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Chapter One: Voyage to the Moon

Posted on 2009-11-24

Early one moonday on Deimos Base, Mrs. Bennet sailed out of the pressure lock on her tether in search of her husband. Maneuvering her way through the open space with an agility born of long practice, she finally located him on the port side of the base where he was making repairs on the number-two generator. He did not appear to notice her approach.

"Mr. Bennet! Have you heard?" she cried when she came near. Her hands fluttered slowly, the otherwise flighty motions hampered by her space suit, and her wide eyes sparkled through the dark material of her visor. "A luxury-class cruiser ship just docked in hanger three, with a party of five -- three men and two women! And two of the men are single!"

Mr. Bennet, who had come outside expressly for the purpose of getting some work done away from his wife, said nothing. But he looked in her direction for a moment before returning his attention to his task, and this was inducement enough for her to continue.

"I just had it from Eva Long, you know, who of course had the name of the cruiser from Captain Morris, that the gentleman who owns it is a Mr. Bingley, who, if you remember, inherited the bulk of the Bingley Merchants fortune a few years ago after that terrible spaceship accident near Vega that killed his parents," Mrs. Bennet said cheerfully. She paused, looking out at the hulking mass of Mars, before adding: "What a fine thing for our girls."

Her husband didn't even raise a brow at this seeming non sequitur. Instead, he pointed to the magnetic spanner tethered to his toolbox, and Mrs. Bennet handed it to him.

"You know, of course," she continued after a moment, "that I'm thinking of his marrying one of them. After all, with us stuck out here on Deimos, it isn't as if we get all that many new prospects for them. This isn't one of those fashionable bases that attract many visitors. Or new residents." She glared at the pockmarked hunk of metal she called home, her lips drawn into a petulant pout.

Mr. Bennet looked up at his wife now and, with his free hand, flipped on his comm. unit. "And what does anything you might have just said have to do with me?" he asked her, his voice crackling through her headpiece.

"Well, just that you would visit Mr. Bingley and his fellow travelers, of course," Mrs. Bennet replied, amazed that her husband could not come to this conclusion on his own. "As governor of the base, it's your job to welcome all newcomers."

"Oh, I don't see any need for that. I'm sure they've been welcomed enough by the base residents and welcoming committee," he replied, giving one of the bolts a final wrench. "There's no reason for me to get involved."

Mrs. Bennet shrieked in distress; Mr. Bennet quickly turned down the volume in his helmet. He picked up his toolbox and moved to the solar receivers, where he opened a panel and began checking connections. Mrs. Bennet followed.

"But only consider your daughters!" she cried. "If you would only make the effort to befriend them, perhaps be the first to invite them for dinner, we'd have a jump on all the others."

"Because it's a matter of first-come, first-served, I imagine," Mr. Bennet said.

"Of course not," Mrs. Bennet replied with some asperity. "But it is true that if he were stunned by the beauty of our daughters first, he wouldn't give anyone else but a passing glance."

Mr. Bennet looked over at his wife. "I'm still not understanding what I have to do with it," he said. "Why don't you just send the girls? I'll send a note with them informing him of their availability, and we'll be done with it. Though, of course, I'll have to throw in a good word for Lizzy."

"You'll do no such thing, Mr. Bennet. We cannot be obvious about it," Mrs. Bennet said, trying to cross her arms and failing, due to her present bulkiness. "Besides, I don't know why Lizzy should get any preference. She's not half as good-looking as Jane is, nor half as sociable as Lydia. But you're always setting her above the others."

"That's because the others have barely enough personality to go between them. At least my Lizzy is clever."

"Oh, how can you say such a thing about our children?"

Mr. Bennet paused, digesting this. "Very easily, actually," he concluded at last, closing the panel and picking up his tools. "But you shouldn't worry; I'm sure there are plenty of silly young men in the universe who will want to marry them."

"It wouldn't matter if there were a thousand such, if you won't visit them when they come," Mrs. Bennet said bitterly, bounding along behind him.

"Depend upon it, my dear: if there are a thousand, I'll visit them all."

Not completely satisfied with such an answer and slightly suspicious that he was mocking her, Mrs. Bennet maintained a stony silence as they re-entered the pressurization chamber, and she said not a word until the doors opened ten minutes later. Unfortunately for her fairly impressive feat, it went unnoticed by Mr. Bennet, who had already disabled his communications.

"Unlike you, I do have to listen to all of that," Elizabeth Bennet remarked dryly as her father, a minute behind his wife, came through the re-entry area to put away his suit and tools. Mrs. Bennet had quickly shed her equipment and hurried off on some unspecified errand.

Mr. Bennet gazed fondly at his second eldest, who was removing her headset and switching off the local out-base communications system. "That's why I put you on watch when I'm out there," he replied, flipping through the sheets on his clipboard and making a few notes. "Heaven forefend it were one of your sisters. Jane would be in silent tears, Mary would be lecturing us on some point of long-forgotten space code we'd offended, Kitty would be confused and probably tell Lydia all about it, and Lydia would share every gory detail, true or false, with everyone on the base, if not in the galaxy. At least you can get a good chuckle out of all of it."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "Only if I repeatedly tell myself I'm not related to any of you," she said. "You know, perhaps next time I won't give you any warning, so you'll have the enjoyment of listening to her, too."

Mr. Bennet wisely did not respond to this provocation.

"So," his daughter said, changing the subject as she collected her book and paperwork, "when did you already visit Bingley and crew?"

"I was there when the pilot docked them, of course," Mr. Bennet said with a chuckle, accompanying Elizabeth out the door and down the hall. "I didn't head outside until I'd already directed the newcomers to their quarters. Your mother needs a new source for her gossip, if she's that behind the times. Not that I mind, as it gives me a chance to spike her guns before she ever pulls them out."

"And how is he? Mr. Bingley, I mean. Does he show any marriage potential?"

"Well, he is male and single," Mr. Bennet replied.

"Handsome?"

"I couldn't hazard a guess."

"Funny?"

"I don't know anything about wit, but he did seem good-humored enough. What else? He wore a well-tailored blue jumpsuit and has a head full of hair. Darkish, I suppose. I can't really give you much more, other than the information from his docking certificate, and you already have that in your files. Our conversation was not long."

"And his friends?"

"What, are you writing a report for the Universal Tribune?"

"Oh, no, just for my diary," Elizabeth replied with a laugh. "And I shall surround the entry with pink and purple hearts. C'mon spill it, Dad -- what about his friends? I do have to know more than Mother, you know."

Mr. Bennet chuckled. "Well then, my dear, I am afraid you're out of luck. I passed not a word with the four of them. The two women -- who I understand are sisters to Mr. Charles Xavier Bingley, full name -- were busy directing where their luggage was placed, and how gently; one of the men -- the husband of the eldest sister -- was busy complaining about the lack of refreshments at the welcome; and the other gentleman -- a Fitzwilliam Darcy, and no more do I know than what was on his certs -- remained silent the entire time." He paused. "But I suppose if you would really like to know more we could pop around and ask them."

Elizabeth looked properly horrified, though her mouth quirked slightly. "Good heavens, no!" she cried, laughter threading her voice. "We cannot be obvious about it."

Unfortunately, most of the base's other residents had no such qualms. In only a few hours, the newcomers had had their quarters politely -- and not so politely -- invaded by dozens of well-wishers and welcomers. Someone even offered them a pie.

"As if we're some kind of raree show, here for their amusement," Fitzwilliam Darcy commented dryly to his friend upon entering the latter's suite some hours later, carrying two servings of pie.

"What did you expect?" replied Bingley, sitting up from where he had been lounging on his bunk, reading brochures. "They're curious. We're new. We're exciting. We're someone other than the few hundred that live here. Why would they not come around? I kinda like it, actually," he admitted.

"You must be joking." The expression of distaste on Darcy's face was unfeigned.

"No, I'm not. It's nice to be somewhere where people actually want to get to know you," Bingley said. "And not the toadies that just make up to me because I'm the Bingley Merchants heir."

His friend scoffed. "You don't think that's exactly how these people see you?"

"Some of them, maybe," Bingley conceded. "But not all. That Mr. Bennet seemed nice."

"Mr. Bennet?"

"The governor."

Darcy considered this for a moment. "A gentlemanly man for what he is, I suppose. Seemed strangely amused by something the whole time we were talking to him, though."

"We?" Bingley laughed. "We were talking? I don't think you said a word between the time we left ship and right now."

His friend shuddered slightly. "I don't enjoy passing pleasantries with people like that."

"You're such a snob."

Darcy ate more of his pie.

"But you really should be more cautious, Bingley," he said after politely swallowing his mouthful. "I know you think everyone is honest and open as you are, but these people will suck you dry."

Bingley propped his elbow on the small table by the bed and rested his chin on his fist, gazing with curiosity at his friend. "I wish I knew what made you so cynical."

"I'm not cynical," Darcy replied blandly. "I'm practical."

"To the point of distrusting everyone and everything."

"I've just seen a lot and known a lot of people who make it hard to believe, like you do, in the good of all mankind," Darcy said.

"What, like that guy you told me about last year -- the one your dad sponsored to the Academy?"

Darcy's jaw clenched. "Him among others."

Bingley sighed. "Not everyone is like him. As I'll prove to you: no one will ask me for money."

"No, they'll just try to get you to marry their daughters."

"Well, I don't mind that, so long as they're good looking," Bingley said, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

Darcy chuckled, and the two of them passed on to other topics, such as the surprising luxury of their quarters and their general impressions of the base, fully in sympathy with each other. Despite their disparate characters and relative ages, the two shared a close friendship impervious to the whims of their occasional words.

They had met at a social function some years previous, Darcy taking an instant liking to the pleasant and friendly young man so wholly unaffected by his status and wealth, and Bingley recognizing a strong role model and a potential steadying influence on his often-capricious self. When Bingley's parents died shortly thereafter, the friendship deepened as Darcy further took on the role of elder brother, guiding and sheltering him.

This most recent trip to Mars' outer moon had been suggested by the younger of the two friends as a sightseeing expedition to the oldest base in the Five-Star League, though Bingley had secretly thought that, perhaps, if he liked it, he wouldn't mind settling in moderate obscurity there more permanently. His interest in being feted by the elite of the universe had long since waned, and he was looking now for something a little more peaceful than his fashionable apartments in Paris, Earth; New London, Vega; and Outer Beijing, Capella, while still being actively social. More residences for his sisters and brother-in-law than himself, those luxurious apartments could not offer him what he truly wanted -- a home.

Not willing to admit to such a thing, however -- especially to the owner of the universally famous Pemberley base in the Procyon system -- Bingley maintained that he was simply curious about the one base in the Old System to which he had never been.

