"If you become aware they are scanning him, take his mind from it. Do not give them anything they can use against him to make him give you up," the Director had insisted.
"What exactly is it you expect of me, Captain?" Bridget said loudly, drawing his attention to her.
"Expect?" he repeated. He looked around the room, seeming not to have an answer for her question. He put up a hand to rub absently at his left temple. "I don't understand your meaning."
"What am I to do here?" she emphasized. "You said I was to take care of your needs. What exactly does that entail?"
"My laundry.
"Anything else?"
"Like what?" Hadn't he made himself clear about what he expected of her?
The Vid-Com chimed on. "Captain Cree?"
"Aye!" he snapped with irritation.
"Lieutenant Lona is here with the doctor's belongings, Sir."
"Then bring them in!"
Bridget stood up as Drewe and two young men entered the quarters. "Is that my room?"
Cree glanced at the closed door. "Aye."
"Put her things in there," Drewe ordered his helpers. He glanced at Bridget, smiled hesitantly then accompanied the men into her room. He waited until her clothing was in the closet and the box of personal possessions was laid on the bed then ushered out the men. He smiled again at Bridget in passing then left with his helpers without saying a single word to his commander.
Cree nodded at Bridget's look of inquiry. "You may unpack." When she went into her new room, he followed. "You have very little in the way of possessions."
"I don't need much." She opened the box on her bed and took out a toiletry case, a few books and an antiquated CD player and a few disks, then moaned.
"What is it?" Cree demanded as he watched her reach in the box and pull out a crumpled magazine photo.
"Of all the things they could have damaged, this I would not have had them harm," she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. She clasped the slick page to her chest. "Not this."
Curious to see whose photograph she cherished so deeply, the Reaper stepped forward and held out his hand. "Let me see."
She hesitated, meeting his challenging gaze, then held the magazine page out for him to take. "Please be careful with it. I found it in a trash bin and I doubt there's another like it anywhere on FSK-14."
Cree looked at the page and frowned. It was a photograph of a white marble statue depicting a robed woman with outspread arms. The statue's face was lovely, serene, and under her feet was a coiled serpent. He lifted his head and stared at Bridget. "Who is this?"
"The Virgin Mary. The mother of Christ, Our Lord. I am a Catholic and I pray to her."
The Reaper's face relaxed. "I have heard of your religion." He looked down at the statue. "This comforts you?"
"It reminds me of home. And yes, it comforts me."
He handed it back. "Then you may keep it."
He found her watching him with what could only have been anticipation, and not pleasant anticipation at that. "What?"
"You didn't finish telling me about my other duties." Her mouth was tight; her expression wary.
Cree's brows drew together in confusion then straightened as he realized what she meant. "I bought a companion, Bridget."
"I will not be your whore, Captain Cree."
Cree folded his arms and looked at her, liking the way her eyes flashed and her face had colored with a faint tint of rose. He cocked his head to one side in what she would learn was a habit when he was assessing a situation newly presented to him. Almost in a teasing fashion he regarded her from beneath thick brown lashes and one side of his mouth quirked in what might have been a smile on a lesser man.
"Have I asked you to whore for me, Bridget?"
"I will cook for you." She glanced around, disgusted by the mess and aching to put things to rights. "I will clean your home and try to make it as pleasant as possible for you." Her mouth tightened. "But I will not play the whore for you or any other man."
"Not even Konnor Rhye?" he asked before he thought and could have kicked himself for doing so.
Bridget's nails drew blood in the palm of her hand. "What is between Konnor and me is— "
"Over," he said quietly, "What ever was between the two of you is over."
"Konnor and I are— "
"Were," he stressed.
"Captain, I don't think you understand how the two of us feel toward..."
He waved aside her words. "I do not wish to hear anything about the Keeper," he snapped. "You will not speak of him to me again. Is that clear?"
"Konnor and I..."
"Do not say his name!"
She tried again to make him understand. "We are in..."
"I will hear no more!"he shouted at her, cutting off the one phrase he would be damned if he would let her say.
"Be very careful how you tread," Dr. Dean had warned her. "He is the most dangerous when he feels threatened."
Bridget lowered her gaze. Not only because she was angry and did not want to give away her feelings, but because the fury in the Reaper's face was awful to behold.
"Sit down.
Bridget sat down on the bed and folded her hands in her lap. She waited for him to stop pacing, not looking at him as he ranged to and fro across the room. When finally he stopped, she risked a glimpse at him and found him studying her. She tensed, holding his gaze, refusing to cower before the thunderclouds still sweeping across his face.
"Tell me about yourself."
Bridget let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. "I doubt there is anything I can tell you that you haven't already read and memorized from my dossier."
He snorted. "I read only the Retrieval report. All that tells me is from where you were extracted, when, and who did the Retrieval." He squinted at her. "Captain Kullen, was it not?"
Bridget's jaw clenched. "Yes."
"A son of a bitch," he stated. "Not worth the triso it takes to keep him from Transitioning."
A cold chill ran down Bridget's spine. He spoke so nonchalantly of something that was a horror unto itself.
"Go on."
"With what? I don't understand what you want to know."
