Three Worlds 01 - Seduce Me In Dreams

by Jacquelyn Frank

  Actually, no one would say that. They wouldn’t dare.

  But their lightness and the habitually perceived gentleness of color gave Bronse an unsettling edge when he fixed his eyes on strangers. They would be so busy trying to wrap their minds around the incongruity of a mountainous, deadly man with forget-me-not eyes that they would end up blabbing all kinds of information without even realizing it.

  Lasher, however, was no longer unbalanced by Bronse’s delicately colored eyes. That wasn’t to say that a warning or smoldering threat that could be seen from time to time did not give Lasher pause. He was, after all, a very intelligent man. But at the moment there was only reluctance warring with confusion in Bronse’s gaze, and Masin knew that he simply needed to exhibit patience and persistence.

  “I don’t think I can explain it,” Bronse said at last, the words coming in an uncontrolled rush, as if he were unburdening himself of a great secret. “I’m afraid if I start to, I will sound like the Ebbany sun has fried my brain.”

  “Maybe it did,” his second speculated with a crooked grin as he reached casually for his beer and took a swig. “I’m not used to you prevaricating, so it would make me wonder.”

  “I know,” Bronse grumbled with dissatisfaction.

  “But crazy people never think they’re crazy. You’re sane just by virtue of the question. So, what are you thinking? Spit it out. Let’s see if I can do anything for you.”

  Bronse’s troubled gaze flicked up to Lasher’s with penetrating lavender pupils.

  “One of us is going to die.”

  “Just what exactly does that mean?” Lasher asked, all traces of humor vanishing. “Are you talking about Trick? You heard what the doctors said—”

  “No. Not Trick. Not now at least.” Bronse exhaled sharply, running frustrated hands over his face and through his jet hair until the short cut spiked up even though it was slightly longer than military length at the moment. “I don’t know who, or how, or anything else. I just have a sick gut feeling that we’re going to lose someone on an imminent mission.”

  Lasher settled back in his chair again, studying his commanding officer quietly for a long minute.

  “If it were anyone else, I would call Psyche Services and get you wired and decompressed,” Lasher said darkly. “Going into a mission with that attitude stuck in your head is going to make it happen. You know that, right?”

  “I know that,” Bronse barked. “Why do you think I’ve been smacking the feeling down for the past two days? I thought for certain that something was going to happen on the way back to base. When it didn’t, the feeling just seemed to grow in intensity.” Bronse’s voice lowered to a dark passion. “Part of me thinks I should be decompressing in Psyche Services, too, but another part of me is screaming out that if I leave my team I’m going to be leaving you all to get your fucking heads blown off. I don’t mean that to be a disparagement against you, either. I’ve never once doubted your ability to command in the event of my absence, Masin.”

  Lasher took the compliment seriously, especially when Bronse forewent his militia nickname and called him by his given name, an occasion reserved for the most serious of conversations.

  “I can only explain it as masculine intuition, if such a thing exists. A soldier’s intuition,” he corrected himself, looking better satisfied with that. “Masin, something very unusual is about to occur, and we’re going to get thrust up in the middle of it. Now, that’s fine by me. That’s what we do, right?” Bronse didn’t wait for Lasher’s nod. “But somewhere along the line, I’m sure that two things are going to happen. First, something is going to attempt to separate me from the rest of the group, and if that happens, you all are as good as dead. Second, if we manage to thwart that and make it to the end of the mission, we will lose someone no matter what. That’s an idea I cannot stomach or accept. I have never lost a man in the field, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to start now.”

  Lasher was quiet for a long time as he absorbed this proclamation. Although Bronse had a gut instinct that bordered on precognition at times, never before had he presented Masin with something as specific as this. Clearly the commander was just as disturbed by this as Lasher was. But he was disturbed to a point of determination, not panic, and that was an important distinction. It told Lasher that Bronse was still in command of his perspective and able to remain in command of his group.

