Team Building with Jack Landors (SPD, A Squad, #25, K+)
characters: SPD’s A Squad (Kat/Cruger)
prompt #25: spirit
word count: 3500
rating: K+
summary: “Tell Cadet Landors that I’m perfectly aware he has most of B Squad in Command with him. They’re probably engaged in some utterly frivolous activity involving either holidays or horseplay. Possibly both."
Team Building with Jack Landors (spirit)
by *Andrea
“Kat, can you hold this for me?” Syd passed her the end of a paper chain without waiting for an answer, stepping back and studying the way it fell between them critically. “Hmm. I don’t think that’s going to be quite long enough.”
“What did you do with the rest of the tinsel, princess?” Z’s voice called from the other side of Command. “I know we didn’t use it all downstairs.”
“Bridge, I need some more of those paper strips,” Syd said, piling up the rest of the chain on the console beside Kat. “It won’t have the same effect if it doesn’t reach the floor on both sides of the door.”
Kat lifted her end of the paper circles for closer inspection, tugging on them experimentally. Whatever adhesive B Squad was using would probably hold them together longer than the paper would last. She smiled as Syd swirled back around the console, a handful of paper strips in hand, and started linking them through the other end of the chain and pressing them together to make loops one at a time.
“Sky, where’s the tinsel?” Z demanded.
Sky looked up from the sector map he and Jack were huddled over to give her a skeptical look. “What makes you think I have any idea where the tinsel is?”
“B Squad is in charge of decorating, and you’re in charge of B Squad,” she informed him. “So... find me some tinsel.”
Kat watched Jack and Sky exchange glances. Jack obviously tried--and failed--to suppress a smile when Sky asked, “Have you noticed it’s only when things go wrong that they admit I’m in charge?”
“There,” Syd declared, picking up her end of the paper chain and holding it up again. “What do you think, Kat?”
She eyed it carefully. “I think it’s about five links short.”
Syd paused. “Do you know, I actually believe you,” she said after a moment. “Bridge?”
“Well, if anyone could do it by eye, it would be Kat,” he pointed out. “She’s used to judging three dimensional specifications, and a lot of her design work calls for precision that the computer can only achieve through manual input.”
Syd opened her mouth, turning on him, and was brought up short when he turned up right behind her with five strips of paper in his hand. “Thanks,” she said instead.
“Syd.” Sky’s voice, coming from the middle of the room, would not be ignored. “Tell Z where the tinsel is before she makes me crazy.”
“Isn’t it a little late for that?” Syd countered.
“Oh, hey, I think I saw tinsel in the lounge last night,” Bridge offered. “Back behind one of the couches. I’ll go check.”
“No, it’s all right,” Z assured him. “I can look. I just thought Syd had it and was hiding it or something.”
That Syd heard, and Kat smiled as she demanded to know what they thought she wanted with tinsel when she was obviously hanging paper chains. It was, Kat thought, a typically B Squad response to being told that one of their number wouldn’t be taking the day off with the rest of them... and Jack was still B Squad, no matter what the morpher he carried said. If he was working, the rest of them wouldn’t leave.
So the team had trickled into Command over the course of the morning, coming to entertain Jack on dispatch and bringing their holiday spirit with them. She was sure that entertaining her was just a side benefit, but she was enjoying it nonetheless. It was good to be home.
“SPD.” A voice echoed through Command, temporarily silencing the banter. “NTPD Unit 157 requests backup at the plaza, junction fifth and market. Code two one niner. That’s code two one niner at plaza junction fifth and market.”
“Delta Base acknowledges,” Jack said into the sudden quiet. Code 219 was alien weapons’ discharge. “Ranger squad dispatched.
“Landors for Lin,” he continued, switching channels. “Acknowledge.”
“Go for Lin,” Chi’s voice answered immediately.
“New Tech PD is requesting backup at the plaza, at the corner of fifth and market,” he told her. “They have alien weapons’ fire, and they want Ranger backup.”
Chi’s reply was sharp and businesslike. “We’re on our way.”
Kat caught his eye across the room, and he waved her off before she could even say anything. “Stand down, number four,” he said, flashing her a smile. “They can handle it.”
“Just out of curiosity,” Sky added. “When did you start telling NTPD that all our squads are Ranger squads?”
