I supposed he was right. He kept talking. “Waverly Sander, we love you more than anything in this universe, and if you’ll have us, we’d like to make you our family. Our wife. The other half of our souls. We promise to love and protect you, to treat you with honor, to always think of your welfare, to listen to you, to treat you as our equals, and to always know that we have the greatest love in the world in your heart.”
Jackson nodded. “Look at you being poetic.”
I laughed. This was… happening. I’d woken up this morning with no idea this was going to take place. And here I was, getting married.
“I promise to do the same things for you, and I promise to protect your hearts, to know that in all of you I have the ultimate gifts. I will never take you for granted.”
Canyon kissed me first, followed by Rohan, Jackson and then finally Ari. Joy filled my heart so fully I thought it might explode. I had these guys, they had me, and they were my husbands.
Just then, Canyon jumped. “Jackson, the radar is about to come through with something?”
Jackson scrunched up his face. “For real?”
“Yes.”
Jackson ran to the screen to look down at it, scratching his head. “This far out in the hole there is nothing. Nothing can stay here, not really. It floats. Moves. Not for very long anyway. Like a current. Be weird to encounter anything at all, considering the gravity problem.”
He stared at the screen and as we all watched him, waiting for him to tell us what was happening, Rohan linked our fingers together. We were married. The thought kept banging around in my mind.
“What’s my last name?” I asked Ari as he stood to my left. “I mean, I guess I don’t change it. Melissa is still Melissa Alexander. Paloma became a Sandler but that was about politics. Diana still has her last name.”
Ari touched my cheek with the back of his knuckles, smoothing gently. “Baby, I love that you have Sandler as your last name. You’re taking it back from him.”
“Ari, okay. But if we do have our ten kids,” I’d made up that number one night and now it looked like it had become a thing, “I don’t want them to have it.”
Canyon looked at Rohan. “We’re going to have to choose last names.”
“I was just thinking that. Jackson?” Rohan didn’t take his eyes off Jackson. “What’s happening?”
My tattooed covered husband raised his eyes. “There is a fleet of ships ahead of us. Stationary. Floating. They have… weights on them, like an anchor at sea.”
“A fleet?” I rushed forward to look down. “What fleet?”
I knew the answer to my own question so I wasn’t surprised when Ro answered. “Evander.”
“Are there life signs?” Ari strode over next to me. “Or just empty ships?”
“There are life signs.” Jackson answered. “Hundreds and hundreds of them.”
“If that’s true then why aren’t we under attack? Or being signaled? Or something?” None of this made any sense to me.
Canyon knew without ever looking at the monitor. “It’s Super Soldiers.”
Rohan nodded. “In stasis. They’re bringing over the force. They’re in stasis. Ready to wake up on command and come through the black hole. Ready to take the side of the galaxy we call home for Evander Corporation. This has always been the fear. Evander hasn’t had the manpower. But now they will. They just need to wake it up.”
I loved my Super Soldiers, but the way Rohan paled as he spoke told me all I needed to know. This was the end. With that force of ready to go killers, no one stood a chance.
8 My Wedding Night
We floated into the stream of anchored war ships like we’d suddenly accidently stepped into a haunted graveyard. As a child with no friends, I’d spent a lot of time in my own head, imagining all kinds of paranormal things. The settlers on Sandler One had reported hearing voices through the woods and mountains at night, a constant whispering. Some people claimed to have seen spirits. There were strange deaths reported.
All of that had scared me when I lay in my bed alone, wondering if the servants had disappeared in the middle of the darkness, leaving me alone in my scary house. I’d eventually gotten over that, realizing that my father was the scariest thing in my world. But, as I stood there, staring out the galley window, the room dark because I hadn’t turned on any lights, watching the low light from the ships that floated around us, I couldn’t help but remember exactly what it felt like to be hidden in my room at night.
They looked like ghost ships. On them, hundreds upon hundreds of soldiers who had been bred to kill waited to be woken up. I had married two men who shared a lot with them. The difference? Canyon had encountered Sterling and learned there was the possibility of another life for Super Soldiers, that the fact that it bothered him to participate in missions that killed children was not something to be ashamed of. To be fair, he’d been on his way to break out of Evander when he’d run into Sterling. That was a big difference unto itself.
He’d known in his gut the person who wanted to go with him was Rohan. Together, they’d done the impossible.
The men on those ships had no such luck. If they had doubts about the world, I didn’t know if they’d expressed them or not. They were asleep in what Rohan called extended nothingness. They would wake up, fight, kill, destroy. Some of them would die. Some would live to do it another day.
My husbands had been experts in execution and war. Canyon a sniper, Rohan a troop leader. On those ships, the passengers were those things and more. What had my husbands said? Bombs. Torture. Pillage. Destruction. Evander sent them to take what the board of trustees at Evander wanted, by whatever means necessary.
I’d had to leave the room where my husbands plotted. I should be reveling in getting to think the word husband, yet my mind couldn’t be further away. Jackson piloted the ship, as best anyone could pilot in a black hole. It was possible we would bang into one of them like boats during a storm. There was only so much we could do.
