Anstractor (The New Phase Book 1) (24 page)

When she arrived at the executive room that was given to her, Camille turned off all the lights, set the bath going, lit several aroma candles, and removed her clothes to submerse herself into the olive liquid. After she had soaked for ten minutes or so, a shadowy figure stepped out of the corner and stood next to her.

“Hello, love of my life,” Camille said calmly.

She didn’t need to look at Rafian to know it was he. She could always feel him. The Filan blood that was part of her ancestry gave her the gift of attachment to people she had been intimate with. It was the reason Filans rarely slept with more than one person in their life. When Filans chose a mate, it was normally a mate for life, but this was not something she had ever shared with him. The men she had killed in the jumper training had been unworthy of her body. They were aggressive with her, and she could not bear the thought of staying attached to them for a lifetime. Filans were an old race from Vestalia. They were fair-skinned, bright-haired, light-eyed people. Her looks should have given her away to other Vestalians, but given the rarity of a Filan being around in this day and age, many just took her to be a regular Vestalian descendant or of mixed race with Vestalian and Meluvian.

“Is this going to be a problem, Cammy?” Rafian asked as he removed the 3B mask and sat on the edge of her bath looking at her.

“What problem?” Camille asked nonchalantly, her tone hinting she didn’t care for an answer because she knew what it would be, but she wanted to hear it from him anyway.

When he replied with “Us,” she couldn’t help but laugh out loud. But it came out as a small “Hmph,” as she wished he would walk away and leave.

“I hurt you, Cammy. I can keep on saying that it was unintentional due to my amnesia, but I brought back Mari when I got my Memory back, not thinking that I already had a wife-to-be waiting for me here. A wife-to-be who gave up her body and her everything to join an organization at my behest. I get it, and I am sorry.”

He lifted one of her shapely legs out of the bath water and washed it gently with the sponge, admiring how perfectly shaped her tiny feet were. She watched him as he did it and would have been lying to herself if she had said that she didn’t like it.

“I never told you my heritage, Rafian, but I am an old race, just like you.”

She was beginning to feel sorry for him, as he seemed genuinely tortured, and she wanted him to know the reason behind her obsession.

“So, you’re a Seeker too?”

“No. Look at me. Like, really look at me, Raf.…I have blond hair, dancing crystal eyes, and fair, slightly golden skin. How many girls around here do you see who look anything like me?”

Rafian took a look at Camille again, this time observing her racial uniqueness. Then it dawned on him that she was indeed a one-of-a-kind on the ship. Sure, there were many blondes and dark and pale skin types, but Camille had a complexion that stuck out from all of them, and her eyes were also freaky. They looked as if she had no pupils in certain lights. It was due to the color, a gray that was so light it appeared to be silver. Camille was also one of the only soldiers who could detect him even when cloaked. She triggered uncontrollable urges within him whenever she was close, and she felt like his, no matter how much he shielded his feelings with the thought of his love for Marian.

“Get out! Camille, are you a Filan descendant?”

He knew the answer as he asked, and the thought of it frightened him.

“So how in the hell did you get through the jumper class? Sex outside of your chosen is supposed to be like torture to…”

He stopped himself as he put it all together—the murders, Camille’s sudden cold nature, her refusal to let him drift away. He realized that the night he made love to her on the mercenary ship so many years ago had fulfilled the Filan bonding ritual of matrimony.

“Why in the hell did you not warn me back then, Cammy?”

“I didn’t think we would go that far, Rafian! I was stupid and lonely—there we were! Two decorated fighter jocks with no one in our lives but each other. You cannot tell me that you did not see me as your soul mate and life partner back when we were cleaning ships together. You were—are—everything to me, do you not understand? We lived together, we made love every night; it was perfect before all of this jumper nonsense.”

Rafian knew that she was right, and he looked at the Executive Room wall as he pondered this. He had been fully committed to Camille all the way up to his first jump and the chemical Memory loss that made him find Marian. He still had strong feelings for her and knew it went beyond the draw that her Filan nature had on him when he was near her. There would be no “moving on” for Camille, and the only way they would be rid of each other was probably through death.

“Do you love me, Rafian?”

She broke his thoughts with the question. It was asked so quietly that he wondered if she really wanted to hear his answer.

