by K. D. Jones
“Better?” Maggie asked, stepping up next to him.
“Much better.” His helmet alerted him of a message. He pressed the play button. “Captain Estro, come in. Where are you, Captain? Come on, Liam, it’s Kyle. I’m getting worried about you.”
He pushed his communicator. “This is Captain Liam Estro,” he said quietly into the microphone. He didn’t have to wait long before he got a response.
“Liam! Where the hell have you been?” Kyle’s angry and relieved voice came over the line.
He watched as Maggie walked the perimeter looking for danger. “I’ll explain later. Right now I need a pick up. Two people.”
“Two?”
“Just come and get me. Do you have a lock on my location yet?” Liam was grateful that Maggie couldn’t hear him.
“Yes. ETA two minutes.”
He ended communications and lifted the visor on his helmet. “Good news, my brother Kyle will be here in less than two minutes,” he told her. He watched as she turned to look at him with sadness in her eyes.
“That is good news. I know you’ll be glad to get back.” She wouldn’t look at him directly. She appeared so fragile to him, standing there framed in the doorway.
“Maggie, will you come back with me?” He looked at her with hopeful eyes. But she shook her head and he turned away.
“I don’t think …” A loud popping sound came from outside.
Liam turned around just in time to see redness spreading over Maggie’s chest. “Maggie!” He rushed forward and caught her in his arms as she fell to the ground. She had been shot from behind. “No!”
Chapter 9
Liam reached for his blaster and prepared to kill anyone he could see. There was yelling and then the sound of more shots being fired outside the building. His brother Kyle’s tall form filled the doorway.
“Liam, are you okay?” Kyle rushed to his side.
“I need a mediko right away!” Liam yelled. He felt his heart squeeze at the thought that he might be losing her. That was simply unacceptable.
“Are you hurt?” Kyle tried to pull him away from the body on the ground.
“No, my woman is shot!” He pushed Kyle’s grip off of his arm.
“Your what?” Kyle looked at him, confused.
“Get me a mediko now!”
Kyle hit his communicator. “This is Lieutenant Estro, send down shuttle for immediate pick up. Have the med kit ready and notify the Mediko team on the Eclipse that we have an injured party coming up.”
He got a response immediately. “Lieutenant Estro, your request is confirmed. A shuttle is en route, ETA one minute. The mediko team on board the Eclipse is on standby.”
Kyle turned back to his older brother. Liam was normally cool-headed when it came to military missions. He had never seen this look on his brother’s face before. It worried him.
“They’re sending a ship down with a med kit to stabilize her and a Mediko team is waiting for her on board the Eclipse,” Kyle reassured his brother. He moved to stand on the other side of the immobile form. It had something over its face. “Can it breathe?”
“Of course. It’s not an it but a woman, a human woman.” Liam gently removed her cloth mask and the hoodie she had over her head.
“Wow, she’s pretty. You found her underground? Are there more there like her? I need to go get me one.” Kyle’s attempt to lighten the mood fell flat. Liam was so focused on the fallen woman, he barely grunted in response. Kyle couldn’t figure out what was going on. Liam was missing for less than twenty-four hours and he came back attached to some stranger. What was up with that?
Kyle heard the shuttle landing. “They’re here.” He watched as his brother lifted the small human carefully up in his arms. She was a tiny thing, and too thin from what Kyle could see. How did someone so small survive five years underground? He supposed he would get answers soon enough.
He followed Liam as he carried the human to the shuttle. A gurney was hovering close by and Liam laid her down on it. One of their team members, a trained mediko, administered a stabilizing shot and something else to help stop the bleeding.
“Sir, the human will be stable until we can get to the Eclipse and have her examined by the main mediko team,” the Lieutenant said.
Liam nodded and stayed by the Maggie’s side as the gurney was guided back into the shuttle. Kyle noted that his brother refused to leave the woman’s side. Interesting. It was almost like they were asawanis or something. That couldn’t be it, though. They barely knew one another.
***
Liam held Maggie’s hand for the whole trip back to the Eclipse. He hated that she was unconscious, but it was probably for the best. She would probably be in pain if she were awake right then. She would also be angry with him for taking her back to his ship without her agreement.
He sighed. He would rather face her anger than know he had left her to die. He rubbed his fingers against her knuckles. Her skin was soft. Not as soft as the women he met at the domes, of course; Maggie’s hands were the hands of a worker. Someone who had to dig through rubble to find supplies in order to live. She was a fighter. He liked that about her. But at the same time, his protective instincts demanded that he care for her and make her life easier.
It took them less than an hour to reach the Eclipse. The docking bay doors were open and their shuttle settled in. The shuttle doors opened and the floating gurney began to move out of the small ship. Liam climbed out after it, intending to go with Maggie to Medik. A team of Medikos were checking Maggie’s vitals, under the direction of his brother Jared. Then he heard his father’s voice.
“Where is he? Is he okay?” His father’s worried eyes met Liam’s.
“I’m fine, Father,” Liam told him, standing as close to the gurney as he could get. The medikos were discussing what to do for Maggie. He wanted to hear what they said. He wasn’t prepared for his father to grasp his arms and pull him around to face him.
