Ria's Visions (Hearts of ICARUS Book 6)

by Laura Jo Phillips

  Thorn finished his own lunch, then returned to setting up the remaining feeds for the Beacon before starting on the Hilgaria. While he worked, Ria Lobo kept creeping into his thoughts. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t seem to get her out of his head.

  Once he had all of the important feeds locked in and tested for all three ships, he began setting up what he thought of as secondary cams. Cams he wouldn’t be monitoring on a regular basis unless the computer spotted something and alerted him to it. He’d reserved the lowest screen in each stack for this since there were a lot more aux cams.

  Again he began with the Bihotza. He activated cams in the non-secure conference room, comms, the map room, the individual training rooms, storerooms, game room, meeting rooms, and the different areas of the infirmary. He forced himself to work on the other cams first, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t curious to see what Ria was doing once she passed through the triage area.

  There were several rooms in the Bihotza’s infirmary. Two private patient rooms, the triage area, two supply rooms, a break room, Dr. Jula’s office, a work room containing several vid terminals for the staff’s use, and the med fabricator room.

  He found Ria stripping the bed in one of the patient rooms and wondered why. After a few minutes of digging he discovered that one of the kitchen staff was treated for a burn the night before and released just before noon.

  He returned his attention to the room Ria was working in, watching as she sterilized the mattress and other furniture. As far as she knew, nobody was watching her, but she worked methodically without pause, cleaning the room carefully and thoroughly. He had to admit he was impressed. Not once did she even look as though she were thinking about anything other than what she was doing.

  She was just finishing up when he realized what he was doing. Frustrated with himself for wasting time, and for watching Ria for no good reason, he minimized the feed. He checked the rest of the Bihotza’s aux cams then moved onto the Hilgaria’s. He’d barely gotten started on the Beacon when his vox buzzed.

  “Talon,” he said by way of greeting.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Good. Haven’t had a glitch or bug as yet. Considering the number of cams I’m dealing with, that’s a welcome surprise.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Talon said, impressed.

  “How’s the studying going?” Thorn asked with a hint of humor. He couldn’t think of anything he’d rather do less than learn the safety protocols for science labs and medical facilities.

  “Don’t laugh, Brother,” Talon said. “You do realize you’ll be setting up and managing the security systems for those labs.”

  “Yes, I do, but only after the two of you get up to speed on the basics so you can tell me what needs to be done.”

  Talon grunted into his ear, and Thorn grinned. “We’re going to the Roar Room to run off this day. Why don’t you meet us there?”

  Thorn glanced at the time, surprised to see how late it was. “Sounds good. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

  Thorn set the entire system on auto, glad that he’d already programed it to send notices and alarms to his hand terminal. Checking to make sure everything was working as it should be, he left the surveillance room, then double checked to be sure the lock engaged.

  After a good run, a shower, and dinner, Thorn went to his stateroom, stared at his bed for a long minute, then sighed. He was tired but not sleepy, so getting into bed would only frustrate him. He left his stateroom, suddenly very glad that the surveillance room was just a few steps up the corridor.

  Intending to complete the aux cam setup for the Beacon, he was almost surprised to find himself checking the Bihotza feeds. He started with the game and vid rooms where people gathered for socializing, surprised to find that Ria wasn’t in any of them. He checked the cafeteria, all the rooms of the infirmary, and the corridors, wondering if she’d gone to her room. There were no cams in the private rooms, of course, so he had no way of checking.

  Well, he conceded, there was a way. He argued with himself for a few minutes, then sighed and gave up. What difference did it make? It wasn’t like anyone would know.

  He pulled up the cam from the corridor that ran between the guest rooms and accessed the recording, searching for movement. It took just a few moments to find the spot where she went into her room.

  He leaned back in his chair, surprised by how disappointed he was. It was foolish to be doing this anyway, he decided. He reached up to stop the playback when the motion recorder skipped ahead two hours to show Ria leaving her room, dressed in what appeared to be workout clothes. He double checked the time on the recording. Did she really workout so late in the evening?