  “And the civvies?” Lasher pressed, getting back to that question.

  “I just had to get out of uniform,” Bronse said dismissively. “It helped dissuade this sense of needing to be battle ready. I need to relax and sleep if I’m going to be at the top of my game when it’s needed, and I haven’t been able to do that since we got off Ebbany. The civvies and your company … and confessing this feeling to you … have made me feel a little better.”

  “I can imagine,” Lasher murmured. It bothered the lieutenant commander that this had been disturbing Bronse since Ebbany. Could the close call with Trick’s life have unsettled Bronse enough to make him paranoid? Lasher found it hard to conceive that Bronse Chapel would ever come close to the deep end, never mind jumping in. Was all of this surfacing only since Ebbany? Bronse’s gut instincts had been around for quite some time though. Was that why Bronse had refused to let the team meet him in the desert, when it would have been faster and easier to rescue Trick if they had? Lasher didn’t often question Bronse, never having had reason to, and it disturbed him to find himself doing so now.

  “Masin, you’re being transparent,” Bronse said with wry observation as he slowly sipped his beer. “You think I’m a few cards short of a deck.”

  Lasher smiled crookedly and chuckled softly. “I’d be stupid not to consider it. But I’ve trusted you for every single minute of the past ten years, and I’m incapable of doing otherwise now. You’ve always been able to think circles around me and everyone else. Maybe your brain is evolving to a higher level, and now you can sense trouble even before the mission.”

  “Go ahead, make jokes,” Bronse snorted derisively.

  “Seriously,” Lasher said, “I put as much stock in gut feelings, hunches, and instinct as the next soldier. It has saved my life on more than enough occasions. Your feelings just happen to be a bit more specific than the average, and, eerie as it may feel, I think I can accept that. I just need to know how much you want me to share with the crew. Frankly, I think Justice is already on edge. She spent a lot of time with you on deck and assimilated your tension and wariness. Ender was born paranoid, so he’s never not on alert. Trick isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so I don’t see any point in stressing out the kid while he heals.”

  “I know. I plan to keep this between you and me. Between the two of us, we can keep the others on their toes and pointed in the right direction. If I get separated from you, I know you’ll know that making sure we regroup is what I want at all costs unless I clearly order otherwise. I just feel better knowing that you know where my mind is on this.”

  “I’m rock solid clear on it. Now,” Lasher mused, “all we need is a mission.”

  Forty-eight hours later and with only three consecutive hours of deep sleep under his eyelids, Bronse was brutalizing his body in the officer’s gym, trying to burn himself into some kind of exhaustive state that would allow him to fall asleep and stay that way.

  It was some awful hour during the base’s night cycle because the gym was abandoned, only the sickly bluish-white artificial lighting keeping him company. Even that was iffy in places, bulbs close to needing changing giving off occasional warning flickers, announcing their imminent demise. He was glad for the quiet, though, and the desolate feeling of the empty gym suited his mood.

  Bronse was currently pitting himself against the gravity mats, which increased the pull of gravity in proportion to the user’s strength and level of skill. Any exercise he chose would be made tougher to do as he worked against his own increasing body weight. The mats were designed to avoid causing severe injuries or stress fractures, but
right up until that point they would push the limit.

  Bronse had decided on some basic floor exercises. They were what had strengthened him enough to carry a 205-pound man across five miles of broiling desert, so they would damn well be enough to get him to fall asleep for at least a good eight hours. Though the crew members were trained to function at peak levels under the duress of very little sleep, when downtime came, crashing was imperative to rejuvenating and maintaining health and strength. Undergoing hard-core conditions was something best left to the battlefield and bad situations.

