Almost as soon as she began to fall toward the dream state, Torin appeared.
So much joy flooded Claudia that her alarm went off again.
She sucked in a breath and held it until the alarm ceased, but she discovered it was all she could do to keep calm enough to prevent setting it off again.
“Why did you leave me, Tita?”
Claudia couldn’t disconnect the alarm, but she lowered the volume to a low buzz.
“I thought you sent me away,” she gasped, hopefulness and uncertainty warring within her.
He frowned. “Why would you think that, Tita? Did I not say that you and I were joined, soul to soul? Why would I deliberately split myself in half—when it would not benefit either of us? Only to send you into danger?”
Claudia wanted to believe that—so badly she had to question it. Why would he only come now if this wasn’t what he’d wanted?
He touched her face. “Pride. Arrogance. I allowed myself to believe something I was told that I should not have believed.
“But I could not let it go. I had to hear it from you to find acceptance.
“But perhaps it was for the best. Perhaps you will be safer. Vishnu seems bent on self-destruction. Your own world will not be as wild and dangerous.
“I will come for you, Tita, when it is safe. Only say the word and I will come!”
Claudia swallowed with an effort, struggling against the sadness that formed a hard lump in her throat. She’d been afraid, before, when she’d accepted that she would probably die, but now all she could think was that she wouldn’t get to discover what might have been. That he really did seem to care for her and she was never going to get the chance to explore the connection or develop a true relationship with him.
“We’re not going to make it,” she said bluntly and then swallowed with an effort. “I wish there had been more time for us ….”
Horror washed over his expression and then fury. “You left the safety of Vishnu without the certainty that you could reach your own people?”
“We believed it was our best chance at survival,” Claudia corrected him. “Katia helped to convince us we had to go or it would be too late. I thought you had sent her to send me away. I thought …. A lot of things. It doesn’t matter now.”
“It does matter,” Torin growled. “It matters to me!”
She studied his face, realizing abruptly that it mattered to her, too, far more than she had realized. She felt … connected to him, felt a bond of affection even though she wasn’t sure that it was true, something she could trust. It had been forged out of a need for survival—on both sides, she was sure. “I love you,” she said after a moment. “I don’t know if it’s a soul deep connection as you seem to believe, but I feel … an affinity for you that I don’t recall ever feeling for another human being.”
His eyes blazed with intense emotion.
Claudia felt the connection before she felt the pressure of his lips against hers.
A sense almost of euphoria gathered inside of her almost the instant they connected physically, as if she’d just plugged in to a 110 outlet. Energy poured into her.
Chapter Twelve
She was weak, Torin realized in dismay. If he hadn’t been so wrapped up in his own emotions he would have realized that at once.
He should have anyway. She was a part of him.
But then again, she was not his kind. Maybe that explained why he felt so drawn to her and yet confused about his feelings?
The attraction was most definitely there, and yet she wasn’t of his world, wasn’t like his people.
A short internal search told him he had little energy to spare. He’d used up too much in his search for her, but he couldn’t leave her without giving what he could to protect her.
He hadn’t counted on the magnitude of his desire for her when he had been separated from her for so long. The moment he forged the bond, began to push his energy into her, he lost himself in her.
It began to be almost a tug of war—the giving, the taking as he savored her essence and then returned the favor by bestowing his essence upon her.
So that he could mark her as his own.
Feed her the energy she needed to survive.
He chaffed that he could not be with her in the corporeal. He wanted to thrust inside of her as he had before, infuse her with his seed as a claiming, even though he knew it could not find a home in her womb and grow.
His hunger was such that he’d grown dangerously weak by the time he realized what he’d done.
He broke the connection with an effort of will. “I will get you home, Tita,” he said weakly, hoping that he would have the strength to do so, that he hadn’t given so much of himself that he would not be able to reclaim his body and rejuvenate.
* * * *
Claudia felt like weeping when she woke from her dream.
She’d tried hard to hang on to it, to hold it to herself until she drifted away—beyond recall.
She’d been so close.
At least, she’d thought so.
But when she woke she felt … like death had moved far beyond her grasp. She felt stronger, energized.
It didn’t actually make any sense that she did.
But there was no denying that she did, and she was too restless to stay put. “Reyes? Wilkes? Guys? Are y’all still with me?”
Unzipping her sleeping bag, she climbed out, drawn to check on Wilkes and Reyes when they didn’t respond.
To her horror, she discovered that their vital signs were so low they didn’t seem to be just sleeping anymore. They seemed to have dropped into a coma.
The impulse to rouse them, or at least try, was almost irresistible, but she was held back by the abrupt realization that they were probably better off than she was if she was right and they had slipped into a coma. They would be beyond knowing or caring by now, beyond suffering and fear.