  He switched over to the training room cams and was surprised to find that she was in one of the smaller studios, alone. She was soaked with sweat, her face red from exertion as she walked toward the far side of the room. She stopped, set her feet, took a breath, then sprang forward onto her hands, flipping to her feet, then her hands, all the way across the room in a straight line. She did ten flips in a row before something went wrong and she landed flat on her back with a pained groan.

  Thorn was surprised to find that his heart was racing. Seeing her fall flat like that had made him want to run straight over there and help her up. She climbed to her feet wearily, heaved a deep breath, then limped to the side of the room where she picked up a towel and a bottle of water. She wiped her face, sipped the water, then turned around, seeming to contemplate the room.

  With an expression of disappointment on her face she left the training room. She took the stairs up to the guest room deck despite the fact that she was still limping, and returned to her room.

  Thorn wondered why she was practicing flips in a training room alone at night rather than with a spotter or partner or even the training master. He found the recording for that studio, backed it up two hours, then played it.

  He watched her enter the studio, close the shutters over the viewing window, then begin warming up. After several minutes of stretches, Ria proceeded to throw her body back and forth across the training room as though she was intent on causing herself serious harm. She attempted a series of leaps, flips, and spins that had Thorn wincing, then gasping, then tensing up, once again fighting the urge to transport over there. He had to keep reminding himself that he was watching a recording, and that she’d not only managed to survive the brutal workout, but that she’d walked away from it under her own power. She had a slight limp that was true, but after what he’d just witnessed, it was a miracle she could walk at all.

  He recognized the moves she was attempting as tiketa. Since her mother was the acknowledged tiketa expert in a number of systems, he assumed Ria and her sisters were raised on it. He didn’t know much about the discipline, but it was easy to see that, even though her body was lean and well-toned, she was too tall, and her legs too long for many of the moves she was attempting. He suspected that it had been some time since she’d practiced tiketa, and wondered why she’d suddenly decided to take it up now.

  He watched her attempt a running leap and flip that she couldn’t quite complete before landing face down on the floor. He turned off the recording, unable to watch the rest of it.

  No longer feeling the least bit interested in working, he returned to his room and got ready for bed. Visions of Ria Lobo’s tall, slender figure encased in snug workout clothing kept running through his head. Clothing that hugged her high, full breasts, flat stomach, firm rear, and long, shapely legs.

  He shook his head at himself, wondering what in the red moon’s craters was wrong with him. He hadn’t looked at a woman’s figure with interest in more than three hundred years. Even now his interest was confined to his mind. His body was incapable of responding to it, and would remain so until they found their berezi.

  He climbed into bed, turned off the light and closed his eyes, determined not to think about Ria Lobo. Despite his efforts, it was her image in his mind that he fell aslee
p to.

  Chapter 8

  Every Tuesday night Ria sat on the bed in her room with her hand terminal in her hand, trying to decide whether or not to pull up images of the Katres. After ten or fifteen minutes she’d put the device down, deciding to wait another week. This went on for six weeks before she finally admitted to herself that she didn’t want to know what they looked like.

  Knowing they’d be on the Bihotza every Wednesday made it easy enough to avoid them, so it wasn’t necessary. She just remained in the infirmary during breaks on those days, either having lunch delivered, or skipping it altogether.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t nearly as easy to keep them out of her thoughts, whether she was awake or asleep. Putting faces on them just didn’t seem like a good idea. Especially since her nightmares now included three new characters.

  She couldn’t stop the nightmares. She’d spoken to a couple of the doctors on the Leaper, and they’d given her medications to try, but they didn’t work. Nothing worked. Once she knew she’d be going on the expedition she’d spent the three nights leading up to departure with a sound recorder running while she slept. She’d been enormously relieved to learn that she didn’t scream or make any other odd noises while she slept that would give her secrets away.

