No Dominion (The Walker Papers: A Garrison Report) by CE Murphy

now that’s all she’s ready for. I talked her into going to the Academy before she started in the Motor Pool, just in case it woke her up to her own potential.”
    Twenty-three. Ten years younger than me. Too young, even if she wasn’t an employee. I shook my head without knowing I’d done it and saw it reflected in Nichols’ eyes. Not just his eyes, but in his expression, too, like he was seeing something I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. “Did it? Not if she’s one of the mechanics.”
    “She graduated in the top third of her class. Too proud to do worse, I think, and too cautious to do better. Except in the defensive driving course. They said she was the best driver they’d ever had come through the school. She was a good shot, too, not afraid of guns. But she wanted the Motor Pool when she came back, and I thought it wasn’t time to push her. Not yet. So she’s down in the garage for now. I’d wondered at first if she’d get along, the only woman down there, but…”
    He gestured, encompassing the ring of men littered around the purple car. Walker sat above them like their queen, laughing and passing alcohol back and forth. She leaned over and stole somebody’s burger for a bite, then handed it back, and he didn’t complain. “Not a problem,” I said dryly.
    “I think she’s their mascot, if you can put mascots on a pedestal. That’s most of the Motor Pool over there. You want me to introduce you?”
    “Maybe later.”
    Nichols failed a second time to hide his grin. “Right. Well. I think I’ll go grab some of Elise—that’s Bruce’s wife—some of her potato salad. If they ever invite you to dinner, say yes. Elise is one of the best cooks I’d ever met.”
    “Will do.” I watched Nichols retreat—because that’s what he was doing, and without a hint of subtlety—then went back to studying Joanne Walker.
    Smart money was on walking away, or waiting for Nichols to come back and put a badge and a formal introduction between us. The woman—the girl —was an employee, and I wasn’t going to start my captain’s career with a score like that against me. I hadn’t come this far this fast by making stupid mistakes.
    But for some reason I had to see which of us was taller. I was halfway to the gathering at the purple car before I realized it, and then Walker noticed me and it was too late to find another destination.
    She slid off the car’s hood and stepped over one of the men surrounding it. Long legs and Daisy-May shorts: the man she’d stepped over grinned until he couldn’t anymore, and one of the others hit his shoulder in a combination of envy and praise. Walker ignored them and came up to me, stopping a few feet away. I was taller, but only just, and she was barefoot, which put her at the disadvantage.
    It didn’t seem to bother her. She tipped her aviator shades down, revealing hazel eyes that tended toward green. She looked me over from head to toe and back again, then gave me a slow smile. “Hi. I’m Joanne Walker. Joanie.”
    The hand she offered me to shake had a beer in it. I tapped my own beer bottle against hers and then took my first drink of the day, because she drank and it seemed the natural, polite, and social-class-appropriate response. “Mike Morrison,” I said when we’d both drunk. “Pleasure to meet you.”
    “You too. You’re new, or your car never breaks down. Which is it?”
    “New.”
    “Thought so. Come on, have a drink.” She turned away and sauntered back to her crew, stepping over someone else as she approached the car. With me a step behind her, the man didn’t have time to appreciate it, which gave me a faint smug satisfaction I had no right to. “Guys, this is Mike. Mike, this is everybody. Nick, he runs Motor Pool, that’s Dave, this is Benny, that’s Jake—” She ran through another eight or ten names, ending with, “And yes, there will be a quiz.”
    “Nick, Dave, Benny—” I repeated them all back to her, earning a round of