“Since they all started doing Ranger duty,” Jack answered. His light tone indicated that he knew Sky wasn’t going to make something of it; that in fact, it was probably a conversation they’d had before. In some form or other.
Kat had noticed that too--weeks ago, when Jack had formally taken over patrol rotations and liaison assignments. He’d been doing it unofficially for months, but after the battle for Earth and his accidental promotion to A Squad Red, he’d apparently decided to bump everyone else up too. She’d pointed it out to the commander as a sort of pre-emptive strike, to keep him from finding out on his own and exploding at the worst possible time.
To her surprise, though, Cruger had taken it well. “They’re all Ranger-track,” he’d pointed out. “And frankly, if it keeps NTPD from complaining every time we assign them a lower-ranked squad, I’m all for it. Tell him to keep it up.”
She hadn’t, not least because it was incredibly childish of the base commander to pass orders to his second-in-command through a third party. But she’d also refrained because she thought Jack got a kick out of making unauthorized unilateral decisions, and telling him that the commander approved might take some of the fun out of it. He didn’t get to have enough fun at SPD, as far as she was concerned.
Kat shook her head as Jack stole his Santa hat back from Sky and held it on his head as he danced out of the way of Sky’s retaliatory lunge. All appearances to the contrary, she thought, amused. One glimpse, one reminder of a baby decades old by now, and suddenly she was feeling maternal.
“Come on,” Sky complained, when Jack braced his arms against the far side of the command console and grinned at him, practically daring him to give chase. “It looks terrible with your shirt!”
While that was certainly true--Jack had put the tropical print back on over his SPD t-shirt--Kat couldn’t decide whether it was stranger to hear Sky whine or to hear him talk about what someone else was wearing. Syd must have agreed, since she said, “Sky, you’re the last person who should be giving anyone fashion advice.”
“Such as it is,” Z put in. One of her had gone with Bridge to look for the tinsel, while the other remained in Command with the rest of them. Kat couldn’t help wondering what Time Force would have tried to do to her, had she been born a thousand years later.
“Everything looks great with this shirt,” Jack declared. “That’s why I’m wearing it. I’m tired of SPD grey.”
“Join the club,” Syd told him. “Kat, can you help me put this up?”
She slid off the console without a word, secretly pleased to be asked. She’d told Jack that the day they visited in the future had been twenty years ago--twenty-two, to be exact--and it had been, for him. For her, it was closer to forty. She’d spent a lot of time hiding after her escape, unwilling to believe that Time Force could or would give up. She’d finally dared to look for Jen, and it had been two long years after she’d found her before she attempted contact.
Jen had worked another miracle... for herself this time. Time Force had granted her “exile” to the time she’d fallen in love with, on condition of continued if autonomous service. She’d been given broad orders regarding the reparation of a timeline she and her team had splintered in their quest to avenge their leader. The details were entrusted to her.
So her sister had predated the “Kat Manx” identity to 2001, a refugee from a world that had fallen to the Troobian Empire years before, and installed her as a visiting consultant to SPD Earth. This made it easy for “Kat” to disappear whenever Jen got word that Time Force was sending someone to check in, and it kept her far enough out of the chain of command that she wasn’t subject to constant background checks. Visitors from the future still occasionally caught them by surprise, but this week was the closest call they’d had in nineteen years and their backup plan had gone off without a hitch.
“Sky,” Syd said imperiously. “I need another tall person, here.”
“Try a chair,” Jack offered, watching her glare at the doorway from the relative safety of the command console.
“I can do it.” Kat held out her hand for the adhesive, which Syd relinquished without question, but it didn’t keep her from staring impatiently in Sky’s direction. “Really, Syd, it’s fine.”
“I’m not going to make Kat decorate by herself because Syd’s too lazy to get a chair,” Sky was telling Jack.
“So you’re going to give her a personal army instead?” Jack retorted, but Sky was already coming over to help.
“Tell me when it’s even,” he said, catching the other side of the paper chain and holding it up top of the door. He held up his free hand and pointed at Syd as she opened her mouth. “Not you,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Kat.”
Kat glanced over at him in surprise, since Sky wasn’t exactly known for soliciting advice. From anyone. But he just looked back at her, waiting with some semblance of patience, and she wondered what Jack had told him about their “vacation.” Was he treating her differently all of a sudden, or was it just her imagination?