  Nevertheless, she’d picked the guest room farthest from the master suite when offered the choice before she even stepped foot on the Bihotza. Just in case. She’d declined Pandora’s offer to share a room for the same reason, as much as she wished she could have accepted. She really did get tired of being alone all the time.

  While she had no control over the nightmares, her waking hours were another matter. She carefully planned every minute of every day, allowing herself no free time whatsoever. No time for her thoughts to wander into dangerous areas. No time to be afraid. No time to panic. Definitely no time to wish or dream or wonder.

  While she was working in the infirmary she focused intently on whatever she was doing, no matter how trivial. It wasn’t easy to train herself not to allow her mind to wander, but she’d taught herself to do other things that were far more difficult, and at a much younger age. She knew she could do it if she just kept at it.

  Studying was a big part of her daily schedule. She hit the books for no less than two hours each day after her shift, and twice as long on her days off. She even studied during every meal she ate alone, which was most of them.

  Dr. Jula and Dr. Kannon expressed surprise and pleasure at her devotion to her studies. Praise that she accepted politely, but took no pleasure in. Studying was an escape for her, and always had been.

  After studying she changed into workout clothes and went down to one of the Bihotza’s training studios. It had seemed sort of strange to work out at night in the beginning, but she soon found that she enjoyed the quiet, and being alone helped her to focus better. She spent a couple of hours there every night, minimum, practicing tiketa. Never had she worked so hard at the discipline her mother had begun teaching her and her sisters before they could walk.

  Unfortunately, it was even more difficult than she’d thought it would be after her five-year absence. She deeply regretted allowing the skills she’d developed throughout her childhood to slip away. She’d taken them for granted, never realizing how valuable they’d been. Or how difficult it would be to get them back.

  Tiketa was developed for petite women, and Ria, like her sisters, was not petite. She was a touch over six feet tall, which put her at a distinct disadvantage.

  Having practiced the discipline throughout her growing years, she’d never had trouble executing the high leaps and fast flips and spins tiketa required. After five years of disuse, she’d been shocked at how difficult it was to complete the moves she’d once considered simple and basic.

  After her first disheartening and painful session, she’d made up her mind to keep at it, no matter what. Her first goal was to regain her previous skill. Her second, to improve upon that as much as possible, as fast as possible. When she realized that focusing on tiketa distracted her mind as much as studying did, it encouraged her to work even harder at it. Sometimes, if she practiced long enough, she could even sleep without the nightmares.

  She had dinner with Vari and the Dracon-Bats on occasion, when they invited her. Sometimes Vari came to the infirmary to take her to lunch, or Pandora would show up for a friendly chat. Otherwise she was careful not to make a nuisance of herself, or make demands on her sister’s time.

  As the weeks passed she settled into a routine that was as comforting as it was boring. That suited her fine. She wanted no surprises, needed no excitement, and studiously avoided anything new.

  ***

  Before long Thorn became almost addicted to watching Ria. He didn’t watch her every move, but he checked on her often throughout the day. He’d been surprised during the first few days to find that she had a very limited routine that she stuck to without deviation.

  She worked, studied, and trained. That was all she did. She didn’t socialize or make friends, though she was unfailingly polite to everyone, always. Occasionally the Dracon-Bats would invite her to dinner, and she would accept graciously, though he noticed the subtle signs of tension in her that her sister appeared to miss. Occasionally Vari would say things that puzzled him, and that appeared to disturb Ria, though she never said anything. If he didn’t know they were sisters, he’d wonder if Vari knew Ria at all.

  She showed steady improvement in tiketa, though he couldn’t understand why she didn’t ask for help. He’d even seen Lanok offer a few times, and she always agreed to let him know if she changed her mind.

