Lords of the Sea (23 page)

Cassie dropped her hands and lifted her face. “Carl and David are gone, and I’m afraid I know what they went to do,” she whispered back.

Linda turned as white as a sheet. Her head whipped around as she surveyed the room to verify Cassie’s remark. “They’re going to get us all killed,” she whispered hoarsely.

Cassie looked at her mournfully. “You know what the worst thing about it is?”

Linda stared at her uncomprehendingly.

“I’m more worried about Raen being mad with me for not telling him.”

Linda’s face went blank. After a moment, though, she grabbed Cassie’s arm and urged her up. Cassie allowed herself to be led without resistance, but surprise flickered through her when Linda led her back to her own quarters. “What did you say?” she demanded once they’d left the others sleeping.

Cassie flinched at the question. “I know! Maybe I’m going through premature menopause?”

“Hormonal overload, more likely!” Linda retorted dryly. “I thought you were going to be the sensible one?”

“I tried!” Cassie wailed. “I don’t know if I’m crazy about him or just plain crazy!

I’ve been so scared and confused ever since we got here I don’t know what to think about anything, or what to do! I can’t trust anything—not what I see, not what I think, not what I feel! This place—shouldn’t be here at all. None of these people should be here, and I can hardly take that in. Now it looks like we’re looking at world annihilation by aliens, and I’m so crazy about one of them that I can’t seem to stay away from him.

“I convinced myself they were good people, and our government was in the wrong. I was wrong, wasn’t I? They’re just playing with us—and I fell for it.”

Linda’s lips turned down. “I hope you don’t think I can help. I’ve been divorced twice. Does that sound like a woman who has a clue about men? No! It sounds like an idiot who’s ever hopeful she’ll have better sense the next time around! I fell for Adan like a ton of bricks. I listened to you because I thought you had your wits about you and I
knew
I didn’t. I thought he was just trying to use me.”

Cassie looked at her apologetically. “I’m so sorry! I should’ve just minded my own business.”

“I doubt I would’ve listened to you except I realized you were probably right,”

she said glumly. “He’s so young and beautiful. What would he want with me? There had to be a catch.”

Cassie stared at her for a long moment, realizing what she said made perfect sense. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right! I’ve been such an idiot! I knew as soon as he separated us that he was up to something, and I
still
fell for it the moment he decided to pay me some attention.”

Linda gave her a look of commiseration. “We should stick to homegrown. You and I both know this would never work out, even if not for everything else.”

“No. You’re right. I couldn’t picture it. They’d never fit in at home and neither one of us would fit in here … not that that matters.”

“No, it doesn’t, because as soon as they catch those two gung-ho idiots, we’re dead.”

137

“Unless they realize we didn’t have anything to do with it,” Cassie said a little hopefully.

“You think they won’t think our little walk outside yesterday was a chance to plan this?”

“Oh,” Cassie muttered, “I’d forgotten about that. Good point.” She looked around the room tiredly. They’d taken the mattress and the chair and moved them to Linda’s room. Moving to one wall, she sat down and leaned back against it. “He’ll think I wanted to have sex with him just to distract him—especially after we talked about just that when we first came—which, I think, is what gave him the idea to distract us with sex to begin with.”

Linda looked her over. “You sneaked out last night for sex?”

Cassie

shrugged.

Linda settled beside her. “I did that a few times when I was a teenager. Was it fun?”

“The sneaking? Or the sex?”

“The sneaking is half the excitement.”

“Oh, it was exciting alright!” Cassie agreed. “But not the kind of thrill I go for.

Anyway, I didn’t sneak out
for
that. I went to talk—really!” she insisted at the look of disbelief on Linda’s face, then frowned. “Maybe subconsciously I’d hoped for it, I suppose. Mostly I was hoping that there was a possibility that they’d help us if we helped them.”

“You know, of course, if they even
offer
to torture me, I’m going to spill my guts, don’t you?” Linda said conversationally.

Cassie studied her face. Linda had said it humorously, but they both knew she would. “I doubt it’ll come to that, honestly. Everything’s so stirred up now, I don’t think we’ll get out of here even if the Atlanteans decide to let us go.” She sighed. “And even if they did, and we made it out, my confidence in our government and theirs managing to avert disaster is about non-existent. From what Raen said, the Atlanteans are basically ignoring them/us, and you know that’s practically a goad. That toad in the White House has a Napoleon complex. He’ll have everybody in the country scared shitless by now and
demanding
he do something. I expect he’s got everything in the arsenal trained right on this one little spot by now and is busy plagiarizing the speech that actor made in the movie about an alien invasion.

