Roark (Women Of Earth Book 1)

by Jacqueline Rhoades

  Roark and his Prime exchanged looks. Unspoken questions and answers passed between them. Harm nodded.

  “You always did know how to pick ‘em,” Harm said. “You got anymore cavik, Mira? We’ve got a lot to discuss with the Lege.”

  ~*~

  With the resilience of his youth, David’s recovery was swift. On the second day out of the induced semi-stasis state, he opened his eyes, looked from sister to sister, and spoke.

  “Is there anything to eat? I’m starving.” The words were no sooner spoken than his face clouded over. “Oh, shit,” he said and the smile that was forming vanished for good. “I wasn’t dreaming.”

  “David,” Wynne admonished from habit, but her look didn’t match her words. David was back and she couldn’t hide her happiness.

  Mira’s feelings were mixed. A few days before, she would have given her life to save his. Now that his recovery was assured, she wanted to break his neck.

  “Shit doesn’t quite cover it,” she said drily. “Try deep fucking shit, that’s a helluva a lot closer. Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Do you have a clue what you’ve put us through?”

  “Hey, I’m the injured guy here, remember?” he complained as ready as she was to fall back into their familiar pattern. He gave Wynne a puppy dog look that had her stroking his head in sympathy.

  “Remember? I was there, you little...” Mira clamped her jaws shut at the memory and closed her eyes, hoping he saw her frustration and not the tears forming behind the lids. When one escaped from the corner, she knew she’d lost. “I thought we’d lost you, David.”

  That tear and the reminder of his own close call must have touched him, because his tone changed, too. “Yeah, I kind of thought I was a goner, too. Guess we were both wrong. It’s all good, Mira.” He reached for her hand.

  “That you’re alive is better than good, but there’s plenty more that isn’t, mister,” she said, reaffirming her stance as family bad guy. But she took his hand and gave it a squeeze to show him her position was only half-hearted. “You have a lot of explaining to do and that had better be all good, too.”

  “Okay, okay, but can I explain it after I eat?”

  “Yes,” Wynne said.

  “No,” Mira said at the same time. She’d like to pretend everything was fine, but she couldn’t. “You need to tell us what you know. Make it short and fast so you don’t starve to death.”

  “But I’m hungry,” David muttered. As if to prove his point, his stomach growled.

  Wynne, ever the peacemaker, reached for a hand of each of her siblings, forming a circle of the three. “Why don’t I go rustle up some food while you tell Mira what happened.” She shook her head as if exasperated with them both, but she was grinning happily, delighted to hear their familiar bickering. “That way you both win.”

  “She’s crazy,” David whispered.

  “I know,” Mira whispered back.

  “It comes from living with you two,” Wynne called through the closing door.

  “You should have told me, David. I could have helped,” Mira told him when their sister was gone.

  “You would have gone ballistic and stopped me.”

  He was right. She never saw anything when she was with him, but rumor had it that people who messed with Tomaselli paid for it. Big time. She didn’t want David near The Buzz for any reason, and would have had plenty to say about it, but she would have done as he said and gone ballistic if she knew he was trying to work his way into Tomaselli’s circle of thugs.

  “Okay, so you didn’t tell me and I didn’t stop you. Now, start at the beginning.”

  “Bret asked me if I wanted to hang out with him and some of the other guys. They played cards, but I couldn’t play because I didn’t have money and then Brett asked if I’d like to make a few bucks. All we had to do was pick up a few boxes from a guy across town. Why not, right? So I did and we got paid. It was just some clothes, sneakers and shit. No big deal.”

  “No big deal! Those things were most likely stolen, David. And the money? What happened to it?”

  “I lost it at cards and...” His fingers picked at the blanket. “Other stuff.”

  Mira wasn’t sure she wanted to know what other stuff was, so she didn’t ask. She nodded for him to go on. “I’m listening.”

  “I didn’t think I was hurting anybody, Mira. I know what you’re thinking. I should’ve brought that money home.”

  She wasn’t thinking about the money at all. She was thinking that David’s biggest fault was not thinking and that had he thought, he wouldn’t have been hanging around with a slug like Bret in the first place.

  “But I figured it wasn’t like I was taking anything away from you guys and I was tired of hanging around with little kids.” He paused and added, “And being treated like one.”

  “That was my fault,” she conceded reluctantly. “I have a hard time seeing you as anyone other than my baby brother.”

  David didn’t disagree. “Yeah, and it pissed me off.” He shrugged. “I guess I just wanted to show you I wasn’t a kid anymore or maybe I just wanted to show me.” He shrugged again. “Anyway, he started talking about other ways we could make money, big money. He said Tony was looking for guys he could trust. He took me to see Tony and Tony started talking about fighting for the cause, about driving the Hahnshin and the Godan out, about making things better for the people.

  “I knew it was bullshit,” he said before she could comment. “Guys like Tony don’t care about stuff like the people, but when I tried to tell that to Bret, he got really mad and started to talk about what happens to guys who betray the cause. So I backed off and said I only wanted to make sure that Tony was for real and not handing us bullshit. And yeah,” he admitted, “I liked hanging out at The Buzz.”