  He’d been watching her for two weeks before it finally penetrated his conscious mind that she had an overly sensitive startle response. He wondered at first if something had happened that he’d missed, and began going through older recordings. Eventually he realized it had always been there, and that she was not only aware of it, but careful to hide it by turning a flinch or a jump into a deliberate movement. He was as troubled by her efforts to hide her startle response as he was by the startle response itself, and he found himself thinking about it often.

  One day, about six weeks into the expedition, the security cam for the triage room of the Bihotza’s infirmary triggered an alarm. Thorn zoomed in on a crewman with a long cut on his arm that was bleeding heavily. He turned up the volume in order to hear the man tell Corin, the senior med-tech on duty at the time, that he’d had an accident with a power tool in the engineering metal shop.

  Corin sat the man down in a treatment chair near the counter, put a pressure bandage on the wound to slow the bleeding, then turned to the med terminal to pull the man’s medical file up. A few seconds later Ria entered the room with a tray of supplies she’d just finished ordering from the med fabricator, her full attention on the loaded tray. When the patient reached out and grabbed her ass, Ria jumped so violently that the tray and everything on it flew out of her hands, crashing to the floor.

  She stared at the man, her face white as she backed away from him, obviously terrified. It was all Thorn could do to hold back a blood rage as he watched to see what happened next.

  Corin spun around, took in the situation at a glance, and approached Ria slowly and carefully. Thorn noticed that he kept his hands at his sides, never reaching toward her as most people would. He spoke to her in very low, gentle tones, as though he was afraid of frightening her further.

  “Ria, it’s all right,” Corin said. “I want you to go into the lounge now.”

  Ria looked at him with panic in her eyes before she glanced at the supplies scattered around the floor. “B-b-but I h-have to p-pick up th-th-this m-mess.”

  “No, you don’t,” Corin said, not attempting to finish her sentence, or giving any sign that he even noticed her stuttering. “You need to go into the lounge, make yourself a cup of tea, sit down and relax. Go on now, Ria. Let me deal with this.”

  Ria looked at him, then the mess, then him again. Then she left the room, keeping well clear o
f the patient without looking in his direction.

  Thorn noticed the smirk on the man’s face as he watched Ria leave, and it infuriated him and his katrenca, which was snarling and hissing. As soon as she was gone, Corin walked back to the crewman.

  “What the fuck is that stuttering bitch’s problem?” the patient demanded.

  Then Corin did something that earned him a place in Thorn’s good books forever. He doubled up his fist and punched the man in the jaw hard enough to knock him off the chair. While the man was struggling to his feet, Corin pressed a button on the wall in front of him that would sound an alarm in security. Then he used the intercom to summon the med-tech on duty, a surprisingly large man named Graeme.

  “He did something to Ria,” Corin said to Graeme. “I didn’t see it, but I think he grabbed her as she walked by.”

  Graeme glared at the patient, who had a belligerent expression on his face. “I’m gonna report your ass,” he said to Corin as he sat back down in the chair. “You can’t just assault a crewman and get away with it.”

  Corin pointed up at the camera in the corner of the room. He didn’t say a word, but the crewman didn’t need an explanation. His eyes traveled to the cam, and he paled.

  “Let’s get this wound treated before security gets here,” Corin said to Graeme. The crewman started to rise, but the med-tech clamped one hand on his shoulder and pushed down hard, letting him know that he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Thorn had seen enough. He shoved back his chair, tapping his vox as he left the room and headed for Transport. He ordered the security team heading for the infirmary to keep the man where he was and make sure he allowed Corin to treat his injury. As soon as he disconnected he transported to the Bihotza, then tapped his vox again. After asking Declan to meet him in the infirmary, he headed there himself.

  Declan, Jay and Kai were waiting outside the infirmary when he arrived. “Brace yourselves,” he said after a short greeting. “What I’m about to tell you may cause a blood rage.” Declan nodded, appreciating the warning which would, by itself, help a great deal if they needed to hang on to their tempers.