Instead of trying, she moved away from them and settled at the console. “Houston, this is IP Expedition One, Lander One, Lt. Claudia Milner speaking. Oxygen levels have dropped to … oxygen levels are insufficient to sustain the crew. Commander Wilkes and Engineer Reyes have … well, I think they’ve both fallen into a coma. What is the Eta of the rescue craft?”
“We’re right on top of you, Lt. Milner!”
Claudia’s heart nearly leapt from her chest when the response was almost immediate and exactly what she wanted, needed, to hear. It wasn’t possible, she thought a little wildly. She must be hallucinating from carbon dioxide poisoning. How could they possibly have caught up with them after all the calculations had pointed to the irrefutable fact that her and her crew would be dead for days, possibly as much as week, before the two vessels rendezvoused? “Seriously?” she asked blankly.
The commander of the other vessel laughed. “Not exactly, but we have you in sight. You think you can wake up the rest of the crew? We’ll be docking in … looks like within the hour.”
“Oh my god! I didn’t think there was any way you guys could get to us in time!”
“We didn’t think so either. Well, we wouldn’t have been able to if you hadn’t managed to get up a bit more speed to close the gap and meet us sooner.”
Claudia’s heart executed a weird little double tap. She struggled with her thoughts for several moments. “Could you repeat that?”
His voice sounded strange, but he repeated his comments. “We understood that you had depleted your fuel supplies with the last course correction you made outside the Rogue’s influence.”
Claudia didn’t try to answer him. There was no way he’d believe what she thought had happened and she couldn’t come up with a reasonable lie at the moment.
She was going to have to think of something before they were debriefed!
It wasn’t until they arrived at Mars base that she realized they wouldn’t be going straight back to Earth.
That wasn’t a reprieve, however. It just meant she would have to handle the debriefing a lot sooner.
&nb
sp; She couldn’t be altogether sorry since it also meant that Reyes and Wilkes could get medical attention that much sooner, but she wasn’t prepared for the debriefing.
* * * *
Mars had changed quite a bit since Claudia had seen it on their outward bound voyage to the edge of the solar system—three years previously. There were upwards of two dozen new structures just at the bustling space port, where they set down, and these additions had a far more permanent look about them than the port had had before. The large transport that arrived to collect them as they left the ship and headed toward the base took them down an actual paved road and through newly planted forests that stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see on either side of the highway.
They reached and then passed through the tiny, colonial town of Clements, which looked as if it had burst at the seams since Claudia had seen it last. There were too many new structures for Claudia to count from her seat in the rover, but she could see that the bulk of them looked like temporary shelters—which suggested a large influx of new people too quickly for anything permanent to be built.
Or a large influx of temporary visitors that would be moving on and wouldn’t need a permanent place.
The town looked like a cross between a future world and pictures she’d seen of old mining towns back in the wild west of U.S. history.
She supposed that shouldn’t have come as a huge surprise given the fact that it was a mining town. But it did because it seemed like far too much growth in the space of three years, particularly given the ‘temporary’ look so many structures had to them.
Had there been some huge discovery—like a gold rush, she wondered?
Or was this evacuees from Earth because of the havoc the Rogue was wreaking?
Or was it some combination of the two? An economic boom and refugees?
The people she saw moving about the streets weren’t wearing the bulkier suits that had been required before for moving around and working outside.
Of course the placement of an artificial magnetic field in space almost two decades earlier had radically changed Mars in only a handful of years from frozen, airless desert wasteland into a land of promise. Without the solar winds to rip away the atmosphere and evaporate the water, the effects began to reverse almost immediately. River, lake, and oceans beds filled with water released from the soil and underground and no longer snatched away as quickly as it hit the surface. Atmospheric gases were released and began to accumulate and form an actual atmosphere.
The factories built by companies footing the bill for passage for a goodly portion of the colonists had created a greenhouse effect that was warming the planet and, at this point anyway, making it more livable. Particularly in conjunction with the mass plantings of GMO forests that were producing air. And they’d managed to produce their first plant crops outside the protective domes within the first decade of colonization.
The last she knew, though, the air pressure still wasn’t sufficient to allow anyone outside without a hab suit. Undoubtedly, they’d reached a new threshold in atmospheric pressure, though, that allowed for the lighter suits.
One day, in the not too distant future, they would have completely changed the surface of Mars—and for better or worse it would be an extension of Earth.
Maybe a more habitable extension.
The changes she’d seen extended to the base. There were upwards of two dozen new structures just on the base itself and the perimeter fencing had been expanded to engulf maybe fifty more acres. That seemed to suggest more buildings were planned, but it seemed odd to her to build such a large base.
Unless there was trouble brewing over resources already?
Or rather again.
The U.S. had gotten the jump on colonizing Mars, establishing a dozen strategically placed colonies in the first couple of years after they’d set up the artificial magnetic field. Of course most of the so called ‘colonies’ were either completely unmanned or robotically manned, but most of them were purchased/financed by the wealthy and guarded the richest resources.
