Having completed the solemn tour of his ship nearly half an hour ago—touring the ship before going into battle was a centuries-old tradition that he’d eagerly carried on ever since his first command—Captain Erickson stood alone on the forward observation deck and gazed out through the wall-sized transluminum window at the enormous task force that had assembled over the last nine days. Over the last twenty minutes or so he’d counted two hundred and nineteen ships floating out there, and those were just the ones he could see. All totaled, over a thousand Solfleet and Coalition heavies had come together for Operation Mass Eviction. How could the Coalition not emerge victorious employing such an overwhelming force? Even a few of the more space-worthy Tor’Kana vessels they’d rescued were involved in one way or another. A political necessity, he surmised. One with which he couldn’t disagree, too. After all, it seemed only right that as many Tor’Kana vessels as possible should be directly involved in the liberation of their own home system, no matter what role their condition might relegate them to play.
He gazed at the only one of them he could see, which also happened to be the only one of them intended to see direct combat during the campaign. The others weren’t nearly battle-ready enough to be sent into the fight, so they were going to fill supporting roles such as floating hospitals or resupply ships. He couldn’t remember its name, but looking at it, the first word that popped into his head was ‘conglomerate’. All four of its original jump nacelles, one of its fusion engine cowlings, and a large section of its forward hull had been lost in battle during the first Rosha’Kana campaign. The nacelles and cowling had since been replaced with the newest Solfleet models—their light blue-gray skin looked almost white against the vessel’s shimmering black coating—and the hull section had been replaced by a bright yellow-white emergency armor patch of Trindeah design. At a glance, the replacement parts looked more like a cluster of drifting debris than components of a larger vessel, which when he thought about it might actually have been an advantage.
Speaking of the Trindeah, theirs was by far the largest contribution to the task force—four hundred ninety-five ships, eighty-five of which were fighter carriers that also served well as battleships. Their design, in fact, was what Solfleet had based its battlecarrier project on. When the Trindeah agreed to support an operation, they really supported it. Hell, in a pinch they might have been able to pull this campaign off all by themselves.
As Sol’s closest neighbors, the three simian-like races of the Centaurian Alliance had also committed a large contingency of forces to the fight. Whether that was because they genuinely cared about their human allies or only because they knew that if Sol fell they’d likely be next, who could know for sure? Then again, who cared, as long as they were there? The Centaurian infantry fought in roughly platoon-sized units like large packs of angry wild animals and were real berserkers when it came to hand-to-hand combat. Erickson almost pitied the crew of any Veshtonn ship the Centaurians might happen to board during the upcoming battle.
“Bridge to Captain Erickson,” O’Connor’s voice called from the ceiling.
Erickson tapped his link. “Go ahead, Ensign.”
“We just received word from the task force commander, sir. It’s time.”
Time. Time to get underway. Time to go to war. “All right. I’m on my way.” He closed the channel and gazed out at the black sea of ships one more time. “And so it begins.”
Ten Days Later
Earth Standard Date: Saturday, 18 September 2190
Still hot and winded from her more strenuous than usual late evening workout—she usually limited herself to a few stretching exercises at night and saved the more vigorous stuff for the early morning—Commander Royer kicked off her sneakers as she double-locked her stateroom door behind her. She pulled off her socks as well and dropped them to the floor, then started to undress as she crossed to the room’s lone window, a small circular one that reminded her a lot of an old sea ship’s portal.
She was aware of course, as she dropped her sweat-soaked tee shirt to the floor and pulled off her shorts, that there wasn’t much to see from amidships in a civilian passenger liner in jumpspace. The stars had long since gathered into their distant rings of colorful light directly ahead of and behind the ship, and the only way she was going to see either one of them was by going up to one of the observation decks where she would no doubt also find a few dozen of her fellow passengers, no matter what time of day or night she went. And the pair of Solfleet escort cruisers that had accompanied them out of the Caldanra star system had split off and taken up their own positions ahead of and behind them just prior to the jump two days ago, so she wouldn’t see them, either.
No, no sea of stars in jumpspace. The resultant narrow streak of bright green light when a lone stray star or two occasionally whipped by was all the show she had to look forward to out there. Nevertheless, despite the field grade rank she wore and the position of leadership she held, she hadn’t been assigned to a ship’s cabin with a window of any kind in several years—traveling as a lowly nobody simply came with the job—so she intended to make the most of it while she had the chance, no matter how insignificant that ‘most’ might be.
As if on cue, a single bright green point of light whipped by, and another followed a few seconds after. Two at almost the same time—what a treat.
“So much for that,” she said aloud. She peeled off her sweat-soaked sports bra and panties, then picked up the rest of her clothes and stuffed everything into her laundry bag. Then she went into the bathroom—the lights flickered on automatically and came up to full brightness, their only setting—and stopped in front of the mirror.
“Oh my God,” she mumbled, startled by the sight of woman she found looking back at her. Several random locks of her pinned-up hair had fallen loose and were clinging to her exertion-reddened face. Her skin glistened under the mirror lights as if coated with baby oil, and rivulets of perspiration were running down between her breasts, over her abdomen, and into her damp pubic hair.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worked out so furiously. Thirty minutes of stretching, then an hour on the weight machine, followed by an hour of aerobics and a five mile run on the treadmill. Judging from her appearance she’d damn near killed herself, but it had sure as hell felt good at the time. Amazing how much energy a person could build up over a few weeks of forced celibacy, especially when that person was forced to spend part of her time with a beauty like Stefani. That sexy young thing had sorely tempted her on more than a few occasions during the week they’d spent working things out together. Intentionally, too, once or twice, but more often simply by happenstance, and she’d come real close to giving in a couple of times. But now that she was finally on her way home to Karen, she felt relieved—she was very relieved—that she hadn’t betrayed her trust.
She couldn’t wait to get back home.
She let down the rest of her hair and shook it out, then stepped into the bathtub, drew the curtain, and set the shower water for medium temperature and heavy flow. She would have loved to take a long, hot, soothing bubble bath, but she’d realized as soon as she saw the tub that it simply wasn’t big enough for her to stretch out and bathe in comfortably, even by herself, so that, too, was going to have to wait until she got home. Instead, she closed her eyes and stood motionless under the warm stream for a while before she started to soap up, and she spent that time thinking back over her previous week’s work.
She’d visited Sergeant Graves in the hospital two more times—first on Friday, two days after he mentioned his nightmares to her, and again on Sunday, two days after that—to try again to talk him into joining the agency, but he still hadn’t given in. She had thought she was wearing him down at one point when he asked her a question about the typical daily life of an Intelligence agent, but he’d suddenly regrouped and reinforced his resistance right after that. He’d even told her not to bother answering his question just seconds after he’d asked it, before she’d even had a chance to try. And then on Monday the doctors had released him from the hospital unexpectedly and sent him home on convalescent leave. She’d tried to talk to him there as well, but he’d refused to even answer his door.
Except for having taken Stefani O’Donnell into custody, it had appeared at that moment that her trip had been a complete waste of time. But then she’d experienced her epiphany. It had been at that very moment, while standing in vain at the sergeant’s front door and looking around at the apartment complex he lived in, that the initial idea for her admittedly underhanded scheme had first sparked to life in her devious mind.
Convinced as soon as it came to her that she could make it work, she’d sped back to the office and had gotten the ball rolling immediately. She’d called in every favor and had pulled every string she could in order to rush things through as fast as possible—she’d wanted to leave for home as soon as she could, after all—and when she’d contacted the admiral to update him on her progress, or rather the lack thereof, she’d conveniently ‘forgotten’ to mention anything about having found and apprehended Stefani O’Donnell, having already decided that it was better to provide him with legitimate grounds for deniability, just in case.
She only hoped that she could count on the Tarko City station chief, whom she’d left in charge of the whole operation, to comply with her explicate instructions—to report only to her and to keep his mouth shut otherwise.
She washed her hair and rinsed herself off, then turned off the water and stood under the dryer, combing her fingers through her hair until it was barely still damp. Then she stepped out of the tub and went back into the room.
She opened her underwear drawer and reached in, but then changed her mind. The room was warm and she was alone, so why bother wearing anything? She’d already had her dinner and her workout. She was in for the night and it wasn’t like anyone was going to come by to visit. She closed the drawer, then turned on the flatscreen monitor—the stateroom was little more than a passenger cabin, too small for a virtuavid unit—propped up the pillows, and sat back on the bed to find something to watch.
“Play.”
The screen lit up to reveal a familiar handsome young starship captain in spicy-mustard command gold sittinig at the equally familiar briefing room table aboard his ship, hands folded, his fingers interlaced. “They used to say if man could fly he’d have wings,” he calmly began. “But he did fly. He discovered he had to.” A somewhat older gentleman appeared on the screen for a moment, and then the captain returned and, briefly pointing his finger and waving his hand around for emphasis, continued, “Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn’t reached the moon, or that we hadn’t gone on to Mars and then to the nearest star? That’s like saying you wish that...you still operated with scalpels and sewed your patients up with cat gut like your great, great, great, great-grandfather used to. I’m in command,” he went on as the camera started slowly moving in closer. “I could order this,” he added as the music began, “but I’m not. Because...Doctor McCoy is right...in pointing out the enormous danger potential in any contact with life and intelligence as fantastically advanced as this, but I must point out that the possibilities, the potential...for knowledge and advancement is equally great!” The music grew louder and more dramatic. “Risk. Risk is our business. That’s what this starship is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her.”
“Change,” Royer said, sighing and rolling her eyes. Was there any place in the entire galaxy where that centuries-old program wasn’t still shown? It wasn’t a bad show and had certainly been a hit in its time, but it could be a bit melodramatic for her taste.
The picture flickered and changed to yet another famous chef on another studio kitchen set doing another cooking show. She rolled her eyes again. “Change,” she repeated.
The picture flickered again. Big, colorful, overstuffed furry animals bounced through a bright green meadow of carpet and paper flowers. “Change.”
“...back to the ten o’clock news,” the anchorman was saying. “I’m James F. Alexander.”
Royer glanced up at the wall clock. 2040 hours. So it was a recorded rebroadcast, at least a day old.
“If you’re just joining us and missed our top story, don’t worry, because tonight our top story is also our only story. The regular news will be broadcast one hour later than normal so that we might bring you this very special report.
“To summarize for those of you who have just tuned in, several sources have reported to I-P-N that less than thirty-six hours ago a Coalition task force comprised of over one thousand Solfleet and allied warships invaded the Rosha’Kana star system in a massive counterattack aimed at pushing out the Veshtonn forces that invaded and subsequently occupied that system approximately two and a half months ago. No Central Command officials could be reached for comment as they are understandably quite busy, but while we don’t yet have any official reports pertaining to what we understand to have been dubbed ‘Operation Mass Eviction,’ we do have with us tonight, Retired Major General...”
“Off,” Royer said, more annoyed than she should have been. The screen went dark and silence filled the room. While she honored the service of all retirees, she’d grown tired of hearing them guess about what might be going on in this or that theater of battle based solely on their own previous war experiences. While a very few of them no doubt still had high level connections to various field commanders and could report on events with at least some basis of fact to back them up, the vast majority of them didn’t, and their analyses and predictions almost always ended up being way off the mark in the end. And as far as the various all-news networks went, I-P-N was easily the most untrustworthy of them all in the first place.
She hadn’t really wanted to watch anything anyway.
So the fight to save the Tor’Kana was finally underway, she reflected as she yawned and stretched. Wow. Not even twenty-one hundred hours yet and she was tired already. “I must be getting old,” she told herself. God willing, this campaign would be a quick one and would end in victory with minimum loss of Coalition lives. Then, with all need for the ‘Timeshift Resolution’ eliminated, perhaps she and the admiral could instead send their agent, whoever that agent might be, back in time with orders to concentrate his or her efforts only on finding Günter and bringing him home.
She yawned again, so decided she might as well go to sleep. After all, it wasn’t like she had anything better to do. All she needed to do was to get up, turn down the sheets, and then climb into bed. She lay there for a moment or two longer, intending to do just that, but instead drifted off to sleep on top of the blankets.
* * *
Her long platinum hair fluttered freely in the fresh evening breeze blowing in off the open sea and cooled her bare, suntanned skin. As she strolled along the unspoiled beach’s hard wet sands, holding Karen’s soft, warm hand in hers, small waves—just minor swells that rose above the smooth surface of the tranquil sea—succumbed to the shallow depths and rolled up onto the beach with a sound like the tinkling of crystalline wind chimes, lapping at her feet and chilling her toes with salty foam. The swollen orange-red sun painted a glowing rainbow across the distant clouds as it slowly sank into the sea beyond the indistinct horizon, bathing Karen in a soft golden glow that enhanced her radiant beauty. Somewhere off in the distance seagulls screeched for reasons known only to the gulls themselves.
“Our world is so beautiful,” Karen said, her melodic tone like a tender song in Liz’s ear.
Liz stopped walking, and Karen with her, and turned to her. “Not so beautiful as you.”
Karen gazed at her through those gentle eyes and smiled her warm, loving smile. “I so love you, Liz,” she said.
Liz stepped closer, touching her breasts to Karen’s, and kissed her softly.
She felt suddenly as though she were falling and she opened her eyes.
The bed had just dropped right out from under her, but was fortunately still there to catch her after she bounced off the ceiling.
“What the hell?” she shouted, instantly awake. She rolled off the bed but had barely taken a step toward the bureau—if she was going to be tossed around the room like a rag doll, she wanted to put some clothes on first—before the vessel rumbled and she found herself falling sideways toward the far wall. She slammed into it with a solid thud and a sharp pain shot through her right shoulder, and she finally realized as she collapsed to the floor what was happening.
The ship had come under attack.
She tried to stand up, but the deck suddenly shot upward with another clap of rumbling thunder and swatted her like an insect, sending her tumbling backward through the air. She crashed feet first into the wall several feet above the bed, then fell to the bed and quickly grabbed hold of the mattress and held on for dear life while the thunderous barrage continued incessantly and the ship pitched and rolled like an ocean liner on an angry sea.
She wasn’t necessarily afraid to die, but the thought of leaving Karen behind crushed her.
Then again, the chances of that happening as a result of this attack, realistically, were slim to none. Despite the attack’s apparent ferocity, she knew the assailing vessel or vessels had to be relatively small and lightly armed—probably nothing more than an enemy deep recon patrol gone astray. Otherwise the liner and everyone aboard it would have been reduced to space flotsam already. All she had to do was hold on tight for a few more minutes. Their escorts would put an end to the attack, and to the attackers, soon enough.
Her biggest concern, aside from the fact that members of the ship’s crew would likely find her unconscious and buck naked before she ever woke up on her own if she happened to lose her grip, was that if the attack forced the liner to drop out of jumpspace, then it would take them a god-awful long time to reach another jump ring. They’d likely spend the next several weeks cruising through interstellar space at sublight. Perhaps months if current events prevented the fleet from committing sufficient resources to a search, which with Operation Mass Eviction having just begun they very likely would.
Admiral Hansen was still finding it difficult to concentrate on his book. He had hoped, though he’d had his doubts, that once Heather finally turned off her videogame and went to bed, which she’d done more than an hour ago, it would get at least a little bit easier. But it hadn’t. Thoughts of the events unfolding in the Rosha’Kana star system were persistently preoccupying his mind, distracting him from everything else, and he was repeatedly finding himself having to reread the pages at least once and sometimes twice in order to follow the story.
He’d arranged with the Joint Chiefs to receive at least one campaign update per day, two if possible, throughout the duration of Operation Mass Eviction, which had finally commenced two days ago. The first of those updates had come at 0839 hours on Thursday, barely an hour after the first shots were fired, and he hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything else since.
The task force had taken eight days to reach the besieged system. Eight long, anxiety-filled days to complete a voyage that normally took just a little over two. Even a massive flotilla the size of that task force could have done it in less than three, had they simply jumped directly to the system’s inner planets, but that of course would have been much too risky. Unnecessarily risky. All of the contingent commanders, human an non-human alike, had agreed on that point without debate. None of the advance recon scouts they’d sent in had been heard from—they were all missing and currently presumed lost—so they’d had no way of knowing what awaited them around the twin Tor worlds. Consequently, the task force had jumped back into normal space while still several days’ travel outside the system and had cruised in on inertia alone under blackout conditions and strict communications silence until they made contact with the enemy.
That first enemy contact had reportedly been a two-ship scouting party. As soon as the enemy had reacted overtly to their presence, the entire task force had powered up and swarmed into the inner system to engage. But as it had turned out, those scouts had only been the tip of a very large and deadly spear. Several dozen previously undetected Veshtonn capital ships had appeared almost instantly and seemingly out of nowhere and had come to their defense, and in the ensuing confusion the scouts had escaped. According to the latest update, no one on the Coalition side had yet determined in what direction they’d fled, and given that the entire task force was now fully involved in combat operations, they likely never would.
Hansen sighed. “Damn it,” he muttered. He’d just reached the bottom of the same page for the third time and he still had no idea what he’d just read.
“Excuse me, Nick?” Hal’s voice called from the terminal.
Hansen closed the book and dropped his hands to his lap. So much for reading. Whenever Hal called him at home... “What is it, Hal?” he asked.
“I’m sorry to bother you at home at this hour, especially on a Saturday evening, but you have a priority message coming in from the S-I-A station commander in Tarko City on Cirra.”
Hansen set his book aside and got up, then went over and sat down at his terminal. “Put it through, Hal,” he said.
“Admiral Hansen,” the nondescript commander began the instant his image appeared on the screen. “I apologize for sending you a recording instead of reporting to you live, but I wanted to get Search and Rescue operations spun up immediately.”
Search and rescue! What the hell...