“What happened? Are you harmed?” His father looked him anxiously up and down, trying to find where he was hurt. “I need a Mediko over here now!” he barked.
“I’m fine.” Liam waved off his brother Jared.
“There’s blood all over you,” his father said, gesturing at his uniform.
“It’s not my blood. It’s Maggie’s.”
“Who is Maggie?” His father reluctantly released Liam.
“One of the survivors I found hiding in the subway system.” He pointed at the gurney and tried to follow as the mediko team moved the floating gurney out of the docking bay. His father stopped him.
“If you are unharmed, then I need you to come back for debriefing.”
Liam shook his head sharply. “I need to go with Maggie. She might be frightened when she wakes up.”
Jared came to stand next to them. “You and Kyle go do your debrief. I will stay with the human while she is recovering in Mediko. She will be unconscious for hours. I need to keep her sedated so I can do some full scans. I’ll let you know when she wakes up.”
“Maggie. Her name is Maggie.”
“Okay, I’ll let you know when Maggie wakes up. Does she have a last name? She may have family survivors in the domes.”
“I don’t know her last name.” Liam felt horrible. He should have asked her more about herself.
“It’s okay. I’ll be taking blood and DNA samples anyway. We have most of the human medical records downloaded, so I’ll run it through to see if I can find a match,” Jared reassured him before he headed to Mediko.
“Come, let’s get this debrief over with,” Liam said. His father ushered him in the opposite direction. He glanced once more in the direction they had taken Maggie. He needed to hurry up and get back to her as soon as possible.
***
Their father took him and Kyle to his office. Liam hesitated before he took a seat across from his father’s desk. Kyle sat next to him. His father looked at Liam with concern. “Are you sure you are okay?”
Liam shrugged.
“When we’re done here, I’ll have Jared run a scan. I just want to get this over with.”
“What happened to you? Why did you lose communication with the rest of your team?” His father went into commander mode.
“My scanner picked up a life form. I chased it down because it was moving away from me. I discovered it was a human woman. I removed my helmet to show her that there was nothing to fear from me. Another human, a man named Ben, knocked me out. My helmet was left under some debris. By the time I woke up, I was below ground in some kind of underground community. I was interrogated. My uniform top was taken from me. I believe the man named Ben was planning to try to trade me for weapons.”
“Who is the woman? Should we put her in a detaining cell?” his father asked.
“No! Of course not. Maggie is innocent. She overheard this Ben saying if they couldn’t find anyone who would trade for me, they would kill me. I believe her. She helped me escape. I owe her my life.” Liam shifted impatiently in his seat. He wanted to get to Maggie as soon as possible.
“This Maggie could be working with the man Ben. What if it is her plan to get brought up here to try to obtain weapons?” his father asked.
“I asked her to come back with me. She was hesitant. She didn’t fake that. She’ll probably be angry that I brought her here without her permission. Are we done yet?”
His father sighed with frustration. “Fine, but make sure Jared checks over you for injuries.”
Liam didn’t waste any time. He shot from his chair and left without looking back. He didn’t hear the conversation as he left.
“He is acting very strange,” their father said to Kyle.
“I agree. This human may have done something to him. He can’t seem to stand being separated from her. It’s not normal.” Kyle ran a hand through his thick hair.
“Keep an eye on the human. I don’t trust her.”
“Yes, sir.”
***
Liam entered Mediko and sighed with relief when he saw Maggie lying on a mediko bed. His brother was injecting her with something and checking her vitals. “How is she?”
Jared looked up at him. “She had a small degree of radiation sickness. I am injecting her with the fast-acting healing serum. She’ll need a shot of the serum every day, plus an injection of nutrients. But she should be one hundred percent recovered in a couple of weeks.”
Liam stood next to her bed and gently touched her cheek. “Good.” He noticed that Maggie’s clothes had been removed, her hair taken down from her braid, and her entire body cleansed. He swallowed at knowing she was bare under the blanket.
“When can I take her home?”
Jared stopped entering something in his computer to stare at Liam in surprise. “Home?”
“Yes, she is coming home with me. She is … mine.”
“She agrees to this? That is very fast.” Jared looked back and forth at the two of them.
“She hasn’t agreed yet. She doesn’t know my intentions. We were too busy escaping danger. But now that we are free and she is safe, I plan to make her my asawani.”
“That seems… sudden.”
“I don’t want to argue. Father wants you to scan me for any injuries. As soon as Maggie is able to be moved, I will take her home with me.”
Jared picked up his handheld scanner and waved it over Liam’s front and back. “You’re slightly dehydrated and need an oxygen treatment. Otherwise, you’re perfectly fine.” Jared gave him the injectable oxygen treatment, then turned his attention back to Maggie.
“I am running DNA checks on her. She could belong to someone else,” Jared said, trying to reason with him.
“She said she did not have an asawani for the past five years. She told me she is twenty-one, which means that she was only sixteen when the nuclear bombs went off. That would make her underage for a serious relationship. I felt a connection with her the moment I looked into her eyes. I can’t explain it. I just feel … complete with her. I want her. I need her.” Liam felt that was all he needed to say on the matter. Maggie was going to be his and that was the end of the conversation. He watched as his brother Jared’s eyes lingered on Maggie. “She is mine, Jared.”
