Carnifex

21/4/468 AC, The Big ?

The yacht was almost fifty nautical miles ahead of the flotilla. Their cover had pretty much been blown off the coast of Xamar, but there was good reason to expect with a name change and a new paint job that they'd be clandestine enough in the Nicobar Straits. The new name, even now being painted in two alphabets on the stern, was Qamra, Arabic for "moon." Almost, almost, Marta had suggested calling it the Queer, but since the crew had been so understanding of her and Jaqueline's love affair—at least to the point of ignoring it—she thought better of rubbing it in their faces.

"It's worse than that, you know, love," Jaquie had explained. "We're the only ones getting any aboard and that has to be hard, no pun intended, on the rest of the crew."

"Well we could do something about that," Marta countered.

She was joking, but Jaquie took her seriously. "Do you think we should? I mean, it isn't like it would be anything new for either of us. We might not enjoy it all that much but it would be foolish to pretend it would hurt us any. And we could assemble quite a little nest egg for when we're discharged. I think the guys would appreciate it."

In fact, though the transfer from the auxiliaries had brought a certain amount of respect from the men, it had been a pay cut. Much of that loss would be made up, in time, through the deferred benefits that came upon release from the Legion. Still, their joint bank account hadn't been growing at the rate it had aboard Fosa's Fornication Frigate.

"Do you miss it?" Marta asked, seriously. "Guys, I mean."

"Honestly?" Jaquie looked at Martha carefully to see if the answer would hurt. "Not as much as I love it with you. But, yes, I miss it."

"We'll talk to Rodriguez then," Marta said. "But if he says it's okay you can only do it if I get to watch."

"Ooo, that would be fun."