A few hours after the parade had broken up, Veraa arrived at her billet for six days of shore leave before heading to the School of Armour. She would be sharing a hotel room with Amy for five of those days, before her friend shuttled back up to the CNF School of Languages at HM Naval Base Portsmouth, just a few hundred thousand kilometres overhead. She had managed to have lunch with Sam after the parade, but it had been ever-so slightly awkward. After three months apart, they didn’t have much to talk about. Sam had seemed distracted and a little upset, claiming he’d had a rather difficult conversation earlier.
Veraa swiped her keycard and unlocked her door, hurling her duffel bags through one by one and looking both ways along the corridor before shutting the door behind herself. She slid down the door and hugged her knees, leaving the seabags in a pile in the middle of the room by the small table. There were no tears, but she wasn’t exactly walking on air.
The lock buzzed and the door shifted behind her. She tried to stand up but the silly thing locked itself again. She opened the door from the inside. “Sorry, that was me.”
Amy laughed and hurled a duffel at her. “Well thanks! I was worried they’d given me the wrong card.”
Veraa slung the bag onto the pile. “Hey, I said I was sorry.”
“Were you sitting behind the door or something?”
She hesitated, as they dragged the bags inside and dumped them under the table. “Yeah, kinda was.”
Amy laughed. “How come?”
“Just a little down in the mouth, I guess.”
They began sorting the seabags by ownership, tossing them onto their respective beds. Amy picked up the suitcase that held all the civilian clothes that she’d taken to RS. “I say again, how come?”
“Had lunch with Sam, wasn’t exactly a riot. It was nice, don’t get me wrong; friendly and polite… but I’m just not walking on air, like one should be after not seeing a boyfriend in three months. I don’t know, it was just a little awkward.”
“Well, that’s disappointing, honey,” said Amy soothingly, taking a seat at the table. “Would a little sightseeing and retail therapy help cheer you up?”
Veraa dug in her own suitcase and pulled out the plain blouse she’d worn on Ispania. “Gimme a bearing on the nearest flea market, urgent,” she said, and they both laughed.
They changed out of their Blue Dress A uniforms and almost died of shock at the comfort and familiarity of their ‘normal-people clothes’. As it turned out, the nearest market wasn’t far at all, and they spent the day wandering around and browsing. Amy had a mini heart attack when she saw for the first time in three months how much her bank balance had grown by.
Five days passed gloriously slowly, and the girls didn’t once mention the Marine Corps or military life, except for once on Amy’s last night on-world. They and the boys from the room next door had ordered some New Indian takeaway and were eating at the table in the centre of their room. Tahj and O’Dell had brought the chairs around from their room, and with the addition of a bottle of wine dinner quickly became a cosy, humerous affair. Tahj had proposed a toast to Amy, as the first to ship out.
“Ladies and gentleman, kindly charge your glasses, and so on, blah blah, for a toast to Private Second Class O’Keane; may she soon have a fruitful and mentally stimulating experience at the School of Languages.”
They had drank their toast and begun to continue their meal, when O’Dell suddenly chuckled and paused with his fork halfway to his mouth.
“Strange, innit. We’re sitting here, not a care in the world, in a fancy hotel room paid for by the Confederacy, horsin’ down on curries. In another week, we’ll all be in different systems.”
“Well, not all,” shrugged Tahj. “Veraa and I will both be at the School of Armour.”
“Y’know what I mean, though?”
“Of course. I s’pose that’s military life, though; you meet people and become firm friends, and then six months later you’re told to pack up and move on, perhaps never to see them again. I’m just glad I have everyone’s link addresses. True friendships last for life, regardless of time or space.”
Everyone was silent for a moment, before the three others burst out laughing.
“You a philosopher now, Tahj?” asked Veraa.
“No, not even,” he laughed. “I guess I just think deep, y’know.”
“Not a bad thing.”
Another bottle was ordered and brought up, and the night got even more rosy-cheeked and merry. Somehow, a discussion about O’Dell’s choice to join the Infantry ended with a kiss on the cheek from Amy, who promptly blushed so hard she could have camouflaged herself in Veraa’s hair.
Life on the Fringes 