“She still gets to choose, brother. She may wake up and fear you. She could take a liking to someone else.”
“She won’t.” Liam shook his head, refusing to believe that she would choose anyone else. The brothers were so busy glaring at one another, they almost didn’t hear the soft whisper.
“Liam.”
Both men turned to look at the bed. “She’s awake.”
Chapter 10
“Hey, little one.” Liam took her hand in his.
“What happened?” Her voice sounded really rough. She coughed a little. She accepted the sip of water that Liam gave her. She felt like she had been run over by a truck or something.
“The man named Ben shot at us. He actually shot you in the back. My brother Kyle and the rest of my team came and chased them off.”
“I was shot?” She looked down at her bare skin underneath the blanket. She blushed and pulled the sheet up higher.
“Yes. We brought you up to the Eclipse for treatment. You could have died.” His voice cracked a little.
“Hey. I’m tough. It’ll take more than a little bullet to keep me down.” Maggie wanted to reassure him. No one except Lily and Corey had shown real concern for her in years. She wasn’t used to this. She suddenly realized that there was another person in the room. A tall man, taller than Liam by half an inch. He wasn’t as bulky as Liam. He had the same dark eyes as Liam, though Liam’s eyes had beautiful gold specks.
“Hi, I’m Maggie.” She reached out to shake his hand careful not to let the sheet fall off.
“I am Mediko Jared Estro.” He shook her hand carefully, as if afraid he would break her.
“Estro?” Maggie let go of his hand and looked more closely at the two men. There was definitely a family resemblance.
“Jared is my older brother,” Liam explained, reclaiming her hand.
“Oh. Well it is very nice to meet you, Jared. You said you are a mediko. Is that like a doctor?”
“Yes.” Jared gave her a smile, which she returned. Both brothers sucked in a breath at the sight of her smile.
“I would like to move her now,” Liam said. He didn’t like the way Jared was looking at Maggie. She lit up the room with her pretty eyes and smile. He wanted to get her alone, away from other men.
Jared waved a black thing over her body. He sighed. “Very well. She is dehydrated and needs her treatments daily.”
“You can do that at our suite.” Liam was already tucking the blanket around Maggie, preparing to lift her into his arms.
“Wait, Liam. I’m naked. I need some clothes.” She blushed, wondering if Liam’s brother had been the one to remove her clothes. How embarrassing.
“I will make sure to wrap the sheet around you carefully. I am having clothes brought to you. Most of our Drastan women are taller, but we should find something you can wear.”
“I’m not that short,” she protested, pursing her lips.
Liam laughed. “Of course not. Come on, little one, let’s get you home.”
Maggie wrapped her arms around Liam’s neck as he lifted her up in his arms. She reached for the blanket making sure she was covered underneath. She looked back at Jared. “See you later, Jared. Thanks for helping me.”
“You’re welcome,” Jared responded with a smile.
Maggie looked at everything and everyone as they passed down the corridors. She asked Liam so many questions. She felt like she was a kid again, going on a road trip to somewhere new. She was probably driving Liam nuts, but he answered every question patiently.
“What’s that?” she asked about a strange orange canister.
“Garbage receptacle.”
“What kind of uniform is that? It’s different from yours,” she asked when two men in yellow uniforms passed them.
“They’re on the maintenanc
e crew. We differentiate rank and position by colors. Yellow uniforms are for maintenance crews, white uniforms are for medikos, black uniforms are for military, and so forth.”
“Oh, I see.” This made sense, in retrospect, since Jared had been wearing a white uniform, but she hadn’t thought to ask about it at the time.
“You’re a captain?” She fingered his symbol on his sleeve.
“Yes, that’s right. My younger brother Kyle is a lieutenant and my father is the commander of this ship.”
“So your brother Jared isn’t in the military?” she asked, leaning her head against him. She felt so tired.
“No, he followed our mother’s career path and became a mediko.”
“Is your mother on board?” She felt a flutter of nervousness at the possibility of meeting his mother.
“No, she died years ago, right after Kyle was born.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. My parents are dead, too,” Maggie said sadly. “I’m really tired.” She yawned.
“We’re home.” He opened the door to his family’s suite and entered.
“This doesn’t look like my home.” Maggie commented, looking around at the luxurious suite.
“You’ll stay here with me and my family until you are recovered.”
“Okay.” She was too tired to argue with him. She laid her head down on his shoulder again and closed her eyes. She only woke briefly when he laid her on something cool and soft. A bed.
“Don’t leave me,” she whispered.
“I won’t. Not ever,” he whispered against her lips.
Maggie felt his weight settle next to her on the bed. She turned towards him, wrapping herself up in his arms.
***
Maggie wasn’t sure if she had been sleeping for hours or days. Her body felt sluggish. But amazingly, she didn’t feel any pain at all. She reached underneath the blankets and touched her stomach, still bare, and then moved her hand further up to her chest, where she remembered the exit wound had been when they told her she had been shot. There was just a slight puckered spot. Confused, she threw the covers off of her and went to the mirror on the wall.