Of Blood and Angels (The Two Moons of Rehnor, Book 3) (8 page)

“You okay, Commander?”  Hevzi, our pilot
turned to me.

“Fine,” I replied and forced a smile
though my stomach was in knots.  “Why?”

“You didn't respond,” Hevzi said.  “I was
just asking permission to engage propulsion.”

“Sorry.”  I tried to clear my head. 
“Engage and let's pull out of here.”

The ship rumbled a bit and then glided
away from the Spacebase.

“Coordinates are set,” Hevzi announced. 
“Enroute to Taurus IV, ETA 74.43 hours.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” I said, palming
my cell.  I moved to go ring Shelly from the lift where I could have a minute
of privacy but there was a young woman standing next to me.

“May I get you something, Commander?”

“No,” I replied, not recognizing her.  Her
skin was tinged slightly blue, Andorian.  She had Yeoman stripes.  Her name tag
said, Siria.  “Thank you, Yeoman Siria.”  I tried to move past her.

“Nothing at all, Commander?” she insisted.

“No,” I replied a bit forcefully.  “What
would you possibly get me?”

“Anything,” she said.  “Andorus serves the
MaKennah ka Rehnor.”

“What?” I coughed into my hand.

“You are the MaKani.  I will serve you.” 
She started to kneel.

“Stand up,” I hissed. 

“Yes, Madame.”  She stood up straight and
at attention with her shoulders back.

“Where is your duty station?”

“I am off duty, Madame.”  She followed me
to the lift.

“Can I have a moment alone?” I asked,
showing her my cell.

She shook her head no.  “You are not to be
left alone, Madame.”

“Says who?” I demanded.

“Andorus serves the MaKennah ka Rehnor,
our Overlord,” she said again.  “The MaKennah has the powers of a great and
wondrous god.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I heard that,” I snapped. 
“Give it a rest.”

Hevzi stared at me.

“What?”

He shrugged and turned back to his
console.

“Can you get me some coffee, please?” I
asked the Andorian.  “Decaf single tall skinny vanilla latte?”

“Yes, Madame,” she cried jubilantly as if
I just rewarded her.  She ran off in the lift I was planning to use.

Hevzi snickered.

I glared at him and my cell as I waited
for the lift to return.  When it did, I had lost my signal. 

“Sorry Commander,” Lt. Perina, the
communications officer, called after I waved my cell at her.  “We're already
into the dark.”

By the end of the week, I had four
Andorian crew following me around including my once translator, Tilia.  They
would take turns, whoever was off duty became my personal servant.  Despite how
many times I would yell at them to leave me alone, they stood outside my cabin
or in the bridge elevator or where ever else I happened to be.

“This is ridiculous, Commander,” Captain
Richard growled after summoning me into his office again.

“I know, Sir.  I've told them to leave me
alone.”

“Do you know why they are doing it?” the
Captain demanded.

I thought carefully before answering.

“They think my husband is their overlord?”

Richard laughed heartily.  “Yes, I did
hear that from the Andorian Prime Minister.  Seems your husband is either the
Infidel or the Savior depending on which planet he is on.”

“You know about the Infidel stuff on
Rozari?” I gasped.

“Of course.  I had to approve his petition
for boarding privileges didn't I?”

“I guess,” I replied, feeling pretty
stupid.  I wondered what else the Captain knew.

“I'll see if I can put a stop to this
while you are aboard,” Richard said.  “But I can't make any promises about what
they'll do when you are ashore.”  He laughed again.  “Looks like you've got
your own groupies.”

Unfortunately, the Captain was not able to
put an end to the Andorians attending to me.  Citing cultural differences, the
Andorian government claimed it was their religious duty to serve me and by
preventing that on board, Spaceforce was violating their civil rights.  Nobody
seemed to care about my civil rights.

I think I developed an ulcer during this
time.  I almost hoped that Andorians were following Senya around Rozari,
keeping an eye on him.  Between the annoyance of their constant hovering and my
worrying about him, I barely slept and felt like a hole was burning in my
stomach.

