Earth Afire (The First Formic War)

difficult.
    “I’m leaving for China,” he said. “For six months.”
    It was like a slap. She stared at him. “Why so long?”
    “Exercises with the Chinese. We’re training them on some new equipment.” He couldn’t speak of the HERC. It was still classified.
    “Not a hostile op?”
    “No,” he said, reassuring her. “Purely training.”
    “Those can be dangerous too.”
    “This one won’t be. It will be boring.”
    “How often will you get to come back?”
    “I won’t. Six months solid. No leave time.”
    She stared at him then looked down at her half-eaten pastry and pushed it around her plate. “I see. When do you leave?”
    He checked the time on his wrist pad. “Less than two hours. I only found out an hour ago.”
    She put the plate aside, angry. “That’s how much time they gave you? That’s ridiculous. Not to mention insensitive. It shows a complete disregard for people. Doesn’t it make you angry?”
    “I’m a soldier, Kim. This is what I do. I go places.”
    “Why does it have to be you? I thought you were in the middle of some important training here.”
    “I am. It’s the training here that’s now taking me there.”
    She pulled her legs off his lap. “Can you request that someone else go in your place? I know that’s unorthodox, but surely they make exceptions.”
    “I don’t have extenuating circumstances.”
    “Tell them I need you here to help with the development of the Med-Assist.”
    “You’ve never needed my help before, and the military doesn’t make exceptions, especially with private contractors. If you needed a soldier, they would argue that it doesn’t have to be me.”
    She got up, crossed to the window, and looked out over the city. “Don’t you want to fight this?”
    “You know I can’t, Kim.”
    “That’s not what I asked.”
    “Do I want to go to China? Of course not. But I don’t get a say in these matters. That’s the problem. It’s always going to be like this. They’re always going to send me away.”
    She turned and faced him. “What are you saying?”
    “I’m saying this is a moment of decision. I know we’ve never discussed marriage, but you and I both know that’s where this relationship is headed. We dance around the word, but we’re both thinking about it.”
    “Of course I think about it,” she said. “That’s what people our age do, Mazer. They look for someone with whom to spend the rest of their life.”
    “And is this the kind of marriage you want?” Mazer asked. “Do you want a husband who goes off for six months or years at a time? Is that the kind of father you want for your children? One who’s absent most of the time? People don’t get married to live apart, Kim.”
    “No, people get married because they love each other and want to make babies together, Mazer. People get married because they see happiness ahead of them with someone.”
    “Yes, but you don’t see that with me,” said Mazer. “You see a world of lonely, sleepless nights, worrying about whether or not I’m bleeding to death in a ditch somewhere.”
    “Don’t say that.”
    “You’re proving my point, Kim. Whenever I leave on assignment, you’re near crazy with worry. At first I thought it was endearing because it meant you deeply cared for me. Now it makes me sick to think about it. I can’t stand that I make you feel that way.”
    She turned away, back to the window.
    “I’ve always been afraid to start a family for this reason, Kim. When I joined up I resigned myself to being single. I wasn’t going to be an absent father and husband. Then I met you, and I convinced myself that I could make it work. I told myself that our commitment to each other and to our children would be strong enough to endure any separation. But now I see that I was only being selfish. I was thinking about my happiness, not yours. You deserve someone who can be with you and share the load every day of your life.”
    She didn’t turn around.
    “I can’t leave the military,” he said. “I’m in for at least five more years. I don’t have a choice on that. Asking you to wait until I get back from China is the same as asking you to wait five years, which I won’t do. That’s not fair to you.”
    He waited for her to move, to look at him, to say something. She didn’t.
    “Marriage to me wouldn’t be marriage, Kim. You’d be committed to someone who wasn’t there. You’d be raising children by yourself. I saw my father do that when my