The jumper leader stood up and began pacing the room in thought. “I can’t stop thinking about you, Cammy.”

He had finally admitted it, and he inhaled angrily as he let it sink in that the admission made him a terrible husband to Marian.

“I love you to death, baby, but I will not divorce my wife. Our lusty decision on that ship has bound us permanently, but Marian and I are connected in a different but similarly deep way. What would you have me do? Should I consider suicide to release you, or should I return to Tyhera with Marian so as to spare you the connection trauma whenever I am near?”

Camille motioned Rafian over and emerged from the mineral bath to stand in front of him naked, the water pooling around her feet on the shiny black floor.

“Look, it would be easy to choose either, but that is not our way, is it, Commander? I think you should find a way for Marian to accept that I am in your life…forever. Accept that I had you first, and accept that if I want you, then I am going to have you.”

She had a serious and dangerous look in her eye that reflected a person who was settled on a direction. She touched the sides of his face with her wet hands and kissed him gently on his lips. She smelled and tasted like heaven.

“I’ve experienced and survived some really traumatic things for you, Rafian. I know that you know this. I am sick of crying and curling up in pain trying to get past what I cannot physically get past. So tell that to the woman you married, or don’t tell her. But accept that you cannot shun me and be rid of me. I think you owe me that at least.”

Rafian nodded in agreement.

“You got it, baby. I will talk to Marian.”

With those words, he slipped off the 3B suit, drew her naked body near, and gave her a welcome to the Helysian that made the medals and praise offered up earlier seem like nothing.

Rafian sat in his favorite café on
Helysian
, slowly sipping on the tea he had ordered to calm him. He sat in his regular seat, which was in the back, behind one of the large columns that held a mock Vestalian ceiling in place. The café was supposed to help patrons immerse themselves in the music and forget for a few minutes that they were on a military ship.

Everyone in the café knew Commander VCA, but more importantly, they knew not to bother him or alert other patrons that he was in attendance. Most days he was there, he would be calming his nerves from a mission or seeking escape from the political arguing that men of his position seemed to gravitate towards. Rafian was still very much a soldier, and he felt more comfortable going into action than filling his stomach with exotic liquors and bartering for the planetary scraps that fell from the Geralese table of galactic domination.

Today, he had come to the café to escape the sarcastic wrath of his beloved wife Marian. He didn’t know why he thought that the conversation about Camille would be easy. For Marian, the old Tyheran ways were hard to break, and even though she herself was part of their new order, she could not find it in herself to allow her husband to have an open relationship or to accommodate another woman outside of herself.

After a heated argument, Rafian removed himself from Marian’s wrath when he realized how bad an idea it was to ask her about it. In his mind, he silently decided that he would still be with Camille, but in a very secretive way. He drank the tea thinking about the inevitable future when they would be caught, the fight that would ensue, and the disappointment that would be reflected in Marian’s eyes. He couldn’t help but smile at the thought of the two women fighting. He didn’t know which of them would win, but he knew that it would be an epic battle. He also knew that it could end up being deadly, and he didn’t want either of them to go off the deep end. He would have to make sure that both he and Camille were never caught. He had to make sure they kept it high, tight, and professional.

The entire thing made him sigh with a heavy chest; life had always been an adventure for him, so he didn’t know why he invited drama into his life with this new issue. Better had he left his new wife on Tyhera and jumped to her every weekend or so, but that was unrealistic. After what he had done to her life, her becoming a traitor and starting a fire under the revolution, it would have made more sense for him to live there with her and jump back to Camille whenever he could. There was no easy way to avoid this, and it led him to even more irrational thoughts, such as, what if he could just leave them both for a new start somewhere else?

“So am I to be replaced by food and drink now, Rafian?”

The question came from an unexpected Marian, who plopped down next to him with a concerned look on her face.

“Did you really think it would be easy with me?”

She was obviously trying to continue the earlier discussion that he was trying so desperately to get away from. His immediate urge was to get up and leave, but this was his wife, a woman whom he had vowed to stay with for life. Vows were to be taken seriously, and although he hated verbal arguments, he owed Marian the conversation.

“There isn’t much to talk about, Marian. The reality of the matter is that for Camille, someone I hold dear to my heart, our bond is chemical, and if I push her away, it may become suicidal for her.”

