It was pitch-black outside, and dense, angry clouds streamed past the sliver of a crescent moon.
She couldn’t put it off any longer.
It wasn’t as if she didn’t want to talk to her mother. On the contrary, she very much wanted to talk to her, about a million things and nothing at all. Was she afraid? Yes. A little, and in a manner she’d never experienced. It might not even be fear but something else altogether: guilt, hope, trepidation, a tinge of longing.
Regardless, the conversation she was experiencing the emotion over wasn’t this conversation—it would come later, in person. This conversation had to happen and happen now for practical, time-and-galaxy-saving reasons. And it was going to be weird and awkward and uncomfortable and she was going to have to be so careful….
She groaned, decided to cheat and sent a pulse. Far safer, and neither of them would be able to accuse the other of ‘taking that tone.’
Alexis! Are you all right? Are you—
Mom, I’m fine. I am. I’m glad you are, too. Swear I will explain everything when I see you, but I don’t have a lot of time right now. I need you to do something for me.
Of course. Anything.
Anything? Really? I need you to send a military escort to Sagan to retrieve Dr. Abigail Canivon and take her to Earth. She’s head of the Cybernetics Research Center at the Druyan Institute.
Yes, I’m familiar with her and her work.
Good. There is one small problem—well, technically two small problems.
Sagan is currently under siege by the aliens. I know. Our forces are engaging them.
They are? But Sagan isn’t an Alliance world.
A great deal has happened while you’ve been away.
Alex’s head already spun a bit from the barrage of surprising developments Delavasi had relayed. She wasn’t certain she had believed humanity would be up to the task of saving itself, frankly…but it seemed they were intent on surprising her.
So I hear. Then you have a few things to fill me in on as well.
What’s the second problem?
The escort needs to be large enough to transport eighteen tonnes of hardware.
Understood. I’ll make it happen.
A flash of lightning briefly lit the Cavare skyline in the distance. You’re not going to ask me why?
You said you’ll explain when you see me. I’m taking you at your word.
Wow. She dragged a hand over her mouth and tried to process the reaction. She didn’t entirely succeed.
Thank you. I will. I—
Caleb stormed through the room without so much as a glance at her. He continued past the fireplace to the conference room where Delavasi stood, now studying a screen in his hand.
His fist landed square on Delavasi’s jaw, sending the tall, stocky man reeling backward into the wall.
“What the fuck!” Her exclamation elicited no reaction whatsoever from either of them.
Alexis?
She ignored her mother and bolted into the other room to witness the unfolding scene.
Delavasi grimaced and wiped blood off the corner of his mouth using the back of his hand. “Talked to your sister, then?”
Alexis, answer me.
Caleb’s glare could have frozen the fiery pits of Hell; even in profile it was enough to send a shiver arcing down her spine. His voice sounded tightly controlled but escaped through gritted teeth. “Alex, could you please step out for a minute? The Director and I need to have a private conversation.”
I’m sorry, Mom, I have to go.
What—
She cut the connection and moved closer until she stood within arm’s reach of him. “I’m not at all sure that’s a good idea.”
Caleb pulled his glare away from the man to give her what she believed he meant to be an imploring look. The storm raging in his eyes shocked her into retreating a step.
“Please? I promise I won’t kill him.”
Delavasi shrugged. “I promise I won’t kill him either. Can’t promise I won’t fire him.”
Those were the parameters they were operating under?
Her gaze darted between them in some degree of shock. The tension radiating to fill the space between the two men vibrated along her skin. Both of Caleb’s fists were clenched, and she remembered her first real impression of him: the panther poised to spring.
Though her focus remained on Caleb, in the corner of her vision she noted Delavasi now lounged in false casualness against the wall with which he’d collided. Somehow she doubted he would allow a second punch to land so easily.
She had no idea what was transpiring. She trusted Caleb, but she had never seen him like this; not even his fury on learning he was being framed for the EASC bombing compared.
And if she trusted him, it meant Delavasi was now a bad guy, and their protector had become an adversary.
And she was being ordered out of the room.
Dread pooled in her gut. Her heart sank to join it with the realization that just when the tiniest amount of order and direction had begun to return to the world, everything was being flipped upside down yet again.
“Fine.” She regarded Caleb a final second, but his countenance had locked into hardness, blocking her access to him. She swallowed once, pivoted and walked out.
Caleb sensed rather than saw Alex depart, for the entirety of his attention had returned to Delavasi. The man massaged his jaw but had recovered sufficiently from the strike to be staring him down. He’d expected no less out of the Director of Intelligence.
“How dare you keep this from my family. How dare you let us believe he had walked out on us, on my mother, when in truth he had died in the line of duty. For twenty years! Do you have any idea what a heartless son of a bitch he seemed to us? Do you—”
“It was not up to me. It wasn’t up to any of us.”
Caleb snorted. “You know, you have a reputation as a man of integrity. But that’s bullshit, isn’t it? You’re nothing but a coward and a liar.”
“Besmirch my honor all you want, but realize you don’t possess all the facts.”