“Nobody’s going to stop to consider that if they wanted the planet, they could’ve wiped us out a long time ago and took it. And, my god! It might have been worth having way back when, but we’ve just about ruined it now.”

Linda shrugged. “It’s still better than Mars.”

“Or any of the other planets in the system,” Cassie agreed with a faint smile. “But if it’s true that ship up there came from Andromeda—and I don’t see any reason to question it since they obviously didn’t come from here—then it seems to me there are plenty of places they could go.”

“But they picked our planet, so it must have been the best choice in range.”

“At the time. According to our own legends the Atlantean civilization was around thousands of years ago. That was pre-fucked up by a long shot.”

“You’ve thought this over,” Linda said musingly. “I haven’t really spent much time thinking about anything except what I wished I’d done.”

138

“I spent a lot of time by myself.”

The approach of marching steps down the corridor distracted them. Cassie lifted her head to listen and realized it was at least a half a dozen people moving toward them and marching in step. She exchanged a fearful glance with Linda. They both stood up and turned to face the door.

Raen’s face looked as if it was carved from stone as he stopped before the door.

He said something to the first two soldiers in the group in his own tongue and they detached themselves from the group, approaching Linda and Cassie with their pikes held warningly. Cassie and Linda exchanged a wide-eyed, horrified glance, but neither of them moved. The group moved off while the two soldiers bound Cassie’s and Linda’s hands behind their backs and then urged them out of the room.

Cassie had more than half suspected that they’d be detained there while the guards rounded up the others. Instead, as soon as the soldiers marched them out of the room, they directed them down the corridor, past the room where the others were being similarly manacled. They walked for what seemed like an hour, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the ship. Finally, they turned on a bisecting corridor and walked for perhaps a half an hour. They came at last to a wide door and when it opened, Cassie saw yet another corridor, though this one was much more narrow than the others they’d traversed.

The place had prison written all over it, and Cassie felt her stomach knot for the first time with real fear. They halted by a narrow door, removed Cassie’s manacles and pushed her inside. The door, when it slid shut, was solid without so much as a tiny window. She had no idea where they took Linda. After standing at the door uneasily for a few moments, she finally looked around the tiny room and then moved to the narrow cot.

She had to suppose they’d caught Carl and David and they’d been in the act of doing whatever it was they’d thought up—probably trying to send information to the navy using the Morse Code. She supposed she could understand why the Atlanteans would be furious about it, but Raen had claimed they weren’t worried about the American military. Aside from being a betrayal of the hospitality extended to them, she couldn’t see that it could make that much difference. It wasn’t as if the American army could do much with any information they got.

She’d known they’d all be blamed, and she was still outraged at the injustice of it.

She had time to get over it and begin to feel scared again. She finally reached the point where her exhaustion from having almost no sleep the night before overcame her fear, though, and lay down on the cot and fell asleep.

She woke sometime later thoroughly disoriented. When she opened her eyes, she discovered that the noise that had awakened her was Raen entering her cell. His expression was no more welcoming than it had been earlier, and she felt her heart sink.

“Get up,” he commanded her.

139

Cassie was so drunk from so little sleep and being woken so abruptly, it was all she could do to comply. She staggered slightly when she stood up, and Raen grasped her arm to steady her. Without a word, he led her out of the cell and then out of the wide door that led into the area where the cells were contained.

She had no idea where he was taking her, but although she glanced at his hard profile a few times she discovered she couldn’t get up the nerve to ask him. This man looked like the scary one who’d captured her that first day, not like the considerate lover who’d so thoroughly pleasured her, not like the handsome, smiling man who’d asked her to walk with him.

He felt betrayed, she realized, and unfortunately she felt as if she had betrayed him because she hadn’t told him when she’d guessed what Carl and David must be up to.

They didn’t leave the same way she’d arrived, and she was too distressed to pay much attention, but it seemed they walked for every bit of an hour before Raen finally drew her to a halt before another door. She was dumbfounded when she discovered it was his quarters.