“As I’m sure you’re aware, someone you know well came to see us recently. That person departed this location two days ago to return to her point of origin. Approximately thirty-five minutes before I recorded this message, all contact with that person’s vessel and both of its escorts was abruptly lost. Now, for all we know, the problem might be nothing more than a simple communications malfunction. There’s been no indication of enemy contact, but we’re not taking any chances. I’ll notify you immediately with any news. Out.”
The screen went dark.
Hansen drew a deep breath and exhaled long and loud as he sat back. Then he rested his elbow on the arm of his chair and his head in his hand. Commander Royer. Liz. A pair of Veshtonn scouts had escaped the task force’s assault, and now Liz’s ship had gone missing in the same general vicinity. S&R operations were most likely already underway, but until they found something no one would even know if she and all those hundreds of others onboard were alive or dead. And worst of all, there was absolutely nothing he could do to make a difference.
But there was one thing he had to do, and soon, before the story broke on the news. He had to go tell Karen that her wife’s vessel was missing. Liz wouldn’t want her to hear it on the news first, either. No, she’d want Karen to be told in person, right away, and would want him to be the one to tell her.
Five Days Later
Earth Standard Date: Thursday, 23 September 2190
All Dylan could do was stand and watch while the compound around him twisted and bent at impossible angles, growing strangely more warped and distorted and surreal as the seconds ticked by impossibly slow. Shrinking and stretching, blurring and fading from view, like an underwater world seen from above the rippling surface of a crystal clear sea. It suddenly dawned on him then that the inescapable hell in which he found himself was nothing more than a horrible dream. He clung fervently to that small spark of consciousness and fought his way back. Fought to escape the terror of the chaotic hell that is war, and to escape from that hideous, blood-thirsty demon that had again invaded his nightmares. Finally, the din of combat began to fade, drowned out by the peace and quiet of the real world.
He relaxed his white-knuckled grip on the sweat-dampened blankets, and as he slowly and repeatedly flexed his fingers to work the cramps out, he tried to visualize the creature in his mind. But with each passing moment the fleeting memory of its alien form faded further and further into oblivion, just as it always did.
He drew a breath and sighed. What was it? What the hell was it? Why couldn’t he ever remember? In his nightmares the creature was as real as the bed he lay in, but when he awoke, nothing. It was just gone, as if it had never existed at all.
But it had existed, and he knew that it was still there, still lurking somewhere within the realm of his subconscious. And he knew that it would return once again to destroy him the next time he slept. It always returned.
So what the hell was it? Where had it come from? It wasn’t there, in the real battle. After two weeks of almost daily counseling, at least he could be sure of that much. Where then? What dark and haunted chamber of the mind could have spawned such a demon, this monster of the disturbed subconscious that could erase all memory of its appearance from its own creator’s consciousness? And why? Why was it after him? Even the new doctors who had come in and taken over his psychological care after he told that S.I.A. woman about his nightmares hadn’t figured that one out yet.
Doctors. What a joke. Psychologists and psychiatrists. Quacks, every damn one of them. Professional doubletalkers. What right did they have to call themselves doctors? They didn’t hold peoples’ lives in the palms of their hands. They couldn’t replace a blind man’s eyes or reattach a severed limb, or cut people open, fix whatever was wrong, and then sew them up again. What did they know? Absolutely nothing. Given a choice he’d stop going to his bi-daily sessions in a heartbeat. Hell, he hadn’t wanted to start them in the first place. He’d never liked the idea of someone poking around in his head as though he were some kind of lab animal to be experimented on. He didn’t like it at all.
But of course, he hadn’t been given a choice. He’d been ordered to go. Regulations. Any service member who experienced some sort of traumatic event was required to undergo a series of psychological evaluations and be certified fit for duty before being allowed to return, assuming he or she was physically able to return. Any service member who experienced a traumatic event. Obviously, that included anyone wounded in combat, and right now he was that anyone. But why did that certification process have to take so damn long?
He checked himself. He was doing it again—dwelling on his unfortunate circumstances and making himself angry. It was a pointless exercise, not to mention a self-defeating one, and would only serve to worsen an already bad headache. Hell, he’d been wounded just three and a half weeks ago. And besides, no matter how bad things might be, there was always somebody somewhere for whom things were a lot worse. His mother, God bless her insight, had told him that many times when he was a small child, and he had never forgotten it.
He should call her. He usually tried to contact her at least once a month, but he hadn’t spoken to her since before the last FTX six weeks ago. She might be worried.
He lay still for a few more minutes, listening for the rain that had been falling steadily for the last few days, but hearing nothing. Then he rolled his throbbing head across the sweat-soaked pillow, squinting hard against blinding shafts of sunlight that shone down through the quad-pane skylight like four proton beams aimed directly into his eyes. But squinting alone proved not to be enough and the painful brightness still forced him to turn back to the wall. At least the sun was shining for a change. And thankfully, for the first time in days he didn’t have any appointments with that team of doctors who’d been assigned to his case, medical or otherwise.
He forced himself to open his eyes again, blinking repeatedly until they finally grew used to the sunlight. Then he drew a deep breath and held it, steeled himself, and exhaled sharply with a grunt as he rolled over onto his side, grimacing against the anticipated pain that shot through his shoulder like the energy pulse that had blown it apart. He dropped his feet to the thickly carpeted floor and sat up quickly to take the pressure off, but that only amplified his discomfort as daggers of sharp pain stabbed through his torso.
Hesitantly at first, he drew several more deep, labored breaths, exhaling more slowly with each successive one until his ribs finally started to regain some of their flexibility. He closed his eyes and continued the exercise for several minutes, just as Marissa had taught him, until his heart rate decreased and the throbbing between his temples eased. But the moment he opened his eyes again that throbbing resumed once more.
He sighed. Why did he even bother to try? He’d told himself at least a hundred times that without the formal training that only a live Tor’Kana Priest Adept could provide—training that Marissa had been fortunate enough to have received before she entered the service and had tried to pass on to him—he’d never master even their most basic mental healing disciplines.
“Thanks for trying, Marissa,” he said aloud to the empty room.
Marissa. He wished she could be there with him now to share his bed and wondered if he’d blown his chances with her for good. Despite the fact that he routinely slept alone for weeks at a time in the field, he’d come to realize over the last ten nights that he didn’t particularly like doing the same thing at home. He was used to sleeping with Carolyn, and the bed felt empty and very lonely without her.
He didn’t love Marissa—not that way. He never had. That much he knew for sure. But he did care about her and he already missed her terribly. If only he’d given in to her advances and divorced Carolyn a long time ago. Maybe things would have turned out differently for them. Maybe, given time, he could have fallen in love with her and built a life with her. Now it was probably too late. She was gone. She was out of the fleet, back home with her family somewhere in L.A. He’d called her once, but their conversation had felt strangely awkward and forced.
At any rate, as far as the Cirran mental disciplines were concerned, she’d been a patient teacher, and a pretty good one, too, considering that she’d been little more than a novice herself. Despite his lingering feelings of discouragement he’d grown noticeably better at employing the first discipline over the last several days. Nevertheless, his mind having finally conceded this round of the battle of wills to his body, he reached for the pill bottle on the nightstand to his right—he tried not to over-extend but inflicted more pain upon himself just the same—and dispensed a Liferin tablet into his hand. But rather than just toss it into his mouth he hesitated, stared down at it, until it gradually faded from view.
* * *
“Thank you, Corporal,” he said as he watched the little white tablet already beginning to dissolve in his sweaty palm. “You’re a life saver. My head is really killing me.”
“You should have asked me for one a lot sooner.”
With a little more effort than it usually required, Dylan filled his hot, pasty mouth with warm saliva and tossed the pill to the back of his throat and swallowed. Then he said, “I thought you didn’t carry these things anymore.”
“Never hurts to have a backup plan.”
“Good point.”
“Anyway, that’ll fix you right up.”
“I hope so.”
“Did you at least try the discipline?”
Dylan nodded...slightly. “Only about half a dozen times since we left. It worked a little bit, but this one’s a major skullquake.”
“Aw, come on, Sarge. You oughtta know by now size doesn’t matter.”
* * *
He was smiling, he realized. He was sitting on the edge of his bed and staring down at the tablet in his hand, smiling. God he missed her. He tossed the tablet into his mouth, swallowed, and waited a few moments for it to take effect. Then, feeling almost like a new man, he tossed the warm blankets aside and stood up, creating a breeze that chilled his bare, sweat-coated skin. He raised his arms gingerly toward the ceiling—he could smell the sweat in his armpits—and carefully stretched every muscle from head to toe, then limped into the bathroom to shave and take a sorely needed shower.
* * *
He set the shower for medium-warm, heavy flow, then stepped into the stall and stood still as a statue under the pulsating stream.
He cupped his rough, dry hands under the soap dispenser and held them there until the creamy white fluid overflowed and oozed down the length of his forearms.
He lathered up.
“Finally, to be clean again,” he mumbled. “Hey, Kenny!” he called out. “You in here?”
“Yeah!” the answer came.
“I told you I was still a white man under all this dirt!”
“I’ll call my great-grandfather for you! Maybe he can help!”
He laughed.
He heard the door to the next stall slam closed with a sharp crack. Was maintenance ever going to adjust the tension on that thing? He heard Marissa humming a soft melody that he didn’t recognize. When she turned the water on the sound drowned her out, but then her haunting melody exploded into a reverberating moan of such ecstasy that everyone in the showers, and probably in the locker room as well, had to have heard it.
“Oh!” she cried out, sounding as though she were on the very brink of orgasm, eliciting assorted snickers and various comments. “Oh yes! Yes! Oh, it feels so good!”
The snickering graduated into open laughter.
Comments followed. Jokes. Profanities. Someone over-stepped their bounds. He said something to stop that in its tracks.
He dropped his arms to his sides and just stood there shaking his head. “I think I’ll just stay in here forever,” he mumbled.
“Great! I’ll stay with you.”
* * *
He wished she were with him now. But of course, he couldn’t really stay in the shower forever. His medical leave would end in a few more weeks and he’d have to report back for duty, provided the medical doctors and doubletalkers alike all cleared him as he’d been told to expect they probably would. When that time came he’d return to duty gladly and without regret. What’s more, he’d return with renewed enthusiasm. He missed being there. He was proud of his service and had every intention of continuing to serve, despite what had happened to him. It was the only thing in his entire adult life that he’d ever done right.
But for now he was still on medical leave and it would probably be a good idea to go outside and enjoy the nice weather while it lasted.
He rinsed himself off, turned off the water, and stood under the warm air dryer until his pale skin was dry and his dark brown hair barely felt damp. Then he stepped out and wiped the bottoms of his feet on the mat, and as he walked back into the bedroom he realized that he wasn’t limping very much anymore and that the pain in his ribs was all but gone. True, he had taken the Liferin a little while ago, but despite its strength to cure headaches it had never quite deadened his other aches and pains so completely before. Perhaps those long, painful hours of physical therapy he’d been putting in were finally doing some good after all.
As he had done every morning since coming home from the base hospital, he stood naked in front of the full-length mirror to examine his battered body. His left thigh was still slightly discolored, but at least it had finally shrunk down to near-normal size. His lower chest and sides, though still pretty tender, weren’t covered in bruises anymore. His shoulder still hurt when he flexed or stressed it—or rolled onto it in bed—but it, too, was healing nicely. In fact, except for some slight redness, it looked as if it hadn’t even been injured, let alone blown to dust.
He leaned closer to the mirror and scrutinized his left eye, comparing it to his right. Except for a hint of redness and swelling along the outer edges of the socket where the shattered bone had been replaced, the bruising there had faded as well. His doctors had assured him that it was only temporary, and in fact he almost couldn’t see it now. That pleased him, because at the rate he was healing he’d be as good as new by the time he returned to duty. Physically at least.
But what about psychologically? He stared deeply into his reflection’s eyes. He thought again of that mysterious demonic creature that came to him in his nightmares intent on bringing about his ultimate destruction. Dealing with the heavy losses that his squad had suffered in that battle was difficult enough, but the stubborn persistence of that demon haunting his subconscious mind? What could it possibly mean?
He blinked, repeatedly, snapping himself out of it. Why the hell was he still so fixated on that creature? It was fast becoming less of a fixation and more of an obsession. The damn thing already lurked about at will in his subconscious, and that was enough. He wasn’t about to let it intrude on his conscious mind as well.
He reached for the comb on top of his bureau and ran it through his hair, which had grown quite a bit longer since he was wounded than the regulations of his particular branch of Solfleet allowed. Of course it was longer. He hadn’t had a haircut in over a month and a half. Much longer and it might actually lay right, he thought with a grin.
He tossed his comb back down on his bureau, but as he started turning away from the mirror he noticed something that, when he was just a few years younger, he’d thought he’d never have to worry about, and he quickly turned back. Growing quickly disappointed with the out-of-shape figure who stood before him, he reached up and gently pinched the beginnings of a most unwelcome pair of love handles. Never in his adult life had he ever let himself go, and yet there it was, a fatty belt of unwanted flesh. The beginnings of the proverbial spare tire. He sighed, knowing that any Marine Corps NCO worth his training, especially one who served in Special Operations, should never allow such a thing to happen.
* * *
He stood naked in front of the full-length mirror on the wall to look himself over. As usual, he felt generally pleased with what he saw. His muscles weren’t particularly large like Sergeant Running Horse’s—certainly nothing like a bodybuilder’s—but they were well defined, hard and strong, more like those of an accomplished martial artist.
* * *
The sooner he could get back to his strict workout regimen—the sooner he could look into the mirror and see that perfectly conditioned Ranger looking back at him again—the better.
With one final glance into his reflection’s eyes, a hard glance that served to tell him just how disgusted he really felt about his appearance now as compared to then, he stepped over to his bureau and opened the top two drawers. He pulled on a comfortable pair of black hiking shorts and his favorite lounging around shirt—an old black, white, and orange hockey jersey that had been worn by #21, Steve Smith, first line centerman and captain of the once again two-time Stanley Cup Champion Philadelphia Flyers.
Though he’d been born in Maine, Dylan had grown up in Philadelphia’s western suburbs, so he was a life-long Flyers fan. He’d followed them for as long as he could remember. Unlike baseball, which was only still played for nostalgia sake in a few small cities, professional hockey had withstood the test of time with relatively little change. Beyond Earth, of course, its popularity couldn’t hold a candle to that of the Coalition’s Professional Treece League or the Galactic Games, but it was still a great sport, his favorite by far, and he tried never to miss a game when the local Earth affiliated network happened to fit one into its programming schedule.
He grabbed his watch and strapped it around his left wrist as he padded through the dimly lit living room and into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Compared to the soft aquamarine carpet that warmed the rest of his apartment, the kitchen’s bare white floor felt cold and hard beneath his feet.
* * *
After two weeks of spending every day and most of the nights in thick, sweat-absorbent field socks and heavy combat boots, the smooth, cool plasticrete steps that led from the basement gym and locker/shower facilities back up to the first floor felt like blocks of soothing ice beneath his bare feet. But regulations prohibited going barefoot in the barracks’ common areas, so as he reached the top of the staircase he paused to pull on his old, worn leather sandals.
* * *
No sandals, socks, or anything else would cover his feet this morning, old and worn or otherwise. He did have an old pair of wool-lined house slippers kicking around somewhere, but he never bothered to put them on anymore, now that Carolyn wasn’t around to nag him about it. He’d never liked them. They made his feet sweat. He preferred to go barefoot.
He took out his favorite coffee mug—the Military Police/Security Forces black and gray ceramic one with the United Earth Federation banner emblazoned on one side and the royal blue, gold, and silver Solfleet insignia badge on the other, which he’d been given upon his first ever reenlistment as a token of his service—and filled it nearly to the brim with the rich dark brew that he preferred, then sauntered back into the living room. He threw open the curtains and had to shade his eyes against the bright sunlight that suddenly flooded the room. As usual, the faded house plants seemed to perk right up.
Faded? Yes, he noted, inspecting a few of the plants nearest to him more closely. The colors in their leaves were substantially more faded then he’d ever seen them before. In fact, they were dull. Some were even turning brown and withering at the tips. He’d have to remember to water them soon. He hadn’t done that since...when? He couldn’t even remember. Oh well. What did it matter, anyway? Perhaps when he finished his coffee. Speaking of which...
He sipped gingerly—it was still too hot to gulp—savoring its pure flavor and rich aroma. He didn’t care what the manufacturers of their field rations claimed regarding the quality of their product. In his opinion, even an average fresh-brewed coffee beat their instant concoction any day of the week. He swished it around in his mouth for several heavenly seconds before he finally swallowed.
He opened the sliding glass door and walked out onto the deck, stepped up to the railing and gazed down into the garden.
* * *
Except for Marissa, it was the most beautiful sight that he had seen in the last two weeks.
Short as it had been, the FTX had seemed like one of the longest, most grueling ones he’d ever been a part of. Two weeks, bivouacked high up on the barren, hard, dusty gray-faced slopes of the western range. The nights had been bitterly cold, the days almost oven-like. But now, finally, he was home, breathing in the minty, pine-scented air and gazing down at the lush, living garden, enjoying some much needed peace and quiet.
“You’re home early,” Carolyn said as she stepped out onto the deck behind him, pulling her bathrobe on around her. She made it sound as if it were some kind of miracle.
“We cleaned most of our gear in the field as soon as we broke camp last night,” he told her. “All we had to do when we got back to the base was put everything away. We knocked out our leadership debriefing and got released by about four-thirty this morning.”
A kiss to greet her, failed.
“In that case you should have been home over two hours ago, shouldn’t you?”
Accusation. Another argument, about Marissa of course. Then...
“Want some coffee?”
Empathy? Surprising. Why?
What had she just asked? Did he want some coffee? He nodded.