If we did, the emergency systems would wake up the ship and they’d blow us to smithereens. That wasn’t comforting. Still, if anyone could make this work, it was Jackson. Canyon and Rohan talked about destroying as many as we could before heading for the exit of the black hole and hoping we got away before the other ships’ emergency systems alerted them. Ari was helping them plot.
I wasn’t a little girl. I was a Sandler. I had my bloodthirsty side. I never minded when people who harmed those I love got what was coming to them. But I didn’t want to pull triggers. There had been too much blood already.
And those people on those ships were victims as my husbands had been. Bred in a lab, given no choices, abused, neglected, unwanted and made to believe their sole purpose in life was to serve the needs of a corporation. The settlers on Sandler One heard voices. Canyon could hear machines. Ari saw hallucinations. Jackson marked up his body with what ifs. Rohan saw things in the shadows when he was coming back from time travel. Well, maybe I wasn’t so very different than all of them because I could hear and see things, too.
I could hear the souls of those Super Soldiers crying out to me that they’d never been given a choice, that they’d never known there was one. What were our choices? Kill them while they slept or leave them as we fled back to our space, our time? What then? Would they follow in our wake and destroy everything I loved?
I saw impossibilities and heard sounds that weren’t there. For once, I was going to pay attention and stop living in the certain. I had married four amazing men. Sometimes the tides turned in my direction.
I ran from the room, plowing into the bridge like my life depended on it. Rohan turned to stare at me. “You okay?”
He must have really been focused if he’d not heard me coming. “We have to tell them.”
Canyon shook his head. “Tell them what?”
“Tell them they have a choice. Tell them what you figured out, that there is life somewhere else. Tell them they can choose not to fulfill their missions and that there
are people on that side of the black hole who will help them.”
Ari nodded. “I wish. I get where you’re coming from, sweetheart. But if we go over there and wake them up, they’re going to kill us—or torture us before they kill us. Either way, they’re not listening, and we’re dead.”
Yes, he was being pragmatic. But I was going to go with the idea that this was possible. “So we don’t wake them up.”
“Then how do you propose we tell them?” Ari tapped the table in front of him with his forefinger.
I pointed at Canyon. “A message they see when they open their eyes. That just plays through the ship. The second they are remotely brought back to consciousness by whatever means Evander uses to do such a thing. We have a message. We tell them. Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe they’ll think it’s crazy or stupid. But there is the chance, isn’t there, that some of them have had the same thoughts you and Rohan had. The ones that led you to escape, to do what was never done, which was to get out of there.” My adrenaline was up. I could feel it, and I bounced from one foot to the other. “A few of them have thought it. They hear it, they get off the ship or they don’t perform their duty or damn it, they talk about it. Now it spreads. The doubt. It’s like,” I whirled around, pointing at Ari, “an infection. One cell infecting the next and bam soon there are enough of them going ‘Hey, I never asked for this crap. I don’t want to live my life as a slave to a corporation just because they decided to genetically modify humanity and grow the perfect soldier in a lab.’ ”
I was really on a roll, and I couldn’t stop. “That’s how we defeat them.”
I waited. Any second, one of them was going to dismiss me and I would deflate, but right then it felt so incredibly right to me.
Rohan lifted his eyebrows. “It’s a really good idea.”
“And doable.” Jackson didn’t look up from where he steered. “It would mean getting into the two lead ships. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the way I’m reading these schematics, the other fifteen ships are being controlled by two in the front. At least that’s how the messages are sent. They start with ship A and B and move from there. It would mean uploading the message into those two ships. I don’t know how we do that from here without triggering their wake up alarms.”
Ari rose. “Could we do it from the ship itself? Like in all seriousness, would it be easier to board the ship than try to mess with it from outside?”
This was happening. They had listened and now we were plotting.
“Conversely,” Canyon sighed. “If we’re going to go on the ship, we could implant messages that tell the ships to self-destruct.”
I stared at him. I understood why he’d said that, but I didn’t want to contemplate it. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was completely off base and I knew I was saying this over and over. But hadn’t there been enough blood?
“They were once your people, right?” I scrunched up my face. “Your family?”
Canyon took my hand, squeezing my fingers. “The only family I’ve ever had are in this room right now, and I would run for the rest of my life to keep you all safe. I’d destroy every single person I ever knew. I’m not saying we have to do that, but I wouldn’t hesitate if I had to. And neither would the three of them. I’m just the only one who said it.”
I kissed his knuckles. “I would support you in whatever you had to do to keep us safe, if it was the only option. I don’t think it is. Are you telling me there is no chance that some of them are having your doubts?”
“I think for sure some of them are.” He nodded. “But not all of them. How many of them does it take to kill everyone?”
He was right. “I’m just being foolish.”
“No,” he shook his head. “You’re not. It is worth a try. These men are asleep. They haven’t done anything yet. I don’t like thinking about how you’ll look at me if I do this. We’ll try it your way then we’ll book it like hell to the exit of the hole. We’ll tell people in charge of the war. Let them decide what to do with them. Diana. Melissa. Someone else.”
I rubbed my eyes before I grasped onto my knees. “What if I’m wrong? What if we miss the chance to end this right now?”
