A Stellar Affair (10 page)

“My guess is that Corvus’s old partners lay low until they saw how everything shook out. Once the dust settled, they then took the opportunity for another payout. They let it be known that they had information on one of our major bases and held an auction. This was about the time we saw a change in the number of ships around Algoron. I guess they wanted to be ready to move as soon as they knew where to aim.

“Several parties were trying to get their hands on that intel, but one man was a step ahead—Sirius Mirach, the former Chief Assistant to the missing Chancellor. Mirach was the one who bought Ardra, along with Slade and the others. He pulled some strings and arranged for them to fly to Algoron once he had an extraction facility set up.

“The only thing is, the greedy bastard decided to go on the cheap, so he chose the
Oberon
. Maybe he thought a small ship like that was more likely to go unnoticed, but he kept too close an eye on it. One of our operatives caught wind of what was going on.” Nash sat back and laced his fingers behind his head. “So there you have it. How’s that for the shadowy depths of the black-market people trade?”

Jack couldn’t stop thinking about Ardra’s husband. “Has humanity really sunk so low?”

“For centuries.” Nash took a deep breath. “The thing I don’t get is the name. I mean, it proved really hard anyhow, but it could have been impossible. Why change Ardra’s last name but keep her first?”

“Because the first name is the most familiar,” Jack told him. “Too many changes and she would have rejected the programming. As for the last name, they had no choice. Her name connects her to Earth, and Corvus’s name leads to him.” That made Jack pause. “But why marry her at all? Why give her his name in the first place?”

Could it be Corvus really had loved her? At least, as much as a man like him had known how?

Jack didn’t have the answers.

Chapter Nine

With a loud crack, Ardra pried the last bit of wires loose. She looked around in case someone had heard, but all was quiet. The frame swung freely from the connecting filaments at the top once the other three sides were severed. She pushed the window open and looked out. Although it was dark outside, there was enough light from the other buildings for her to see the road.

She tried to hook her right leg over the window sill. It was high, and she had to give it three more tries before she succeeded. She pulled herself sideways onto the ledge on her belly. Her breath whooshed out as she slowly turned to hang her legs outside so she could lower herself feet first. She prayed no one would hear her.

The broken wires caught at her shirt as she wriggled farther out of the aperture. Just when she thought her bruised ribs and squished breasts couldn’t take anymore, she got stuck. Her shirt folded and bunched up where it snagged, and gravity worked against her. She certainly wasn’t getting off to a good start.

Very carefully, she let go of the detached window frame and set it against the back of her shoulders. With most of her body draped against the outside wall, she had to support her weight with her left hand as she used her right to untangle herself. She struggled for a few minutes before she finally got free. Then she slid over the ledge and slowly extended her arms until she was hanging by her fingertips.

The jagged window frame that she had kept open against her back closed as she moved her body out of the way. It scraped across her neck and over her head, cutting her left temple before it rapped painfully against her knuckles. She could feel the warm blood well up from what was probably a minor scalp wound. With a glance below her, she released her grip and fell quietly to the ground. The impact was jarring, but she landed on her feet.

Pausing only long enough to think of Jack, she tried to sense whether he knew what she was doing. An image of him sitting on his porch crept into her mind, and she was sure he was unaware of her escape. It was time to run.

Ardra took off sprinting and flew until she could hear her pulse in her ears. The road that wound its way north from the compound consisted of compressed dirt with bits of loose gravel. It made a lot of noise—at least to the frightened ears of a fugitive—but it was the quickest route. Although she knew it was dangerous to stay on the road, she figured the darkness that half blinded her would also lend her concealment. Her strategy for the moment was simple. Run fast, run far.

Adrenalin fueled her flight, keeping her legs pumping long after they began to ache. The pain and fear she had experienced since leaving Nintu V urged her on. As hard as she tried, though, her body couldn’t support perpetual motion. Gradually, her sprint slowed to a run, then to a heavy jog, and at last to a dogged walk.

She had no idea how far she had traveled, but only a distance of solar systems was going to make her feel safe. Her sense of finally being free commingled with her dread of recapture. Ardra moved to the grassy, uneven roadside on her right and kept glancing over her shoulder as she pushed herself onward.

“Where are you going, Ardra?”
Jack seemed to ask directly behind her.

She nearly lost her balance when she spun around. Even before she peered into the empty air, though, she realized he was speaking inside her head. That should have terrified her, but she actually found his voice comforting.

