Dedication (The Medicean Stars Saga Book 1) (21 page)

As the others join William at the crest of the hill, a shout rings out from canyon, and the camp bursts into activity. The three sleeping forms jump up, grabbing their weapons, and race for the top of the path down into the canyon while the form perched on the edge begins blasting away into the air below him. The sounds of further fire echo up out of the canyon. Seeing their opportunity, William and his teammates steal down the face of the hill, half-crawling, half-running, hoping they can make it to the relative cover of the campsite before anyone notices them.

Western Mountains

Abandoned Military Base

After a night as restless as William’s, though for much more pleasant reasons, Angelina is retrieving the key and the waistband from where she flung them the afternoon before. Gavitte looks up from where he is sitting on the bed as she bends over, still unsure if he should pinch himself to see if this is all a dream.

Noticing that he is staring, she stands up abruptly, blushing, slightly embarrassed by his gaze despite their activities of the night before.

“I know what you’re thinking, but I have to go help with the initiation of some recruits,” she says, rummaging through a drawer looking for a clean shirt. “Why don’t we meet up afterwards? I have to do some rounds, checking the airlocks they’ve been building, and you can help me. It’ll give you an opportunity to explore more of the base, and give us a chance to talk.”

“I’d really like that,” he responds, feeling truly happy first time in far too long. Angelina has awakened something inside him that he’d thought was lost. There had been several women that had shared his empty bed since she’d left him all those years ago, he still can’t bring himself to think her name without a twinge of heartache, but Angelina has broken down some barrier he hadn’t realized he’d built. The others had come and gone leaving nothing behind except a discarded toothbrush or a misplaced hair tie, because in the end, Gavitte had realized that he’d wanted something from them they could not give. They were not her, and they all fell short of his mental measuring stick. Angelina is different. From the first time he saw her, he hasn’t thought of any other woman except in passing, and as he has explored her nuances further, he’s discovered the intoxicating combinations of delicate contradictions that make up who she is.

He’d been drawn in by her fire, by the passion that burned through her eyes and the strength and determination she displayed when carrying out her duties and arguing in the council meetings. But last night she’d opened up to him, revealing another side: softness, a tenderness, and layer of doubt beneath the calloused exterior that had resonated within him. Laying in the dark gently stroking her hair as she clung to him, her head resting on his chest, had felt so right that he’d greedily clung to every second, fighting to stay awake, knowing that when the morning came they’d have to return to the world outside her cozy room.

He realizes he is smiling stupidly as he recalls all of what transpired the night before. Angelina turns back towards him and catches the look on his face. She tries to glower at him, but the glint in her eye betrays the pleasure she takes from his infatuation. He knows there is a serious world awaiting them both outside the door, even if he wishes he could spend the rest of the day tracing her curves and talking about whatever strikes their fancy.

Especially serious is the press release that one of the field operatives brought in several weeks ago, within which the government insisted that no means would be spared to root out and destroy the Resistance. In an unusually candid moment, the government shed some light on their plans, listing several options for the removal of the “insurgents,” including nuclear and biological weapons. Since General Lampard heard the news, the entire base had been focused on one thing: building air locks and self-sustaining infrastructure so that they could weather anything thrown at them. The entire base could now last indefinitely, completely sealed off from the rest of the world. Gavitte’s newly planned rendezvous is only the final inspection to make sure all the automatic seals are working properly. At least that had been General Lampard’s description when he and Gavitte happened to pass through one of the newly installed doors that was as thick as Gavitte is tall.

“I’ll be handing the recruits off for mental evaluations after lunch,” Angelina continues. “Do you want to meet up after that? I bet we can make the inspection of the airlocks last all afternoon,” she adds with mischief in her eyes.

“Sure, how about I meet you in the arboretum?” he suggests, standing and reaching for his discarded pants.

During their conversation, she has managed to wriggle back into her shorts and don a sleeveless drill instructor’s shirt that, in Gavitte’s mind, only serves to accentuate the shape of her torso instead of provide the semblance of modesty generally expected of clothing. Now fully clothed, she comes back over to Gavitte and slides her hands into his hair. She draws him in for a long, lingering kiss before answering.

“The arboretum sounds good. One of the airlocks is fairly close to there anyway.”

She makes her exit after pointing out the key, straightening her shirt, and settling into the persona of drill instructor. When she is gone, Gavitte marvels at how she is able to slip on her mask the way she does; he doubts very much that he’ll be able to keep from smiling all day.

