Deviation (22 page)

Dark blue eyes met her own, communicating the knowledge they both shared.

She was infected.

Before she could voice anything the doorway opened and two men crowded into the room. Reesa recognized them at once; Charles Baine and David Borden. Somewhere in the back of her mind she had known who it would be before she'd seen them. Of course Matthew would call for Baine, the man was as loyal as a puppy. And of course he would call for his brother, who would be the foremost scientist that could find a cure.

Then her eyes flicked to the muted news report as it replayed the explosion and her heart wrenched. As much as she knew her time was limited with the virus and that she needed to let them tend to her, she could not leave Kate to fend for herself. Her mind was foggy and she realized belatedly that the men were speaking. David had already advanced to her left side and was opening a small, metallic case.

She blinked at it, remembering in a distant sort of way that it was his medical case. He swabbed the inside of her elbow with a quick, adroit movement and she lifted her attention to his face. David bore very little resemblance to his brother. There were the same high cheek bones and low forehead, but rather than the handsome set features prominent for Matthew, David's face seemed proportioned too close together. If he grew his hair out at the sides or something he could have looked slightly less ridiculous.

But then, this was David Borden. His arrogance superseded his reality and he automatically assumed he was better looking than anyone else in the room.

The prick of the needle finally focused her.

"By god, Matt," David was saying. "You actually married her?"

Matthew didn't reply in words. Reesa felt his hand on her shoulder squeeze just-so and she allowed herself to lean toward him. They watched in silence as David worked, depositing the blood sample into his case-turned-computer type tool. In a detached sort of way she noted the things she had gotten wrong in her writing. The medical case had five compartments, not four and was generally less shiny than she had imagined.

She blamed Star Trek for that. Rodenberry's sleek, sexy style had become so ingrained in her psyche that she'd subconsciously adopted certain assumptions.

The milky black pad just to the left of the computer's touch screen resembled the mouse pad of a laptop. When he smeared two drops of her blood on it, however, she caught the general function.

Micro-Analyzer.

"Good news and bad news," David announced promptly. "Your wife is indeed infected."

Matthew grunted.

"Good news is that it is not accelerating. It's taking the natural path so by my calculations ... " David tapped twice on the touch screen. "She has eleven weeks and five days before she expires."

Reesa flinched at the word choice; expires. Like a carton of milk, she thought. Good lord, David was just as cold and mechanical as she'd written him to be. Matthew, however, did not find humor in it at all. She felt his fingers dig into her shoulder as he suppressed himself.

"Not to worry," David said cheerfully. "I can fix her. I'll have her transferred to the lab."

"No," Reesa said in unison with Matt.

They glanced at each other and she remembered that she was female in a very male dominant society. Challenging a man or countering a man in such a way would not reflect well on her new husband. Reesa felt her cheeks burn as the attention of the room focused more fully on her person. She debated cowing and then her eyes caught the video screen again.

The replay slowed the attack down so much that Kate's hair looked like it was moving through water. The report zoomed in on her face, revealing the determined grit of her teeth, the narrow squint of her eyes as she ducked for cover.

"No," she said again, summoning her courage forward. "I need to get Kate."

"Who is Kate?" David asked.

"Remember your place, woman," Baine said from the doorway.

"Charles," Matthew's curt tone stopped her from retorting. "Her place is as my wife and she will enjoy the freedom that comes with that title."

"Good God, Matt," David's eyes rounded in shock. "You sound like a mawkish puppy."

"Kate is the woman that the Novo Femina are currently marketing as the savior of feminine freedom," Matthew ignored the comment. "She is uninfected and unaltered and we will be leaving to collect her shortly."

David finally looked at the video screen. Reesa saw the shock as it hit him. His mouth opened in surprise, working to emit some sort of sound as he stood up. "What the hell is going on?"

