Lunar Affair

Chapter One

(Almaaz System - Planet Mayia)

Lieutenant Jack Alexander sat morosely over his drink in the corner of the Purple Heart bar, and watched the man he loved being expertly seduced by a boy with a pretty face and blond hair curling just above his ears. It was being done very cleverly - he was certain Marc thought he was the one making the moves.

Marc was leaning forward and laughing at something the boy had said, casually letting their fingers touch as he bought him another drink, an expensive Super Nova. The tiny hologram of a star exploding lit up the drink from inside the plasglas. Marc’s head was carefully angled so that the available light fell on the good side of his face, leaving the ugly scars in shadow; though surely the boy must have seen them already, and been prepared to turn a blind eye.

Marc leaned even closer and whispered something in the boy’s ear. The youth smiled shyly and dropped his eyes. Lieutenant Alexander felt as if he could cheerfully have kicked him. Marc stood up, unable to hide his triumph completely, and the boy gulped down the rest of his drink and rose to his feet. Then they went out of the room together.

Jack felt a pain in his chest that was becoming all too familiar. Marc had always been something of a player when it came to relationships, but ever since the assault he was picking up a different man every time they had station leave, as if he was trying to prove something, perhaps something as simple as ‘Hey, I’m still attractive.’

Jack looked around half heartedly. He had another six hours planet leave down here on Mayia - maybe he should try and find someone for the night as well. But he didn’t want just ‘someone’, he wanted Marc. God, he was an idiot. That was never going to happen, not in a million years. You’d think he would have been able to move on by now, stop fixating on the one man who was out of bounds, his best friend.

He saw a stranger approaching him with a tentative smile, and quickly leaned forward to reset the customer console unit in the centre of his table. Instantly, the table surface transformed from a purple heart into a plain black disc and the chair next to him disappeared from sight. A clear indication, he hoped, that he wanted to be left alone. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man frown briefly and then change course towards a more welcoming prospect. Jack settled back into his seat, and sipped his drink, and brooded over Marc.

~~~

Jack and Marc had been friends since their first day at the Patrol Academy. Two very different men - the old story of opposites attracting. Marc was tall and handsome, his hair a striking copper colour, his features finely chiselled and his body soon turned into sculptured muscle by the hard training. Jack, on the other hand, was just an ordinary looking guy, with a plain, likeable face, dark brown hair he wore a little too long and he always seemed to have a few extra kilos round the middle that he couldn’t shake.

Marc was driven by ambition and soon found his feet on the bottom step of the ladder to becoming an officer. When they were both posted to the Patrol ship Lunar, Marc rose steadily to the position of First Lieutenant and looked set to achieve his ultimate goal of a captaincy, assuming he passed the interview in a few weeks time. Jack kept up, more because of their friendship than because he wanted to be a Captain or even a Lieutenant, and eventually moved sideways into the position of Supply and Logistics Officer, which suited his less aggressive personality down to the ground.

From the moment Jack and Marc realised they were both oms, they looked out for each other, and any cadet who tried to harass one of them soon found he had two men to fight. Like most other oms in the academy, they hid their sexuality from everyone else, except the Chief Medical Officer. The academy was not the place to publically admit you were homosexual. They kept their friendship totally platonic for their own protection; a relationship might have lead to one, or both, of them being transferred out.

At first, Jack welcomed the platonic nature of their relationship. He suspected that they would never have become friends otherwise - he would have just been the latest in a long line of men Marc seduced and dumped. He remembered vividly the moment things changed.

Marc had come into his hotel room, after a rather unpleasant breakup with his latest, and sat next to him on the couch, pouring himself a large shot of Amberi, his favourite drink. Some moments later, Jack turned to ask him something and found that he had fallen asleep, his head gradually sliding down to rest on Jack’s shoulder, his body unconsciously cuddling into him, one hand coming up to rest on his chest. Jack felt such a powerful surge of love, it took his breath away. He sat there for hours, treasuring the discovery. As soon as Marc woke though, stretching and making a vulgar joke, it was obvious to Jack that the revelation had only been one sided. He had done his best ever since to keep his feelings totally under wraps, but the effort was getting harder and harder.

He ordered another drink from the customer unit in his table and settled back in his corner. Maybe he should give up and go back to the ship, or maybe he should just get drunk.

~~~

What’s your name, pretty one?

Lieutenant Marc Duran ran his hand caressingly up and down the side of the youth beneath him. His skin was beautifully smooth, unblemished. They were lying in a hotel bed covered with material resembling soft furs and they were both naked.

Call me Ryan, answered the boy. He smiled provocatively through long lashes and parted his lips.

Duran groaned as desire flooded through him. He didn’t usually pick up someone so young, but there had been something about this boy that had attracted him sufficiently to break his own rule. He bent his head and kissed the youth, scarcely noticing that the boy kept his eyes tightly shut.

Duran was just drifting off to sleep a couple of rather energetic hours later, when the boy turned to him and murmured, What happened to your face?

