***
Ekaterina III boasted one of the strongest military forces in the human sphere, both in terms of its ground forces and the naval squadrons patrolling her system, guarding the enormous orbital shipyards. If there was a safe place in the known human galaxy, with the possible exception of Earth itself, it was here.
And that was how Jodi felt now. Safe, content. She was still riding an emotional roller coaster that alternated between the exhausted depression of the furious fighting she had seen on Rutan and the hyperventilated feeling of knowing she was back with the woman she loved. The fact that her love was unrequited, that Nicole Carré had long ago made it clear that she could never be more than a close friend, did not – and never had – been an obstacle for Jodi’s tacit affection. It was enough to know that Nicole cared, loving Jodi as a friend. That they had never shared a passionate moment together was something Jodi had decided she could live with. The physical expressions of her love for Nicole were discretely diverted toward others who were more than happy to receive them, and who willingly did their best to satisfy Jodi’s needs in return.
As for Nicole, Jodi knew that she had been with men on a few rare occasions, but nothing had ever come of any of these relationships. Nicole’s life was her job, and Jodi doubted that there was anyone in the Fleet who did it better: Nicole Carré lived and breathed fighters. Living so long in such a lethal profession was beyond the ability of all but a very few. Nicole Carré was among them. Her mastery of technique and relentless aggression in the cockpit had quickly earned her commander’s stripes and a squadron command, and she was now on the verge of putting on another stripe and taking over Hood’s entire wing. Her cold demeanor had earned her the call sign Ice Queen since early on in flight training. But Jodi knew there was more, much more, beneath the flawless porcelain skin of her commander.
Nicole’s professional and personal aloofness gave Jodi a certain sense of security, the feeling that she would always be the one to whom Nicole would turn in times of need. And so it had been for the years they had known each other. Jodi, her own flying skills having proven quite lethal to the enemy, had sacrificed promotions and choice assignments to stay with Nicole. Jodi obstinately refused her friend’s pleas – and several direct orders – to take her own command and develop her career, and at last Nicole had given up after Jodi had laid her heart bare. It was then that Nicole fully realized how dependent she was on Jodi for support, lover or not; Nicole could not deny the fact that she herself was only human, and needed someone by her side. That someone just happened to be Jodi Mackenzie.
Still, Jodi could not help but be sad for her friend. She needed love just as a flower needs the light of the sun, but would never find it. As much as she wanted Nicole for herself, she would have been happy to see someone sweep her off her feet, to love her like Jodi would have loved to. That was the measure of Jodi’s love.
“Jodi, what is wrong?”
Nicole’s question caught her off guard. “Nothing,” Jodi said, pushing away the thoughts of what could never be. “I… I was just thinking how good dinner was.” She smiled. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had food like this.” She laughed nervously. “It’ll probably make me barf.”
“Do not be silly,” Nicole said, letting Jodi’s white lie pass for the time being. She knew that if something was bothering her, she would speak up about it sooner or later. Fishing for a little humor to brighten up her friend, Nicole made a theater out of looking over their plates, at the devastated remains of an authentic lobster dinner that had cost Nicole half a month’s pay in the best restaurant in the port. It had been worth every credit, both for the food itself and to help welcome Jodi home. “The day you become sick from good food is the day the goat becomes the gourmet, oui?” Leaning forward, she took one of Jodi’s hands in hers. “I am glad you are back, my friend.”
“Me, too,” Jodi rasped. She was afraid that she would break down and start bawling with joy. She squeezed Nicole’s hand tightly.
Nicole smiled. She so much wished that Jodi would find someone she could be truly happy with, for she had so much to give. But Nicole knew that this was not going to happen any time soon; Jodi had made that quite clear. Sitting across from her, Nicole was painfully aware just how attractive Jodi was to the people around her. From surreptitious glances to unabashed stares, easily a dozen people close by were more than casually interested in her friend. If only…
But it was not to be. Not yet, anyway. Jodi was content with the way things were and, as fate would have it, so was Nicole. They were a good team.