***

The Temple turned from serene warmth to roiling chaos in a matter of seconds. Hedric had seen the threat just before it had happened. The Makeem Loyalist had strapped so much weaponry to his person that Hedric had instinctively known the size of the explosion before it had happened. And much to his chagrin, he'd reacted on that instinct, reaching for and rescuing the Kate woman as though she really were Mesa.

It was only as the dust settled, as pebbled remains of the marbled structure trickled around them, that his mind got confused. She was pinned under him, her features twisted in fear and fury, face dusted with the powdery substance of destroyed marble, and he forgot for one blissful moment that she was Kate.

He settled his mouth on hers with a longing groan. His body came to vibrant life, shifting against her as his fingers dove into her tangled hair. The lips under his parted with a gasp and he licked to taste her, to seek her, to draw her reaction.

Only she didn't react.

There was something wrong with that but Hedric didn't stop to ask what. It had been too long since he'd felt her. Too long since he'd breathed her breath and savored her mouth.

And then his thoughts went to static as her knee slammed full-force into his groin.

Blinding, overwhelming pain shorted his brain.

She struck his temple next, sending him teetering to the left, and Kate scrambled out from under him. Curled on the ground, reeling in pain and shock, Hedric had a vague but annoyed pride in the sight of her as she took his weapon and did a crouching retreat to the nearest wall. She didn't look at him, which was just as well since he was still twitching with residual pain. And then he realized, with the careful check she made of the surroundings and the brief inspection of her newly stolen weapon, that Kate was trained.

Not as a Field Arc, there was too much terror in her face, but definitely trained.

And for some reason that really pissed him off.

He jolted to his feet, ignoring the whine of bullets and the shouting of men until he had reached her side. Whatever threat she read in his face made her level the weapon at him.

"Boss!" Myron's voice.

Hedric scanned the crumbling area until he located the pilot. Twelve feet away, Myron crouched against a pillar with Freeman just behind. He watched as Freeman turned around the pillar and shot several times. The sun blazed hot purple through the atmospheric greenhouse, glinting against the half-metal wall behind Kate. The frightened look on her features never faltered but neither did her hands. She kept the weapon on him, driven by some primal need that Hedric was finally able to identify.

Someone's mother, Myron had said.

He should have made Mesa a mother. Life would have been different. Fuller, he thought. Richer somehow.

The thought of Mesa pregnant tightened something in his chest. The ache of her loss hit him hard. He grabbed the gun from Kate's hands, wrenching it away and shoving her back against the wall with a rageful shout. Kate's head smacked against the metal and she fell limp to the side.

Hedric turned and fired. He didn't care at who or what, he just fired. In his mind was only the future he had lost. A future he'd never considered before; a future of children and laughter and content.

Something sharp struck his arm a moment before Myron tackled him to the ground.

"The Novo Femina opened the doors to its new Temple on Mars today. Makeem loyalists protested at the site, shouting the mantra that man would not fall to women again. Several ARC's were employed to maintain peace as well as keep the citizens safe from the local wildlife."
- A.P. January 7, 2281

They had built fail-safes into the temple and Celeocia wasted no time in deploying them. As the attack simmered to a standstill outside the gates, she sent her orders, calm and serene as always, even though her heart felt like it might burst through her chest cavity. Eanmar bustled just beside her as they made their way over the pentice. She could hear the hiss and whine of escaping ships as the general order to evacuate was obeyed. There were no alarms, just the flash of green whirling from the emergency lights overhead.

"Has Kate been located yet?" Celeocia asked.

"No." Eanmar replied, breathless and attempting to keep in stride.

Panic beat at her and she struggled not to show it. Everything hinged on Kate now. The Makeem would hunt her down and eviscerate the woman, making certain that all traces were gone. They couldn't afford to let the Scientific Community really examine her, after all. It would throw off their foothold in galaxy-wide politics if a real human female was alive and well. But in the mess of the attack the girl had gone missing. They had to find her and they had to find her alive.

Celeocia was only half paying attention to where she was going. The robot in her had begun to replay the incident, rewinding and slowing the events down. Hedric, bless him, had done the right thing. She could see in the images that he'd done a straight dive for Kate, shielding her with his armor-clad body from the explosion.