“You left me no choice,” she whispered aloud. “You didn’t let me go, so I had to escape.”

She picked up her pace, forcing her legs to do a quick trot again. Her chest felt tight.

“Please don’t run,”
Jack said.
“You can’t get off the planet, and you’re putting yourself in danger.”

“Maybe,” she muttered, “but I can still signal for help from your communications building.”

As she said this, she pictured that long rectangular building. She felt Jack tense for a moment, but then he delved more deeply into her thoughts.

“Nice try,”
he told her.
“You’re not going for the communications building. You decided that was too risky. You also wouldn’t risk the innocent people on this planet by giving away our position.”

Under different circumstances, she might have smiled. He knew her too well. Although she would do almost anything to get free, she would never have brought a Tetch assault raining down on Ryso. She wanted nothing to do with the war.

Ardra tried to keep her mind blank to prevent Jack from locating her, but she wasn’t exactly sure where she was anyway. A thin forest crowded both sides of the road, and a lazy breeze scudded across the open pathway. She could just make out the route ahead when the moon peeked through the clouds. Other than that, it was as if she had run off the planet into open space.

“Ardra,”
Jack said,
“please stop this. Come back to me.”

Now she did smirk.
“It’s not going to be that easy. You want me? Come and get me.”

She pushed herself harder.

Jack sighed. “Well,” he told the others, “you can forget about her returning peacefully.”

He had been sitting on his patio trying to unwind when he’d felt Ardra brush his mind. Curious about why she had been checking up on him, he had touched her thoughts. A little song had floated into his head, and all he could see was darkness. He had also heard heavy breathing. At first, his mind had gone in an inappropriate direction, but then he had felt the sensation of wind against his skin and realized she had escaped.

Now every light in the compound had been thrown on, and people were beginning to gather. Across from him, Gabriella nodded in understanding, and Falk wore his usual serene expression. After Jack had spread the news about Ardra’s escape, Arrius had woken Walter. The two had finished organizing the search and had gone to communications to send word ahead to the next compound.

Although Jack had done exactly what he was supposed to do, he was sorry to see how the current state of affairs was escalating. The locals joining this fiasco knew what kind of intel Ardra was carrying, and they were edgy. Most of them visualized their loved ones living on another planet, perhaps the one that was scheduled for the next attack. This was an explosive situation, and Jack didn’t want Ardra to feel hunted.

He concentrated harder on finding her. As soon as he connected with her, he could feel her pounding heart as if it were his own. He even found himself breathing with her. She was pushing herself with everything she had. He tried to look through her eyes, but he couldn’t make out any landmarks in the dark.

“Getting anything?” Gabriella asked.

He shook his head. “This is hopeless. She’s lost. Even she doesn’t know where she is.”

“Can you at least tell us which direction she’s heading?”

He turned in place and rubbed his eyes. “When I first realized what was happening, I sensed she was running in the open. She started out on the road, but she may have since left it. There are plenty of side avenues she could use to hide, but I think she’ll stick to the main route as long as she can. She doesn’t want to risk getting stuck down some dead-end farm path.

Ardra belly flopped into the dirt in time to dodge a searchlight. The illumination up ahead had been growing steadily brighter as she closed the distance, but this one beam crept along the highway to find her. Did they know she was here?

Jack was already looking for her, but she wasn’t sure whether or not he had told anybody else that she had escaped. This was a different compound, and the lights might be part of their routine security. Routine or not, though, they would spot her if she wasn’t careful.

Flattening herself to the ground, she crawled farther from the roadside. She slid through some thick mud that burned every one of her cuts and scratches, and then she wove through a patch of weedy grass. Despite her discomfort, she continued forward. After what seemed like ages, she reached the side of the first outlying building. Her joints creaked as she slid herself up to her feet. With her back pressed against the wall, she eased around the corner.

Up ahead, there was nearly an exact duplicate of the compound she had left behind, only this one was about half the size. The lights were on in the buildings at the southern end, but the streets remained empty. Everything might have looked peaceful if she hadn’t seen the commotion higher up. They had constructed a scaffold on the roof of the tall building across the road, turning it into a search tower. Three people stood up there and swept broad rays of light in every direction.

Ardra stayed where she was and looked for a pattern to their movements. They had fallen into a sort of one-two-three routine that left her side of the road shadowed for several seconds at a time. With this knowledge, she moved farther back into the brush. There was a jagged wire fence, and she could see farmhouses not far off.

