by Toby Minton
“After he gets us back on the ground, right?” the man at Nikki’s feet said with a ghost of a smile as he worked on the paint on his neck.
“Don’t you worry, Padre,” Mos said, his own grin much more obvious, and much more evil. “I want that fool on his feet when I knock him on his ass.”
Like Michael and Gideon, the blonde older man didn’t take a seat as they rose. He grabbed a hanging strap to steady himself as he stood by Impact’s feet. His eyes gravitated to Nikki, his gaze resting lightly on her before it shifted to Michael.
Michael couldn’t look away from the gray eyes that had looked so hard before but so much softer meeting his own. Much like when he’d met Impact, Michael had the strange feeling that he knew this man. Then the man’s gaze dropped, the déjà vu dropping with it. “Ace, Mos, Padre, nice work out there tonight,” he said.
“All in a day, Major,” Ace said, leaning her head back and closing her eyes as the transport’s shaking smoothed out.
“Just following Ace’s lead, boss,” Mos put in.
Padre just dipped his head.
Michael’s gaze slid back to Impact. “What happened to his shoulder?”
“He took a round covering our escape,” the blonde man answered. “He took on one of Savior’s landers and half a squad to do it. If he hadn’t, we wouldn’t have gotten your sister out.”
“Whatever you said to him, kid, remember it,” Mos said. “Cue ball and team play don’t usually mix.”
“Can’t you heal him,” Michael said to Gideon, who was still half in the shadows. “Like you did Nikki.”
Gideon looked at him, and Michael had the uneasy feeling that the scarred man was studying him, turning over every word Michael said in his head.
“Every joule he accumulated reaching us went to healing your sister,” Gideon said, watching him even more intently, which Michael wouldn’t have believed possible if he hadn’t seen it.
“So he is like us?” Michael asked. “Like Nikki and me.”
“In a way,” Gideon replied. “The energy that makes you special is the same. Your bodies use it in different ways. Or perhaps it uses your bodies in different ways.”
“And you?” Michael said.
Gideon stared at him for several seconds before responding. “The same energy made me what I am today. But I don’t generate it like the three of you. I can only see it, and channel it. I’m little more than a conduit.”
“So you could use what I generate to help him?” Michael said.
The pause was even longer this time, and for a second Michael thought he saw a faint wrinkle over Gideon’s unscarred eye, the first hint of uncertainty he’d seen from the intense man. “I could.”
Michael balled the hand resting on the deck into a fist. “Tell me when you have enough.” He tightened his other hand over his broken ribs. Then he squeezed, holding Gideon’s stare and swallowing a shout of pain as the fractured bones ground together and into the already tender tissue.
There was no mistaking the red glow in Gideon’s eye this time. It intensified as Michael felt the power flowing into Nikki. Gideon’s eyes flashed back and forth between Nikki and Michael.
“Fascinating,” Gideon mumbled. “No evident conduction. It builds in one then moves to the other seemingly instantaneously.”
“Gideon,” the blonde man said, drawing Gideon’s eye.
“Relax, Elias,” Gideon replied, his eyes back on Michael’s as he placed one hand on Impact’s arm and extended the other toward Nikki. “The boy knows what he’s doing.”
Michael almost cried out when he saw the hand, the claw, settle on Nikki’s chest. What Michael was seeing was no scarring. But he didn’t want to interrupt this process now that he’d started it. He pushed his gaze to Nikki instead, to watch the pulse in her neck quickening with the power flowing into her, to see the smile starting to tug at her mouth even in sleep. He squeezed harder, grunting with the pain this time, but Nikki seemed to calm instead of waking.
Impact sucked in a sharp breath. Michael looked over to see his eyes opening wide, his back arching up off the jump seats. Then he sagged back, and his eyes drifted shut again as he dropped into an even deeper sleep than before.
“Gideon, that’s enough,” Elias said, taking a step toward them.
“Back!” Gideon barked, his eye blazing red. He pulled his hand from Impact and gripped Michael’s arm. “Relax,” he commanded Michael.
