Kidnapped (15 page)

"This place is different from all the others you've seen. People like me aren't supposed to be here. It's on the verge of Alliance territory and not supposed to have any Alliance presence, but we sometimes come anyway."

He winked at her and surprised her by taking her hand. "It'll be okay, just stay close to me. Come on, babe."

She made a face. "I always stay close to you. It's the only safe place."

*****

Patricia meant her words. Travis's world terrified her, and if she had a choice, closer to him was better. This time, his reassuring words sounded false and his smile seemed hollow. She knew he was trying to make her feel better, but it only served to convince her of the danger all around them. She still stepped through the airlock obediently, and wrinkled her nose at the unfamiliar smells attacking her. The ship might be desolate, dark, and depressing, but it was always spotlessly clean. This place smelled like trash and burning tires.

Behind her, Travis made a point of locking the ship, a thing he usually didn't bother with, and when they started walking through the corridor, she had to step over piles of debris. Some of the litter looked very suspicious and had a smell so rancid she didn't want to think about what it might be.

Drunks were bumping into them, and they had only walked for a couple of minutes when a man with four arms tried to rip her shirt off. Travis punched him and mumbled, "Sorry ‘bout that, baby doll."

She paused to look at the thug sprawled on the floor, not really comprehending what just happened. Her lover took her hand and pulled her along.

As they went further towards the centre and came around a corner, people lay in long rows in the hallway, and Patricia couldn't help it; she stopped and stared, eyes wide with surprise. Travis let go of her hand and wrapped his arm around her shoulders instead, urging her forward, trying to explain, "It's okay, they're alive, they're just... knocked out. You see, uh, sometimes people, uh..."

He pulled his artificial hand through his hair, seeming unusually uncertain and at a loss for words. Patricia, on the other hand, was much less naïve than he thought. She quirked an eyebrow and replied ironically, "Let me guess, it's complicated, and I wouldn't understand?"

He wasn't paying enough attention to hear the sarcasm, and sounded relieved, "Exactly."

She rolled her eyes, thinking men all over the universe were surprisingly much alike.

After a few more steps, it was Travis's turn to stop, and he poked a black-clad leg with the toe of his shoe, smiling wryly. "They should know better than doing this out in the open. If I wasn't so busy with other things I'd bust them."

They moved on again, at times having to step over people that had rolled too far over the walkway. Before leaving the distasteful place behind, Patricia paused once more and asked, curiously, "Are you tempted?"

His response surprised her; he started laughing, and pulled her tight as he answered, "Not a bit. I've got everything I need right here, and my reality is much better than anything anyone could see like that."

He kissed her quickly, and it made her feel oddly warm and fuzzy inside. She never doubted his love, but it was still nice to get it confirmed.

They continued deeper into the station, and she did her best not to ogle the clientele. She didn't even stare at the naked woman who tried to sell herself to them, but if she could have shrunk in size and jumped into the relative safety of one of his pockets, she would have. 

Her lover's voice woke her from the appealing fantasy, "I didn't really want to bring you here, sweetie, this place isn't for people like you, but I need you to keep an eye out for me."

*****

When Travis finally stopped, they were far down in the station, and the door next to them looked just like all the others. He glanced over thoughtfully at Patricia, wondering if she could find her way back if she had to, and then wondered why he wondered. He didn't exactly believe in premonitions, he didn't even know the word, but he did trust his instincts. Pulling out a small weapon from a pocket, he pressed it into her unwilling hands. "You take this. Look, this is the safety. If this dot is red, it means it's armed and dangerous."

His mouth twitched a little as he was talking. The description felt a little silly, but he kept reminding himself she didn't have a clue, and he needed to make it easy. Pointing to a wheel on top of the barrel, he continued, "This controls the power. One is the lowest setting and would just stun a person. Two kills people, and three disintegrates them. This is a small weapon with a small power source, so you can do a lot of ones, but only five or maybe six threes, okay?"

Patricia nodded, and the way she held the gun told him all he needed to know. She was afraid of it and wasn't going to use it. He turned the wheel and changed the setting. "Let's have this at one to start with. If something happens and you shoot people like that, they'll get up eventually, but it will buy you time."

He sighed, thinking that coming here might have been a bad idea. Pulling her into his arms, he continued quietly, "I'm not saying anything will happen, it probably won't. It's just in case, okay."

She nodded reluctantly, and he smiled, trying to shake the dark feeling off. "Good."

There were more things he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her to be prepared and watch out just in case, but he didn't know what he was worried about, and scaring her was counterproductive. She was still holding the gun, between two fingers as if it could bite her, and he took it out of her hand and tucked it into her pocket. "There you go."

*****

Patricia was distracted by the gun. She didn't like it, didn't want it, and it weighed down her clothes in a menacing way. When her lover stepped closer to the door in front of them and it started to slide open, she wanted to hide behind his back. Whatever might be in there must be dangerous if he wanted her to be armed, and she didn't want to see it. Then, she blinked with surprise; it wasn't at all what she would have expected.

She stood on the threshold of a doctor's office, and it was clean. A man sat working at a desk and turned around when the door opened. He winced when he saw the uniform, squinted and put a pair of glasses on, and to her surprise, he smiled widely when he recognized Travis. This was a first. Everyone else they'd ever met had greeted him with fear.

Once inside, her lover waited for the door to close, and said lightly, "Samuel, meet my girlfriend Patricia. Patricia, this is Samuel. He's, uh, an old friend."

She lifted an eyebrow. She hadn't expected him to have friends, and Samuel looked just as surprised at the concept of his friend having a girl.