  Mira wasn’t sure that was the entire truth, but she let it slide. She thought it was more likely that David had been a willing believer until the night the silver eagles fought off the crows. She squeezed the hand that had somehow found its way into hers.

  “I get it, David. I really do. I think that’s how I ended up with Anthony, too. He lures you in with the shiny stuff and then you realize that gold covered bullshit is still bullshit.”

  He’d begun the story, albeit hesitantly, in his typical not-my-fault fashion, sometimes stopping to blink away the brain fog Ahnyis had warned them might follow the semi-stasis. As his story went on, however, the fog began to lift and it was no longer about poor David, but about what he’d learned.

  It wasn’t long before David heard mention of the kids who’d disappeared and knew that Tony was a part of it. He had to save them.

  Again, Mira suspected the truth was a little different than the telling. David wanted to be a hero more than he wanted to save the children. He wanted to be seen as a man.

  “Bret laughed about the stupid Godan and how they thought they were using Tony, but he was using them. The money he made from them was going to the cause. He thought it was funny how the Godan were paying for the revolution against them. Bret believed it, Mira.”

  “Do you know where the kids are?”

  “No, the tower thing happened before I could find out. I didn’t know what they were planning to do until it was too late. You have to believe me. I didn’t know and tried to stop it when I did. The only reason I said I’d go on that run was to give me an excuse to hang out at The Buzz after closing. That’s when you hear the most, when nobody but Tony’s crew can hang out.”

  For several days they’d been switching out crates at the tower sites. They’d done it before; replace boxes of goods with boxes of junk so no one would notice the theft for days or sometimes weeks. To a city kid like David, fertilizer was useless junk. It wasn’t until that final load that Bret told him the plan.

  “I tried to stop him. I did, Mira. He said they were spy towers and the people who were there were no better than enemy spies.” David started to cry. “There were people in those towers that I knew. He said the money was worth it. He s
hrugged and called them collateral damage like they were broken windows or something. They were people!”

  Mira held him in her arms while he sobbed out the rest. He and Bret fought. David lost. The shard of glass in his side wasn’t from the blast, but from Bret. David only survived because Bret was running late and didn’t stop to make sure he’d finished the job. When the tower fell, David was covered in rubble. Bret probably thought he was dead.

  “You have to believe me,” he moaned into her shoulder. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

  “I believe you, David. You did what you could.”

  All they had to do was get Roark to believe it, too.

  “The helmetheads weren’t real, either,” he sniffed, wiping his eyes. The more he spoke, the bleaker he looked.

  She knew that, but she let him go on uninterrupted.

  “They take the kids out when the crows come in from the north. Tony uses one of those radio things they all have on their shoulders. Sometimes he speaks in English, but the good stuff is in Godan. He speaks it almost as good as you, Mira. I learned a little when you were practicing, enough to catch some of the words, but not enough to put them together. That’s why I took the translator. His door is warped and doesn’t always close all the way, and I thought...”

  He looked around his windowless room as if seeing it for the first time and it probably was. He’d been unconscious from his surgery when they brought him here and been kept in semi-stasis for several days. This was the first morning he’d been fully conscious.

  The tiny room was a basement utility closet they’d quickly converted to a hospital room to keep him safe, while spreading the word that his recovery looked unlikely. It was spotlessly clean, but the walls and ceiling were stained with years of vacancy.

  “It doesn’t matter what I thought. I screwed that up, too. How many are left?” His head fell back on the pillow and he stared blankly at the stained ceiling. “And why didn’t you let me die with them?”

  Had he been dreaming while unconscious? Did he think those dreams were real? How much of what he told her had been a dream, too?

  “Davey, what are you talking about? Everything is all right.”

  Anger mixed with his misery. “Stop it. I’m not a kid. Stop telling me everything is all right when we both know we wouldn’t be in a bunker if it was.”

  Under other circumstances, she might have laughed at his misconception, but talk of bunkers and dying added up to something way too frightening for humor. “This isn’t a bunker. It’s a cleaning supply closet and I swear to you, everything will be all right. Davey, it’s not too late. Tell me what you know.”

  He blinked and lifted himself up on his forearms. “What day is it?” he asked.

  Chapter 25

  Anthony Tomaselli couldn’t keep the glint of victory from his eyes when Roark entered the cell. He was sure the papers the First Commander’s Prime Toady carried were for his release. With no survivors in his little band of miscreants, there’d be no one to contradict his story.

  “It all checked out, didn’t it? Those boys were in it for themselves. Don’t feel too bad, though,” he said generously. “They had me fooled, too. Imagine them selling me stolen goods they said were scavenged.”

  “Hmm, yes, imagine that,” Roark agreed. “There are a few more things I’d like to clarify before I have you escorted back to your place of business.” He motioned to his Prime and Harm passed him a sheaf of papers and a small box. “When you directed those Godan soldiers away from Mira’s children, why did you tell them to...” he referred to the papers, “Yes, here it is. You told them to watch their mouths.”

  “I never said shit. All I did was point them in a false direction to save those kids. I didn’t even know they were Mira’s. I should have let them take the little bastards. Try to do something nice and it comes back to bite you in the ass. She hates me. I told you that. The little bit...” Having made the mistake before, he quickly changed his words. “She coached them, told them what to say.”