Two days before we emerged from deep
space, I was working two shifts because the Captain had a report to finish and
could not sit the com.  I was tired.  I had been on duty nearly twenty hours
and I dragged myself down to my cabin to sleep for a brief four hours before I
had to take the com again. 

“Katie?”  Jerry nearly scared me out of my
skin by coming up behind me as I unlocked my cabin door.

“What the hell were you doing?” I gasped.

“I was just waiting to ask you
something.”  He threw up his hands.  “No need to bite off my head.  Do you
think I have enough money in my budget this year to request another nurse?”

“Come in,” I sighed even though I was so
tired I could hardly see.  “Let me just pull it up for a second and look at
it.”  I pushed open the door to my cabin and turned on the light.  I shrieked!

“What?” Jerry shrieked back.

“Senya!” I cried and raced over to the
bed.  He was lying there face down, covered in what looked like red dust with
cuts all over his arms and legs.  His hair was filthy and matted with red mud. 
“Senya!  Senya!” I shook him.

“Katie, what the hell is going on?” Jerry
grabbed my arm. “He's not here.”

“What?”  I looked at Jerry and then back
at Senya.  “You don't see him?”

“Katie?”  Jerry studied my face as if I
were totally insane.  “You've been at the com too long.”

“Please, Jerry.”  I grabbed his arm. 
“Tell me, you see him!”

“Katie, he's not here.”

“Oh shit.”  I sank to my knees.  “He’s
almost dead again.”

Jerry pulled out his scanner and turned it
on, running it over my head.  “Who's almost dead again, honey?”

I closed my eyes and hugged myself.  “I
need to call Thad.  We're dark for two more days.  I've got to get a message to
Thad.  Do you know any way to get an emergency medical message out, Jerry? 
There must be something you can do?”

“Now come on, Katie, you know I can't
break the dark.”  He ran the scanner across my back.  “Your vitals are fine but
I suggest you go right to bed.  Do you want a sleeping pill?”

“No,” I sobbed.

“Alright, but if you can't get to sleep
right away, ring me.  I'll cancel your next duty shift.  We'll look at my
budget later.”  He pulled me up and helped me get into the bed, tucking the
blanket around me.  “Goodnight Goldie.”

The light flicked off and the door closed
behind him.

“Senya, where are you?”  I stroked his arm
and his back.  It felt like the mud and dust was coming off in my hand but it
didn’t.  He wasn’t really here.  “Senya, speak to me.”

“Bloody fucking fool,” he mumbled.

“Who?” I cried.

“Me,” he replied.

“Where are you?”

“Don't know.”  His image faded for a
moment.  My hand was stroking nothing but air.

“Senya!”  He came back.  “Are you still on
Rozari?”

“Not sure,” he sighed.

“Karupatani?” I prodded.

“Maybe.”

“Where?”

No response.  He faded again and didn’t
come back.

I couldn’t sleep.  I was like a zombie at
the com four hours later and Jerry was called by Hevzi.  I was escorted back to
my cabin and tucked back into bed and then given a sleeping pill.

“Senya's hurt,” I told Jerry.

“You're hallucinating, Katie,” Jerry
said.  “This is deep space, weird things happen.”

I slept until we emerged from the dark. 
The ringing vid woke me up.  It was Thad.

“He's missing?” I cried, bolting out of
bed.

“I couldn't ring you earlier because you
were blacked out in deep space.  I called as soon as your ship could be
reached,” Thad said calmly.

“How long has he been gone?”

“Twenty-two days.”

“You tried our house?”

“Uh, yeah.  Gosh, I think we forgot to
look under your bed though.  By the way, his car is still in the parking lot
here in Kalika-hahr.”

“When was the last time someone saw him?”

