Promises to Keep

by Promises To Keep (lit) (NCP)

  "They aren’t widely known."

  Bethan studied Sarah. "You knew it would kill you if you stood in the way? You could’ve stepped back and let it kill him."

  The cup in Sarah’s hand shook. "No, I couldn’t. I don’t know why but...." She lifted the cup to her mouth and drank.

  Bethan patted her arm. "I think I know why, Sarah."

  Jeffrey entered and Bethan and the others turned as one.

  He had a cautious smile. "I think we caught all the damage in time. He’s under the healing accelerator now, will be for a few hours."

  Sarah’s face lit up and Bethan gave a private sigh of relief. Yes, she knew why Sarah had faced almost certain death to save Garran’s life.

  "He’ll be all right, then." Even more than her face showed, Sarah’s voice revealed. Sarah was in love with her husband, she just didn’t realize it yet.

  Jeffrey nodded, his gaze warm on Sarah’s face. "He’ll be fine. In fact, I’ll probably release him tomorrow if he heals as fast as I expect him to." He shook his head and sighed melodramatically. "Garran can be a terrible patient. I wouldn’t want to keep him here a microsecond longer than necessary."

  * * * *

  Garran struggled to consciousness, a steady ping in his ear. The sound grated on his nerves, repeating over and over. Sweet Gaia, what was that infernal racket?

  He opened his eyes to find the room dimly lit--not his room--and lying in a bed--not his bed--and alone, no sign of anyone about. Where was he?

  Searching for the source of the annoying sound, he found a medical scanner hovering over his head, recording the status of his vital organs and displaying them to the room’s media wall, and, no doubt to the monitoring station down the hall. The time on the scanner said it was late second shift.

  Garran groaned and leaned back against the thin pillow, pulling higher the flimsy sheet that he now realized constituted his only covering, his clothes having disappeared along with the last several hours.

  Time to deal with the facts. He was in the medical center, that much was certain. Why was he here? He couldn’t remember, his memory was a blur.

  Maybe if he reconstructed it. Garran lifted a pain-filled arm and rubbed his aching forehead. It hurt to think but he needed to try. What was the last thing he remembered?

  An image of green swam into his mind, brightly lit as if by the sun and he remembered the time and place. It had been mid-second shift and they’d been in the garden. They? Yes, he’d been sitting with Sarah on a bench--he warmed at that, the glow of her face as she’d taken in the beauty around her. She’d loved it, and spoken about staying with him. He smiled, remembering the thrill her words had given him.

  But then she’d gone on and talked about how she didn’t think she could love him. Even now a hot anger churned in his stomach at her certainty. How could she know something like that when he’d hardly had the chance to show how it would be with them, how his touch would bind her to him. She was an innocent to the passion of men and women and needed to be shown the truth. The time was past for uncertainty. He would make her his own. His Sarah. What she needed.…

  Garran’s anger chilled. He knew what had happened next. He’d grabbed her to take her back to his room and on the way there.…

  An image came, of Sarah against a wall, him pressing her against it. He’d kissed her, taken her mouth by force, and she’d bent to his will, her body telling him what her mind denied. She’d given in and he remembered that brief exultation.

  But then she’d screamed, and a sharp pain had pierced his back, pain so intense his breath had caught and his heart stuttered in its beat. He remembered falling and looking back to see a demonized woman’s face with a weapon in hand, blood dripping from the tip.

  His blood.

  Sarah had stood before her and the woman had raised her blade again.…

  "SARAH!" He cried her name aloud, unable to control the terror in his voice. He remembered it all now--they’d been attacked in the corridor by one of the Earth women, neither of his bodyguards around. He’d been hurt, badly. The sore arm and his head, the lingering pain in his back told him that story. The healing accelerator always gave him a headache and muscle pain.

  The more pain, the longer the treatment. He must have been through surgery and under a HA for several hours.