“A little lower,” she said, just to see what he would happen. When he dropped it too far, she corrected, “No, up... higher--stop.”
“Maybe a little to the right,” Syd added helpfully.
Sky ignored her. “Good?” he asked Kat.
She tried not to smile as she handed over the adhesive, but it was a losing battle. Sky was definitely being sweeter than usual. It was only underscored by his lack of response to Syd. She’d expected to suffer by association for his irritation with Jack, but when the irritation didn’t manifest, it hadn’t occurred to her that she might get some of the spillover affection instead.
“Perfect,” she told him, deciding she might as well enjoy it while it lasted.
Sky actually smiled at her.
“Well, at least the length is,” Syd said, eyeing the door critically.
“You’re welcome,” Kat replied.
“You okay?” Sky asked, catching her flinch when the lab alert was triggered.
Maybe it was the calm of Command, the general peace that seemed to prevail with the holidays and only a skeleton crew on to celebrate. Maybe it was finally outwitting Time Force, feeling that there really were times and places she was safe, or that at the very least there were people who cared enough to help when she wasn’t. But she reached for her morpher instead of racing for the door when she felt the emergency signal go off.
“Doggie,” she said, holding up one finger in Sky’s direction. “Is that you?”
The room was suddenly quiet, and it only made the pause before his reply heavier. “Possibly?” The base commander sounded--as far as she was concerned--appropriately chagrinned. She was not going to let him get in the habit of using the emergency signal as a Kat-specific pager system.
“And are you,” she inquired, just to drive her point home, “or anyone around you, in immediate and/or life-threatening jeopardy?”
The pause was shorter this time. “Not at the moment.”
“Did you press the emergency alert button underneath the desk in my lab for any reason other than a desire to get back at me for accidentally bumping into it eighteen times, despite a strategically convenient location that makes it impossible for anyone actually using the desk to avoid hitting it?”
“While I’m disappointed that you didn’t consider the possibility I might in fact be using your desk for legitimate purposes,” his voice replied, “yes. Yes I did.”
“And that reason would be?” she demanded, aware of Jack coming around the console to stand beside Z. Making sure he didn’t miss anything, no doubt. Sky and Syd weren’t making any secret of their interest, either.
“Come down here and find out,” the base commander told her.
“She’s on duty,” Jack called, clearly intending for the remark to be overheard.
Kat shot him a look, and Jack held up his hands in apology. Sorry, he mouthed.
“Tell Cadet Landors that I’m perfectly aware he has most of B Squad in Command with him,” the commander said. “They’re probably engaged in some utterly frivolous activity involving either holidays or horseplay, possibly both, and I see no reason one or more of them can’t cover for you while you take a moment to visit your own lab.”
“Well, maybe I see a reason,” she told him.
Next to her, Syd folded her arms and smiled. She and Sky exchanged glances, and Kat barely kept herself from rolling her eyes. If SPD put even a quarter of the effort into their background checks that they put into the rumor mill, she wouldn’t be here today.
“That is, of course, your choice,” Cruger’s voice informed her. That was probably as close to an admission of guilt as she would get.
This time she did roll her eyes, and it was Sky who hid a smile. “I’ll be there in a minute,” she said, cutting the link before she could hear whether he had a reply or not.
“You know,” Sky said thoughtfully, “I bet Bridge could rig something so the alert system responded differently to certain people.”
“Yeah, like with the cake dish,” Syd agreed. “It only shocked Boom.”
Kat looked at her, and she added quickly, “It was just a tiny shock. Just the once.”
“It wouldn’t stop someone from using it to call for help,” Sky put in. “It would just be a deterrent for anyone prone to hitting it ‘accidentally.’” He mimed little quotes around the word, and when she glared past him at Jack, he just held up his hands again.
“No,” she said firmly. “Guys, I can handle this. I’ve already had to discourage Jack from helping, and I’d appreciate it if you would just let us work this out on our own.”
Syd shrugged, and Sky followed suit. “Up to you,” he agreed. “You change your mind, just say the word.”