She went inside. He stepped away from the railing and stretched out on a chaise lounge.
He sat in silence and waited for his coffee.
* * *
Sounds of the world around him broke the silence and intruded on the realm of memory, pulling Dylan back to the here and now. One of those sounds, the wheels-on-rail squeal of a poorly maintained sliding door, briefly drowned the others out. He looked up to see who it was who’d inadvertently encroached on his solitude.
Across the courtyard the young woman who had moved into the apartment directly opposite his about a week ago stepped out onto her deck and let the door slide closed behind her. She was wearing the tan utility jumpsuit of Solfleet’s naval personnel, which surprised him. He recalled catching a brief glimpse of her in the parking lot the day she arrived, but she’d been wearing civvies then and he’d thought she was a teenager—the daughter of colonists perhaps, or of a fellow service member newly stationed in the area, a high school senior at the oldest—even though he hadn’t seen anyone else with her at the time. He certainly hadn’t thought her old enough to be in the service herself.
But she obviously was in the service, and that presented some interesting possibilities. Perhaps he hadn’t seen anyone with her that day because there was no one with her. Perhaps she was single and unattached and lived there by herself. And perhaps, if he played his cards right, she might just share his bed and give him the companionship he was yearning for.
Curious, he ducked back inside, took his binocs from the shelf where he kept them, and held them to his eyes for a better look.
Yes, she did look young, but not quite as young as he’d remembered. She had to be at least nineteen or twenty. Still barely more than a girl, but old enough to make a move on without having to worry about any moral or legal ramifications. And she was very pretty—a fact that had not escaped him that day in the parking lot—with long blond hair and sapphire blue eyes.
She was wearing the insignia of Communications on her right collar and the chevrons of a crewman first class on her sleeves, but her hands looked soft, her nails manicured and polished to a high gloss. Certainly not the hands of someone who spent her duty hours setting up remote field-communications sites. Probably a clerk of some sort. Her belt hung unfastened and loose at her waist and her Solfleet insignia badge was noticeably absent. Apparently, she had a little time to kill before she had to leave for duty.
Peering past her into that small portion of her apartment’s interior within his field of view, Dylan saw no signs of anyone else’s presence. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean that she lived alone. She still might have a roommate or even a husband who simply wasn’t there at the moment. Or one who was there and was just somewhere out of view. He’d have to keep an eye on things for a while to be sure.
She leaned forward and rested her elbows on the railing, then sipped from the tall ice-filled glass of dark amber drink that she was holding. She gazed down into the garden, just as Carolyn had so often done before.
Carolyn again. How long was her lingering specter going to haunt him? Longer than the demon of his nightmares, he was willing to bet.
A thought suddenly occurred to him, and as mean-spirited as the idea seemed on the surface, he had to wonder if there might not actually be some truth to it. Perhaps that creature was nothing more than a subconscious representation of his x-wife.
* * *
She was just standing there, leaning against the deck railing with the breeze blowing gently through her auburn hair and the early morning sun shining through her thin white nightgown, silhouetting her athletic body. She was a vision of beauty—a vision that served to remind him of what it was that had attracted him to her in the first place.
He approached her from behind. He wrapped his arms around her slender waist and gently pressed against her as he kissed the nape of her neck. “Good morning,” he said as warmly and pleasantly as he could. To his surprise she responded in kind, resting her hands on his and welcoming his loving touch. But when he kissed her again, she grasped his wrists and gently freed herself.
“Don’t get carried away,” she said as she stepped away from him. “Just because we had a nice dinner and I let you fuck me last night, doesn’t mean I’m not still upset.”
He’d thought that he and Carolyn had gone a long way last night toward finally starting to heal their ailing relationship, and he’d decided then that no matter what, he was not going to say good-bye with another argument.
“Besides,” she continued, staring down at the garden. “You don’t have time for that. You have to go.”
“I still have a few minutes.”
“You don’t want to be late.”
“I’m not going to be late!”
“Don’t you yell at me!” she snapped back, glaring at him. “I’m not one of your little tin soldiers you can scold whenever you want to!” She turned her back on him and said, as if to dismiss him from her world completely, “See you when you get back.” She sounded disappointed at the prospect.
He shook his head in disgust again, waved her off, and went back inside without another word. He huffed at his own stupidity. He’d thought they’d made love last night. She obviously had her own way of looking at it. He grabbed his shirt and beret off the back of his chair and headed out.
Minutes later, as he tore down the road in his sleek red sports car on his way to the base, he glanced at the bright gold band on his left ring finger and made a mental note to take it off and secure it in his locker when he arrived at the barracks.
He sighed. Despite their problems, he’d never taken his wedding ring off before. Come to think of it, he’d never even thought about taking it off—at least not seriously. Not even in combat, when he probably should have. Did the fact that he’d decided to do so now necessarily mean anything significant? Had he also decided, perhaps, without even realizing it until this very moment, that Carolyn just wasn’t worth the effort anymore? Was his rocky marriage finally coming to an end after almost eight years?
* * *
Yes, it was. Or rather it had been at the time, although he’d had no idea then just how soon that end would come. Or under what circumstances. But it had come and now he was a single man again.
A ring of skin so pale that it looked almost white by comparison still circled his finger where he had worn his wedding band. He stroked it with his thumb, unconsciously—a habit he’d formed without even realizing it, as thoughts of Carolyn slowly faded.
He picked up his binocs again and looked back across the courtyard. The girl was still there, still leaning on her railing and sipping from her glass, which she had nearly emptied. She’d stripped off her uniform and had folded the bottom of her tight black tank top up nearly to her breast line, baring her slender midriff. When he’d spotted her a few minutes ago he’d figured that she was getting ready for duty. Obviously, he’d been wrong.
He gazed longingly at her. Thoughts of Marissa and Carolyn might have faded to their place in the back of his mind, at least for now, but the mood they had invoked within him hadn’t faded at all. He felt anxious, filled with sexual tension, and the sight of this beautiful girl wearing nothing but her fleet-issue underwear only compounded that anxiety.
She tossed back the last of her drink then grabbed up her clothes and went back inside. “Nice,” Dylan mumbled, staring at her backside until the door closed behind her.
He lowered his binocs and wondered what her name might be, where she came from, and what her assignment was. Assuming that she did in fact live alone, should he go over there and introduce himself? Welcome her to the neighborhood? If he did, how would she react? Would she just smile and thank him politely or would she invite him into her apartment for a little while? Or would she tell him to get lost and leave her alone? That was always a possibility as well. But if the former, might he stand a chance of coaxing her into bed?
He let his imagination wander for a few more moments, then scolded himself for doing so. Wanting to take a beautiful girl to bed was exactly how his relationship with Carolyn had begun, and he certainly didn’t need to end up in that situation again. Yet finding another woman to share his bed was the very thing that had occupied his mind—his conscious mind—for weeks. Might he have the one without risk of falling into the other?
His stomach rumbled with hunger, so he set his binocs aside and went into the kitchen to fix something to eat. Minutes later, with his plate in one hand and a tall glass of iced tea in the other, he headed back out onto the deck and sat down. He gazed across the courtyard as he ate and thought some more about going over and introducing himself. After all, he stood little chance of ever seeing Marissa again and Carolyn was gone for good—may the bitch finally find happiness in her formerly adulterous relationship—so assuming the girl was in fact single and lived alone, what was there to stop him? If he handled it right, and if he decided that having someone to sleep with was worth the risk of another relationship after all, maybe he’d get lucky.
One thing was for certain. He’d never know for sure unless he tried.
He considered the possibilities, but by the time he finished eating he’d finally decided not to act on the impulses of his flesh, and he berated himself once more for allowing his mind to wander in that direction. If he was going to meet her, he would do so either by random chance or by God’s own design, which given his intentions was no doubt highly unlikely. Then, if the two of them did happen to hit it off—or at the very least get along well enough—he’d wait, take it slowly, and see how things developed.
Yeah, sure he would. He knew himself better than that. More likely he’d take her to bed as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Either way, he wasn’t going to go running over to her apartment and make a fool of himself.
No, he wouldn’t be made a fool of. Instead, he took his dishes into the kitchen and placed them in the dishwasher, then picked up the old General Norman Schwarzkopf biography he’d been engrossed in throughout his convalescence and went back out onto the deck to read.
And just maybe to catch another glimpse of his new neighbor.
Except for a couple of bathroom breaks and the occasional trip to the kitchen for a snack or a drink, Dylan had spent the entire afternoon outside, reading and basking in the comfortably warm late summer sun. Not long before dusk he’d finally set the book aside and gone out for a quiet stroll through the garden, the only place where the multitude of sweet floral fragrances were strong enough to overpower the forest’s mint-laced, pine-like aroma. His thoughts had quickly turned to Marissa again—for a guy who wasn’t in love he sure thought a lot about the woman he wasn’t in love with, he’d recognized—and despite how awkward their previous conversation had been, he’d decided to give her another call, just to tell her that he was thinking about her and to wish her well. But her mother had answered that call and had explained that her daughter had decided to put her military life behind her and start over, and that she wanted no further contact with her former comrades. Dylan had pushed to talk with her anyway, if only just to wish her well and to say good-bye, but her mother had refused to put her on and had then disconnected without another word.
Another friendship had ended.
Soon afterward, when the sun had finally sunk behind the treetops and the sky had begun to darken, he’d fixed himself a quick dinner. Then he’d gone back out onto the deck to enjoy the fresh night air.
The air had cooled somewhat since he came back outside but remained just warm enough to feel comfortable when it was still, but from time to time a cool breeze blew gently up through the trees, coming off the surface of the lake several hundred meters away, bringing a chill to the air and carrying with it the crackling and popping of someone’s campfire, and the quiet hum of a far off power boat’s engine.
* * *
Even from inside its dimly lit and slightly chilly passenger cabin, Dylan could barely hear the subdued whisper of the small vessel’s engines with their tactical noise dampeners fully engaged, and no one had spoken much more than a few words in the hours since departure, so the flight had been nearly as quiet as it had been long. But that was normal for a combat mission. There was something very humbling about the very real possibility of not living to see another sunrise that tended to plunge even the bravest of Marines into quiet reflection.
He’d spent that time thinking back over his career.
What the hell was he doing in a Ranger unit?
The overhead lighting changed from its normal soft blue-white to a not too bright blood red. “Coming up on insertion point,” the pilot announced over the intercom.
“On your feet,” the lieutenant called out from the front of the cabin.
Equipment check. Routine. Thumbs up.
“Man the capsules.”
Routine.
Amber changed to green. The drop. The countdown.
Routine.
No injuries.
Ready.
He gave the order to move out.
At first their trek was slow and precarious, through a forest as thick and as black as road tar. The dense overhead canopy kept the starlight at bay, and without it their night-vision displays were useless. They traveled in relative silence using the faint sounds of each other’s careful footfalls to maintain their proper intervals, because bunching up could be a fatal mistake.
Hours passed.
Moonlight.
Night-vision displays. Without bothering to give the word—he knew his troops didn’t have to be told—he flipped his NVD into place over his eye. Through its dark amber-green lens, the forest took on an eerie, haunted appearance, and a feeling of foreboding suddenly filled the depths of his very soul. That feeling grew more intense as they drew steadily closer to their objective, but he kept that feeling to himself.
A brilliant, blinding light suddenly flooded the forest.
* * *
The sudden luminescence startled Dylan back to the present. Across the courtyard the girl’s living room lights had just come on and her curtains were standing wide open. He hadn’t even realized he was gazing in that direction. He sat and watched for a few moments but perceived no movement inside. Then, driven by his curious, albeit suspicious nature, he went inside, picked up his binocs, and switched off the lights.
He focused on the front door of the girl’s apartment just as she stepped inside, and her sultry beauty instantly captivated him. She was wearing a black mini-skirt—was that real leather?—and matching jacket with a low-cut cherry-red blouse and black knee boots. Her hair was swept back on the sides and loosely braided down her back. Two or three glittering gold necklaces, several bracelets, and a pair of sparkling crystalline earrings completed her trendy outfit. Dylan had thought she was attractive before, but now? He couldn’t believe her uniform had hidden so much.
She closed the door behind her and punched what he assumed was her locking code into the wall panel, then pulled off her boots and set them in the closet. Then she headed toward her bedroom, and Dylan’s gaze eagerly followed.
The bedroom lights came up as she walked in, casting her shadow against the curtains—an indistinct silhouette that quickly sharpened and then vanished an instant later when she threw the curtains open. She pulled off her jacket and tossed it onto the bed, then stepped over to her dresser and took off her jewelry—including a pair of bright golden barrettes that Dylan hadn’t even seen—one piece at a time, carefully arranging each one in its proper place. She ran her fingers through her hair and shook it loose, then started to undress.
Now that he’d seen she was safe and everything was all right, Dylan knew that he should stop watching her. Despite the curious fact that she’d opened her curtains, she had the same right to privacy as anyone else and to continue spying on her would be wrong. But as she stepped out of her skirt and started to unbutton her blouse, something—whether it was curiosity, appreciation of her beauty, or just plain ordinary lust he couldn’t guess, nor did he dwell on it—something compelled him to continue his unlawful surveillance. Probably the lust, he admitted to himself. He hadn’t been with a woman in weeks.
She opened her blouse and slipped it from her shoulders, revealing sensuous black lace lingerie, then stepped up to the full-length mirror next to her dresser. She twisted back and forth from left to right as far as she could without taking her eyes off of her reflection. Then, after a few seconds of that, she reached up behind her and unfastened her bra, then turned her back to the window as she slipped it off and headed into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
Dylan set his binocs aside, sat back, and rested his head against the back of the couch with a sigh. His heart was pounding. This young woman, whoever she was, was beautiful to be sure and certainly not very shy. But what was it that had reduced him to spying on her through the windows? Why were women and sex on his mind so much lately? Had he really grown so lonely so quickly or was he just so incredibly bored, being stuck on medical leave for so long, that his mind—his conscious mind at least—couldn’t find anything else with which to occupy itself?
Maybe he should just go over there and introduce himself.
Maybe he should.
Maybe...
* * *
They’d gained entry into the poorly lit commander’s office and were busy grabbing all the documents they could find and sealing them into water-proof/fire-proof envelopes.
“Looks like that’s everything, Sarge,” Marissa said. “I’ve emptied every drawer or cabinet I can find.”
“Same here.”
—He never found anything more.
“Good. Then what do you say we get the hell out of...” She fell silent, turned, stared into the blackness.
“What is it?” he quietly asked, raising his rifle. “What’s wrong?”
—He knew what it was.
“I thought I heard something in there.”
—Please, God, not again. Don’t put her through it again.
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure. Like...someone crying maybe?”
No more questions. They listened. A faint moan.
—He knew what it was.
They stepped into the darkness.
He found something. A door.
—She was in there.
Another moan, from inside. No latch. The other side. He found the button.
They went inside.
—There she was.
Small, slender, dark haired, she lay stretched out on some kind of surgical bed next to a series of machines, her eyes rolled back in her head. Stripped naked, beaten, perhaps tortured. Her badly skinned hands were strapped to a metal bar above her head. Her legs, thighs badly bruised, were spread wide and strapped to the sides of the bed frame just below her knees. Tubes ran from one of the machines, feeding fluids into her arms. Small sensors fastened to her head, beneath her breasts, and over her heart. Her belly, swollen as though she were pregnant...
—Inhuman.
Bleeding heavily from her torn vagina.
—Poor, innocent girl.
He called Doc.
—Doc would never show up.
That familiar demonic hiss filled the room...
—filled his entire world—
...and once more, before he could react, a heavy stream of thick florescent bile-yellow fluid sprayed in from the darkness and spattered over Marissa’s face and chest. She dropped her rifle and clutched her face in her hands, screaming at the top of her lungs as she collapsed to the floor, writhing in pain.
—Again.
“Marissa!” He raised his rifle to the doorway and fired blindly into the darkness as he rushed toward her, but a long and immensely powerful whip suddenly lashed out and knocked him back as it ripped the rifle from his hands. In the same fluid motion it struck Marissa square across her chest as she tried to climb back to her feet and knocked her back against the far wall. She dropped back to the floor.
—That always happened, and it had happened again. Why did he always react the same way?
It emerged from the darkness.
—The serpent! The Prince of Darkness! The Devil itself, risen from the fiery abyss!
The Beast rose up. The Beast slithered slowly toward him.
He backed farther away.
—He knew he wouldn’t escape. He never escaped.
He drew his sidearm.
—He knew it would knock his sidearm away.
The Beast dodged everything he managed to throw at it.
—He’d never been able to hit it.
The Beast spat—burned his arms but missed his face.
Lucky...but he’d left himself venerable.
The Beast grabbed him up in its long tail, which it swiftly coiled around his mid-section. It lifted him off the floor.
—He’d fallen for it again.
The air gushed from his lungs. He couldn’t draw a breath. One by one his ribs began to crack. Tiny sparks of light began dancing like fireflies in the darkness before his tearing eyes. He was going to die.
—Again.
Gunfire. The Beast dropped him to the floor.
More gunfire, but not for long. A crash. Silence.
The Beast lifted him again. He fought against it. He kicked. The Beast threw him down again, but not for long.
Combat knife.
The Beast pulled him in. He opened its gullet.
The doomed creature dropped him into the expanding pool of its cold, thick blood.
Blood. It bled. It wasn’t the Beast after all!
The flapping of its gullet tissue. The gurgling of its gushing blood.
It lay there, twitching, silently waiting to die.
Excruciating pain.
He was dying.
Someone moaned. “Marissa!” He crawled to her and turned her over. The rancid stench of vomit. His own acidy bile burned his throat.
Her face, badly discolored. Her eyes, nearly swollen shut. The front of her TAC-vest had dissolved completely away, and what little remained of her battle-dress tunic was torn wide open. A deep cut ran high across her burned and bloodied chest, but it didn’t appear to be bleeding anymore.
