Interphase

Sitting at her desk in the office of the Judge Advocate General, and using her favorite technology to communicate with someone who right now definitely didn't want to hear from her.

Meredith sighed. She said aloud, "John, it's my mother. Damn, and double damn!"

"That does it." Yancey responded by locating his swimming trunks and pulling them on.

Admiral Fiona Meredith Carver hated waiting, and seldom hesitated to interrupt her subordinates no matter where they were or what their duty status. Her daughter wasn't her subordinate, in any sense except that one woman outranked the other; but even to the creche bred, a bio-parent had privileges others in one's life did not. So she intruded on Meredith's thoughts whenever she felt like it, and part of the price of wearing a captain's comm implant (issued only when an officer reached command rank, although civilians with sufficient wealth could buy them at will) was being "available" 25/7. "Well! It' s the middle of the day on the resort coast of Sirtis Major, I believe. What kept you from answering for so long?"

"What do you think, Mother?" Meredith let the image her eyes were seeing at this moment go through. The green of Sirtis Major's southern ocean, calm in the shelter of this cove. The brightness of sun glinting on red sand. John sitting beside her, looking both physically uncomfortable and far more annoyed than Admiral Carver sounded, with solid biological reasons for feeling that way.

"Not funny," the older woman said with emphasis, as she shared that last perception.

"I suppose not." The younger sent back a mental sigh. "All right, Mother. Tell me what's so goddamned important. Because in case you haven't figured it out by now, I was in the middle of something I'd like to get back to!"

"John's what's so important, Merry." Carver's thoughts lost all other emotional coloration but intensity. "He needs to resign from the Guard. Now. Today."

"What?" Meredith was too well-trained an officer to let the word explode from her lips, but her vocal cords wanted to utter it. She could feel her throat moving. "Why?"

"Because I assume that if you're fond enough of him to let him do to you what you just teased me about, as part of an exclusive pair-bonding no less, I also assume you wouldn't like seeing him destitute. That's what he'll be if he stays around until the order that just went through my office gets implemented."

"What order is that?" She ought not to ask. Clearly Admiral Carver must be breaking regulations, or at least bending them until they screamed, by giving advance warning of whatever Astral Guard Command was sending down. Yet she couldn't help the question, because her years of discipline couldn't overrule the way her heart contracted at the thought of John in trouble.

"The creche lobby finally got its way, Merry. You figure it out. I have to go now." Admiral Carver dropped out of the link with even more than her usual abruptness.

"Well?" When Meredith let her eyes focus again, John was still sitting beside her. His eyes were on her face, not on her naked breasts. Right now they might almost be colleagues again, junior officers serving on the same starship, instead of two far more senior ones trying to keep their bonding alive with only an occasional shared respite to nourish it.

"Mother was tipping me off about something that came through her office," Meredith said, staring at her lover's familiar face and putting every bit of conviction she could muster into her tone.