She shook her head, heading out into the hallway before she could become an accomplice to things she didn’t even want to know about. She wasn’t sure she could survive having Sky’s affection, after all. She knew Cruger thought the one good thing about the relationship between his two Red Rangers was Sky’s tendency to keep Jack in check, but this wasn’t the first time she’d thought it was probably the other way around.
Charon was in the lab when she got there--using the hood, of course, which was probably the only reason she was there on a Saturday morning. Her current project was time-intensive, and she couldn’t just walk out while it was in progress. Which meant that whatever the commander had to say, he was either going to say it in front of one of Kat’s students or somewhere else entirely.
“You know,” Kat said, folding her arms. He was sitting forward forward in her chair, fidgeting with the same stylus Jack had been playing with three days before. “You do have an office. With your own desk, even.”
“So I’m told,” he agreed. He didn’t put the stylus down.
She waited. There wasn’t much more she could do at this point, and she was getting a little tired of it. A third of her life gone since Time Force, and here she was... exactly where that grown-up child had told her she would be, thirty-nine years ago.
“Your sister founded SPD,” he’d told her. “You work there with her. You’re the head of Base Tech, and you make everyone crazy by working way longer hours than humans can.”
That was what he had known about her. Funny, she remembered thinking at the time. That was pretty much what everyone then thought of her too. Except she suspected that she’d gotten slightly more respect as a time-traveling Karmanian prisoner than she did now as an alien war refugee.
“Dr. Manx.” The commander was watching her, and he seemed to know when her attention came back to him from wherever it had been. Tipping his head toward the hood, he obviously indicated Charon.
She glared back at him. No, she could not ask Charon to leave, and she was starting to think she wouldn’t even if she could. “Yes?” she countered coldly.
“You like the base commander,” Hyanni’s son had told her. “He’s this dog named Anubis Cruger, and frankly, I don’t know what you see in him. I wish he’d stop hanging out in your lab, though--”
Cruger stood up, all stiff formality and odd personal courage combined. “I wanted to apologize for my behavior this morning,” he said. Now that she had drawn the line, he was going to try to call her bluff? “That was hardly the appropriate time.”
He made no effort to keep his voice down, but if he thought she was afraid of people overhearing, well... he hadn’t worked on this base as long as she had. “No,” she agreed, lifting her chin. “It wasn’t.
“I accept your apology,” she added, just before he might have continued.
He looked at her for a long moment. Then, finally, “Take a walk with me.”
She gave him the stare right back, because she wasn’t following an order. But he just waited, making it clear--slowly and silently--that it had been a request, not a command. She would answer a request.
She turned, inclining her head, and he set the stylus down carefully before coming out from behind her desk. “So, were you?” she asked, as he joined her.
She could feel the sidelong glance he gave her as they headed out into the hallway. “Was I what?”
“Using my desk for legitimate purposes,” she said.
She could hear him smile. “Yes,” he said. “If you consider getting your attention a legitimate purpose.”
“Depends on the day.” The answer was easy, but she hadn’t decided which kind of day this was yet.
“I meant what I said about this morning.” His tone was suddenly serious again. “I was upset because I was... worried. About you. And Jack. I shouldn’t have brought it up the moment you got back.”
“You already apologized,” she reminded him. “If you have more to say, just say it.”
She could see him shake his head out of the corner of her eye. “There’s no Mexico base, Kat.”
“Not yet,” she said lightly.
He stopped where he was and turned to her there, in the middle of a deserted hallway. “I can’t protect you if I don’t know what you’re doing,” he told her. He held up a hand when she went to speak, and she hesitated just long enough for him to add, “I know, you don’t need protecting. But if you want to know why I was upset... that’s why.”
“You know when I said I could wait?” She didn’t realize she was saying it until the words were out. “I changed my mind.”
And for someone who could barely talk about the weather, some days, he kept up and came back in kind. “When I said I want you,” he replied, “what I meant was, I love you.”
She opened her mouth, but he had absolutely won this round because she had no response for that. He knew it, too, and instead of smiling he reached out to touch her face. His hand was shockingly warm.
“Tomorrow is, I believe, the eighth day of Hanukkah,” he said quietly. “I would be honored if you would have dinner with me.”
She finally managed to find her voice. “Hanukkah ends at sundown.”
Now he did smile. “Have dinner with me anyway.”