  But Sarah? Panic forced him to sit higher, ignoring the pain in his back. She’d faced that murderess alone, no weapon, and no one to help her. What had happened to her? He cast about, looking for some sign of her in the room, failing to see one. Surely if she’d been hurt, they’d have put her in the same room with him, that was always done with couples.…

  Which could only mean.…

  NO! No, no, no, she couldn’t be dead. That couldn’t be the case. Gaia wouldn’t be that cruel, to give him a new lover and snatch her away.

  A nagging shame-filled thought entered from his soul. Why not, when you treated her more like an object than a woman? What he’d done in the corridor--her body he would tame, but would he court her heart? No. Would he allow the truth to be spoken, a truth that would influence her decision? No.

  He’d have forced her to choose to be with him in spite of what she thought she knew, ignoring everyone who’d tried to tell him how foolish he was being.

  He’d used his body and his mind to seduce her, not the truth.

  He leaned back against the pillow, wallowing in his grief, old prayers not spoken in so long in his mind and on his lips. He would do better, given another chance. Sarah would be given a true choice...if she still lived.

  "Garran? How are you feeling?" The doctor’s wife was at his shoulder, concern written on her face. He stared at her, remembering how alien he’d thought she’d looked when he’d met her and how foolish Jeffrey had been in allowing his misguided attachment bind him to a woman from Earth.

  What a foolish man...to choose a wife who’d loved him faithfully for the past five years and who’d given him a child.

  Garran knew who was really the fool.

  "My wife. Is she all right?" His voice sounded weak and distant as from the bottom of a great well.

  "Your wife?" Her face crinkled in concern. "No one told me she was here. Was she hurt, too?"

  "I don’t know. She was with me when we were attacked."

  Her eyes widened in concern, then her mouth set in sudden anger. "No one tells me anything anymore," she complained, her voice thoroughly exasperated. "I had to find out about you when I came on shift." She glanced at the monitors, nodding approvingly. "You’ll be fine, by the way."

  As if that would make a difference if Sarah weren’t going to be there with him. He grabbed her hand. "Could you find out where she is?"

  A smile lit her face. "Sounds like Jeffrey finally got his wish. You’ve got it bad, Garran." She patted his shoulder with a comforting hand. "I’ll go find out what’s going on."

  After she’d left, Garran remembered why he’d asked that the doctor’s wife be excluded from his and Sarah’s claiming dinner but it was too late to stop her. If Sarah was alive, she’d probably want to kill him over all this.

  If not, he didn’t want to live.

  Resigned to his fate, he tried to relax.

  Chapter Twenty

  The sound of raised voices woke Sarah from her resting place on the couch of the small private waiting area that Sammul and Maxxa had insisted they use "for security’s sake." Neither of the big men were to be seen but she could hear one of them, Maxxa, she thought, outside the door arguing with someone over whether she was to be disturbed.

  Sarah checked her wrist chrono and groaned. Only two hours had passed since she’d lain down after being assured that Garran was out of danger. She hadn’t wanted to leave the medical center on the chance that he’d wake, in spite of the bodyguards arguing that Garran’s suite was the safest place on the ship. Using the private waiting area of the medical center had been a compromise.

  Sarah rubbed the sleep from her eyes. It seemed liked weeks since she’d been ab
le to get more than a couple hours sleep in a night and tonight didn’t look to be any different. Giving in to the inevitable, Sarah got to her feet and headed for the door, just as she heard Garran’s name.

  Maybe he’d woken up?

  Sarah jerked the door open, then stood, stunned as she stared at the woman arguing with her bodyguard.

  It couldn’t be. "Karen?"

  The woman spun on her heels, her jaw dropping open. She blinked her eyes. "Sarah? Is that you?"

  Sarah’s knees buckled and Maxxa moved quickly, grabbing Sarah’s arm as she collapsed against the doorway. Karen followed him into the room, turning on the lights as he half-carried Sarah to the couch. When he released Sarah, Karen took his place, sitting next to Sarah, arm around her shoulders.

  "Sarah, good heavens, are you all right?"

  Tears filled her eyes. "I thought you were dead.…"

  Karen hugged her closer. "Dead? No way! Don’t you remember? You told me before I left with Earthforce that I didn’t have permission to die."