  Reaching the limits of his stamina, Bronse finally dropped to his hands and knees in a panting sweat on the black gravity mat, his teeth gritting against the aches of his body as sinew twitched in protest and relief. It would take the mat a few more minutes to gear back its gravitational resistance after sensing that he’d stopped his workout. So Bronse rolled over onto his back and bore the strangely comforting pressure of his body being drawn toward the floor as if he were being sucked down into the mat. But then the pull of it released so suddenly that Bronse had a momentary sensation of zero-g, the illusion of near weightlessness that seemed so real that he wondered why he didn’t float away. He adjusted after a moment, of course, his breathing regulating as well, but he didn’t get up off the floor. He lay staring at the ceiling, somehow fascinated by the intermittent flicker of the dying bulbs in the lighting units.

  “Bronse …”

  Bronse turned his head when he heard his name being called, looking toward the entrance of the gym. He sat up abruptly when all he saw was rows of quiet exercise equipment and neatly stacked weight-sims.

  “Jus?”

  Not that it had to be Justice because it was a woman’s voice, but he could see no cause for any other woman to seek him out at this hour. Considering the rigors of their training earlier, Justice always liked to get solid time in her rack. She wasn’t the type for the restless nights that he was struggling with, so it would have surprised him to see her. But there was no sign of her or a messenger, certainly no sign of anyone on an IM base who would have dared to use his given name with such soft familiarity as he’d just heard.

  More than likely he’d mistaken stray noises on Zero Station for the sound of a voice calling him. Why he’d thought it was female … well, he mused with a wry, self-deprecating smile, that didn’t take a psychology degree to figure out, considering how long it had been since they’d had a decent planetside leave.

  Keeping half an eye on the entrance to the room, he lay back on the mat again, indulging in a lackadaisical moment.

  “Bronse.”

  Bronse froze when the very clear repeat of his name and the distinctly accented female voice flowed all around him, followed by the curious sensation of fingertips drifting down the side of his face.

  “By the Being!” Bronse swore as he lurched to his feet, staggering back a step until his back hit a wall. He braced himself there for a moment, his heart pounding in shock, a half-dozen other emotions and thoughts crowding in on him.

  He’d seen some pretty hair-raising stuff in his career, from cannibals to alien invaders from another galaxy, but invisible women? A ghost? Anything was possible, he supposed, and as a soldier he rapidly got past the strangeness of it and went right to the next step.

  “Whoever you are, you’re trespassing on a military installation. Show yourself,” he demanded.

  To his infinite shock, she did.

  She was turning toward him as she materialized out of thin air. Details were blurred at first; only the burgundy color of the flowing fabric she wore and the darkness of her hair registered with any clarity. By the time she came fully about, however, the details were crystal clear, although she was more a holographic image than real. A very detailed ghost.

  She was tall, not more than a head shorter than he was, and he was six foot four. Her features were sweeping and exotic—good bone structure and sly sensuality. Her mouth was generous, and her chin had a natural dimple. Her cheekbones were pronounced, elegant, drawing attention to the delicacy of her slim nose and the upward tilt at the corners of her eyes. All that facial exotica was foiled, however, by a simple pair of brown eyes, a cross between leather and topaz, although she got points for expressiveness because he could see wide-eyed curiosity and surprise within them. Her hair was deep, dark brown, he noted now that he could see it at its part against her scalp. It looked almost black in the cascading loops of small braids it had been styled into. Considering that the tightly trussed looping braids nearly reached the small of her back, Bronse expected that her hair was extremely long when unbound. In its current intricacy of design, however, it was utilitarian as well as pleasing to the eye.

  Her figure was hidden by the free-flowing shape of the wine-colored burnoose she wore. The fabric parted in the center, giving him a glimpse of white clothing beneath. This half-hidden shift was made of a very lightweight fabric that revealed her darkly tanned skin. She wore knee-high boots and breeches beneath the ankle-length outer garment as well, and he caught flashing glimpses of Delran platinum in thin chains decorating the span between her hips and the tops of her boots. The beautiful precious metal was unmistakable, its rose-tinted glimmer blinding because of its infamous purity. On her wrists she wore a multitude of bangle bracelets made of the same metal, which was easily the most expensive natural element in the galaxy. Bronse realized that the clips binding her hair were also made of the valued metal.

