“You what?” Parker asked groggily.
“I brought water,” Cheoff said tersely. “It’s nothing you need to worry about today. General?”
“When does the shipment arrive?” she asked.
“Soon. Never mind. You handle Mr. Parker. I’m sure Colonel Rhodes has the 4 under control,” Cheoff said. Diana bristled. That was the third time this week Cheoff had undercut her authority and given directives to Rhodes instead of her.
Shutting down her screen, Diana scooted her chair back noisily. She didn’t like Cheoff bringing black market shipments into her port. Neither did Parker. But the man was obviously ill and if she let him go to port, he’d just be in the way.
“Come on,” she said. Her hand barely brushed his, and he jerked away, gasping sharply. It wasn’t a headache; something was wrong with his hand. She’d tortured enough people to recognize a pain response when she saw one. Sweat beaded on his face, and his pupils dilated. His eyes darted toward Cheoff, but then he hurried out the door, forcing his chin to stay up, even as his chest looked like it would cave in. Diana followed him into the hall. He leaned against the door, feigning nonchalance.
“Look at this,” he said, so weak that he barely lifted his eyes to acknowledge her. “The ship coming back is Oriana.”
“Didn’t think the religious names were that popular,” Diana commented. “But I guess anyone brave enough to come here needs a little religion.”
“It’s Matthews. It’s his ship,” he said, showing her the registry.
“No. They’re dead. I nearly burned up in the atmosphere escaping that ship,” Diana said. She was struck by the need to run—to get as far from that spaceport as possible. She’d been pushed involuntarily onto that ship and barely escaped with her life.
“Damien Coro fueled the run,” Parker read, linking his arm with hers. It wasn’t meant to be intimate; he was using her as a crutch.
“Coro. So he’s come for his wife,” Diana reasoned.
“Let’s go tell him she’s dead,” Parker snickered, tucking the Virp into his vest pocket and shifting more of his weight onto her arm.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Diana said.
“Stop me.”
Diana squeezed his hand and Parker fell to his knees, his cry of pain echoing through the hall. There were only a few offices on this level, and the people who poked their heads out to check the source of the noise quickly ducked back into their offices when they saw her.
“Doesn’t feel broken,” Diana observed, releasing his fingers. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” She raised her brow and started to squeeze, but he bit his cheek, prepared this time.
“Can you talk about it here?” she asked, releasing his fingers, taking his elbow. Being in Cheoff’s shadow, Parker did not face as many death threats or personal attacks as the governor, but that did not mean he was immune.
Shaking, he let her help him up, and linked her arm again. She took him into her office and closed the door. The room had a wall of security monitors, but wasn’t much wider than was needed to have a chair in front of them. The overhead lights were off, and the monitors cast an ever-changing color-scape on Parker’s pale features.
“What happened to your hand?” she asked, keeping him on his feet, not giving him a chance to relax.
“After you left—after that Elysian sent you to Oriana—Galen did something to my hand so that I could reach him if I needed him,” Parker rasped, his chin brushing her shoulder. “He said with this upgrade, we could talk through the Confluence.”
“That’s why you haven’t invited me over these past few months? You’re talking to him?” Diana said, her chest tight with jealousy.
“I haven’t been able. The more I try, the more it feels like my damn fingers are breaking off and there’s gangrene crawling up my arm.” He looked down at his left hand, and aside from the clawed, trembling fingers, it looked perfectly healthy.
“Which is why you’re not going to port. Rhodes can handle a water hauler, and I’m not going near any ship named Oriana,” she said. “Come on. Nurse.”
“A nurse is useless,” he groused, wincing again as his hand incidentally brushed hers. “I need Galen to fix this and I can’t reach him.”
“He’s not supposed to be meddling in human affairs anymore. His own people probably killed him when they realized he changed your hand,” Diana said. “You need to let go.”
“It’s easier to do when you come around. I’ve been wrong to neglect you,” Parker said, a hint of lust in his ebony eyes.
“That’s a pitiful invitation,” Diana teased.
Parker kissed her shoulder. “Stay with me tonight. I’m down a hand. I may have to use my tongue a lot more.”
