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for kicking him in the butt.
    Cain Salvador whispered aside to Cole Darby, lying on the creeper next to his underneath Cain’s Swift. “Did I just see Kerry Blue kick the Old Man in the butt?”
    “Nope.” Darb kept his eyes on his work. “Didn’t happen. You saw nothing. Gimme the torch.”
    “Colonel’s here,” Cain whispered. “Do we stand up?”
    “Keep welding.”
    It had taken Kerry Blue over two years to see what Darb had noticed in his first months on board Merrimack. Colonel Steele was always an ogre to Kerry Blue, always yelling at her. She noticed that part. The colonel did everything he could to keep her out of his sight, like he couldn’t stand the sight of her.
    Well, he really really couldn’t stand the sight of her.
    Blue never figured that part out until Darb hit her in the head with it: He can’t stand to be near you. That had woken her up. She’d been wide awake ever since. Steele came stalking around the husk of Kerry’s Swift, his eyes hard as arctic ice, as if looking for something to criticize in the heap.
    Darb cringed in hiding under Cain’s Swift. It felt like the whole hangar could just go up in flames right now.
    A small movement broke up the Old Man’s frown, like a flicker in an image that quickly repairs itself. There was some kind of strong current in here. A sparking. Something was going to ignite. Smelled like someone’s career.
    Darb heard Kerry Blue talking too fast, too loud: “Look what he did! Augustus torched my crate! Why mine? I was nice to that son of a bitch!”
    Kerry Blue had been nice to men beyond count.
    Steele’s face turned blood red.
    Kerry railed on, “Why couldn’t he torch your crate instead?” Steele said, “He knew the way to get at me.” Darb tried to reel his legs in all the way under the Swift, cringing.
    Kerry brought her voice way down quiet for just Steele—and the two guys trying to disappear under Alpha Three—to hear. “Yeah?”
    Darb tried to will his ears shut.
    I’m not hearing this. I am not hearing this. Anyone asks, I got no idea. La la la la la—
    And praise the Lord, Steele growled at Kerry, “Clean up this mess.” He stalked away. Kerry Blue’s voice sailed after him, too cheery: “Aye, aye, sir.”
    Colonel TR Steele turned his back on Kerry Blue and retreated to his side of that vast chasm that separated officer from enlisted man. Man, for Kerry Blue was a man by military definition. A she-man instead of a he-man, but a man as far as the Navy was concerned.
    Except that was all bullskat to Colonel Steele, and Kerry Blue was all woman and what the hell was she doing on his battleship? Enlisted!
    He could not have her. He could not breathe without her. He got all tongue-tied and stupid around her. He could not afford to mess this up.
    What this? He caught himself thinking. There was no this. This could not happen. There could be no this! Steele prowled across the hangar to Flight Leader Ranza Espinoza, a big woman, with broad shoulders, boy hips, and fine gray eyes. Her fat shock of coarse, light brown hair was tied back into a ponytail as thick as Steele’s fist.
    Ranza was a tough soldier, but she was not terrific with details. Unfortunately, the Divorce Protocol was nothing but details.
    Steele looked over Ranza’s rounded shoulder at the instructions which she kept reading and rereading. “Got it in hand, Flight Leader?”
    “No, sir,” said Ranza. “This has got me by the short hairs. And I thought I knew everything there was to know about divorce too.”
    Ranza had three children with three different last names, all back home on Earth with their maternal grandmother. “You have a brain, Flight Leader,” said Colonel Steele.
    “Use it.” Ranza anguished over the instructions that may as well have been written in Turkish. “Sir, Fm tryin’—” Steele snatched the instructions from her. “Cole Darby!”
    “Sir!” Darb’s voice sounded along with a clunk. That was Flight Sergeant Cole Darby bumping