Lords of the Sea (20 page)

* * * *

“We were beginning to think we’d have to send out a search party for you …

again,” Mark muttered when Cassie reached Linda’s quarters.

Cassie blushed but sent him an irritated glance for the reminder.

She sure as hell wasn’t going to tell them Raen was the main reason she’d been gone so long … again. “I’m starving,” she said, trying to divert everyone’s mind before they began to pelt her with questions she didn’t feel like answering at the moment.

She’d parted company with Raen when they’d reached the council chambers again. It wasn’t until then that she’d begun to wonder why he’d asked her to walk with him at all, let alone taken her to his home—or what was left of it.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t enjoyed it. The problem was, she’d enjoyed it way too much, and she’d seen a side of Raen that was way too appealing.

She sighed.

Every
side of Raen was way too appealing.

Remembering the way he’d smiled at her when she’d agreed to walk with him thrilled her all the way down to her toes all over again. He was handsome when his face looked like it had been carved from stone. That smile …. If she’d been hit by a bolt of lightning, she couldn’t have been more stunned.

“You’re in a good mood,” Linda observed suspiciously.

Cassie looked at her blankly, feeling guilty color creep up her neck.

Unfortunately, her mind was equally blank and a ready lie didn’t instantly spring to her tongue. She’d been too bemused and addled by Raen to realize she needed to think up a believable lie if she didn’t want to tell them truth. “I’m glad that’s over with,” she managed finally.

“That bad, huh?”

She shrugged. “There was an Admiral Valora there—snotty bitch.”

“A female Admiral?” Mark asked in patent disbelief.

Cassie narrowed her eyes at him. “Just what’s that supposed to mean?”

He glanced from Cassie to Linda and Shelly and finally shrugged. “I was just surprised. Admiral of what?”

Cassie pointed a finger heavenward. “That.”

“You’re shitting me!” Jimmy exclaimed in excitement. “You met the captain of the alien ship?”

“The councilor called her Admiral.”

“You’re sure of that?” Carl demanded.

Cassie turned to look at him in surprise. “I’m sure.”

He shook his head at the question in her eyes. “Later.”

His attitude made her uneasy, but she didn’t push it. The servants arrived only a few moments behind her with lunch on trays and everyone was preoccupied with the food for a while. “I guess that cinches it,” David muttered when the servants had left.

“What?” Ben asked absently.

“Cassie arrives and less than five minutes later the servants do?”

114

Ben stared at him blankly. “Oh. I figured as much. I’d already begun to suspect it before Cassie mentioned it.”

“Right!” Jimmy said with a snort. “You wouldn’t have been humping that ET if you’d known you were on candid camera. You think they’re airing the clips on the net?”

Ben glared at him. “If all they got was a view of my hairy ass, I ain’t worried about it.”

Jimmy chortled. “Yeah, because the last woman that saw your hairy ass was your mother!”

Ben threw a food missile at him. “So when’s the last time you got laid, dork!”

“The night before we left.”

“Yeah, right!” He seemed to think it over and then his eyes widened. “You’re not talking about that corn fed beauty I saw you with at the bar?”

Jimmy glared at him furiously, all signs of amusement vanished. “Don’t talk about her like that. She’s not fat, asshole. I like a woman with curves.”

Ben snickered. “Me, too, but that one had a few more than I like on my women.”

Jimmy shot up from his seat on the mattress, overturning his plate, and launched himself at Ben while everyone gaped at him in stunned disbelief. He’d punched Ben a half a dozen times before anyone recovered enough to drag him off.

“What the hell’s the matter with you, Slater?” Carl demanded when he’d managed to separate the two men.

“You heard what that asshole said about Jennifer!”

“God, Jimmy! It’s not like she’s here.”

“
I’m
here!” Jimmy snarled, stabbing a thumb at his thin chest. “And I told him not to talk about her like that.”

“Alright, already!” Ben snapped. “I’m sorry. I was just kidding, man.”

“Well it hurts her feelings, asshole, and I don’t think it’s funny!”

Carl eased his hold on Jimmy. “You alright now?”

Jimmy stared at him for a long moment. “Hell no! I’ll meet y’all outside,” he snapped and stalked from the room.

Still gripped in stunned silence, no one said anything for a time after Jimmy had left.