Deimos Base, now a footnote in guidebooks of the universe, was commissioned at the beginning of the space exploration age as a stepping-stone to Mars, though it took some years afterward for the technology necessary to build the base to be developed. It was gradually expanded during the following half-century to include larger and more living quarters, artificial gravity, hydroponics, and a more secure life-support system and communications grid, thus creating a self-sustaining biotope.

Unfortunately, with the slow speed of space travel and ever-advancing technology, Deimos Base continued in time to fall further and further behind. This onetime "Archetype for the Age of Space Exploration," as it was once touted, became little more than oft-forgotten obsolescence.

The breakthrough that truly sounded the death knell for the base came during the otherwise failed development of time travel. When combined with space displacement, the technology allowed ships to be sent to previously too-distant stars without taking centuries to do so. Eyes now turned further outward than the mere pebble-throwing distance between Earth and Mars, and explorations were undertaken to other solar systems -- to Altair, to Procyon, to Vega -- in search of worlds where the ever-expanding human population could find new home.

But even as humanity flew past Deimos to find refuge in the reaches of the galaxy, the base's residents continued their lives, generations born and raised and dying on this tiny rock orbiting an inhospitable planet.

Some residents had come seeking temporary work and stayed; some had come looking for a place far from the madding crowd and found a place far from the crowd, but stayed anyway; some had been born and raised there and dreamed of another world somewhere in the galaxy, but stayed on because it was home.

For the Bennet family, Deimos Base was home. They had been established there for hundreds of years before the current generation, many of them in the position of head engineer or governor. Edward Bennet had been one of the original engineers on the project, and his ancestors were viewed in much the light of a local ruling class, along with the longtime residents the Lucas family and the Philips family.

Without a male other than Mr. Bennet, however, the surname -- if not the entire genetic line -- was likely to disappear off base registers when the daughters married and went elsewhere. And that situation, the residents of Deimos Base all agreed, was highly probable, if regrettable. The Bennet sisters were well reputed as the beauties of the base and, by a biased few, the whole universe. And, what with the elegance of the first, talent and wit of the second, intelligence of the third, and vivacity and ambition of the youngest two, it was universally agreed they had the capabilities to go anywhere, do anything.

Such was the situation upon the arrival of these two bachelors (and, of course, the other guests, whoever they were). The Bennet sisters were likely to capture the attention of the two men, all agreed, when first they saw them. And though many another girl (or mother) on base sighed over that probability, they also recognized that the sooner the Bennet sisters were partnered off, the more bachelors would be available for the rest of them.

But here it was, a full day into the newcomers' visit to the base, and they had yet to lay eyes on a single Bennet lady under the age of 40. Not that Bingley hadn't tried. But with every step he and the others took around the halls of the base, they were so frequently accosted by someone who hadn't made their acquaintance yet that a trip two doors down could take an hour.

The youngest of the Bennet ladies, however, had a good chance to look at the newcomers.

"That Bingley is truly delicious," Lydia said as she and Kitty came dashing into the control room later in the day.

"Really, Lydia," Jane chided, giving her adolescent sister a sideways glance from where she sat at her desk, sorting paperwork.

"Oh, no, he really is," agreed Kitty. "And you should see his sisters. I've never seen outfits like theirs."

"Is that a good thing?" Elizabeth said with a laugh, putting on gloves to remove from the transfer tube a message capsule, still cold from the vacuum of space. Cracking it open, she handed Jane another receipt to file.

Lydia shot her older sister a disbelieving look. "Well, obviously. All the magazines we get are so old everything is passé. These two have probably actually been to Paris."

"I don't see why we can't go to Earth," Kitty added. "It's not as if it's that far away."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes at the renewal of this longstanding complaint. "Right; only a few hundred million miles. More than fifty million at bare minimum." She shook her head, stripping off her gloves and sitting on the edge of a desk. "First off, the two of you don't have jobs and therefore don't make any credits, so you could never pay your way on a holiday downside. And I doubt you could beg that much off Mom."

"Pff. Dad never gives us more than a few measly credits for allowance," Lydia groused.

"More than he ever gave us," Mary commented from the other side of the room, where she was making notes on a recent weather pattern readout from Mars. "If you would simply be more thrifty with what you get, it wouldn't be a problem. Sending off to Vega for a jacket when you could get something here for a third of the cost is incredibly stupid."

"Only if we wanted to dress as hideously as you do," Lydia shot back.

Elizabeth cleared her throat. "Yes, well, even if money weren't a problem, Lydia -- even could you afford the shuttle to Earth, and afford to stay there for any period of time, and have any credits left to eat on -- what makes you think anyone would want to take you? There's no way Dad or Mom would let you go by yourselves. You're not even sixteen."

"So? Mom's always talking about visiting Earth," Lydia said. "Maybe she'll even get Dad to let us go down before the dinner tomorrow night."

"Dinner?" Elizabeth echoed, momentarily arrested. "What dinner?"

"The state dinner Dad's putting on for the new guests," Mary said authoritatively. "One of those very important--"

"Utterly mind-numbing, five-hour," Lydia inserted with a roll of her eyes.

"--official affairs he always holds for visiting dignitaries."

Elizabeth looked in confusion at her sister. "Charles Bingley? I thought he was just a merchant."

Mary shook her head. "No, Fitzwilliam Darcy," she said. "He owns the base off Procyon, is quite a well regarded physicist, and is sponsoring the new expedition to Alpha Centauri. Personally, I don't think they'll find anything habitable there, since it's a triple star system, but I suppose they have to try." She shrugged.

"Why haven't I heard about this?" Elizabeth muttered as an aside to Jane.

"The Alpha Centauri mission?"

"No, the dinner."

"Perhaps if you would check your runner more often..." Jane said with a gentle smile, gesturing toward the little black device clipped to her sister's belt.

Elizabeth scrolled through her recent messages and sighed. "Surprise, surprise. Apparently I'm in charge of the lovely party, and no one bothered to tell me in person. Is it really that hard to walk down the hall and talk to me?"

Jane gave her sister a look she didn't bother to misinterpret. "Now, that's not my fault, and you know it," Elizabeth responded with a laugh. "Maria Lucas bursts into tears at the drop of a hat, much less an ounce of sarcasm."

This didn't appear to alter Jane's opinion of the incident, but the topic was closed. Elizabeth's attention had drifted to her youngest sisters' continued conversation about the upcoming dinner.

"Unless that's the wait staff uniform, you can re-think it," she said, interrupting Lydia's description of her ideal high-skirted, low-necklined scrap of fabric and matching pumps. She pointed in mock menace at her youngest sisters. "The only way the two of you are going to the dinner is by bringing it out yourselves. And at this point, I am in need of waiters."

While she was still short of staff several minutes later, she at least didn't have to listen to any more of her sisters' chatter for a while, Elizabeth reflected. She had enough to do without being driven half out of her mind by their incessant gossip.

Not that she was likely to escape it -- she did live on Deimos Base, the seeming universal capital of quidnuncs, after all -- but one less thing she had to hear about the all-consuming topic of Charles Bingley and his four guests was a blessing. With all the work that had devolved onto her as station manager, she had rescinded her earlier desire to know everything about the newcomers and now felt that knowing nothing would be better.

Which, unfortunately, led to an awkward encounter later -- though how gossip could have known that Bingley and Darcy were standing right around the corner and somehow alerted Elizabeth to her situation is somewhat unclear. But perhaps it would have if, in Jane's words, she only would check her runner more often.

Chapter Two: First Contact

Posted on 2009-12-01

By the time the state dinner for Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, scientist and PhD, owner of the universally famous base off Procyon-5, and all-around rich guy, was set to begin, Elizabeth was exhausted.

Not that anyone would have been able to tell from her appearance, of course. She was smiling and seemingly unconcerned, dressed with care befitting her station, her silvery-blond hair swept up into a casual bun to keep it out of the way as she complimented the head chef on his spread, checked off the last of the table arrangements, consulted with the majordomo to ensure the wait staff was fully briefed, and adjusted the lighting in the dining hall with the technician's assistance.

Normally, such tasks -- and indeed, the entire dinner itself -- would not have been in the purview of the station manager. In fact, the previous station manager, Geoff Philips, had never been in charge of any events held at the base, tending more to the maintenance, inter-system communications, and transportation needs than to its citizens' morale.

But a few years previous, after the former social director left unexpectedly for a more lucrative position at a resort on Altair, Elizabeth had filled in to organize a state dinner for the Vegan senator visiting on a tour of the Five-Star League. Unfortunately for her, she did such a wonderful job with the event that now she was in charge of all of them. Even the current social director, William Lucas, saw no need to relieve her of the onerous task. He preferred instead to focus his abilities on weekly assemblies and holiday gatherings.

Not that Elizabeth minded horribly. She had recognized soon after signing to her position with the base government that her work life was no longer under her control. As she often quipped, the Deimos Base Company's slogan should have been "All your base hours belong to us." But aside from her resignation to her ever-changing job description, in a rather strange way she also enjoyed the stress of organizing such an event.

"And how many people have we made cry today?" Charlotte Lucas asked as Elizabeth joined her in a corner of the dining hall. Guests milled around them, chatting vaguely as they sipped drinks and waited for the guest of honor to arrive.

"None yet," she replied, giving her friend a wink. "But, then, I haven't seen your sister tonight, so there's still hope."

Charlotte laughed. "I don't think Maria'll ever come back to you for more out-base lessons, you know," she said. "You've absolutely terrified her with your stories of people who've drifted off into space, never to be seen again."

"Well, we can't let them think there are no risks, you know," Elizabeth said with a grimace. She paused and then continued with a smile: "But onto more pleasant topics, what do you think of our guest of honor? I haven't met him yet. Is he worth all the effort I've just gone through on his behalf?"

Charlotte shrugged. "He certainly has class. The rumors going around say he's worth at least twenty million creds a year, and that's not including the royalties he gets on the minimum five new patents his labs seem to put out annually. And, quite honestly, he's not bad looking. The classic physicist physique, true, but not bad looking for all that."

Elizabeth glanced at her friend wryly. "If you're using the same standard you use to judge yourself, I would imagine he's highly attractive, actually. Especially with all that money -- have you ever heard of an ugly millionaire?"

They both laughed, but secretly Elizabeth felt that there was a sad truth to her question, reinforced very shortly thereafter by the behavior of her neighbors. When at nearly a perfectly fashionable fifteen minutes after the event began Bingley's party arrived, the two gentlemen were eagerly besieged by the residents of the base, introductions and desperate expressions abounding. But Darcy, who during the whole of the ordeal more or less followed the younger man's lead from group to group, seemed to have withdrawn upon himself. Despite this aloofness -- or perhaps, in the way of narrow-focused people everywhere, because of it -- he was even more greedily sought after.

