux studied her body’s profile in the long mirror.

The soft edges that she had acquired during her leave of absence to care for her father were nearly gone. Although she had tried to maintain a rigorous exercise regimen during that time, it had been nearly impossible to maintain during his last weeks when even sleep had become a precious commodity. It had taken her months of effort to regain this much.

Her legs and hips had regained nearly all of their previous muscle tone. They were not quite in the same condition as when she served as a Lieutenant, but they were close. Studying her breasts, always a bit larger than she thought they needed to be, she was grateful for the ship’s low gravity. On Earth, she had noticed, they had begun to sag slightly, the unfortunate side effect of both planet-side gravity and her brief pregnancy.

She had found it within herself now to longer experience that lost and hollow feeling at that memory. What she did not expect was the remembered sensation that came unbidden to her—that of Scott’s touch along her body.

He is gone now, she reminded herself. Long since dead and gone.

No matter how many times she had practiced that litany since she had returned to her own present—his future—a part of her refused to believe it. They had touched, talked, and made love. It had happened to her only months ago—not more than a century past.