by T. G. Ayer
Max didn’t need to ask what it specialized in. Its unimaginative name gave it away. “Why me?” he asked softly. “I have skills to offer my country.”
“But your position as Liaison supersedes all other roles. Until the Pythia is of the mind to set you aside, you are permanently attached to her on behalf of the country.” Max could have sworn he’d heard a hint of bitterness in Aulus’s voice, but when he looked up at the commander’s face, he saw no sign of emotion.
“Oh, and the position at FAPA requires a tertiary education.” Max opened his mouth to name his military school honors, but Aulus cut him off. “I’m well aware of your academic performance, but unfortunately this is a requirement for entry to the FAPA head office. You’ll be my second in command and will take the position of commander when I move into the more senior general role.”
Max noted the man’s ambition and was tempted to question him on his timeframe. But he bit his tongue and maintained the respect that Aulus’s position demanded.
Max stared at the papers, thinking of what life would be like outside of the military. Then he looked up at Aulus, making the decision on instinct. “Am I able to make a request, sir?”
Aulus paused, half turned to make for the door. “Go ahead.”
Max took a breath. “Could I request two milites to be invited as well?”
Aulus smiled. “Commander Gordia had already apprised us of the tightly-knit unit you three make. They’ve been invited as well.”
“And the university?”
“That too.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me. Show me I’m not making a mistake.”
University life proceeded in a fashion that made Max grateful that classes were nightly and that he could be useful working at the FAPA head office during the day. Marcus had often complained that normal humans needed sleep, but he’d kept up anyway.
Two years passed before Max found himself living with Les and contemplating the big question.
“Do you really think you two are meant for each other?” Marcus asked as Max dropped a box onto the desk in his new office. He’d been moved to Interim Commander, a position that would last a year or two before Aulus designated Max full Commander of FAPA head office.
Max pulled out the plaque that his parents had made for him, a Latin saying that equated one’s parents to gods. It had been a joke, but Max had appreciated it more than they had realized. Now it sat atop a sideboard beside his many awards and medals. And beside the gift from Aurelia—a brass statue of a wide-eyed boar with a gold ring through its nose.
“He looks dangerous,” said Marcus, eyeing the statue.
“He is,” Max replied without thinking. But when he looked up to cover up his faux pas, Marcus had already left and was walking out to his desk.
Marcus’s words rang in his head though. Did he really love Les? Max cared for her deeply, which he knew meant he loved her. Had Aurelia succeeded in confusing him enough that he’d not trust his own heart?
Chapter 16
In the end, he hadn’t proposed to Les.
Their fighting only increased in frequency until Max was beginning to question why they were still together. One night, he’d just reached the apartment he shared with Les and had stuck a fork into a juicy steak when his phone began to ring. Les glared at him, but Max had had little choice.
“I have to answer, Les. As Interim Commander if I put one foot wrong, I could lose everything. If we want a better place to live in, I can’t risk being careless.” He’d used his FAPA position as a reason to answer, but they both knew who the call was from.
Les sat back and raised her wine goblet to her lips. Better she drank than to argue with him. When he cut the call, her face had darkened. “I know that look. You have to go?”
Max cut a fat portion of the steak and stuck it in his mouth. As he chewed, he said, “I have to go. It’s what being Liaison entails.”
Les snorted and reached for the bottle of cabernet sauvignon, his father’s aged line. “All it does is make you her bitch.”
Max swallowed hard and got to his feet so fast that his chair toppled over. Les’s eyes widened for the briefest moment and then she lowered her lids and concentrated on drinking.
Max left her there to simmer and headed into the bath. He showered and changed, then packed a set of clothes as well as a uniform. There were times when he never knew what he was heading into when Aurelia called.
He walked into the dining room to find Les pouring the last of the bottle of wine into her glass. Her eyes were glazed, but she gritted her jaw tight, the tension emanating from her body like a wave.
“I wish you would understand, Les. This is something that’s important to me. You’ve known that since forever.”
“I never realized how much she controlled you.”
“It’s not about control. It’s about duty. The desire to do something good for the world.”
Les snorted. “For what? For politicians to ensure they maintain control? For corporations to eliminate competition?” There was a cold edge to her voice that Max didn’t like. No, the iciness hurt him deeply.
“I don’t know why you can’t support me on this. Yes, I’m called out at a moment’s notice. I was going to...” Max realized how close he was to confessing he’d been waiting for the right moment to pop the question. Then he cleared his throat. “I think we need some time apart. When I return, I’ll stay with Marcus for a few days. Maybe we need to...think.”
Les got to her feet, her face crumpling as she began to sob. Max ignored her and kept walking. At the door, he paused to look back at her. “You selfish bastard! You’re making a goddamn choice, you know that?”
Max sighed, the pain something more than he could bear. He opened the door and shut it just in time.
Glass crashed into the door, and he heard Les scream out, “You’ll leave me for her?”
