* * * *
What language do you think they’re speaking? It doesn’t sound like anything I’m
familiar with.
Raen shrugged.
Are you recording it?
Jadin gave him an offended look.
Of course.
Why not check to see if the computer has had any luck translating, then, instead of
speculating?
Sending Raen an irritated glance, Jadin focused on the computer.
Translation?
Still collating. Shall I play what I have decoded?
the computer responded.
Jadin threw a laughing glance at his friend when the computer translated the discussion about Raen’s ‘sharing air’ with the female called Cassie. Raen, however, did not look amused.
The one called Mark seems to think she is his woman,
Raen commented.
Jadin eyed Raen speculatively and finally shrugged.
She does not seem to agree.
Raen’s frown deepened
. I am not sure it was wise to leave them all together.
Jadin tamped his amusement with an effort and shrugged off handedly.
It was the
only room that was dry that we could pump air in to at such short notice. We will have to
make other arrangements if we are to hold them long … unless our people manage to
raise the ship before they run out of air.
Raen glanced at him sharply.
As far as we know they have done nothing more
than wander into the city. Unless I find out otherwise, we will let them go long before air
21
is an issue for them. Keep a close eye on them. I do not think they are stupid enough to
try to leave, knowing how deep we are, but you never know with humans.
Jadin nodded, knowing it was an order, not a request.
You do not want to stay a
while longer and observe?
he asked, all innocence.
Unless I miss my guess, the one
called Cassie is starting to feel a little uncomfortably warm. I am thinking she will be
coming out of that strange suit she is wearing before long.
Raen sent him an amused glance.
In mixed company? I doubt it. If anything they
seem more inhibited about their bodies than they used to be.
Jadin turned to watch him as he moved to the doorway of the observation room.
Where are you going
? he asked curiously.
Raen paused and turned to frown at Jadin but finally shrugged off his irritation.
They said ‘ancient’ Greeks. I am going to see if I can figure out just how gods bedamned
long we have been down here waiting for the Mother world to send help.
He stopped by communications on the way out to speak with Kadar.
Did no one
think to turn the gods bedamned alert off? The vibrations are rattling my brain.
Kadar glanced at him in surprise.
It is off. I turned it off myself.
Raen sent him a perturbed look.
What is the source of the tremors then?
The mother ship is probing for us,
Kadar responded with a shrug.
They have found us,
Raen retorted dryly as he headed out the door.
I feel it in my
bones.
Kadar stared after him blankly a moment and then chuckled.
Aye, I am feeling it
in my bones, too. It will rattle my teeth from my head if they keep it up much longer.
Struggling to ignore the sonic waves pelting him now that he knew the source and purpose of them, Raen headed for the nearest egress from the ship. The more distance he put between himself and the woman, he discovered, the less tense he felt. That realization didn’t particularly please him.
Then again, he was irritated with himself anyway. He didn’t know where the impulse had come from to kiss the woman, but he figured as impulses went it was probably one of the stupidest that had ever hit him.
He’d had no use for humans before the cataclysm that had sent their city to the bottom of the sea and divided their people—with nearly half of them abandoning ship to take their chances on living among the primitives—he saw no reason to feel any differently now only because they appeared somewhat more advanced than they had been.
Very likely those who’d chosen to live among them had been butchered by the gods bedamned savages—Kira, Omar, and Le were no doubt long dead and gone. He’d accepted that likelihood and the certainty that he would never see them again as soon as he’d discovered his brothers and his woman were missing and knew what they’d done.
He could not abandon his post and go after them, though. The city had been in chaos from the moment the meteor shower struck, the citizens terrified, running around in a blind panic with no notion of where to go or what to do to save themselves. It had taken all he and his men could do to round them up and herd them into the stasis chambers before their floating city sank.
He supposed they’d counted on that when they’d decided to betray him.
Truthfully, he wasn’t certain he would have gone after them if he could have—his brothers, maybe—Kira—he wasn’t at all sure.
22
He supposed he would have felt compelled to if it had been possible. He had bonded with Kira’s other chosen, had learned to look upon them as if they were true brothers—not like his blood brother, but the ties had been strong.
Kira was another matter.
She’d long since killed the love he’d felt for her when they’d first joined. In truth, if it hadn’t been for the fact that he’d decided she wasn’t worth dying over, he thought he might have been more than a little tempted to strangle her.
The fury he’d felt when he’d discovered she’d aborted their child--
his
child—for no better reason than because she hadn’t wanted to chance ruining her beautiful body rushed over him as if it had only been the day before that he’d discovered it.
For him, it had been little more than that—only a matter of days before the cataclysm when he’d gone into stasis. It didn’t matter how long it had actually been. In his mind it was no more than that and it was still just as fresh and painful as if it had just happened.
She could’ve prevented the pregnancy if she hadn’t wanted his child. There was no excuse for what she’d done—none. He knew it had been premeditated maliciousness on her part—all of it—getting pregnant to start with and then aborting it—all calculated to avenge herself against him for wrongs she’d imagined.
He’d been stupid enough when they’d first united to believe her possessiveness was a sign of her love for him. He’d been wrong. It was only a sign of possessiveness, a sense of ownership. She hadn’t cared about him. She was incapable of caring about anyone but herself. She’d figured she owned him, though, and she’d watched him like a hawk, interpreting everything he did as a sign of faithlessness.