She heard herself say, “Okay,” and she wondered what disaster would strike tomorrow.
prompt #25: spirit
word count: 3500
rating: K+
summary: “Tell Cadet Landors that I’m perfectly aware he has most of B Squad in Command with him. They’re probably engaged in some utterly frivolous activity involving either holidays or horseplay. Possibly both."
Team Building with Jack Landors (spirit)
by *Andrea
“Kat, can you hold this for me?” Syd passed her the end of a paper chain without waiting for an answer, stepping back and studying the way it fell between them critically. “Hmm. I don’t think that’s going to be quite long enough.”
“What did you do with the rest of the tinsel, princess?” Z’s voice called from the other side of Command. “I know we didn’t use it all downstairs.”
“Bridge, I need some more of those paper strips,” Syd said, piling up the rest of the chain on the console beside Kat. “It won’t have the same effect if it doesn’t reach the floor on both sides of the door.”
Kat lifted her end of the paper circles for closer inspection, tugging on them experimentally. Whatever adhesive B Squad was using would probably hold them together longer than the paper would last. She smiled as Syd swirled back around the console, a handful of paper strips in hand, and started linking them through the other end of the chain and pressing them together to make loops one at a time.
“Sky, where’s the tinsel?” Z demanded.
Sky looked up from the sector map he and Jack were huddled over to give her a skeptical look. “What makes you think I have any idea where the tinsel is?”
“B Squad is in charge of decorating, and you’re in charge of B Squad,” she informed him. “So... find me some tinsel.”
Kat watched Jack and Sky exchange glances. Jack obviously tried--and failed--to suppress a smile when Sky asked, “Have you noticed it’s only when things go wrong that they admit I’m in charge?”
“There,” Syd declared, picking up her end of the paper chain and holding it up again. “What do you think, Kat?”
She eyed it carefully. “I think it’s about five links short.”
Syd paused. “Do you know, I actually believe you,” she said after a moment. “Bridge?”
“Well, if anyone could do it by eye, it would be Kat,” he pointed out. “She’s used to judging three dimensional specifications, and a lot of her design work calls for precision that the computer can only achieve through manual input.”
Syd opened her mouth, turning on him, and was brought up short when he turned up right behind her with five strips of paper in his hand. “Thanks,” she said instead.
“Syd.” Sky’s voice, coming from the middle of the room, would not be ignored. “Tell Z where the tinsel is before she makes me crazy.”
“Isn’t it a little late for that?” Syd countered.
“Oh, hey, I think I saw tinsel in the lounge last night,” Bridge offered. “Back behind one of the couches. I’ll go check.”
“No, it’s all right,” Z assured him. “I can look. I just thought Syd had it and was hiding it or something.”
That Syd heard, and Kat smiled as she demanded to know what they thought she wanted with tinsel when she was obviously hanging paper chains. It was, Kat thought, a typically B Squad response to being told that one of their number wouldn’t be taking the day off with the rest of them... and Jack was still B Squad, no matter what the morpher he carried said. If he was working, the rest of them wouldn’t leave.
So the team had trickled into Command over the course of the morning, coming to entertain Jack on dispatch and bringing their holiday spirit with them. She was sure that entertaining her was just a side benefit, but she was enjoying it nonetheless. It was good to be home.
“SPD.” A voice echoed through Command, temporarily silencing the banter. “NTPD Unit 157 requests backup at the plaza, junction fifth and market. Code two one niner. That’s code two one niner at plaza junction fifth and market.”
“Delta Base acknowledges,” Jack said into the sudden quiet. Code 219 was alien weapons’ discharge. “Ranger squad dispatched.
“Landors for Lin,” he continued, switching channels. “Acknowledge.”
“Go for Lin,” Chi’s voice answered immediately.
“New Tech PD is requesting backup at the plaza, at the corner of fifth and market,” he told her. “They have alien weapons’ fire, and they want Ranger backup.”
Chi’s reply was sharp and businesslike. “We’re on our way.”
Kat caught his eye across the room, and he waved her off before she could even say anything. “Stand down, number four,” he said, flashing her a smile. “They can handle it.”
“Just out of curiosity,” Sky added. “When did you start telling NTPD that all our squads are Ranger squads?”
