“Wavey,” Rohan called via my communicator. Jackson had finally gotten me one.
I picked up my wrist to answer him. “Yes?”
“We’re going to hit the edge of the black hole. Do you want to come up here and watch with us?”
“I’ll be right there.” Goosebumps broke out on my arms, and I rubbed them away. What was the problem? This was what we wanted, what we needed. This was going home.
I made it to the comm room in time to see the edge of the hole. I’d never traveled through the black hole before this journey, and I’d hardly been alert when we’d gone through it on the other end. Now I could see the edge through the view screen. It just looked like a wrinkle in space. The lines didn’t quite meet.
I stood shoulder to shoulder with Ari. Rohan piloted and Jackson leaned back in a chair, watching the screen near him. Canyon was quiet in the corner of the room.
Ari grinned down at me. “You did it. You survived.”
“Thanks to you guys.”
He rubbed my back. “Thanks to you for the ten months.”
“What do we think is on the other side? And for that matter, can you imagine what it took for the first humans who did this? To board ships and just go? Landing on the other side of the galaxy with no idea if there would even be planets there to land on.”
Canyon strode over to me. “My understanding of Earth history is that they were fleeing nuclear destruction. Some of those same people landed in Sandler territory. Some went to the Dark Planets. Some made Mars a colony and eventually the station. The Farm was left pretty untouched, probably because the tech didn’t work well enough at the time to see through the unwelcoming atmosphere to the beauty below.”
“You didn’t tell me what you think is through that entrance right now, Canyon. Was that distraction?”
He shrugged. “Maybe nothing. Maybe it’s a quiet day out there. Maybe it’s just routine traffic making its way through the galaxy, avoiding the powers that want to control things, or maybe it’s Armageddon.”
Canyon winked at me.
“You’re winking?”
The ship shook, and I gripped the side of the chair. The next second we rushed back to the side of the galaxy where Ari and I had been born. The others had all made this trip before in some fashion. I let out a breath. It was good to be back.
But my ease didn’t last very long.
“Timeline?” Canyon asked Jackson whose head was down, staring at the readings.
He nodded before he answered. “Well done, Canyon. One month. Can’t ask for better than that.”
Canyon patted the wall. “Well done Artemis.” He winked at me again.
“Do I need to be worried you’re speaking to the ship again?” I turned toward him.
He had recently shaved his head and with the earrings in both lobes of his ears was looking rather pirate-ish again. Now that he could see himself, it must be a look he preferred. He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Nope.”
“Incoming.” Ro spoke so calmly I could hardly believe it. Incoming what?
Canyon marched over and sat next to Jackson while Ari’s jaw line hardened. The latter spoke. “Which side?”
Oh, they must mean ships. I needed to get with the program of what they weren’t saying aloud.
“Both. Evander and Sandler both present.” The ship tilted left, and I held onto the chair harder until Ari took my arm and led me to a chair of my own. I buckled in.
“Battle?” I needed to know what I looked at. From the inside of Artemis, everything was still quiet. How could the few ships I saw outside there be engaged in a fight? Maybe that was how things always seemed from a distance.
Jackson nodded. “Yes, we’ve come out in the middle of a showdown. Sandler side seems to be losing. That’s not surprising. They were pretty much decimated when we left a month ago in their timeline here. Not sure what we’re looking at now. I’m sending a coded message to The Farm.”
I listened, but my eyes were drawn to the scene in front of me again. The silent battle. I knew some of those ships. I’d been dragged from one to the other until my father discarded me for betrayal and sent me to a wife auction to be sold off to the Dark Planets.
They had been beautiful vessels, albeit the definition of personal hell for me. Now they were wrecked. I walked toward the screen to get a better look. Flames were evident inside the windows and black smoke bellowed out and disappeared into the void of space. There were cracks in the side.
The Great Sandler Empire, Waverly. You aren’t fit to be a part of it. You are an embarrassment to me. Your brothers and I will rule, and you’ll watch from the side, you ugly woman. The thing your mother hoisted on me.
His voice. It was never hard to hear blasting through my mind. This was his dream, his legacy, his reflection of self, dying in front of me, and I couldn’t bring myself to care one bit about it.
“There are maydays coming in everywhere.” Ari stared down at his tablet. “People are hurt. They need medical care.”
Jackson shook his head. “We’re not running into the middle of a battle. We’re getting out of here. They’re our enemy.”
Ari leaned forward, the power of his gaze directed straight at Jackson. “We left ships full of our enemies behind us in the hole. We left them a message that things can get better. We boarded their ships to do that. In front of us are people who need help. Are they less worthy because they’re awake?”
“They’re less worthy because they could blow us out of the sky.”
We were moving farther and farther from the scene. I dropped my gaze.
“They are crying out for medical help. I don’t think they have the capability to do anything to us. We are supposed to ethically answer these kinds of calls. I’m a doctor. That’s what I do.”
Canyon shook his head. “I’ve never seen it, ever. Not during battle. You don’t go help the enemy.”
Ari jumped up. “Well, maybe we should anyway.”