As a dinner partner, he was certainly less than desirable. After the twentieth time of getting monosyllabic responses to her polite questions about his living quarters on base, his opinions on the food, how his trip had gone, and how he could comfortably sit with a stick lodged upright in such an awkward place, Elizabeth gritted her teeth and cursed her mother for somehow rearranging the seating she had so carefully planned before the event. Clearly her smug-looking mother's object was to advantageously space her eldest daughters between the two eligible gentlemen (Jane between the two, Mary on Bingley's left, and Elizabeth at the end of the table on Darcy's right). But the prominent position, in addition to providing her with a conversational partner as gregarious as a tree stump, left Elizabeth without even the option of making faces at Charlotte, who had been more pleasantly placed at another table between the old and often paranoid Mr. Ackbar and the friendly Mr. Calrissian. Charlotte sent her commiserating glances anyway.

But the evening's capstone that turned the general tide of feeling against Darcy, newly elected local villain, was the abominable remark he made within hearing of Elizabeth during the after-dinner dancing.

Near the end of the night, Elizabeth had gone into the kitchens to ensure that the desserts, which had not yet made their way onto the buffet tables, had not been forgotten. On her way back, she paused to direct a waiter to bus a table scattered with dirty dishware, and thus unwittingly put herself around the corner from Darcy, who was propping up a wall near the entrance to the dining hall.

At that moment, Bingley, taking a break from dancing with Jane, came up to speak with his friend, elbowing him in the ribs and addressing him with a playful jocularity: "Come on, Darcy. Why don't you dance? You look stupid standing here with no purpose."

"Rather stupid here than stupid out there," Darcy replied. "Other than your sisters, who are already dancing, there's no one I'd be even half willing to partner."

Bingley laughed. "Good grief, Darcy. Personally, I think there's quite a few nice girls around here, many of whom are good dancers and pretty stunning beauties."

Darcy made a sound halfway between a snort and a laugh. "If you mean your most recent dance partner, I grant you she is fairly good looking."

"She is, isn't she?" Bingley said. "But if you don't want to dance, why don't you sit down and talk with someone? There are plenty of nice people around here to chat with. What about Jane's sister? She seemed intelligent. And you've already gotten on well with her, sitting next to her at dinner, right?"

"What, the station manager, or whatever she called herself?" Darcy scoffed. "You've got to be kidding, Bingley. It was bad enough someone stuck her next to me at dinner. I'm not going to sit down and have another chat with a glorified janitor. She probably only got the position because she's the daughter of the governor. Go on and enjoy your dancing -- you're wasting your time with me."

Elizabeth, who had continued standing on the other side of the corner, unsure how to get past them and into the dining hall without any awkwardness, was at first filled with a sense of righteous outrage as she heard this last little speech. But then, as her cynical side took over, she shifted into resigned contempt. And when she at last felt the stirrings of her natural good humor returning and she caught sight of Charlotte Lucas, she went to her friend and shared with her the mildly amusing tale of their honored guest's pomposity. In a small way, it helped to put her more into a mere detached dislike of the man, and she regained her enjoyment of the evening.

"If I were you, Lizzy," said Mrs. Bennet as she finished telling the story to her long-suffering and lightly slumbering husband later that evening, "I wouldn't share more than two civil words with the man in the future."

"I doubt he should know so many," Elizabeth replied mildly. "But I think I can safely promise you that I shall have as little as possible to do with him. And should he fly off the base, whether in a space capsule or not, I shall be well pleased and probably refrain from calling out the marines to retrieve him."

But contrary to her hopes, Darcy remained securely on base in the next few days and, more often than not, holed up in his quarters. Occasionally he followed Bingley about on tours of the inner workings of the base, if only to escape for a while the clinging importunities of Bingley's sister, Caroline, who was more than plainly angling for his ring on her finger -- or at least a nice alimony settlement. She and her sister Louisa had come on the first tour with the two men and, after getting one of her impractical heels stuck in a grate in the core reactor room and pressing the wrong button while windmilling about, she had retreated ignominiously to her rooms and refused any more invitations to see the rest of the silly, dirty, repulsive base.

So Darcy felt free to explore with Bingley, though naturally a little less enthusiastically than his friend. After a while, however, he began to look forward to the daily tours and even went on a few solitary ramblings of his own.

The reason, of course, was that during the course of many of their tours they would run into Elizabeth, who in her position as station manager was frequently to be seen in various areas of the base. Every new glance at her increasingly appreciated features and figure, every greater understanding of her industriousness and the scope of her work, every glimpse of her smile (directed at Bingley, not Darcy), led to a stronger yearning in him to see her again and to know more about her.

Unnoticed by Darcy, however, was her studious avoidance of him and her hapless attempts to avoid running into him in the first place. To her, every increasingly frequent encounter was frustrating to the extreme.

"You know, I think he likes you," Charlotte said slyly to her friend as she leaned over the communications console in the walkout bay a few days later. When Elizabeth looked up with a confused expression, her friend nodded towards the other side of the room where Darcy and Bingley were getting an in-depth explanation from Jane of the suiting technologies available at the base. Elizabeth looked over and met Darcy's eyes, which were making one of their frequent unsubtle assays in her direction.

"Gads, I hope not," she choked, looking away quickly and shuffling her papers while a light stain flushed her cheeks. When she had collected herself more fully, she shook her head. "No, I'm sure you're wrong. If anything, he's probably just trying to figure out what space rock I might have crawled out from under, and which genus and species of xenos would be the closest classification."

"I think not," Charlotte replied. "He's a physicist, not a biologist, Lizzy. Besides, I don't see why it should be so odd he'd have the hots for you. You are pretty eye-catching, you know. Personally, I'd say even more gorgeous than Jane, whatever your mother's opinion."

Elizabeth scoffed, but thanked her for the thought. "If, as you say, that's what's drawing his attention, though, I think I'd rather curse it than praise it. I have no interest in that direction. My interest is more firmly secured by these schematics of the new air filtration systems designed by the DeBourgh Company," she said, raising her voice ever so slightly and drawing a curious look from her friend. "It's a little over-the-top, in my opinion -- a lot of unnecessary engineering that could be easily simplified by returning to the design of a basic centrifuge for the primary liquid chamber. But, then, I'm not an expert in these things. What do you think, Mr. Darcy?"

That gentleman, who had been gradually moving away from the space suit demonstration and closer to the communications desk, started a bit guiltily but recovered quickly. "I would say you are right, Miss Bennet," he said, unashamedly closing the rest of the distance and nodding politely to Charlotte. "But ostentation is a hallmark of the DeBourgh brand, and for those less perceptive than you the more technical the piece of equipment the more desirable it can be. The more shrewd, such as yourself, might be more interested in the Fitzwilliam & Fitzwilliam brand of filtration device."

"My, my, Mr. Darcy," she replied dryly, fanning herself with her hand, "you're going to give me an exaggerated opinion of my intelligence."

"I am sure you could never be too proud of your accomplishments," he replied gallantly.

"On the contrary," she said, "I often feel that I am the best at everything I do, no matter how lowly my position and tasks."

He smiled. "I have seen nothing to indicate that here at Deimos base you are not the best at what you do."

As they were speaking, the others in the room, including a newly arrived William Lucas, had gravitated toward the conversation at the console. The latter gentleman, unwittingly forestalling a sarcastic reply by Elizabeth, spoke now:

"Indeed she is," the portly social director said while his daughter rolled her eyes at her friend. "She is quite accomplished. Quite accomplished, indeed. Our Eliza has taught all my daughters to space walk around this part of our moon, you know. Has she arranged to give you lessons yet while you're here, sir?" he asked of Darcy.

"She has not, I'm afraid," that gentleman replied warily.

"You should take the opportunity to learn while you are on base," Mr. Lucas said. "It's an invaluable skill, and a testament to our civilization -- I've always considered moonwalking one of the most advanced aspects of our culture."

"Oh, I doubt that," Darcy drawled. "Even the 20th-centuriers could moonwalk."

Mr. Lucas, slightly flummoxed by this response, looked around for something else to say to further the social dialogue. He turned to Elizabeth, who had gone back to her work, trying her best to ignore the conversation around her. "Miss Eliza, I hope I can prevail upon you to teach this young gentleman how to comport himself in free-space maneuvers. And, why -- what better a time than right now, while the moon is in wane and you are both here?"

Elizabeth closed her eyes momentarily and sighed. "Mr. Lucas, as I frequently remind you, I am not the only certified space maneuvering trainer on base. I am sure Mr. Darcy would care to take his lessons from some other instructor than me."

"Not at all," Darcy replied. "I would be honored to be instructed by you."

Not expecting this reply and not entirely sure she understood his meaning or intent, Elizabeth did not know at first what to say. Mr. Lucas, naturally, filled the gap: "As you see, he's not unwilling. And I, for one, would be delighted to watch for a while and refresh my own skills."

Elizabeth, certain in the knowledge that Mr. Lucas had never spacewalked in his life, merely smiled.

"And with someone so highly regarded and engaging as you are, Miss Eliza," Mr. Lucas continued, "who could object to a few hours of your company?"

"Who, indeed, Mr. Lucas," Elizabeth said, arching a brow in Darcy's direction. "But I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me this once. I have some work to get done in central controls."

And collecting her papers, she escaped, leaving behind at least one person whose opinion of her, if anything, had only increased.

Charlotte, hurrying along behind her in the hallway, merely laughed at her friend's behavior. "Somehow, I don't think that's how you attract a suitor, Eliza," she said, puffing slightly with the exertion.

"I think that's the idea," Elizabeth replied, not slackening the pace.

"Well, if you're going to make your mother happy, at least one of you should try to be successful in attracting one of them."

Startled, Elizabeth stopped and turned, causing her friend to run into her. "What do you mean by that?" she asked after all of her papers were collected from the floor and the helpful clerk who'd stopped hurried off on his way again.

Charlotte held up her hands as if in surrender. "Nothing! I just meant that you and Jane might want to work on your flirtation. Maybe take a few pointers from your youngest sisters."

Elizabeth snorted. "As if anyone in their right mind would want to imitate them."

"They do know how to attract men," her friend said with a shrug. "And they do at least know how to let a guy know that his attention is appreciated."

"Woah," Elizabeth said, holding up a hand. "We'll get to the guys my sisters are attracting later. What do you mean we don't appreciate a man's attention?"

"Not that you don't appreciate it -- just that you don't make it obvious you do."

"But why be obvious? Personally, I think it's rather repulsive to watch a woman fawn all over a guy."

"At least then he'll know where he stands. The 'ice queen' thing is all well and good, but a guy will get tired of that, if he doesn't think he's making an impression."

"Wait -- just to be clear, who are we talking about: Jane or me?"

Charlotte shrugged. "Either, really. But, unlike you, I think Jane actually likes the guy in question, so I think it's a little more imperative in her case to show even more than she feels, rather than less."

"You know Jane is a bit shy when it comes to showing her feelings. I should think it obvious just looking at her that she really likes this Bingley."

