by Jay Shaw
“Uh huh, c’mon, spill.”
Ange lifted her chin, brown eyes reaching across the space between them, as she whispered. “Oh my God! His hands! The things he can do with…and his mouth…and he smells so damn good!”
Julia felt her face heat and shifted positions, swapping her legs around so that her right foot was tucked behind her left knee; fingernails scoring tiny crescents into the butter-soft leather of the chair. Ange’s confession reminded her of how Mark’s scent had enticed her into his arms, and amped up her need for him. The heat in his kiss as he’d explored the inside of her mouth and the feel of his hands on her body. She cleared her dry throat and attempted to tug the soft fabric of her tee away from the tight buds of her nipples without drawing attention to the action. “Ah, yeah, I can relate.”
“Somehow, I thought you might.” Ange pressed the back of her hand to one cheek then the other, while tugging at the neck of her uniform shirt.
Julia pushed herself up from the chair and moved to the bed with the thought of unpacking, when the sheen from two silver picture frames caught the corner of her eye. The smaller one held a snapshot taken on the island; Mark with Julia wrapped in his arms.
Anora must have taken it in the moment when they’d thought they were saying goodbye. She had captured Julia with her head nestled into Mark’s collarbone. Her eyes closed and Mark resting his cheek atop her hair. His arms enveloping her to him, far away gaze fixed on the horizon. A moment captured for all eternity in the space between one breath and the next; one she remembered with absolute clarity. The next thing Mark’d said was that he had to go back, and her reaction wouldn’t have made a good photo at all.
The larger frame held an image taken by someone in the bride’s side of the aisle, because they had captured Mark’s expression just as she had reached him and taken his arm. It was beautiful, and exactly the kind of shot, Julia would have taken herself. She loved to watch the groom in that moment when everyone else was watching the bride walk down to meet him.
“Yoohoo?” Julia came back from her memories to Ange waving a hand in front of her face. “Where did you go?”
“Oh, you know, about nine days ago.”
“They’re great, aren’t they? Colonel Holden suits the castaway look.” Ange chuckled to herself. “Anora got them printed while you were away.”
“I’ll be sure to thank her later.”
“Now.” Ange changed subjects like a magpie chasing shiny things and started pulling clothes from Julia’s luggage. “I love this, and this, and this.”
“That’s lucky, since they’re for you.” Julia laughed; relieved to move onto the more serious subject of clothes. “But these, are for me.”
Sometime later, Mark and Hayden strolled through the opening doors and caught the last of Julia and Ange’s laughter.
“You’re gonna need more drawers.”
“Some of this is Ange’s”
“Three tops.” Ange scoffed and tossed a long sash of ethic print her friend, only to duck as it was tossed back again to land atop the impressive pile of recent purchases dominating the bed. “Don’t blame me for the exhausted state of your husband’s credit chip.”
“No, it’s all about haggling.” Julia explained, missing the joke in her eagerness to share her experience. “And once you settle on an acceptable price, you pay with these little wooden squares. No doubt they made on the deal since I can’t read the symbols and there’s no logical exchange rate to speak of. We would’ve spent longer but I wanted to see the liquid bronze ocean Mark’d been teasing me about, but then an Arcadian grabb-”
Mark tugged the hand Julia had unwittingly clasped over her throat. The abrasions had healed away to nothing two days into the ocean part of their vacation. Whether it was the powers of the ointment Mark had kept applying, or the gleaming water, Julia wasn’t sure. She was just grateful they hadn’t scarred. Mark entwined their fingers and wrapped both their arms around her waist, before smacking a loud kiss to her cheek. It was an effective distraction for Julia, but it didn’t prevent a confused glance passing between their friends.
“Heard the news?”
“Yep.”
“Should make life interesting.”
“If there’s one thing this galaxy doesn’t need, is for things to get more interesting.”
Julia tensed with unwanted memories, too new to quash completely, and twisted to reach for a kiss. Caught up in each other, it was a while before either of them became aware of the heated atmosphere and turned curious eyes on their friends. Hayden and Ange were more than five feet apart and yet the look passing between them coursed with a heat and a longing so powerful, Julia felt her own body yearn in answer.