Something moved just beyond the pentice. Celeocia stopped and turned, recognizing the sleek cobalt blue of the Lothogy. First she saw her son, limp over the shoulder of one of his men and the mother in her faltered.

"Hedric," she whispered.

And then she saw Kate, limp like her son, toted on board the Lothogy in suit. The pilot carried her and the robotic part of her brain hunted for his name.

"Myron!" she shouted.

He paused halfway inside the ship and turned her way. She thought for a moment to shout an order, but his weapon turned with him. Instinct, her mind told her, but then he fired and she knew he'd known who she was. He'd known and he'd shot at her anyway and she was so shocked she forgot to move.

Eanmar took action. The acolyte tackled her down, forcing the bullet to miss and ricocheted against the pillar just beyond. Three more shots rang out around them, confirming that Myron had no intentions of relinquishing Kate, which was the most ridiculous thing she had ever witnessed in her life. Could 21st Century females inspire that sort of instinctive need to protect in the men around them? Or had Kate simply enchanted them all due to her distinct resemblance to Mesa?

Logic formed quickly.

Either Myron and the Lothogy crew were naturally prone to protect the girl given who she looked like, or Myron himself was Makeem.

They heard the roar of the Lothogy's engines and Eanmar hurried to stand. Celeocia steadied herself with a nearby pillar and got to her feet.

"Shoot the Lothogy down but don't destroy it," she ordered.

Eanmar repeated the orders into a communication box nearby. There was a brief hesitation and then the soldiers manning the temple perimeter opened fire. The Lothogy made a graceful evasion and turned left but Celeocia could see the men on the next tower preparing to fire. The leftmost engine exploded and the Lothogy made a violent tilt in the air. She watched, hands grasping the railing, as the engine sputtered from flame to smoke under the ships natural defenses. It leveled out but lost altitude at a steady rate, racing still farther away from the temple as it did so.

The Lothogy disappeared into the tree-line, a dark trail of smoke the only evidence of where it had fallen.

***

Kate struggled between the sluggish and painful aftereffects of having been brained on a wall, and the rising panic infecting the cockpit. Jellison and Freeman were arguing over something, Keats was shouting at them both while fighting to secure her mostly limp body into the seat, and alarms reverberated through the walls. She knew she was on the Lothogy again, but she had the distinct feeling that they were crashing.

It was the look on Myron's face that gave it away. He was so utterly focused, so stone-wall calm, that they had to be. Ben looked like that when he was scared, she thought. She'd seen him that pale when they'd taken a bad turn on a rafting trip. Blinking several times, Kate realized that the ship was tilted at an awkward angle, which was why Keats was having such a hard time buckling her in.

"Brace for impact!" Myron shouted.

Jellison and Freeman promptly shut up, which might have helped with her screaming headache, but the alarms were still blaring so there was no relief of pressure. Keats abandoned his mission and thrust his arms through the straps surrounding her instead, hugging up close as the first shudder rent through the ship. His face smacked against her collarbone and her left arm went numb.

Everything lurched forward as the Lothogy hit ground. Keats' legs lifted but his arms tightened around her, holding on out of a mix of protecting her and self-preservation.

Finally grabbing onto rational thought, Kate clung to him as well, wrapping arms and legs around him to keep him from flying through the cockpit. Everything teetered to the left, slamming her body against the side of the chair. She felt Keats' right arm crush under their combined weight and the man yelped in pain. Her ankles slipped and she nearly lost her hold on him.

Then the ship settled, snapping her back into the chair. Keats' body pressed hard against her for a moment, and then released as the Lothogy finally came to a standstill. She let the engineer go and blinked twice, hard, trying to pull her mind into focus.

"Report," Myron ordered.

His hands kept moving on the controls, shutting systems down until the alarms went off.

"Freeman, OK."

"Jellison, OK."

"My arm is broken," Keats hissed as he detached from her.