She prayed for stealth and darted along the fence through the tall, prickly grass. A search beam cut toward her, and she was no more than halfway to the other side when it caught her. It was like being nicked by a shaft of lightning. She slammed her chest to the ground before the spotlight fully framed her and mentally begged the man holding the light not to notice her. After a few agonizing seconds, the light moved on.

With no time for relief, she pushed up and took off sprinting again. She dashed the remaining length of the compound until she was once again enveloped by the wild womb of darkness beyond. It took a while for her vision to adjust, but then she picked up speed.

“She’s past the northern compound,” Jack announced.

He looked at Falk and Gabriella next to him in the ground cruiser, but they showed little reaction to the news. Walter had stayed behind so he could maintain contact with the other compounds, but everyone else fanned out along the road behind them. The short-range ground cruiser was slowing as its solar cells grew low on power, and he could barely see anything in the dark.

“It’s no use,” Jack said. “Pull up when we get to the next compound. We’ll have to wait until daylight to find her.”

“Are you sure?” Gabriella asked. “The farther away she gets, the harder it’s going to be to overtake her.”

He shook his head. “She can’t get too far on foot. I don’t want to risk losing her in the dark. I also don’t want her to know how close behind her we are.”

Gabriella still looked uncertain. “There’s no way you can figure out where she is right now?”

“I’m not global tracking,” he told her.

“And you can’t convince her to come back?”

“No.” Jack stifled a yawn and froze with his mouth still half open. He had an idea. “I might be able to slow her down, though.”

Despite her willpower, Ardra began to weave as her energy flagged. She couldn’t run anymore, and she let loose with a yawn. Deep on the right shoulder of the road, the ground sloped downward. She ducked into the ditch for the night. Even after she got off her feet, her soles continued to throb, and her mouth was dry. She could smell water somewhere nearby, but she doubted it would be safe to drink. The blood that had dribbled from her scalp encrusted her left eye and held the outer corner closed. She touched a finger to the wound and found it was sore but no longer bleeding.

Curling into the grass, she was overwhelmed by the sheer weight of her fatigue. She couldn’t understand how she could rest with people chasing after her, but she quickly fell asleep. Once she did, she dreamed of Earth.

Her mom was hosting some kind of dinner party at their house, and as Ardra peered through the crowd, she saw her dad was at the party too. He was holding her mother’s hand. Although she could see her father’s pale blue eyes, she couldn’t make out the rest of his face. It seemed that even here she was deprived of the chance to really know him.

“Are you having fun?” Jack asked.

She turned to face him. He looked so vivid and handsome that she almost reached out to touch him. She edged closer to get out of the way of someone carrying a tray of hors d’ouvres.

“I don’t know about fun,” she said, “but this is relaxing. What are you doing here?”

“I came to be with you, Ardra. I didn’t want you to feel alone.”

“That was nice of you.” Somehow she thought she had invited him. “Are you having a good time?”

“I am now,” he told her. “I’m very happy I found you.”

She gave him a crooked smile. “Was I hard to find?”

“You’re not hard to find, but you are difficult to reach.”

“There are a lot of people here.” She sort of wished they would all go home so she could be alone with Jack.

He leaned closer until they were almost cheek-to-cheek. “If you’re feeling overwhelmed, then maybe you need someone to rescue you.”

“Are you that someone?” she asked.

She couldn’t see his smile, but she felt it with her entire body.

He laughed. “How about abandoning your guests for the company of one man? Would you like to go outside with me?”

His lips lingered near her neck before he took her hand. Her heart beat faster as she felt his warm palm, but his touch made her feel strangely safe. He led her through the crowd, which magically parted for him, and then they were outside beneath the night sky. The stars appeared closer and brighter tonight, but they also seemed unfamiliar. When had she ever seen stars like this?

“Jack?”

“It’s all right, Ardra.” He kept his fingers wrapped around her hand and pressed his body close. “I want to share this with you.”

Lifting her hand with his, he pointed at several stars and traced the constellations. They all had names—names he made sound beautiful. Then he lowered his gaze to study her face.

“Who are you really?” he asked.

“That’s what I’ve been wondering about you,” she admitted.

They were interrupted when the guests poured out of the house and surrounded them with noisy cocktail chatter. She looked at Jack, but he was already fading.

The clamor of voices echoed and grew more distant until it became the sound of a search party that was far more present and real. Ardra awoke in the grass and sprang into a crouching position. It was past daybreak, and her pursuers were south of her along the main road.