“Man! I ain’t never seen Jimmy blow up like that!” David said finally. “I wonder what kind of burr that boy’s got up his ass?”

“Maybe he just likes Jennifer,” Linda said pointedly.

“I think it’s sweet,” Shelly put in.

Everyone turned to stare at her.

Shelly shrugged. “Not that he beat the shit out of Ben,” she clarified. “I mean that he’s so sweet on her he wants to defend her.”

“He’s just stressed out over this situation,” Mark muttered. “We’re all on edge.”

Linda uttered an inelegant snort of disbelief. “Don’t you believe it! Jimmy’s having the time of his life! He’s talked UFO’s and aliens as long as I’ve known him and now he gets to sleep in a UFO and rub elbows with aliens. He’s happy as a lark.
That
was about his girl.”

Setting her dishes aside, she got up. “He’s had time to cool down. I’m going to try to catch up to him.”

Everyone else set the remains of their meal aside and followed her out.

115

As unsettled as Cassie was by the incident, and as guilty as she felt for feeling that way, she was relieved about it at the same time since it had effectively blocked everything else from everyone’s mind. No one said anything else about the fight until Ben surged ahead of them, but the moment they decided he was out of earshot, they fell to discussing their amazement over it, mostly their surprise about Jimmy launching the attack at all, though Linda and Shelly were impressed and charmed by his ‘white knight’

attitude, and Carl and David by his speed and ferocity. They just couldn’t get over skinny, easy going Jimmy turning in the blink of an eye from mild mannered ‘Clark’ to whirling dervish the next moment.

Cassie was as shocked as the rest of them, even though she hadn’t known Jimmy nearly as long as they had, but she was more focused on her own thoughts. The interlude with Raen had distracted her from the meeting with the councilor but hadn’t put it completely from her mind, and she worried one puzzle over a while and then the other.

She didn’t know what to make of Raen’s behavior, but, now that the fairy dust had settled, she was afraid to take it at face value. As handsome, powerfully built, and downright sexy as she’d thought the ‘stone warrior’ Raen was, there’d been an aura of danger about him—above and beyond the fact that he was alien and one couldn’t
get
more dark and mysterious than a completely unknown entity—that had made her at least as wary and nervous as it had fascinated her. She hadn’t realized that he could also be a charmer, but that side was more dangerous, she realized, than the other, because it made her
forget
the dangerous side she’d already seen and knew.

If he hadn’t been who and what he was and there hadn’t been a dangerous situation hanging over them, she would’ve thought his request to walk with her was only motivated by a desire for her company and an interest in getting to know her better.

As it was, she couldn’t help but think it was the flip side of the sexual encounter they’d had, another attempt to seduce her—not physically but mentally.

He’d been probing her for potentially useful information since he’d captured her.

Could she regard ‘the walk’ as nothing more than personal interest, all things considered?

As lowering a thought as it was, she didn’t think so. She was more inclined to think that he’d decided to try a different tactic since the sex didn’t seem to have broken down her barriers as well as he’d thought it would.

Unfortunately for her, her protective barrier was crumbling faster than she could put it back together. She had to constantly remind herself of the danger she was in because she
wanted
to throw reason and caution to the four winds and glory in her own downfall.

It helped, some, that she couldn’t imagine a future for them—no more than she could imagine a future with Mark, although for completely different reasons. At least with Mark, the typical scenario played—the two of them in a house or apartment, fighting over bills and the division of home labor, passing each other in the morning on the way to work and again at night as they came in and flaked out on the couch in front of the TV—maybe that baby she wanted so badly—but probably not. Because Mark was a selfish prick, and she couldn’t imagine him ever doing anything she wanted.

She couldn’t picture coming home from work to Raen—she would’ve liked to have been able to, but she couldn’t. She also couldn’t see him in a business suit or workmen’s clothes heading out with briefcase or lunchbox—mowing the lawn.

116

He belonged here, and she couldn’t see herself fitting in here anymore than she could see him fitting into her life.

All of which was a moot point because she knew, deep down, that that was an issue that was never going to come up. Neither the charm he’d poured over her or the wild sex had turned her mind completely to mush. He’d made it pretty damned clear that he considered humans in general as inferior creatures.

Whatever he was up to, his motivations weren’t anything she was familiar with.

Mark, she understood. He was either bent on sex, period, or he wanted something more permanent like domestic sex slave and housekeeper/wife.

