Heaven's Queen (49 page)

“So how long is this going to take again?” I asked, hovering over Rupert’s bed.

For the last time, I don’t know.
Hyrek’s claws clicked testily across the screen of his com.
All I’m doing is cutting off the drug that’s been keeping him unconscious and leaving him to wake up on his own time.

“Okay,” I said, settling back in my chair. “I’ll wait.”

Hyrek’s snout twitched as he removed the last of the gauze from Rupert’s face, followed by the oxygen mask.
You do realize this is not guaranteed? He could wake up in five minutes or five days or not at all.

“He’ll wake up,” I said firmly. “And I’ll be here. And if you try to kick me out, I will kick your ass.”

Hyrek snapped his teeth at me, but he didn’t try to make me go. No one did. Caldswell must have given an order, because the petty officers who usually hounded me to do stupid things like sleep or eat or fill out forms vanished altogether, leaving me alone with Rupert and my growing worry.

The first night was hell. I didn’t sleep a wink, and I had a newfound appreciation for all the times Rupert had waited at my bedside. The next day was better, but by late afternoon the quiet and exhaustion were taking their toll, and I started drifting off. I caught myself several times, but eventually I slept, my head resting on the mattress right next to Rupert’s arm. I couldn’t have been out for more than an hour when I felt something move beside me.

I shot up, wide awake in an instant. The lights were dimmed for the battleship’s night cycle, but it was still bright enough for me to make out Rupert’s sluggish movements under the sheets. I moved away quickly, giving him plenty of room just in case he wasn’t really himself yet. But when his eyes opened, they weren’t the dilated, crazed eyes of his symbiont. They were hazy and charmingly dazed as he looked around the darkened room in confusion.

I probably should have said something then, but I couldn’t make a sound. Relief and happiness and a thousand other emotions I wasn’t used to dealing with had stopped my throat tight. So I just sat there and waited until, at last, his eyes fell on me.

He stopped cold, his breath catching like he’d seen a ghost. I gave him a weak smile in return, the best I could manage without breaking down again like a ninny. “Hi,” I whispered. And then, because I’d already lost the chance to tell him once and wasn’t about to risk it again, I said, “I love you.”

The words fell so easily from my mouth I was ashamed all over again that I hadn’t said them earlier. From the expression on Rupert’s face, though, you would have thought I’d just announced my intention to slit his throat. He stared at me in horror, his eyes going so wide I could see the whites all the way around. And then, in a tiny, gravelly, beautifully accented voice, he whispered, “Am I dead?”

I should have told him calmly that he was not. I should have explained things to him like a sensible person, because he’d just woken up from a nine-day coma and was clearly confused. I
should
have done any number of things, but what I
did
was throw myself into his bed and kiss him like I’d been dying to since I’d first realized he was alive.

Rupert must have caught on that he wasn’t dead pretty quick, because after a few seconds he was kissing me back just as hard, his arms wrapped around my waist as far as the restraints would allow. When we finally came up for air, he still looked confused, though much, much happier.

“Where are we? What happened?”

“On a Republic battleship,” I told him, reaching down to unlock his restraints. “And you got shot in the head, though not by me this time. Caldswell did it, but he missed and you ended up in a coma. You just woke up.”

As I released the last hook holding him to the table, Rupert reached up to rub his temple. “The last thing I remember is getting you to the bomber. Did we fail?”

“Nope,” I replied, grinning wide. “Other than you getting hurt and both of us possibly going to jail forever, we succeeded spectacularly. Maat’s dead, the lelgis turned tail and ran, the phantoms are going home to greener pastures, and the daughters are saved. More importantly,” I added, sitting down on the edge of the bed, “you’re alive.”

I reached out to run my hand down his cheek, but I never made it, because Rupert grabbed me first. He sat up in a rush, crushing me against him as he buried his face in my neck. He didn’t say anything, didn’t make a sound, but his shoulders were shaking. I hugged him back, squeezing until my arms ached, and though I didn’t cry this time, it was a very near thing.

“I’m so happy you’re alive,” he whispered at last. “You have no idea.”

“I think I do,” I said, kissing his shoulder before pulling back to look him in the eyes. “Because if you
ever
scare me like that again, I will kill you myself.”