Diana blushed with delight.
“Show me,” Diana challenged, her lips brushing his ear. His hands ghosted up her arms toward her face, and he hissed when his injured fingers made contact. Breaking the kiss, he looked over their heads and frowned.
“What is it?” she asked, glancing up, too.
“It’s nothing,” he murmured, taking another breath, centering himself, then forcing the moment to continue. He kept his left hand cradled to his chest, but his tongue did the promised dirty work. Diana walked her hands over his skin, digging under his clothes, tilting her head so that his lips found her neck. She glanced up, half-expecting to see Galen watching, eagerly awaiting their progeny. She wondered if the beast had the ability to override their contraceptive measures. But her lover’s tongue soon banished the thought from her mind.
4
Amanda fell to her knees, clutching the base of her neck, reeling in pain. The tracking chip injected under her skin sent darts of electricity through her spine. To the other prisoners in the 5, it barely registered as an itch. They were so numb from mind-altering drugs that they wouldn’t notice a missing limb. But Amanda was in the early stages of schizophrenia. Her brain chemistry was different. The drugs didn’t work on her the way they were supposed to and she felt everything.
“Where are you going?” Diana Solvere taunted, yanking Amanda’s hair, dragging her to her feet.
“To find my parents,” Amanda gasped, grabbing hold of Solvere’s wrists, trying to stabilize herself. Solvere had imprisoned Amanda’s parents over a year ago, so she claimed. The drugs would keep Amanda from recognizing them, if they worked.
“The dose still isn’t high enough!” Diana snapped, addressing someone else. “I want her mind cleansed!”
The room shifted and swayed. The light changed. Amanda’s feet were not on the ground, but she could feel hands around her legs. She kicked free and slammed against the wall again. Finding the handrails, she climbed franticly.
“Get down. Down on the ground! Now!” Danny hollered.
Shifting her weight onto Diana’s arm, Amanda swung her legs up and kicked hard. They both fell to the ground, kicking up a cloud of lunar dust. Amanda would never stop fighting to get free of the 5.
Gravity dragged her down. Amanda’s hand was tangled in metal bonds, and she rolled and slid, banging her head and shoulders against the grips on the wall. She tried to run, but she couldn’t lift her torso off the ground. Blood coated her tongue, trickling down her dry throat. Then the hallucination faded. She dangled from a hand-grip in the corridor of the lower deck.
Danny sang a Terranan song, his mellow voice tempering her traumatic memory. He used the Terranan language to pull her from the flashback because it was the language she most easily recognized when it happened. She felt his hand on her calf. Then he slowly scooted his body to lie next to her. He reached up, and untangled her hand from the grip. “Are you hurt? Anything broken?”
Mostly her pride. Again. She was shocked there was any left. She shook her head. Her heart felt weak, aching as it pounded in her chest. Her wrist was bruised, and she couldn’t bend the last two fingers.
“Why can’t I get better?” she moaned, burying her face in his shoulder. “I have medicine, and I’m still
not better.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, squeezing her shoulders. They stayed on the floor of the corridor, waiting for their bodies to adapt to the gravity. A few moments later, they felt the thump of touchdown.
Danny tapped his Feather. “Nice landing, Chase.”
“Morri?” Amanda called, lifting her head. Seeing spots, and she lowered her chin onto Danny’s chest, praying the flashback wouldn’t return. “Morri?”
“Probably passed out,” Danny whispered, stroking Amanda’s back. “Gravity.”
“He’s gone, Captain!” Coro hollered, his panic overshadowing the gravity-induced weakness. “Sikorsky! He Disappeared!”
Tray opened his eyes when he felt Oriana’s wheels touch down. He exhaled in relief and peeled his fingers off the armrest, pumping the joints to restore circulation. Almost six years and two-hundred eighteen takeoffs and landings, and he still hadn’t managed to keep his eyes open. Despite his exercise regiment, his neck was weak. His torso felt like it was caving in on that one side where the bullet had ripped through him a month ago. He couldn’t even remember where he’d left his walking crutches. He’d thought he wouldn’t need them in the lunar gravity.