As much as it wounded her to accept it, she knew it was probable that Raen had only one motive—one goal. Like Councilor det Ophelia, he was trying to save Atlantis, and he was ruthless enough to use whatever means necessary.

It was ironic that both men had focused on such a useless pawn, but she’d apparently managed to convince them, somehow, that she wasn’t as useless as she knew herself to be.

She still wanted to help them. As afraid of the consequences as she was now that she’d had time to consider it, it still felt like the right thing to do. How could it possibly be wrong, morally, if it prevented people from getting killed for no good reason? The government might think getting their hands on superior alien technology was reason enough, but she somehow doubted that her fellow Americans would feel the same way when their homes and families were being blasted out of existence while the people who’d started it were tucked safely away in a top secret hole in the ground somewhere.

The question was, could she trust her instincts? And if she could, could she help and still save her own ass? And if she couldn’t, did she have the guts to risk it?

She’d always felt that she was a deeply empathetic person, but she’d never considered herself particularly brave—not a complete coward—but she was a self-preservationist. She was far more prone to the flight part of the ‘fight or flight’ instinct.

She emerged from her thoughts as something familiar caught her eye and looked up with a flicker of recognition at a building she’d seen earlier. She and Raen had passed it, she remembered, on their walk. As she continued, she kept glancing in that direction, wondering if she’d be able to see the house he’d taken her to.

She saw Raen before she recognized the structure. Her chest tightened instantly, as if a giant, invisible hand had fisted around it, squeezing her lungs and heart until they had to struggle to work. He was working on the house, she saw. He’d removed his robe but had tied it around his waist. Sweat glistened on his torso and arms from his labors.

The play of muscles on his body as he bent and lifted loose stones instantly conjured the image of him the night before as he’d strained over her and made everything inside of her go hot and moist and turned everything else to the consistency of jelly.

She was so mesmerized by the sight, she walked smack in to Mark, who was in front of her, nearly tripping both of them up.

117

“Damn it!” Mark yelled angrily. Catching himself with an effort, he whirled to see who’d slammed into him and nearly made him fall. Cassie had managed, just barely, to keep from falling, as well, but she’d been thrown off balance by Mark’s efforts to regain his.

There was no way in hell to pretend it hadn’t been her.

“Sorry,” Cassie muttered, fighting the urge to look to see if Raen had caught her little ‘mishap’, “I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”

Linda and Shelly, who’d obviously noticed the show, erupted into schoolgirl giggles that immediately alerted everyone else to the reason for Cassie’s inattention.

Mark might have forgiven her for bumping into him if not for that. The scowl he’d turned on her before he realized it was her had already dropped from his features when Linda and Shelly cut loose with snickers and giggles. His head automatically whipped around in search of the reason for their amusement and when he looked at Cassie again he was obviously irritated. “I don’t know what you see in that ET,” he muttered.

Linda and Shelly exchanged a look and burst out laughing again.

“Could we be a little serious here?” Carl said irritably.

“Sure!” Linda quipped. “Why not make it obvious we’re out here to discuss things we don’t want them to hear?”

He glared at her but relaxed after a moment. “Point taken. Anybody else feel like doing something to make us all look stupid?”

“Kiss my ass!” Cassie snapped. “I tripped!”

“It usually works better if you watch where you’re going instead of staring at the scenery,” David said dryly.

“Right!” Shelly put in. “And if that had been a woman over there, bared to the waist, you guys wouldn’t have even glanced in that direction.”

David grinned at her. “Bitch,” he said without heat. “Why don’t you do that and we’ll see?”

“Oh, you wish!”

He gave her a ‘strip’ once over. “I wouldn’t mind,” he retorted with a grin.

“I don’t think we should stop at the boat,” Carl interrupted.

“I thought that was where we were headed?” Mark said, his irritation still evident in his voice.

Carl shrugged. “The rooms are bugged, the boat probably is, too.”

“I’ve never seen a camera or a microphone,” Cassie pointed out. “We don’t know
what
they’re using, but I doubt it’s anything we’re familiar with. The chances are they’d be able to see and hear us where ever we are.”

Carl slowed and turned to look at her. “You might have mentioned that before.”

“I

don’t
know
. I’m just saying ….”

“And you might be right, but I don’t see an alternative.”