He didn’t offer her a seat or a drink, and the tautness of his features didn’t abate one whit, although she’d more than half hoped when he led her into his room that it would transpire that he’d only gone through the elaborate ruse to separate her from the others. She stood where he left her, studying him uneasily as he paced away from her and finally turned to study her with condemning eyes. Propping his shoulders against the wall, he folded his arms over his chest.

“They sent you to keep me occupied while they attempted to contact your people,” he said flatly.

Cassie swallowed with an effort, but the statement jogged her brain into functioning. “I went because you told me to come to you after everyone was asleep,” she reminded him.

“So, I gave you the opportunity and you took it?”

Cassie felt a surge of anger usurp her fear. “Y’all have been watching us and listening to us ever since we’ve been here. You know damned well I didn’t! They were gone when I got back and you would have to know I didn’t talk to anyone about it after we’d made the arrangement to meet.”

“You are saying all of this was not planned on the day you and your friends walked out to talk where you could not be overheard?”

Cassie expelled an irritated sigh. “No! It was not planned—Not by me. Not by anyone else that I was aware of. The only thing we discussed was how to get out of here alive, and we didn’t actually manage to come up with a plan for that!”

He tilted his head, narrowing his eyes on her thoughtfully. “You knew nothing about them signaling with light?”

Cassie felt her face heat guiltily. “Carl said he was in the Navy and knew Morse Code, but he didn’t say ….” She broke off abruptly as she remembered the conversation.

140

“Did not say what?”

“We were trying to figure out a way to get out of this alive!” Cassie said angrily.

“We’re scared! We’re all scared. Mostly we just argued. And then we talked about the likelihood that they’d shoot us out of the water the moment we tried to leave and Carl said he could communicate with them by Morse Code and convince them we were Americans so they wouldn’t shoot us! I thought that was all he meant to do. And then we decided instead of trying to get through on the boat to figure out a way to get to the media instead so we could avoid the military altogether. I thought he’d dismissed that plan. I honestly didn’t think about it anymore after we got to talking about trying to slip out and reach the media to avoid ending up in a military prison.”

“And yet you knew the moment I questioned you what they’d gone to do. How is that?” he asked coldly.

“When I got back to the room and discovered they were gone I figured it out,” she admitted.

“So you admit you knew at least that far in advance and you still said nothing.

You didn’t think to come to me with this information?”

“I

did
think about it! I couldn’t betray them.”

“But you could betray my trust in you?” He pushed away from the wall and approached her when she merely stared at him miserably. “You shared your body with me, right here, not an hour before you betrayed me. Are your loyalties with your people?

Or just with yourself? They are certainly not with your lover!”

She lifted her chin to look him in the eyes. “I never said my loyalties were for sale. I told you and I told the councilor that I couldn’t and wouldn’t deliberately betray my people. I never would have told you anything to begin with if I’d realized—
believed
for one moment that it would be used against my countrymen. I came to you to help them … and also to help the Atlantean people because I don’t believe you mean us any harm.

“
You
said you didn’t need or want my help. And I know for a fact that you have had us watched the entire time we’ve been here. I figured y’all knew better where Carl and David were and what they were doing than I did.

“And if you didn’t, I
still
couldn’t tell you, damn it!

“I came to you because I trusted you to do the right thing—what was right for everyone! I did not
plan
to have sex with you, and I sure as hell didn’t do it just to keep you occupied so Carl and David could sneak out! Because I didn’t
know
they planned to!”

He studied her for a long moment and finally turned to pace the room. “I begin to understand you humans,” he said curtly. “You are guided entirely by self-interest and greed. Data without observation of the subjects is not nearly as effective, although there is historical evidence that those traits are inherent in mankind as a whole—and aggression. All in all, despite your intelligence, you haven’t really risen much above the animals. You are still guided more by your instincts than your intelligence and you are, by and large, vicious predators.”

Cassie watched him as he paced, feeling her heart sink at his assessment, but that was nothing compared to his cold comment that they’d been nothing more than lab rats.

She’d suspected something of the kind, and it still hurt. She was abruptly fiercely glad she hadn’t been stupid enough to tell him she loved him, especially since she realized she 141

didn’t love
him
at all. She didn’t even know the man. She’d fallen in love with the man she thought he was, and she’d been totally blind to what he really was—alien to her.