Canyon ran a hand through his hair. “At the very least, we tried.”
“I like Wavey’s plan,” Rohan added. “And I’d never let you blow them up, so don’t get the idea, Waverly, that it was really on the table. We go back to destroying unconscious men and we might as well join Evander again. No, we do your plan because why not.”
Ari sighed. “Of course we have to get on the ships.”
Jackson nodded. “That you can do. I say you, because it’s going to take all four of you, unless one of you wants to hold this ship steady in the black hole winds.”
Rohan shook his head at Jackson. “The three of us.”
My tattooed husband didn’t agree. “No, the four of you. The way this works is that one of you keeps the computers busy—that could be Canyon and Rohan—and the other two implant the recorded message. That will mean Ari and Waverly are coming. Actually, teams of two would be best. That’s how I’d plan this. And yeah, I said that. Our wife is going to have to take a trip over there if we’re doing this. I don’t, realistically, think anyone else is holding Artemis steady. I barely am.”
I nodded. “I can do whatever I have to do. I always have.”
“Then first things first,” Ari tugged on an edge of my hair. “You need to make a recording and make it good for those guys to listen to when they wake up. Listen, right? Not video?”
“Much simpler to get an audio through,” Jackson agreed. “They’ll never routinely check for that.”
Rohan grabbed my arm. “Come on. Let’s go record.”
He sat me in front of a machine. This was all happening so fast. I’d suggested this and now we were just going to do it?
Rohan hit some buttons on his tablet. I still didn’t have one of those. “Tell me when you’re ready.”
Really? I hadn’t thought of what to say at all. “Okay.”
He nodded at me. “Go.”
“Hi.” I hoped I didn’t sound truly ridiculous. “My name is Waverly.” I dropped the last name. I didn’t need to get everyone’s back up using Sandler. They had to have a glimmer of an idea about whom they were going to fight, or at least they would know soon. Better to just leave it off.
I continued. “I realize this is odd. Not what you were expecting. But I had to speak to you today. You see, I know you’re here, at the behest of Evander Corporation and you’re ready to come through the black hole and attack because they said to. I know you are the best-trained, strongest soldiers there ever were. I know these things because I am married to two of you. Yes, that’s right. I don’t know exactly what time stream you’re from.”
I took a deep breath. Time travel, even having done it, made my head hurt. “But maybe you know their names. They’re Canyon and Rohan. I don’t know if anyone said anything to you about what happened to them, but they live on the other side of the galaxy now, with me. They’re my husbands. Two of them.” I lifted my gaze from where I stared at the wall to look at Rohan. His love shined through his eyes straight at me. The look made me bolder, more sure of myself. “I tell you this because I want you to know that there is a possibility of life beyond what you’ve been told. Maybe you’re happy, maybe you aren’t. Maybe you’ve had doubts, maybe you haven’t.”
I took another steadying breath. This was hard. I had to get it exactly right. “They aren’t the only Super Soldiers I know.” I was exaggerating. I knew one other but that was fine. “I say this to you not because I can guarantee you’re going to have a wife. There is still the same shortage of women there ever was. Things are as miserably hard as they ever were. But there is a life to be had beyond a corporation who hurts you because they can. You are people. It is fine to think of yourself that way. And I want you to know that. If we see you on the other side of a battlefield then I still wish you well. You’re human beings. Don’t let anyone ever treat
you as other.”
I nodded at Ro, and he turned off the recording. His mouth was on me, fast. His lips were cool but his skin warm. He was Rohan. He was mine.
“I love you, Wavey. You make me feel human. If any of them could have half the happiness I have with you they’d be lucky.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Let’s go deliver this message.”
He nodded once. “Yes. Jackson has all the answers. Let’s let him tell us how.”
As it turned out, it was complicated. Jackson held Artemis as still as he could make it—a feat unto itself. Jackson was actually breaking a sweat keeping the controls steady. And us using two small shuttles that looked like they might be a hundred years old to reach the Super Soldiers’ ships. I sat next to Canyon on one shuttle while Ari and Ro traveled on another. Artemis’ armor pushed us away, as it had been designed to do, and all we had to do was float toward our particular ship.
Something obvious hadn’t occurred to me earlier, and I turned to Canyon. We sat close, our legs touching and his hand on my knee. “Could you just talk to their computers?”
“I don’t want to alert the computer that I’m there. I’m somewhat concerned that the computer may just be set to immediately wake the entire fleet in the event it senses an intruder. The little I’m going to mess with it will be the most I want to touch it at all. I’m not enough tuned into the tech since the operation.”
I nodded. That made sense in as much as I could understand it at all to begin with. “I don’t want you pushing too hard on your end either. I don’t want you going down whatever rabbit hole you did to get into that situation to begin with. If that is possible. I mean, how can you hear the machines at all anymore?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’m not risking losing the ability to see you or speak to you. I can still touch your light. I won’t lose anything. I have… plans.”
“Which would be what?”
Canyon leaned over to kiss my cheek. “I want to see you holding a baby in the sunlight on a clear day when it’s not too warm, not too cold. I want to stand there and see that.”
Light Unfolding_A Reverse Harem Science Fiction Romance Page 9