“We should leave them alone.”
“Agreed. But this is our room.”
“Ah, guys.” Julia gestured to Mark who was nuzzling her neck, arms wrapped tight beneath her breasts. “Mind if we have a moment alone?”
Ange was reaching for Hayden’s outstretched hand before Julia had finished her request. “Umm…sure…see you later…at…dinner.”
“Young love.” She murmured on a dreamy sigh as Mark leaned her back amid the tumble of tossed luggage.
“It’s good to be home.”
“I guess.” She arched into his body as he kissed her neck, inching his way down to her collarbone. “I’ll have to get used to sharing you with everyone, after having you all to myself for an entire week.”
His fingers stuttered on a button, humming as he leaned his head into the press of her hand in his hair, before working the rest free. She wondered fleetingly how much of this they’d get to do, now that Mr By-the-Book Clayton was in charge. Mark traversed the bare expanse of her throat, soft lips laying warm sucking kisses down between her breasts, and Julia decided she could think about that later; much, much, later.
~*~
Her zero-eight-hundred briefing with Mr Clayton was not something Julia was looking forward to.
Mark had patted her ass and grinned, unrepentant, in response to her filthy look. His meeting wasn’t until ten.
“You’ll be fine. It’s not like he can send you home. You’re a paramedic; not to mention the third fastest glider pilot on this base, and wife of the military commander.”
“I love how you just tagged that on at the end.”
“He’s just marking his territory.”
“Wonderful.”
Dressed in her BDUs, combat boots, tee, and jacket, she’d taken the relocator to the office level and now, stood poised on the threshold of the Commander in Chief’s office.
Mr Clayton was seated at his desk; the likeness between him and the aforementioned weasel even more evident as he squinted at his laptop screen from behind narrow rectangular glasses. He looked up at her knock and blinked to change his focus.
“Mrs Holden, do come in. Please, have a seat.” He gestured to the three white leather chairs grouped together on the opposite side of the room.
“Mr Clayton.” Julia said, icy demeanor bordering on rudeness, and took the chair facing the door.
“I asked you here this morning to introduce myself and to gain a sense of what it is you do here.” Mr Clayton took the chair to her left and she changed hips so she could face him head on.
“We have met on two previous occasions, Mr Clayton, during your inspection tours with Colonel Archer.”
“I remember, Mrs Holden. May I call you Julia?” Julia waved a dismissive hand in ascent and he continued. “But your situation, and status, has altered considerably since I was last here. Have they not?”
“Yes.”
“Well…” Mr Thomas Clayton, Commander in Chief of Phoenix City in the Dragonus Galaxy, and lapdog of the GOC, had the decency to shift in his seat under her steely blue-eyed glare. “Your recent marriage to this base’s military comman-”
“Is none of your fucking business.” Julia bit her lip and shifted in her seat, she’d told herself she was going to be cool, calm, and collected. “All you need to
know is what’s in my file. I’m a trained EMT with thirteen years’ experience, I can fly helicopters, and I’m the number three X2 pilot in this city.”
“I see.” Mr Clayton nodded and tapped his fingers across his tablet’s screen. “My apologies, Julia, I am sure you understand my concern. Especially, when you consider the very short timeline on which these events took place.”
“It’s my experience that timelines are mercurial in nature and therefore cannot be confined to any one set of parameters.”
“Er, yes.” Mr Clayton cleared his throat and nodded like a bobble-head. “An excellent observation.”
“Thank you.” Julia tucked a wayward strain of hair behind her ear and offered a delicate sniff into the awkward silence filling the room.
“Well, thank you again, Julia, for meeting with me. I hope your holiday was nice…” Mr Clayton paused, hopeful of more information.
It wasn’t a need-to-know top secret mission so Julia told him.
“Yes, thank you. Dragonus is full of both friends and foes, isn’t it?”
