“Perhaps you think that because you have a terrible sense of humor for a human,” Iyotake said repressively. “Behave, Commander. We have work to do.”
“Your fighters are going to be one of our aces in the hole,” Henry reminded the CAG. “There’s a reason we kept you under wraps in Satra. The GMS birds are going to be an ugly shock to anyone who tries to jump this conference.”
“That’s what we’re here for, boss,” O’Flannagain agreed with a casual salute. “FighterDiv keeps everyone else breathing.”
Henry forced his incipient grimace into a smile and a nod. Like O’Flannagain, he knew the corollary to that joke: FighterDiv died to keep everyone else breathing.
He’d lost too many friends and subordinates over the war to have forgotten that.
To Henry’s surprise, O’Flannagain waited while everyone else left. A few moments after he’d dismissed the meeting, he was alone in the briefing room with his CAG and arched a questioning eyebrow at the younger woman.
“What trouble are you in this time, Samira?” he asked.
“No trouble,” she told him. “Why do you assume I’m in trouble?”
“Because even though you’ve improved dramatically, you were sent to me as a discipline case,” Henry observed. She’d had one epic drunken disaster before they’d hashed out some of her issues—mostly that crashing after a dogfight left her looking for alcohol or sex, neither of which was safely available to a senior officer on a battlecruiser.
“And I think we both know that Old Man Barrie sent me to you because he figured you’d get what was going on,” O’Flannagain told him. “He certainly did, though the CAG on Scorpius wasn’t as, ah, patient.”
Henry winced.
“Please…do not refer to my ex-husband as ‘old man’ to my face,” he noted stiffly. “I accept that neither of us are spring chickens anymore, but Commodore Barrie is only a year older than I am.”
O’Flannagain snorted.
“Maybe it’s his gold oak leaf, ser, but…you’re a stiff with a stick up your ass, but he’s old.”
Henry raised a warning finger. He’d tolerate quite a bit from O’Flannagain—she was a spectacular pilot and growing into a more-than-competent officer—but there were lines.
“I assume you did not stay behind to remind me about my ex,” he told her. He was reasonably sure that his CAG didn’t know about Yellow Bicycle, either, so she wouldn’t know why Peter Barrie was currently on Henry’s mind.
“What’s up?”
“Todorovich is on her way back?” she asked.
“Yeah. Shaka would have left about six hours after the skip drone.” He shrugged. “They’ll be here in two days.”
“La-Tar might be focused on food production, but they’ve got gardens,” O’Flannagain pointed out. “I’m pretty sure you could find a florist in two days.”
Henry stared at the redheaded woman blankly for a moment.
“And why would I need a florist?” he asked.
O’Flannagain chuckled and took a seat on the briefing room’s table, one leg tucked under her in an awkward-looking fashion.
“I know your type, boss,” she told him. “Takes you a long time to fall, but when you do, you fall hard. And you’ve been falling for the Ambassador at least since Tano.”
“That’s quite the assumption to make,” Henry replied automatically. “The Ambassador isn’t my type.”
His oft-repeated joke sounded false even to him, though. The joke was that no one was his type—he’d been attracted to three people in his entire life. Except…O’Flannagain was correct. Four people.
“She’s been making eyes at you since before that,” the fighter pilot told him. “And she’s not in your chain of command.”
This time, Henry held up a warning hand, and O’Flannagain, thankfully, stopped.
“Might I suggest that matchmaking your captain is generally considered poor form?” he said drily. “I’m twenty years older than you, Commander, I can handle my own relationships.”
O’Flannagain gave him a completely undiscouraged grin.
“But like most men, you can use the occasional brick to the head,” she replied. “To realize what you’re thinking, let alone what she’s thinking.”
“Even coming from FighterDiv, there are days I swear we give you rocket-jocks too long of a leash,” Henry said with a chuckle. “Consider your brick thrown, Commander, and butt out.”
“Wilco,” she said, then paused with a thoughtful look on her face.
“What is it?” Henry asked.
“Rocket-jock,” she echoed back at him. “There’s no rockets on a One-Thirty, Skipper. Some maneuvering jets, but they’re so secondary as to be irrelevant. We’re going to have to come up with a new slang for fighter pilot.”
He shook his head at her and latched on to the change of subject.
“I’ve tried your simulators for the Lancer,” he reminded her. “There’s definitely some rocketing going on, even if we aren’t leaving burnt hydrogen anywhere anymore. If we can reliably get the damn things into space, they’re going to be useful.”
“We’re working on that,” O’Flannagain said. “We’ve got the first squadron in actual service; problems were going to happen.”
“Let’s hope they don’t happen when we have a Kozun battle group charging at us with blood in their eyes,” Henry told her.
Back in his office, Henry caught himself looking to see if there was a florist on the space stations above La-Tar without fully realizing what he was doing.
He had to laugh. He wasn’t entirely sure he bought in to O’Flannagain’s “brick,” but he definitely missed Todorovich. The sharp-edged diplomat had been a valuable partner ever since he’d been tasked with transporting her to the Great Gathering of the Vesheron.
Most of his work since then had been ferrying her around as they tried to hold together the worlds the Kenmiri had abandoned. They’d been in each other’s back pockets the whole time, and he’d grown used to having her to lean on for advice and counsel.
He was pretty sure that feeling was mutual. They had different points of view and skillsets, which meant that she had useful opinions on his missions, and he hoped he had useful insights on hers.
There was a large gap between that and the type of romantic and physical interest that O’Flannagain was suggesting. She’d made jokes about Todorovich being interested in Henry before, but he’d written those off as jokes.
Except.
Except that he was self-aware enough to realize that she was right. It would have taken him longer to realize it on his own, but now he was facing up to it, she was right. At some point, Sylvia Todorovich had slipped over that invisible line in his head from person to attractive person.
That was something that happened rarely enough for Henry that he wasn’t sure how to deal with it even when it wasn’t potentially a giant complication. Sylvia Todorovich might be a civilian and outside his chain of command, but she’d also been his civilian counterpart and his partner for a year now.