Hostage To The Stars: A Sectors SF Romance (19 page)

Sara rose on her tiptoes to peer inside. Brow furrowed, she gave him a dubious frown. “Cramped. Tell me this can hold both of us.”

“Maybe.”

She retreated, stumbling over gear scattered on the floor. “I’m not going if you aren’t with me, Johnny Danver.”

The ground shook. Dust rained from the ceiling above. “Barrage is starting,” he said. “It takes time to blow up an entire planet. There’s a chain reaction to establish. But we’ve got to get you out of here.”

“We both go or no one goes.” Her jaw was clenched.

He walked to her and gave in to the overpowering temptation to kiss her. Sara twined her arms around his neck and pressed herself to him, returning the caress and deepening it. After a moment, he set her away from him. “My mission was to save you,” he said, voice low. “Let me accomplish my last mission.”

“No!” Sara wrenched herself out of his arms. “You have to come too. I refuse to leave you behind. This fucking capsule is going to have to save both of us or neither of us. The military always overbuilds, doesn’t it?”

“Usually,” he had to admit.

“So it can take a big guy like you and a smaller person like me.”

The ground shook again and he had to brace her to keep her from falling. “We’re out of time.”

“Then stop arguing, get in the damn capsule with me and let’s go.”

He hesitated.

Sara rested her hand on his cheek. “I know, you want me safe. And I love you for it. But life without you is no life at all. Either I’ll die with you here, or I’ll try the escape pod with you.”

“I can force you to go for your own good,” he said, picking her up as he reached his decision. “I know the damn pod can take care of one person. Two is dicey.”

Tears streaming down her cheeks, she begged. “Johnny, please, don’t do this.”

He strode to the escape pod.

“When you get to the
Penny
, don’t mention the cherindor, ok?” he said. “The beast is Shalira’s—Mike’s wife—her secret to keep. When someone actually escapes from the Mawreg, which isn’t often, a lot of the details are fuzzy, so the investigators will believe you if you say you don’t know how you got loose.”

She clung to him, hands fisted in his shirt, as he attempted to set her inside the capsule. “I won’t leave you. I won’t let you do this, sacrifice yourself for me. We can go together.”

He kissed her, indulging himself for a long moment, until another, more severe earthquake reminded him of the short time remaining for the planet. Firmly, he deposited her in the pod’s interior seat. Wiping the tears off her cheeks with his thumb, he tried to fill his voice with all the emotion trapped in his heart. “I never thought I’d be blessed enough to find a woman to love. To love me. I need you to live, Sara.”

She closed her eyes, shaking her head side to side. “Not without you.”

“I’m done arguing. You have to activate the controls from the inside. If you love me, do this.” He gave her a small shake, not hard, just enough to make her open her eyes. He needed to see her one last time, needed to know she saw
him
for goodbye.

Sara stared into his eyes for a moment, her own stormy and tear-filled. Then she nodded and transferred her gaze to the control panel. He told her what to input.

Nothing happened.

“Try it again,” he said, clinging to the side of the pod as the ground shook, threatening to take his feet out from underneath him.
 

“I did. It won’t work. I guess we’re going to stay here together after all.” She started to climb from the pod.

“This doesn’t make sense.” He scanned the readouts on the exterior control, which had come to life immediately when he entered his operator code and still glowed green across the board. Racking his brain for the details of the test flights he’d done so long ago, he smacked his forehead in chagrin. “Seven hells, two factor validation.” He helped her exit the pod. “Looks like you get your wish; we’re going together or not at all. I’ll get in and you’re going to have to crawl in on top of me. It’ll be cramped.” He pulled himself over the lip of the hatch and reclined, reaching for her. “Hurry!”

She managed to get inside, curling herself by his side in the tiny space, which wouldn’t have been possible if the designers hadn’t allocated enough room for a soldier in full combat uniform and his bulky gear. Padding closed in firmly on all side, pressing their bodies together, making her heartbeat accelerate and her chest tighten. She listened to his steady heartbeat under her ear and tried to calm herself. His fingers flying, Johnny activated the interior controls and the hatch slammed shut with enough force to rock the capsule on its stand.