"To you, maybe," Charlotte said. "But remember that he doesn't know her as well."

"And she doesn't know him. And if she does like what she sees so far, why would she scare him away by being what she isn't -- in a sense, lying to him? Why would she risk an embarrassing rejection when she still hasn't gotten to know enough about him to make a sure decision?"

"Because she won't get to know him more if he doesn't want to spend time with her because she's too subtle. I say snag them first, and then when you've got their attention secure you can show them a little more of who you really are."

Elizabeth shook her head slowly. "Oh, Charlotte. You don't really believe that. You would never act like that."

"How should I know what I'd do?" Charlotte said, wrinkling her nose. "I've never had the chance. I'd like to think a guy would see me and fall in love with me instantly, but I think we both know the likelihood of that. Love at first sight only happens in movies. It's better to have a man, and know I have him, than to blow it by not grabbing him while I can."

Elizabeth laughed. "I'm not even going to touch that one."

"I know. That's why he'd be mine for the taking," Charlotte replied dryly.

And with that bad joke, they returned to their former humor with each other. The two then continued down the hallway until they parted ways, Elizabeth for central controls and Charlotte for the dining hall, where she served as assistant pastry chef.

But Elizabeth's mind, for the most part, stayed on their conversation. Charlotte had always been a pragmatic friend, and as one a few years older and theoretically wiser, Elizabeth had always given her opinions more weight.

Thus, at the next opportunity she had to study her older sister, she watched Jane's interactions with Bingley. They were sitting together in the dining hall at midmeal, Elizabeth slowly and silently scooping nutritional yoghurt out of her cup and leaving the other two to talk. The eager Bingley, she decided, was clearly smitten with the angelically dark, willowy young woman; Jane, for her part, betrayed her feelings by her frequent blushes, her eyes downcast or shining interestedly at her conversational partner.

It was a sickening display, Elizabeth decided, tossing the empty yoghurt cup onto her tray and taking a bite of her vegebar instead. Sickeningly sweet, really, and it would be a blessing when the two finally paired off, she felt, even as she was heartily glad for and filially proud of her favorite sister. They hadn't even noticed that they hadn't said one word to Elizabeth -- or to each other, for that matter -- for the past fifteen minutes.

Someone else had noticed, of course, from where he sat across the room wishing he had sat at his friend's table. Instead, Darcy was six tables away, where he had chosen a seat from which he could easily watch Elizabeth without interruption. He barely noticed that his own table was primarily empty on each side, barren of anyone wishing to sit by the aloof gentleman.

He, of course, had noticed Bingley's flirtation with the brunette (laying it on a bit thick, he thought), but it was only a side note. He was more interested in the expressions that played across Elizabeth's face, the way her brow wrinkled in thought and the way her smile started lopsidedly with a little quirky tilt on the left and then spread to include the rest of her full, rosy lips when she was truly amused. Her hair drew his attention, the way the silvery threads caught and reflected the light as she turned her head, the way the gently wavy locks danced as they came undone from the loose bun she had pulled at the back. The curve of her throat arrested his gaze as she tilted her head back to laugh at something a passing waiter said into her tiny, shell-like ear. Her eyes held him in thrall, the way they sparkled and the light seemed to dance merrily within them as she laughed, the way they would darken as they looked deep into his own...

"I bet I can guess what you're thinking."

Darcy turned, startled, as Caroline Bingley slid her tray onto the table next to his. He grimaced slightly and moved away as she sat down uncomfortably close. She pretended not to notice.

"I should imagine not," he said, taking refuge in the food he had until now forgotten to eat.

Caroline snorted, an odd sound from such an otherwise elegant female. "You're thinking about how insufferably boring these meals are, and in such graceless surrounds. About how you'd like to wring Charles' neck for having brought us to this horribly uncultured, backwater, boorishly populated place."

"On the contrary," Darcy replied, addressing himself to his tofuloaf. "I was more agreeably engaged. I was merely thinking about how pleasant a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can be."

"Oh?" A smile crossed Caroline's features before she leaned in curiously and asked, batting her eyelashes slightly, "And whose are the fine eyes that inspired these reflections?"

"Miss Elizabeth Bennet's."

"Oh!" She sat back in her seat, her mouth opening and closing like a fish as she took in this new bit of information. "Oh, I see," she said, regaining control. "And when shall I expect an invitation to the wedding?"

Darcy, whose thoughts had been along a similar line, nearly choked. "Isn't that just like a woman," he said after taking a sip of his water. "You say you like the look of a feminine face, and an instant later you're declaring your vows."

"Ah, but if you're serious about it I'll consider it just a matter of time. You will, of course, have a charming mother-in law," she continued snidely as the latter came through the doorway of the dining hall and immediately addressed herself excitedly to Bingley and Jane. "I'm sure you'll love having her stay at Pemberley with you; she'll never leave, in fact. And the younger sisters, too. My goodness, it'll just be one big, happy family."

But despite her words, and to the many more she added, Darcy responded with an expression of pure indifference. With such a riveted audience, Caroline's wit flowed long.

Chapter Three: Marooned

Posted on 2009-12-08

A few days later during a family breakfast in the Bennet suite, Jane's runner buzzed with a message. Before she could scan more than two words, Mrs. Bennet excitedly tore the little black box from her daughter's hand and read aloud the brief invitation:

"Jane, re: our plans to tour the moon. Could you be our guide? We'd like to set out this morning. The men are meeting with the marine sergeant for ship refitting suggestions and won't be joining us. Caroline Bingley."

"No men. Oh, that's unlucky," Mrs. Bennet said, tapping the runner on her chin. "But I think I have an idea. We'll tell her that you can't start out until 12-hour," she said, typing the response, "and then you'll take the Geo-5."

"The Geo-5?" Jane echoed. "But that's far too large for only three people. Can I not take the Rover?"

"Oh, no, dear," said Mrs. Bennet. "I had it for your father to do some repairs on the Rover this afternoon. Plus, if the men get done early they may be able to join you. If you take the Geo-5, you'll be able to accommodate them."

Despite her misgivings about the ethics of this slightly shady approach, Jane had to accept the plan -- especially as a note in her name had already been sent to Caroline outlining it. Naturally, everything occurred just as Mrs. Bennet predicted: the gentlemen, hearing that the tour was to start after 12-hour, finished up with their meeting early and joined the three women on their tour of the southern trailing half of the outer Mars moon.

A little after mid-day, however, as Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth were poring over an antique diesel engine in their free time, they both received a buzz on their runners from Jane:

"No need to worry, but Geo-5 broke down in Swift. All safe, but need an hour or more to fix. A G5 cable may be helpful? Will be late returning. Jane."

"No need to worry, hm?" Elizabeth said, wiping the grease from her hands with a rag. "I knew she shouldn't have taken the Geo out, no matter what Mother said. The struts haven't been working on it right since Lydia ran it into that crater a few months ago."

"I don't think your mother considered that in her planning," Mr. Bennet muttered, only looking up from his diagrams in order to poke at a spark plug lying on the workbench.

"Or, if she did, she was counting on something like this happening," Elizabeth said with a sigh, shrugging out of her apron and hanging it on a peg. "Stranding Jane out in the middle of nowhere with Mr. Bingley, in the hopes that they might have more time to fall in love."

"And all because of my plan," Mrs. Bennet said smugly as she came into the room.

Elizabeth couldn't help but glare. "There's only twenty hours of air in that vehicle, Mother. Would killing them all be part of your plan, too?"

"Nonsense," her mother rejoined. "People don't die of getting caught out in space anymore. There would be plenty of time for the marines to find them and tow them back, if necessary. Besides, this will give Jane more time to show Mr. Bingley how efficient and knowledgeable she is in such a situation."

"Jane doesn't know much more about fixing a space vehicle than how to replace a headbeam," Elizabeth said. "If it's more major than that, there's a good chance she'll have no idea what to do. I'm going to take the Mercury out there and help them get back."

"You? What's out there for you?" Mrs. Bennet said. "No, it would be better if you just let Jane handle everything."

But Elizabeth, once she had decided on the course of action, listened to no more of her mother's objections. Loading the Mercury with her suit, an extra tank, and all of the tools and a few parts she thought she might need, she set out toward the Swift crater only fifteen minutes later. As she flew over the spacejunk-littered landscape, navigating the vehicle north, she kept an eye on the tracking system, searching for a small blip that would tell her she was closing in on the Geo-5. At last, as she skimmed the eastern ridge of the Voltaire crater, she spotted the tiny dot on the monitor that indicated the other vehicle's position. She headed in that direction.

The large modern moon-roving vehicle was perched unevenly on the rocky terrain just overlooking the vast Swift crater. Elizabeth cautiously set the Mercury down nearby, carefully ensuring that any dust cloud created by her landing would be minimal. With her parking job secure, she pulled her things together, exited the vehicle, and made her way across. Her first stop was the space-suited figure fiddling with a panel at the front of the Geo-5. Tapping her on the shoulder, Elizabeth made a "2" with her fingers and pointed to her helmet.

"Oh, I'm so glad you've come, Lizzy!" breathed Jane as she switched her comm. unit to the correct channel. "I wasn't sure you would."

"Of course I would!" Elizabeth laughed. "When have I ever denied myself the opportunity to fix something? But before I get my hands on this poor baby's innards, I'm just going to go in and make sure everyone's all right and check the air levels. I assume they're all still inside?"

Her assumption confirmed by Jane, Elizabeth went to the vehicle and entered through the pressurization chamber. Inside the main compartment, she found the Bingleys and the Hursts, all of whom were startled to see her. Only Darcy seemed unsurprised, but she surmised by his position at the far window that he had seen her approach and conversation with her sister. Even so, he reacted no more to her presence than by turning his chair fully in her direction and staring at her impassively.

Bingley was the first to approach her, flying through the air with gleeful abandon. "How wonderful to see you, Miss Elizabeth!" he said, reaching out to take her unresisting hand and pumping it excitedly, sending them both off-balance. "Such a wonderful view, isn't this?" He swept his hand towards the tinted windows showing the vast openness of the moon. The crater before them seemed to stretch to the horizon in every direction.

Elizabeth, slightly bemused by his seeming unconcern for their position, could only smile as she watched him spin around dizzily. "This is one of the best views of the crater you'll get," she replied. "And you should take the time to enjoy it while you can. I've just come to help Jane fix this old boat, so it shouldn't be long before you're on your way back to the base."

"About time," Mr. Hurst muttered, but Bingley greeted the news with a warm, "Splendid," and a bright smile. Elizabeth ignored the curled lip of Caroline Bingley's expression and the solemn, silently watchful gaze of Darcy's, and retreated back out to the lunar surface.

No sooner had she left the vehicle than Caroline began reviling her to her companions. "And to think we only had to suffer through the ignominy of a broken-down wreck," she said dryly. "Now Miss Eliza Bennet has come to wave her magic wand and make it all better. As if we couldn't have fixed it."

