by Celeste Raye
Renall said, “Stave it off?”
Bates said, “We have to let the universe know what it is The Federation plans. Until all stand against them, there’s no way to kill them off. You know this. There must be a total rebellion, not just the pockets of it we have seen over the years.”
Bates’ eyes turned to Jeval. “I need you because I know of that thing you possess. You could topple their entire research lab from a distance, and you know it.”
Marik leaped from the chair he sat in. “To do so would mean his death! To do that would drain him totally dry and kill him!”
Bates said, “Then give enough for the men I command, that we will all command, to get into that place and level it. If it means dying inside those walls as they implode around me, I am willing to do that. I am willing to die for this. I am. I do not expect you to feel the same, of course.”
They would all die, most likely. On that score, Bates had been one hundred percent correct. The retribution for destroying that research lab would be swift and harsh. Jeval said, “I will help. I think they all will too, but I want a promise from you.”
Bates said, “If I can give that to you, I will.”
It was a concession, but not enough of one. “If we all die there, you must have some sort of decoy in place; you must be able to make it look as if the attack came from elsewhere, was plotted out elsewhere, so that the people here don’t find themselves being hit with the same weapon blast that destroyed Old Earth.”
Bates’ smile was not nice. “Oh, I have a plan for that already. I have spent the last year inserting evidence that proves, substantially, that several of the highest-ranking Federation officials are our allies. Because of that, they shall die too. The best way to kill off anything is with a headshot; don’t you agree?”
Jeval couldn’t argue that. None of them could.
Bates asked, “Do we have an accord?”
Jeval looked at his siblings. They had all known for some time that the war was coming. They had all known that the rebellion against The Federation would catch them up in its grip. But were they willing to cast their lot with this man and his plot and risk everything when it might be simpler to just sit it out and wait to see if his dire predictions about the unknown wormhole and The Federation’s opening of it, and the possible consequences of that action, came true?
They were.
They had no choice at all really.
Margie stood by the door as he came out of it. His gaze went to her. He had refused to allow himself to consider the words and actions she had used when Bates had demanded an audience.
He’d had to block that from his mind because if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to focus on that conversation with Bates, and he would have been distracted by all the questions her words and her being there at his side brought up.
Now that the thing with Bates was over, he had no choice but to let those questions come. They would not stay buried anymore.
His siblings and their mates drifted off. Bates left and got back on his ship, but the ships didn’t leave. Margie stood there, her wide eyes locked onto his face and her bright lips slightly parted.
Those lips he wanted to kiss so badly, that face he wanted to cup between his hands and just stare at until he burned every detail into his memory.
Because he might not come back from the mission he had just agreed to undertake.
Margie looked down at her feet and then back up at his face. A wry smile played out on her mouth. “You’re not going to tell me what just happened, are you?”
“Yes, but…but not here.” That surprised him. He had not meant to tell her. It was not the time. The last thing he needed was to have a heartache left behind. This was a suicide mission, and that was why he had insisted that Renall and Marik stay behind. He and Jessica and Talon alone would go with Bates to the research lab, and Bates damn well better be able to provide the backup and troops he had promised, but even if he did, there was little likelihood he would return alive.
Jessica would know the odds, but she would go anyway. She would because that was her nature and she would die with Talon before she lived without him.
For one moment, he really wondered if he could say the same thing about Margie, and if he could, would he allow her to go?
No.
Hell no.
He loved her too much to see her die.
Loved her.
That hit him like a jagged bolt of the purest and most deadly lightning. He loved her, and the last thing he wanted was for her to die.
They set off, and she asked, “Do you want to come to my hut? I have some honey and those figs you like. I…I picked them this morning.”
Just that morning, after he had made love to her and left her. Had she picked them just for him?
She had, and he knew it. She disliked the fruit, hated it in fact, with a real and vibrant intensity and made no secret of it. His chest hurt; he was sure if he touched a finger to that chest of his, he’d feel his heart breaking right there below the skin. “Yes, thank you.”
They turned up a grassy path. She said, “You know what?”
“What?”
“I don’t regret it. None of it.”
His head ached now too. The pressure building in his brain was from his mind trying to tell him to stay silent, to not put into words the feelings he had managed to hold at bay for so long. “Oh?”
“I don’t. Not going. Not being your sex slave, and being your sex slave,” there was a laugh lurking in her voice, but there was sadness in her words too. “I don’t even regret having killed that being that tried to kill you. In fact, I would kill any who would try and never regret it.”
She stopped walking. The sun lay on her face and hair, and there were silvery tears running down her face now. His thumb pressed against the bottom of her eye, rubbing one tear away. He said, “Margie, you know why this can’t be.”
“Because you can kill people, blow things up just by wanting to. Because you are afraid that you will somehow get me pregnant and that our child will die.”
Now was the time to tell her that he had to go. That he probably wouldn’t come back.