If he left their home because he couldn’t stand to listen to her harping any longer and couldn’t trust himself to keep his temper in check, he was fleeing to his mistress. If he was late in returning home because of his duties, he was with another woman. If he didn’t want her because he was worn out from working twelve hours straight to earn enough credits to buy her the things she wanted, he had expended himself on some other woman.
He should have realized sooner that she wouldn’t have been so quick to question his motives and morals if her own hadn’t been questionable. By the time he’d realized that she was painting him with her own brush, though, doing what she constantly accused him of, she’d already lost the power to hurt him.
He hadn’t loved her when she’d left. He wasn’t even certain when he’d finally stopped loving her. He
was
certain of when he’d begun to hate her, though. That was when she’d informed him she’d aborted his child.
He shook his head, trying to shake the thoughts as he emerged from the ship at last and glanced around at the crumbling remains of what had once been a beautiful city.
Slowly, it sank into his mind that it looked far worse than it had directly after the meteor had struck. All of the damage wasn’t from that impact.
Time had done this.
Coldness swept over him as he moved through the ruins of the city and paused now and then to run a hand over the broken stones of a building, feeling the smoothed edges of the stones, rounded now when once the edges had been crisp and sharp.
Hundreds of years, then, he realized, feeling stunned, disbelieving even though he knew it would have taken that for the ocean to smooth the stones.
23
Almost as soon as he made that connection, though, he noticed formations of coral had grown up around the perimeter of the ship.
A wave of nausea went through him as he stared at it, trying to convince himself that the ship had simply settled amongst the coral when it had sank.
For many moments, he simply stared at it. Finally, reluctantly, he moved toward the formations to study them.
He swallowed a little sickly once he had.
They had to have been in stasis closer to a thousand years—at the very least—not hundreds, he realized. They’d expected the possibility that it might be several hundred, but nothing like this.
His thoughts went to the woman he’d captured, or more specifically to the breathing unit she’d been wearing. It had been clumsy to his way of thinking, but the technology of creating such a thing, so that air breathers could move beneath sea ….
He shook his head, wondering what other technology the humans had mastered while they had been sleeping.
Lifting his head, he stared toward the surface of the sea. None of them had been carrying weapons. Knowing the human propensity for violence, however, he returned to his stasis unit to retrieve his trident. He’d dropped his weapon when he’d gone after the woman.
A flicker of annoyance went through him.
He hadn’t simply ‘dropped’ it, he acknowledged reluctantly. He’d tossed it aside.
He still wasn’t entirely certain why.
He hadn’t needed it to subdue her, of course—there hadn’t been a moment of doubt that there would be any contest of strength or speed between them—but that was beside the point. A sentinel, captain of the guard or not, did not simply decide to disarm himself when faced with a potential threat. She could have been a decoy sent to lead him from his post—or into an ambush.
He’d tossed it aside because he’d seen she was terrified and he hadn’t wanted to frighten her more by waving the weapon in her face.
Mayhap the years in stasis had slowed his wits? Or scrambled them, he wondered in self-disgust?
He’d been born a soldier, had trained for it his entire life. He was still a man, but he had never been prone to allow a woman to distract him from his duty, however delightfully formed, however pretty.
And she was that.
He did not think he’d been thinking of any of that when he’d gone after her, though—not how appealing she was physically.
He’d been thinking about the look in her wide eyes.
He shook his head, trying to shake the thoughts as he propelled himself upwards, climbing steadily until he broke the surface. Images kept flickering through his mind, however.
She’d clung to him, he knew, from fear of drowning, sought the air she desperately needed, not offered her mouth to him. He knew that with the logical side of his mind, but the other part of himself, the side governed by instincts, persisted in interpreting those moments in an entirely different way.
24
She’d tasted—sweet. It wasn’t just surprise to discover that that had sent a jolt through him the first time he’d covered her mouth to give her air. He’d told himself it was, but he had never been one for self deception. He’d enjoyed the taste of her, the feel of her clinging tightly to him.
That was why he’d been in no great hurry to leave her with the others.
That was why he’d taken advantage of her panic and kissed her instead of letting her go at once when he’d reached the room where they’d gathered the other human intruders.
He could lie to himself till doomsday about the instant attraction he’d felt for her, but he knew better.
No one had been more vocal about their distaste for and distrust of the natives of this world than he. It was beyond ironic that the first female to stir him deeply since Kira hailed from that tribe of man.
And the worst of it was, he recognized it for what it was because he’d been there before.
Trouble, deep trouble.
It was not the sort of connection that one could slough off with a few frantic couplings. It went soul deep. It was a physical recognition of the compatibility of potential mates.
It was almost worse that she seemed to recognize it, as well.
She’d certainly responded as if she had.
It was just as well they’d be gone soon and he would have no chance to make a fool out of himself, otherwise he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to resist the pull.
The first lungful of air he sucked in as he broke the surface of the sea choked him, dragging his mind from the woman with a vengeance. His throat and lungs burned. He coughed for several minutes, expelling the water in painful gasps, wondering if it had just been so long he’d ‘forgotten’ how to breathe air instead of siphoning it from the water, or if there was something wrong with the air.