"Actually," said Bingley, "I don't think we could."

"Did you see her outfit, Louisa?" Caroline said, turning her chair away from her brother. "Do you think she wears that jumpsuit for special occasions, or just everyday use?"

Louisa joined her in laughter. "Absolutely filthy, Caroline; covered in grease. And her hair! It looked like she'd been dragged backward through a bush."

"And why must she be scampering about the moon all because her sister's vehicle broke down? I thought all of these colonist-types were born knowing how to make a new steering column out of a pen cap. There's no need for her to come all the way out here."

"I think it shows a concern for her sister -- and, indeed, for all of us -- that, quite frankly, I'm grateful for," Bingley inserted, a little put out by the discussion.

Caroline ignored him. "And all alone, too! To fly that however many miles it is all by herself. To me, that smacks of pure conceited independence."

Louisa nodded, and Caroline, narrowing her eyes slightly, leaned in Darcy's direction and said, "Its rather sad, isn't it, these moon people? I'm sure you wouldn't want your sister acting like that."

"Not at all," Darcy said, returning his gaze out the window.

Her smile turned sickly sweet. "I'm afraid this little adventure of hers might have damaged your opinion of her fine eyes."

He met her gaze for a moment, one brow raised, and then turned back to the window. "On the contrary, I think they were brightened by her exertions."

An awkward silence greeted this bland remark until at last Louisa remarked, "You know, it is rather a pity about Jane."

Bingley looked up sharply from where he had slouched in his seat but was forestalled in any response by Caroline, who agreed with, "Oh, indeed. She's a sweet girl, but her family! And I think you heard about her uncle and aunt -- on Earth! Who lives on Earth anymore?"

"Who cares?" cried Bingley. "If the whole planet was populated by their relatives, it still wouldn't make them make a jot less pleasant."

"No, but it would make their chances of getting anywhere in this universe much lower," said Darcy, turning from the window to look narrowly at his friend. "Connections are one of the most valuable assets in our world; without them, you end up ... well, stranded on a moon."

Bingley made no answer to this, and Caroline and Louisa felt free to continue their deprecating comments about their dear friend. But even this occupation could not last them too long, and their boredom at last drove them to the communications console, where they chatted with the two people outside the vehicle (Jane responding more often and pleasantly than Elizabeth, naturally) about the tour and how well the repairs were progressing.

It was about half an hour later when Elizabeth again returned to the ship, in search of a few parts she could scavenge. She entered the main compartment to find four of its five occupants engaged in playing and observing a game of backgammon on a magnetic board Mr. Hurst always carried with him. The fifth, Darcy, was seated at a small worktable, bent over a technical document and making notes in the margins. He looked up in surprise when Bingley greeted the new arrival, but said nothing. After she described her errand, he returned to his work, steadfastly ignoring her presence. Unfortunately, he could not ignore everyone else's quite as well.

"By the way, Darcy, what are you doing over there?" Caroline asked a few minutes later.

He didn't respond at first, but when she repeated the question more loudly, he looked up and said, in an overly patient tone, " I'm proofing one of my sister's papers for her experiment."

"Oh! Your dear, dear sister. And how is Georgiana? She must have grown up much since I saw her last year. Is she as tall as I am now?"

"She's about Miss Bennet's height," Darcy said, eyeing the figure bent over the small corner sink. Elizabeth straightened and turned in surprise, floating into the wall.

"How wonderful it would have been to have her here!" Caroline continued quickly. "She's such a wonderful young woman. And so advanced for her age, too -- firsts in all of her classes, as I recall."

"You know," Bingley mused aloud, "I've always been impressed at how advanced all these young people are these days."

"Young people?" Darcy echoed. "Charles, you're barely over twenty-five."

"And what, in heaven's name, do you mean by them being 'advanced'?" Caroline added.

"Well, just that, not only are they always involved in varsity athletics and artistic endeavors and place firsts on all their exams, but they're all supermodels and diplomatic ambassadors and building plasma rays, as well. It seems like the name of every single woman I ever meet is always followed by, 'and she's so incredibly advanced for her age.'"

This extemporaneous speech, marked by Bingley's honest belief in what he was saying, was met by complete baffled surprise. At last, Elizabeth couldn't hold in her laughter anymore, and her snort and guffaw was shortly followed by, "Unfortunately, Bingley, that's all too true," Darcy said. "It seems these days all that's required to be deemed 'advanced' is to have aced the easy classes on Tutor. But look at it honestly, Bingley -- in order to be truly advanced, be beyond the norm, there have to be at least half of the people below it. In fact, I would highly doubt there are very many young people out there that are truly advanced. Not in the way it was back when we were still in school."

"You solved the Navier-Stokes question when you were ten," Caroline added proudly.

Darcy seemed hesitant to use the example, but nodded. "I suppose what I'm saying is that there really are only a few young people out there that are truly advanced for their age. Maybe half a dozen, if you look at the universal science competitions, for instance."

Caroline agreed, but Elizabeth, diverted from her mission, propped herself carefully over the counter, folded her arms, and said, "That's a rather narrow definition of being advanced."

Darcy, looking at her askance asked, "What do you mean?"

"Just that it seems you place all the importance on science, and none on any of the other areas in which a person can be advanced."

He narrowed his eyes slightly, tipping his head. "Actually, I think that a truly advanced person should be well-rounded in all of the academic areas. And that is where so many fail."

"Of course!" Caroline said, pouncing on this example of Elizabeth's lack of understanding. "A truly advanced young person should be more than a science geek, or someone who is simply good at building things. They should be socially adept; have a strong understanding of fashion, the arts, music, and all the major languages of the universe; have seen the cultured reaches of the universe. There should be something sophisticated about them -- there should be something special in their manner, in the way they walk, talk, and act. Without this, they are run-of the-mill, no more than ordinary."

Elizabeth, raising an eyebrow in challenge, turned her gaze to Darcy, who reluctantly agreed. "That is true," he sad slowly, "but I would still argue that, even more than taking in those more academic qualities, things that can be simply learned, a young person needs to go farther than that. They should add something more substantial, if you will -- the quest for knowledge and evidence of having put it into practical use for the sake of others."

As he spoke, Elizabeth was shaking her head slowly, a smile on her lips. "You know, I'm not really surprised anymore that you know so few accomplished young people, Mr. Darcy," she said when he had finished. "I'm a bit more surprised that you know any."

"Do you doubt me, or their existence?"

"Their existence," she replied. "I've never seen anyone so perfect as you described. Such a paragon -- such a unification of character, taste, elegance, and application -- seems so statistically improbable as to be impossible ... as a physicist such as yourself should know."

Caroline and Louisa here cried out at the injustice of her statement, saying that they knew hundreds of young people who fit the description. With a frustrated growl, Mr. Hurst recalled his opponent's attention to the game, and conversation was again at an end. With a sigh, Elizabeth continued her scrounging, making a quick foray into the undercarriage in search of a spare cable.

While she was below, Caroline hissed to the table at large, "Eliza Bennet thinks she's so clever, doesn't she? Thinks that by demeaning everyone else she'll be making her own meager qualities appear more impressive. Personally, I think it's a rather crude and underhanded way of making yourself look better."

"Undoubtedly," said Darcy, who had come close to the table in search of a new pencil from his case. He glanced at Caroline, pointedly looking at her face, at her careful make-up and false eyelashes, and then at her other, more permanent enhancements. "But I think there's an underhandedness to any false pretense used to attract others."

Elizabeth returned from her foray below just then, so the conversation was shelved -- to an embarrassed Caroline's relief. In only a few minutes, the backgammon game was also finished, with Mr. Hurst the clear winner, as he, unlike Caroline, had paid full attention the entire time. Tired of the game, Caroline now drifted over to where Darcy sat.

"It's so nice that you help your sister out like this," she said, reading over his shoulder. "I'm sure Georgiana is grateful to have such an intelligent and dedicated brother."

He made no answer, continuing to scratch notes onto the paper.

"You write rather fast, don't you?"

"Actually, I write rather slowly."

"You must have to write quite a bit every day, what with your papers and experiments and business dealings. Personally, I'd find it very boring."

"Luckily, then, it's my task and not yours."

"Do tell your sister that I'm looking forward to seeing her on Vega in a few months."

"I'm proofing a paper, Caroline, not writing a letter."

"Oh, but you do it so quickly, it seems, so easily."

Bingley laughed at his sister, who gave him a glare, "That's a horrible compliment for Darcy, Caroline! He doesn't write easily at all. He works too hard trying to use four-syllable words."

"Better than four-letter words," Darcy replied, sitting back and smiling at his friend. "My style is simply different than yours."

"Oh, Charles is quite possibly the worst writer imaginable," Caroline said. "If his letters weren't all written digitally, I doubt anybody'd be able to tell what he's trying to say. Even then, all the words run together and he hardly ever uses the spell checker."

Bingley laughed. "That's only because my thoughts flow so quickly -- I have to put them down before I forget about them entirely. I've written letters before that, when you truly read them, mean absolutely nothing at all."

"I know -- I've received them," Darcy muttered.

Elizabeth, who had been giving more and more attention to this interchange rather than to her task, now entered the fray: "I'm impressed, Mr. Bingley, at your ready acknowledgement of your fault. Your humility is admirable."

"On the contrary, Miss Bennet," Darcy said, "humility -- or the appearance of it -- is often no more than a lack of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast. Bingley's not ashamed of what you call his fault at all -- he's actually quite proud of his writing style because he thinks, if it doesn't reflect well on his ease of manner and rapidity of thought, at least it makes him sound more interesting. The person who does things hastily more often than not thinks more highly of such an ability than those around him do."

Bingley laughed at this, unconcerned. "So you dislike my ease of action and decision making. That's no surprise, considering your own more deliberate nature. But my writing style is a horrible example for this. It's so basic, so unimportant. Let's say instead I was thinking about doing something big -- let's say that tomorrow I simply pack up and depart from Deimos and go off to, oh, I don't know ... Deneb let's say. You think my little whim would be a poor reflection on my character?"

"How could it possibly be any good?" Darcy asked. "You're leaving everything up in the air, loose ends everywhere, and doing it for no more than a whim, for no benefit to anyone but yourself -- and even there, I highly doubt you'd be truly happy with your decision. Besides, I don't think you would ever actually do such a thing. Almost everything you do is based on chance -- if, while you were boarding the ship, a friend came up and said, 'hey, why don't you stay another week?' you would. Not only that, but you'd stay another month."

"So what does that say about his character?" Elizabeth asked.

"That I am easily persuaded, which to him is an unpardonable sin," Bingley said. "He would think much better of me if I instead gave my friend a flat denial and flew off immediately."

"So he thinks that you would've atoned, then, for your original rashness by being bloody-minded, instead."

