Gates of Hell by Susan Sizemore

Roxanne Shirah-Merkrates. That’s the message. I can’t go. Not because I’m involved in any secret analysis of captured Trin technology—which I am.”
    “This line really must be secure.”
    “Yeah, but Trin spies know who’s dissecting their stuff; it’s getting to me that’s the hard part.”
    “Which is why you can’t be bothered to perform your duties as a koltiri?”
    “I’m pregnant, Roxy.”
    Oh. Damn. “Bitch.”
    Reine looked genuinely hurt. “You don’t want to be an auntie?”
    “I don’t want to leave my ship. Or my husband. Or my duty to another oath we took. I’m not like other koltiri, or I wouldn’t be on a warship on border patrol,” she reminded her sister—the sister with the cushy inner-Systems sector-ship berth. “The
Tigris
needs her ship’s medical officer.” Okay, she agreed with Reine, but Reine had no business calling her husband an asshole. That was her job.
    Reine was not moved. “How very patriotic.” She sighed, and mirrored Roxy’s arms-crossed position. “You now expect me to give the come out of hiding speech, right?”
    Roxy nodded. “That should be next up on your agenda.”
    “You’re such a mind reader, little sister. Oops.” She gestured with a pointed finger. “Shouldn’t have added that. You have problems with my—”
    “Being my perfect big sister,” Roxy finished for her. “Damn it, Reine!” Roxy slapped a hand down on the communications console. “Stop playing me. I’m not your guitar.”
    “You are koltiri of Koltir. Do the job you were born to do. Out.”
    Needless to say, Roxanne Merkrates, Physician and Healer, stuck her tongue out at the blank screen. Then she laughed. “Hey,” she said, bouncing to her feet. “I’m gonna be an aunt!” She laughed again as she left the media center to return to sickbay. “I sure as hell hope the father’s somebody she’s married to.” She was being unkind and unfair, but she was a sister, so a certain amount of petulance was allowable when her older sister was in manipulation mode. Since Reine really wasn’t a holier-than-thou type, Roxy was over her annoyance by the time she was out in the corridor. At least her annoyance with her sister.
    ———
    “You’re sweaty.”
    Roxy glanced over her shoulder and continued bouncing the orange ball on the playing court deck. Eamon winced ever so slightly with each small impact on the pale, simulated-wood surface. She didn’t get that he didn’t get it. “Of course,” she answered. “We’ve been practicing for the last hour.” Behind them, two dozen other crewmembers continued to drill, going through a swift-paced shootaround that Roxy longed to jump back into. Basketball was the one thing she knew she was good at. It helped that she was six foot four. Their father had given Reine and Ben music; he had passed on his love and skill with the sport to Roxanne. She, in turn, had infected a large number of the
Tigris’s
crew. Captain Merkrates disdained “sweaty pursuits” other than sex and martial arts training, but agreed any legal activity was useful for combating the boredom of . long-range patrols.
    “I called sickbay,” he said. “They told me you were here.”
    Roxy continued to bounce the ball. She didn’t try to read his mind—he didn’t like for her to and didn’t really trust she could do it without harming him—but it wasn’t hard to know what he was thinking. She didn’t try to read his emotions, either, not in the way that was as natural to her as breathing. She was trained to shield incoming as well as outgoing emotion, to turn empathy on and off. Had she and her husband been bonded it wouldn’t have been possible, but no privacy-loving Alpaean aristocrat would ever consent to giving up a part of themselves in such a way. Alpaean intimacy was not Koltiran, or even Terran, and she had accepted the man on his own terms for nearly four years. Even if he didn’t like basketball. Besides, she didn’t have to be an