  Wiping her cheeks, Sarah stared at her friend. Same sandy-blonde hair, longer than it had been when she’d been with Earthforce, same infectious grin. She not only didn’t look dead, she looked great.

  She looked...happy!

  "I don’t understand. You were on The Hope. In the First Fleet."

  "I was indeed." Karen agreed, the hint of a smile in her eyes.

  "They engaged the Gaians."

  "We most certainly did." Karen’s eyes glittered in amusement.

  "The fleet was destroyed, all hands lost."

  Karen’s face broke out in a grin. "The fleet was defeated, all hands captured."

  "Captured?" Bewilderment sped through Sarah. "Not destroyed?"

  "Certainly not destroyed." Karen looked indignant. "Gaians don’t destroy if we can help it. Life is sacred to us."

  Us? "Karen, what are you talking about? You aren’t a Gaian."

  Karen folded her arms and glared. "I most certainly am. Goodness, Sarah, you sound just like the General!"

  Mind in a whirl, Sarah lifted her hand. "Karen, I’m very confused."

  Karen laughed and hugged her again. "All right, let me see if I can un-confuse you. I guess I should start with what really happened during the war. The first thing you should realize is that the Gaians don’t fight their battles the way Earthforce does. They don’t believe in killing, so they found a way to battle Earth without doing so. Instead of destroying ships in space, they captured them."

  "Captured?"

  Karen nodded. "The Gaians created a new technology that took over the controls of an enemy’s ship, everything from weapons, guidance, and propulsion, to life-support. Take the First Fleet. We flew at them, ready to do battle, and they pulled the plug on us. Nothing worked on the ships, the computers were completely under their control. They left us in darkness with only minor life-support for about an hour, then opened up a comm-link and told us what they were going to do with us."

  Horrified, Sarah tried to imagine what that hour had been like, sitting on a dark and silent ship, knowing you were at the mercy of your enemies. "And what was it they did?"

  Karen shook her head ruefully. "Better than what was deserved after Carras. The Gaians took the ships they captured and grounded them, a few at a time, on different planets. Most of the solar systems around here have been mapped by Gaian explorers, so they knew which planets would support life. They forced the ships to land, then sent special programs through the computers to render them useless for the foreseeable future. The ships were grounded...permanently."

  Sarah remembered the young engineer and how proud he’d been of the remote ship controller he was working on. For five years they’d had similar technology...and they’d used it to fight the war.

  If Earth had had that kind of a weapon, how would they have used it? To disable a ship and land it gently on a planet? Or, would they have used it to send that ship into the nearest sun. She knew Earthforce and didn’t like the answer to that question.

  "So what happened to the first fleet?"

  Karen shrugged. "I’m not privileged to know just where the ships were landed. It’s a security thing. Part of the peace treaty with Earth requires us to give them the location of their ships...a few at a time. It will be a while before Earth gets all its toys back," she said with a self-satisfied gloat.

  Karen had never liked Earthforce. Circumstances had forced her into it, the funding for getting her medical training, but she’d stated from the beginning that she’d be in the military for as short a time as possible, to serve her two years then get out.

  Looked like that time was even shorter than she could have expected.

  "So how did you get off The Hope? And what are you doing on The Promise?"

  "Me?" Karen grinned at her. "I’m second officer of this whole medical facility!"

  "Second officer? After Jeffrey?"

  "Yeah, it’s sort of a package deal. Gaian couples normally work together if at all possible, so.…"

  Sarah finally saw the connection. "You’re Jeffrey’s wife."

  "That I am," She said proudly and Karen’s sweet smile told Sarah that she was in love with her husband.

  "How did you meet? The Gaians are so careful to keep unmarried men and women apart."

  Karen shook her head. "They weren’t that careful in the beginning. It was rare that unmarried Gaian men ever went off planet so they didn’t realize they could attach to one of us. After they captured The Hope, they offered us additional medical supplies before we were ‘planted.’ I was medical supply officer so I was the one sent to The Promise."

  She grinned. "The Gaians brought in our shuttle and Jeffrey was there to meet us. He was surprised they’d sent a woman, but even more surprised when he suddenly had trouble breathing."