"I never came close to saying so, Miss Bennet," Darcy said quickly. "But, hypothetically, if that were the case, you've got to remember that this friend gave him no reasons, no arguments to convince him to stay."

"So to yield trustingly to a friend's persuasion has no merit with you."

"To yield without conviction of mind doesn't say much for the understanding of either."

Elizabeth shook her head. "It sounds as if you put no value on friendship or affection, Mr. Darcy. I think that when you're close to a person, you're more likely to put more weight on their opinions without necessarily waiting for their arguments. And I'm not necessarily talking only about the circumstance you supposed for Mr. Bingley. Any person, asking any to change a decision of little importance -- would you think badly of the person who agreed without waiting to be convinced?"

"Wouldn't it make sense, before I commit to a position, to define how well these friends know each other, and clarify exactly how important their decision?"

"Of course," Bingley interjected, "let's hear all the details. Not forgetting, of course, their heights, weights, and different shoe sizes. It's more important than you think," he said to Elizabeth's laugh. "I don't think I'd listen to Darcy quite so much if he weren't a foot taller than I am. I swear there's nothing quite as frightening as Darcy, and at certain times and in certain places -- at his base, especially, on a day off, when he's got nothing better to do."

Elizabeth smiled, but noted the rigidity of Darcy's expression and checked her laugh. Bingley's easy comment had bothered him for some reason, though she couldn't explain why -- perhaps simply that he was offended by his friend's easy airing of his faults? But he relaxed back against his chair as Caroline cried out against the injustice in her brother's remark and, with a insouciant tone, said, "I see what you're getting at, Bingley. You hate arguments and want to put a period to this one."

"Maybe I do," Bingley replied, his eyes twinkling merrily. "And if you and Miss Bennet could wait until we get back to base to continue your discussion, I would be eternally grateful."

"Oh, it's no skin off my back," Elizabeth said, glancing at Darcy with an arch look. "I still have to find these parts, and I'm sure Mr. Darcy needs to get back to his paper."

With only a slight tightening of his lips, which could either have denoted frustration or amusement, Darcy went back to his sister's study papers.

The cabin soon again resumed its active silence, only the sounds of the rustling of papers, the clicking of metal backgammon pieces, the tapping of fingernails, and the soft swearing of Elizabeth struggling to unscrew a tightly wrenched bolt disturbing the peace.

At last, in possession of a few parts she might be able to adapt to her purpose, Elizabeth exited the vehicle to return outside. With her again out of the way, Caroline and Louisa were left to resume their dissection of her and her family's dubious attractions. Bingley joined in occasionally to object to their characterizations and Mr. Hurst ignored them utterly to take a quick nap, but Darcy remained on the other side of the cabin. He had since abandoned his sister's paper and was now gazing out the window at the figures below, moving about the front of the vehicle.

After a bit, he left the main compartment without a word to his companions. They, thinking he had merely stepped out to relieve himself, thought nothing of it. But had they been watching out the window where he had previously been placed, they might have seen him re-enter their view, clad in an extra suit, approaching the two Bennet sisters.

"May I help with anything?" Darcy asked for the fifth time, finally stumbling upon the frequency they were using to communicate.

Elizabeth looked around, startled, but after regaining her poise merely cocked her head at him with a curious expression and then returned to what she was doing. Jane, feeling the slight awkwardness of her sister's lack of response, smiled and said, "Of course, Mr. Darcy. You are welcome to help."

With such a warm greeting, Darcy came closer to take up a position only a foot away from Elizabeth and, hands behind his back, leaned in to watch as she connected two wires carefully. After she had clamped and sealed them together, she closed that panel and moved to the next. Darcy followed.

"May I help you with anything?" he repeated when she had given him no indication of her awareness of his presence. From where she perched over a rock a few feet away, trying to make two spare parts fit together in the desired shape, Jane again looked up. But, sensing this time something that discouraged her interference, she said nothing and returned to her task.

The silence grew as Elizabeth gingerly unplugged a frayed cable, and after a moment she finally looked at her interrogator. "Oh, I heard you the first time, Mr. Darcy. But I had thought the question rhetorical or simply a means to mock me for the slow nature of our progress. I didn't know you knew anything about fixing a Geo-5."

"I don't," Darcy admitted after a moment. "But if you had a task you could easily explain, I would be glad to be of assistance."

Unsure yet of the reason for his offer, Elizabeth directed him to her toolbox, asking for the T-handle reamer. After only a moment's hesitation looking over the unorganized large metal box, he picked out the correct tool and handed it to her. Her look of surprise was evident when he placed it in her hand, but she said nothing until she needed the next tool. They continued to work as such for some time, developing a seemingly well-rehearsed rhythm, until he remarked, "You have an impressive talent, working on mechanicals like this."

Her hand, awaiting the next tool, jerked slightly and the stripper he had just tried to put in it began to float away. Catching it deftly, he offered it again to her. She snatched it from his hands and put it to work on a wire.

"I didn't know you knew anything about mechanics, Mr. Darcy," she said at last. "I thought you were a physicist, not an engineer."

"Just because I am not entirely knowledgeable about a subject doesn't mean I can't admire those who are."

"I wasn't aware you admired anyone but yourself," she returned blandly, asking for another tool.

He looked at her sideways for a moment with a bemused expression on his face. "Being aware and proud of one's accomplishments is not a failing, Miss Bennet," he said at last. "Not recognizing the accomplishments of others would indeed be a grave fault, but I trust I am not so blind as that."

Elizabeth now turned to the man beside her, put her hands to her hips, and said, a smile on her face, "Do you have any faults at all, Mr. Darcy? Renowned physicist, base owner, expedition sponsor, perfect paper-editor, kind-hearted brother, and -- dare I say it? -- Demigod. I do enjoy laughing at the foibles or flaws of others, but it seems to me you have an incredible talent of appearing to be utterly without them."

He reddened slightly, turning to face her entirely. "I don't think that's possible for anyone. But, yes, it has been an object of mine to avoid any weakness that might otherwise hold me up to ridicule."

"Such as vanity and pride, perhaps?"

"I agree that vanity is a weakness," Darcy said, "but pride -- where self-control and self-awareness is not an issue, neither will pride be."

She reached past him to the toolbox in order to hide her smile, but it was yet apparent in her voice when she said, "So, then, you have no faults."

"I said nothing of the kind," he replied tightly. "I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of will or wisdom. My temper, I think, is often too implacable -- I don't forget or forgive as I perhaps should, and my feelings aren't swayed by the slightest suggestion. Many would call me resentful -- implacably so. My good opinion once lost is lost forever."

She looked at him keenly for a moment, and then said softly, "Implacable resentment -- that is a failing, indeed, Mr. Darcy. But you've chosen your fault well; I cannot laugh at it."

"I think that everyone has something in their character to which no efforts on their part can make a difference."

Elizabeth smiled. "Your defect is a tendency to hate everybody."

"And yours is to willfully misunderstand them."

"Is the vehicle fixed yet?"

Elizabeth and Darcy, started, looked at each other, and then up at the window of the vehicle. Caroline, communicator gripped tightly in one hand, stood staring down at them through the tinted glass.

"Very shortly," Elizabeth said gruffly, returning to her work.

Darcy, after a few moments of thought, excused himself and returned to the vehicle. As he stripped off the space suit he had earlier donned, he began to think that Caroline's interruption came at an opportune time. There was a definite danger in Elizabeth Bennet and the feelings she inspired in him. She was nothing to what he expected -- and what was expected of him -- to look for in a wife. Not that there was any snobbery involved, but one didn't reach into a mud puddle expecting to pull out a pearl -- or avoid getting dirty.

As well, he didn't want to be accused of raising expectations in a quarter where no expectations should exist. It would be far better for everyone if he simply dropped any pretense of interest in the woman and avoided her completely.

Satisfied with this new philosophy, he put it into practice when the object of these reflections and her sister returned to the vehicle to attempt its restart. He ignored her completely, not giving her lithe form any more than a brief glance as they entered.

Never mind that the rest of his senses followed her every movement around the cabin, or that his entire body ached for him to drink his fill of the sight of her. Never mind his keen awareness of the moment she left the cabin to return to the Mercury, or the stab of disappointment he felt when she did not bid him farewell as she did the others -- even Caroline.

No, he had done a perfect job of depressing any inkling she might have had of his interest in her, he congratulated himself later as the vehicles sped swiftly across the moon on their return to base. She could have no suspicions that he felt a thing for her beyond vague acquaintanceship. And he was in no danger of falling in love with her. All was safe.

At least, that's what he told himself.

Chapter Four: The Invasion

Posted on 2009-12-15

The following morning brought another visitor to Deimos Base, though the news inspired no more than a handful of whispers among its residents. Unlike the Bingley party, this was a lone passenger, brought by pod, come to visit the Bennets. Also unlike the Bingley party, he was of no social importance -- merely the executive assistant at an engineering company located on Altair.

"But not simply any engineering company," the young man was quick to inform his hosts upon his arrival, "but rather that of Catherine DeBourgh. And, as executive assistant, I am often in close consultation with that great lady herself. Why, my desk is but an aisle from her grand office, which overlooks the whole of Rosings City."

Mr. Bennet, a slight twinkle in his eye, responded, "Only an aisle? Did you hear that, Lizzy?"

His daughter, who was matching the information on the new arrival's certifications to the forward orders, gave him an exasperated look. Here she was, trying as diligently as possible to be as professional as possible, and her father was doing all possible to make that as difficult as possible. Standard procedure, really, but still frustrating.

Only a moment later, however, the certs had been scanned and Elizabeth handed the card back to their new guest. "You're all checked in, Mr. Collins," she said, interrupting his description of the ultra-modern and high-tech DeBourgh compound and the luxurious quarters of the DeBourgh family.

"Miss Elizabeth, you are too kind," William Collins said, punctuating his remark with a bow.

"Oh, isn't she?" Mrs. Bennet said happily, bestowing upon the young man a benevolent look. She had, since shortly after her husband informed her of his second cousin's imminent arrival, been looking upon him as another potential husband for one of her daughters. There was, of course, the annoyance that she would have to make any sort of an effort to accommodate a guest, but that was quickly got over. As well, when he awkwardly stepped out of the small pod she was a little dismayed to find that he was not a very prepossessing young man, being somewhat tall and gangly and not in the least attractive. But his obvious appreciation of her daughters' beauty and the tales he spun about his wealthy and influential boss were enough to turn any mother's opinion, and she quickly decided that, indeed, she had felt soon after hearing of his arrival that he would be a decidedly perfect son-in-law.

The only thing that bothered Mrs. Bennet somewhat was his clear preference for Jane. That would not do, considering Jane was nearly spoken for by Mr. Bingley. Why waste a spectacular beauty on only a second-rate suitor? And so she told him, in the most tactful and subtle way possible after he had been settled into his guest quarters.

