by Shawn Jones
“If you’re tricking me, I get to beat you up.”
Cort smiled. “Yep.”
Diane remembered the crash. She got serious again. “Were you a robot?”
Cort asked what she meant. Not because he didn’t remember, but because he needed time to think. She pointed at a picture on his flexpad. Behind a long-necked dinosaur, there was a CONDOR patrolling the stockade wall around Bergh Station, on Solitude. “You looked like him.”
“Yeah. That was me. It’s like my Marine armor, only stronger. It’s how I saved you in the wreck.”
Diane looked at the flexpad for a long time. Cort’s inhibitor cycled off, and he felt both doubt and excitement. “I can make you some, too.”
Diane’s excitement told him he’d struck a chord. He touched his ear and spoke to George, telling the AI to clear a path to the armory and to print a CONDOR for Diane, like the one Dalek had.
“Who’s George?”
“You won’t believe this, but George and Dalek are both your brothers.”
Cort talked to her while they walked to the armory, where she put on the CONDOR George had printed, and the two of them played in the mock-up of the Erom ship.
Later, as they took the armor off, Diane asked, “Do I really have two brothers now?”
They drank printed cola while Cort explained about her new family, and the future.
“If this is a trick, it’s mean, Daddy.”
“It’s not a trick.”
“Mommy’s going to be mad that you let me have a soda pop.”
“She can be as mad at me as much she wants to. This isn’t about her.”
“I hope she’s not mad at me.”
Even without reading her mind, he sensed Diane’s fear. “Do you remember what I told you about the giant cockroaches that protect your brother? They’ll protect you, too. Even from your mom.”
“Are they here? With us?”
Cort picked up a flexpad, and ordered Tur to bring Diane’s security team to the armory. Four Jaifans walked into the room and startled Diane.
“It’s tall! Eww!”
Staring at the Jaifans, she took a drink of her cola. A moment later , she burped, causing Cort’s eyes to stream tears of happiness.
Through watery eyes, he said, “Tur, this is Dalek’s sister. Their security teams can overlap, as she’ll be living with us.”
Tur clicked, and Diane couldn’t understand him. The Jaifan handed Cort a small comm unit, a spare that Dalek didn’t use. After another hour, she could use the device easily, and asked to meet the rest of her new family. Cort left her with Kim, Clem, and Dalek, and went to wake up Angela.
“Why do they call you ‘Pledge Father’?”
“Your brother is a prince to the Jaifans.” He ruffled her hair, relishing its feel in his hand. “In a way, that makes you a princess. But they will call you Pledge Sister.”
—
Cort pulled the helmet of his FALCON over his head. Without activating the camouflage, he looked at Biyadiq and said, “Doc, can you do this my way, or do I have to do it alone?”
“What do you mean?”
Kim walked in. “I left Diane with Dalek and Clem. I want to be here.”
Cort squeezed her hand and turned back to Doctor Biyadiq.
“Salana, that woman in there killed my daughter. I have no love for her, and I will not make this easy on her. In fact, I’m going to play with her mind for a little while. I have over two decades of anger built up that I am going to express in the form of terror. I will not physically harm her, but neither will I be gentle with her mind. You people made me save her. Well, this is the cost of that. If you intend to use your bedside manner, you aren’t going in.”
“Then I shouldn’t go in.”
“Fair enough.” He looked at them. “But let me tell all of you this. She is not to know where she is, who we are, or even if we are human. If any of you go against me on this point, I’ll make your life hell.” He took a tray of medical tools from Biyadiq, activated a flame mirage on his FALCON, and walked into Angela’s room.
He walked up to her bed and leaned down so close to her that the suit’s sensors could pick up the vibration of her uvula as she breathed. Unlike the gentleness used to wake his daughter, Cort turned the transdermal syringe to the setting used on Jaifans, then touched the device to the surface of Angela’s eye.
Angela jerked awake, screaming and struggling helplessly against her restraints, only to be overcome with the visage of a fiery being leaning so close to her face that it consumed her vision. The only thing that kept her from fainting was the stimulant that still burned in her eye.
Cort let her abject terror wash over him like a warm rain, relishing the sweet feeling of revenge for the wrongs she had done him so many years before. Over her skull he held the scanner that Biyadiq had used on Diane, so that Ceram could take his readings. After fifteen seconds, the Jaifan doctor spoke to him.
Ceram clicked, “Cortland. You need to stop now. Further torture will cause irreparable harm to her psyche.”
“Like she did mine, by killing our daughter.”
“Baby,” Kim said. “You have Diane back now. Stop it.”
Cort took a deep breath and turned on his active camouflage, rendering him nearly invisible to Angela. Holding her head still, he touched her other eye with the syringe and walked out of the room. Somehow, her terror made the decades of loss he had endured more bearable, and when Angela fell asleep, he lamented the loss of her fear.