“This city is the furthest I’ve been from home. Perhaps now, I shall see more of Dragonus’ sights, than I did of Earth’s.” Mr Clayton smiled, wistful; the action lightening his face and making him almost handsome, before it faded into what Julia realized were the marks of grief. “My Eleanor always wanted to travel.”
She offered a small smile and held out her hand in the hopes of bringing the interview to a close. “Mr Clayton.”
“Julia.” He had a surprisingly firm handshake and a dry, warm palm.
It wasn’t until she had left Mr Clayton’s office and was striding down the corridor that she let herself take a deep relieved breath. She had set him straight on the issues that mattered, and learned a bit about him as well. The departure of Eleanor, whether through death or divorce, seemed recent, and likely explained his presence in Dragonus – four million light years from Earth. A goodly distance for separating yourself from any problems you wanted to escape. A strategy her beloved colonel had once employed.
Julia asked the universe to look kindly on Mr Clayton and turned down the corridor leading to her team’s offices. It was time to find out what new protocols had been added to their chapter of Mr Clayton’s book. Kate embraced her before she could fully walk into the cupboard they laughingly called a briefing room.
“Welcome back, have a good time?” Levi winked from where he stood next to the coffee maker. It was hard to tell whether he was leaning or if the cabinet was holding him up, since he was only three cups into his daily quota.
“Meh, it was okay.” She blushed under her team’s knowing laughter.
“Didn’t expect to see you so early on your first day back.” Brendon rumbled, eyes gleaming with amusement.
“Or walking.”
Kate slapped Zeb’s arm and he pulled her into his lap, ignoring her playful squeals before plonking her into the adjacent chair.
“Clayton.” Julia ignored Zeb’s teasing in favor of answering Brendon’s question.
“Been there, done that.” Zeb groaned. “He’s working his way through everyone.”
“I got that much. Implied I’d married Mark to gain a place here in Phoenix and advance my career.”
Brendon and Levi whistled long and slow into the stunned silence.
“Is he still breathing?” Kate asked, half-joking.
“Yes, well at least he was when I left him.” Julia huffed. “In a way I’m glad my interview was before Mark’s.”
The image of Mr Clayton cowering under the weight of Mark’s arched and disapproving eyebrow was an amusing one.
“Mr Clayton is no longer in doubt of my motives, abilities, or feelings.”
“I’m sure he isn’t.” Zeb murmured around the rim of his coffee mug.
“So, if everyone’s okay with it, I’d like to forget about Mr Clayton and get on with our day.”
There were nods and yesses as Rescue one settled noisily around the rectangular table.
Chapter 23
The concussion blast from an explosion somewhere to the west of main building lasted long enough to rattle Julia’s bones and the crockery on the counter top in front of her. Voices united in a babbling hum, turning the subdued Mess hall into a turkey farm at feeding time, as people tried to process what had happened.
“This is Wings, where do you need me?” She asked into her radio.
“Wings?” Mark answered sharp and immediate. “Where are you?”
“Mess hall. Everyone here’s okay.”
“Get your team to the Oceanic Studies lab, north quay sub-level nine. A strike team will meet you there.”
“Copy.” Julia tapped off her link with Mark and radioed her team.
They had no idea what they were headed into, but it had to be big. Despite the blast’s origin centering in the Sciences Division, three towers left-of-center in Phoenix’s tiara layout, aftershocks had rattled the main building; leaving tell-tale cracks in the otherwise pristine white walls and broken panes in the ornate windows.
Her combat boots clumped on the floor as she ran down the corridor from the relocator alcove nearest the Oceanic’s lab. Brendon, Levi, Kate, and Zeb, appeared at the junction ahead, each carrying an orange jump bag. Julia could smell the location before they got there. Gray smoke ebbed and flowed above their heads, rippling like the underside of a storm cloud as it sought a way out. Small isolated fires of chemical-green and purple flames gave the lab the eerie feel of a witch’s lair; the concoction of lethal potions gone awry.