—Always the same.
“I’m still with you. How bad is it?”
“I don’t think it’s too serious.”
A lie.
Conversation. No time.
He was dying.
They had to rescue the consort.
Weapons.
He helped Marissa to her feet.
“Your arms are burned.”
“The bastard spat at me.”
Free the girl. Help her up. He gave her his shirt.
“Let’s go.”
“Fire in the hole!”
“Ortiz is out of it. She’ll be taking...”
—He should have expected it by now.
A huge explosion suddenly rocked the main hall. The shock wave knocked the three of them to the ground.
He jumped up. No pain. Marissa and the girl. Veshtonn!
—They always came.
Combat. Reinforcements. Shin collapsed motionless to the dirt.
—Poor girl.
Something burned his thigh.
He was hit.
His right shoulder exploded in a burst of searing agony so intense that he couldn’t even scream as he stumbled backward to the ground.
He was hit again. Badly.
“Sergeant Graves is down!”
The pain faded to numbness. He rolled onto his stomach, retrieved his rifle, and staggered to his feet, determined to stay in the fight.
His head suddenly snapped back and his knees buckled. He collapsed.
He sat up.
Warm blood flowed into his eye and down over his cheek and neck.
He was hit again. Very badly.
Everything slowed down and the world around him began to spin out of control.
Idiot! Standing up and walking toward the enemy like that!
—Time to die. Served him right for being so stupid.
The world faded until all was darkness.
* * *
“No!” he shrieked as he bolted awake, straining his ribs as he sat up, his eyes wide open and his head throbbing violently.
After a moment he realized he was safe at home, not lying face down on the battlefield, dying in a pool of his own blood. He was sitting on the edge of his couch, clutching a small cushion tightly to his chest. He drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly, then set the cushion aside and wiped the sweat from his brow. Then he got up and went into the kitchen for a drink of water and a Liferin tablet.
He’d fought Sulaini before, but prior to that battle he’d never faced off against any of their regular Army troops. But he’d known from having seen plenty of pictures what their combat uniforms looked like, so he’d been somewhat prepared when the C.U.F. compound suddenly filled with dozens of them. They were a known entity. They were familiar. But the Kree-Veshtonn blood-warriors were another thing entirely. What had they been doing there? The Veshtonn had been forced out of the system four years ago. Except for the ones he’d fought against with the Marines from the Tripoli he’d never even seen one of them up close before, and those ones had been almost totally obscured by their helmets and suits of armor. He’d only ever seen fuzzy pictures and heard sketchy descriptions of what they really looked like—two meters tall and more, dark green and brown, scaly-skinned, vaguely humanoid in structure but more reptilian in appearance, with an insectoid carapace, long skinny tails, and fan-like membranes on the sides of their necks. All accurate descriptions, but nothing he’d ever seen or heard had done their true ugliness justice.
And what about the creature whose appearance had already faded from his memory yet again? He’d known without a doubt for more than a week now that it wasn’t real. But still it came to him every time he went to sleep. Why wouldn’t it leave him alone?
He glanced up at the clock on the wall and was surprised to see that it was only 21:15 hours, according to how the Earth colonists and Solfleet forces measured local time, but he decided to go to bed anyway. He needed all the rest he could get.
He gulped down his water and set the empty glass on the counter, then started toward his bedroom, but when he happened to glance outside as he passed the sliding glass door, he noticed movement in the girl’s apartment.
He stopped short. A split second of indecision. His mind, his morality, told him to fight the temptation to spy on her again—to ignore it and just go to bed. But the memory of what he’d seen earlier enticed every other fiber of his being and he promptly chose to give in once more.
Chose to give in? Yes. It was a choice—a choice that he felt ashamed of even as he acted on it, sitting down on the couch and picking up his binocs.
She was standing in front of her mirror again, brushing out her lustrous hair, wearing a satiny pink bathrobe, short enough so that every time she raised her arms Dylan caught a glimpse of her bright white panties. She brushed over and over and over for several minutes before she finally put down her brush, gave her hair one last flip, and then turned and opened her sliding door.
She stepped out onto her deck and untied her robe as she approached the railing, allowing it to blow open in the breeze to reveal her firm, bare breasts. She raised her arms and ran her fingers through her hair, then stretched them out to her sides, arched her back, and let her robe billow freely behind her in the breeze as she gazed up at the stars.
It was as if she knew he was watching her and was posing for him. He couldn’t begin to imagine why she would do that, but he certainly approved. He gazed without blinking at her beautiful, curvaceous body. Standing there, awash in the moonlight’s soft glow, she reminded him of a portrait of the mythological Cirran goddess of beauty he’d once seen.
She dropped her arms to her sides and let her robe slip from her shoulders and fall to the deck, then rested her hands on the railing. But only a few moments later, obviously chilled by the cool evening air, she picked it up and went back inside and closed and locked the door behind her. She draped it over the back of her couch and disappeared into her kitchen. Then, moments later, she emerged carrying a tall ice-filled drink, grabbed a book off the wall shelf, and stretched out on her couch to read.
Dylan watched her for a few more minutes, but when she’d read several pages and it appeared as though she was going to read for a while longer, he lay back on the couch to rest his weary eyes. He reran what he’d just seen in his mind’s eye, hoping that his neighbor’s lovely image might chase those of the other women away for good. The women who’d left him in body—one through tragedy, the other by choice—but who, like the creature that haunted his dreams, continued to dwell in his subconscious.
* * *
Combat. Reinforcements. Shin collapsed motionless to the dirt.
—Poor girl.
Something burned his thigh.
He was hit.
His right shoulder exploded in a burst of searing agony so intense that he couldn’t even scream as he stumbled backward to the ground.
He was hit again. Badly.
“Sergeant Graves is down!”
“Marissa!” he cried.
—Strange. He hadn’t done that before.
The pain faded to numbness. He rolled onto his stomach, retrieved his rifle, and staggered to his feet, determined to stay in the fight.
His head suddenly snapped back and his knees buckled. He collapsed.
“Marissa!”
Warm blood flowed into his eye and down over his cheek and neck.
He was hit again. Very badly.
Everything slowed down and the world around him began to spin out of control.
Time to die.
“I love you.”
—Why had he said that? He wished he could have meant it, but he couldn’t. He never should have said it.
The world faded untyil all was darkness.
“Dylan? Are you awake?”
He rolled his head across the pillow to see who it was who’d so thoughtlessly roused him from his drug-induced slumber. Carolyn.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”
“About what?”
Her eyes fell to the hand she cradled in hers. “About us.”
He didn’t speak.
She looked down, then faced the bed again. “I’m sorry,” she said as she pulled off her wedding ring and tossed it onto the blanket. “It’s over, Dylan. I’m divorcing you.”
She hurried out of the room.
Right into his arms. Suddenly it all made sense.
He was alone.
“Sergeant Graves?”
—Her again. He knew her voice. What was she doing here? Why was she here?
“May I come in, Sergeant?”
“Sure.”
—Why did he say that? Why did he always let her in?
She closed the door. Took a seat. Cautious. But of course.
Lots of talk. Get to the point.
“What the hell was that...that thing that almost killed me?”
“What thing that almost killed you? You mean the Sulaini soldier who tried to beat you to death with his rifle?”
“What? What Sulaini soldier? What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?”
Was it really feasible she didn’t know how he was wounded? Not likely. “I’m talking about that thing that was hiding out in the Sulaini commander’s office building. That...alien...creature that would’ve snapped me in two if Marissa hadn’t turned it into Swiss cheese when she did.”
“Alien creature? I’m...I’m sorry, Sergeant. I must have missed something. What alien creature are you talking about? What did it look like?”
“What alien creature am I talking about? The alien creature that burned Marissa! The one that damn near crushed my ribs into powder!”
Nothing. A blank stare.
“It looked like...like...awe hell! I don’t know what the hell it looked like!”
“You’re seeing something in your dreams.”
“It’s not just in my dreams!”
“Yes, it is! Dylan, listen to me.”
—All right.
“Think back, Dylan. Think about the battle. Replay it in your mind. Do you really remember this alien creature being there?”
“Yes, I really remember it being there! I see it every damn night!”
“I’m not talking about in your nightmares! Ignore them for the moment. Think about the actual battle ten days ago. Go through it, step by step, as you actually remember it.”
He thought back.
—Why was he thinking back? He knew the truth. Why was he listening to her again?
It wasn’t there.
—It should have been there.
He remembered Marissa being wounded in a chemical explosion. He remembered being beaten repeatedly with a rifle in brutal hand-to-hand combat. And he remembered being shot...three times.
—But that wasn’t right. The creature was supposed to be there. It should have been there.
“Do you remember this alien creature of yours being there?”
“No.”
—Why did he say ‘no’ again when he knew it had been there? It should have been there.
“Of course you don’t, because it wasn’t there.”
“But...it was so real.”
* * *
It was real.
No, it wasn’t. He’d known for some time now what really happened in the middle of that island forest that night. His conscious memories of the battle had never agreed with what he saw in his nightmares, but with the doctors’ help—as much as he hated to admit it, those professional doubletalkers who didn’t deserve to call themselves doctors had actually done some good—and after sitting through a complete mission debriefing, he’d eventually worked that out. “Then why do you still see the damn thing in your nightmares?” he asked himself.
Speaking of his nightmares, this was the first time since he’d been wounded that he’d dreamed of something other than the battle itself. And although he’d just woken up he wasn’t feeling even a hint of a headache. So, for the first time in as long, he allowed himself to hope for something that he hadn’t enjoyed in nearly a month. A full night of restful sleep. Disregarding with little consideration that ever-dimming spark of morality that told him to leave the girl alone, he decided to take one last quick look across the courtyard. After that, he promised himself, he’d go to bed for the night.
She still lay half naked on her couch, reading her book. She reached up with her free hand and turned the page, then laid it back on her stomach and continued reading. Apparently, she intended to read well into night.
Dylan set his binocs aside, got up, and started toward his bedroom, but as he passed by the window, a small flash of light caught his eye and he looked out again. The girl had set her book on the coffee table and was getting up.
He dashed back to the couch and resumed his surveillance just as she snatched up her robe. She pulled it on as she bounded up over the two steps to her front door, then tapped the intercom button. She closed it and tied it off as she spoke. Then, after a quick look at the small video screen above the intercom, she keyed the door open.
Her visitor appeared to be a human man in his early to mid forties—a human man of Terran stock as opposed to Cirran, that conclusion based on the fact that he had brown eyes. Assuming that he wasn’t wearing colored lenses, of course. He was tall and muscular, with curly black hair and a thick moustache, was dressed in gray slacks and a green shirt, and carried an overnight bag under his arm. He held some sort of identification up for the girl to look at, but Dylan couldn’t make out what it was. After a brief exchange the girl stepped aside and invited him inside.
The man dropped his bag down beside the couch. Then the two of them sat down—him on the left side of the couch as Dylan looked at it, her in the chair sitting caddie-corner to its right—and began talking. Dylan watched their mouths closely, hoping to make out a few words and maybe figure out what they were discussing, but he had no luck.
He knew he should have taken that lip-reading course in high school.
A few minutes into their conversation the man reached down over the arm of the couch and opened his bag. He pulled out a handcomp—Solfleet-issue from the looks of it—activated it and made some adjustments, then moved closer to the girl and handed it to her.
Things were getting interesting.
Several more minutes passed as they discussed whatever it was they were discussing, passing the handcomp back and forth between them, but Dylan didn’t learn anything. The man eventually took back the device and turned it off, but their conversation continued for a while longer. Twenty more minutes at least. Perhaps thirty. The girl eventually got up and went into her bedroom, but this time Dylan held his eyes on the stranger, hoping that he’d do something before he got up to leave that might provide some clue as to exactly who he was.
It soon became apparent, however, that he wasn’t planning to leave at all. He pulled his shoes and socks off, then took off his shirt—damn, he had a hairy chest!—and set it aside. Then he took a small hygiene kit out of his overnight bag, opened it, and set it on the floor in front of the couch. He lay back, then quickly rolled over and reached for the kit as though his life depended on it. He missed it, adjusted its position, then lay back again and repeated the exercise...twice. After his hand plunged right into the bag on the third try, he lay back and relaxed once more, seemingly for good this time. A few seconds later the curtains closed and the living room lights went out.
Dylan shifted his gaze to the bedroom just as the girl came out of her bathroom, still in her panties but carrying her robe in her hand. She draped it over the back of her dresser chair then walked over to her bureau and pulled on a loose white tank top. Then, as she climbed into bed, her bedroom curtains closed and the rest her apartment lights went out.
Dylan set his binocs aside for the last time and finally went to bed. As he shed his clothes and climbed in under the covers, he wondered what in the galaxy the girl could possibly be involved in that would have brought that mysterious stranger into her home. For reasons he couldn’t quite put a finger on, he suspected the man was with the S.I.A.
But maybe he was just being paranoid.
He caught a glimpse of Shin as she collapsed motionless to the dirt. Then something burned his thigh. He glanced down at it, and just as he realized that he’d been shot, his right shoulder exploded in a burst of searing agony so intense that he couldn’t even scream as he stumbled backward to the ground, dragging the girl down on top of him.
“Sergeant Graves is down!” Marissa hollered as she bent down to pull the girl off of him. But she lost her balance and fell as well. She struggled to her hands and knees, only to fall face down into the dirt again.
The world was spinning. The battle raged on.
The pain faded to numbness. He rolled onto his stomach, retrieved his rifle, and staggered to his feet, determined to stay in the fight. But as he plodded forward, unable even to raise his rifle, his head suddenly snapped back and his knees buckled. He collapsed, his legs bent up underneath him, his buttocks on his heels and his shoulders and the back of his head on the ground. Somehow, through sheer force of will, he managed to sit up again, and he felt his own warm blood flowing into his left eye and down over his cheek and neck.
Everything slowed down and the world around him began to spin out of control.
Idiot! Standing up and walking toward the enemy like that!
The world faded until all was darkness.
* * *
“No!” Dylan screamed as he shot up, his eyes wide open, hands grasping the sides of his sweat-drenched head. As usual, it took him a moment to realize that he was safe at home. But this time, just like earlier when he’d nodded off on the couch, his head didn’t hurt—a sure sign that he’d gotten at least a few hours of restful sleep before the nightmares returned to torture him. He reached for his medication anyway—he wished he could have slept through the entire night, just for once—but all he found beneath his fingers was the surface of the nightstand. Then he remembered he’d taken the bottle into the kitchen sometime during the day.
He tossed his blankets aside, climbed out of bed, and headed that way without bothering to put anything on. As he walked through the living room he realized that he wasn’t limping and that his leg didn’t hurt anymore. He also noticed that the curtains were backlit where they hung across the windows and the sliding door. Had his bedroom been as bright just now? Could it be dawn already? He hoped not. He wanted to go back to sleep.
He walked over to the curtains, pulled back the edge and peeked out, and felt relieved to find that it was only the moonlight. He glanced up at the clock and saw that it was only a little past 26:40 hours—barely twenty minutes before midnight. He still had the whole night ahead of him. Plenty of time to get a good night’s sleep. But the outdoors looked peaceful and inviting at that moment, so he decided to go down into the garden for a while first, just to sit under the glowing moons in the cool breeze and enjoy the peace and quiet.
He went back into his bedroom, pulled on a pair of jeans and his Flyers jersey, then slipped on his shoes and headed outside.
The air had cooled some more since earlier in the evening but the tall plants with their thick foliage that lined the garden’s perimeter held back most of the breeze, so the clothes he’d put on were sufficient to keep him warm without a coat. The larger of the moons shone full and bright at its zenith, so only the most brilliant stars were visible. Its smaller brother, on the other hand, hung low in the deep purple sky, barely visible between two of the neighboring buildings and mostly obscured now by distant charcoal-gray clouds. Most of the flowers had retreated into nocturnal dormancy, but their sweet fragrances still perfumed the air. Faint sounds of battle echoed in the far distant foothills and served to remind him that somewhere out there military training continued without him.
He chose a bench near the center of the garden where two paths intersected and sat down in front of the spot-lit ivory stone statue that watched over it from atop its marble pedestal. The intricately detailed statue of a tall, overly muscular man, probably one of the myriad of Cirran gods, holding a slender young woman in his arms—her meager clothing torn almost completely away and her legs wrapped loosely around his hips—while he kissed her bare, ample breast and made love to her. Which god and/or goddess the statue represented, he couldn’t say. The Cirrans had so many of them, who could keep track? Carolyn, who’d always been interested in art and culture, had probably researched it, but he’d never really cared enough to ask her. One thing was certain though. It didn’t leave anything to the imagination.
He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, filling his lungs with fresh, cool, cleansing, flora-scented air that seemed to revive and relax him at the same time. He began feeling truly refreshed, almost as if he’d finally gotten that full night’s sleep that he’d been coveting for so long. He found the garden so soothing and peaceful in fact, despite the sounds of the distant mock battle, that he felt as though he could remain there forever. Or even longer.
Strange. The nightmare that had awakened him yet again—that same nightmare that had played itself out over and over in his sleeping mind—had been so much more vivid this time than ever before. So much more real. Why would that happen? Why, when all other dreams and nightmares faded away over time, would this one only grow more coherent?
“Hi.”
Dylan leapt to his feet and whirled around to face the voice’s owner, crouching low, prepared to defend himself against the invisible enemy and if necessary, to kill it. He was all Ranger now. There was no pain.
The sudden silence that met him told him that whoever had spoken had frozen in his or her tracks, still hidden in the shadows. But then time resumed its flow and the voice quickly broke that silence. “I’m sorry,” it said meekly. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” It was the voice of a young woman, or perhaps of a teenage girl. Might it be her?