Rupert stared at me for a long second, and then he folded me back against his chest, pulling me up on the bed until I was sitting in his lap. “I’ll never leave you again,” he solemnly. “I swear it.”

I leaned into him, perfectly happy, because I knew he meant it. Whatever happened from here out, however screwed we were, we were together. Right now, that felt like the most important thing in the universe, and if thinking so made me a sentimental weakling, I’d just have to learn to deal with it.

We didn’t break apart again until Hyrek came in thirty minutes later. After that, I was ordered back to my chair while Rupert was put through the expected battery of tests. He bore the poking and prodding with far more grace than I would have in his situation, but then, it probably helped that he was completely healthy. I asked jokingly if symbionts could regenerate lost limbs as well as brains, which earned me a lengthy lecture on symbiont physiology from our resident lizard.

“You know, a simple yes would have sufficed,” I grumbled.

Ah
, Hyrek typed.
But then you wouldn’t have learned anything.

Two hours after he entered, Hyrek grudgingly pronounced Rupert cured. I think I was happier about that than Rupert was. I was so damn sick of this room and I wanted nothing more than to take Rupert back to the surprisingly nice cabin Caldswell had assigned me and fall asleep next to him for a week. Unfortunately, Caldswell picked that moment to come in.

He wasn’t alone, either. Mabel was there, along with an older man I’d never seen before, who was wearing a very important-looking Terran Starfleet uniform. Admiral was my guess, maybe higher. He also had a daughter with him who wasn’t Marielle. This girl’s hair was cut very short, and she looked every bit as cold and deadly as Maat at her worst.

I felt Rupert tense on the bed beside me as they entered, but his face was perfectly calm when I looked over. I moved a bit closer anyway, glaring at Caldswell to do something about it. Which meant, of course, that he did.

“Out, Morris,” he ordered.

I was opening my mouth to tell him exactly where and how hard he could shove his orders when Rupert squeezed my hand. “It’s all right, Devi,” he said quietly. “I’ll find you later. Go rest.”

I gave him a skeptical look, but as scary serious as this group looked, there was a daughter here. Between her and Rupert, that gave me two voices I trusted to be on my side. Besides, I reasoned, if they were going to lock Rupert up, they would have done it while he was unconscious, and they definitely wouldn’t have let me stay with him given my record for successful escapes.

That made me feel a bit better, and though I was loathe to leave Rupert so soon after getting him back, I wasn’t about to embarrass myself by making some kind of melodramatic scene. But I wasn’t above giving him a long, pointed kiss, just to make my intentions clear. He was grinning when I finished, and I grinned back, hopping off the bed and heading for my cabin, shooting Caldswell the mother of all death glares on my way out. I’ve made hardened mercs in full armor step back with that sort of look. Naturally, then, it rolled off Caldswell like water off a greased duck.

I don’t know who he’d kicked out to get it, but Caldswell had given me a very nice diplomatic suite on the ship’s port side. It was still cramped, we were on a battleship after all, but I had a full-sized bed, my own bathroom, and a window with a great view of the wrecked Dark Star Station. If I hadn’t known for sure what it was, I never would have recognized the place with the work lights all over the cavernous new hole it was sporting on one side.

Caldswell told me that almost all of the Eyes who’d run during our attack had survived. He’d informed me of this gravely, like I should care, but I really didn’t. It was his job to worry about symbionts. I didn’t give a damn whether they were dead or heading off to form their own symbiont colony so long as I never had to see any of them ever again.

I’d meant to wait up for Rupert to hear what Caldswell was planning, but I’d been awake for almost thirty hours at this point with only an hour’s nap in between, and my body was in revolt. By the time I’d showered and changed, I was dead on my feet. I passed out the moment I sat down on the bed, just fell right over. I don’t think I moved a muscle until I heard Rupert call my name.

When I opened my eyes, it was like I’d gone back in time. Rupert was sitting on the edge of my bed dressed in a somber black suit identical to the ones he’d worn on the
Fool
. The only difference was his hair, which was still short and slightly damp from the shower he must have taken, and the haze of glowing phantoms that was still flowing through the ship like a river. Otherwise, we could have been in Nova’s and my bunk back on the ship, except now Rupert was smiling openly at me, his hand reaching down to brush my hair out of my face with a possessive familiarity I liked a lot more than I’d thought I would.