But the raging heat that flooded into him through Gideon’s hand made that all but impossible. It was nothing like the ripple of power he felt when he and Nikki fought. When that happened he felt the power tingle along every nerve in his body simultaneously as it made him stronger. It moved through him like it was meant to be there. This was something else, an invasive burn that seared through his arm and chest in a straight line to his injured ribs. He felt a flare of heat as the bones forced themselves back together, and then it was gone.
He felt exhausted, like the fire burning into him had been consuming his own strength as it healed him. His eyelids suddenly felt like lead weights.
He looked at Impact and whispered, “We’re not even yet, not even close, but that’s a start.” Then he looked up at Gideon and Elias. “If you’ll set this thing down somewhere out of the way, we’ll get out of your hair. I know thanks isn’t enough for what you did for us, but—”
“That won’t be possible,” Gideon said, his voice more akin to the growl he’d used on Elias than a normal tone. “You’re coming with us.”
The flash of alarm Michael felt pushed against the weight of his exhaustion, but he knew he was in no shape to make these people do anything they didn’t want to do. Not yet at least.
“Where are you taking us?” he asked, returning Gideon’s weighing stare with the hardest look he could muster. But it was Elias who answered.
“Somewhere safe,” Elias said, kneeling to Michael’s level. “You can rest easy until we get there,” he said, putting a hand on Michael’s shoulder and easing him back against Nikki’s makeshift bed.
“Yes. Rest,” Gideon said, his voice low and almost human again. “We have much to discuss.”
Chapter 12
Nikki
Nikki woke up in a strange bed, in a strange room, absolutely ravenous. But she woke up happy.
For one thing, she was mostly pain free. Taking a deep breath didn’t cause anything more serious than a yawn. She could wiggle her toes and stretch without a twinge from her leg. And her head was clear as shanty booze, not a touch of stomach-swirling dizziness.
For another, she couldn’t remember having a single dream since she’d blacked out. She wouldn’t have minded more flying and cows, but she was fairly sure that had been the concussion talking, so she was just as happy to be dream free.
Most importantly, she wasn’t alone anymore. No one was in the room, of course, but Michael was somewhere close by, alive and well, if a little stressed, which was really nothing unusual and definitely nothing to get twisted over.
Nikki sat up in the bed and pulled back the sheet to double-check her injuries. Sure enough, her leg was smooth and unblemished below her baggy men’s sleep shorts, and her side just had a few leftover bloodstains where the three deep slashes had been.
Thanks, Mikey, she thought with a fond smile she rarely let him see.
She swung her legs off the side of the bed, which was a narrow fold-down contraption attached to one of the mostly bare concrete walls. The room was small and windowless, or at least the walls were windowless. The ceiling was angled so the lowest point was over the bed and the highest over the door. Roughly midway across the slope, a long rectangular opening let in diffused daylight. Aside from the bed, the only furnishings were an old metal locker on one side of the room and a sink and mirror on the other.
Nikki slid off the bed onto the cold concrete floor and walked to the sink. As she passed under what she’d thought was a skylight, she saw it was just a shallow recess housing some kind of artificial daylight l
amp. Weird. And a little alarming. Now that she thought about it, this room looked a whole lot like how she’d always pictured high security prison cells. She didn’t feel the level of stress from Michael she’d expect if he were in the slam, so she brushed off the worry for now.
Waking up in a strange place was common for Nikki and Michael. They’d never really had a place of their own, so just about every place was strange in some way, and when Nikki found a good rave or club…
She’d developed a routine for this kind of situation. Clean up as best she could from the night before, then find food, and only then figure out where she was.
Turned out there was also a shower at the sink, which would have made step one a lot easier, but the toe biter who’d installed it had mucked up the job but good. The meter-square recess of floor with the drain was directly under the sink—the shower head directly over the sink. Washing the sink would be a snap. Washing herself…
Nikki resorted to what some called a whore’s bath. Nikki found that term offensive to whores. The few she’d known had been better off money-wise than most people, and they usually worked out of their own places with working plumbing—pun intended—so Nikki called the sink-and-rag trick the where-the-hell-am-I bath because, well, come on.