118

“Exactly what do we have to discuss, anyway?” Ben asked as he dropped back to join them. “Cassie already went to talk to the head guy. It’s not like we can give her any tips at this point.”

“I’d like to know if she found out anything anyway,” Carl responded.

“And do what with it?” Linda demanded. “Stand at the edge of Atlantis and try to yell the information over to the Navy?”

“I did a stint in the Navy,” Carl retorted.

“So?”

“Morse code. Anybody else?”

“Me, too,” David volunteered. “I don’t know how much of the code I remember, though.”

“Me and Jimmy were in the Air Force together,” Mark said. “He might know Morse Code, but I don’t.”

“Ben?”

“Nope.”

“No, you weren’t in service? Or no you don’t know the code?” Carl asked.

“Neither. No, to both. Boy Scouts, but I’ve forgotten it.”

“I couldn’t help but notice you didn’t ask any of us if we were in the service,”

Shelly said irritably.

“Were

you?”

Shelly and Linda exchanged a glance and then looked at Cassie. Cassie shrugged.

“No.”

Carl sent Shelly a look of disgust and kept walking.

They paused when they reached the boat. Jimmy was sprawled on one of the benches, glaring off into space. “Come on, Jimmy,” Carl called to him. “We’re going to walk down to that bridge and see if there’s any fish in the channel.”

Jimmy didn’t look very enthused, but he clambered out of the boat and joined them.

Cassie’s stomach was knotted tighter than a noose. She felt like she had one around her throat already. She didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her that the men might have been in service, but it hadn’t. Now that she knew, it also occurred to her, forcefully, that every one of them had taken an oath and their training made them take that oath very, very seriously.

If they even suspected she was telling ‘the enemy’ anything, she was fucked.

And they didn’t just suspect. She’d already admitted she’d said more than she probably should’ve.

If it had been Shelly, they would probably have just patted her on the head and told her not to worry about it.

She was so screwed!

By the time they stopped at the bridge, the tension inside of Cassie had wound its way down to her sphincter.

Carl fixed her with a stern look. “So—what did you tell them?”

She shrugged, wishing she hadn’t been so unnerved that it had scrambled her brains. She could’ve used the time thinking up a really good story to cover her ass.

“Nothing.”

119

Carl frowned, but it wasn’t the frown that worried her. It was the suspicion in his eyes. “You were gone almost two hours and you didn’t tell them anything?” he asked in patent disbelief.

Should she tell them she was with Raen half that time? Or would that sound worse?

She decided it would sound worse.

“He asked me about my conversation with Raen. I told him that it had just been talk, and I didn’t know what I was talking about. And then he told me about the situation and asked me to help, and I told him I couldn’t without getting in trouble.”

“And that took almost two hours?” Mark demanded.

“When the hell did you get a watch?” Cassie snapped. “Because mine hasn’t worked since we got here.”

“It’s a rough guess.”

“I don’t give a good god damned what kind of guess it is!” Cassie shot back at him. “I told you what was said.”

“Don’t get all defensive,” David said calmingly. “We’re just asking.”

“No, you aren’t! You’re fucking ganging up on me and interrogating!”

The men all exchanged looks that she didn’t like at all. She saw when she looked around that Linda and Shelly were leaning on the bridge railing looking down at the water as if they had no idea what was going on.

Obviously, there wasn’t going to be any support from that direction.

“What did you discuss with Raen, anyway?”

It was said mildly, but Cassie knew damned well they’d just decided to try a different tactic. Sucking in a deep breath, she forced herself to relax and pretend she didn’t know that was what they were up to. “He took me for a walk. It was the first time I’d seen that,” she said, gesturing toward the ruins. “I immediately thought about the Katrina disaster and 9-11, and I told him I could talk to people when we got back about disaster relief. And, if the news people did a story on it, they’d get a lot of volunteers to help.”

“That’s all you told him?”

Cassie pretended to think it over, but she wasn’t about to tell him everything she’d said. It was way too incriminating. “I think I said something about being surprised the entire armed forces weren’t here when I saw the ship up there.”

She had the sinking feeling they didn’t believe her.

“What are you thinking?” David asked Carl.

He shrugged dismissively, obviously mulling it over in his mind. “The only thing I can make of it,” he said after a while, “is that they decided Cassie was sympathetic to them and they could use her to talk to the media and try to influence public opinion.”