He said, “Let’s go inside. This is private.”
Her crestfallen face hurt him to the core, but she didn’t argue, and for that he was grateful.
Chapter 7 - Jeval
How could she tell him that she was pregnant? He would find out eventually. Jenny kept no secrets from Marik, and even if she kept that one, Marik too would be able to sense her impending child. He was a natural healer like Jenny, and she knew it was far better for Jeval to hear it from her than to hear it from one of them, but fear kept her silent as they entered her home.
The table that one of her fellow Revants had made from a few bits of wood and stone was pretty, and the flowers she had plucked and set into a small drinking vessel and water that graced the center of that table lent a bright splash of color to it as well. The figs were in a bowl and the honey in a container made of some clever material that was clear. The sun lit the flowers, streamed through the golden honey, and sent a wash of light through the room.
Her heart ached. She understood why so many who had had so much back on Old Earth felt they were being downgraded, but for her, that simple place with its simple furnishings and pleasures was the best place that she had ever known, and she felt a pang of sheer love for it—and for the being who stood in the center of the one-room structure, gazing at her with his incredible eyes and a troubled expression on his face that hurt her to the heart. She asked, “I have bread too; would you like…we can have a small meal.”
He strode across the room. His hands cupped her face, and he stared down into her eyes. “Why is it you are so able to hide from me?”
“You can’t read people or beings unless they let you in, or you go into them. You never have with me.”
And she really hoped that he wouldn’t try it just then either. She had a lot to hide.
He said, “That’s
not what I mean. I mean most beings, well, humans anyway, wear everything right on their face. Their expressions and body language make it easy to know just what they are thinking and feeling but you…you always keep everything hidden. You seem to be happy and smiling, but you aren’t, most of the time. I can see that. I just don’t know why you hide one or the other.”
“Most humans do.” Her throat was so raw that the words hurt. She swallowed back a salty lump. “Jeval, I love you. You have to know that.”
“I do.” His eyes didn’t move away from hers. “You have to know I care for you too Margie but…but we cannot be mates. We can’t be life mates.”
“Why?”
Everything was in that question. She knew every answer he would give, and she knew that for every answer he gave, there would be a massive blow leveled onto her heart, but she knew she had to hear him list them, so she could argue against them.
Above everything else the Revant were logical. They valued that, they valued logic over emotion, and maybe if she could make him see that his fears about a child, and falling in love, and life mating were emotional things, she might be able to convince him that it was only logical that they remain together—that they be life mates.
She expected him to say any number of things. Nothing could have prepared her for his answer. “I might not live much longer.”
Every cell, every nerve, every fiber of her being, went taut and tingling. Her body went so rigid that pain from those stiffened muscles traveled upward, exploding agony into her skull. Her mouth hung agape, and she squinted at him, trying to puzzle out the meaning behind those words. “Jeval…what? What are you saying?”
He looked away from her then. He swallowed so hard she could see his throat working. “We need to talk.”
She struggled to drag air into her lungs. Her legs were so stiff she couldn’t unlock them long enough to move, so she just stood there, rooted to the spot and staring at him. “Please tell me…”
His hand propelled her to the chairs at the table. He pulled one out and sat her down. Her bottom hit the hard wood and she sat there, clenched like a fist and with that pain traveling all through her, rocketing across every inner system and leaving a sick and dazed feeling in its wake.
Jeval was dying?
No.
Please no!
His hands lay on the table. Their fingers were so close, close enough that if she moved hers just a bit she could take his hands, but that shock kept her immobile, kept her from reaching out. There was a hard and sharp stone just below her breast, and the weight of it made her body sag a bit. Tears went running down her face, but she didn’t notice them. Her lips finally shaped out words. “What is it? What is happening?”
He lifted a hand from the table and ran it through his hair. “You know as well as I do that the rebellion has been small and widely flung until now.”
Horror rose up. “Are you saying it isn’t anymore? We have thought for a long time that it would grow and that the rebels would decide to take on The Federation head on, but so far they haven’t.”
“They are now.”
Her blood went to ice. “What? How…wait. What does this have to do with…?” She could not say the words. “With what you just told me?”
“I just threw my hat into the ring with the rebels.”
Her eyes went to the closed door. “Bates might have spies posted. You shouldn’t say such things.”
“Bates is a rebel.”
That took her so aback that her mind went blank and her body went numb. “No.”
“Yes.”
Had everyone and everything in the entire universe somehow managed to go insane? She reached for his hand and held it in both of hers. “What does that have to do with… with you…” It hit her then. “No. Don’t do it. Let them have their war without you, Jeval.”
“I can’t. If they are going to succeed, I have to help them.”
“You’ll probably die.”
Tears came again, making her cheeks and eyes burn. He didn’t look away from her face, and she read sorrow in his then. His head nodded up and down. “I probably will. The Federation is likely to try to bomb us just to prevent us from doing what it is that we will try to do. But you will be safe here. Nobody in The Federation will know that anyone here had any part in it.”