Once she was as clean as the situation allowed, Nikki swapped the sleep shorts for the only pair of jeans she now owned, luckily her best. Best meaning they had only one hole and one small tear, and the knees weren’t quite worn all the way through yet. She left on the purple tankini top she’d slept in, which made her wonder who’d dressed her. Michael always left her as she was when she dropped for the night. Whoever had put her in here had cleaned off the worst of the blood and put her in the most comfortable clothes she had. She added that to the mystery pile for step three and pulled on her club shoes, a battered pair of patent combat boots that could fit over or under her semi-snug jeans. She chose under for now. Best to start the day low-key and work her way up.
She went back to the mirror and tried to do something with her new hair, but the cabinet behind the mirror was bare, except for a pile of something she hoped was old baking soda. Oh well. Finger combing would have to do.
She crammed the rest of her stuff back into her bag and stepped out the door, which was a metal, round-edged monstrosity with an oversized lever. What is this place? A submarine? She kind of hoped so. That would be a first.
The hall was arched concrete with eight identical doors, four per side, spaced evenly to a dead end on her left and what sounded like a working garage at the end of the hall on her right.
Identical doors, huh?
Nikki crossed the hall and tried the door opposite hers. It opened into a mirror image of her room but with a little more in the way of furnishings and posters covering the walls. She was guessing it was man’s room by the number of bikini-clad cartoon boobs staring back at her. Whatever works, she thought as she went to the sink.
Score. Not only did this guy have a brush, he had a canister of styling putty that would do nicely.
Ten minutes later, she silently thanked Michael for the job he’d done on her incognito hairdo. It was really pretty fabulous. She had a smile on her face as she left the room and headed for the clanging and banging down the hall.
At the end of her hall she found a crossing hallway of the same arched concrete and the source of all the noise—a large sunken landing bay. The ceiling of the bay was a good thirty meters high. The back wall was at least forty meters from where she stood, with two heavy blast doors retracted to let a salty smelling breeze in through a curtain of what had to be fake greenery. Right in front of her, down a few concrete steps to the bay floor, three stout tables held all manner of odd tools, presumably for working on things like the assortment of small ground and air vehicles parked in the bay or maybe the larger transport that had brought her here. Said transport was sitting to her right with one of its engine compartments open and bits and pieces trailing out across the floor like it had coughed them up.
Four people were working in the bay, two of whom she recognized from the train. T-bone and Helga were deeper into the bay in the process of opening and unpacking half a dozen crates of new parts. A portly guy in greasy coveralls had his torso wedged so far in the open engine port she couldn’t really get a look at him. The fourth was closer to the steps with his back to her. He was younger than the rest, maybe mid twenties, with a slicked sandy blonde pompadour, a muscled upper body to die for, and a butt that would bounce a coin right back. She didn’t have a coin, but there were a few washers on the nearest table. She gave it a shot.
“Hey! Who—” he spun around, and his mouth dropped open. “Heh-looo.” He whistled through his teeth as he gathered himself and stood up straighter. “I didn’t get a look at you before. Damn!” His southern accent made the word a solid two syllables.
“Yeah. OK. If I were a snack, where would I be?” she replied with a not-too-interested look. He was cute, but maybe a little on the douchy side. He might be good for some banter, but that was probably all. Probably.
“Honey, if you were a snack, you wouldn’t last long around me,” he said with a chuckle, solidifying her first impression.
“I bet that’d make two of us,” she said in a tone he obviously didn’t catch, judging by his answering wink. Nobody got her humor. Where was Sam?
“Mess hall’s the next door down the hall to the right,” he said. “If you need anything more substantial while you’re here, my room’s right across from yours.”
“That’s yours, huh?” she replied with a grin. “Nice posters.”
“Huh?”