“Jodi,” Nicole asked, “what is that?” She had seen a strange bit of jewelry hanging from Jodi’s neck that she had not noticed before. It looked like nothing more than a loop of twine or very fine rope cascading down into her ample cleavage.
“Oh,” Jodi said. “It’s a gift from someone I met on Rutan.” She looked sheepish as she held up the small wooden crucifix that Hernandez had given her.
“May I see it?” Nicole asked, curious as to the origins of this token and who had gotten Jodi Mackenzie, of all people, to take up religion.
“Sure,” Jodi slipped it from around her neck and handed it across the table.
“Does this mean you are a believer?” Nicole asked, curious as she examined the cross in her hands.
“No,” Jodi answered immediately. “Yes. Maybe.” She threw her head back in exasperation. “Hell, I don’t know. I prayed on the way here from Rutan, on the shuttle. Can you believe that? I meant it, too. But now, I don’t know. How can anyone believe in any God when the universe is as fucked up as ours is?”
“That is what faith is supposed to be about, or so they say,” Nicole answered distantly. “To believe in something you have accepted to be true, but that sometimes seems to go against all that you see.” She was quiet for a moment as she turned the old cross in her hands. “I used to have one of these, given me by my mother. That, and the clothes on my back, was all that was left to me when my parents died. There was a time when I believed in such things as God, but that was a long time ago, when I was very young, before the realities of life showed my beliefs to be painfully foolish.”
“What happened to it?” Jodi asked softly, more to draw the pain out of her friend than to satisfy any sense of curiosity. Nicole had never spoken much about her childhood. But Jodi figured that this was a harmless question now. “The cross, I mean. Do you just not wear it anymore?”
Nicole shook her head and smiled, but Jodi could see that her eyes were misting over. She had never seen Nicole like this. “Nikki,” she said quickly, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. You don’t have to–”
“It is all right,” Nicole told her as her mind paged back to those distant years of her youth. “It has just been a very long time since I have thought of it, that is all. When I was a young girl, after my parents died and I was put into an orphanage, I had a friend. A boy who was very special to me. Since I was older, I was able to leave the orphanage before him, to go to the academy. I gave my crucifix to him to keep for me, the only special thing I had for the person I held most dear.”
“What happened?” Jodi asked, watching Nicole turn the wooden cross over in her hands. “He blew you off, didn’t he?”
“No,” Nicole said with a force that startled Jodi. “No,” she went on more softly now, “he would never have done that. Never. We wrote each other often, and I counted each passing day toward the time when he could join me. I would have been a senior by the time he could have come, but we would have had some time together. I knew even then that we were terribly young, mere children, but still, I had hopes and dreams for the two of us, and I knew he did, too.
“Then, in my first year at the academy, I was going back to visit him when I found out that the orphanage had been attacked, that the entire planet had been wiped out.” She smiled bitterly. How many times had she relived that day in her nightmares? “The silver of my mother’s cross burned away with the rest of Hallmark’s at
mosphere. Along with him.”
Looking up at Jodi and seeing her shocked expression, Nicole apologized. “Jodi, I am sorry for bringing up such unpleasant a subject.” Pretending she had something in her eye, a convenient excuse to wipe away a tear that threatened to fall, she asked, “Did you wish to go see the show tonight at Wilmington’s, or… Jodi, what is wrong?”
“Did… did you say Hallmark?” Jodi rasped.
“Yes,” Nicole said, confused and growing concerned at her friend’s alarming change in expression. She looked like she was going into shock. “Jodi, tell me what’s–”
“What was his name?” Jodi demanded suddenly.
“Jodi, why–”
“Dammit, Nicole, what was his name?” Jodi practically shouted from across the table. Around them, conversations ceased as people turned to stare.
“Reza,” Nicole said, looking at Jodi as if she had gone mad. “Reza Gard. Why? What does it matter? What is wrong with you?”