Dylan straightened and partially relaxed, but remained ready to defend himself if he had to. “That’s okay,” he replied, embarrassed at having been caught off guard like that. No one had ever been able to do that to him. Well, not since Tamour anyway.
The girl appeared as little more than an indistinct shadow as she approached through the darkness, coming up the path from the direction of the building adjacent to his own. “Couldn’t sleep through the war games?” she asked.
Dylan still couldn’t make out any of her facial features, but when he saw the Solfleet uniform his hopes began to grow. Then she finally stepped out of the shadows into the moonlight and dashed those hopes just as quickly. Her uniform was Army green and black. Her dark hair and shorter height confirmed it wasn’t her, and then he recognized her as the young woman who worked in the apartment complex’s management office as Solfleet’s liaison to the local housing authority. She was carrying her duty jacket over her arm and her long, straight black hair was flowing freely down her back.
“Actually,” he responded as he relaxed more completely, “I didn’t hear the war games until I came outside.”
She stopped beside the bench. “Mind if I sit with you, Sergeant Graves?” she asked.
Dylan gestured toward the bench, inviting her to do so. He waited for her to sit down first, then joined her. “You work here in the office, don’t you?” he asked her, just to start a conversation. There was nothing he hated more when crossing paths with someone familiar than that uneasy silence that occurred when neither he nor the other person knew quite what to say.
“That’s right,” she answered with a polite smile.
“That’s how you know my name.”
She nodded. “Right again.”
“You didn’t just get off work, I hope.”
“No,” she answered, grinning as if the very idea were totally ridiculous. “I stayed home all night after work, so I didn’t bother to change.”
“I see.” Now what? It was his turn to speak. He had to say something. She was waiting. But what? “So what are you doing out this late at night?” he finally heard himself ask, cringing inside at how lame a question that was even as he asked it.
“I like to go for a walk before I go to bed,” she answered graciously. “Sometimes I go swimming, too. What about you, Sergeant? What are you doing out this late?”
“Please, call me Dylan.”
She smiled. “All right, Dylan.”
He smiled back. “I woke up and looked out the window. I guess you could say the garden invited me out.” He looked around and added, “It’s really peaceful out here at night.”
“Yeah, that’s why... Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, realization filling her voice. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“No, you’re not disturbing me,” he assured her as his eyes met hers. “In fact, I’m glad to have the company.”
“Are you sure?”
He smiled again. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“All right,” she said, returning his smile.
She wasn’t the blonde who lived across the courtyard, but she was a very pretty girl in her own right. Her features were warm and beautiful, and Dylan quickly became aware that an attraction—a physical attraction, of course—already seemed to be forming between them.
“You know,” she was saying, “since we’re out here together, I’ve been wondering about something and I’d like to ask you a question...if you don’t mind.”
“What kind of question?” he asked.
“It’s about your family.”
“My family? You mean my wife, my parents, or my ancient ancestors?”
“Actually, I’m not sure if it’s about your family or not,” she explained, backstepping a little bit. “That’s actually the question. I’ve been wondering if you’re related to Captain Richard Graves of the Excalibur.” Dylan gazed at her without expression. “The ship whose crew made the first actual face-to-face contact with the Cirrans back in sixty-eight when they tried to rescue one of their shuttles?” she further clarified. Maybe she’d mistaken his Ranger’s silent suspicion for a lack of understanding. “You know, the one the Veshtonn destroyed during the cease-fire.”
He scrutinized her features very carefully, paying particular attention to the color of her slightly almond-shaped eyes, and it only took a moment for her to realize what he was doing.
“They’re not violet,” she told him. “They’re green, and I’m not wearing lenses.”
“I’m sorry, but...”
“I know. A Solfleet soldier can’t be too careful. Especially one who’s stationed in this system. But you don’t have to worry, Dylan. I’m not a Cirran traitor or a Sulaini spy. I’m as Terran as you are. Besides, I’m in Solfleet myself, remember.”
“Anyone could get their hands on a uniform if they really wanted to,” he pointed out.
“True, but I’m not just some stranger who walked up to you on the street, am I?” she countered. “You recognized me the minute I stepped into the light.”
He grinned and nodded his head. “Okay, you win. You’re not a Cirran traitor or a Sulaini spy.”
“And?” she coaxed.
“And, yes, I’m related to Richard Graves. He was my father. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious,” she answered. Then she looked away, down at the ground, and quietly added, “I lost my father to the Veshtonn, too.”
“I’m sorry. What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“He was the chief of engineering operations aboard the Boshtahr Jumpstation when the Veshtonn destroyed it.” She looked up. “My God. Has it really been over twenty years already? I was on Earth with my mother at the time, for my grandmother’s hundredth birthday. We were all going to stay for a month but my dad was called back early.” She sighed. “Mom was never quite the same after he was killed. She just sort of...died inside. If only your father could have beaten them. Maybe then...”
“I know!” Dylan snapped defensively as he practically jumped up from the bench and stepped away. “Maybe then the Veshtonn wouldn’t have been able to occupy this system. Maybe then they wouldn’t have discovered bolamide. Maybe then they wouldn’t have launched the sneak attack on Boshtahr and destroyed the jumpstation.” He turned and faced her. “I’ve heard all of that about a thousand times before. It’s not fair to blame my father for...”
“No!” she exclaimed, looking at him with surprise and shaking her head as she, too, stood up. “No, I’m not blaming your father, Dylan! I’m not blaming him at all! He bloodied their noses real good before they...” She hesitated to say it, but then reminded herself that he obviously knew what happened, “...before they destroyed his ship. I know that. How many of them did he take out in that battle? Two? Three?”
After a moment he answered, “According to publicized Intelligence reports, four.”
“Four!” She sat back down. “No, I don’t blame your father at all. On the contrary, I think he was one of the best starcruiser captains I’ve ever read about. If there were too many of them for him to defeat...”
Dylan’s anger quickly subsided, and as he sat down next to the girl again he even felt a measure of pride on behalf of his father. Pride? In his father? How could that possibly be? His father had abandoned the family almost twenty-three years ago. He’d chosen the captaincy of his precious starcruiser over the love and companionship of his own wife and children, including a newborn infant, and had gotten himself killed shortly thereafter.
Dylan had quickly grown to resent his father, even to hate him—his mother had often told him that he’d grown up angry—and that hatred had become so deeply rooted that throughout most of his teens and early twenties he’d refused even to think about him. It was only in the last few years that he’d managed to come to terms with his painful past and forgive his father. Or had he? He liked to think so, but truth be told, sometimes he still wasn’t too sure. Hatred? Yes, once upon a time. But no longer. His desire to forgive him had vanquished it. Resentment? Maybe still, to some extent. But pride?
“Your father’s actions in the face of the enemy were probably the only thing that kept them from swarming across the border right then and there and plowing their way through Earth-controlled space in full force,” the girl added. “He was undoubtedly one of the biggest heroes of that period of the war.”
Dylan had no idea how to respond to that. Like most everyone else he’d ever known, he’d read the stories of his father’s bloody battles against the Veshtonn. Hell, he’d read all the stories about his father’s career that he could find, both fact and fiction. Some of them fairly recently, too. He’d read about his days as a cadet at the Solfleet Academy, about his years as a junior officer, and about his eventual rise to the captaincy of his own vessel. And he’d read every news story that had ever been written about his attempt to rescue the crew of that ill-fated Cirran shuttle. Still, there were times he couldn’t be sure if ‘hero’ was the word he would have used to describe him. He had a few other words in mind, even now.
He sighed. True forgiveness was proving to be a lot more difficult than it sounded.
“This war has gone on too long,” he commented, intentionally changing the subject. “Too many people have died.”
“I’d hate to think of the alternative.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that. If we were ever forced to withdraw from this system, for example, it would likely be the next one to fall...again. The Cirrans are a good people. I think the Sulaini are, too, to tell you the truth, despite their aggressive nature. I don’t relish the thought of seeing any of them enslaved by the Veshtonn again. Or worse. I just wish there were another way. All this back and forth slaughter is so...so stupid. Tragic.”
She looked at him curiously. “You surprise me, Dylan.”
“How so?”
“Your attitude. Most of the soldiers and Marines I’ve met seem to wish the war would escalate even further than it already has, if that’s even possible. It’s like they have some kind of sick fascination with it or something. It’s really disgusting, if you ask me.”
“They’re a small minority, I assure you. I’ll bet none of them had ever even seen combat when they said whatever they said to give you that opinion of them. Trust me, no one hates war more than a soldier who’s fought one.”
“My mother told me once that my father used to say that same thing when they were young, every time he came back from a forward deployment.”
“He was right.” Another, more humorous thought struck Dylan and made him grin. “You know, when I was growing up I swore I’d never join the military service. Sometimes I’m still not sure why I did. Other times I think...”
He paused. Something had distracted the girl and she wasn’t listening. What was it she’d said? She’d mentioned what her mother had told her and then her attention had wandered. Maybe she was still thinking about her mother. “So where is your mother these days?” he asked.
She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly while she gazed down at her folded hands in her lap. “She died a few years ago.”
Dylan laid his hand gently on the back of her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“So was I at first.” Her eyes met his once more. “Not long after she died I started reading her private diaries, and I began to realize just how painful her life really was after Daddy died. She wrote that I was a constant source of joy for her, but deep down inside she still agonized over his death. She cried herself to sleep almost every night.
“One night when I was seventeen she wrote an unusually long entry about not wanting to face that inevitable day when I would leave her, too.” her eyes fell to her hands again. “She died in her sleep that same night. I miss her, but at least she’s at peace. She’s buried in her hometown, back in Korea.”
As Dylan sat listening to the girl—to the young woman—he became acutely aware of the beautiful angles of her face, the sheen of her long black hair under the ghostly glow of the spotlight behind them, and the gentle curve of her shoulder beneath his hand. An overwhelming feeling of being drawn to her washed over him like a warm sunbeam on a cloudy day.
“I’m glad you’re both at peace,” he said. She looked back to him again, and as he gazed into her eyes as though for the very first time, he felt as though he were looking into the depths of her very soul, and somehow he knew that she was the one—the one with whom he was meant to be.
What the hell was he thinking? Except for their conversation when he and Carolyn first showed up looking for a place to live, which had been strictly business, he’d only just talked to her for the first time. How could he possibly have come to feel that way about her so quickly? And where did that leave Diane, his old high school sweetheart—the only girl he’d truly ever felt that way about, though only long after it was too late? The only girl he sometimes still thought about in that same way, and for whom he still harbored some very strong and not so deeply buried feelings?
He had to lighten the moment, and quickly.
“May I ask you one more question?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He paused for just the right effect, then asked, “What’s your name?”
She looked dumbfounded as the realization that she hadn’t already told him washed over her. “I am so sorry,” she said, putting a hand over her mouth in embarrassment but still smiling behind it. “It’s Bethany. Corporal Bethany DeGaetano. My friends call me Beth.”
“Bethany DeGaetano,” he repeated, pleased that his little verbal maneuver had taken her mind off her parents and cheered her up, at least a little. Not to mention what it had done for him. “DeGaetano. Sounds Italian.”
“It is,” she confirmed, dropping her hand back to her lap. “According to my uncle—my mom’s brother—my father was very Italian.”
“What does ‘very Italian’ mean?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, shrugging her shoulders. “I think it had something to do with the fact that he couldn’t seem to talk without using his hands.”
“You seem to be doing all right.”
“I guess I never got into the habit.”
“Well, there you go. So much for stereotypes.”
“But I’m only half Italian.”
“Ah,” he responded. “That must be it.”
“Must be,” she playfully agreed.
“Bethany DeGaetano,” he repeated again after barely a second, just to avoid one of those uncomfortable moments of silence. “Bethany. That’s a pretty name.”
“Thank you.” she said shyly.
And before he could stop himself, he added, “For a very pretty young woman.”
She appeared to be pondering something as she gazed silently into his eyes for a moment, then asked, “Do you know anything about that statue behind us?”
Maybe those awkward moments of silence made her as uncomfortable as they did him. Or was it his compliment that had brought on the sudden change in subject? Either way, Dylan was glad for it. “Sure I do,” he answered, glancing briefly over his shoulder at the statue. “It’s off-white, made of a very hard stone, and I don’t think my mother would want me staring at it for very long. She’d be afraid I might go blind.”
“What? Really?”
He laughed and shook his head. “No, but she’d probably tell me something like that. She’s always loved art, but that thing with all its anatomical detail would probably be nothing more than pornography to her.”
Beth smiled. Such a beautiful smile. “That thing, as you call it, is Eul’tiran, the Cirran god of lovemaking. It’s no accident that he was placed right here where the garden’s two main paths just happen to cross. Where our paths just happen to have crossed.”
“Just happen to have crossed?” Dylan asked, using his expression and the inflection of his voice to make his suspicions as obvious as possible.
“Well,” she grinned, admitting, “I may have planned it. Sort of.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said, grinning back. “So who’s the woman?”
“The woman?”
“Yeah, the woman. The one old Eul’tiran up there is teaching the birds and the bees to.”
“Oh. That’s Satah’ra, a mortal woman who just happened to be in the right place at the right time and caught his eye. Legend has it Eul’tiran was roaming the surface of the mortal world one night when he saw her bathing in a natural pool. According to the story he thought she was the most beautiful mortal woman he’d ever laid eyes on, so he hid in the trees until she finished and let her get dressed, then tore off her clothes and raped her right there on the banks of the pool. When he finished he made her the goddess of fertility as penance.”
“Lucky woman. Well, sort of.”
“I think so,” Beth agreed, although the way she said it led Dylan to believe she wasn’t talking about the statue anymore. They gazed deeply into each other’s eyes once again. Dylan knew what was coming next and he began to wonder if he had completely lost his mind. But he couldn’t resist the desire that was driving him closer to her.
She leaned in to him, closed her eyes, and welcomed his gentle kiss, but her response was tentative at best. Something was obviously bothering her. “What about your wife, Dylan?” she asked nervously, answering his question before he asked it.
“I don’t have a wife anymore,” he told her. “We divorced a few weeks ago.”
“Oh,” she said, withdrawing slightly. “I’m...”
“It’s okay,” he told her, relieving her of the need to tell him she was sorry. “Considering what our marriage has been like for the last few years, we’re both better off.”
“All three of us,” she pointed out.
Dylan smiled. “Right. All three of us.”
She kissed him again. And then, after a brief silence, she asked him, “Feel like going for a swim?”
“Isn’t it a little cold for that tonight?”
“Only when you get out. The water’s nice and warm. Almost like a bathtub.”
“Well, I’d like to,” he told her, “but I’m still recovering from some pretty serious injuries. I wouldn’t want to aggravate anything.” He was only teasing. He fully intended to go swimming with her, and was in fact looking forward to it.
“So we’ll take it easy,” she countered, a touch of disappointment finding its way into her voice.
He smiled, and a moment later, realizing that he’d been pulling her leg, Beth smiled back and slapped him playfully on the arm. But then he remembered that he wasn’t wearing any underwear. If he did go swimming with her, would she be offended if he swam naked? Perhaps he should go up to the apartment and put on his trunks. Skinny-dipping might have been exactly what she had in mind, but then again it might not have. He considered both possibilities, then decided that to err on the conservative side was probably the wisest course of action. Especially considering all the apartments that overlooked the pool.
“All right,” he finally said, adding as he stood up, “I’ll go put on my trunks and meet you at the pool.”
“Wait a second,” Beth said, grabbing hold of his jersey to keep him from walking off as she stood with him. “We can’t go to the pool. We have to go to the lake.”
He turned back to her. “Something wrong with the pool?”
“No, not exactly,” she answered, grinning mischievously and easing her way into his welcoming arms.
“Then why do we have to go all the way to the lake?”
She looked up at him through seductive eyes. “We have to go all the way to the lake because there are a lot of apartments full of curious people overlooking the pool, and when I go swimming at night I don’t actually wear a swimsuit.”
“Oh.” He smiled, too. “Well. In that case what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
She gave him a quick peck on the lips and said, “I thought you’d see things my way,” and then slipped her hand into his and led him out of the garden.
As they headed into the forest, Dylan wondered just exactly what her lack of a swimsuit would mean when they got to the lake. Would she swim in her underclothes or in nothing at all? Of course, it didn’t make any difference for him either way? He had no underwear on, so unless he decided to swim in his jeans...
* * *
“This is my favorite spot,” Beth told him, stopping just as they emerged from the tree line. They’d walked for nearly an hour, much longer than it should have taken them to reach the lake’s nearest bank, so Dylan suspected they’d gone at least partway around to the other side. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
Dylan let go of her hand and walked a few steps farther ahead to look around. As he’d suspected, Beth had led him partway around the lake, to a large but secluded clearing at the base of a fifty- or sixty-foot waterfall that sparkled like a shower of diamonds in the moonlight as it thundered into the natural pool before of him. The roughly oval-shaped pool itself measured anywhere from nine to twelve meters in width and at least thirty across the center of its length. Glints of moonlight glistened off perpetual ripples as they raced across the water’s black surface, under-lighting the leaves of the trees near the banks and adding an almost ghost-like quality to the area’s soft illumination. It reminded Dylan of another forest clearing he’d visited not so long ago, but where that one had seemed haunted by death, this one seemed somehow magical, like something out of a young adult’s fantasy novel, so pushing thoughts of the former from his mind proved less than difficult.
“You’re right. It is beautiful,” he agreed.