“How can you say that?”
His smile was harsh and drawn. “Because if we fail, we have our own bombs and the place we are aiming for will be dust, and we will be dust right along with it.”
Dust. He was talking an atomizing bomb or a neutron displacement bomb, something capable of leveling entire cities and even small planets. There was savvy in that, of course. It would be impossible to find evidence after such a thing as there would literally be nothing left, making it impossible to identify any particular being, especially since even their cells and DNA markers would be in space and impossible to catch and trace.
That sick feeling just got worse as she considered that. Her fingers clamped down on his. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I do.”
She persisted, “Tell me why you have to. Why, Jeval? Why can’t you just let Talon and Jessica go, and don’t even sit there and try to tell me they won’t be the first ones up. They both claim they want peace, but we both know that neither of them will ever be satisfied until The Federation is destroyed.”
He didn’t answer. His fingers moved, shifting so that his thumb could stroke along the top of her hand, Desperate now, she said, “Why not just reduce it to dust in the first place then? “
“Because we need some of those who are there to help us determine if there are other places like it. If The Federation has duplicated the place and the research being done there. Bates has plenty of access, but not full access to that, despite his rank. The Federation is wily and suspicious even of itself and its highest members, and there are always secrets upon secrets upon secrets. Before we can char it, we have to know, or it will all be for naught.”
“What if you find out there is another, and then you have to destroy yourselves? What good will that knowledge do then?” The acrid bitterness in her throat leaked downward, right into her heart. “What then?”
“It won’t be for naught. We will have hi-tech comcasters. The intel will go out even if we do not go on.”
No, a hundred thousand times no. A million times no. She couldn’t let him do it. That gift of his, it was so strong, and yet it was so deadly, and not just to those he leveled it upon, but to himself. It would consume him if he used it to the degree that Bates wanted him to use it, and he had to know that.
He did know that. That was why he had said he was probably going to die.
Between the consequences of using his gift and the probability that The Federation would swoop in with their warships and make the rebels have to drop that bomb to hide their true intentions and identities, he would probably die.
“You agreed to the bomb to protect us, to protect this planet.”
“I agreed to it for you, Margie. I can’t die knowing that there is a chance you will suffer for this.”
He did love her. He loved her so much he was willing to let himself get blasted to dust to protect her. She could not tell him about that baby now, not when he had so much on his shoulders. He would go; there was no way to stop him from it, and she knew it. He would do what he felt he had to do.
“Why now?” That was the only question left to ask.
Jeval took a deep breath. “The Federation has found a wormhole.”
“So?”
“It leads to a different universe.”
Everything went gray and black. A sharp buzzing sensation was followed by the most numbed sensation she had ever felt. Visions came into her head. Aliens like they had never seen ripping through a wormhole that The Federation had opened; a wormhole that the other universe had known about and closed to keep them out. War so horrific that none in their universe would survive. Planets tumbling into nothingness. Entire systems
failing and falling into dust. Cities crumbling before a tide of weapons such as they had never seen and had no ability to fight against.
That other universe was peaceful but war-like, able to defend itself, willing to defend itself, against any and all other invaders—against The Federation that was small and weak in comparison to them.
“Margie?
The vision snapped and broke. She stared at him, dazed and unsure. Everything had just been shown to her, but she didn’t know how or why. “The research lab, it’s on Orional.”
He went white. “How do you know that?”
“I…” her tongue wet her lips. “I don’t know.”
How did she know it? She had no idea; she just knew what she had just seen wasn’t just her imagination working overtime and his words, his affirmation of some of the knowledge that had just gone hurtling across her mind, proved that. “I don’t know, Jeval. I just know that whatever is on that other side will destroy this entire universe and there will be nothing any of us can do to stop it. The Federation…they think they can rule there too, but they’re wrong.”
He stood so fast that the chair fell to the floor. He came around the table, and his arms slid around her, pulled her up and out of the chair. His eyes locked onto hers. “Tell me…what just happened?”
“I don’t know.” She sagged against him. Despite everything, the sensation of his body against hers sent trails of desire and a heated flush rolling across her lower body. Juices slid from her inner core, dampening her inner thighs and her lower lips. Her breath was a hard gas that was a combination of fear and ardor. “I don’t know. I just saw…I saw it all. I saw them coming through the wormhole and killing the entire universe. I saw people dying and worlds falling. I saw…I saw The Federation buckle and crumble like a child’s toy that is useless to its owner now.”
His hands slid up her arms and then went around her. He held her up and close. She rested her face on his chest, her cheek turned so that her ear rested just above his heart, and that steady thump and pound there below her ear reassured and steadied her, helped to pull her back from the brink of madness she was sure she had been about to cross in the wake of those visions.