“What?” she put on an innocent look and turned her attention to T-bone carrying a part toward them. “T-bone! Long time no see.”
“Mos,” he corrected with a smile but a furrowed brow. “Or Moses, if you like. That’s Chief Gram in the engine. You just met Corporal Wells—”
“Coop,” Beach Body cut in. “But you can call me anything you like, honey.”
“And this is Sergeant Major Achterberg,” Mos went on, indicating Helga.
“Bejeezus, that’s a mouthful,” Nikki said.
“Ace,” Sergeant Major Tongue-twister said with a grunt as she set a part down next to the engine.
“How do you get Ace out of all that?” Nikki asked.
“Oh, she was the shit in her day,” Coop said.
“Watch it,” Ace warned.
“No offense. You still got it goin’ on,” Coop placated. “I just mean that you’re…well, mature.”
“Ace captained the Marine Corps women’s volleyball team to what? Two successive championships?” Mos finished for him as Ace silenced Coop with a glare.
Nailed it, Nikki thought. If Ace’s favorite color wasn’t rainbow, Nikki would eat that transport. She gave Ace a half smile but looked away when the woman met her eyes. Coop’s “got it goin’ on” comment didn’t even come close. Ace was flat-out gorgeous for any age, not just her own. But feeling even a glimmer of attraction to another woman made Nikki think of…someone she’d rather not remember, which made her uncomfortable, which made her mad, which ended up causing all kinds of trouble nine times out of ten.
Nikki’s stomach rumbled loudly enough for all to hear. Speaking of eating a transport...
She looked at Coop. “So, food that way?” she asked, pointing down the hall.
“You’re a fast learner,” Coop said with a grin.
She turned back toward the door. “Thanks for the directions, Disney. And the hair goo.”
“It’s Coop—what?”
She was already heading down the hall, but she heard Mos’s laughter echoing from the bay behind her.
The mess hall was right where Coop had said. Like the rest of the place, it was all concrete and steel, with two folding tables with a handful of chairs around each in the open area inside the door and an industrial looking kitchen beyond that.
Both rooms were deserted save for a lone man setting his used plate on a rack ne
ar the kitchen. He was dressed in dark fatigues and looked like he’d just come in from a week-long march. He looked over as she entered. It took her a second to recognize him.
“Sam?” she said, getting her first good look at him in the light. He was just a hair taller than she was, and his skin wasn’t quite as dark as she had thought. His eyes, on the other hand, were just as dark and quick as she remembered. “Did you just get in?”
“Nikki,” he said. “Yeah. Had to go back for the skimmer I hid outside that ghost town.”
“Oh,” she said, smiling at the way he said her name. Shame he was outside her usual dating range. “Did you run into any more soldiers?”
“Not that they saw,” his smile lit up his face for a minute, but his exhaustion didn’t let it last long. “How are you feeling?”
“Bright and sunny. That’s me,” she said with smile. “What’s a skimmer?”
“A skimmer? Newish Japanese military tech for live scouting runs,” he said. “We liberated one last year. A lot like a motorcycle, but nice and quiet, and it doesn’t need roads. I’ll show you sometime.”
“Deal,” she said. “Ninja class and a joy ride. Locked in.”
Sam smiled again. “Help yourself to whatever you want from the kitchen, and don’t worry about cleaning up. We have a rotation. I believe Mos has today.”
He showed her around the kitchen and then excused himself to go get cleaned up and get some rack time, whatever that was. As he was heading out the door, he stopped and turned. “There’s another dining area up those spiral steps. Better view. Not so sterile. Your brother and Kate are up there now.”
“Sweet,” she said, and Sam disappeared down the hall.
So that was the cause of the stress that was trickling through the link. Michael’s tension made perfect sense now. Whoever this Kate was, she had no doubt fallen for Michael’s aloof, please-leave-me-the-hell-alone good looks. He was up there now clumsily trying to fend off the advances of some beefy ex-soldier who probably curled more than he weighed. Nikki couldn’t miss this.