"And if you have any need of more pillows or blankets, Mr. Collins, feel free to help yourself," Mrs. Bennet said, casually adjusting a frame on the wall. "We would hope you feel quite at home here."

"Thank you, Mrs. Bennet," he replied. "You and your family have been most welcoming."

"Indeed," she replied. "And if you would like a tour, or would like to see anything around the base, I am sure my daughters would be most accommodating. Although, I should suggest that maybe one of the younger might be most available," she continued, lowering her voice into a confidential tone. "You see, my eldest is very nearly engaged and has been quite busy recently, so she might not have as much time. The others ... well, I think they would all be quite willing to spend some time showing you around."

The expression on Mr. Collins' face, betraying his mildly intense, though brief, cogitations, confirmed Mrs. Bennet's suspicion that he had come to Deimos Base to hunt for a wife. After all, she had reflected when her husband read her Mr. Collins' initial message, anyone coming to Deimos Base must have an ulterior motive, two-week vacation or not. And with the glowing reports of her daughters' beauty, where better to start a search?

For once, Mrs. Bennet had been completely correct. Though Mr. Collins hadn't said anything in his letter to Mr. Bennet about looking for a spouse, it had indeed been foremost on his mind. With Catherine DeBourgh and her only daughter on a two-week sojourn to the healing spa at New Bath in the Capella Aurigae system, he had a fortnight to begin -- and hopefully complete -- his search for an adequate female. As most of his Altairian year was given over to assisting his lofty benefactress, he had concluded, as per her suggestion, that choosing a suitable mate should be done efficiently and promptly and with as little dithering as possible. Knowing, as he did, that his second cousin lived on Deimos Base with five eligible daughters (all reportedly beauties with desirable genes), he quickly concluded that this should be his destination. An introduction, very little outlay in expenditures, and everything else that proceeded from the hospitality due a cousin would ease his way and make the search quite effortless.

And this little hiccough of the eldest being engaged -- or nearly so -- was no trouble in the slightest. He simply shifted his interests to the second eldest, and it was done. She seemed a sensible, hardy, nearly-as-beautiful-as-the-eldest young woman. Her white hair was a bit strange, but he was sure she could dye it. And her attention to detail, knowledge, and submission to her father's requests had been apparent when she completed his arrival and boarding requirements. No, she would do quite nicely, he concluded.

So it was that Elizabeth found her footsteps closely -- and constantly -- dogged by her increasingly annoying distant cousin. As she worked in the various areas of the base, moving frequently in an attempt to shake off the leech, she answered questions, deflected compliments, and struggled to refrain from strangling the man.

"I'm going to kill him, Charlotte," she said as she paced the length of the women's toilets, the only place she could think of where Mr. Collins wouldn't dare set foot. "If I have to hear one more effusive compliment about my 'usefulness' and 'activeness', I'm going to kill him."

Charlotte, who had been called to the lavatory as a sympathetic friend, laughed. "Oh, poor Lizzy -- besieged by men."

"Besieged is right. Though I think I'd rather take Mr. Darcy's silent glowers over Mr. Collins' over-attentiveness any day," Elizabeth said, folding her arms with a sniff.

"Hm. I think I'd take Mr. Darcy any way I could," Charlotte said with a wink. "Alas, he has eyes only for you."

"Gads. Why can't the man go away? And if you say one more word about Mr. Darcy being in love with me, I'll smuck you."

Charlotte held up her hands in mock surrender.

"Could you please take my cousin off my hands -- just for a few hours. I've got work backing up and with him in my hair I won't get anything done." When Charlotte hesitated, considering, Elizabeth went down on one knee and begged, "Please. I'll owe you, big time."

"I suppose I could take him with me and show him the kitchens," Charlotte said.

"As long as he doesn't ruin dessert."

"Demanding, demanding. I do a favor for you and it's never enough..."

Elizabeth waited until Charlotte had led Mr. Collins away before peeking her head out the door and making her escape down the hall towards the marine barracks. She had a bit of business with Colonel Foster and, with her cousin temporarily out of the way, decided now would be the best time to accomplish it. On the way, she unintentionally collected her marine-mad youngest sisters, as well as Jane, who had some outer-world correspondence to deliver in that section of the base.

As they were rounding a corner near the elevators, Lydia suddenly cried out, grabbed Kitty by the hand, and rushed forward. Jane and Elizabeth followed more sedately behind.

"It's good to see you, too," Captain Denny was saying to the two younger Bennets as the two approached the group. A young man Elizabeth had never seen before stood beside Denny, but unlike his friend was not dressed in the distinctive uniform of the space marines.

"This," the captain continued, gesturing to his friend, "is Lieutenant Wickham. He's just joined us here with a team doing some research on the qualities of our moon dust. Comparing it to the stuff on Phobos, or some rubbish."

"It is rubbish," Wickham rejoined. "Space rubbish, that is. And although it all may be too highly technical for your brain, Denny, some of us are very interested in it."

Denny laughed at that, and Lydia re-entered the conversation with a rather risqué remark, to which they both laughed harder. But Elizabeth's attention was diverted from her disapproval by the smooth hum of the elevator nearest them arriving on their floor. The door slid soundlessly open and Elizabeth spied Bingley and Darcy inside.

Bingley, his eyes alighting first on Jane, smiled widely and stepped out, his hands reaching out to grasp hers. "Miss Bennet! We were just on our way to Longbourn corridor to see you and thank you -- and of course, Miss Elizabeth -- for your help in getting us back to base so ably yesterday."

Jane demurred that, indeed, it wasn't so much her but her sister who had done the majority of the work, and that he had no cause to thank her. Bingley replied, saying that of course she should be thanked, for she had worked tirelessly to help her sister fix the vehicle. Elizabeth smiled at first at this interplay, but soon was arrested by a split-second occurrence between his friend and the new lieutenant.

Darcy had barely stepped out of the elevator and was doing his best to avoid gazing overlong at Elizabeth when his eyes alit on Wickham. That gentleman spotted him at the same moment, and Elizabeth was in the fortunate place to see both their reactions to the others' presence: one turned white, the other red. After a moment, Wickham nodded his head in acknowledgment and Darcy returned the salutation with a short, spasmodic nod of his own.

Elizabeth was intrigued -- first by the strange manner of greeting and secondly by the thought that these two men, so opposite on first impressions, should know each other. But she had no opportunity to discover how as Darcy turned again, pressed the button to call the elevator and, when the doors opened a moment later, stepped in. Bingley, seeing his friend was ready to go but unaware of the passing moment prior to it, apologized to Jane and said that they unfortunately had a meeting with William Lucas to attend. He disappeared into the elevator as it closed and, with the woosh of the elevator ascending, the scene ended.

The remaining group looked awkwardly at each other for a moment, uncertain how to proceed after that whirlwind entrance and exeunt by the two gentlemen. At last Lydia suggested they adjourn to a nearby canteen used most often by the officers near the barracks, and all but Jane, who still had correspondence to deliver, departed in that direction.

Here, at last, as they sat down in a spacious booth, did Elizabeth have her curiosity satisfied. "Do you know -- about how long has Mr. Darcy been staying on Deimos Base?" Wickham asked as he slid over slightly in the booth, effectively separating him and Elizabeth from the others by distance.

"About a month," Elizabeth replied. Then, unwilling to let the matter drop now it had been broached, "He owns one of the foremost bases in the Procyon system, I believe."

"He does," Wickham replied. "Quite an impressive base, and one that produces an easy twenty million credits a year for him. And I should know -- I've been closely connected with the Darcy family, and to Pemberly, nearly since birth."

He caught sight of her raised brows and shrugged. "We're not exactly close anymore, as I'm sure you might have gathered from the way we met earlier. Are you ... do you know him well?"

"As much as I ever want to," she replied. "I've spent several hours in his company, and I couldn't wait to get out of it. He's pretty much offended everyone by now. I don't know what it is people hate the most -- probably either his pride, his aloofness, or his arrogance."

He studied his hands. "I don't know if I should share my opinion of him," he said at last. "After all, I could hardly be called unbiased. But I will admit I'm not sorry to hear what you say. It doesn't happen often he's judged so squarely on his merit. The universe at large is generally blinded by his fortune and friends -- or afraid, perhaps, of his high society, of his perfect manners -- to see him as anything but what he chooses to be known as."

"Perfect manners! The little I know of him, I wouldn't have even begun to suspect that of him."

But Wickham only shook his head. After a moment of silence he said, more perhaps to himself than to her, "I wonder if he'll be staying here long."

"I don't think anyone knows. Not one of them has said anything about how long they'll be here. His friend seems eager to stay on, of course, but the rest of the party..." she trailed off. "His being here won't affect your staying, will it?"

Wickham replied that it would not, and that it was not he who would be driven away by Darcy. "If he chooses not to be in my company, that's his prerogative. We're not exactly what you might call 'friendly' now, but I'm not going to go out of my way to avoid him." He paused, considered, then continued: "It's a pity, really, that Darcy should have turned out the way he did. His father was a saint -- one of the best, most generous men who'd ever lived. For his sake, to respect his memory, I think I'd forgive Darcy anything."

Elizabeth was astonished, and more than interested to hear more, but did not know a tactful way to inquire further. Wickham, clearing his throat, now moved on to more general topics of the Marine Corps here at Deimos and of the history of the moon. To her questions, he declared himself delighted with everything he had seen so far of the base and its inhabitants.

"To be honest, it was the society here on Deimos that truly drew me to this study," he said. "From all my friend Denny had told me of the Marine Corps' quarters and of the excellent people here, I had been more than tempted to choose this over the other, perhaps more noteworthy but more isolated projects I was offered. My life has, of late, been a series of disappointments, and I don't do well in solitude -- I could never be a hermit. Field research was never my intention when I entered my career; I was supposed to be in academia. I was trained for it, really, and by this time I would have been well placed and on my way to gaining tenure if not for the, ah, gentleman we were speaking of earlier."

"Mr. Darcy!" Elizabeth breathed in amazement.

He confirmed her deduction with a nod. "The present Mr. Darcy's father, Reginald Darcy, was my godfather and my stepmother's brother. He had always taken an interest in me, especially as my father had served him as an accountant for many years. When I grew old enough for university, he sponsored me at the Academy, where he was a board member. He had written recommendations for me, had spoken with a few professors and the dean, and had actually paid for a portion of my graduate studies before he died unexpectedly. The astropedology professorship I had been promised fell vacant only a little while later, but without his support -- and with the direct opposition of his son -- it was given elsewhere."

"His opposition? But how could he do that? He's only one person -- surely you could have talked with other board members. Or sued -- wouldn't that have been illegal?"