  Regardless of how she had appeared, Bronse was able to gather a great deal of information about her in just those few seconds. She was wealthy; only the very rich could afford Delran platinum. She was someone of import; he could sense it in her carriage and bearing. Never before in his career had he seen her type of features or her clearly cultural dress, making it possible that she was not from their system. Maybe she was from one of the wilderness areas on Ebbany or Tari, where not every culture was yet recorded.

  The manner of her appearance still bothered him, though. It wasn’t that he hadn’t received his share of holographic messages in his time. That wasn’t what was keeping him edgy and spooked. It was that there was no holographic reception pad in the middle of the floor of the officer’s gym. Technologically speaking, her presence wasn’t possible. One pad was needed to send and another to receive. At least, that was the known technology. Known technology also didn’t allow for her very physical touch against his face. Bronse was damn sure he hadn’t imagined that. He could still feel the path of her fingertips on his face as if his skin were hyperaware.

  While he was making his observations, he could see her making her own. Her eyes moved over him with slow and blatant curiosity, shyness obviously not a factor in her makeup. She took in his hair, spiking haphazardly no doubt from being drenched in sweat, and the bluntly squared strength of his features. No one had ever called him handsome, and he didn’t much care either way, but he wasn’t unattractive either and he accepted that with a mental shrug.

  She hesitated, as everyone did, at the lancing pastel stare of his eyes, a look of fascination spreading over her features as she leaned eagerly forward for a moment before catching herself. Bronse tried not to smile. His eyes had that effect on women, no matter who they were. She swept her gaze over the enormous breadth of his shoulders, the powerful sculpture of his chest, the smooth narrowing of his waist and hips, and the iron-hard thickness of his thighs and calves. He wore only the body-hugging black Skintex shorts that were usual for his workouts, so she was getting a highly unimpeded view of his body. Bronse didn’t mind. He was a big man, intimidating as hell, and in awesome physical shape. All of his crew maintained daunting physiques, each unique to their body structure. Bronse didn’t believe in overdeveloping just for looks, however. He focused on strength, endurance, and the all-important agility needed for his job. None of his muscle got in the way of his movement, and none of it was for show. It was all about top performance under fire. He demanded the same of his entire crew.

  “Who are you?” she as
ked.

  Bronse was surprised by her question, his hands settling on his hips as he regarded her. He wondered how she could see him. He wasn’t on a hologram pad, nor would he even know how to dial out a connection to this stranger.

  “I think I asked you first,” he said in his sharpest military tone.

  She lifted a single brow, the delicate arch rising in an expression of amusement and surprise. It was the humor that threw him. Mainly because he was used to receiving respect and even intimidation in reaction to his military attitude. He’d perfected it during a short stint as an ETF training officer.

  “My name is Ravenna. Somehow I know that your name is Bronse, though I do not know how. Now we have exchanged names, but it is unsatisfying, is it not? There is nothing to be learned from a name.”

  It was a good observation. He had learned more about her while she had stood silently before him. Although the unusual name could come in handy later when he got his hands on the Universal Database.

  “Why did you come to me?” she asked.

  Again, she had beaten him to the punch. He was bemused to the point of smiling slightly as he ran a hand through his wet hair, sending sweat bouncing off the ends.

  “I didn’t come to you. I think it was the other way around.”

  Now it was her turn to look bewildered. She recovered fast though.

  “Who are you really,” she demanded, narrowing her eyes. “Why do you taunt me like this?”

  The question gave Bronse pause. There was the contempt of history in that strange remark. It was as if she was accusing him of …

  Bronse straightened suddenly, flashes of memory swimming through him. “I’ve seen you before,” he uttered in surprise.

  “I cannot sleep because of you,” she accused softly.