Six bodies caught in grotesque contortions of charred flesh were scattered amongst the debris of work benches and equipment she had no names for. Her team fanned out, the checking for survivors; a pointless formality.
She froze, her hand to her ear and mouth open ready to report, when through the gaping, still-sizzling crater in the exterior wall, marched ten armored-up Arcadians; tribal tattoos stark and brown as old blood against their grotesque orange musculature.
Unarmed, Julia and her team posed no threat and were simply ignored. The alien soldiers, having achieved a successful breach of an unprepared Phoenix City, marched over the dead and out into the corridor.
“Colonel Holden.” She whispered into her radio, once it was just her team in the lab again. “Come in.”
“Go for Holden.”
“You’ve got a squad of Arcadian’s coming your way, down the sub-level nine corridor.”
“Understood. Stay put.”
He cut their connection just as gunfire and laser blasts screeched painfully in her ear.
“We need to stay here.” Julia turned her attention to her stunned team.
Their job had become recovery, rather than rescue, and despite the unpleasantness of the task, it was preferable to awaiting the outcome of the battle down the corridor. Levi checked the names of the dead against the digital manifest glowing on the tablet strapped to his thigh as she called them out. Kate had taken out the black body bags and with Zeb’s help, was preparing each victim for their trip to the morgue. Julia could’ve sworn the gunfire was growing louder.
The Arcadian’s were beating a hasty retreat and dragging an unconscious Colonel Holden by the back of his TAC vest. Their rear guard returning the fire of Phoenix’s advancing strike teams with short sharp bursts of bright blue light. The stench of ozone blending with that of scorched flesh and exposed chemicals of the decimated lab.
“DOWN!” Hayden bellowed as he charged into the debris in pursuit of the enemy and his friend. Body art absorbing the light from the neon green flames, igniting the fury in his eyes as his hair thrashed around his shoulders like Medusa’s asps, blaster releasing deafening volleys of white-gold energy into an already apocalyptic atmosphere of death and destruction.
She dropped to the ground, hands over her head in a pathetic attempt to protect herself; mind screaming on a panicked loop as imminent grief loomed out of the chaos toward her. Julia was the most terrified she’d ever been in her entire li
fe, engulfed in hailstorm of T60 fire punctuated by the growl of Hayden’s blaster; no quarter given or sought. She peeked over the rubble and whimpered as Mark was slung over an Arcadian’s shoulder, limp and vulnerable against their seven foot bulk. The edges of the round shell it wore on its back glowed red. A piercing whine adding to the hurricane of sounds as the pattern of lights cycled faster and faster until both warrior and Julia’s husband were jettisoned skyward.
They were out of her line of sight and she scrambled over charred debris, oblivious to the ash on her skin and the stench she breathed in, Hayden’s warning to keep down still loud in her mind. She had to see, had to make it to the hole, had to lay eyes on the ship that was robbing her of her love, had to see the direction they took in order to follow. Strong arms grabbed her around the waist and hauled her back. She thrashed; fought against the strength keeping her from her goal.
They had Mark. What right did they have to waltz in and take what was hers? Darkness threatened at the limit of her vision. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart galloped in frantic surges, bruising itself against her ribs; pain feasted on her agony as her lover’s name tore loose on a scream, only to mock her with its echo.
“MARK!”
Hayden held her tighter.
“No!” She whispered, hoarse and desperate, hands clutching to blue leather as her knees gave way beneath her.
Julia’s gaze was fixed skyward, her body slumped within Hayden’s rigid embrace; the Arcadian ship gone from Phoenix’s atmosphere. There was no point in struggling anymore; even as Hayden lowered her to the floor and growled into his earpiece. What he said made no difference. Mark was gone and the place within her ached and quivered beyond the telling of it.
~*~
Hayden would tear apart the galaxy to get his friend back. Julia knew. She understood because it was exactly how she felt too. But she was scared. Fear ached deep in her bones; an unspoken whisper in the back of her mind. They knew who had taken Mark, but the Arcadians had settlements throughout the length and breadth of Dragonus. Finding him would be impossible.