“I can’t believe I ran away like that,” Daniel Archer said softly.
“What?” Lorena Romanova sounded distracted, and she had good reason. She was working on a piece of technology that she understood and he did not, for all his starship engineer’s certification. It had been around since Narsatian colonial days; and if she could get it operating, then the three of them—Reen, Dan, and Rachel Kane—would be able to get to the next farmstead without having to walk there via the underground passage that had (as far as they knew, at least) remained open in spite of the havoc that the Triad’s death throes had caused on the surface above them.
Moving away from the Romanov Farmstead via any kind of surface travel right now was a certain way to wind up in the hands of the Star Service. The mop-up squad wouldn’t hang around forever, but even after they returned to the ship the monitoring from orbit was sure to continue; and Archer had an uncomfortable feeling that whoever was directing the search for Rachel Kane (Captain Giandrea, under orders he hated but had to obey? or someone else?) was not going to be fooled this time into assuming she was dead.
Dan himself would be the target of a formal order to apprehend, as well, since by now the authorities had to know who had given shelter to the fugitive gen. Whether or not they knew more than that about his ties to her, he had no way to guess.
But in any case, by seeing to it that Rachel got off the trade-ship without waiting to take care of the rest of his people Dan Archer had done a thing he never could have imagined himself doing. He looked at her now in the dim light of the underground passage’s ancient lumipanels, and he repeated dully, “I ran away. I left my people behind, and saved myself.”
“You couldn’t have saved them, Dan. All you could have done was die, too.” Rachel’s physical stamina was superior to that of a randomly conceived human, but she was still less than a day away from her lifeboat ordeal’s end and she was also burdened with three unborn babies. She had curled up in the tiny cabin of the ancient railcar while Reen worked on its propulsion system, and she was half asleep when she realized her lover was addressing her and not the universe in general.
“But I still shouldn’t have left them like that.” Archer sat down beside the woman who was carrying his children, and slid an arm around her—whether to give comfort or to gain it, he could not have said right then. The temperature this far underground was constant, but that unvarying temperature felt cool to a human being at rest. So she nestled against him for warmth, not only in an effort to give consolation; and soon she was asleep.
Reen Romanova went on working. And at length she said softly, “Shove over, Dan. Let’s give it a try.”
There was just room enough for the three of them inside the little railcar. It moved forward silently, glided along a course that was a scant meter wide and that lit up the darkness just before them and just behind them in a world that otherwise was utterly black.
The air that had been trapped here unused for generations was stale, but breathable. How fast they were moving, Dan could not estimate; but at least the woman beside him did not wake.
The shame of leaving his partners, his crew, dead behind him was something he would have to put away for later reflection. Right now he was selfishly thankful that Rachel had survived—and that since she was still living, he was alive too.
“We’re not fugitives, we don’t have to hide. Not yet, anyway.”
So Katy had said, as she and Johnnie had gathered up the sleeping Maddy and had bundled her into a second aircar. The one they had used earlier in the day had been returned to its garage.
Johnnie was piloting, and when she would have a chance to rest again Katy could not guess. So she reclined the co-pilot’s seat, curled her body as best she could within the safety harness’s confines, and willed herself to fall asleep.
It was a skill she had mastered long ago, in cadet days; and it was just as useful now as it had been back then. Not only did it give her the edge of being rested for whatever she had to do next, it also kept her from having to endure a season of helplessly anticipating a future she dreaded and could not control.
She had been dreaming, and it was hard to come to the surface when she knew that consciousness was going to bring her a reality far less pleasant than the inner world of memory to which her dream had taken her. But she had to wake up, it was Johnnie’s voice and not Linc’s voice that she was hearing from close beside her…and although the seat that cradled her body was comfortable enough, it was definitely not the captain’s berth back on the old Firestorm.
That had been her last night aboard the ship which was her final command as a captain, before she moved up to flag rank. She had waited for that night before she extended an invitation to her long-time executive officer, to the man who was her closest friend and dearest love, to share that berth with her.
Just why it had seemed so important to consummate the change in their relationship before they left their old lives behind them forever, she could not have said then and was no better able to say now. Linc had been nervous about that night, terribly and understandably so; maybe it had been for his sake that she’d wanted their first lovemaking to happen in familiar surroundings, but telling herself that was the only reason felt very much like an excuse.
Maybe she had needed to go into her career’s next phase with that particular change behind her, and not ahead. And he had waited so long and so patiently for her to be ready; they had both known, almost from the day she came back aboard after leaving George Fralick’s home on Kesra once she had borne and weaned Maddy, that Linc would be her husband now. But she had come back to him after that battle with George broken and hurting, her soul raw from the deaths of her sons—from their father’s verbal brutality in blaming her for those deaths—and from having been made to choose either a continued life with a man who’d managed to kill her love for him, or separation from her baby daughter.
Staying and turning into the bitter, crippled thing that she knew such a life would make her, could never have benefited Maddy. So Katy had made the decision, the most painful one of her entire life, to let George raise their last child without her when what passed for a family court on Kesra would not consent to letting her take the baby to live even part of the time with her family on Narsai.
And then after one last outrage, she had reported for her final tour of duty aboard the Firestorm knowing that she had no business to be in command of anything just then.. Not even of a lifeboat, because she had been functioning only by reflex. Like a ship no longer under power but moving steadily through space until something interfered with its progress, she had let the momentum of years spent in training and of far more years spent practicing her profession carry her along. Linc had stood between her and the tasks for which those automatic responses would not have been enough; for weeks after she came “home” he had gone on commanding the ship in fact, although not in name.