Beneath a shroud of sadness, Max left the building and headed out to the waiting car. He’d go to Aurelia and deal with whatever she wanted.
Then he had to think about his future, because he was no longer sure that being the Liaison to the Pythia was good for him.
Or for Les.
Chapter 17
Max wasn’t sure what to think of Aurelia’s prediction.
“An oil refinery in the Eastern Slavic States, is going to explode. Some kind of system malfunction. But the pipelines to and from the refinery were built beneath the surrounding towns. Any explosion is going to have a flow-on effect along the pipes themselves. We know from the schematics report that the pipes are vented at various locations which from what we’ve been able to ascertain, will guarantee total obliteration of everything within a two-mile radius, as well as extensive damage and radiation poisoning at least eight miles out. We’re also looking at the toxic pollution of rivers and water tables as well as evaporation and rainfall. We’re talking acid rain.”
Max was addressing Aulus, at the request of Aurelia who’d stressed how bad the situation could get.
“Their army won’t let us anywhere near that refinery.”
“Even if we tell them what we know?”
Aulus shook his head. “Those people are Extreme Stalinists but with a twisted agenda. Even if we offer help, they will turn us down, out of pride or suspicion, it doesn’t matter.”
“So what are we talking? Covert op?”
Aulus nodded as he tapped his charcoal pencil on his desk. “Gather a recon team. We have two black sites in the area. This will have to be off the books, so we don’t ruffle certain feathers.”
Max hated when things leaned toward diplomacy. It usually meant his hands were tied. Which is what he didn’t need on this particular op. He nodded and exhaled. “I’ll get the team together. We leave in four hours.”
“That soon?”
“Aurelia wasn’t able to give me a specific timeframe. She couldn’t see anything that would help date the event, which means we have to treat it as an imminent threat.”
Aulus nodded, his expression confirming that he was satisfied with Max’s conclusions. “Let me know when you’re ready. I’ll arrange a plane now. You’re going trans-pacific, so you’ll have rough weather and turbulence most of the way. You going to manage the bumpy flight?”
Max nodded. He didn’t realize that Aulus knew of his issue with flying. Ever since he’d returned from Morocco, he’d suffered from terrible nausea on every flight. Les had teased him saying he was the only person on the planet who suffered from PTSD from overexposure to intense odor.
She may well have been right.
Aulus cleared his throat. “There are places—”
“Marcus has a list for me. I’ve been taking a few things. I’ll figure it out eventually.”
Aulus nodded, and Max wondered if the man was enjoying what was clearly a failure on Max’s part. But Aulus merely tapped his pencil again.
Max left soon after and selected the team, debriefing them swiftly and making it clear they were going dark and that they could possibly not return. There were many somber faces around the team, but none chose to remain behind even when Max offered that as an option with no judgment of consequences.
Max had considered calling Celestra, going home and talking with her. But with the limited time, and with wheels up in under an hour, he had little choice in the matter.
Marcus has insisted on joining the team, claiming that Aulus needed to stretch his muscles every now and again. And that the rest of the team would manage just fine.
Max hoped he was right.
But even as the plane took off, with his team all strapped in and ready, Max felt something strange twist in his gut. And it had nothing to do with nausea.
He usually went with his gut. And today his gut was telling him that something was wrong.
Chapter 18
Max and the team moved like shadows down a long catwalk that overlooked the portion of the refinery that Aurelia had claimed was where the explosions had originated.
When the team reached the location, Max was horrified to find that the pressure had reached past the danger level. The team studied the schematics and scanned the room. Up above them on the left wall was an office that overlooked the control room. Max sent two of his team up to check the room, then sent two more out of the main hall to investigate why the place was empty.
Before the two even reached the door, Max heard Marcus’s voice on the overhead speaker system. “We have to get the hell out of here. This thing’s gonna blow. The facility was evacuated thirty minutes ago.”
There was a short pause while Max wondered how long they had.
The speaker screeched, and Marcus’s voice echoed around the team. “T minus twenty minutes and three seconds.”
Before he could say the word, the entire team turned as one and began to evacuate. Marcus and his partner rappelled back down to the ground floor and brought up the rear.
“Aurelia was right to say we needed to move now,” muttered Max as they raced along the corridors. Red lights flashed, and alarms rang announcing the countdown to detonation.
“Something went wrong inside there, Max. It wasn’t an accident. They did something deliberately, or maybe pushed things too far.”
“And they managed to evacuate early enough to get out of the danger zone.”
“Did they evacuate the towns?”
“Not that I saw. There were no public announcements or even a notice to the nearby towns to flee the blast radius.”
Max’s jaw hurt at the thought that the bastards had left thousands of innocent people to die.
The team burst into the daylight out of the tunnel entrance, but not one of them paused to take a breath. They ran for the hillside and scrambled up the steep incline, racing for the two black bullet-proof army issue four-wheel-drives. Tires skidded, and doors slammed, and the vehicles took off. All heads turned to watch through the back windows.