I was on a mission and a man fired a laser gun at me. There’s only so much even modern medical technology can do to fix that sort of injury completely. He grimaced.

Did you get the man responsible?

We got the man who fired the shot, but not the one who was behind it all. At least, not yet, but it should be soon. We have some leads.

Ryan looked at him with concern shining in his eyes, "I hope they flog him. Will you be there when they catch him?" He started kissing the strong column of Duran’s throat, avoiding the scarred tissue, his left hand playing with the short copper curls at the back of his neck.

No, unfortunately. His arrest will be up to the local force, but I’ll have to be here to help with the identification and charges.

So you’ll be back? When? Perhaps we can meet up again - I’d really like that. Duran rolled eagerly onto his back as Ryan kissed his way down his smooth chest to his lean stomach, his clever fingers working their magic for the third time.

Saturday, in two weeks time. The words came out rather breathlessly. They’ll pick him up on Friday, so I should be able to see you again on Saturday evening. He wasn’t supposed to tell anyone anything about the operation, but by then he wasn’t exactly thinking with his brain.

~~~

Both men were back at work on the Lunar the next day, neither of them feeling particularly refreshed. Alexander was nursing a hangover and Duran was reliving his night with Ryan, trying to ignore the ugly suspicions sliding around the back of his mind about just how could an apparently shy eighteen year old be that expert a lover.

Chapter Two

(Three months earlier)

The six men from the Lunar’s Beta team moved forward under cover of darkness. They were somewhere on the outskirts of Beledi - Mayia’s capital city - following up a tip about illegal weapons at the request of the local police. It wasn’t unusual for a police force to request assistance from the more military trained Patrol. As a general rule, the police kept law and order in the towns while the Patrol was responsible for planet and system wide law enforcement.

First Lieutenant Marc Duran signalled to the man on his left to stay back and keep watch while the rest of the team split in half, two following him and the other three circling the building. He activated the heat sensor of his goggles again, confirming that only two men were inside and then broke in the door.

He burst into the room, his two team mates hard on his heels, stunners charged and ready for action. He saw a man dive out the window, clutching a package to his chest, but made no move to follow. The other man in the room gripped his full attention - he was pointing a laser gun right at him.

Duran flung himself to the ground, firing his stunner as he fell. Behind him, Corporal Kerr fired and took out the assailant, but the damage was done.

"Eeeiii!" Duran screamed in agony. The beam had missed the middle of Duran’s body where it had been aimed, but hit him on the side of his face as he went down.

Instantly his other team mate, Edwards, dropped down to help. He sprayed a light layer of plasfoam over Duran’s face to stop the bleeding, and applied a strong anaesthetic to knock him out quickly.

"He needs a medic, now!" Edwards’ voice shook as he looked down at the bloody ruin of what had been his commander’s face.

Kerr put a hand on his shoulder, I’ve called and a Medic’s on the way. You stay with him, we’ll take care of the rest. Kerr moved quickly, directing the rest of his team to ensure the whole building was safely contained.

One of the crew came up to report. We caught the one who tried to escape, sir. Both men are now secured, he told Kerr. Corp, there must be several hundred weapons here! Looks like four containers of laser guns, but we’ll have to dismantle them all to make sure.

Just leave everything where it is for the moment. The local police will be here shortly to take over. He smiled wryly at Lee’s look of disbelief. I know, I’d rather we took everything up to the Lunar, but we’ve had orders to leave this part to the locals. Politics! He snorted, At least it will be their responsibility to ensure these weapons are identified before they’re recycled. That could take some time, if they’ve all been stolen.

~~~

Duran spent the next couple of weeks in sick bay having his face reconstructed. It was a long and painful process, complicated by grief over his lost looks. He’d never thought of himself as a particularly vain man, but he hadn’t realised how much he had taken his ability to attract people, of both sexes, for granted. Traded on it, to be truthful.

Now, instead of smiling and moving closer, people flinched, and stepped back. Not Jack, of course. Jack visited him every day and treated him just as he normally did.

Thank god! he said, in all seriousness, the first time Duran was awake enough to listen to him. It’s not as bad as it might have been. At least he missed your eyes, that would have been a real problem. Give it a few months and it will all fade even further.

A week later Duran was back on duty, and as the crew soon got used to his scars, he was persuaded they might not be as bad as he feared. But when he and Jack had gone to a bar, he had been unable to pick up a man for the first time in his life. He was shattered. He tried to get over it, telling himself he was lucky he was still alive at all, that it was shallow to put so much value on his looks, but it didn’t help, the incident struck a deep blow at his confidence.

As had happened so often in the past, Jack was the one who helped him. Perhaps you should try pretending the scars are not there, he suggested matter-of-factly, ignoring the furious glare Marc gave him.

If you go around hunched over and cringing away from people, of course they are going to think your face is something to be frightened of. But if you act as if the scars don’t matter, you’ll find most people will ignore them, too.

Eventually, he took Jack’s advice and found to his surprise that it did