“Since they all started doing Ranger duty,” Jack answered. His light tone indicated that he knew Sky wasn’t going to make something of it; that in fact, it was probably a conversation they’d had before. In some form or other.
Kat had noticed that too--weeks ago, when Jack had formally taken over patrol rotations and liaison assignments. He’d been doing it unofficially for months, but after the battle for Earth and his accidental promotion to A Squad Red, he’d apparently decided to bump everyone else up too. She’d pointed it out to the commander as a sort of pre-emptive strike, to keep him from finding out on his own and exploding at the worst possible time.
To her surprise, though, Cruger had taken it well. “They’re all Ranger-track,” he’d pointed out. “And frankly, if it keeps NTPD from complaining every time we assign them a lower-ranked squad, I’m all for it. Tell him to keep it up.”
She hadn’t, not least because it was incredibly childish of the base commander to pass orders to his second-in-command through a third party. But she’d also refrained because she thought Jack got a kick out of making unauthorized unilateral decisions, and telling him that the commander approved might take some of the fun out of it. He didn’t get to have enough fun at SPD, as far as she was concerned.
Kat shook her head as Jack stole his Santa hat back from Sky and held it on his head as he danced out of the way of Sky’s retaliatory lunge. All appearances to the contrary, she thought, amused. One glimpse, one reminder of a baby decades old by now, and suddenly she was feeling maternal.
“Come on,” Sky complained, when Jack braced his arms against the far side of the command console and grinned at him, practically daring him to give chase. “It looks terrible with your shirt!”
While that was certainly true--Jack had put the tropical print back on over his SPD t-shirt--Kat couldn’t decide whether it was stranger to hear Sky whine or to hear him talk about what someone else was wearing. Syd must have agreed, since she said, “Sky, you’re the last person who should be giving anyone fashion advice.”
“Such as it is,” Z put in. One of her had gone with Bridge to look for the tinsel, while the other remained in Command with the rest of them. Kat couldn’t help wondering what Time Force would have tried to do to her, had she been born a thousand years later.
“Everything looks great with this shirt,” Jack declared. “That’s why I’m wearing it. I’m tired of SPD grey.”
“Join the club,” Syd told him. “Kat, can you help me put this up?”
She slid off the console without a word, secretly pleased to be asked. She’d told Jack that the day they visited in the future had been twenty years ago--twenty-two, to be exact--and it had been, for him. For her, it was closer to forty. She’d spent a lot of time hiding after her escape, unwilling to believe that Time Force could or would give up. She’d finally dared to look for Jen, and it had been two long years after she’d found her before she attempted contact.
Jen had worked another miracle... for herself this time. Time Force had granted her “exile” to the time she’d fallen in love with, on condition of continued if autonomous service. She’d been given broad orders regarding the reparation of a timeline she and her team had splintered in their quest to avenge their leader. The details were entrusted to her.
So her sister had predated the “Kat Manx” identity to 2001, a refugee from a world that had fallen to the Troobian Empire years before, and installed her as a visiting consultant to SPD Earth. This made it easy for “Kat” to disappear whenever Jen got word that Time Force was sending someone to check in, and it kept her far enough out of the chain of command that she wasn’t subject to constant background checks. Visitors from the future still occasionally caught them by surprise, but this week was the closest call they’d had in nineteen years and their backup plan had gone off without a hitch.
“Sky,” Syd said imperiously. “I need another tall person, here.”
“Try a chair,” Jack offered, watching her glare at the doorway from the relative safety of the command console.
“I can do it.” Kat held out her hand for the adhesive, which Syd relinquished without question, but it didn’t keep her from staring impatiently in Sky’s direction. “Really, Syd, it’s fine.”
“I’m not going to make Kat decorate by herself because Syd’s too lazy to get a chair,” Sky was telling Jack.
“So you’re going to give her a personal army instead?” Jack retorted, but Sky was already coming over to help.
“Tell me when it’s even,” he said, catching the other side of the paper chain and holding it up top of the door. He held up his free hand and pointed at Syd as she opened her mouth. “Not you,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Kat.”
Kat glanced over at him in surprise, since Sky wasn’t exactly known for soliciting advice. From anyone. But he just looked back at her, waiting with some semblance of patience, and she wondered what Jack had told him about their “vacation.” Was he treating her differently all of a sudden, or was it just her imagination?