Other countries scrambling to pull together resources to launch a Mars colony protested furiously, naturally enough, but there was little they could do about it beyond fighting everyone else over what was left and/or seeking citizenship in the U.S. colonies.
Suffice it to say, it had caused strained relations even with U.S. allies.
So she supposed it was possible that the U.S. had decided to fund a military buildup on Mars to prevent any serious challenge for the land and resources they’d grabbed.
Or maybe it was to prevent the colonists from assuming they’d outrun the heavy hand of the U.S. government?
Income taxes weren’t scheduled to be collected for another twenty years—because it was going to take that long for the settlers to pay off their debt to the companies that owned them for transportation to Mars—but she supposed the government didn’t want anyone to get the idea that they were actually free.
Despite the speculation, the noticeable tension of the guards at the gate made her uneasy.
That seemed to suggest that a threat had been assessed as imminent.
* * * *
Claudia, Wilkes, and Reyes were escorted directly to the medical center, processed and ensconced in private rooms for examination and treatment.
Basically quarantined.
Which was a polite way of saying imprisoned.
Claudia hadn’t really expected anything else. It was standard procedure for anyone returning from space, whether they’d actually touched down on a foreign object—moon or planet or asteroid—or not.
Life had been discovered beyond Earth almost the moment Mars was shielded from the sun’s radiation by the magnetic field—microbial at least—and that had led them to be even more careful of cross-contamination than before.
All the unpleasant stuff was upfront. They pulled more blood than she really thought she could spare for tests. They took samples of her skin, hair, nails, and body waste. They poked fingers and or cameras in every orifice for a ‘look-see’.
Finally, they stabbed her with an IV and began replacing lost fluids and nutrients—she was dehydrated and borderline malnourished.
And then they left her alone with nothing but her thoughts to chase the deadly boredom of hours and days in a hospital bed.
Her first query about her crewmembers was met with, “They’re being tested and treated.”
The following day she was informed that they were expected to fully recover, but it was also expected to take ‘time’ and they weren’t allowed visitors yet.
As happy as Claudia was at the news that Reyes and Wilkes were recovering—expected to make a full recovery—she chaffed that she wasn’t allowed to see them with her own eyes and verify the truth of what she’d been told. Her imagination wouldn’t let her rest without that confirmation. It supplied her with all sorts of horrible possibilities—mostly revolving around the medical staff having missed something critical.
She slept more of the first two days than she was awake. She thought there was the strong possibility that she was being sedated—because she shouldn’t be exhausted to that point when she’d done little else the last week and more in space before she’d been picked up. And she certainly hadn’t been too busy working to sleep on the trip from the rendezvous to Mars base.
She dreamed of Torin.
And this time she was certain she was dreaming and that made her feel like weeping.
She didn’t, of course. She sucked it up.
She couldn’t afford to allow the hospital staff to observe anything that might be interpreted as depression.
Particularly when they were already acting very strange around her.
It wasn’t anything she could really pin down and she tried her best to convince herself she was just being paranoid, but it was hard to explain away the fact that everyone avoided eye contact.
Oh they made a great pretense of being friendly and positive, but they always smiled
and spoke to a point in her near vicinity rather than directly to her.
She finally found out why when she was discharged from the medical center and presented herself at last for debriefing.
After staring at her in silence for what seemed an eternity, the officer in charge of her interrogation almost seemed to shrug.
“I don’t know of any delicate way to put this, Lt. Milner ….” He picked up a report in front of him and skimmed down the page. “You are five … no six weeks pregnant, Lieutenant. Would you care to explain how that happened when the entire crew was on birth control—including you. And, before you say anything at all, Lieutenant, in point of fact, the DNA tests reveal that the fetus does not belong to any of the other crewmembers. It belongs to an unknown male of a previously unknown race.”
Claudia couldn’t have been more stunned if he’d suddenly stood up and punched her right in the face. Talk about being completely blindsided! She’d been struggling to figure out whether she should even bring up the involvement with the aliens on the Rogue and, if so, how much to tell.
And that one, tiny little detail that had never even crossed her mind had blown the whole thing up in her face. “I’m sorry, what?”
Chapter Thirteen
Claudia was so exhausted from the hours and hours of interrogation over the course of the next week that she had no time to consider her condition on a personal level. It wasn’t, in fact, until her superiors asked her what her plan was concerning the fetus that it fully sank in that she was carrying a baby.
Torin’s baby.
She was damned if she could figure out how he’d by-passed her IUD!
They hadn’t found a sign of it and she sure as hell hadn’t lost it/passed it without noticing! Granted, they were very small, but they weren’t microscopic! She would’ve noticed something like that!
They were made to be broken down and absorbed by the body after a period of serving their purpose, but that was five years, minimum! She’d only had hers a little over three.
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