Ages in Oblivion Thrown: Book One of the Sleep Trilogy (18 page)

“
I’m sorry if I upset you. Earlier.”
She seemed to know that he was at a tipping point.

“
I wasn’t upset. I find myself more
concerned about and for you than I had expected.”
Great, I sound like an idiot out of
Austen.

Maeve raised an eyebrow.

“
Still sounds like you think I’m
crazy.”

“
Crazy, no. Complicated?” There was a
palpable sense of temperature. Neither one of them dared move; each
willing the other to do so.

“
I can deal with that.”

“
Good.”

“
Indeed.” Less than a foot of distance
stood between them. She held up a mug, “Coffee?”

“
Screw coffee. Coffee can go to hell.”
He closed the gap and picked her up off her feet.

۞

“
You think he’s in
love
? Really?” Sa’andy was slowly twirling some
spaghetti squash around her plate. Tark had told her everything
that had transpired over the past several hours. She was a bit
surprised that he’d put so much together in so little time. Leaving
aside the question of his best friend, she knew it was time to be
honest with him. She smiled, hoping that he would not be angry with
her.

“
I can feel you growing stronger. What
conclusion have you arrived at?”

“
Do you have to be so clinical
sounding? They’re people, not ratifications of a treaty.” He
pouted, staring at his goat cheese crostini. Had he ordered this?
“I’m going to have to protect their interests no matter what
happens.”

She smiled, having goaded him into a
discourse with his conscience, and he didn’t even apparently
realize it.

“
Even if that eventually means the end
of everything you’ve worked for? Even if it means you find yourself
fighting a war?”

“
Even when it means that all I have
left is you, baby. You’re the only thing I won’t surrender. What’s
this talk about war, though?” He didn’t like it. War was something
he preferred to avoid at any cost. Not for the sake of cowardice,
but that he knew what came with it.

“
Never mind. You’re sure?” He nodded,
his look of confidence her answer, and she knew that she could
proceed. “Then I have to tell you a few things.”

۞

It took a bit to catch back up with everyone
else. Antonio had scarpered off to “figure some stuff out”. Jemi
had been back in her room. Grace had been with some personnel she’d
met in the weapons section. It seemed she was considering trying to
go back into the service. Josh had to laugh at that. For someone
who didn’t want to go back to school, she was happy to overlook
that if it meant being able to handle large arms again. Boom.

It had been a semi-happy reunion.
Everyone was pleased to see Jules (Jemi thought
someone
might be more than typically happy to
see her). None of them seemed able to muster up the same enthusiasm
for Wallace.

“
I’m not taking this personally, just
so you know.” Wallace hadn’t expected a warm welcome, but this was
way worse.

“
Well, you could. Because it
is.”

“
You know, Josh, Grace, we didn’t
really know each other. Jemi either, but she seems to be able to
give me the benefit of the doubt.” He gestured over to the latter
subject, who drew back and began to run her fingers through her
curls. She was still trying to get used to them. She figured her
head needed a rest after a couple hundred years in
plaits.

“
Um, well, I just don’t like saying
mean things.” She kept her eyes on her hair.

Wallace threw his hands up in the air and
flopped down onto a couch.

“
Great.” He waved to Julieta. “You
might as well get this show on the road. We have a compressed
timeline, as you keep reminding me.”

“
Timeline?”

“
Yes, Grace. I mentioned to Josh and
Leif, we uh, still have our original mission.”

“
Say what?”

۞

It felt like they’d fallen off the edge of
forever. Maeve had lost all concept of time while Dmitry held her,
her toes just brushing the floor. She fought down the turning of
her brain to other ideas and tried to hold herself in the moment.
It was more than a simple kiss. Those were everyday. Even the kiss
from when they’d gone out that first night seemed trivial;
significant of nothing. If they had gone their separate ways
afterwards, neither of them would have thought twice about that
kiss.

This was different.

This was the opening of a door.

An invitation to investigate from every
angle.

A long pent-up shudder and sigh worked its
way from deep within her body, escaping with force. Dmitry paused,
drew back to look at her, held her more tightly.

“
What color are your eyes, anyway?” He
looked into them, and grinned at her in a way that stole the breath
from her lips.

“
That’s what you’re going to ask?” She
tried to resist, but his gravity pulled at her
relentlessly.

“
I already know where your bed is.” He
clearly had a handle on roguishness. She laughed quietly, and he
realized he hadn’t heard that before. “You need to do that more
often.”

“
So do you.” She closed her eyes and
rested her forehead against his, listening only to the sound of
their breathing. “Someone was knocking at the door earlier, weren’t
they?”

“
Couldn’t have been too important.
They went away.” He resumed his investigating.

۞

“
Let me think about this. It’s a lot
to consider.”

“
I realize that this comes as a shock,
most likely, but I’ve waited as long as I could. I feel very
strongly about it.”

“
I can tell. Give me a
minute.”

“
Jorge, just be honest with me.” Tark
knelt next to the bed where Sa’andy still sat, taking her hands,
gazing pointedly into her depthless black pools. She was very cute,
looking as though she was waiting for something bad to suddenly
happen.

“
I need to digest the fact that you’ve
beaten me to the punch. No worries, see? I want to spend the rest
of my life by your side. I’m not sure you realize that
traditionally, I’d be the one asking you.”

“
Earth has many odd customs, not least
of which are your marriage traditions. Why should it matter who
asks whom?”