Unfastening his harness, Tray moved forward, sliding into the middle seat of the console, taking over communication with port while Chase taxied them in. Chase kept his body pressed stiffly against the seat, and his hands firmly gripping the yoke. Simulations and gravity training couldn’t prepare a body for landing on a world after four days of weightlessness. They would have used artificial gravity during the ride, but for Tray. Something about the technology didn’t quite resonate with him—or rather, it resonated in such a way that the walls of his arteries broke down. Morrigan figured it’d take years for the artificial gravity to kill him, but Tray wasn’t going to risk exposure.
The dome of the Main City rose a quarter mile, its massive structure dwarfing the spaceport and obscuring the two domes behind it. The spaceport was flat-topped, built for function over aesthetics. There were no welcome signs or advertisements projected on the walls. Terrana was not a tourist destination, and there was no illusion that anything made here was worth buying. Oriana rolled unceremoniously into the airlock and waited for the pressure to equalize.
“How’s that plan coming, brother?” Tray asked, tapping his Feather.
“Half way there,” Danny grunted. “Sikorsky teleported off as soon as we touched down. Coro’s still here and ranting.”
“The universe owes me ten marks,” Tray chuckled, letting out a breath of relief. Coro didn’t have power over Mikayla and Hero the way Sikorsky did. That opened a lot more options in terms of dealing with their problem.
“Amanda?” Tray asked.
“We’re in the corridor. I barely got her feet on the ground in time,” Danny said.
“Next time you should heed the seatbelt blinky light,” Tray teased. He glanced to the side to share the joke with Chase, but Chase sat completely still, eyes closed. “Chase, are you still with me?”
“No, I’m pretty sure I left my stomach in orbit,” Chase grumbled, then coughed dryly.
“Do you need to lie down?” Tray asked. “The pressurization will only take another minute, and then we have to move again.”
“I can make it,” Chase replied, inhaling deeply and forcing his eyes open. “Just a little… dehydrated.”
“Recline your seat. Call for a tow,” Tray ordered. “The port crews have little cars just for towing, and they get sad if they don’t get to play with them once in awhile.”
“I’d be sad, too.” Chase squinted, squeezed the yoke, then closed his eyes again. Tray called port and requested the tow, then found the lever that reclined Chase’s chair. The chair was stuck, and fighting with it took more energy than either he or Chase had. After five minutes of fiddling and taking breaks, be gave up and headed downstairs to help his brother.
The ship lurched when the tow attached to the forward wheel, and Tray lost his balance, tumbling down three steps before he managed to stop himself with the handrail. He sat on the stairs, catching his breath, and getting used to the uneven motion of the tow. It had been months since Tray had to jump from micro-g to gravity, and on top of that, his legs were wobbly from Saskia’s stunner shot.
At middeck, the stairs fed into the catwalk, overlooking the cargo bay, and Tray descended slowly, taking care with every step, not wanting to wear himself out. The old water tank that Coro had secured filled bay and served to legitimize their presence, but it also meant that Terranan port workers would come into their bay to move it.
The tank was smaller than a standard water haul, but still dwarfed the two little ships—Danny’s Bobsled and Hawk’s glider. The anchors had held, thank goodness, and both vessels stood a little taller with less gravity weighing on the suspension.
Tray braced himself, then cautiously hobbled across the bay to the lower deck hatch. Medical bay, food stores, and laundry were down here. Danny and Amanda lay on the floor, just outside the door to the recently rehabilitated passenger bay.
“A dozen beds on this ship, and you two choose the floor,” Tray intoned sarcastically.
Danny lifted his head, made a rude gesture, then dropped his head again. He whispered soothes to Amanda, signaling to Tray that she’d had a psychotic episode, and might not be safe to approach. Amanda’s clothes were askew, and her knuckles bruised.
“Check on Morrigan,” Danny said.
When they’d first bought Oriana, the passenger bay was alive with travelers and refugees. They had consoles with games and books, fluffy chairs, art on the wall. It was a sad, dark hole now.
