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going on? Just what…” She trailed off,
stunned.
    “Something rotten in the state of Denmark,
methinks. I have to go.”
    Jill just raised a shaky palm as Forman left,
not looking. She ground the heels of her hands into her eyes,
damning her leaking tear ducts. Los Angeles . Her whole
family was in Los Angeles, her parents and her little brother and
uncles and cousins...
    She waited as long as she could, until the
ship secured from General Quarters and the watertight doors and
hatches were allowed open and the ship slowed; they must have
gotten word they were not under attack after all. She wondered why
the two naval ships had not been told to move away before the
attack on the cruise ship.
    Her first concern was more information. She
also needed more food, and to move the illicit gear she'd stashed
back in the compartment. Angrily she shook her head, throwing the
tears off, wiping her eyes with her sleeves. Stood up, gritting her
teeth against the pain, and strode out into the passageway.
    The ship was busy, sailors and Marines
scurrying about with extreme sense of purpose. The amphibious well
was filled with people, checking landing craft and gear, loading
armored vehicles aboard the huge hovercraft, chaining them down to
hardpoints on the decks. She saw live ammunition being hoisted into
the tanks and personnel carriers.
    The very busyness hid her, just one uniform
among scores, hurrying about a task. She climbed the ladder to the
compartment where she'd hid her gear, using mostly her upper body
strength, and then struggled back down with the rucksack,
everything stuffed inside it.
    “Hey, let me give you a hand.” He was
smiling, handsome, cheerful and dark. She saw Staff Sergeant’s
stripes, and ‘Gaona’ printed on his nametag.
    “No, I got it.” She grimly struggled on.
    “Come on, Sergeant. You know, chivalry isn’t
really dead.”
    “With all due respect, Staff Sergeant, you
can stow that shit where the sun don’t shine. I pull my weight.” At
that moment, the jury-rigged prosthesis on her left leg failed her,
twisting sideways under the pressure of walking down the ladder
steps. She would have fallen had he not caught her, setting her
gently on the deck, along with her rucksack.
    He looked at her lower leg, then her face,
then back again. “You should be screaming about now, so I’m going
to guess that’s not your real leg. I mean, that’s…” Confusion
showed on his face.
    She bit back her embarrassment to growl,
“It’s a prosthesis. I need to re-secure it. Just help me get out of
everyone’s way.”
    Accepting his support she hobbled a few yards
on one leg to a spot against the bulkhead. Once there she pulled up
her trouser cuffs and began redoing the bindings. “Thanks, Staff
Sergeant. But you don’t have to do any more. I’m good.”
    Pursing his lips he nodded, then shrugged as
he pointedly read her name tag. “Okay, Sergeant Repeth. I’ll see
you around.” His tone was playful.
    She watched him walk away. Just as
good-looking from this angle, and he knows it. Oh, Jill, give it a
rest, not the time for the libido to act up . Funny, she’d been
feeling friskier the last few days. Maybe it was from the…the
whatever-it-was that was fixing her legs.
    Boot and straps again secure, she stood back
up and hefted the rucksack down the passageway toward the
chaplain’s berth. After dropping that off, she made her way to the
nearest mess. The galley crew was in full swing, and she loaded up
on everything she could, demolished the whole tray, then did it
again. She didn’t think she could get away with a third; one of the
mess ratings had looked at her strangely the second time through.
Fortified, she stumped down the passageways to the other enlisted
mess and went through the line there too.
    This time she could eat slowly enough to
listen to the scuttlebutt. She chose a spot close to a group of
sailors in uniforms somewhat crisper than average. She thought they
were part of the CIC,