I watched the exchange. Ari always battled between what he had to do and what he wanted to do. It couldn’t have been easy to live in a world where he was denied his chosen interest—psychiatry—while he battled his own hallucinations, and barely got to practice medicine that wasn’t in some way war related.
Ari was a gentle soul.
“Should we pause a distance away, wait for them to finish fighting, and go offer assistance at that point?”
Ari rounded on me. “They might be dead by then, baby.” His response was certainly loud, but it didn’t make me feel threatened. By contrast, it made me worry about him.
“Don’t yell at her,” Jackson hollered back at him. “Don’t you ever yell at her.”
I raised my hand. “I’m fine. I don’t wilt if I get yelled at. I don’t suddenly melt into a puddle on the floor. All of our nerves are up.”
Ari ran a hand through his hair. His voice was lower. “Is anyone listening to me at all? People are dying.”
“People are always dying, sometimes planets full.” I didn’t know why I said that. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help. Overwhelmed was an understatement.
Ari’s face fell. “I know. Orion was a…”
He never got to finish what he was going to say. Even though we’d moved away from the battle, Rohan called out. “Incoming.”
I almost asked incoming what? But a second before the ship jolted with a force I’d never felt before, Canyon grabbed me, knocking us both to the floor, his body blocking mine. We’d been hit. Someone had…
I came to with my ears ringing, knowing I wasn’t in a med machine. I actually recognized my surroundings quite well. The prisoner holding cells on my father’s ships were all the same. They were identical. At one point my brother Tommy had designed every vessel in the fleet, and these rooms were always the same. Paloma had been held in one.
They were plastic containers lined up next to each other. The person couldn’t stand up inside but sitting and lying was fine. There was a toilet and a bed. If I wanted to move,
I had to crawl.
I sighed. How had this happened? I didn’t even know. We’d been hit, the beginning of that experience resonated with me. Canyon had jumped on top of me but then what? I held my pounding head. Where were the guys? How was I here? What ship was I on?
Where were my husbands? I stared down at my ring. It was there and intact. That was good news. Otherwise I might think I’d made up the last two years and I was still on my father’s flagship, waiting to be transported to my bride auction.
Okay. I had to think past the headache, which was easier said than done. Something had happened. I wasn’t dead and that might be because Canyon had blocked me with his body. Was he dead then? I teared up at the thought. No, he was hard to kill. He was made to be pretty indestructible. That didn’t mean it wasn’t possible, but I had to hold out hope.
Ari had been a distance away. Jackson and Rohan on the other side of the room. If I was alive, they were too, and if they were, they’d never stop looking for me. End of story.
I was going to hold onto that. They’d crossed the galaxy to get to me. This would be… easier. And in the meantime, I was going to figure out how to rescue myself so I could rescue them. Wherever they were. I’d figure that out, too.
I was alone in my prison cell, no other souls visible. So when the door banged open at the end of the hall, whoever had arrived was no doubt here to see me. I’d been on enough of my father’s ships to know they were all pretty much designed the same. All of them were modelled after Tommy’s designs.
A beat up young man, with half his face red from a burn scar, regarded me when he got to my cell. “Your father wants to see you.” He wheezed when he spoke.
I stared up him from where I sat on the ground. “You don’t look so well.”
“Get up.” He opened the door. “And he says if you give me any trouble I can beat you.”
“I’m sure you could. But real men don’t do that to women. So maybe keep your hands to yourself and we’ll see if there is any hope for you yet.”
10 Garrison Sandler
The ship was wrecked. I’d not been wrong when I watched the battle. My father’s fleet was decimated. Men groaned in corners, dying, and the vessel itself made a noise that made me wonder if it was about to split in half. I swallowed my fear. Whatever happened, I had to believe I could make it through it. I was still here, still alive, and I was getting back to my guys, wherever they were.
The clearly dying young man who escorted me to my father didn’t beat me. He never even suggested it again. I doubted he would have had the energy, but I liked to think that my scolding him might have made a difference.
Every step I took closer to my father amped the anxiety inside of me until my hands shook. We rounded the corner, and when I thought we would go on to the office floor, we stopped instead in the Shuttle Bay. Why were we going there?
My father stood alone in the center of the room, his back to us. He stared out the bay window into space. He turned when we got closer.
“Ted,” he told the man who stood with me. “Step away from my daughter.”
I was surprised he acknowledged our relationship. Frequently, he didn’t. As a young girl I would have killed for him to say that. To take me out in public. It wasn’t until he dragged me to work for him on his ships that I’d even seen him off the estate.
Ted did as he’d been told. Everyone around my father always did. I sighed. I wasn’t afraid. Now that I stood here with him, fear didn’t even factor in how I felt. I was more… disappointed to be back here again. My anxiety drained from my spine. There was no doubt he was powerful but…
He grabbed his laser controlled gun from his holster where he always kept it, raised it, and shot Ted—who fell to the floor, a big gaping hole in his chest. I ran for Ted, instinct to help beating back every other thing happening right then. My father hurled his arm forward, stopping me mid drop.
“He’s dead. It’s a kill shot. Aren’t you a nurse? Shouldn’t you know that?” He dragged me with him even as I pulled back. I didn’t know where he thought I was going, but it wasn’t with him anywhere.