“Why does it work for you and not me?” she asked, as the pod elevated and rose.

“Some Special Forces gear requires our operator code and our DNA. I didn’t even think about that when I first touched it but back in the day when we were doing the test runs, the controls were set with fail safes so no one took it for an unauthorized joy ride.” He hugged her as best he could. “We’ll be going into cryo sleep in a minute or two and stay under until the
Penny
retrieves us. I hope the coolant is viable after all these years.”

She screamed as the pod lurched and clanged against the tunnel wall before resuming its upward journey, accelerating as it ascended.

“Getting hot,” Johnny said. “I think the planetary chain reaction is pretty near to end point.”

“Do we have time to get far enough away?”
 

“The pod has hyperdrive short jump capability, if we can get high enough off the planet. The AI is making the decisions now.” He ran his fingers through her hair in a gentle caress. “I love you, lady.” The words were hard to make out, mumbled.

She tried to form the only possible response but her throat and lips were numb. She realized movement was impossible, both from the acceleration and the accumulating effects of the cryo sleep inhalant. Dying in Johnny’s arms wasn’t what she’d hoped for when they started this escape, but if her life ended high in the atmosphere of Farduccir, at least she’d be with the person who meant more to her than anyone else ever had.

The first thing Johnny saw when the escape pod opened and the cryo coolant dissipated was Mike’s face as he peered over the shoulders of the techs working to free him and Sara. He coughed. “Damn, the whole point of this was to keep you out of uniform, cousin.”

Mike laughed, relief plain in the lines of his face. “Yeah, well
then
the whole point became rescuing your sorry ass from the pirates and the Mawreg.”

Sara groaned and tried to sit up. One of the techs grabbed her.

“Careful, she has a broken hand,” Johnny said as the men lifted her from the pod.

Mike reached in to assist him in making his own way out of the pod’s embrace. “Who would have guessed this flaky piece of old tech would come in handy someday? We were pretty skeptical during the test program, remember?”

Johnny patted the pod’s side as he slid to the deck. “Life saver all right.”

“Is this lady the famous Sara Bridges?” Mike asked.

Although woozy and disheveled, Sara broke free from the medic to come to Johnny. Hand on his shoulder as he leaned heavily on Mike, peering into his face, she said, “Are you all right?”

“Head hurts.” He eyed her up and down, eyes narrowed. “And you?”

“I’m fine, or will be once the doctors fix my hand. And scan for any Mawreg implants.” She focused on the man supporting him. She thought she observed a faint family resemblance. “Are you Mike?” she asked.

He gave her a salute. “Major Mike Varone, at your service.”

“I heard a lot about you,” she said.

“I suspect not all good from the tone.” He laughed. “What have you been telling her about me, cousin?”

“Nothin’ but the truth, I swear. Well possibly the edited truth.” Johnny chuckled.

“Listen, he needs help. When we were in the Mawreg lab, he took in or absorbed a whole bunch of their data,” she said, ignoring their teasing byplay. “Some kind of memory implant he’s got?”

Mike gave Johnny a sharp glance. “We’re straying into classified territory here on an open deck.”

Sara stepped closer to Mike, attitude pugnacious, jaw jutting. “I made him tell me. He couldn’t stop himself from taking in data once he began. I-I had to hit him to get him to disconnect.”

Johnny grinned and rubbed his chin. “She packs a punch all right.”

She glared at him and turned to Mike. “The point is, he needs to download or debrief. He hasn’t been entirely himself since it happened. Please, can you get that arranged, the sooner the better?”

Johnny knew Mike understood his situation completely. But she was selling herself short —she had an important piece of data to share as well. Shaking a finger at her, he said, “This lady has a complete schematic of the Mawreg base memorized.”

Eyes wide in surprise, she shrugged. “For all the good it’ll do, since the planet’s been destroyed.”

