?"Joanne nodded weakly, then managed to stand up straight again,recovering some of her color. She looked between the two of us and wavedher hand from ...ne side to the other. "Deborah, meet your namesake,Debbie Larranti." Nice to meet you, Deborah." I hugged her daughter in a Sappho greeting.Deborah's embrace was confused and hesitant, but I certainly couldn'tfault her for that.Joanne turned to me, eyes darting from side to side and up and down,taking in details of my face and the way I was. If we came across more Bugs, we could use their own tactics against them.“You doing alright, Raz?” I asked as she walked beside me.“What, this?” she asked as she gestured to her blood-stained coveralls. “This is nothing, those knives are tiny. I’ve had more serious cuts than this during play fights. Borealans heal fast, I’ll be fine.”“Thanks ... by the way,” I added.“For what?”“For saving my ass back there. If you’d been a second slower, my face would be looking like Vasiliev’s shoulder right. Something fell away and the helicopterseemed to vibrate and then the middle of the rotor shattered and one ofthe blades snapped off and hit parts of the fuselage. The blade musthave fractured a fuel line because the engine section at the rear of thecockpit caught fire and then the back half of the body exploded. Wewatched if fall into the sea immediately in front of Wanderer's bow andheard another bang, there was a cloud of smoke and then it went quiet."I told you they fell into the sea," I. “Yes! That kiss was like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I remember thinking that if only you weren’t gay, you’d be ideal to be my first. I can’t remember anything after that until I woke up this morning so that must have been when I fell asleep.” Joanna giggled. “I didn’t fall asleep during the kiss, did I? That would be unforgivable.”“No,” I said, opting to reassure her, “but it was soon afterwards.” Joanna sounded so definite about what she remembered that I didn’t think it worth challenging.