“
It’s…oh, never mind. You’re right.”
He thought of a certain ring, one made from Ethiopian opal set in
black gold. He’d been ‘thinking it over’ for nearly a year, and
now…it seemed like an irrelevant notion. Perhaps it would be better
for the wedding, anyway. “What was the other thing you wanted to
talk about?”

Sa’andy grimaced. This was what had caused
her to blurt out her proposal; fear of the unknown. She wondered
how he would react to her confession. Breathing in deeply, she
tried madly to sort out how to say it, and let it come out in one
big rush.

Tark sat quietly for a few minutes. Part of
him wanted to laugh aloud, while the rest of him sat in dazed
bewilderment. Sa’andy had always seemed so straightforward and
uncomplicated. Instead, she was turning out to be nothing short of
a spook.

“
Are you a spy, then?” She laughed at
him, not without a touch of unease.

“
Not a spy. At least, I don’t
think
so. I was asked to help, so I
did.”

“
Dare I ask who approached
you?”

“
I don’t think that’s a good idea yet.
I’m sure they’ll come to you before long.”

He was at a loss for words again. She had
kept secrets from him. Even now, she was keeping a secret. The
question was what he would do now. His random coincidence, finding
six frozen people in the middle of nowhere in space? Sa’andy had
known all along why she was volunteering to scan and catalog
Jupiter. She’d just needed the excuse to go looking. But why? Why
bother waking these people up?

“
Why?”

“
There’s not a quick answer. I don’t
know all the details anyway.”

“
I’ve got to know some of it, if I’m
going to make a decision. Life around here may get a little crazy
during the next week or so, and I need to be able to be ready for
it.”

“
I know. We’re not talking about the
end of the storm season though, are we?” His forced smile answered
for him. “They have a task ahead of them. It will be dangerous, but
they are the only ones who can accomplish it.” She wanted to tell
him the rest, but she’d been compelled to remain silent. It was
essential that he remain ignorant of certain things for now. They
had promised he would be briefed fully when the time
came.

Until then, he could not know that these
people were the only ones…because they did not exist. Because they
all contained the essential part of their conditioning and
training. Sa’andy had asked her handler whether there was a
trigger. Would they simply begin their mission once a signal or cue
was given?

But she was not authorized to have
that answer. That alone was enough to convince her not to tell Tark
everything. Perhaps these people
were
simply time bombs. She did not want to
think of them that way, but it was already in her mind. She could
spare Tark that doubt for now. She smiled at him, hoping that he
trusted her enough to let it lie for now.

“
Well, we should make the most of our
fleeting free time, then.” No words exchanged. Just the quickening
of heartbeats, and a mutual need for each other. It was love born
of certainty, and had been from the first. Instinct drove them
together, rather than apart.

۞

The stranger slept as he usually did,
half-awake, reviewing the day’s events while his body recharged.
Knowing a great many more things than he had at the beginning of
his stay, his rest was calm. Most of these details had been gleaned
within the past twenty-four hours or so. He’d seen several of those
walking meatsicles, and knew with whom he wanted to start.

It would be the beginning of the solution to
the problem of their existence. Heat of divine inspiration
blossomed in his mind, as it was flooded with plans and the promise
of blood. The mission was to go forth and bend the arms of justice
with his righteousness. Purity would be restored because of these
steps, the first of many in the coming days.

Should be careful about getting ahead of
oneself, he thought. Overconfidence tended to bring down hubris and
wrath. Then progress would come to a dead halt. Emphasis on the
dead. All in good time, that was his motto, patience was the key to
success. In the meantime, there were other women.

That thought in mind, he rousted himself
from his short nap, and ambled out in search of a date. Hopefully
someone appropriate. He could buy her dinner, and laugh or frown at
the right moments while she talked. During this time, he would
really thinking about the power he would exercise, just out of the
realm of her perception.

Oh, he wasn’t a god. That job was better
left to the man who had sent him here. He was the type of monster
who enjoyed bringing to life the chaos that Robert Warden
envisioned. An artist with appalling talent, he would carefully
exact the tempests of his master, precision all that mattered. Like
a destroying angel, a nephilim, with outward beauty and only decay
within.

The ship he’d arrived on had already
departed, naturally. He had a whole replacement host of
unsuspecting cherubs, nymphs, and seraphim. So many assorted hues
and textures, all living on board this military base and civilian
city. So many possibilities in tastes and turn-ons. Who knew where
the night could take him? At last, an object of his usual desires
crossed right in front of him. She saw him check her out, blushing
just enough to tease his sensibilities. Just his type too; long
blonde hair, modestly endowed, excellent taste in clothing.

Someone you’d bring home to mother, except,
well, his mother was dead. Just the same, he knew she’d have
approved. Like the last two, but now he knew he’d have to proceed
with discretion, and not have this one discovered the way the last
one had been. He’d been skillful with the one after that. He
couldn’t afford to get lazy and careless now. If there was nothing
to be found, there was no trail to lead back to him. He approached
her with his usual disarming smile lighting up blue-grey eyes and
perfectly white, straight teeth.

“
Are you waiting for somebody? No? Do
you mind if I join you?”

۞

It was deep into the night when Tark dragged
himself from bed, leaving behind the enigmatically smiling woman
who would soon be his wife. He didn’t really want to be up, or do
any of the work he’d set himself up for, but being in his office at
this hour ensured quiet and privacy.

No prying eyes to tell tales. The officer of
the day probably wouldn’t make much of an appearance, and the
couple of people watching sensors or comm would ignore him. He
wanted to make a call back earthside on a secure channel. It would
take a little bit of finagling, breaking of protocols, but he had
to try to get some information.