I tugged backward, but he was stronger. Older than I’d ever seen him look but still with three inches on me and plenty of muscle, eventually he won. Kicking and screaming, he put me on a small shuttle.
He rolled his eyes. “I am saving you.”
“From what?” I waited for him to answer me, but instead he fiddled with a switch and launched us into space. I ran to the window. We hadn’t gone far from where I’d been when I somehow ended up on a Sandler ship. I could even see Artemis. She looked quiet in the sky, but she was moving, not floating like she was dead. She even fired at another ship.
Someone was alive on Artemis. That was such a relief I almost cried. But I didn’t let myself. Not with my father here.
I was getting off this shuttle.
“Imagine my surprise, Waverly,” he always said my name like it tasted bad in his mouth, “when the boarding party meant to scour the ridiculous looking vessel that came through the black hole realized they had stumbled upon my daughter. The timing was fortuitous.”
I put my hands on my lips. “What happened to the men on the ship?”
“Oh some sort of battle. No matter. We got you in the scuffle. And—” He pushed a button. The ship we’d just left blew up. I cried out, watching the orange explosion start and stop in the vacuum of space, leaving only destruction in its wake. I hadn’t seen that many people aboard, but who knew how many there were and the few there were didn’t deserve that.
I cried out because there was so much cruelty in the world, because planets were nuked decades ago in this timeline, because those people didn’t feel like an old timeline to me, because my father blew up his ship and so many others…
Because. Because. Because.
“I should have just let you blow up, but I never could get over feeling sorry for you. Besides, you’ll be excellent assistance where we’re going.”
I tried to swallow. My brain didn’t want to function. “Where are we going?”
“We are going to regroup. I’ve done it once, I can do it again. We’ll come back stronger. I could never imagine a man wanting you, but someone will somewhere, and they’ll pay me. We’ll go from there.”
Oh no. Bile rose in my throat. “I’m married.”
He scowled. “Those men you sold yourself too are either dead already or about to be. Besides, I didn’t give permission. No Sandler woman gets married without my permission, and I didn’t give it. Here, I’ll speed up the process.”
He lifted his fingers. Was he going to start to fire at Artemis while they were already fighting? And presumably there were people on board they fought, too. No, I couldn’t allow this to happen. One time I’d been a coward but no more.
He was not going to hurt my husbands. I launched myself at him, and we both went down. He’d proven himself stronger than me before but that was just when I had myself to worry about. I fought him hard, rolling on the floor. Rohan had taught me to throw a punch, I used the skill now. I got one good hit at his face before he blocked me, rolling me over to throw a punch at my face.
“You stupid girl. You don’t deserve me.”
I spit at him. “I deserved so much better than you. Tommy, Keith, Quinn and Clay did, too. The universe deserved better than you. You’re nothing but a small man inside, trying to make yourself feel better by destroying lives.”
He foamed at the mouth. I had the brief impression of a rabid dog. “I’m through with you, ungrateful whore.”
He jumped up, grabbing his gun from his holster. I’d seen this move before. He’d just killed Tad like this. I launched myself at him, and we both went down, struggling for the gun. I took an elbow in the gut, and it knocked the wind from my body, but I managed to knee him in the groin.
It was too late. He’d gotten his gun and just at the moment of impact on his cock he shot me. It hit me straight in the gut. I looked down, shock settling over me. I’d been shot
in the stomach. I wasn’t dead. It would take a while for it to kill me. I… I forced my medical brain to shut off. I wasn’t dead until I was officially dead.
He could still hurt my guys.
I didn’t feel any pain. That would come for sure. But the result of my kicking him in his nether parts, he’d bent over, dropping the gun. I breathed through my nose and reached for the weapon he’d just used on me.
Point and click.
I’d never had my lesson, but my issue with the gun was over. I fired. The noise vibrated off the walls of the shuttle. It must have done that when he shot me, but I didn’t notice. I’d hit him square in the forehead. He blinked rapidly, a hole appearing in the center of his head. Disbelief warred with horror for a split second before he toppled over like a marionette that had lost his strings.
He hit the ground with a thud. I stared at him, open-mouthed, before I started screaming. I couldn’t stop. I screamed and screamed, my hand going to my gut wound the only thing that stopped me. It was funny. I could feel the beginning of the pain now and that was what made me quit yelling.
Okay, I’d killed my father. A lot of people would be glad. I would have to cope with this, but to do so meant I had to live. I scooted on my rear end, every movement hurting worse than the one before it. There was a med machine on this shuttle. They all had one. I managed to get over to it. That was when I saw it.
Half the machine was hanging off. Wires were pulled. Something or someone had damaged this machine. There was no way it was going to work. I cried out again. This was bad news. Awful.
If I didn’t have a med machine I was dead.
That was all there was to it.
I had to think. I couldn’t give up. I wouldn’t. The guys were in Artemis. They would come for me. I just had to reach them, but I couldn’t fathom moving again. I couldn’t bear the thought. The blood soaked everything and there was a projectile lodged inside of me. Intellectually, I could picture it. I’d seen this many times, but I wasn’t going to look. Somehow, looking at myself was worse.
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