Marian punched in the code for her standard order of coffee with milk and let it materialize fully before picking it up and sipping away at it. Rafian was fully aware of her tactic of letting him simmer before she answered, but he focused his attention on the holographic dancer who shook her body in front of the kitchen. The silence was nerve wracking, but he set his mind elsewhere, not expecting an answer. He missed Aurora. She was so easy to talk to during situations like this. The few times he had argued with her, they would find a way to talk it out, and within minutes, they were back to joking with each other and enjoying each other’s company. With Marian, the fights had a way of becoming lengthy sieges. Here, she was invading his quiet time, but he knew she wanted closure as much as he did.

Marian was a woman whose livelihood and belief structure had been uprooted in his rebellion. He had tried to take her life and then stole her away to marry her. Next he took her away from her home, her country, her planet, and her galaxy, and took her to a strange world where he was promised to another woman. She in turn played along nicely the entire time and then joined his insane jumper organization in order to stay with him. Reflecting on all of this made him feel like an ass.

“You know what, Marian? You don’t deserve any of this. I apologize. Let me figure out this thing with Camille. You need not concern yourself further.”

He stared at her to read how she was taking it. He did not want an argument, and he most certainly did not want her upset and disappointed in him.

She looked up from her coffee, smiled slightly, and then said, “Thank you, husband.”

The pair continued their time together with happier topics, and after another thirty minutes of talking, Marian got up, kissed Rafian on the top of his head, and left. Rafian sat there in a daze afterwards, not willing to follow her. Just then his comm flared alive with an incoming call. The face of Tayden Lark hovered above it and began to speak.

“Hey, Commander, our scouts on Vestalia have found vulnerability at a massive Geralese compound known as Zynec Prime. The marine command would like for our jumpers to investigate this place, destroy as much of it as we can, and occupy it as our Alpha location for retaking our home planet.”

Rafian sighed with relief at the chance at doing something else. It was of the highest honors that his command was being asked to do this mission. He quickly thanked Tayden for the update and resisted the urge to leap to his feet and yell with excitement. Instead, he stood up, took a deep breath, and swallowed the last of his tea. Rafian made his way out of the café and towards his rented office. He called Camille to let her know the news, but the call wasn’t answered. This made him stop in his tracks! What sort of jumper did not answer a direct call from the commander? He looked at the comm as if it had the answer and then took a detour to the
Helysian
command in order to investigate.

* * *

Camille YAN was not a woman who was used to being on the wrong side of military command. She was the girl scout who could only do right and an enforcer of the rules. After her chat with Rafian about her feelings and his surprising acceptance of both his guilt and his unwillingness to let her go, she decided that a few drinks were in order. However, the celebration went a bit too far when she took too many shots of Cenelagine, and before she knew it, she was waking up in a puddle of her own vomit. A flirty crewman who had tried to get too close to her was lying on the floor next to her with a smoking hole in his chest from her side arm. Camille was arrested and taken to the brig, but after some evaluation, she was immediately released to a psych ship in order to be treated for her mental condition.

Upon learning all of this, Rafian felt as if he had been punched in the stomach. He had so many questions about the process. Why hadn’t he or Tayden been alerted? What sort of treatments was she to receive, and was she going to get prison time? He didn’t know what to do, especially after learning that she was not allowed to have visitors. He stood at attention in front of the brig warden, his only show of emotion being his knitted brows from being upset and confused.

He knew she had not been herself since the jumper situation, but he assumed that with time and healing, the old Camille would be back to defeat her demons and rejoin the world, as she smiled defiantly at her doubters. He was wrong, of course, and he knew that the doctors would help her. But the question about the shooting still remained, and he had to have an answer.

Wheeling around to march out of the jail, Rafian noticed a young cadet running his direction. Upon catching up with him, the boy bowed deeply and took a knee, and Rafian swallowed some saliva to moisturize his dry throat before addressing him.

“What is it, Cadet?”

“Sir, first let me say it is an honor to speak directly to the commander, sir! I apologize for disturbing the commander’s stroll but wanted to let him know that Subcommander Camille YAN will be scheduled for release after getting an all clear from the psych ship
Lauren
. The unfortunate death of crewman Sole Sirn is ruled a result of the subcommander’s poor medical condition, and he will be air locked with high military honors as a soldier of war.”

