And then it was all fine.
As swiftly as the emergency had begun, it was over. They cleared the storm belt intact, albeit a little smoky. Jerri shoved the business end of the burrito back into her mouth and gave a little wave to the bridge crew who were cheering with relief and adulation. Tomorrow they’d go back to ignoring her completely, but tonight, she was a goddess on the bridge.
“Night-night,” she said with a little wave before scuffing off to bed.
The bridge doors slid open. Jerri took a step forward and bounced into a solid object who had decided to turn himself into another door of sorts. It was Atlas, and unlike the bridge crew who looked like they’d just been through a tumble dryer, he did not have so much as a sleek black hair out of place. His amber gaze bored into her. Unlike the asteroids she could not dodge it. It caught her dead center and proceeded to range over her, finding every bit of her wanting.
There was a moment in which he was not sure what to say. The way the Audacity had just flown was truly astounding, in every sense of the word. Atlas had never seen or experienced anything like it. From his perch in his quarters, strapped against a wall, he’d watched the sensors dance with the motion of the vessel.
That was fucking cool. That’s what the non-commander part of him wanted to say. The commander part found himself confronted with a half-dressed ensign who looked like she’d just fallen out of a back-station dumpster. It was that part that spoke.
“Did you forget your uniform, Ensign?”
The bridge doors slid closed again behind her. Business as usual ensued in the space beyond. In the bridge vestibule, business was not at all usual.
He saw Jerri pause, suck in a breath for patience, and then absolutely fail to muster the necessary level of respect.
“I just saved your life. You’re welcome.” She had somehow managed to say get fucked without using either of those specific words. It was quite the linguistic act of magic. He would have admired it if not for her tedious insubordination.
She was a mess. An absolute mess. Her hair was completely askew in an asymmetrical blonde fuzzy halo around her head. There was a streak of blue on her cheek, which he figured was from the overly sugary beverage sticking out of a threadbare pocket on her robe, a garment that only barely qualified as providing decency. Her feet were clad unevenly. On her left foot was a pink fuzzy sock. There was nothing on her right foot at all. The notion that the Audacity had just been piloted by this vision of unprofessionalism damn near made his hair stand on end. If there was any single moment that exemplified all the troubles Atlas was having with this ensign, this scene would be the perfect image.
“Did you also forget that eating and drinking are prohibited on the bridge?” He indicated the snacks spilling out of the pockets of the robe.
“There was a DSN call. DSN calls supersede all protocol, or have you forgotten the rules you love so much? Jesus fucking wept, man. I just stopped this ship from being destroyed and you’re whining about a burrito? Get some fucking priorities.”
He grabbed her, felt her softness beneath his rough, ridged hands. It was becoming increasingly hard to hold back with this young woman. He wanted to treat her like a rebellious ensign, knock her down a rank, throw her in the brig. But she was pressing his buttons and he knew that sending her off to sit and sulk was going to do absolutely nothing to change her attitude, and he knew equally that she didn’t care about her rank—though she might if she ended up in a dormitory instead of an individual cabin. She needed physical correction.
“That mouth is going to get you into more trouble than you can handle.”
Jerri looked down at his hands, one on each shoulder, then looked back up at him.
“Yeah?”
Was she challenging him? After the way she’d been when he first punished her? She must have forgotten already. Short memory, perhaps. Or maybe just a bratty temperament unsuited to serving on a ship. Or maybe what she really wanted was inside his pants. That was more likely.
He could not deny her place on the Audacity. If not for her, they’d be space goo, as she’d screamed out on one of her many cursing tirades during the evasion sequence. He had been watching via screen from his quarters while strapped in. The ship had been performing barrel rolls and roly-polies in a way that had almost certainly caused many thousands of credits worth of damage. It was reckless madness of a caliber that would undoubtedly result in endless reports to endless departments. And it was the only reason they were still alive.