The man was short and a little stout, had light-brown curly hair and friendly blue eyes. If Travis had chosen to have one friend, this was probably a good choice. He looked solid and she would have expected him to be a farmer in the sunshine of some rural planet, not a doctor in a place like this.

Samuel got up to shake her hand, and seemed to feel the situation needed some explanation. "Come in, sit down. Can I get you something? How about some tea?"

He nodded to himself and turned his back to them, heading towards a kitchen module before she had the time to answer. "You see, Patricia was it, this station wasn't always like this. It used to be better, much better. There was an Alliance raid on it, and some merchants set fire to most of it. Travis here saved my children. They don't live here anymore, it's too dangerous nowadays, but anyway, I owe him big time."

There weren't all that many places to sit, so Travis took the guest chair and pulled her down in his lap while the other man roamed around the room, fixing the tea, babbling on. Patricia sent her lover an amused glance. He shrugged a little, and seemed somewhat embarrassed, whispering, "They were very small, and close to the fire, and, I don't know what happened."

Samuel heard him and chuckled, "Oh, don't be silly, you know exactly what happened."

He turned to Patricia and explained, "This very room was in flames, do you see the beam over there?"

Pointing at a crooked steel construction, he continued, "That thing bent from the heat. So, this man heard the babies crying inside, and he went right in to get them, protecting them with his own body. Don't get me wrong, I know everyone's supposed to be terrified of Commander Travis, but to me, he's the only hero I ever met."

Travis cleared his throat and interrupted the flow of words, "He's making that up."

Patricia found all of this hilarious, and she did believe Samuel. If his programming glitched enough to let her out of the cell and into his heart, it could very well have happened before.

Samuel settled down a little when he was back in his own chair. Travis declined the tea, but Patricia took a mug to be polite, and after taking a couple of sips, Samuel eyed them curiously.

"So, what happened here huh? You, Commander, are not supposed to be doing this. Or should I say this either? Big trouble on the horizon for you."

Travis answered flatly, "I know. That's why we're here. I need your help."

The doctor bit his lip and nodded. He didn't need to ask what the help might be. "Get your clothes off and go in the scanner."

Patricia didn't understand what they were talking about, but when Travis kissed her on the cheek and tried to joke, "No looking, missy," she cradled his face in her hands, looked into his eyes for a long moment, and pressed her lips against his. She was happy he kissed her back, and when he pulled her close, she forgot all about the gun in her pocket, about where they were, and about being worried. At least until Samuel cleared his throat and teased, "Do you two want to borrow my apartment?"

*****

The procedure didn't take long, and Patricia was watching the screen curiously, even though the pictures didn't mean much to her. Samuel, on the other hand, was looking at the depictions of Travis with a frown, shook his head, and mumbled, "It's time for you to retire."

She asked, "What do you mean," in a voice that might have been a little too urgent, because he looked at her with sympathy in his eyes.

"You're not from around here, are you?"

Giving her head a little shake, she confessed, "I don't know where I'm from," and he said dismissively, "Well, don't worry about it, he's fine."

The answer was a bit too short and she lifted her eyebrows and stared at him until he became uncomfortable enough to say something more. "Okay, look at this bone for instance. It's been broken and fused back together so many times it's getting difficult to tell what is what. Over here, these blue areas are artificial organs. If I put you in the scanner, I bet you wouldn't even have one."

Staring at the screen, squinting at it and tilting her head from side to side did absolutely nothing to bring clarity to what she saw, and she gave up. Samuel had told her not to worry, and she couldn't do anything about anything anyway.

When Travis was getting dressed again, Patricia did her best not to ogle. She just peeked a little, with a smile tugging at her lips, and Samuel fidgeted. "There's one in your arm of course, and it's set to trigger the explosives if anyone tampers with it."

Travis shrugged and replied unemotionally, "We'll cut the arm off, it's been done before."

 Patricia groaned and put a hand over her face, but the doctor just went on, pretending the idea didn't bother him at all. Then, the rest of their words penetrated her mind and she asked, "What explosives?"

Both men ignored her. "Alright, it's your flesh. There are three more in your body, one's pretty close to the heart, but I think I can get it out. One's in your foot and that won't be a problem, but, uh..."

Samuel looked troubled. "The last one is at the base of your neck and quite entangled in the nervous system. I don't have the equipment to do it."

Travis asked with a trace of impatience, "Well, can you get it?"

Samuel shook his head a little, "I suppose, but it will take some time, maybe three months, and, even if I do..." He made an apologetic gesture, "Even if I do, there's a fifty percent chance I paralyze you." 

Neither of them listened to Patricia, when she once more asked, "What explosives?"

Travis was looking at the doctor and shrugged. "Well, if that happens, just kill me and make sure Patricia gets back home to her planet, okay."

Samuel sighed, and she yelled, "What explosives?"

This time, both men turned to look at her. Her lover's facial expression didn't change at all when he said, "In my arm. Veronica wants to make sure I'm obedient."

The news that Travis was walking around with a bomb in his arm made Patricia wonder what other horrible things he hadn't told her. She wanted to ask, but he was already leading her out of there and she barely had time to wave goodbye to the kind doctor. The corridor didn't seem to be a good place to talk about anything, but she promised herself he wouldn't get out of it
that
easily.

They didn't get far before Patricia heard the hard sound of boots against the metal floor. It was much too rhythmic, and loud enough not to drown in the background noise of the station. It seemed ominous to her, and her hope of being wrong disappeared when her lover tensed and mumbled, "That can't be good."