Jodi felt her heart hammering in her chest, and she was becoming lightheaded to the point of dizziness. “What did he look like?” she asked, licking her lips and leaning forward as if she were physically starving for the words that were to come from Nicole’s lips.
“He… he was just a boy then–”
“Did he have green eyes that you couldn’t turn away from?”
That shocked Nicole. “Yes,” she said, her face knotting with concern. “How–”
“Did he have a scar over his left eye, like this?” Jodi ran a fingernail over her left eye, just touching the skin of her forehead and cheek. “And dark brown hair?”
“Yes. Yes,” Nicole croaked. A strange sense of déjà vu was creeping over her, leaving her skin tingling and a distinctly unpleasant feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Jodi–”
“Did your mother’s cross have ‘3089’ engraved on the back of it?”
“Yes. That was the year my parents were married.” She suddenly reached for Jodi’s hands. “Jodi, what is going on?”
“Oh, God, Nicole,” Jodi said, fighting hard to contain her excitement, oblivious to the crowd of onlookers who had forsaken their dinner to watch the spectacle these two were providing. “He didn’t die on Hallmark,” she blurted, her words rushing forth in a stream. “He showed up on Rutan, carrying an endorsement letter from some Colonel Hickock and your mother’s crucifix. He was brought up by the Kreelans, as one of them. He taught me his name. He’s on his way to Earth right now aboard–”
“That is not possible!” Nicole shouted. But how else could Jodi possibly know these things? she demanded of herself. And who else could it be? Jodi began to fade behind a curtain of swirling black spots that suddenly began to pool in Nicole’s vision.
“Nicole, it’s true! I swear!”
“Reza… alive?” Nicole, wide-eyed, shook her head as the blood drained from her face.
“Nicole, I’m sorry, but – Nicole? Nicole!”
But Nicole could no longer hear what Jodi or anyone else was saying. Her eyes rolled back to expose the whites, and she fell from her chair to land at the feet of the shocked restaurant manager who had just emerged from the kitchen to see what all the fuss was about.
***
Jodi sat in a chair next to Nicole’s bed, keeping watch over her friend as the sleep drugs did their work. In what had seemed like a trek born of a novel of the surreal, Jodi had somehow gotten Nicole back to the Hood. The chief surgeon examined her and put her on bed rest for twenty-four hours with a diagnosis of emotional trauma. Jodi felt awful.
But as she sat there, holding Nicole’s hand, she realized why Nicole had reacted so strongly to the news that Reza had not died, but had been raised by their enemies: even though she had been so young, she had never let go of him, never stopped loving him. She had taken on the occasional lover, but never had she allowed the relationship to blossom into something more substantial than the satisfaction of the most basic primal needs. Somehow, inside, she had gone on believing that he could not really be dead, that somehow he would return like a fairytale hero to claim her heart, a modern Prince Charming, snatched from the jaws of Death. While Jodi knew that Reza was not – or at least did not seem to be – bent on the destruction of humanity, and perhaps just the opposite, his Kreelan upbringing and all the negative implications that lay therein could not be ignored. And to Nicole, who had not yet given Jodi time to explain all the things that had happened on Rutan, it must have seemed like her long-lost knight in shining armor had returned as some infamous Black Knight, corrupted and evil. The Reza Jodi had seen would be nothing like what Nicole remembered. She was bound to be taken aback, Jodi thought, perhaps even horrified.
“It’s not that way, Nikki,” Jodi said quietly, although she knew Nicole could not hear her through the narcotic fog that had been required to sedate her shocked brain. “I just wish you could have been there to see him. Maybe, maybe when that stupid bitch Rabat finally gets done with him, you’ll get your chance. But…” Jodi sighed.
Despite the guilty feelings that the thought evoked, Jodi could not help but wonder if such a meeting would be a good thing for her. Reza represented a change in the equation of her relationship with Nicole, and that was something she was distinctly uncomfortable with.