Except for the rocky cliffs to his right, from which the waterfall flowed, the pool’s banks were low and rounded, covered with thick moss. Whether that moss was blue or green, or black, or purple, or even dull orange for that matter, Dylan couldn’t tell in the absence of daylight. There was a large V-shaped cut through the soil near the center of the far left bank, which Beth explained allowed the overflow to escape from the pool and trickle down the hill to the lake below. Several odd formations of rocks and boulders—some of them didn’t look quite natural—were scattered here and there throughout the clearing, the largest ones nearest the cliffs. Various species of plants and wildflowers that Dylan didn’t recognize grew in abundance among them, their bouquet of fragrances pleasingly sweet like roses and honeysuckle, mild citrus and clover, sprinkled with a dash of peppermint.
“What are all those plants and flowers growing between the rocks?” he asked.
“I don’t know what they’re called,” she replied, “but I do know this clearing is the only place on the entire planet where those particular species are known to grow.”
“Why’s that? What’s so special about this place?”
“From a scientific point of view, we don’t know because we’ve never studied it. I know. I checked. But culturally... The Cirrans call this the Pool of Satah’ra.”
He looked at her. “This is where that story you told me is supposed to have taken place?”
“That’s right. This is a sacred religious site—not a place the natives like to talk about with off-worlders.”
“How did you find it?”
“By accident one night on one of my walks.”
He returned to her side. While this particular forest was known to be free of dangerous wild animals, there were several areas within it where the terrain could get pretty tricky. “You walk this forest at night?” he asked. “Alone?”
“Sometimes,” she answered. “I’m careful enough.”
He looked around once more and then gazed at the small body of water again. “A sacred religious sight, huh. Why isn’t it guarded? Should we even be here?”
“Not really, but no one will ever find out as long as we’re gone by morning. The Cirrans come here to pray sometimes during the day or on overcast nights after dinner, but on clear nights like this they stay away.”
“Why?”
“They believe that on clear nights Satah’ra comes down from Caldanra-Shelar—basically their equivalent of Heaven combined with a sort of Mount Olympus-type place. They say she descends on a giant bird of prey and comes here to bathe. She’s supposed to be the most beautiful goddess of all with a womb so fertile that it glows. She never wears any clothing and to look upon her, even accidentally, means to be rendered barren. If you’re a woman, that is.”
“What if you’re a man?”
“Then you become so enchanted by her beauty that it enslaves your soul. You can never love or even make love to a mortal woman again.”
“Ouch,” Dylan commented as his eyebrows rose.
“Exactly. That’s why the natives stay away and don’t guard it, and why I come down here almost every clear night for a swim.”
She laid her jacket down on the largest of the rocks beside her, then sat on a smaller one and pulled off her boots and socks. “A famous writer once said that all the world’s a stage. If that’s true I guess you could say I’ve been playing the role of the goddess Satah’ra on every warm, clear night for about two years now.”
Dylan sat down beside her and pulled his shoes off as well. The moss felt spongy soft and surprisingly warm beneath his feet, unlike anything else he could remember ever having walked on. Satah’ra never wore any clothing, Beth had just explained. Had her comment about playing the role of the goddess been a clue as to what she had in mind for their swim? Not surprisingly, he found himself hoping that it had been.
Beth stood up, turned and faced him, and started to unfasten her blouse. Following her lead, and being careful not to get too far ahead of her since he still wasn’t sure just how much of her clothing she intended to shed, Dylan grabbed hold of his jersey, lifted it up over his head, and pulled it off. She opened her blouse—she was wearing a bra, but no undershirt—slipped it off, and tossed it on top of her jacket. Then she unfastened her trousers and pulled them down from her hips. Dylan set his jersey aside, stood up, and very slowly unfastened his jeans, still unsure as to whether or not he should take them off.
Beth stepped out of her trousers, folded them neatly and laid them on the pile, then reached up behind her back and unfastened her bra. She crossed her arms in front of her and smiled, made a show of slowly slipping the straps from her shoulders, then lowered her arms and let it fall to the ground. Finally, after only a moment’s hesitation, she grasped her panties and pulled them off as well.
She stood before him like a nude model waiting to pose for an art class, inviting his silent stare. She wasn’t as tall or as voluptuously endowed as the blonde from across the courtyard, but she was certainly no less beautiful. Long, lustrous black hair, as he had already seen. Firm, full breasts, a slender waistline and flat stomach, sensuous curves, and a great pair of legs with a small triangle of fine black hair crowning the cleft between them. She smiled invitingly, then stepped up to him and rested her hands on his shoulders.
Dylan took her by the waist and pulled her close, then slid his hands down over her smooth hips and gently squeezed her bottom as he softly kissed her.
“Are you going to be my Eul’tiran?” she whispered. She pressed her lips to his, and as the passion between them grew she dragged her fingernails lightly down his back, then freed him from his jeans. She pressed her body to his and moaned with desire as he responded to her touch.
Then, suddenly, she drew back and said, “Come and get it,” and then ran off and dove into the pool and started swimming toward the opposite bank.
Dylan pulled off his jeans but then held onto them as he was suddenly able to look on the situation with a clearer mind. “You really are out of your mind,” he muttered. The ink on his divorce was barely dry, and as he’d reminded himself earlier when he was spying on the blond, he didn’t need to fall into another relationship this soon.
Then again, maybe she wasn’t looking for a relationship? Maybe she just wanted to have some fun. Maybe she just wanted to go swimming and have sex with no strings attached. God knew that after thinking about Marissa, after thinking about making love to Carolyn, and after watching the girl across the courtyard, he needed a release. What harm could there be in that?
Having sufficiently rationalized his actions, at least to his own satisfaction, he tossed his jeans onto the pile of clothes and ran in after her, once again brushing aside that brief small spark of morality that tried to stop him. He caught up to her near the center of the pool where a narrow column of stone rose up out of the unknown depths to fall barely an inch short of breaking the surface.
Beth boosted herself up and stood atop the small platform, faced Dylan, and struck an enchanting pose much like that of one of the garden statues. “The goddess Satah’ra has appeared once again,” she proclaimed to the night. Then she looked down at Dylan and added, “And you, mortal man, have looked upon her.”
The model in the art class again, Dylan mused, looking up at her. He almost responded with ‘My heart is enslaved forever,’ but thought better of it. A statement like that might give her the wrong idea. Instead, he said only, “And she’s even more beautiful than the legend says.”
Beth smiled but held her pose. “This stone pedestal is exactly where she is said to appear when she comes down from Caldanra-Shelar,” she told him.
“She couldn’t possibly be as beautiful as you are,” he declared, turning on the infamous ‘Graves charm’ so heavily that Beth could have cut it with a knife if she’d had one. She looked up into the trees, still smiling, then suddenly whirled away and dove back into the water.
Dylan swam after her and just caught her by the ankle as she reached the far bank. He closed the space between them, then reached around her on both sides and grabbed hold of the moss, trapping her between his arms and pressing himself against her as he kissed the nape of her neck. She turned to him and rested her hands on his shoulders, then wrapped her legs around his waist and invited him with a passionate kiss to consummate their newfound relationship.
She moaned with pleasure as he penetrated her, rose upward as he pushed deeper inside her until her breasts emerged from the water and her nipples stiffened in the cool breeze. Then, suddenly, pushing off against the slight underwater slope of the bank for leverage, she lifted herself halfway out of the water and dunked him.
He broke the surface quickly, intending to return the favor, but Beth had already climbed out of the tepid water and taken a seat on the bank near its edge. He climbed out onto his hands and knees, and as he crawled over her she lay back on the warm, soft moss and wrapped her legs around him once again. He lay down gently on top of her, and as they kissed, all those weeks’ worth of tension and desire quickly resurfaced within him.
Their passion burned, and without any further playful prelude, they made love.
A shadow drifted silently across the moonlit curtains and was gone in an instant. Dylan awoke but didn’t move except to open his eyes and look over at the window. He stared at the curtains and listened intently for several seconds, but all he heard was Beth breathing quietly at his side.
So what had awakened him?
His skin felt sticky with dried sweat, but that was only from their lovemaking. He hadn’t been having the nightmares again. He knew that because if he had been having them he would have remembered it. He always did. So the question remained, what had awakened him?
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe sleeping with someone for the first time in so many weeks had just... No. It wasn’t nothing. Something definitely was not right. Something had tripped his mind’s alarm and awakened him, and after so many years of military conditioning he knew that to not heed that alarm’s warning could well be a fatal mistake—both for him and for Beth.
He lifted Beth’s arm from across his chest and gently rolled her onto her back. Then, being careful not to disturb her any further, he slid his arm out from under her shoulders and climbed out of bed. He crept over to the window and peeked out past the edge of the curtain. He had reverted to Ranger mode again. He felt no ache in his head, no soreness in his shoulder or ribs, no stiffness in his leg.
Across the courtyard a dark, indistinct object sat unmoving on the blond girl’s deck. But the larger moon hung high and full above its rooftop, reflecting the long departed sun’s nuclear brilliance off its enormous face and casting deep shadows over most of the deck, so he couldn’t make out what the object was. One thing he did know, though. Whatever that object was, it was something that hadn’t been there earlier in the evening.
Beth stirred behind him. “What’s wrong?” she asked drowsily.
“I’m not sure,” he answered. “It may be nothing.”
“Then come on back to bed.”
“In a minute.”
Rather than wait for him to come back to her, she climbed out of bed and joined him by the window, wrapped her arms around his waist and cuddled up to his side. “What are you looking at?” she asked.
He draped an arm around her shoulders and answered, “One of the apartments across the courtyard. I think something’s wrong.” He let the curtain fall back into place and looked at her. “Better get dressed.”
“I don’t want to get dressed,” she told him with a yawn. “I want to go back to bed and I want you to come back to bed with me.”
Dylan kissed her on the forehead and said, “I really think we’d better get dressed.” Then he gently loosed himself from her embrace, and as he started to pull on his clothes he noticed that instead of getting dressed herself, Beth had taken a seat at his desk and was watching him. But he would not change his mind. He couldn’t. He had to be sure that everything was all right over at the blond girl’s apartment. He had to know that she was safe. Exactly why he had to know, he couldn’t really say, but he felt somehow obligated nonetheless.
He went into the living room and opened the curtains a few inches, then picked up his binocs, switched them to night-vision mode, and zoomed in for a closer look at that dark object. It didn’t do any good. Her deck was so deep in the shadows that although he could see the object more clearly, he still couldn’t make out what it was.
A sudden brilliant flash blinded him before he instinctively pulled back from the lenses—for one fleeting moment he found himself back in that island jungle, hiding in the underbrush while the enemy lit up the area with his spotlight—and cursed their filters for reacting so slowly. But as soon as his sight returned and his binocs reset themselves, he looked again and discovered that the object had split into two black-clad men. One of them moved to the right, to the sliding door that led into her bedroom, then crouched and waited while the other forced open the door to her living room, threw the curtains aside, and rushed inside. Gunfire erupted and the intruder stumbled back out through the open door, tearing the curtains down around him as the writhing remains of the girl’s mysterious guest glowed bright orange and disintegrated on the couch.
“They’ve got disruptors!” Dylan exclaimed.
“Who’s got disruptors?” Beth asked as she ran into the living room in her underclothes, carrying her trousers and fumbling to pull on her blouse. “What’s going on?”
Dylan set his binocs aside and coaxed her toward the comm-panel. “Hurry. Call the Civil Guard.” Then he rushed into the bedroom.
“And tell them what?” she asked, calling after him.
“Two heavily armed intruders have broken into the upstairs apartment directly across the courtyard from here,” he hollered. “There’s been disrupter fire and at least two people are dead.”
“Dead!”
“Do it, Beth!”
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed as she tapped the emergency call button. Then, having gotten over the initial shock of the situation, she asked, “What if they’re not intruders? What if they are the Civil Guard pulling some kind of raid or something?”
“The Civil Guard wouldn’t be using disruptors!” he answered as he hurried back into the living room, clutching an older style Solfleet-issue pulse pistol in his right hand. “They’ve been banned by every member world and protectorate in the Coalition!”
Beth gasped when she saw his pistol. “Dylan!” she shouted. “What are you doing with a gun in your home?”
“Nothing yet,” he answered as he picked up his binocs.
“You can’t have guns off the base! It’s against Cirran law!”
“So is murder! Make the damn call!”
“I am making the damn call!”
The girl’s lights came up just as Dylan lifted his binocs to his eyes again. He switched them back to their normal setting and saw that aside from being dressed in black, the intruders weren’t wearing any particular kind of uniform. Burglars? A local street gang? No. Burglars and street gangs wouldn’t have been able to get their hands on disruptors. Someone much more dangerous then.
He set the binocs on the floor beside him and threw open the sliding door by hand—the auto mechanism was too damn slow—then dropped to one knee and took careful aim across the courtyard at the one remaining intruder, who was still crouching on the deck and was touching his hand to something on his left shoulder. He hesitated just long enough to savor the long absent rush of adrenalin that surged through his veins, then slowly squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
“What the...” He stared at his weapon in disbelief, then aimed and squeezed the trigger again, and again nothing happened. “Damn it!” he cried.
“What’s wrong?” Beth asked, pulling on her trousers. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened!” Dylan angrily replied. Then, being careful not to shout too loudly, he exclaimed “That stupid bitch!” He turned and threw his weapon at the couch so hard that it bounced off the back cushion and landed with a clatter on the coffee table.
“What!”
“Carolyn drained the power pack!”
“Why would she do that?”
He picked up his binocs again. “She always hated having a weapon in the house. Damn it! Damn her! I should have known she’d do something like that!” He looked back outside just as another weapon whined and a glowing beam of crimson flashed across the courtyard from somewhere directly above and struck the girl’s bedroom window, engulfing it in a brilliant flare of superheated energy.
“That shot came from your roof!” Beth exclaimed as she rushed over to Dylan’s side and then dropped to the floor to pull on her socks and boots.
“The Civil Guard better hurry!” Dylan commented in response.
“They’re on their way!”
The energy that had engulfed the window dissipated quickly. The intruder leapt through the gaping hole that it left behind and trampled over the curtains’ smoldering remains as he dashed to his left after the fleeing girl. He grabbed her by the hair and tackled her through the doorway into the living room, but she somehow managed to twist around as they fell and landed on her back. She fought a valiant fight, punching and kicking and slapping and kneeing and trying to push him off, but it wasn’t enough. He wrestled her onto her stomach and cuffed her hands behind her back.
Cuffed? Might the intruders have been agents of some government agency after all?
The girl obviously hadn’t given up yet. The moment her captor sat back and started to relax she flipped over again, somehow freed one of her legs, and kicked him solidly across the side of his head. He fell hard against the window—a wonder that it didn’t shatter—but recovered quickly and launched himself at her as she struggled to get back on her feet. He stumbled forward and grabbed her by the handcuffs, yanking down on them as he fell and pulling her back down to the floor. She landed hard on her back and tried to kick him again as he jumped up, but this time he stepped in and blocked her attack with a forearm and then dropped to his knees, laying his shins across her legs and straddling her pelvis. Then he backhanded her across her mouth, bringing her struggle to an abrupt end.
He stayed put for a moment, probably to make sure there wasn’t any fight left in her, then stood up. He rolled her onto her stomach against only minimal resistance then slid one arm up under the cuffs and grabbed her hair high enough that he pulled her head up off the floor. Then he lifted her to her feet and held her steady as he forced her to walk forward ahead of him.
“It’s too late,” Dylan said. “They got her.”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know. C-U-F maybe. That girl’s definitely involved in something big. She had a visitor tonight who I think was some kind of agent. Probably S-I-A.” He looked at Beth and stood up. “I’m going after the guy on the roof.”
“Going after him with what?” she asked, grabbing his jersey and standing with him.
Dylan stopped, turned and stared at his discarded pistol. Beth was right. Given his present physical condition, he was helpless to take anyone on without a weapon. “There’s got to be some way to help her,” he said, more to himself than out loud.
“How?” Beth asked.
Dylan sighed. “I don’t know.” He turned back toward the deck and grabbed up his binocs again.
Another intruder walked into the girl’s apartment, right through the front door. He was dressed in black like the others but wasn’t masked, so Dylan made a conscious effort to take as good a look at him as possible. He stepped over the body of a fallen comrade as though it were so much trash and walked over to where the other attacker was holding the girl. Dylan hadn’t even seen the dead one before. That first blinding flash must have been the shot that took him out of the fight.
The newcomer appeared to be middle-aged and Caucasian. He had dark hair, some of which had gone gray, a dark beard, and...and dark eyes! He had dark eyes! “He’s not Cirran or Sulaini,” Dylan observed. “He’s Terran.”
“What?”
“I said he’s Terran, unless he’s wearing colored lenses for some reason.”
“A mercenary?” Beth suggested.
“Possibly, but more likely a traitor. Mercenaries rarely involve themselves in hostilities against their own governments these days. Too much like starting a fire in your own back yard.”
The probably-Terran reached out and grabbed a fistful of the girl’s tank top, tore it off of her, and then stuffed it into her mouth. Then he pulled a pistol from inside his shirt—even older than Dylan’s from the looks of it—and rested the muzzle against her throat. He said something, then slowly slid the weapon down over her right breast and then across to her left, making little circles around her nipples. Then, finally, he slid it down between her breasts, over her stomach, and pushed the muzzle down into the front of her panties.
The girl suddenly kicked him between the legs with what looked like all the force of an angry mule, actually lifting him off his feet before he doubled over. He backed off and dropped to his knees in obvious pain as his partner tightened his hold on their feisty prisoner and slapped her two or three times on the side of her head.
“Good girl,” Dylan muttered.
“What’d she do?” Beth asked.
“Kicked him square in the nuts. Looks like she hurt him pretty badly, too.”
After a minute or so the probably-Terran climbed back to his feet, though he must still have been in a lot of pain, and leveled his pistol at the girl’s chest. He shouted something, then squeezed the trigger.