“You are evil,” Biyadiq said when he turned off his camouflage and peeled the FALCON’s mask back.
Cort walked toward the small woman, backing her into the wall. “And you are terrified of me right now. As well you should be, because no god can protect you if you cross me.”
Kim grabbed Cort’s arm and pulled him into Ceram’s office.
“What?”
“Don’t take that tone with me. What you did to Angela was wrong. But how you threatened Salana was worse.”
“I saved the whore, like you said I should. And Biyadiq thinks I’m a self-important idiot.”
“She’s the only person who can help you! And she’s trying to understand your ways. That’s more than you can say! The only reason you have your daughter right now is because she came up with a solution. Start acting like my husband. Because that man in there wasn’t the man I married.”
Cort understood that she was afraid of how he might answer, but he spoke anyway. “Yes it was. I’ve lived over two decades of my life missing my daughter. I know all of the past, our past, led to all of this, but Angela had that coming to her. She deserved it more than any Cuplan I ever tortured. If I could spend the rest of my life keeping her right on the edge of insanity, I would. But now I’m going to let it go. I’m done with her. I’ll introduce her to this society, but after that she’s someone else’s problem.”
Kim’s anger softened, and Cort said, “What did you mean about Salana giving me Diane?”
Kim had regretted the confession the moment it left her lips, but she knew Cort well enough to know that he wouldn’t drop it. “We lied to you. All of us. You had given up on saving her because the battle on Threm was taking so long. So we had to lie, to make sure you went to Earth.”
She explained that they tampered with the HAWC. George had falsified the sensor readings, showing slower atmospheric saturation. When that didn’t buy them enough time, he showed Cort fake weather patterns too, that showed it would take longer to disperse the gas across the planet’s landscape. With a disabled HAWC, Cort had nothing to do for several hours. Just enough time to get his daughter. They let him think it was his idea to race to Earth and save Diane. Kim admonished Cort not to punish the people who lied to him to save his daughter.
He was stunned but couldn’t be angry. The argument dissolved into a discussion, and the discussion turned into a kiss. When they left Ceram’s office, Cort apologized to Salana and asked her to dine with the family that night.
Thirteen<
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The next morning, it was time to talk to Angela. Cort had known the moment was coming. He and Kim had talked about it. He didn’t want to be the person to acclimate Angela, though. He wanted to expose her to the non-humans on the ship, and leave her alone until she found out on her own that he ruled an empire.
Kim did want to be the one to confront Cort’s first wife. But she conceded that she wasn’t the best person to tell her predecessor that she was, in fact, Kim’s predecessor. In a meeting with George, Salana, and Ceram, they finally decided it had to be Cort who introduced Angela to the new reality.
He stood outside her door and pressed the command pad to open it.
When the door closed behind him, Cort stopped in front of Angela silently. He had spent the last few hours thinking about that moment. Every moment he wasn’t with Diane, this moment played out in his mind; a moment he both dreaded and relished. Now he would lay the moment bare to the woman whose infidelity and weakness had ultimately led to the creation of his empire. He peeled back the mask of his FALCON and watched as recognition stole her fear and anger.
“You? What are you doing here? How are you here, Cortland? Did they take you too?”
Angela practically jumped from her seat and moved across the room to the man she thought was still her husband and protector. Her personal Marine. She put her arms out, and tried to wrap them around his lightly - armored body.
For an instant, Cort’s old need to protect her surfaced. He raised his arms, not sure what they were going to do. But his love for Kimberly controlled their movement. Grabbing both of her shoulders, he held her at bay.
“Sit down.” H h e calmly commanded.
Angela’s arms dropped to her side, and confusion filled her eyes. He saw her recognize what Diane called The Voice, a tone he only took with them when there was to be no discussion or argument. The same voice he’d used in a Walmart years before, as the entire store was taken hostage, with only Cort to stand between his family and the men who had threatened their safety. A conditioned response, or possibly fear, led her back to her seat.
“I’ve lived over two decades of my life since you destroyed our family,” he began. “And I’ve hated you every moment of it. Your drinking and your lovers and your lies took my daughter from me. Yeah, I knew about Tim. I was about to kill him when you died.”
Cort watched as his words filled Angela with more confusion, then he added, “I’ve known about him for decades.”
“What? His name is Timothy. I died? But…”
“But for you it has only been days,” Cort interrupted. “For me it’s been twenty-odd years, Angela. And for the rest of humanity, it’s been centuries.”
“What are you talking about?” Angela asked.
Cort shook his head. “There’s time for that later. You have a lot of catching up to do, Angela. Do you remember anything about the wreck?”
“Yeah,” Angela said. “I can’t believe what I remember, though. Cortland… he wasn’t my lover.”