On the other hand, if the two of them did share something, it would be so much more than Nicole had now.
An idea suddenly congealed in her mind, and she acted on impulse, calling the captain’s yeoman.
“Yes, ma’am?” the young man answered.
“I’d like to speak to the captain as soon as possible,” she said. “Please tell him it’s extremely urgent.”
“Just a moment.” The boyish face was replaced by the Hood’s coat of arms for a moment.
“Yes, Mackenzie, what is it?” The captain’s face suddenly appeared, his short-cropped gray hair forming a silvery helmet on his head. From the rough leather jacket she saw on him, she knew he had just gotten back from shore leave, and his face made it clear that whatever she had to say, it had better be good.
“Sir, I’d like your permission to go to Earth with Commander Carré. She has knowledge that is vital to an ongoing Confederation intelligence project…”
Twenty-Two
Deliha Rabat was her usual flawless self. Despite too little sleep and horrendous stress, most of it produced by her own imagination, she was outwardly calm and collected. But under the plastic veneer she wore in front of her masters, there lurked a seething core of disappointment with herself and resentment toward the successful members of her team, her jealousy at their success a mountain that towered beyond the shadow of her own failure.
Now, standing before the Council and the president, she had to submit herself to what many lesser souls would have considered the final humiliation, the results of the debriefing that they had conducted on the Aboukir on the way to Earth. But to her, it was a challenge, and one that she eagerly accepted. She knew the human mind well, in all its various malignant forms, and was thus well prepared for her time before the Council.
The other researchers had told the Council their golden tales of success: of how phenomenally Reza had scored in language, spatial concepts, and certain types of mathematics; of his superhuman physical strength and mental acuity; of how his physiology was still basically human, yet fundamentally different in ways that were not entirely understood, as if Reza were the product of an extremely successful genetic engineering project that was well beyond human means to fully understand, let alone duplicate. Even the things at which Reza did not excel, but was merely human and thus flawed, were laid at the Council’s feet where they were examined with the enthusiastic but often myopic vision of those disposed to power but often ignorant of the value of the individual.
Needless to say, they were entranced by the work that had been accomplished in the short trip to Earth, and none of the notables present commented on the lack of personal success on Rabat’s part. This, of course, only fueled the fire of her malice.
; Following the completion of Dr. Chuen’s impassioned presentation, the last of her team chiefs to speak, she stood up and took her place at the podium that stood like the hub of the half-wheel of padded chairs from which the eyes of the Council looked down upon her.
“Mr. President,” she said in her best subordinate voice, “ladies and gentlemen of the Council, let me conclude the research team’s statements with some observations that may serve as food for thought as the Council considers the subject’s place and future within the Confederation.”
Rabat did not notice the Navy yeoman who entered through the room’s rear doors like a stealthy field mouse and hurriedly sought out Admiral Zhukovski, who sat beside Melissa Savitch in the small audience arrayed well behind the podium. Zhukovski listened to the man for a moment, then dismissed him. Melissa noted the fleeting impression of a smile across his face, but he refused to answer her signaled question: What was that about?
“As you have already heard,” Deliha went on, “while the subject has adapted extremely well to Standard, he has not uttered a single word of his adopted language, nor has he given any insight whatsoever into Kreelan customs or capabilities outside of those with which he, personally, is endowed.
“In short, he has consciously withheld information that is vital to the security of the Confederation, despite the clear understanding on his part of our need to learn of his experiences. Further, the physiological alterations to the subject apparently have been accompanied by no less significant psychological changes, which undoubtedly are responsible for the subject’s genius level scoring in several areas of the psychological test battery and a phenomenal score in the extra-sensory perception portion of the tests.”
Several of the council members raised their eyebrows at that. It was common knowledge that some individuals possessed a certain “sixth sense,” in some cases active at a level that could be measured with the appropriate scientific techniques. However, Reza’s test results weren’t simply phenomenal; they were literally off the charts.
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