“Well?” I asked, leaning into the touch. “What’s the verdict?”

Rupert frowned. “I’m still not quite sure, actually. Right now, it looks like the Eyes are being disbanded. There was talk of doing bodyguard work for the daughters, but they aren’t exactly keen to work with us.”

I could see how working with your former jailers wouldn’t be ideal. “What are the daughters doing?”

“A little of everything,” Rupert said, moving so that he was sitting on the bed with his back to the wall and my feet across his lap. It was the same position we’d been in when we’d played cards back in my room forever ago, only now he freely rested his hands on me, petting my legs as he talked like he couldn’t stop touching me.

“The daughters have all agreed to work willingly with the Republic and other governments in exchange for certain freedoms. Naturally, they can’t ever fully reintegrate knowing what they know and being who they are, but they’re powerful enough and valuable enough to make sure their confinement is on their own terms.” He grinned at me. “They also demanded amnesty for you.”

“Well, that’s nice,” I said with a yawn. “But I’m not up for being confined even if I am the one setting the terms.”

“Commander Caldswell said as much,” Rupert said with a shrug. “They didn’t make a decision about you, though.”

“But they did about you,” I said, reading between the lines. “What’s going to happen?”

Rupert sighed. “I disobeyed orders,” he said plainly. “So I’m being discharged.”

“Honorably or dishonorably?”

He chuckled. “Would you believe a little of both? There was a move toward court-martial, but Caldswell worked out a deal with the Republic. I’ve been stripped of my clearances and demoted to special envoy for the Scientific Council.”

I frowned. “What kind of job is that?”

“It isn’t one, really,” he admitted. “The title is just to keep me under all my secrecy clauses and on the books, but I’m currently on indefinite unpaid leave.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked. What the hell was Caldswell thinking? Rupert might be a symbiont, but he still had to eat. I understood the need to keep a supersoldier who knew decades of secrets under control, but under this setup, he couldn’t even get another job. “What are you going to live on?”

Rupert flashed me a wry smile. “Well, I did work a very high-paying government job for forty-three years without having to worry about living expenses, so I think I’ll be all right on that account. Honestly, some time off sounds very appealing, especially if I get to take it with you.”

That statement sparked a confused tangle of emotions in my gut. On the one hand, a vacation with Rupert sounded divine. On the other, I didn’t have a huge nest egg waiting for me, and like hell was I going to live off Rupert’s money. Even though I knew he’d offer it freely, I’d always made my own way, and anyway, I
liked
working. Assuming they ever let me out of here, I’d planned to get a job and start saving up for my next suit, maybe even reapply to the Blackbirds if Anthony hadn’t trashed my reputation too badly. I was still thinking about how best to explain this to Rupert when a light flashed outside my window.

I recognized it right off as a jump flash. A
big
one. My first thought was that another battleship had arrived, but when I glanced out the window to be sure, I almost fell off the bed.

A Paradoxian Royal-class battle cruiser was sitting just off our bow. Not just any Royal-class cruiser, either. This was a huge, shiny, golden palace of a battleship with the king’s own seal displayed proudly above the elevated bridge, and my heart leaped into my throat. “Rupert,” I choked out. “That’s the royal ship.”

“So it is,” he said, leaning over for a better view. “I wonder what they want.”

I looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “
The
royal ship,” I clarified. “The
king’s
ship.”

Even as I said it, I knew that couldn’t be true. Just because the royal ship was here didn’t mean King Stephen was on it. The king never left Paradoxian space. Ever. He was a living saint, the divine king. He didn’t even leave the planet unless there was a dire emergency that required his condescension to visit the Marches. He would never come out to a place like this, both Terran space and a recent war zone. The very idea was stupid.

I was still talking myself down when the com Caldswell had given me beeped with a message demanding my immediate presence in the starboard docking bay. Rupert was not mentioned, but I don’t think I could have made him stay if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t. I did make him wait while I changed into the nicest set of drab Terran deck clothes they’d given me, and then we set off together, my heart beating louder by the second as we took the elevator down.