Rafian regarded the young man closely and then looked around to see who might have sent him.

“Thanks, Cadet,” he managed to say, but as he nodded at the boy in gratitude for the tip and searched his senses, he realized that it was the brig warden who had saved Camille, shipped her off, and then sent the messenger to discreetly let him know the fate of his fellow jumper officer. He made an oath to reward the man for looking out for her, but first he needed to take care of much more pressing matters. Rafian summoned the twenty jumpers onboard—including Marian—and they assembled on the dock. He told them of the situation with Zynec Prime and then lied about Camille, telling them that she had been shipped off on a private jump.

Rafian unilaterally changed the name of their organization, referring to them as phasers instead of jumpers. He had always hated the term “jumper” and preferred his old military designations instead of the abstract titles of the former jumpers, such as numbered call signs and “person” for fully lethal warriors. His command was simple. They were to send one solitary ship into the hell zone and have it infiltrate Zynec Prime to decimate her defenses. Once the defenses were down within the war zone, the pilot would drop a crystal for the other phasers to teleport onto the ground and commandeer the area from within. They would quickly set up a base city and then silently operate from behind enemy lines.

Upon hearing this, the phasers were excited. They could finally test their mettle at home instead of jumping off to other galaxies. High spirits were all around until they learned that the pilot volunteering for the drop was none other than their commander, Rafian VCA. Marian looked ready to object when he announced it, but she saw the look in his eye and knew that after their argument and the sudden disappearance of Camille, there had to be bigger schemes beneath Rafian’s command. It made her wonder if there was a motive behind his volunteering. Could it be a rendezvous with Camille, who had possibly jumped there? Or, perhaps, given his dark mood as of late, was he was contemplating suicide?

She was uncomfortable with it, but if her assumptions were right, confronting him would be the worst thing she could do. She let it play out and prepped herself to be one of the “boots on the ground” when the crystal beckoned. Her husband and whatever he was planning to do would remain a mystery, and she would just have to trust him to tell her whenever he was ready.

When Rafian dismissed his men and women to enjoy their last night before deploying, he avoided Marian and chose instead to do the one activity he always did to clear his head. It was late in the hour when she found him atop his Zero fighter, polishing it as if he were going to be presenting it in an aerial show.

“I brought you some Vlorian ice cake,” she said, smiling at him through the side of her face, the way she always did, hoping a friendly demeanor, a tasty dessert—which he always seemed to order—and some civil conversation would walk him back from the dark precipice she assumed he was teetering upon.

“You’re a sweetheart,” he said in a dry, aloof manner.

“Look, Rafian, this mission…” she began, and she could see him preparing to dismiss her as if he did not want to hear anything she had to say.

“I know that your mind is made up, babe, but why you? You’re the top commander. This is crazy! The only time people do things like this is when they feel no confidence in their people to get a job done successfully, or when they want to go out in a blaze of glory on an important mission! I’m not going to bite my tongue now by saying this, but I feel for you it is the latter. Why you?”

Rafian hopped down from his ship, threw the dirty cloth under its front wheel, and walked towards Marian.

“So I’m suicidal now? How many of these phasers do you know to be trained as ace pilots? Outside of Camille YAN, how many other war-proven ace pilots do we have in our number, Ree?”

Marian knew the answer but pretended to think about it at length. She got the point. There was no other pilot like Rafian VCA to fly the crystal drop. They had pilots who were good enough to be drafted in as phasers, but none as good as the man and woman who commanded them. Tayden was in decompression after completing some sort of top-secret mission, and Camille was missing in action. Rafian had to be the one to do it, and though it hurt her to see the man she loved attempt a mission so dangerous, she knew that as a soldier and a wife, she had a duty to support him.

“Well, husband, tomorrow is the day of your lethal mission, and I will be watching you from a holo-vid somewhere up here, biting my nails and wishing upon every god’s name that I know that you will make it through, drop the crystal, land, and join me with the other jump…I mean phasers…in taking that strip of land.”

Their last week of painful conversation about Camille had dismantled what seemed like a lifetime of love between them, and it all flooded her mind and made her extremely tired and worn out. How had they fallen apart so quickly?
And why is he so angry?