“Don’t lie to me, Angela. The time for lies is long past. Longer than you could possibly realize. I knew all about him.”
“Cortland… Why do you keep calling me Angela?”
“Face the truth,” Cort ordered. “If you don’t, I’m going to walk out of this room and you will never see me or Diane again. Don’t lie to me again, Angela.”
She stood up and walked to a viewscreen. “Why doesn’t this TV work?”
“You aren’t ready for what you would see on it. Are you going to finally be honest with me?”
Angela’s shoulders rose and fell, then she turned said, “Yes. I’ve been seeing someone; again. You didn’t know about the first one.”
“Yes I did. His name was Steven Palmer. He left you for a twenty-something in Texas when you wouldn’t leave me.”
“Yeah, I guess you did know,” Angela replied. “Timothy is putting the same pressure on me. He’s just a toy though. I think he sees dollar signs because of our money. I’m going to leave him.”
“That’s no longer an issue,” Cort said coolly.
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
Defensively, Angela asked, “So you’re making decisions for me now?”
“As far as the world is concerned, and even to the me you remember, you are dead. So your relationship with Tim is a non-issue.”
“His name is Timothy,” Angela corrected. “I don’t feel dead.”
“Listen to me. Don’t interrupt, Angela. Just listen.”
She leaned back in her chair and said, “Okay.”
“You’ll learn more, but these are the highlights you have to know for all of this to make sense. In the original wreck—the one that happened two decades ago for me—you drove over the side of the bridge. Both you and Diane were killed when you hit the railroad tracks below. Then a train crashed into you. I heard the explosion from our house, and somehow I knew. I got in the truck and followed the sirens to the fire. I arrived at the railroad tracks before they did, and they couldn’t stop me from getting into the car. After I pulled you both from the wreckage, I checked out of society and became a hermit at the property near Malakoff Diggins. Several years later, Ben contacted me and asked me to take part in an experiment. Just before the experiment happened, I had a fling and gave my lover all of my assets.”
Cort sensed her hurt when he mentioned Amber. Seriously Angela?
“The experiment sent me forward over three centuries, and I found out that my fling had resulted in a child, and there was a corporate empire waiting for me. After a year on Earth, I moved to a colony on Mars. There, the same tech that sent me forward in time, led me to wage war against both Earth and an alien government. Do you follow me so far?”
“I follow you, Corty,” Angela said in an incredulous tone that bordered on laughter, “But I don’t believe you.”
“Don’t call me that, and it doesn’t matter if you believe me or not. It’s what happened.”
Cort stood up and walked to the viewscreen. Pressing two buttons, an image of Threm appeared. He said, “That’s what is outside the ship we are in right now.”
Angela walked over to the screen. Expressions of shock, fear, and disbelief all crossed her face. She reached for his hand, but he pulled away and went back to his seat, where he finished his tale.
“I’m here protecting that planet. Anyway, eventually, I founded a military empire known as the Ares Federation. My realm stretches across an entire arm of the galaxy.”
“Bullshit. Does this place have room service? I need a drink.”
Cort decided talking about the other universe would sidetrack Angela’s comprehension of everything that was happening, so he just said, “Because of a fluke in time, I found myself back here a month before the accident that was supposed to kill you and Diane.”
“Seriously, Corty. I need a drink. I’d settle for some of your scotch right now. By the way, you look haggard as hell.”
Cort shook his head. “If you won’t accept this, I can’t help you.”
Including her in any future is such a bad idea. If Kim doesn’t kill her, I might. Those raptors that ate Kim’s wolf would make a feast of her.
“Then prove it, Emperor Corty-baby. And where’s my daughter?”
Cort touched his flexpad and an image appeared on the viewscreen. It was the video feed from his CONDOR when he rescued Diane and Angela. When she saw the two men, who both looked like her husband, refer to her as a whore, she slumped back down into her chair.
With tears in her eyes, she said, “So you saved us. Where’s Diane?”
“Yes, I saved you. I was the flaming skeleton you saw. Actually, it’s a kind of powered armor. After I pulled you both from the car, I recreated the accident as well as I could and brought you up here. Now my people are trying to figure out if I have altered time. Once we know the answer to that, we are going back to the future I created.”
She jumped up and ran toward him. “You gave me a shot in my eye! You miserab
le fucking piece of shit! I was terrified of you!”
Cort stopped her hand as she raised it to slap him, and said, “I’ve lived decades of my life with the knowledge that you killed our daughter. You’re lucky it wasn’t much worse, Angela. I wanted to let you die, you worthless bitch. I still think I should have. Every breath you take from that moment forward is a borrowed one. You owe Diane your life. Actually, she didn’t know. You owe your breath to my new wife.”
Angela missed most of what Cort was saying. He could sense her confusion and fear growing. He pushed her backward and let go of her wrist.