“A little lower,” she said, just to see what he would happen. When he dropped it too far, she corrected, “No, up... higher--stop.”
“Maybe a little to the right,” Syd added helpfully.
Sky ignored her. “Good?” he asked Kat.
She tried not to smile as she handed over the adhesive, but it was a losing battle. Sky was definitely being sweeter than usual. It was only underscored by his lack of response to Syd. She’d expected to suffer by association for his irritation with Jack, but when the irritation didn’t manifest, it hadn’t occurred to her that she might get some of the spillover affection instead.
“Perfect,” she told him, deciding she might as well enjoy it while it lasted.
Sky actually smiled at her.
“Well, at least the length is,” Syd said, eyeing the door critically.
“You’re welcome,” Kat replied.
“You okay?” Sky asked, catching her flinch when the lab alert was triggered.
Maybe it was the calm of Command, the general peace that seemed to prevail with the holidays and only a skeleton crew on to celebrate. Maybe it was finally outwitting Time Force, feeling that there really were times and places she was safe, or that at the very least there were people who cared enough to help when she wasn’t. But she reached for her morpher instead of racing for the door when she felt the emergency signal go off.
“Doggie,” she said, holding up one finger in Sky’s direction. “Is that you?”
The room was suddenly quiet, and it only made the pause before his reply heavier. “Possibly?” The base commander sounded--as far as she was concerned--appropriately chagrinned. She was not going to let him get in the habit of using the emergency signal as a Kat-specific pager system.
“And are you,” she inquired, just to drive her point home, “or anyone around you, in immediate and/or life-threatening jeopardy?”
The pause was shorter this time. “Not at the moment.”
“Did you press the emergency alert button underneath the desk in my lab for any reason other than a desire to get back at me for accidentally bumping into it eighteen times, despite a strategically convenient location that makes it impossible for anyone actually using the desk to avoid hitting it?”
“While I’m disappointed that you didn’t consider the possibility I might in fact be using your desk for legitimate purposes,” his voice replied, “yes. Yes I did.”
“And that reason would be?” she demanded, aware of Jack coming around the console to stand beside Z. Making sure he didn’t miss anything, no doubt. Sky and Syd weren’t making any secret of their interest, either.
“Come down here and find out,” the base commander told her.
“She’s on duty,” Jack called, clearly intending for the remark to be overheard.
Kat shot him a look, and Jack held up his hands in apology. Sorry, he mouthed.
“Tell Cadet Landors that I’m perfectly aware he has most of B Squad in Command with him,” the commander said. “They’re probably engaged in some utterly frivolous activity involving either holidays or horseplay, possibly both, and I see no reason one or more of them can’t cover for you while you take a moment to visit your own lab.”
“Well, maybe I see a reason,” she told him.
Next to her, Syd folded her arms and smiled. She and Sky exchanged glances, and Kat barely kept herself from rolling her eyes. If SPD put even a quarter of the effort into their background checks that they put into the rumor mill, she wouldn’t be here today.
“That is, of course, your choice,” Cruger’s voice informed her. That was probably as close to an admission of guilt as she would get.
This time she did roll her eyes, and it was Sky who hid a smile. “I’ll be there in a minute,” she said, cutting the link before she could hear whether he had a reply or not.
“You know,” Sky said thoughtfully, “I bet Bridge could rig something so the alert system responded differently to certain people.”
“Yeah, like with the cake dish,” Syd agreed. “It only shocked Boom.”
Kat looked at her, and she added quickly, “It was just a tiny shock. Just the once.”
“It wouldn’t stop someone from using it to call for help,” Sky put in. “It would just be a deterrent for anyone prone to hitting it ‘accidentally.’” He mimed little quotes around the word, and when she glared past him at Jack, he just held up his hands again.
“No,” she said firmly. “Guys, I can handle this. I’ve already had to discourage Jack from helping, and I’d appreciate it if you would just let us work this out on our own.”
Syd shrugged, and Sky followed suit. “Up to you,” he agreed. “You change your mind, just say the word.”
She shook her head, heading out into the hallway before she could become an accomplice to things she didn’t even want to know about. She wasn’t sure she could survive having Sky’s affection, after all. She knew Cruger thought the one good thing about the relationship between his two Red Rangers was Sky’s tendency to keep Jack in check, but this wasn’t the first time she’d thought it was probably the other way around.