Cree sighed with irritation. "Who you were. How you were Retrieved. What you felt about it."
Bridget suspected he knew more than he was letting on that he did, but she had been instructed to humor him. She was to cater to his every wish.
"I was in college."
"Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa," he supplied. "I believe the year was 1994 or thereabouts."
"Yes." She looked down at her lap. "I had been working in the research lab..."
"Biology."
She nodded. "It was late and I was tired. I was on my way back to the dorm when this man I had been seeing was suddenly there beside me. He nearly gave me a heart attack. He said he'd been waiting for me to walk me to my room. I didn't question him. When he put his arm around me, I didn't try to stop him. It wasn't until I felt the sting on my shoulder that I knew something was wrong."
Cree watched her as she sat there, her mouth quivering. He waited for her to speak and when she did not, he prompted her. "He was a Hunter. You woke on a Rysalian transport."
"Months later," she replied. "The first thing I remember hearing was the seal breaking on the E.S.U." She stared across the room, seeming to see the Extended Sleep Unit sitting there. "I remember watching the lid fold back and this...thing staring down at me."
"The ship's cybot," he said, amused.
Bridget nodded. "I think I screamed, but I'm not sure. Somehow I knew where I was." She laughed sardonically. "Or rather I knew where I wasn't!"
"There was a problem with some of the women taken with you."
"Yes," she answered, recalling that terrible moment. "They didn't believe we were in a spaceship until one of the Keepers opened the shield and we saw nothing but empty space." She laughed again, this time almost tearfully. "`The Final Frontier.' Margot and Denise had not wanted
to boldly go where no ob-gyn students had gone before."
Cree had read the report. He knew two of the nine women extracted with Bridget had been terminated by Kullen, the Reaper on whose ship Bridget had been taken. He wondered if Bridget had any idea what had happened to the women. Her next words told him she did.
"He killed them," she said quietly. She looked up. "The Reaper. He took them away and killed them."
"And he was censured for it."
"Censured for it? With what? A slap on the wrist? How do you Rysalians punish a Reaper for murder?"
"Reapers are seldom punished for anything we do. We were designed to kill, Bridget. That is our primary function."
"You kill women, too, do you?" He was stunned by the venom in her voice.
"No," he replied. "I have never taken the life of a woman. I rarely interact with females. There is one on my ship, but I think of her as a member of the crew; nothing more."
"And the surrogates? Don't you `interact' with them?"
Had he not known better, he would have thought her jealous. She was looking at him with what he thought might well be possessiveness. Women were strange creatures; contradictions that bewildered the most intelligent of men. Understanding them, knowing what they meant, was difficult at best.
"Reapers have needs just as other men do," he responded. "Lust is a need that is easily satisfied by the surrogates. You do not need to interact with the plumber who comes to unclog your drain."
Bridget blushed to the roots of her hair, his words hitting her like slaps in the face. She could not meet his gaze and knew he was smirking at her, having put her on the defensive with his lewd comparison.
"You kill," she whispered, trying to blot out the image he had so graphically instilled in her mind.
"Aye," he agreed. "I have admitted as much, but you knew that before you came here."
She steeled herself to look up at him. "So who do you kill?"
"Whomever the Empire decides must be terminated.
"Enemies of the Empire," she scoffed.
"Aye."
"Women of the Resistance?"
He frowned. "I have told you I do not terminate females."
"Only males."
"Certain males, aye." He held her gaze.
"Such as?"
She was doing something he would never have allowed any other being— male or female— to do: question him. It was almost as though she was trying to provoke him, to anger him. She was not openly insulting him, but she might as well have been. Her words were harsh and were flung at him with a great deal of anger and loathing. She tried to hide her feelings, but her face was too expressive, her eyes too easy to read. He decided he liked the mental exercise of sparring with her.
"I go after rogue Retrieval Unit personnel," he explained. "Those who have decided they prefer living on Terra and mating with Terran females there rather than doing the job they were sent to do. We must terminate them because they hold secrets your Terran military should never learn. The most moronic of our Hunters and Gatherers are hundreds of years ahead of your most gifted scientists when it comes to the rudiments of space travel. A slip of the tongue to the wrong scientist could be disastrous. Likewise, they provide counterfeit documents and identities for Hunters and Gatherers stationed on Terra. Knowledge of how they do this, and the ease with which they manufacture Terran monies would cause planet-wide panic." He shook his head. "Not good to allow that to happen."
Bridget thought of the brilliant man who had cultivated her friendship; the man she had dated for several weeks, thinking she knew him, only to find out he wasn't even of her world. Lin, wasn't it? Lin Charles? She couldn't remember. How many more like him were there on earth? He had seemed to fit right in and often spoke of how much he liked to visit Florida, told her of his hometown in Indiana. She wondered if he might one day go ``rogue' and have a Reaper come for him.
"You didn't take into consideration that they might like Earth when you sent them there? Might fall in love with the women they were sent to abduct? Or prefer Earth's freedoms to the restrictions most Rysalians suffer?"
He began to pace once more. He kept glancing at her room's Vid-Com and Bridget wondered if he was being probed again or if the conversation was starting to bore him.