“No, I don’t—and I’d like a few more. What was my role supposed to be in all this? Your penance, or your revenge? Why was I brought into Division? Why am I here?”
“Samuel and your father were close. He wanted to honor your father’s legacy.”
Rage and anguish collided within him, confusion the catalyzing agent to a volatile mixture. He felt as though he might rip apart from the inside with the next breath.
“You’re telling me I was supposed to be some kind of surrogate for my father? To fill the void his absence left in…in Samuel’s life?”
He closed the distance and got in Delavasi’s face; the man didn’t back away, but it hardly mattered.
“Samuel was my friend for eighteen years—or at least I thought he was. Why didn’t he tell me?” He cringed inwardly at the desperation which crept into his voice at the end. He did not intend to show weakness to this man.
Delavasi shifted his weight to his other leg, as if buying himself the space to prepare. “He was under the strictest orders not to divulge—”
“Did you know Samuel? It would hardly have been the first time he disobeyed orders.”
“Yes, I did know him. Did you?”
A harsh exhale forced its way up from his chest, and the void it left behind filled with a suffocating pressure. He took a step back. “…Apparently not.”
“I also knew your father, and consider him one of the most honorable men I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. Listen, son, you—”
Caleb welcomed the anger which flared then, for it beat the slow but inexorable suffocation.
“You do not have the right to call me that. You may have known my father and you may have known Samuel, but you do not know me—so don’t dare to presume you do.”
The man’s hands raised in surrender. “Fair enough. And for the record, I am genuinely sorry we weren’t able to tell your family about what happened—�
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“You could have told me. I worked for you. I risked my life for you, for this government. I gave up friends and loved ones for this job. I earned the right to be told a long goddamn time ago.”
Delavasi nodded deliberately. “Perhaps.”
“Yeah. Perhaps.” He spun and stormed out.
Alex was pacing emphatically in the side hallway, but on seeing him she immediately spun and began approaching him. “Caleb—”
His head shook as he rushed down the hall in the opposite direction. He needed air. He needed to be elsewhere, anywhere. “Not now.”
“Caleb!”
The sharp, forceful tone demanded he halt. He found he had complied, but did not turn around. His voice sounded low and hoarse, likely because he couldn’t breathe. “Alex, I can’t.”
Then he continued down the hall and around the corner without giving her a chance to respond. He had spotted the roof access during their tour of the facility, marked ‘Restricted’ as the roof held defensive measures. He hurried up the stairs—no lift since it wasn’t official access—and burst out the door.
The cold, damp night air assaulted him like a slap across the face. He welcomed the violence of it and drew the air deep into his lungs as he fell back against the wall protecting the stairwell.
Breathe.
What do you do when everything you believed about your life is revealed as a lie? Was his father the hero? Was Samuel the villain?
Not the villain…but not the man he had assumed he knew. Not the man he had admired, heeded for guidance and insight, shared drinks and secrets and sorrows with. No, Samuel turned out to have been a horribly, irredeemably broken man, drowning in a sea of deception and guilt from the day Caleb met him.
Pieces scattered over a lifetime fell into place, and he saw it all play out now in his head—choices and decisions rippling down through the years as the mistakes of the past clawed forward to fuck with his life.
Samuel loses the woman he loves to slavers and, rightly or wrongly, blames himself. When Caleb and his family come under threat, Samuel counsels his father to leave them behind. Maybe it saves their lives, maybe it doesn’t. His father dies, and Samuel is comforted by the knowledge at least his friend’s loved ones didn’t die as well. To make himself feel yet better, to fill a personal void or possibly to atone, he recruits Caleb into Division. He spends years imparting the same lessons, the same rules he lived by and believed to be wisdom, hoping to save one more person from the pain he experienced and the guilt he couldn’t find a way to banish.
But Samuel had never understood the cost on the other side—the cost of what was given up. Caleb suspected perhaps he never had either until this moment.
Dammit. He should have been given the choice, with full knowledge and understanding of the consequences. He should have been allowed to choose his own path.
His laugh came out full of bitterness, enmity and grief. He’d never expected to be the one on the receiving end of the deception and lies. He thought about his father, living a lie until the day he died.
Had any of them known the man at all? It appeared he was not the faithless and selfish bastard who abandoned his family. His father was not deserving of the resentment and animosity Caleb had directed at him for the last twenty years. But he had no idea who the man might actually have been…and somehow that felt like as big a betrayal as the lie had.
The access door opened and Alex stepped out. She took up a position beside him against the wall. She didn’t touch him. He didn’t look at her.
“How did you find me?”
“It’s where I’d be. Are you going to run from me each time something goes wrong for you?”
He didn’t like the coolness of her voice. She sounded as she had those first days on her ship, when every word had been laced in distrust and wariness. It occurred to him then he might have committed a fairly grievous error.
“I wasn’t running from you—I was just running. But no. Only when everything I believed I knew is invalidated in one fell swoop. And I don’t think it’s possible for such a thing to happen a second time.”
“This doesn’t invalidate who you are.”
He glanced over at her in surprise. “You know?”