Charon was in the lab when she got there--using the hood, of course, which was probably the only reason she was there on a Saturday morning. Her current project was time-intensive, and she couldn’t just walk out while it was in progress. Which meant that whatever the commander had to say, he was either going to say it in front of one of Kat’s students or somewhere else entirely.
“You know,” Kat said, folding her arms. He was sitting forward forward in her chair, fidgeting with the same stylus Jack had been playing with three days before. “You do have an office. With your own desk, even.”
“So I’m told,” he agreed. He didn’t put the stylus down.
She waited. There wasn’t much more she could do at this point, and she was getting a little tired of it. A third of her life gone since Time Force, and here she was... exactly where that grown-up child had told her she would be, thirty-nine years ago.
“Your sister founded SPD,” he’d told her. “You work there with her. You’re the head of Base Tech, and you make everyone crazy by working way longer hours than humans can.”
That was what he had known about her. Funny, she remembered thinking at the time. That was pretty much what everyone then thought of her too. Except she suspected that she’d gotten slightly more respect as a time-traveling Karmanian prisoner than she did now as an alien war refugee.
“Dr. Manx.” The commander was watching her, and he seemed to know when her attention came back to him from wherever it had been. Tipping his head toward the hood, he obviously indicated Charon.
She glared back at him. No, she could not ask Charon to leave, and she was starting to think she wouldn’t even if she could. “Yes?” she countered coldly.
“You like the base commander,” Hyanni’s son had told her. “He’s this dog named Anubis Cruger, and frankly, I don’t know what you see in him. I wish he’d stop hanging out in your lab, though--”
Cruger stood up, all stiff formality and odd personal courage combined. “I wanted to apologize for my behavior this morning,” he said. Now that she had drawn the line, he was going to try to call her bluff? “That was hardly the appropriate time.”
He made no effort to keep his voice down, but if he thought she was afraid of people overhearing, well... he hadn’t worked on this base as long as she had. “No,” she agreed, lifting her chin. “It wasn’t.
“I accept your apology,” she added, just before he might have continued.
He looked at her for a long moment. Then, finally, “Take a walk with me.”
She gave him the stare right back, because she wasn’t following an order. But he just waited, making it clear--slowly and silently--that it had been a request, not a command. She would answer a request.
She turned, inclining her head, and he set the stylus down carefully before coming out from behind her desk. “So, were you?” she asked, as he joined her.
She could feel the sidelong glance he gave her as they headed out into the hallway. “Was I what?”
“Using my desk for legitimate purposes,” she said.
She could hear him smile. “Yes,” he said. “If you consider getting your attention a legitimate purpose.”
“Depends on the day.” The answer was easy, but she hadn’t decided which kind of day this was yet.
“I meant what I said about this morning.” His tone was suddenly serious again. “I was upset because I was... worried. About you. And Jack. I shouldn’t have brought it up the moment you got back.”
“You already apologized,” she reminded him. “If you have more to say, just say it.”
She could see him shake his head out of the corner of her eye. “There’s no Mexico base, Kat.”
“Not yet,” she said lightly.
He stopped where he was and turned to her there, in the middle of a deserted hallway. “I can’t protect you if I don’t know what you’re doing,” he told her. He held up a hand when she went to speak, and she hesitated just long enough for him to add, “I know, you don’t need protecting. But if you want to know why I was upset... that’s why.”
“You know when I said I could wait?” She didn’t realize she was saying it until the words were out. “I changed my mind.”
And for someone who could barely talk about the weather, some days, he kept up and came back in kind. “When I said I want you,” he replied, “what I meant was, I love you.”
She opened her mouth, but he had absolutely won this round because she had no response for that. He knew it, too, and instead of smiling he reached out to touch her face. His hand was shockingly warm.
“Tomorrow is, I believe, the eighth day of Hanukkah,” he said quietly. “I would be honored if you would have dinner with me.”
She finally managed to find her voice. “Hanukkah ends at sundown.”
Now he did smile. “Have dinner with me anyway.”
She heard herself say, “Okay,” and she wondered what disaster would strike tomorrow.