She flinched as a small silvery dart that Dylan could barely see stung her in the center of her chest and stuck there. Her legs began to quiver. She appeared to be struggling to stay on her feet. Then her knees buckled and she collapsed. Her captor eased her to the floor, then pulled the dart out of her chest and slipped it into a concealed pocket in his shirt. Then, seemingly at the probably-Terran’s direction, he pulled off her panties and used them to bind her ankles together. Finally, he lifted her up off the floor, threw her over his shoulder, and hurriedly followed the probably-Terran out of the apartment.
Dylan’s mind started racing. There were only two of them now, not counting the one on his roof of course, assuming he was still up there. One was carrying the unconscious girl while the other was doubtlessly still in a lot of pain, so both were moving slowly. If he could get to the roof and eliminate that one first...
But as Beth had already pointed out, the enemy was armed and he was not. So how?
The screaming whine of some kind of energy weapon suddenly filled the air as a blue-white beam lanced skyward from below, just beyond Dylan’s deck. Another beam of crimson answered the shot from above and the two flared bright purple when they crossed. Then they ceased together, and the roof shook with a loud thud and the rumbling of something heavy as it rolled down toward the edge.
Dylan and Beth looked up in unison as the last of the attackers—those they knew about at least—fell hard to his deck. Dylan rushed to the doorway but stopped short of actually running outside. The man lay motionless, face-down in an expanding pool of dark blood. The back of his shirt had burned away and what was left of his charred and boiling flesh still glowed where the energy hadn’t quite dissipated yet. Beyond the body, near the deck’s edge, a disruptor rifle lay idle, just waiting for a new owner to claim it.
“Ask and ye shall receive,” Dylan commented. Then he lay prone and started to crawl outside.
“What are you doing?” Beth gasped.
“Stay here.”
“Like hell!”
She dropped to her stomach and followed him out, cringing and grinding her teeth as she clamped her jaws shut against the smell of scorched flesh and eviscerated inards that assaulted her nose and turned her stomach. Reluctant to do so, she nevertheless crawled right through the warm, sticky, oozing blood and over the lifeless body to the deck’s edge. Dylan grabbed the rifle, glanced quickly to the ground below to be sure it was safe, then started to squeeze between the railing posts.
“Look over there,” Beth told him, pointing.
Dylan looked to where she was pointing. Below them and off to the right another man lay motionless on his back in the middle of a small patch of flowers, holding a small pistol. He was dressed not in black, but in light-colored pajamas, the front of his shirt stained with blood.
“Oh my God, I know him!” Beth exclaimed. “He’s one of the residents here!”
Dylan glanced back at the corpse on his deck and concluded, “They must have shot each other.” Then he gazed down at the other man again. “But why didn’t he just disintegrate like the window did?”
He examined the rifle more closely. The sniper had used a low setting. But why? Weren’t the higher settings working properly? Perhaps he’d wanted to make sure he didn’t kill the girl or set her apartment on fire when he burned through the window. If so, then that was an important detail. It meant they didn’t just want her out of the way of something. They wanted her alive. No, more than that. They’d risked alerting her to their presence and allowing her a chance to escape rather than risk accidentally killing her. They didn’t just want her alive. They needed her alive. She was important. She knew something. But what? And who were they?
“He may have saved our lives,” Beth commented.
“What? Oh. We’ll have to thank him later. Let’s go.”
Dylan squeezed the rest of the way out between the posts and dropped to the ground, rolling onto his good shoulder to absorb the shock and then up onto his feet, crouching low and looking around. The he signaled Beth to join him. She slipped through the posts more quickly and easily than he had, hung by her hands and lowered herself as far as she could, then dropped. She landed hard and a little awkwardly, but managed to stay on her feet.
“You all right?” Dylan asked. She nodded.
They remained still for several seconds, watching and listening to be sure they were still safe. Solfleet’s war games still raged on in the distance, but the apartment battle seemed to have ended...at least for the moment.
“What was that?” Beth asked fearfully.
“What was what?”
“I heard something.”
Dylan sighed. He really hated it when people told him that.
She twisted, first one way and then the other, searching the area all around them. Then she froze, her eyes fixed in a single direction.
A vision of Marissa staring into the darkness of the Sulaini commander’s inner hallway flashed through Dylan’s mind. “Beth?”
“Oh my God,” Beth said, half covering her mouth with one hand. Dylan followed her gaze to the pajama-clad man.
“What is it?” Dylan asked.
“He’s still alive!” she exclaimed as she rushed to his side.
Dylan gazed at the man’s chest but couldn’t discern any movement. “Are you sure?”
Beth pried the pistol from his hand. “Lie still,” she told him, ignoring Dylan for the moment. “Help is coming.”
The wheezing man—Dylan could see now that he was trying hard to breathe—stared into space through glazed, unseeing eyes, no doubt totally oblivious to Beth’s presence, and let go his life’s last breath. Beth hesitated for a moment, then dragged her fingers down over his eyelids, closing them. And then, just for a moment, she bowed her head and closed her own eyes.
The sky had begun to lighten, but no birds sang songs of greeting to the rising sun this dawn. Dylan allowed Beth her moment of silence, but when she began to shiver he knew that it wasn’t just due to the cool air and he told her, “We have to get moving.”
She looked at him, then gazed down at the weapon in her hand. She checked its charge and Dylan doublechecked the rifle he’d picked up. Both were almost fully charged.
They dashed across the garden and between the two farthest buildings, passing the bodies of those few early risers who’d been unfortunate enough to get in the enemy’s way. At least one, Dylan noticed, held a Solfleet-issue pistol in his dead hand.
They put their backs to the wall of the building on their right and stopped when they reached its far end. Dylan glanced briefly around the corner and pulled back very quickly, then crouched low and peeked around it once more, just as briefly. Then he looked back at Beth and told her, “It’s clear,” and asked, “Are you ready?”
“I’m scared,” she confessed.
“So am I, but that’s good,” he assured her. “Means you won’t make mistakes, as long as you don’t let your fear get the best of you.”
“I’m not a soldier, Dylan,” she reminded him. “I’m an administrative specialist.”
“We’re all soldiers first, Beth,” he reminded her. Then he grasped her hand. “Come on.”
They scrambled the fifty meters across the grassy front yard to the cover of the next building. From there they only had a few more meters to go to make it to the thick four-foot tall bushes that hid portions of the stone wall from view—the wall that surrounded the wide open parking lot, twenty feet below. They high-crawled over to it and peered down over the lot from between two of the bushes.
“There they are,” Dylan said, pointing toward the center of the lot where the kidnappers were hurrying as best they could toward a common commercial cargo van’s opening back door, the one still carrying the unconscious girl over his shoulder.
“What do we do now?” Beth asked.
“Wait here.” He threw her a stern look. “I mean it this time.”
He rose to his feet but still crouched as low as he could as he rushed to the right, toward the top of the slate-gray steps that led down to the lot, closing the distance between himself and his prey. Sirens wailed in the distance, echoing through the hills, but they were still at least a few kilometers distant.
He popped up for another look. The van’s back door stood open and the kidnappers were almost there. He raised his rifle, aimed into the cab, and squeezed the trigger. The muzzle flash glared red in his sights, and when it faded the driver had slumped over the controls.
The kidnapper carrying the girl lifted her off his shoulders and rolled her into the back of the van, then jumped in behind her as the probably-Terran suddenly returned fire into the bushes around Dylan’s position. Dylan ducked under the deadly shower and glanced over at Beth. She was on her knees and rising to join the firefight. He scrambled and tackled her flat onto her back.
“Ouch! That hurt!” she hollered, slapping his arm.
“Sorry,” Dylan told her, unfazed by her outburst.
“What are you doing?” she continued to protest. “I could’ve hit him!”
“And he could’ve killed you!” he fired back, silencing her.
The shooting stopped as suddenly as it had started. Dylan jumped to his feet, rifle raised and ready to fire, but it was too late. The van was already speeding away. “Shit!” he exclaimed angrily as he lowered the rifle. He drew a few quick, deep breaths to try to relax as he started pacing back and forth, but it didn’t work.
Beth stood up and brushed herself off, then started to tremble. “What was all that about?” she managed to ask between her own heavy breaths.
“I don’t know, but...” Suddenly he remembered. He looked at her, his eyes wide with urgency. “The handcomp!”
“What handcomp?”
“The Solfleet handcomp they were working with!” he answered as he took off running past several curious and frightened onlookers toward the girl’s building.
Beth took off after him but quickly fell farther behind, losing more and more ground with every step. “What Solfleet handcomp?” she hollered.
Dylan bounded up the front stairs and dashed into the girl’s apartment, right past another black-clad intruder—he just caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of his eye—who was at that moment rifling none too gently through the girl’s closet. He dove forward and rolled up onto his knees against the back of the couch, then turned and fired, blasting the rising enemy out through the doorway to die at Beth’s feet.
She stared down at the dead man in horror, looked up at Dylan, and then suddenly raised her pistol and fired toward the kitchen.
Dylan swung his rifle around in time to see yet another enemy fall. Then he looked back at Beth. She was just standing there, breathing heavily through her gaping mouth, her eyes wide with terror and her body frozen still as a statue, still aiming her pistol at where her victim had been standing.
“It’s okay, Beth,” he told her calmly as he cautiously approached her. “It’s all over now.” He reached her side, being careful not to step into her line of fire, then carefully pried the pistol from her hands. “See? I told you you were a soldier first.”
She looked at him as though she couldn’t comprehend what he’d said. Then she started to cry. “I’ve never shot anyone before,” she told him as the tears flowed down over her cheeks.
Dylan stepped into her, intending to take her into his arms and comfort her, but at that moment someone fired off two rapid shots and she yelped and fell backwards to the floor. Dylan watched in horror and disbelief for a single split second before his instinct and training took over again. He dropped straight to the floor as he spun toward the kitchen and fired, nearly cutting the wounded man in half, then quickly bounced right back to his feet and whirled around in a circle. No more enemies...for the moment.
“Beth!” He dropped to his knees and laid the rifle down beside him. He spotted a pair of small holes in a growing bright red smear of fresh blood high up on the right side of Beth’s already blood-caked blouse. He lifted the material from her skin and then poked his fingers into the holes and tore it open to check her wounds. Two streams of fresh blood trickled down her shoulder and mixed with the darker coagulated blood that already stained her flesh.
So she’d been hit twice, by bullets judging from the look of her wounds.
One of the rounds had cut through her bra strap and entered above her breast. The other had struck just above her collar bone. That one was just a graze relative to the other. A fairly deep one, but a still a graze. Neither wound would be fatal if she got help soon enough, but shock could be if she didn’t. He had to do something to stop the bleeding right away or all the help in the world wouldn’t save her.
Her sleeve. It wasn’t spotless but it was cleaner than the rest of her blouse, so it would have to do. He laid his right hand over both wounds and applied pressure, then rolled her onto her side as gently as he could with his left. He straddled her and used his legs to keep her from rolling back, and as he pulled on her sleeve he spotted a bleeding exit wound at the base of her neck, just to the right of her spine.
“That’s good,” he told her, speaking as calmly as he could manage, hoping to keep her from panicking. “It went right through.”
Her sleeve finally tore free. He pulled it off her limp arm and folded it over several times, then laid it over the exit wound as it was clearly the most severe. “See if you can reach around with your left hand and hold this in place,” he said. With much effort, and with his help, she managed to do as he asked.
The sirens were drawing nearer.
“Hang in there, Beth. Help is almost here.”
He spread his knees apart and gently laid her back, hoping that her body weight would put added pressure on the wound at the base of her neck and help stop the bleeding. Then he stood up, reached over the back of the couch, and grabbed both cushions and the folded blanket that was still draped over the arm. He stacked the cushions beside her legs, then lifted her legs off the floor and slid the cushions underneath them for support. Then he shook out the blanket and laid it over her to keep her warm. “This will help prevent shock,” he told her.
“I can’t breathe!” she cried, wheezing, gasping for air.
Dylan tossed the blanket aside and tore the hole in her blouse wide open. A circle of bubbly red foam was dancing over the wound above her breast, which he realized indicated that her lung was probably collapsing. He laid the palm of his hand over the wound and pressed down firmly, trying desperately to create an air-tight seal. He glanced around but saw nothing within reach that would do the job any better.
The sirens were drawing closer.
He wanted to sit her up and hold her in his arms, but he knew that if he did that he would only worsen her condition. “Help’s almost here, Beth,” he told her again as he gently stroked her cheek with his free hand. “Just a couple more minutes.”
As he continued to reassure her, his biotronic shoulder began to throb painfully and he started feeling faint. Then he spotted a narrow rivulet of blood trickling down over his arm and mixing with hers.
He’d been hit. Of all the luck. But Beth still needed him and he was determined to stay strong for her. Medical care and the chance to rest would come soon enough.
One by one the sirens fell silent. The Civil Guard had arrived. Everything would be all right now.
Beth, and his hand over her wound, seemed to drift off into the distance as a bad case of tunnel-vision suddenly washed over him.
Everything would be all right.
He looked up and the world of color around him faded to so many shades of gray.
Everything would be all right.
Those shades of gray deepened and darkened and ran together.
Darkness swallowed the world.
That Same Morning
Friday, 24 September 2190
Admiral Hansen thanked the Tarko City station commander for his call and closed the channel, then leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on his desk, and sipped his fresh cup of coffee. If it weren’t for the fact that Liz’s ship was still missing, he probably would have been angry as hell at her for what she’d done. Furious even. But as it was he was too concerned for her safety and wellbeing to be too angry.
The station commander had called him to report that Squad Sergeant Dylan Graves and a young Army corporal by the name of Bethany DeGaetano had been wounded while apparently trying to prevent a kidnapping in the sergeant’s housing complex. But he’d clearly been reluctant to make that report and Hansen had had to press him—had even had to pull rank on him, in fact, which was something he tried to avoid doing whenever possible—in order to get anything more out of him. But even as he talked, his deep regret had shown in his eyes.
Hansen had been surprised to learn that Royer had found and arrested the fugitive Stefani O’Donnell right there in Tarko City—why hadn’t she told him anything about that?—and had been utterly shocked about two seconds later when the station commander further informed him that she’d left Cirra without her. Instead of throwing her in irons and arranging to bring her back to Earth like she should have, Royer had turned her over to the Tarko City agents. They in turn had moved her into an apartment directly across from Graves about a week and a half ago, per Commander Royer’s orders, and had been conducting surveillance on the both of them ever since. More than that and perhaps worst of all, Royer had ordered them to keep everything from him and report only to her.
He was growing angry all over again just thinking about it. He drew a deep breath to calm himself. If Liz eventually turned up alive and well—and he sorely wanted to believe, needed to believe, that she would—she was going to have some serious explaining to do.
The Next Night
Saturday, 25 September 2190
Commander Royer hadn’t traveled outside the solar system in so long she’d forgotten the true depth of her loathing for interstellar travel. Especially those weeks-long deep, deep space voyages, like the one she’d finally just returned home from. If she never had to take another trip like that again, it would be too soon.
As usual, she hadn’t slept very well at night during either leg of the trip, especially after that relatively short-lived but nonetheless nerve rattling attack—had it been anything more than just a pair of scout ships, they might well have lost a lot more than communications—and she felt completely exhausted. Sure, Cirra had been a beautiful world and all. Incredibly beautiful in fact. She had especially enjoyed flying over the deep blue forests and the rocky, snow-capped mountain ranges that rose high through the billowy clouds. Their awe-inspiring majesty had been nothing less than magnificent. But it had taken nine days just to get there, her mission had turned into something more complicated and much more deeply covert than she’d expected, and it had taken another nine days to get back home, once she was finally able to leave. The whole trip had lasted twenty-eight days in all, and even though she’d expected right from the beginning to be gone for at least a month, it was still too much. She was so glad to be home.
Home? Mandela Station wasn’t her real home, of course. At least not to the extent that it had become Admiral Hansen’s. Her actual home and official home of record was a small town just outside Kansas City. But among other things, Mandela Station housed Solfleet Central Command Orbital Headquarters, which had been her permanent duty assignment and her and Karen’s home away from home for more than nine years. So, yes. For all intents and purposes she was home.
Considering the duration of the trip, she’d traveled relatively lightly as usual, not wanting to load herself down with extra luggage full of stuff she’d probably end up not needing anyway. At least, that was what she’d told herself she was doing when she packed. But as she left the passenger terminal behind and made her way back through the station’s familiar corridors toward her quarters, the twin carry-on bags that had made up the entirety of her luggage seemed to grow heavier with every step. Especially the one weighing on her right shoulder, which still felt sore where she’d slammed it against the wall during the attack. She was beginning to wonder if the strap might actually saw her arm off, right through her black pleather jacket.
But their weight was nothing compared to that of the other burden she’d brought back with her—a mental burden she would happily exchange for another heavy suitcase if she could. The admiral had been against it from the very beginning, even though not doing it would have meant finally facing the consequences that had been looming over their heads for the last six years. But she’d argued relentlessly until he finally acquiesced and gave her his authorization. Knowing without a doubt that she was right, she’d gone forward with her plan immediately upon his surrender, only to watch it fail. That failure had forced her to take matters into her own hands and go to even more extreme measures, but so far as she knew those measures weren’t proving to be any more effective than the first ones. The admiral had been right all along.
So what was she going to tell him now?
A left turn and an immediate right, then around the double bend in the corridor and her quarters were just ahead. Finally, she’d made it. She was so looking forward to surprising Karen. After conversing with Sergeant Graves in his hospital room, she’d called her wife and told her that she might be away for as long as twice what she’d planned, so Karen, who’d been driven to tears by that call, wouldn’t expect her home for another month yet.