Wickham shook his head. "There was just so much informality about it all that there was no way to prove that it was solely from his partiality that I had been denied the position. As well, he had drummed up just enough suspicion of my previous research -- cleverly, and without directly questioning my methods -- that any defense I might have built ran the risk of, if I failed to deflect his attack, reflecting even more badly on my reputation or on the reputation of the institution. What I can tell you with absolute honesty is that the professorship I was promised fell vacant, just as I finished my graduate studies, and that it was given to another person. And, frankly, I can't see I did anything to deserve it. Granted, I do admit I have a bit of a temper -- I may have said some things occasionally that revealed what I really thought of him ... but I can't think of anything worse. The long and short of it is simply that our personalities, the types of men we are, are too different. I can say without doubt that he hates me."

"That's ridiculous!" Elizabeth cried. "How could this still remain a secret? Especially when you consider how easily information spreads nowadays, how didn't this make the news? And how could everyone be still deceived by his character -- just look at Mr. Bingley. I can't imagine a man like him willingly being friends with someone who did that."

Wickham shrugged. "Mr. Darcy can please wherever he chooses. To the rich and powerful -- to people like himself -- he's the perfect gentleman. He can speak knowledgeably, can discuss the topics of the day with ease. To his equals he's a man apart: liberal-minded, just, even-tempered, honorable, and even well liked."

"But if this were made public?"

He shook his head. "That's something I would never do. I still respect his father too strongly to reveal what happened and dishonor his memory."

Elizabeth smiled at Wickham. Clearly, he was a man of good character -- someone who showed restraint and honor and respect. "Why would Mr. Darcy have acted like he did?" Elizabeth asked now, setting down her drink and leaning towards him. "How could he have acted so callously towards you, risking his own reputation to destroy yours?"

"Oh, I don't think there was ever any risk to himself," Wickham responded. "And with such an opportunity, with so little chance of reprisal, he could take his piece of flesh from someone he so thoroughly hated. I suspect, though I could never prove, that most of Darcy's hatred stems from his jealousy of me. We grew up together. My father quit a thriving practice on Earth to help build up the Darcy empire. And, especially after my father married my stepmother -- and even after her death -- my father and his were so close. When my father died, old Mr. Darcy took me in, offered willingly to provide for me, and loved me -- perhaps, too much, though I would never believe that a just man such as Reginald Darcy would love his son any less. But I can see that it might be hard to see that when you're so emotionally biased. His father's partiality, I think, wounded his pride."

"I can well believe that," Elizabeth said. "Mr. Darcy seems to have a surfeit of the emotion. But it seems ridiculous that he would have gone against his father's wishes simply out of spite. You speak of his pride being hurt, but I would think that very pride would have kept him from being so dishonest and disloyal."

"So you might think," he replied. "But we're all inconsistent at times -- jealousy is a strong emotion, and can overcome a lot of things."

Elizabeth thought about that for a moment, then said, "I'm surprised that a man like Mr. Darcy -- a man who would do such a thing, who is so full of pride -- would be accepted anywhere."

Wickham sighed. "You have to remember, pride is an essential part of the Darcy heritage; it may cause him to be ... aloof to those below him socially, but it's also probably the only thing that's brought him even close to virtue. He gives his money freely, especially to charity; he's welcoming; helps the poor and his people. He has a strong sense of family pride; not to disgrace the family name, bring shame upon his house, lose face -- however you might say it. And, especially with his sister, he's always had a strong brotherly love and affection for his sister. He's often said to be the best of brothers."

Elizabeth recalled the conversation in the Geo-5 with Miss Bingley and smiled. "I have, indeed, heard that. So I'll accept that his pride can occasionally have an advantage. But you mentioned Miss Darcy -- what's she like?"

A grimace crossed his face. "I wish I could say she was a nice girl -- I hate to speak badly of any Darcy -- but she's too much like her brother. Arrogant -- very proud. As a child, she had always been a good, kind girl; she had always been fond of me. But now..." he trailed off, shaking his head. "I hear she's grown up to be a very attractive young woman, getting closer to adulthood now, I think, and very accomplished. Since her father's death she's lived at Pemberley, I believe, where she has a private tutor and companion."

Elizabeth would have asked more, but at that moment Charlotte, followed closely by Mr. Collins, approached the table. With a new audience before him, Mr. Collins began speaking to the table at large about his experiences in the base kitchens and how vastly different they were from the DeBourgh compound's kitchens, and how the ovens here couldn't possibly even compare.

"Working hard, I see," Charlotte said wryly to her friend.

Elizabeth had the grace to blush. "I got sidetracked," she replied, standing up. "But you're right -- I should probably get back to what I was doing. Hopefully Colonel Foster is still in his office."

Wickham stood as well and offered to escort her there. Though she would have gladly accepted his company, she hadn't the chance to say so, as immediately everyone else at the table offered to accompany her in that direction, as well.

On the way through the halls of the barracks, Wickham leaned closer to Elizabeth and asked how her cousin was acquainted with the DeBourghs. She responded that he had lately gotten a position as administrative assistant to the company's owner.

"And she couldn't have bestowed the gesture on a more grateful recipient," Elizabeth said. "Mr. Collins has spoken of practically nothing since he came but the generous and lofty Catherine DeBourgh and her daughter, Anne. Though, I must admit that from what he's said I've gotten the impression less that the lady is an amiable philanthropist and more that she's a rich, pushy, arrogant busybody."

Wickham smiled. "I haven't met her in a number of years, but I believe I remember her much as you describe," he said. "You know, of course, that she's Mr. Darcy's aunt?"

Elizabeth looked at him in surprise, her features lighting up with a smile. "No! Really?"

"Indeed. And she's already petitioned for a waiver of the M-33 rule, so that they can unite the Darcy and DeBourgh empires in time-honored fashion."

She laughed. "So he'll marry his cousin? How perfect! But poor Miss Bingley -- she's completely out of the running."

He smiled, but at that moment they arrived at Colonel Foster's office. Elizabeth excused herself, asking Charlotte to escort Mr. Collins back to the Longbourn corridor while she finished up her work. The rest of the group departed as well, Lydia and Kitty dragging the two men on a tour of the "best parts of the base."

Later in the evening, after Elizabeth had had a little bit of time to mull over the information she was given earlier by Wickham, she reflected that perhaps she should check her sources. Catching sight of her sister Mary sitting in her room with the door open, reading papers at her desk, she popped her head around the door frame and asked, "Mary, what do you know of Lieutenant George Wickham?"

"Wickham?" Mary said, setting down her book and looking with curiosity at her sister. "I think I've heard that name before. ... Wait, is he a pedologist?"

When Elizabeth nodded, her sister sighed and said, "To be honest, I don't know much about him. I haven't read all of his papers -- not in my line, of course." Her brows came down. "And, quite frankly, his style is a bit breezier than I care to read. That always bothers me. This is science, not one of Lydia's fashion magazines."

"But he's fairly well regarded?"

Mary shrugged. "As far as I know." She paused. "Actually, now that you say that, I seem to remember something about him a few years ago -- a question about a paper he authored, or co-authored maybe, but I don't recall many details. There was never any big scandal or anything, just an article in one of the journals, addressing some inconsistencies in the results. Why?"

Elizabeth explained that she had met him while on her way to the barracks, and that he was here on Deimos to do some research, but Mary merely shrugged in uninterested dismissal and returned to her reading.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, could not get Wickham, and especially all that he had revealed about Darcy, out of her head. That Darcy was a snobbish and impolite bore she had known for some time, but that he could have been as evil as the lieutenant implied was a far leap from that -- and yet one that, especially with Mary's commendation of the latter man under her belt, Elizabeth was fully prepared to make.

"But, Lizzy, do you not think that there might have been some misunderstanding?" Jane was saying softly to her as they sat on the bunks in their room later that night. Elizabeth had shared with her the whole tale of Darcy's perfidy, but Jane could believe as readily that Bingley had been deceived in his friend's character as she could question the truth of a statement rendered by someone of such amiable appearance as Wickham -- that is to say, not at all. "I really don't know if we can blame either of them, can we, without knowing everything in the case. It paints Mr. Darcy in such a bad light, and I just can't believe that he could be so awful as to have treated his father's godson so horribly. Could he really be that cruel, that vindictive? And could his friends know his true character so little?"

"I can well believe it, with little effort," Elizabeth replied. "It is much more likely that Mr. Darcy -- someone as rich and well-connected as he is -- could whitewash his past than that Mr. Wickham invented such a story. He had every detail, every date and name and place ... and he was honest in his assessment; he acknowledged many of Mr. Darcy's good qualities, too. What good qualities he has, that is. Besides, if it's at all wrong, let Mr. Darcy tell his side of the story. No one's stopping him."

By Elizabeth's truculent expression, and as both had to work early the following day, the subject was then closed. But Jane still felt uneasy on the subject and during the long night after could only be certain that, if the story were proved correct, Bingley would be highly embarrassed if it were made public.

But Jane did not address the topic or her concerns with her sister the next morning or, indeed, at all the next day as they went about their business. And though it still weighed on her soul, she barely gave it much thought -- especially when Bingley himself appeared at the Bennets' suite and, by his very presence, drove all other thoughts out of her head. He had come to speak with Mr. Bennet about sponsoring a dinner and dance for five days hence on Deimos Day, the anniversary of the base's foundation. His intention was made known to the applause of the excited youngest Bennet sisters, who saw him now as something akin to a benevolent god. Never before had Deimos Day been so well celebrated. Most years featured only a special cake during the dinner hours or a banner or two hung outside the apartments of the more patriotic residents: everyone was soon greatly looking forward to this year's event.

Despite their enthusiasm, however, Kitty and Lydia could not encourage their father to give them leave to go to Earth to find appropriate outfits. They were instead forced to stay on Deimos Base and order their new shoes and skirts from a catalogue, griping bitterly about it the whole time.

Even Elizabeth, who for once felt a need to dress nicely, for a reason she didn't care to admit to herself, spent some of her own hard-earned credits to order a dress especially for the occasion. Her delighted anticipation of the event bubbled over so much that it led her to pose a lighthearted question to Mr. Collins about whether he would go to the dinner and dance though he was not a native Deimosian.

"Your scruples do you credit, Miss Elizabeth," Mr. Collins replied seriously. "I feel, however, what with the dance being sponsored by Mr. Bingley, who himself is not from this base, it would not be inappropriate for me to go. In fact, far from not attending," he continued, "I hope that all my fair cousins would be willing to grant me a dance during the evening. And I hope I can secure you, Miss Elizabeth, for the first," he said, leaning in and raising his brows suggestively.

Elizabeth leaned back, ruing her high spirits and Mr. Collins' choice of garlic bread for lunch. But she had no option but to reply in the affirmative, especially given the glaring look her mother was bending her way, promising retribution if she didn't.

One dance wouldn't be so bad, she told herself. It could be worse -- it could have been Mr. Darcy who'd asked.