  Sarah laughed. "He attached just like that?"

  "Just like that, but of course I didn’t know what was wrong. I thought he was having some sort of attack so I got him onto the floor and tried to help with some mouth-to-mouth. Next thing I know I’m on my back and there is a very aroused man kissing me!"

  The situation sounded so comical, Sarah burst into laughter as well. They laughed with their arms around each other and even Maxxa looked amused.

  Oh, it was good to be with Karen again. "So you abandoned Earthforce and married him?"

  Karen’s shrug told Sarah that the decision hadn’t been that easy. "I didn’t want to leave my ship, but once Jeffrey and I were together I found I couldn’t leave him. I’d never been in love before, Sarah. I went back to The Hope only for a few hours and it was like torture to be away from him. It was as hard on him, too. We finally got permission to be together.

  "Not that everyone was in favor of it, at least at first. The General had more than a little to say about it...."

  A chill filled the pit of Sarah’s stomach.

  "Garran knew...." her voice trailed off as she realized the enormity of the situation. Sarah had told him of her lost friend from The Hope and her name. He’d known Karen hadn’t died. He knew she was on The Promise. He’d known that the Earthforce ships hadn’t been destroyed or their crews killed.

  The entire thing was a lie.

  She rubbed her hands together, trying to dispel their sudden cold. "You’re married to Jeffrey. Why didn’t you come to dinner with him?"

  "You mean Garran’s party?" Karen’s eyes narrowed in annoyance. "Jeffrey told me I couldn’t, that I was needed to stand second shift...at the last minute, too! I was looking forward to meeting Garran’s wife."

  Her mouth turned up into a wicked grin. "It was so appropriate that he married an Earth woman after the hard time he’s given everyone else."

  "Really?" Sarah’s voice sounded faint to her.

  "Absolutely! Here he’d been saying for months how no Earth woman was good enough for a Gaian man, then he winds up attaching to one. Pretty good joke." She laughed.

  "Yeah, terrific. If you aren’t the woman."

  "Well, y
eah...." Karen’s voice trailed off and she looked over at Maxxa glaring at her from the doorway.

  Her jaw dropped open. "Oh, no. Not you, Sarah."

  Sarah sighed. "Oh, yes, me. I’m Garran’s Earther wife." She leaned her head into her hands.

  For a moment Karen sat quiet. Then she chuckled. "Well then, you’ve certainly got him tied up in knots. He’s going reasonably nuts in there, wondering if you are okay."

  Sarah lifted her head. "He is?"

  "He most certainly is. I’m not sure what happened but he’s worried that you were hurt too."

  Sarah shot to her feet. "He’s awake? Can I see him?"

  Karen lifted an eyebrow. "Maybe he isn’t the only one going reasonably nuts." At Sarah’s glare she got to her feet. "I suppose it would do Garran some good to see that you’re all right. Can’t have his blood pressure jumping up and down the way it is...it’s giving the suppressors a real workout keeping up."

  Her emotions tumbling, Sarah followed Karen into the intensive care suite, Maxxa following. Garran’s eyes opened when they walked through the door, his gaze darting between them.

  Sarah glanced up at the monitors, noted the readings. It was as Jeffrey had said. Garran was on his way to a complete recovery and could most likely be released tomorrow.

  "You’re all right?" The gratitude in his warm voice caused a brief flutter of pleasure and Sarah smiled.

  "I’m fine. She didn’t touch me." She explained about the assassin and how the woman’s love for her husband had caused her to fight the parasite.

  The others listened in amazement. "I’ve never heard of anyone overcoming one of those things," Karen told Garran. "We’ll have to see if we can free her of it."

  "If anyone can, I suspect it will be you. You’re one of the best doctors on this ship."

  Karen grinned wryly. "Rare praise from you, but I’ll accept it."

  "I’ve never complained about your work as a doctor."

  "No, I guess not. Didn’t complain about my baby either." Karen gave Sarah a sidelong look. "I’ve got this great vid-clip of Garran holding my little girl, the two of them laughing. You’d never recognize the General in it."