He stopped when he reached the wall and propped against it again. “We caught them before they had finished communications, but you will no doubt be pleased to know that they did manage to inform your people that the Andromeda Prime is Admiral Valora’s flagship and that there was very likely a fleet still in space—which, in point of fact, there is.”

Cassie stared at him in absolute horror. “There’s more?” she managed to ask hoarsely.

He eyed her assessingly. “The Atlantis is no more than a colony ship. We’ve always used population control—for obvious reasons here—but we understood the need for it long before our ancestors came here. Our home world was much like yours is now when our ancestors were sent out to colonize other worlds—over populated—and with much of its natural resources depleted or nearing depletion. The only way we could save it was to reduce the demands on it by reducing the population—which meant sending them elsewhere.

“Yes, there are more—many, many more on many worlds—some colonies far closer than Andromeda that we have traded with in the past.”

Cassie’s knees abruptly felt as weak as water. She had looked around a little hopefully for a place to sit before she fell when it dawned on her that she’d neither been invited nor told to sit and that she was a prisoner. With an effort, she locked her knees.

She was too stunned to really focus her thoughts beyond the need to stay on her feet.

It was a blessing, really. Her personal tragedy should have paled by comparison to the imminent destruction of the planet, but it didn’t. She didn’t know if that was because she didn’t actually believe they’d do it, or if she was just that self-centered, but she couldn’t get far beyond the absolute misery of realizing she’d never meant anything at all to Raen. She couldn’t even summon any anger that he’d used her. She was too busy kicking herself for allowing herself to be used—going out of her way to be used.

“The question is, what to do with you now?”

Cassie lifted her head to look at him, but she wasn’t even in any state to feel a lot of fear anymore. She supposed it was shock and she would fall apart when it finally eased its grip on her, but at the moment she couldn’t bring any order to her mind or feel much emotion.

Would there be another hearing, she wondered? Or would they just take them out and execute them?

It was odd how that was actually starting to sound better all the time. It sounded like something that would be quick and easy. Maybe they’d be nice and just ‘surprise’

them? March them out and not tell them where they were going and then ‘bang’ all over, all done.

It beat the hell out of being incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, she was sure.

Torture was such an ugly way to die, and it took so long.

And she had a really low threshold for pain.

They’d probably be better off than everybody else.

Especially the survivors—if there were any.

142

It seemed pretty doubtful any of their nasty little germs were going to come to the rescue like they had in that alien invasion flick. The Atlanteans had been around longer than the plague.

“Get in the bed.”

Cassie emerged from her fog with a start. “What?”

Raen sent her a look of disgust. “Go to bed before you fall down.”

She stared at him blankly. “Here?” she asked in disbelief.

His lips thinned. “You and your people will be kept apart until we decide what to do with you. You will stay here.”

Cassie tried to make sense of that command and found she couldn’t. “Why?” she asked finally.

“So that I can keep closer watch over you. So that you and your friends will not get another opportunity to think up mischief. Because, regardless of what you have done, I will not lock you in a cell. Go to bed.”

“What about the others?” Cassie asked tentatively.

He studied her for a long moment. “They are with their lovers, also.”

Cassie reddened. “You don’t honestly think ….”

“No, I don’t.”

She glared at him. “You didn’t let me finish.”

“I did not say we were still lovers, or that we would be, or that I want to be. Only that we were.”

There didn’t seem to be a hell of a lot to say to that. She sniffed. “Well, as long as we have that straight,” she muttered. “I need to use the bathroom.”

He gestured toward the door.

She cried in the shower. It seemed safe enough to preserve her pride, and she couldn’t help it anyway. She thought part of it might be relief that she wasn’t going to have to stay in that awful cell. Part of it was because, no matter what decision she made, it always seemed to be the wrong one in retrospect. Most of it, though, was grief for her loss, which seemed excessive even to her when she had still been in a state of confusion as to exactly how she felt about Raen right until she’d realized it didn’t matter
how
she felt anymore. She’d nipped any possibility of having her sentiments returned right in the bud.

Thankfully, Raen was occupied at his desk when she finally peered out of the bathroom because, despite all of her efforts, she hadn’t been able to erase her red nose and red, puffy eyes with cold water. Keeping her face averted, she crossed to the bed and climbed in. Fortunately, she was so exhausted nothing could have kept her awake, not even the miserable thoughts rambling around in her mind.