Coro lay on the floor, Morrigan curled next to him, propping her head on one arm, looking pale and weak. She had been faring worse than him in space, and he’d felt smug about that, since she’d been so pompous about putting him through micro-g therapy. As grateful as he was that she’d doctored him through a gunshot wound, he wished she’d stayed in Quin. His ex-wife had said outright that the reason Tray wasn’t welcome was because she didn’t trust Tray without Danny or Morrigan around. But Morrigan couldn’t practice medicine in Quin and as long as Danny had a doctor to take care of Amanda, he’d never leave Oriana.
“What happened?” Tray asked, kneeling next to the pair.
“Sikorsky teleported out,” Coro sputtered, red-faced.
“And you can’t chase him, so lie still,” Morrigan ordered. She braced her elbows on his shoulder, both to hold him down and hold herself up. “I think his neck is injured.”
Tray nodded. Coro must have tried to stand too quickly when he should have reclined his seat and let his body adjust.
“Did he take Gray?” Coro demanded.
Tray flinched, feeling threatened despite Coro’s helplessness. “No, Amanda’s still here. Danny’s looking after her.”
Coro gave a resigned sigh and his beady, brown eyes closed.
“Were they injured on landing?” Morrigan asked. “Amanda went silent.”
“The gravity is helping her stay mentally grounded, I think,” Tray said, cradling her head, taking the weight from her neck so she could relax. “How are you?”
“All the butterflies in my stomach migrated north,” Morrigan said, touching a hand to her lips, then her temple. “Can I drink bunna out of a proper cup now?” Morrigan asked.
Tray laughed. Morrigan hated sucking all her drinks through straws, and she’d been ranting about it the entire trip. Tray used to make those same complaints the first few months he’d flown. He wondered if he used to be this gruff and snooty as well. He and Morrigan came from similar upbringings, and his life had changed so much since he’d met his brother.
“There’s no bunna, yet,” Tray said.
“I can fix that.” Morrigan said, her elbows pressing deeper into Coro’s shoulder as she fought to sit up.
“Easy,” Tray warned.
“I want my goddamn bunna, Tray,” she snapped. “In a goddamn cup. With cream and sugar and just the faint
est hint of caramel.”
Tray laughed, but he understood her frustration. For him, he wanted to take a shower where the water fell down. Or to sleep on a bed that didn’t fold into the wall and need straps to keep him from floating off.
Tapping his Feather, he activated the vring. “Saskia, where are we on the bunna?”
“It’s not on auto?” she asked, swearing in Terranan. The auto-timer on the brewer had never worked, but Saskia pretended it did, and got annoyed when she had to brew the beans manually. It had taken three years for Tray to realize that she was making a joke.
Suddenly, the ship rumbled. The cargo bay doors were opening!
“Stay with your patient,” Tray ordered, rolling Morrigan to the floor. He glared at Coro as a show of strength, but Coro was flitting in and out of consciousness and didn’t notice. Tray rushed to the hall. Danny sat slumped against the wall, pulling Amanda toward his lap.
“Chase what’s going on?” Danny asked, clamping a hand over his Feather.
“Medical inspection,” Chase replied.
They were being boarded! Tray forgot it was standard procedure to send a paramedic in if a pilot asked for a tow. That meant the entire crew was getting inventoried and Amanda was a wanted fugitive. As a Terranan, her DNA, prints, and blood were in the local medical system. The identity Tray had forged would get overwhelmed by that information. He needed to keep her away from the medic.
“Coro and Morrigan aren’t moving,” Tray said. “Let’s get her to the crew lounge.”
“I’ll handle her,” Danny said, pressing his eyes closed. “Stall them.”
“Oh, you think?” Tray snarked.
5
Hawk was on Terrana. He was on a moon! He’d left Aquia, and now he was in a colony, on another world! All his childhood he’d sat in his father’s glider, dreaming about leaving Rocan, and finding other people and other civilizations. Humans had come no farther than this since settling Aquia. Hawk touched the bird emblem on the breast of his flight jacket, then felt the date embroidered underneath. It all began with his father’s dream, with his glider, and with Sky.
The Confluence: A Space Opera Adventure Series (The New Dawn Book 6) Page 3