“One of the interesting things we do know about the Mawreg,” Mike said, “Is the enemy doesn’t appear to vary their approach to creating their own facilities, certainly not rapidly, in response to past mistakes or events. So it might well be your blueprint gives us a key to every base they’ve ever built.” He glanced from her to Johnny. “This could be highly significant.”

“Yeah, well my brain isn’t exploding because of it, so treat him first. Promise me.” She stabbed her finger at Mike.

“Sir, we really need to get both of them to sickbay,” said the hovering medic. “The cryo sleep coolant in the old pod wasn’t any too fresh—there could be side effects to the lungs. Dangerous to keep delaying.”

As the small party moved toward the edge of the hanger deck, Sara asked, “How long were we drifting out there?”

“Not long.” Mike kept his hand on Johnny’s elbow. “The pod barely escaped the atmosphere before the planet blew, made the jump out of the cloud of burning atmosphere in fact. Maybe a day for us to locate the signal and then carefully haul you in with the tractor beams so as not to crush the pod and the two of you with it.”

“Ma’am, we’ll be taking you to a separate room from the sergeant,” the medic said, holding her in place as Johnny and Mike stepped to the gravlift portal.
 

Johnny turned and she threw herself into his arms for a hug and a kiss. “I’ll see you soon, promise.” He rubbed her shoulders and nuzzled her neck, breathing in her scent.

“I’ll watch out for him,” Mike said.

“Take care of yourself.” Sara relinquished her hold on Johnny and stepped closer to the medic as the two Special Forces operators entered the gravlift and whisked out of sight, accompanied by another medic.

She didn’t see Johnny or his cousin Major Varone again that day but the ship’s crew kept her busy - first being treated for all her aches and pains, large and small, by an efficient military doctor, then drowsing in a sickbay bed until the physician in charge decided she could have her own tiny cabin. An orderly gave her two sets of identical gray and blue casual clothes from the Ship’s store, plus utilitarian underwear, running shoes and socks, and two space marines escorted her to her cabin. An orderly brought her dinner on a tray—nourishing soup and fresh baked sourdough bread, real coffee, with fruit and pudding for dessert. Barely finishing the meal, she slept soundly and woke refreshed in the morning. Her broken hand had been rendered good as new in the ship’s smaller rejuve repair generator the night before, so other than residual tenderness, and a bit of hoarseness from the less-than-fresh cryo coolant, she was fine. The doctor had given her an inhalant for the lingering bronchial irritation and assured her the scans showed no Mawreg tech anywhere in her body.

A pleasant intelligence officer escorted her to breakfast in the officers’ wardroom and then somewhere else on the massive battleship to be debriefed. Sara asked about Johnny but was told he was being debriefed as well. All the military personnel she met were courteous and outwardly concerned for her welfare but asked a great many questions, particularly about how exactly she and Johnny had escaped the Mawreg. Remembering his request for her not to mention the cherindor, Sara fell back on the suggestion she couldn’t remember, repeating with increasing insistence the investigators needed to ask him for his recollections. Eventually, she allowed herself to give in to rising anxiety. Between the relentless questions and her worry about Johnny, she had a full blown anxiety attack. Hyperventilating and not making any effort at self-control she passed out in the small conference room, and woke to find the doctor lecturing her interrogators about overtaxing a civilian. The episode ended the morning’s discussion and the doctor took her off to have lunch with him, again in the officers’ wardroom. The conversation was all about her experiences on sabbatical, doing AO research. Nothing about her time with the pirates or anything touching on Farduccir. The doctor deflected her questions about Johnny, stating he wasn’t involved with the case.

After lunch, the physician delivered her to the original conference room, giving the new people waiting for her a preemptive warning about not pushing her too hard. The next phase of questioning centered on the diagram of the Mawreg base she’d memorized. Sara actually enjoyed participating in the discussion, intellectually fascinated to see how the patient questions of the intelligence officers coaxed her to remember more than she’d thought she would. When the officers indicated the debriefing was concluded, with no further questions, she asked again to see Johnny. There was awkward hemming and hawing, accompanied by sideways glances she didn’t like between the military men, and she was put off with another excuse.