Cassie tried to look stunned, but she felt a cold sweat pop from her pores at just how closely he’d come to guessing what she’d suggested they do.

“Exactly what was it the guy told you when he was telling you about the situation?”

Cassie didn’t have to think it over. She remembered the conversation very clearly. “He said they’d had a problem to start with because they didn’t understand English and the military had taken it as a refusal to meet their demands. He also said the U.S. government was claiming this area as U.S. territory and ordering them out. Then, 120

when the big ship brought the Atlantis up the U.S. claimed the Atlantis as U.S. property because it was recovered in US territory.”

“It

is
U.S. territory,” Carl said grimly. “They extended the territorial waters in the gulf all the way to Mexico’s territorial waters a few years back.”

“And, due to a
complete
lack of foresight on their part, the Atlanteans let their ship sink right in the middle of it!” Linda said sarcastically.

Carl glared at her. “That doesn’t change a thing. Have you got any idea what it could mean to the military to get hold of this technology?”

“It’s called stealing!” Shelly snapped. “Don’t they have enough already to blow the whole fucking planet up ten times over?”

Feeling emboldened by Linda and Shelly’s contributions, Cassie decided it was safe to voice her opinion. “Wouldn’t it be like--grandfathered? I mean, Atlantis was here before the U.S. was even thought of. That would give them prior claim, wouldn’t it?”

“They were on the bottom of the ocean,” David pointed out. “Sunk. This would fall into wreckage recovery.”

“There’s

people

living
on it, though!” Linda pointed out.

“Besides, the U.S. claims air space—everybody does. Wouldn’t the water over them be part of their space?” Cassie asked.

“It’s not our problem and it
ain’t
our decision!” Carl ground out. “The Commander in Chief ….”

“Is going to get us into another damned war!” Linda snapped. “
They
,” she pointed upward, “came to retrieve their property. That isn’t an act of aggression.”

“It could be construed as one,” Carl said tightly.

“You mean made to look like one, don’t you?” Linda said angrily.

Everybody fell silent, and Cassie discovered they’d broken into three camps.

Jimmy and Ben were completely ignoring the discussion—neutral. Mark hadn’t said anything, but he was clearly behind David and Carl—aggression. And she, Linda, and Shelly had formed the voice of reason—fair play—or maybe just a healthy reluctance to get into a fight they probably couldn’t win.

“I don’t think they want to be enemies,” Cassie said finally. “Maybe the government won’t get us much as they want if they make friends instead, but we’d at least have the chance of bartering for some of the technology without getting into a war.”

“Maybe,” Mark agreed. “But like Carl said, it isn’t our business.”

“How can you say it isn’t any of our business?” Linda demanded. “Aren’t we going to get shot at, too? They’re on our doorstep. It isn’t like picking a fight half a world away!”

“That’s the problem, Linda! They
are
on our doorstep. That makes them more of a threat.”

“If they wanted to be a threat, I don’t think they’d have to get very close,” Cassie pointed out. “My god!
We
can shoot people from space! They could probably go
home
and shoot us!”

Carl scrubbed a hand over his face. “Alright. Let’s try to calm down and think.

There really isn’t anything we can do regardless of how we, personally, feel about it.

And we aren’t going to be doing ourselves any good by fighting among ourselves. When 121

we get back …
if
we get back, everybody can voice their opinion to anybody they can get to listen. In the meantime, we need to focus on what we’re going to do to stay alive.”

Everyone exchanged uneasy glances. “I don’t think the Atlanteans mean us any harm,” Cassie said finally.

“I’m talking about friendly fire when and if they let us go,” Carl said dryly.

“Oh!”

“
Friendly
fire!” Linda exclaimed.

“I don’t think the first thing out of the zone is going to be examined really carefully before they open up on us. And I’m not sure the white flag idea Shelly put forth is going to get it.”

Cassie frowned. “The Atlanteans have been communicating with the outside.

Surely, they’ll tell them they’re sending us out?”

“And they may believe it and they might not,” Carl retorted dryly. “My thought is that we should try to establish communications ourselves using Morse Code.”

Cassie stared at him a moment, glanced at Linda and Shelly and finally returned her attention to him. “What makes you think they’ll believe you? What if they just think it’s the Atlanteans trying to fool them?”