“It was me and like I said about three
weeks ago.  He was acting really strange.  Well, Ron is always strange, but
this was like when he's about to have a seizure.  We were walking to a meeting
in Engineering and he just took off running out the front doors of the building
and then he was gone.  I looked everywhere.  The security teams have scoured
every inch of the campus.  Your house has been turned upside and down and
shaken.  He is not here, Kate, and all of our projects are totally off schedule
now."

“He's in Karupatani,” I said.  “We need to
go search there.”

“Katie,” Thad looked at me doubtfully, “he
didn't take his car, he didn't take any of our limos, and he didn't take a
spaceplane.  He ditched our security team.  How exactly could he get to
Karupatani?  Walk across the ocean?”

"He's there," I repeated. 
"He told me he would be going there sometimes."

“What the hell would he go there for?” 
Thad sounded annoyed.  “There's nothing there.  We're talking more than three
weeks, Katie.  I know he does weird stuff periodically but it doesn't usually
last this long.  I mean, come on.  It's not like he could just drop by a mini
mart and pick up a sandwich and a bottle of water when he got hungry.  There's
no food, no water, no plant life.  If he's there, he's dead and then my schedules
will be screwed up forever.”

“He's not dead,” I snapped.

“I know," Thad smirked.
"Although when he gets back, I'm tempted to kill him.  I spoke with Berk. 
Makes more sense to me that someone came and picked him up, you know?  Maybe
even Akan's got him.  But, he's not there either.  So Berk told his dad of
course, and now Loman wants to come tear the campus apart, like I don't have
enough chaos going on here.”

“Listen to me, Thad.  I know he's not
dead.  I know he's in Karupatani.  Trust me in this.  Can you send me a
spaceplane?  I should be at Spacebase 37 by late tonight.  I can be there
tomorrow.”

“Sure, Commander, Mrs. Boss,” he smirked
before ringing off.  "One spaceplane coming right up.  You want a regular
or the Royal deluxe Mishnese version with a side order of fries?"

"Regular is fine," I replied and
sent a note to Captain Richard, telling him that I needed emergency family
leave.  I was packing my overnight bag just as Jerry knocked on the door.

“Feeling better?” he asked.  “Hey, where
are you going?”

“Back to Rozari.”  I found a pair of jeans
and a sweatshirt and tossed them in the bag.  I needed a gun.  I had a Glock
429 back at the house but I didn’t want to take the time to go there.  I made a
mental note to tell Thad to make sure we had lasers, just in case.

“How come?  Something wrong?”

“Yes, Jerry, something is wrong,” I
snapped and then immediately apologized.  It wasn’t Jerry's fault.  Nothing was
Jerry's fault.  “Ron's gone missing.”

Jerry furrowed his brow.  He probably
thought this was a good thing but didn’t want me to know that.  “Gone missing
where?”

“Well if we knew where, he wouldn't be
missing!”  I apologized again.

Jerry sat down on my sofa and made himself
comfortable.

“Missing from you or missing from
everybody?”

“Jerry!  Missing from everybody.  He
hasn't been at work or home for more than three weeks.  He flew off and nobody
has seen him since.  I think he's hurt somewhere and I need to go find him.”

Jerry studied his fingernails.  “You think
he crashed his speeder?”

“No!  His speeder is still in the parking
lot at SdK.  He flew...oh.”

“Oh?”

“Jerry, will you come with me?”  I don't
know why I just asked him that.  Lord knows we had a million doctors at SdK who
were very well equipped to take care of Senya if was hurt.  But what if he was
in some weird half-man, half-eagle state or something else strange was going
on.  Thad wouldn’t want the SdK employees to see him like that and Donak was
too old to go traipsing around the Karupatani continent.

“Jerry, I need you to come with me.  We're
going on a search and rescue mission and it has to be top secret.  I can't ask
any of our employees to come.  You are experienced at search and rescue in
hostile environments.  Please come, Jerry.”

“And when we find him, will you want to
bring him back here?  You've got a massive medical center back on Rozari. 
Couldn't they treat him better?”