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. Hi, Quin said with a smile.After offering a quick grunt, Jacqs looked the other way.Yeah, she liked him.Either that orshe was feeling particularly suicidal and thought trying to start a conversation with him was agood way to get that done.Jacqs didn t have a good reputation for socializing. God, you re rude, Dary complained, before the two women vanished.As far as Jacqs wasconcerned, he was doing a kindness by not letting Quin get confused about his feelings.Liking someone and not knowing if they liked you back was one of those levels of hell.Unfortunately, Jacqs figured he d put Zeke through some level of that hell, even if he hadn tmeant to.He wasn t toying with the man.He just didn t know what he was supposed to befeeling.He liked Zeke.He also liked Aral who ran the whorehouse.He had liked Megalbefore she d died in his arms.He d liked her enough that he would have traded places withher at the time, and he hadn t even gotten a chance to knock boots with her, although she dhinted that she wouldn t be adverse to the idea.The first woman he d slept with had caught him stealing bread.He must have been fourteenat the time, and she couldn t have been more than sixteen, but she d seemed so much older.He thought she was going to call one of the camp guards, who would deliver a goodwhupping and then deliver him back to his mother.Instead she had made Jacqs put the breadback, haul two loads of flour from the central stores, carry several buckets of water, and afterall that, she d given him the bread he tried to steal.After that, he d landed at her tent a lotuntil the batfaces had broken through the military line.The camp squatting just behind thefront lines had scattered as the battle had raged between their tents, ripping up cobbled-together tent homes and human bodies.Jacqs still didn t know what had happened toRaynatha, but that was the nature of war.Up until now, Jacqs would have said that the common denominator was that all his loverswere women.However, Zeke didn t fit that category, and neither did Lacroix, and that wasanother man Jacqs wouldn t mind inviting into his bed if n Lacroix s orientation had matchedhis.Jacqs admired the man, even if Lacroix had, up to this point, avoided Jacqs like the batflu.Jacqs didn t fault him none on that front.With every officer on the ship constantlylooking for new reasons to blame Jacqs for any little fault he showed, including his bad habitof breathing, Jacqs would have avoided himself if he could.The only common denominator Jacqs could see was that they were all powerful individuals.But power was all about being dynamic, being one of those who tied people up or who likedgetting tied up, and Jacqs knew for a fact that he was non-dynamic.He d had a woman askhim to tie her up once.It made Jacqs feel like the villain in some vid, and he d ended uphaving to do all the work.Neither of those feelings had led to a successful encounter.Jacqsstill chalked that one up to foolish experimenting as a young man.And getting tied up wasnot even a little bit interesting to him.Still struggling with his thoughts, Jacqs finished his rations and shoved his plate back in thedistributor before heading for the training room.When he was on short shifts, he tried to usethe extra time to really work out hard.Schreiber mostly lived in the gym and Lacroix andHaslet spent a fair amount of time in the room, but that still meant it was more private than most other spots in the ship, excepting the venting ducts.Jacqs had gotten up there once ortwice out of a sheer, raw desperation to get away from other human beings, but they werecramped enough that it wouldn t never be Jacqs first choice.This time, when Jacqs reached the training room, he found he had a bit more company.Schreiber seemed to be running the techs through their paces.Bolson and Daygik lookedclean wore out but they were still trading punches, and Quin was about near tears, explainingto Schreiber how she d forgotten about the session.When Jacqs walked in the room, every person turned to look, and most of them hadexpressions of horror.The desperation nearly made him do the stupidest thing possible andjoin the sparring group.Hell, it d feel good to knock Bolson around a bit.However, Jacqswould bruise one of the tender babies, and then he d land on discipline again.Besides, withhis luck Schreiber would ask him to work out with Quin, and that would not be a good idea.He headed for the machines where he could lift weights and do some solid thinking.The sparring group slowly got back on track.If Jacqs walking in a room was enough todistract them, Jacqs wasn t giving them good odds on surviving.Maybe they d land behindthe front or get in a unit that respected their tech skills enough to keep em wrapped up allsafe behind a few fighters.Jacqs watched as Neira Daygik actually tripped over her own leftfoot in an attempt to evade the most pathetic punch in the history of the human military.Bolson was worse than useless.Yeah, they d better find someone to watch their six or theywere all dying.Jacqs settled on one of the machines and lifted his legs up to put his feet on the wide plate sohe could do sitting squats.He completed his first set of twenty and the sweat started but hismind still swirled with a million thoughts.Blocking out the near non-stop whining from that end of the training room, Jacqs threwhimself into his workout.Muscles strained and sweat rolled down his spine until the front andback of his shirt were stained dark.His hands ached from pulling the lift bar, and his backsent up little flares of heat that suggested that Jacqs was on the edge of a serious injury.He wanted to push harder.He wanted to force his body into motion until his brain stoppedspinning, but Jacqs knew he couldn t afford to.He had a short shift to sit, and he couldn t doit if he was crippled up.So instead, Jacqs leaned back on one of the machines and watchedone sparring class end and another begin.They d gone through several exercises when Lacroix spotted Grah s unprotected back andgave her a slap on the ass.After spinning around, she hit him back twice as hard in the chest.Laughing, he retreated from the mats backwards, leaving the four navs to fight underSchreiber s tutelage.Jacqs was mildly surprised when Lacroix wandered over his way, but hewas mostly too worn down to care. You look more than half dead, Lacroix commented as he dropped down onto a box ofsparring supplies near the weight machines.Jacqs grunted.Usually that was enough to send fools into full retreat.Instead, Lacroixlaughed. She s getting better, Lacroix commented as he nodded toward Grah. Leaves her left side open too much. I keep telling her that. You should tell her less and hit her real good in the kidneys once or twice, and that ll keepher from letting some bat use that same hole in her defenses. Yeah, I wish I could.It s hard to when I hope to keep my boots under her bunk that night. Lacroix tilted his head and studied Jacqs for a second. She already hates you.Would youmind doing it? Jacqs felt a distant, soft sort of disappointment that someone he admired hated him, but thatwas an old wound, and Grah was hardly the first woman to have that opinion of him.Moreimportantly, Jacqs wanted to think of Grah as surviving the war and giving birth to a wholetribe of cantankerous, smart young boys and girls who could verbally eviscerate the nextgeneration. Yeah, I ll learn her up.She ll curse me out nine ways from the word go, butthat s okay. She ll appreciate it in the end, although you re right that she s going to curse you out whileyou re doing it. Jacqs grunted.He was ready for the conversation to be over.Lacroix did fall silent again, buthe didn t leave
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