She gave him the tiniest smile, though it wasn’t a happy one. “I had my own words with the Director after you left. He came to see the merits of filling me in.”
“I don’t doubt it. You have a way of refusing to accept any alternative to getting what you want.”
“Yeah…look, I’m not happy about you so dismissively shutting me out, but I won’t add to your burdens right now. We can deal with it later. Caleb, there’s something you need to understand. Having a father who was a hero instead of a villain doesn’t make life any easier or harder, and it doesn’t bring them back.”
It was almost as though she could see straight into his mind, reading the echo left by his thoughts. “But it does change the way you view the world, right?”
“Not really. Instead of being bitter at my father I was bitter at the rest of everyone. You were bitter at your father but quite amenable to everyone else, so long as they weren’t a criminal anyway. If we want to be bitter, we’ll find a way. I think—I hope—the opposite is true as well.”
He closed his eyes. She was correct of course, and he didn’t want to be that person; he didn’t want to be hostile, or sullen and spiteful. But he was so damn angry and confused and…terrified. His past had come unmoored, and him with it.
“I just—I feel like I was sold my entire life under false pretenses. Like it was never mine to begin with.”
“Not long after I met you, you told me you enjoyed your life and didn’t regret the choices you’d made. Does learning what happened twenty years ago honestly alter your feelings on the subject?”
Rain at last broke free from the heavy clouds hidden by the darkness, and fat droplets began splashing loudly onto the rooftop. “I don’t know. The whole bloody firmament’s been yanked out from underneath me. I have no rudder. I have no—”
Her hand touched his shoulder, feather light, and before he realized it he had buried his face in her hair.
Her arms were hesitant as they wrapped around his waist, but he squeezed her tight against him, as if holding onto her for his very survival. She was so much warmer than the cold air and colder rain, provided so much more comfort than either violence or solitude had.
His lips found her ear to murmur into it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shut you out.”
She pulled back a fraction to regard him, her eyes alarmingly wary as they searched his. “Are you keeping any more secrets from me? Real secrets, the kind that matter?”
“No.” A simple, bare word. But it was truth, something which currently seemed to be in rather short supply.
Her throat worked in a hint of unease. The rain had begun to dampen her hair in uneven streaks, and a thick strand clung along her neck to accentuate the act.
“When you ordered me out, then ran away from me…I didn’t want to, but I felt a dread that maybe this had all been a lie after all. That my initial fears about you were true, and the switch had flipped and you were going to walk away—” she cut off his burgeoning protest “—I realize I was wrong, and I’m sorry I thought it. But—”
He didn’t let her silence him this time. “You weren’t wrong to think it. I’ve given you no reason not to think it. In all honesty, it could have been true.” He reached up to grasp her face in his hands. “But it isn’t.”
She nodded in superficial acceptance of his answer. Her irises glittered brightly in the rain now streaming down her cheeks to flow over his hands, but the sentiments behind them were once again impenetrable to him.
He couldn’t blame her for remaining wary, but right now he didn’t know how to fix it. For the first time in years, there were a great many things he didn’t know.
7
SAGAN
INDEPENDENT COLONY
* * *
ABIGAIL FINIS
HED PACKING ANOTHER CRATE and stood—to find eight soldiers in full combat gear staring at her from the doorway of the lab.
“Dr. Canivon?”
She brushed strands of hair out of her eyes and wiped her palms on her slacks; always careful to project a poised aura, today she undoubtedly looked a wreck. “Yes, I’m Dr. Canivon.”
An extremely tall, dark-skinned man stepped forward from the group. “Major Yardua, 4th Brigade, SE Command. We’re here to escort you and your equipment off-planet and ensure you reach Earth safely.”
“Well, I hope you brought a sizeable transport.”
“Transport? Ma’am, we brought a frigate.”
She offered a quiet, weary laugh. “That should be sufficient. If two of you can assist me in securing the heavier modules in crates, the rest can begin carrying out what’s already boxed up.”
The Major immediately began issuing orders to the other soldiers with a clear air of urgency. She watched him in growing concern, and when he took a breath she broke in. “You appear to be in quite a hurry. How much time do we have?”
“None, Doctor. We have no time.”
Yardua turned his back on her frown and brought his hand to his ear. “Lt. Colonel, we’ve secured the interior. Requesting SAL support along the building’s perimeter. It’s going to take approximately twenty minutes to secure the cargo and load it on the Fitzgerald, so any available fighter coverage would be welcome as well.”
Two of the men moved deeper into the room and began dismantling Valkyrie’s remaining server racks, and she forced her focus away from Yardua to oversee their work.
The lab had no windows, but she kept glancing over her shoulder through the open doorway to the wide windows of her office. There were flickers of soldiers rushing to and fro outside and the occasional blur of laser fire, but she was simply too far away to ascertain any details.
Troubled and increasingly curious, she escorted the next crate out of the lab and halfway through her office to get a closer view. As she motioned the men carrying it on ahead of her, the walls shook in a roaring crash and a massive fireball plumed outside the front window.
Transcendence: Aurora Rising Book Three Page 6