His private war of revenge had lasted over a thousand years, and yet she could see that he hadn’t lost one iota of determination. With all his people gone, she supposed she couldn’t blame him.
And yet living only for revenge seemed an empty existence.
“In all those years, you’ve had no home? No family? No friends?”
He hesitated, then spoke softly, “There was no time. I was searching for the Staff.”
“The Staff must be very precious to you.”
It was just her luck that the object that was causing all her difficulties was the key to keeping Earth’s enemies at bay. She wasn’t certain how she would reconcile herself to the way the Staff affected her, but she was beginning to believe Jordan was over fifteen hundred years old. That he had known King Arthur.
But was he on the side of Earth?
While she wasn’t totally certain she could trust him, she was leaning more in that direction. She just prayed the shared memories and the physical intimacy weren’t altering her perception.
Gray’s voice came over the speaker. “Prepare for gravity.”
Jordan shoved off the ceiling, rotating their feet down toward the deck. Five seconds later, as the gravity kicked in, they dropped.
Jordan steadied her, then sat on the bed. He scooted over and left enough room for her to join him. But with the restoration of gravity, the return of responsibilities weighed on her.
She reached for her clothing.
He locked his hands behind his head. “You need sleep.”
“Here?” she asked.
“Why not?” He raised an eyebrow. “It’s not like the entire crew doesn’t already know what we’ve been doing.”
“True.” She slipped into his shirt. “Just let me check the communicator to see if Maggie’s answered.”
He shot her the most charming grin. “You look good in my shirt.”
For a moment, she lost her breath. She yearned to get right back into bed and let him take the shirt off of her. But she really needed to check out his story.
From the bed, he couldn’t see her screen. She tapped into the main search engine, but everything she found about King Arthur was legend. Then she recalled that they’d downloaded all of Pendragon’s history into another module.
When she pulled it up, she found King Arthur’s coat of arms. At the sight of three horses that matched the one she’d seen on the breastplate, she bit back a gasp.
She tried to tamp down her excitement. She supposed Jordan could have come across Arthur’s coat of arms while he’d been on Pendragon. But it was the kind of esoteric information that wasn’t found on Earth, that only a historian or someone who’d lived during that time would know. Jordan could have looked it up in Pendragon’s history on the computer, just like she had. But what were the chances? While she still didn’t have real proof that his fantastic story was possible, she was beginning to think he might actually have told her the truth about his past.
“Find anything?” Jordan asked.
“Maggie hasn’t answered yet.” She turned off the monitor but left the system running. Vivianne slid out of his shirt and climbed into bed.
She’d sleep better snuggled next to Jordan’s warm body, knowing that he probably was exactly who he’d claimed to be. Jordan, Chen, Merlin. Still, she’d give up her entire fortune to know with one hundred percent certainty that he was now telling her the truth.
Exhausted, she felt as if she’d just closed her eyes when she awoke to the sound of alarms blaring. Before she could force her eyes open, Jordan had leaped out of bed and dressed. He toggled a switch to open communications with the bridge. “What’s wrong?”
“Those things that came at us in hyperspace,” Tennison’s voice piped into their cabin, “they’re back.”
“I’ll be right there.” Jordan was out the door in less than ten seconds. But before he left, he pointed to the closet. “There’s a change of clothes for you in there.”
“Thanks.” With a sigh, Vivianne swept aside the covers, shocked to discover she’d actually slept for eight full hours. Gazing out the porthole, she viewed the objects in question. And ice slid down her spine.
The objects looked like barbells, but instead of round ends there were cubes of polished rock. While the material might be confused with a naturally formed object, their precise shapes suggested these things were manufactured.
They could be spaceships. Weapons. Hurrying to dress in the clean clothes Jordan had had placed in the cabin for her, her thoughts flew. Jordan could be surprisingly thoughtful, his face when unguarded expressive. And his eyes had darkened with concern at the news of those cubes.
Jordan had left the toggle on the bridge open, and she could hear a multitude of busy conversations.
Gray’s voice was firm. “Everyone quiet down so I can listen to the headset.”
“You picking up anything?” Jordan asked, and she pictured him striding onto the bridge, taking immediate control.
“Nothing.”
Tennison raised his voice. “Energy readings indicate they are powering up. Preparing to fire?”
Vivianne didn’t wait to hear more. She hurried down the hallway.
And everything went dark.
You cannot build moral fiber and devotion by taking away people’s initiative and liberty.
—KING ARTHUR PENDRAGON
8
Totally blind and weightless, Vivianne pulled herself toward the bridge.
Where were the emergency systems? Why hadn’t the backup lights and generator kicked in? Had they suffered a total power failure? Had the Ancient Staff stopped working?
She might not be able to see, but she could hear shouting coming from the direction of the bridge. And George was barking. He must be terrified.
Damn it. He wasn’t the only one. Had those objects sucked out all of the Draco’s power?
Mind whirring with fear, Vivianne reached the bridge. Gray had turned on a tiny portable penlight and held it between his teeth as he helped Tennison remove a panel. Sean had snagged George, but the moment she entered he thrust the dog at her and went to help with the generator.