"When you are sent to perform a mission, you perform it to the best of your ability. Personal feelings are not to get in the way."
"Do Reapers have feelings?"
He stopped, turned and glared at her. "We are programmed for certain kinds of emotions. Love is not one of them."
"Anger? Hatred? Violent emotions?"
"Aye," he replied, uneasy with the turn the conversation had taken. She saw him staring at the Vid-com.
"What of envy? Jealousy? Possessiveness?"
Cree snorted. "Those are not violent emotions."
"They can be," she reminded him.
"Only with Terrans." She sighed. The genetically engineered warrior standing before her would be a harder nut to crack than the Resistance thought. Obviously the subliminals had not been as effective as they were designed to be.
"I need to rest. You may retire whenever you wish. I will most likely have left before you rise in the morning."
Bridget stood up. "Will you require a meal before— "
"No," he cut her off.
"Captain Cree?" the Vid-Com chimed.
"Aye?" he said, obviously relieved.
"Your med is here, Sir."
"Enter!" he ordered, striding briskly from Bridget's room.
Bridget followed and shuddered as the cybot entered the Captain's quarters. It was one of the same faceless, sexless entities she had awakened to see hovering over her on Captain Kullen's starship. She found the thing hideous and unnerving to look at.
"You are three cycles away from Transition," the cybot pronounced.
"I know how close I am!" Cree snapped. He stood still as the cybot injected the triso into his jugular.
Bridget saw the Reaper wince and knew the neuroleptic drug was thick and had a terrible sting to it. If it made a warrior bred to withstand vast amounts of pain flinch, what must it do to a normal being?
The cybot left as quickly as it had come. Cree stood were he was, rubbing at the place on his neck where the drug had been injected.
"It must be very painful."
"You get used to it." He drew in a long breath. "I bid you a good night, Bridget."
Bridget noticed his last words were slurred and knew that was due to the drug's interaction with his genetically -altered DNA. She watched him stumble as he went to his door and the last she saw of him, he was falling across his bed.
"They sleep very little," Dr. Dean had told her. "When they do, it is a sleep like that of the dead. I think part of their legend has to do with that deep sleep."
Long into the night, Bridget sat in the living area of the Captain's quarters and stared fearfully at his door. Now and again, she could hear him moaning then listened as he paced about the room like a caged animal. For a half hour or so, all sound would cease then the moaning would start again, then the pacing. She fell asleep curled up in a chair, her hands tucked beneath her cheek. She never felt him cover her with a blanket nor did she feel the gentle touch on her hair before he left.
CREE ROLLED up his the sleeve of his jumpsuit and allowed the Ministry of Medicine physician to inject the hypersleep drug into his vein. The drug was thick and it stung as it traveled up his arm.
"That burned worse that usual," he complained as he reached over to massage his arm.
"You need to be out at least twenty minutes for the programming to be downloaded, Captain," the medical officer reminded him.
Cree's lips tightened. He was still smarting over the extra assignment he had been given earlier that morning when he had reported to Operations.
"I am not a gods-be-damned Shepherd!" he had snarled as he was being briefed.
"This is a target Admiral Kahn wishes to be retrieved by our best team," the briefing officer had
explained nervously. It didn't do to have a Reaper glaring at you as Captain Cree was glaring at him. "The female is to be treated with the utmost respect."
"Female!" Cree had grunted. "I don't need another gods-be-damned female on board my ship, either! One is enough with that prissy-assed Med Off you foisted on me!"
The briefing officer had backed away. "Well, Sir, there will be more than just the one female you will have to r-retrieve."
"What?" Cree had thundered. He'd grabbed the poor man by the lapels of his uniform. "How many more?"
"F-five."
"Gods-be-damned Kahn and his sniveling female targets," Cree mumbled under his breath as he settled himself more comfortably in his E.S.U.
The Medical Officer knew Cree was already feeling the effects of the sleeping drug careening through his system. Within a matter of moments, the Reaper would be fast asleep, the information needed for him to perform his mission beginning to be downloaded to the terminals implanted in his brain. "How close to Transition are you, Sir?"
"Not close enough for you to have to concern yourself about it," he responded. Already his eyes were closing and a soft black mist was shutting down his world. He forced his eyelids open again and glanced over at the cybot that would monitor the ship while he and the crew were in Extended Sleep.
"Make sure Dr. Yul's compression tank is activated," Cree instructed the `bot.
"`For some must watch, while some must sleep; so runs the world away,'" the cybot agreed. It waved a gallant arm toward Dr. Yul's sleeping compartment for she was the last one to enter the E.S.U. "'Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night `till it be morrow.'"
Dr. Yul pursed her lips and climbed into her E.S.U. Whoever had programmed the cybot's responses and personality had a wicked sense of humor. She liked to read Terran literature, herself, and the quotations from the playwright, Shakespeare, never failed to amuse her since they were always right on target with whatever the duty the `bot needed to perform.
"`To sleep perchance to dream: aye, there's the rub'," the `bot sighed as he ran a swab over the Med Off's arm in preparation to injecting her hyper-sleep.
"I don't dream," said Dr. Yul.
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