  “I don’t think she would have told them to say f-bomb since I wouldn’t know what that was, and I know a Godan warrior wouldn’t say fuck to his buddies.”

  Tomaselli gave Roark a look that said the First Commander was as stupid as he thought. “They’re soldiers, for Christ sake, not nuns. They...”

  Roark spoke over his objection. “They would use the word bey or beyah, not fuck, but you know that, don’t you.” He opened the box and showed Tomaselli the translator and comlink unit inside. Your essence is all over them and, as Dr. Mason informs me, all human fingerprints are different, so we took those, too. Everything on them is being downloaded as we speak, but that might take days.” It was a lie. Both the translators and comlinks were simple devices that recorded nothing.

  “You can save us time and tell us what you know about those missing children and still reap the reward I promised.” He handed the papers and box back to Harm and smiled at the prisoner. “Think about which side your bread is buttered on,” he said, using the idiom Mira had explained and then added a piece of his own, “Since I hold the knife.”

  He touched the blade that hung at his side. Tomaselli’s face paled and then went blank for a moment while he calculated his odds.

  “What day is it?” he asked.

  ~*~

  The First Commander rolled up the paper map he’d used to outline his plan to the handful of newly arrived officers who had been invited to dine in his quarters. They each had a copy folded in their pockets. These were men he trusted with his life and the lives of his warriors. Each of them had come up through the ranks and had the blood markings to prove it.

  “Remember, if the orders come through Harm or me, ignore them.” He pointed to Petrark, who’d not only found the traitors, but a way to use their own game against them. “If there are any changes, this is the face you’ll take your orders from. He’s one of us.”

  “Can’t be one of us, First. He ain’t ugly enough.”

  “Too smart is more like it,” Petrark finally defended himself. “As for my face, women adore it,” he grinned, “that, and the fact that I don’t grunt when I speak. I’ll be sure to send my leftovers to you lot.”

  The table suddenly went quiet and Mira tensed as all eyes turned to Petrark whose pretty face had been the butt of their jokes since the dinner began. She didn’t let out her breath until, as one, they burst into laughter. Roark, she noted, was nodding in approval and laughing, too.

  “He’s got a point.” He looked over to where she was curled in the corner of the sofa. “Anything left in the cabinet, Mirasha?”

  This was her job for the evening; passing out plate after plate of food from the buffet spread along the kitchen counter and pouring glass after glass of beer and hard liquor. Wynne kept the children with her in her bedroom and they’d fallen asleep hours before. Mira was tempted to join them.

  She would never understand these men. They ate and drank and hurled insults at each other, most of which she understood were vile only by the laughter that followed them. All this while Roark spoke of traitors and the Hahnshin massing at the southern border of Sector Three. It was like being in a room full of Mohawks, yet in between the food, drink, and laughter they asked serious and pertinent questions. Roark was right at home with them, his language just as colorful and his laughter just as coarse.

  Petrark beamed like he’d won an award when his insult was accepted.

  They were going to battle and they all seemed happy to hear it. How they were going to move all those men and their war machines into position in secret, she couldn’t fathom.

  “Just like that time on Omaraka!” one bellowed and the war stories began.

  Mira stopped by Roark’s chair when she’d finished pouring. “I’ve had enough blood and guts for one night, I’m going to bed. If they want more, you’ll have to pour.”

  He pulled her head down and kissed her quick and hard. “Still like the big, ugly ones?” he asked.

  It wasn�
��t that long before he was in bed, too, rousing her from her fitful dozing with roaming hands and the demand that she bow before her king.

  She slapped at the hands and scowled at the king. “Your majesty’s drunk.”

  “I am not drunk,” he declared, “Unless it be upon the sweet nectar of victory.”

  “A poetic drunk at that,” she sighed and then closed her eyes and prayed, “Dear God, could you cut out the tongue altogether.”

  “Without a tongue, I could not command, nor could I bring my woman pleasure.” He tickled her neck with the tip, then lifted his head and opened his mouth, offering his tongue. He snapped it shut and looked down at her. “See? Nothing. Your god agrees with me. He, too, will grant me victory.” He kissed the spot he’d tickled. “And you much pleasure.

  “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you, your majesty?”

  “How could I not be sure? The Goddess of War inspired us and your God confirmed. Weren’t you listening? Did you not hear the fine plan we devised?”

  “It was in too many languages. I couldn’t follow.” Knowing she shouldn’t, Mira started to laugh. “I learned some new dirty words that you’ll have to help me with, though.”

  “Then let me explain.”

  She wasn’t sure if he meant the plans or the words until he rolled her to her back, lifted her teeshirt to her neck and started to draw his battle plan out on her body.

  His finger circled her navel. “The battle begins here in daylight. Crows will swoop in from the north thinking the towers are down and there will be no early warning for the town, but they will be wrong,” he chuckled as he leaned down and ran the tip of his tongue around it. “I protect what’s mine and the crows will be blasted from the sky when my eagles fly in from the sun. They think to invade from the north, too, but we will be waiting for them.”