Vivianne caught George and soothed him. Although she was full of questions, she didn’t want to add to the confusion.
Jordan wore the headset and spoke quietly. At first Jordan was calm, but then his eyes narrowed, his mouth tightened, and she suspected he’d begun to issue threats.
Jordan tore off the headset, his eyes dark and furious. “No one’s answering. After we shot at them, I suppose they have their reasons.”
She gasped in surprise. “How could we shoot at them? We have no weapons.”
“Sean rigged up a laser during his shift. When the objects appeared, Lyle panicked and fired.”
“I was trying to protect us,” Lyle said.
She bit back a curse. This was why they shouldn’t have left with an untrained crew. With no self-discipline or rules to serve as guidelines and no plan to deal with a first contact with an alien species, Lyle may have doomed them all.
And they had no contingency measures to deal with hostility, either.
Jordan spoke as he leaned over his monitor. “Lyle destroyed one cube, and then the others put us in some kind of stasis field.”
“Stasis field?”
“An energy dampener,” Gray explained. “We have power, but somehow they’re suppressing it.”
“What about life support?” she asked, and set George on the floor.
“It’s on the fritz,” Sean said, “like every other system onboard.”
Jordan remained calm, but she heard an underlying thread of fury in his tone. “Shut down everything that’s still emitting even one amp. I want to go totally dead.”
His orders shocked her almost as much as his anger. He seemed to be taking the blackout personally.
“You’re going to kill what little life support we have left?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Even our air scrubbers?” Te
nnison asked.
“If they think we’re dead, maybe they’ll lose interest.” Jordan’s tone was hard as a cut diamond.
He edged very close to her and whispered into her ear, his tone so low no one else could possibly hear. “If killing all our power doesn’t work, you’re in charge.”
“What?” She spun around to face him, but Jordan had disappeared. Vanished. Had she imagined he’d told her to take charge? Not that she needed any urging, but it was so unlike him to just depart during a crisis that her gut churned.
She floated before the viewscreen. “Without the ship’s scrubbers, how long can we keep breathing?”
Gray came up beside her. “All our instruments are down, but I’d estimate about a half hour.”
Sean joined them. “Air isn’t our problem. The cold’s going to get us first. Without the ship’s heaters, we’ll freeze long before we run out of air.”
George whined, and she grabbed him from midair. The poor little dog was not adjusting to the lack of gravity. He pushed his cold nose into her hand. Already the bridge temperature had dropped ten degrees, and she held the dog against her stomach, sharing heat.
“Sean, Tennison, grab Darren in the galley and you three go down to the cargo bay and don the spacesuits,” she ordered.
“What about you?” Sean asked her.
“Go,” she snapped, and the three men hurried off the bridge while Lyle hung his head.
“Let me help,” Lyle demanded. “I caused this mess. I want to fix it.”
“I appreciate that. And you may get an opportunity to help.” George licked her hand and she cuddled him tight, his body lending comfort and heat. “If the ploy to cut all power doesn’t work, I need everyone to help implement plan B.”
“Plan B?” Gray asked.
“We wait as long as we can to convince them we’re dead. If that doesn’t work, we turn what power we have back on—”
“And shoot them?” Lyle asked.
She shook her head. “We don’t have enough power for that. But I want to talk to them.”
“Talk?” Lyle shook his head. “If Jordan’s threats didn’t work, you think they’ll be afraid of you?”
“Maybe they’re afraid of women—you never know.” She tried to joke, but her mind was working furiously. She needed to reason with them.
“Where’s Jordan?” Gray asked.
“He went to check on our power,” she lied, and her teeth began to chatter. “Lyle, please go find us some jackets and blankets and hurry back.”
After Lyle tugged himself off the bridge, Gray said quietly, “I can turn on the power by myself.”
“I know.” She sighed and forced her jaw to open wider to prevent her teeth from chattering. “But Lyle needs to feel useful.”
“Captain?” Tennison’s voice came over the speaker system.
“Yes?” Vivianne answered.
“Darren’s giving his spacesuit to Knox.”
He was disobeying her orders to save his girlfriend. Vivianne didn’t like it. “Darren?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Next time you want to disobey an order, you ask for permission to do so. Is that clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then zip Knox into that suit and make sure she knows how to use it.”
“I will. And th-thanks.”
She peered back out the viewscreen. “Th-they aren’t leaving, are th-they?” No longer able to stop her teeth from chattering, she stared at the strange cubes. Had Lyle’s hostility caused this crisis? Would those machines be dampening their power if they hadn’t fired first?
Very likely they were going to die. Freeze to death.
She’d heard that it wasn’t a bad way to go. But as her core temperature dropped, she began to feel light-headed.
To her surprise, Lyle returned with blankets, and he and Gray wrapped one around her and George. “Th-thanks.” In truth it didn’t help much. Her fingertips had gone numb. Ditto for her toes.
As Lyle and Gray wrapped more blankets around themselves, she knew they had only a few more minutes left before they froze. “Huddle close,” she ordered. “We n-need to share body heat.”
The three of them floated shoulder to shoulder, but without gravity they kept moving apart.