She dropped her bags just inside the door as it closed behind her, then slipped off her jacket and tossed it over the back of the nearest chair as she kicked off her shoes. “Karen?” she called. There was no response. She glanced at her watch. 2130 hours. Surely Karen wasn’t asleep already. She never went to bed before 2200. Especially on a Saturday night.
She let down what little bit of hair hadn’t already fallen free of her barrettes—it had grown quite a bit over last month—and shook it out as she sauntered into the bedroom. Nothing. She checked the bathroom. Same result. Karen wasn’t home.
She headed straight for the bed—her own fresh, clean, neatly made bed—and pitched forward face-down with a single bounce onto the semi-firm mattress like a tree falling to a soft forest floor. She sighed. Loudly. It was good to be home. 2130 hours. An extra-early bedtime and a nice long night’s sleep were just what she needed, though Karen would doubtlessly wake her up whenever she came in.
The mere thought of sleep made her yawn and she was tempted to let herself drift off on top of the blankets just as she was. No doubt she could have done so quite easily. But she’d been wearing the same clothes, not to mention the same underclothes, for the past twenty-two hours—she’d skipped the day’s workouts—and the last thing she wanted to do was sleep in them for eight or nine more. So, as soon as she could muster the energy to move, she rolled to the side of the bed and stood up to get undressed.
She stripped down to nothing, tossing her clothes into a pile on the floor in front of her dresser, then faced the bed and turned down the blankets. She could hardly wait to lose herself between the sheets and bury her tired head deep in her over-stuffed pillow. But she desperately needed a shower, and as enticing as the sight of her bed was at that moment, she just couldn’t bring herself to climb into it without one. So, without another second’s thought, she padded drowsily into the bathroom.
She set the temperature to slightly warmer than lukewarm so it would be more soothing than invigorating, then closed her tired eyes, stepped in under the lightly pulsating stream, and let the water pour down over her until her hair was soaked. Then she squirted a palm full of soap into her hand, and as she lathered up she thought about how wonderful a nice long bubble bath would feel. She almost decided to take one, but her bed was still calling out to her so she quickly reconsidered. Besides, she was a little afraid that if she did take a bath she might fall asleep in the tub, and drowning wasn’t very high up on her list of things to do in life.
She finished her shower and toweled off quickly—she didn’t feel like standing under the blow drier—then headed back into the bedroom. She went straight to the bureau, opened the top drawer, and reached in for a clean set of pajamas, but then hesitated before grabbing any. Karen was going to be thrilled to find her home when she came in. No way was she not going to wake her up to give her a proper welcome. Royer grinned at the thought and left the pajamas where they were, closed the drawer, and climbed into bed without putting anything on.
She rolled onto her side to face the door and pulled the blankets up over her shoulder, nearly covering her head as well. The sheets felt cool but not too cool, clean and soft against her bare skin, and as her head sank deeper into her pillow, the light dampness where her hair pressed against her cheek didn’t bother her in the least. “Lights off,” she said quietly.
A darkness deeper than that of interstellar space itself instantly filled the room. She drew a deep breath and relaxed as her hair rinse’s mildly intoxicating floral fragrance took effect and she started her journey into unconsciousness. She felt almost as though she were weightless, or as though she could leave her physical body simply by choosing to do so. The world around her grew ever more distant as she drifted off into nothingness. Drifting...drifting...
The bedroom door slid open and a gleaming shaft of light poured in from the living room and fell across the center of the bed, piercing the darkness like a golden beam from Heaven. “Liz!” Karen’s silhouette exclaimed with excitement as it rushed to her.
Liz threw off the blankets and greeted her elated wife with outstretched arms. “Hi, baby.”
Karen practically jumped into the bed and threw her arms around her wife and rolled over her and pulled her over on top of her and kissed her. “Oh my God, Liz! I’ve been worried sick about you!”
“What? Why?”
“Why!” Karen exclaimed. “Because your ship’s been missing for over a week! Nobody even knew if you were alive or dead!”
“Oh, that,” Liz said. “It was just a communications problem.” Karen didn’t need to know anything more.
“We didn’t know that!” Karen replied. “Oh my God, I missed you so much!” She kissed her again, and again. “Welcome home, baby.” And she kissed her again.
“Thanks.”
They kissed again and Karen slid her hand down over Liz’s bare bottom. “You’re not wearing anything,” she said with a smile.
“No, I’m not,” Liz repled, smiling back.
As they kissed some more, Liz pushed Karen’s top up to her armpits, then slipped her hand inside her bra and gently squeezed her breast. But Karen grasped her wrist and pulled her hand back out, then rolled her onto her back.
“No, you’re tired after your trip,” she said softly, almost whispering. “Tonight is all for you. Just lie back and enjoy it.”
Liz stretched her arms out across the bed and dragged her hands up to the sides of her pillow. After four weeks away from home, she was indeed going to enjoy it. She was going to enjoy it more than ever. What a heavenly way to drift off to sleep.
Karen stripped off her clothes and tossed them away, then leaned down and lightly kissed both sides of Liz’s neck, her collar bones, the little ‘v’ at the base of her throat. Then she slowly worked her way down across her breasts, gently biting and licking and suckling on her nipples, which quickly stiffened at her tongue’s touch. She threw the blankets down past the foot of the bed then resumed kissing and licking and nibbling her way slowly down Liz’s torso and through her fine crown of soft golden hair to the warm, moist flesh between her legs.
Liz spread her legs and purred with pleasure as her wife gently, lovingly, did what she had always done so well. Before long those purrs grew into quiet moans of ecstasy, not all of them quite under her breath.
Three quick beeps from the comm-panel startled her back to full consciousness. “Admiral Hansen to Commander Royer,” it said.
Her next moan emerged as one of extreme displeasure as Karen stopped what she was doing and rested her head atop one of Liz’s legs with a sigh. “Please tell me I didn’t just hear what I just heard,” Liz implored aloud.
“Admiral Hansen to Commander Royer,” the speaker repeated. “Have you made it home yet, Commander?”
It was almost 2200 hours on a Saturday night. He wouldn’t still be working. Would he?
“Admiral Hansen to Commander Royer,” he called again. “If you can hear me, Liz, please respond. Otherwise, give me a call at the office as soon as you get in. I’ll be here until about twenty-three hundred.”
She sighed. Apparently he would be, and he was. She propped herself up on one elbow and reached over to the panel, made sure the unit was set for audio only, and then touched her thumb to the answer pad. “Commander Royer here, sir,” she responded unenthusiastically.
“Ah, you are there. Good. Welcome back, Liz. Sorry to bother you this late, but I’ve been three times as busy as usual since you left and the next two days are already booked solid. Would you mind coming up to the office tonight and briefing me on your trip, so...”
“Do we have to do that tonight, sir?” she interrupted, sharing the disappointment that shone so evidently in Karen’s eyes, even in the relative darkness. “I’m already in bed.”
“Oh,” he said after a moment, apparently having just guessed what he’d done. “Uh... Sorry, Liz. I didn’t even think about... No, we don’t have to do it tonight. But I’ll tell you what. I know what these long trips do to you, so if you come brief me tonight, you can sleep in and not worry about coming to the office for the next morning or eight, barring any dire emergencies.”
The next morning or eight? Had he just... “Did you just offer me the entire next week off, sir?” she asked.
“Yes I did, Commander. Consider it my sincerest apology for interrupting your...sleep.” She and Karen exchanged amused looks, both grinning at his obvious embarrassment. “Unless you’d rather just come back to work on Monday, in which case I can meet you here at oh-six-thirty and you can brief me before we go to the weekly staff meeting.”
Karen lifted her head off Liz’s leg and whispered, “Is he serious? A whole week off?” Liz nodded. “Hell yes!” Karen said as she started to get up. “Go! Talk to the man! Brief him all night if you have to!”
Smiling, Liz said, “I’ll be there in thirty minutes, sir.”
“So I heard. No need to be in uniform. I’ll be waiting. Hansen out.”
The entire next week off. Eight whole days, counting tomorrow and next weekend. She and Karen would be free to go anywhere and do anything they wished. That was definitely worth the price of one late night briefing. But before she could brief the admiral, she needed to know exactly what to brief him on, and more importantly what not to brief him on. She’d been out of touch for a week. Hopefully the Tarko City station commander had forwarded his reports to her home unit and kept the admiral in the dark.
“Lights,” she said as she rolled out of bed. She went to her desk and practically fell into the chair, which automatically activated her terminal. “Computer, search incoming personal communications records for the past twenty-eight days. Keyword ‘Graves’.”
“I guess I’ll go take a cold shower,” Karen said as she appeared at Liz’s shoulder.
Liz put her arm around Karen’s hips and kissed her just below her navel, then looked up at her and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m used to it.” She bent down and kissed her gently on the lips. “Besides,” she added with a smile, “we have the next eight days and nights to do whatever we want.” She kissed her again, then went into the bathroom.
Turning her attention back to the computer, Liz saw about fifteen messages from the station commander listed and sighed with relief. Good man. She’d have to remember to thank him. “Replay messages in reverse order,” she said.
“Hello, Commander,” the man’s image said a little too loudly a moment after it appeared on the screen. Startled, Royer gasped and threw her arms across her breasts. She looked at the time-date stamp in the lower right corner of the display and, much to her relief, saw that the message was in fact a recording and not a live transmission. It had just been received yesterday. She knew, of course, that if it had been a live transmission she would have had to tell the computer to open the channel before the commander could actually have seen her. Nevertheless, sitting in front of his image with nothing on still made her a little uncomfortable.
She turned down the volume, then crossed her legs and turned slightly away as the message continued.
“This is what, my fourteenth update? Fifteenth? I don’t even know. Hell, I lost count a long time ago. Anyway, I’m sorry to say that I don’t have much of anything new for you since the last one. Turns out the gunshot wound Sergeant Graves suffered during the kidnapping wasn’t that serious. They didn’t even admit him. However...”
Gunshot wound! Kidnapping! What the hell?
“...suffering from those nightmares of his. The DeGaetano girl’s wounds, on the other hand, were more serious. She’s in intensive care...”
The DeGaetano girl? Who the hell was that?
“...but has already shown some improvement. She should be out before too much longer. Perhaps as soon as a few days from now.”
“Hold,” Royer commanded. The commander’s image froze.
Just what the hell had happened back there? How had Graves gotten shot again? Who was the DeGaetano girl and who the hell had been kid... Suddenly it dawned on her, and the only thing she could manage to say was, “Uh oh.”
O’Donnell. “Shit.” The enemy had gotten to her first. “Resume.”
“Those special counseling sessions you arranged for have continued and will continue as scheduled, but so far there’s been no sign that they’re helping. As I said, he’s still having those nightmares. I wish I had better news for you, but I don’t.”
The commander paused briefly, then added with an exasperated shake of his head, “I just don’t understand it, Commander. I’ve never heard of anything like this to happen before. If he were a Tor’Kana or even a Cirran telepath, then maybe. But he’s not.” He shook his head again. “Beats me how this happened. I guess all we can do is keep trying.
“On a personal note, I hope you never actually have to go through with your contingency plan for him. He’s a proud Marine and he actually seems like a pretty nice guy. I’d hate to see him embarrassed like that.
“Anyway, you should be back on station for my next scheduled update tomorrow, so I guess I’ll talk to you live at that time. Hopefully I’ll actually have something significant and encouraging to tell you by then. Out.”
Royer leaned back, dropped her hands into her lap, and let go the breath she hadn’t even known she was holding. She’d been kidnapped. It had to be her. She was sure of it. Stefani O’Donnell. Damn it!
Liz knew she should have stayed. What the hell had gone wrong? Obviously, a lot had happened out there since she left. She had a lot of reports to catch up on.
But she didn’t have time now. Admiral Hansen was waiting for her.
Hansen. She groaned. What the hell was she going to tell him now? Why was Graves still having those nightmares and how the hell was she going to explain them to the admiral? He’d been against it from the very beginning and had only reluctantly given the go-ahead after she’d spent literally hours arguing with him, trying to convince him that it was the right thing to do. The last thing he needed to hear now, and certainly the last thing she wanted to have to tell him, was that there were complications.
Now she knew how Ensign Pillinger must have felt.
He was waiting. She got up and went to her dresser, hurriedly brushed out her still damp hair and then pulled on a clean set of underclothes. Then she crossed to the closet and pulled on a pair of jeans and whatever tee shirt she happened to grab first. She quickly checked herself in the mirror, then pulled her tee shirt off again, tossed it aside, and went back to the closet to get a different one. Kansas City Chiefs—a better choice than the Romanov Vodka shirt she’d grabbed first. She pulled it on, then grabbed her sneakers out of her luggage and slipped them on as she headed out the door.
Nothing, she decided with determination as she headed toward the lift. She’d tell Hansen exactly nothing. Nothing about the sergeant’s nightmares. Nothing about the special counseling she’d set up for him to help put an end to them. Nothing about the disturbing news she’d just heard, either. At least, not until she had a chance to review the agent’s previous messages and get some more details. And most definitely nothing about how she planned ultimately to succeed in getting Graves to join the agency, one way or the other, whether he wanted to or not. After all, it was only a matter of time before all the obstacles would be gone and he’d be on his way to the academy. What would it really matter how she did it as long as she got it done? In this case, the ends would justify the means. No need to concern the admiral with the details.
She could only hope the Tarko City station commander hadn’t panicked when her ship went missing and blown the whistle.
Dylan gently brushed a lock of hair out of Bethany’s eyes. He hadn’t left her bedside in hours, even after she’d finally fallen asleep some forty-five minutes ago. With luck she’d sleep through the night.
His wound hadn’t been a very serious one and he’d recovered quickly—more accurately, he’d been repaired quickly, having been hit in his biotronic arm—but Beth was another matter altogether. According to her surgeon, one of her neck vertebrae had been grazed, and although her spinal column hadn’t been hit the initial impact and close passage of the bullet had caused what he’d described in layman’s terms as an indirect trauma injury. She’d recover fully, but it was going to take time. She’d spend at least a week in intensive care and two more on the ward, then be sent home for two or three months of supervised convalescence.
His stomach rumbled. He checked the time. 23:36 hours. No wonder he was hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything since dinner and he’d burned a lot of energy since then. He leaned down and kissed her tenderly on her forehead, then left the room, pulling the door behind him but not closing it all the way. For reasons that hadn’t been clear to him even after the medical staff tried to explain, they didn’t want it closed.
Two more days, he reflected as he started down the hall toward the cafeteria. All he’d had to do was take it easy for two more days. Then he could have returned to his unit. He’d likely have been put on light duty for a while and he still would have had to go to those damn sessions, but at least he would have been back. Now he had to wait another whole week.
Regardless of when he went back, though, he knew things were never going to be quite the same again. He’d return to an almost completely different squad—a squad full of Marines who hadn’t faced combat together before. A squad that hadn’t meshed yet. A squad that hadn’t become a family the way most of his old one had. Not that they’d have to wait very long for the opportunity.
No. Their opportunity would very likely come sooner rather than later.
He thought about that as he walked into the cafeteria, picked up a tray, and started filling it with whatever happened to be within easy reach, and to his surprise he found that the notion scared him. It scared him a lot. He’d seen combat several times over the years, but with the exception of that first mission as a member of the Blackhawk crew—one of his first real tastes of combat—he’d come through it all relatively unharmed. Until last month’s rescue mission. That one had almost cost him his life. And then there was last night. His wound had been a minor one this time, but it was a combat wound nonetheless. Twice in a row now he’d been a casualty. He was only twenty-eight years old, for God sake. Was he losing his edge already?
If he was losing his edge, then how could he continue to lead troops into combat?
The need to pay for his food only distracted him for a moment, but that was long enough. As he slipped his identicard back into his pocket, picked up his tray, and went looking for a table, he summed up his fears in one word.
Nonsense.
He’d go back to his unit, and as soon as he returned to full duty status he’d train his new troops. With Billy’s help he’d mold their new squad into a fighting unit every bit as good as their old one. Perhaps even better. All he needed were the right people.
He chose a table at random and set his tray down, but his sat-phone sang its tone before he even sat down. He pulled it from its belt pouch, flipped it open, and then sat down as he answered, “Hello.”
“Degger, it’s Billy,” Running Horse said. “Sorry to call you so late, but I’ve been trying you at home for hours. Had a little trouble finding your mobile code.”
“No problem, Billy,” Dylan told him. Then he asked, “What’s up?”
“I just wanted to give you a heads-up. They’re planning on making you the detachment supply sergeant when you come back.”
“They’re what?” Dylan asked, not wanting to believe what he was hearing.
“Yeah. They say it’s only going to be temporary, but you know how that goes.”
Indeed he did. Temporary assignments had a way of sneaking up on those persons who’d been naïve enough to volunteer for them and becoming permanent when they weren’t looking. He’d seen it happen a hundred times before and he had no intention of letting it happen to him. “No way am I doing that,” he proclaimed.
“It’s done, Degger. The L-T has already made his decision and sent word up the chain. You’ve got no way out of it, my friend.”
The L-T. Damn. Dylan had liked him, too. He’d really thought he was different.
He drew a deep breath and let it out very slowly, then simply said, “Thanks for the heads-up, Billy. I’ll talk to you later.”
He closed the channel, dropped his phone onto the table, and sat back, suddenly not very hungry. He was a Marine. A combat soldier. A warrior. He was a squad sergeant, not a staff sergeant. He was a man who led others on classified and covert high-risk missions. He wasn’t some kind of warehouse worker or an inventory clerk. Not that he had a problem with those who did that kind of work. They had their part to play just like everyone else, and that part was just as important. But that didn’t mean he wanted to be one of them.
After all he’d done in his career, how could his leaders possibly expect him to adjust to something like that?
The answer was really quite simple, he realized. They couldn’t, and they probably didn’t.
The time had come for him to move on.