Behind them the explosion rocked the refinery, the blast sending a gigantic ball of flame into the air. Vibrations rippled along the ground and through the air, lifting both vehicles off the ground at least two yards before dropping them back down.
Neither vehicle slowed even though they skidded as their tires hit solid ground. They drove along the back of a small village where the vented pipelines spewed fire and gas into the air. Clouds of poisonous smoke covered the town. The screams of the villagers echoed through the air, and out of the darkness, a figure came running.
Flames covered the boy and Max acted out of instinct, without a thought to his own safety. He shoved open the door and flung himself out, landing on the ground and rolling over into a crouch. He raced for the child, throwing the boy onto the ground and rolling him in the dirt to put out the flames. Max’s palms stung from where he’d been forced to touch the child, but he didn’t pay any attention to the pain.
Tires skidded behind Max, and someone held out an emergency foil blanket. It was a new introduction into their first aid kits, apparently appropriate whether to keep a person warm or cool them down depending on which side you used. Max chose the cool side and wrapped the blanket around the boy.
Even as they carried him to the car, Max heard the wheezing of the child’s lungs, and his gut tightened.
They kept driving, and Max watched the boy the entire time, feeding him water with a straw, injecting him with painkillers and antibiotics and praying to Apollo that the boy would survive.
The fallout of the blast was nothing like Max had ever expected. The Union of United nations came down hard on the government of the small Slavic state, placed sanctions on them and removed various trade rights.
The world mourned for the dead and the dying, and for those within the path of the poisonous cloud that had traveled away from the blast site. Across the world, governments had specialists testing constantly to ensure they knew when and where the cloud would reach them. Two years later they were still waiting and watching.
The little boy lasted twenty hours before succumbing to lung failure. He’d had little chance of survival, and though Max had cursed Apollo, he’d have to have expected the god to work miracles.
And the gods were not known for granting miracles.
Les had come by to see Marcus and Max, claiming that she needed to see if they were both doing okay. She’d cleaned and cooked while they slept and relaxed, regained their physical strength. But when Max and Marcus looked into each other’s faces, they relived the horror of the awful night.
Max had listened quietly when Les had apologized for her horrible words, then she’d explained that she understood now why he needed to work with Aurelia, that she wanted to fix their relationship. But there’d been something broken between them for a long time, and Max had finally gained the strength to admit it to himself.
When Max had told Les that he was done, that he could no longer pursue their relationship, and that it was too late for them as a couple, she didn’t explode or rant and rave. She didn’t get angry. She just looked at him sadly and then kissed him on the cheek.
She wished him well and walked out of the door and out of his life.
There had been no way to fix what had been broken.
Max worked purely on trust.
TO BE CONTINUED
READ THE SERIES
The Dark Sight Series
Dark Sight
Cursed Sight
Vissarion
Shadow Sight
Dark Prophecy
Cursed Prophecy
Shadow Prophecy
Immortal Bound - Apsara Chronicles #1 Sample Chapters
Immortal Bound Ch1
In all the years of her particularly strange line of work, and her particularly strange kind of life, Vee Shankar had always done what was required in order to get the bad guy. But today, she was sure she hovered too close to that line she knew she’d never cross.
Too close.
Damned well better be worth the effort.
Vee leaned against the cool brick of the
alley wall, ground her already overly-gritted teeth and tilted her head a little to allow her companion easier access to the curve of her neck, the kisser providing the best cover as she kept a cold eye on the bar across the street.
With Kort a regular on this street, distraction was a better choice than destruction. And Vee may find a use for him in the future. But, one of her biggest discomforts right now was what Syama would think of Vee’s current activities.
Although thankful for the ever-watchful protection of a four-eyed, four-foot-high, black-as-night hellhound, make-out sessions—fake or real—had never fallen into the appropriate-to-witness box.
A glance over at the hellhound—currently shrouded by a dense glamor that rendered her invisible to all other eyes, human or otherwise—confirmed that the bitch’s expression was downright judgmental. Vee suppressed a sigh. Making Syama feel better about guard duty for such a distasteful event was going to be a mish.
She gave the hellhound a warning glare as Kort concentrated on making his way south. Vee’s attention then returned to the entrance to the only establishment on this street still open at the ungodly hour of two in the morning. All the other stores had had the good sense to close up at an hour closer to one deemed not on the straight path to Hell.
Around the corner was another story entirely; Hunts Point in the Bronx, not the place you’d want to spend your free time even in the stark light of day.
But what did any of the residents of this neck of the woods really know? The dangers they saw were tangible ones, abusive pimps and drug pushers, trading in flesh and suffering. What they didn’t allow themselves to see lay strictly within the shadows.
Within their nightmares.
The stakeout was taking its toll on Vee’s bones. The late fall air—already edged with insistent cold—sank right through her fur-lined leather jacket, the icy wet ground seeping its way up into the soles of her boots to sink deep into her bones.