“This isn’t working,” Gray said.
“All right.” Vivianne had to do something. “T-turn th-the power back on.”
Gray and Lyle soared over to the panel. Gray’s fingers were so clumsy with the cold, it took both men to kick in the power—such as it was.
“D-done.” Gray moved slowly. “You want power to go to heat or communications?”
She picked up the headset. “First we talk.”
Blessed heat would have been wonderful. But Vivianne knew it would take hours to get their core temperatures back up, and she had a job to do first. “Tennison, Sean, report to the bridge.” She placed the icy headset over her freezing ears. “Gray, route all power to my station.”
“R-routed.”
Lyle floated unconscious. Vivianne prayed she hadn’t waited too long. Her eyelids were heavy. But going to sleep meant never waking up. “You are k-killing us. We have no heat, which we need to s-sustain life. If you continue to t-take away our power, we’ll die. When you surrounded us, one of my crew panicked and fired at you. We hope you did not suffer a loss of life, but if you did, I’m willing to give you my life in return. There’s no reason to k-kill others aboard who are innocent. I repeat, you are killing everyone on this ship. If you do not restore power immediately, we’ll all die. We’re at your mercy.”
Gray crumbled against a wall. Vivianne swayed on her feet. Her plea was their last chance. Had anyone heard? And if they’d heard, would anything she’d said make any difference? As the cold seeped deep into her bones, her mind drifted.
To Jordan.
Where the hell had he gone?
Some of us are looking to the stars.
—LADY OF THE LAKE
9
Wake up.” Jordan had piled blankets on top of Vivianne, but as the Draco’s heaters kicked in, her flesh had remained cold. So he’d crawled under the covers to warm her with his own body heat. While he’d broken into a sweat, her face remained pale, lifeless.
At least she was breathing. But her pulse was weak.
So weak, Vi’s sudden thoughts barreled into Jordan’s mind, and he was suddenly back in another of her memories.
A teenage Vi hadn’t eaten a good meal in so long her hands shook.
But the little kids were suffering more. This foster home was the worst she’d ever been in. With a chain around the refrigerator and a locked pantry barring the children from food, they were all pale, skinny, and hollow-eyed.
“Haven, you’re the lookout,” Vivianne said to the second-oldest girl. “Let me know if anyone comes home.”
Haven shoved a bookcase over to the garage window, then climbed up. “All clear.”
“James,” Vivianne told a little boy, “stop crying.” Vivianne plucked a penknife from her pocket. “We’re all going to eat soon.”
She inserted the penknife into the lock. And twisted. But the lock held.
Vi’s real parents wouldn’t have called this stealing. The state paid for their food. Only, the greedy people who were supposed to care for them never gave them enough.
Vivianne had become accustomed to the gnawing hunger pangs, but she couldn’t get her hands to stop shaking.
The penknife slipped out of the hole. Vivianne wiped her sweaty fingers on her jeans, then tried again.
The lock clicked. Yes!
“All right.” Haven let out a whoop.
Vivianne opened the cabinet where the foster parents stored their hurricane supplies. She had to choose something that wouldn’t be noticed. After spying several blue boxes, she snagged one and held it up. “How about mac and cheese?”
The kids cheered. Vi helped Haven replace the bookcase, then lifted the little boy onto her hip. “All right. Now, who wants to
help me cook?”
Jordan knew children went hungry. But to feel the gnawing pain in Vivianne’s empty stomach had him angry and frustrated, and puzzled at this new connection between them. They hadn’t made love. So what was going on? Had he been wrong about the Staff causing them to share memories?
Whatever was happening, it was too late for him to stop caring about her.
He placed his fingers on her pulse. Still weak.
“Come on, Vi. You’re a fighter. Fight.” He smoothed back a reddish lock from her forehead, massaged her arms and fingers with his hands, rubbed her calves with his toes. He’d give the Draco’s plumbing another five minutes to warm up, then he’d take her under a hot shower.
“Vi?” He breathed warm air onto her face. She remained still. Deathly still. He cupped her jaw and stroked her cheek. “We need you with us. Wake up.”
Her eyelids fluttered and stilled.
“Vi? Please. Open those pretty eyes for me.”
Her lids fluttered again.
“Come back to me, Vi,” he murmured. “You can do this. Open those clever green eyes. Look at me. Just open your eyes and look at me.”
Ever so slowly, she woke up.
Finally.
But although her eyes were open, at first she didn’t seem to see him.
“You’re safe.” He gathered her against his chest, inhaled her scent.
But then she pulled back, focused. Frowned. “Where the hell did you go?”
He was so happy to see that she was all right, he threw back his head and laughed. Then he reached for her again.
She pummeled his shoulder with her fist. “It’s not funny.”
Jordan couldn’t have been more pleased when his shoulder hurt. It meant she had strength. It meant she would live to fight with him some more.
“How do you feel?” he asked, sitting up and tucking the blanket back around her.
She craned her neck to look out the cabin’s portal.
“Thanks to you, the cubes are gone,” he said, rubbing her forearms through the blanket. “Your plan worked. They left, and the energy came back on.”
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