His love had given her the priceless gift of the time she needed to grieve and to heal; and when she was herself again (an altered self, of course, but that fact did not surprise her—and fortunately it did not seem to disappoint him), the mental and emotional intimacy of that grieving-time remained between them. And he needed her now, as man needing woman; and she needed him, in exactly the same way.
And so they came to that night, when they no longer had to maintain the professionalism of captain and executive officer but had not yet launched their new on-duty relationship. They had held each other many times before, sharing comfort as friends and comrades; but they had never kissed, had never touched in any other way but as friends.
He was shy and gentle, and she was astonished at just how much that gentleness aroused her. Not that George had handled her roughly, because except on one occasion he certainly had not; but something profoundly moved her about seeing this big man, whose courage she knew better than anyone else in the universe could have known it after two decades as his commanding officer and even more years than that of serving beside him as his comrade, so eager and needing—and so uncertain.
The connection between their minds had been that night’s salvation, she still believed that was true with all her soul. He hadn’t had to wonder how she felt about his first clumsy kiss, he had known for certain that the taste of him intoxicated her in a way no one else’s touch ever had. And he had known, from the thoughts that kiss called up within her mind, how to alter the alignment of his mouth against hers; just where she needed the gentle probing of his tongue, just when she wanted him to stop for a moment and give her time to make her own explorations.
She had taken his hands and had put them on her body, and had guided him while she let him feel the pleasure those touches gave her. Many times since that night she had been the one to caress him, but that first time she had known without having to be told in words that what he needed most of all was to prove to himself that he could please her—and so she had lain back in the bed, had squirmed and whimpered under his touch, and when the right moment came had spread her thighs and lifted her hips and guided him tenderly into her warmth.
After that he needed no more guidance, he was thoroughly male and his body knew what to do. And the newness of the experience for him made it new for her as well. She had known two previous lovers and had given birth to four children, but she had never before been touched exactly like this—on every level where it was possible for two sentient beings to communicate, until there was no sense of being separate left.
Those few brief moments of time had changed her, had made her part of him forever in a way she never could have become part of Johnnie Romanov or of George Fralick. Neither her girlhood lover nor her husband of more than twenty years was able to make love to her as Linc could, forging a union in which sheer physical pleasure was overwhelmed by an ecstatic oneness of spirit that might subside after release came and they were obliged to separate—but that never again would be entirely absent.
Wherever he was now, and whatever had been done to him to make their connection useless on a conscious level, that bond still existed. Katy could still feel it, and while right now it was giving her more discomfort than pleasure it nevertheless consoled her just because it was still there.
Because he was still there, still living even though he could not speak to her nor she to him.
“Katy?” Johnnie spoke just a trifle more loudly, but still tried not to raise his voice enough to wake the little girl behind them.
Katy opened her eyes at last, and then had to reach up and wipe tears from her cheeks. She said softly, “It’s like it was a couple of times when Linc and I had to be separated by so much physical distance that we couldn’t find each other. I know he’s out there someplace, I know he isn’t dead; but I can’t touch him. And I’m so used to touching him, Johnnie!”
“I won’t say ‘I know,’” her cousin answered, his voice still very gentle. “But I am sorry, Katy-love. We’re almost in, I just talked to the officer who’s in charge of the Archangel’s landing party and—they haven’t found them. Not Reen or Dan or the Kane woman, anyhow; the rest they did find, in what was left of the ship.”
“Oh, Johnnie, I’m the one who should be sorry!” Katy sat up, and ran a swift hand through her hair by way of making herself presentable. “Here I am fussing and crying because my husband’s in the brig up there, and you’re wondering whether your wife is alive or dead.”
“I’m betting she’s alive. But I don’t want those bastards from the Service to know it, not right now anyway.” Romanov flashed his cousin a taut grin. “There are things you never learned about the Farmstead, Katy, because you never did actually marry me.”
“I won’t ask you what that means,” Katy decided after a moment of looking at him carefully and thinking that maybe she did not know him that well after all. Never once in staid, straitlaced, calm Johnnie had she seen an echo of their space-exploring ancestors’ wild blood—but she was seeing it now.
Yes, George, I said straitlaced. We may believe in starting our unions early here on Narsai, but you’d be amazed at just how exclusive those unions are and at just how we despise people who break their marriage vows once they’ve taken them. But I’ve never talked with you, have I, about how my parents ignored me after I left you? As far as they’re concerned I’m still your wife, and every time Linc touches me I’m committing adultery.
She put those thoughts aside, and glanced over her shoulder to see how George’s daughter was doing. Maddy was cuddled up on the passenger seat, her eyes closed, breathing with the light regular breaths of a sleeping child.
Which changed even while Katy watched her. Maddy’s eyes opened, she sat up so quickly that the safety harness clutched at her as if it had detected a crash in progress, and she uttered a cry that Katy heard herself echoing.
“What the hell?” Johnnie wanted to know. He was setting the aircar down as he asked that question, and then he was speaking over its comm. “Lieutenant, this is Romanov again. I told you I have my cousin and her daughter aboard with me? Well, something’s wrong with both of them. Have you got a medic in your shore party? No? Well, someone better do something damned quick! They’re both having all they can do to keep breathing, and I don’t have a clue about why.”