The morning goes by; it as simple as that. Neither of them seems to notice the hours as they pass. She makes the new recruits push themselves beyond their previous limits, with all appearances of a surly instructor, never letting on the smile within her. He buries himself in building the political platform for reform that they will begin spreading to the public. It is only when he lets himself surface for a minute that a smile steals across his face, but when he does start thinking of her, it is near impossible for him to get back to the research in front of him.

*

Before the warmth of their parting begins to fade, Gavitte is making his way down a passageway whose narrow clearance forces him to turn his shoulders to keep his last white shirt from being ripped by the abrasive rock. Rounding the last bend, he steps out under the branches of a tree, covered in hanging Spanish Moss. Over to his left, splashing through its narrow bed, the stream seems almost as happy as he is as it burbles along its course.

Moving as quietly as he can manage across the moss-covered floor, he catches a glimpse of her through the trees. She is sitting by the stream with her feet in the rushing cold water. As he moves closer, now with a mind to see if he can scare her, he loses sight of her for moment behind some ferns and a tree.

He comes around the edge slowly; all that remains on the rock where she had been sitting are her shoes, socks, and uniform jacket. Now on edge, he moves up onto the rock and peers cautiously into the water.

Then from behind him:

“’Ello, guv’nor.”

The only thing that keeps him from falling face-first into the stream is her hand suddenly on his shoulder. He instead ends up collapsing onto his stomach. She rolls him over and sits on him, like a lioness would sit upon the antelope it just caught.

“You thought you could sneak up on me didn’t you?” she teases.

“No, that’s just how I usually move,” he says. “All my years in the city taught me how to move gracefully, like a shadow.”

“Umm, yeah like an elephant’s shadow.” She takes the sting out of that comment by kissing him.

“So, don’t you have inspections or something to do?” he asks. “Or are you just going to sit on me and try and crush me to death?”

In response to that she gives a bounce, compressing his chest and knocking the wind out of him. As she stands up, she pulls him to his feet. Having no wind left in his lungs, he collapses into her arms and holds on so as not to fall backward into the rushing stream. Liking the feel of her in his arms and the smell of her hair, he lingers even after he catches his breath.

“Ahh give over you big baby. We haven’t done ‘that’ yet, so you have no reason to be panting,” she chides him without releasing him from her return hug.

“You bruised all my internal organs… I’m not sure if I’d be up for it anyway.”

“You calling me fat?” she asks, pushing him away so they can look in each other’s eyes. But before he can give a response, she grabs her things from the rock and pulls him off into the trees. Somehow she manages to get her shoes back on before they leave the moss-covered cavern floor.

Instead of leaving by the path he came in on, they take the main tunnel out and, after a few turns, are once more in the bustle of the underground city. People pushing carts hustle by, too busy to notice the couple holding hands and slinking along the walls, and certainly too busy to notice that one of the pair is their superior officer, even though she is carrying her uniform jacket, complete with insignia, and her shirt proclaims “Drill Instructor” in block lettering across the back.

When they reach an exceptionally narrow portion of the tunnel, they are forced into a small cutout to clear the way for a train of large mining equipment to pass by.

Finding himself in such a tight place with her pressed against him, he slides his arms around her waist and then down under her buttocks, so that each check rests firmly in a hand.

Turning her eyes up to meet his she asks, “So I guess you’ve forgiven me for sitting on you?”

“I guess so,” he replies. “You still might have to work hard to keep me from holding a grudge though.”

She smiles and pulls herself closer into his embrace, but before their moment can go any further, an awkward throat clearing alerts them to the presence of another in their hiding hole.

“Ma’am!” an embarrassed private stammers.

She turns to him, suddenly cold as ice, and returns his salute:

“Excuse me private, I did not see you there. Dismissed!”

The last piece of equipment rumbles by, painting the scene with its twirling yellow light and giving the bright red solider a chance to escape. The private vanishes. Turning back to Gavitte, her whole demeanor shifts.

“I like where that was going…” she says, grabbing his hand and leading him back out into the stream of traffic. “I think I know a place on the way to the first airlock with a few less bystanders to witness your total disregard of military protocols.”

“I have a few protocols in particular I’m thinking of disregarding,” he responds, giving her hand a squeeze.

Picking up the pace, she drags him at a sprint into a side tunnel and up a long flight of stairs. Reaching the top, she slows, then raises her hand to tell him to be quiet while she scans the room. With no intention of letting her get away this time or leading him off on any more wild dashes, he moves up behind her, sliding his hands along her hips and into the front pockets of her fatigues.

She gives up trying to focus on scanning the room and turns her head around so that he, who has been planting kisses on her neck, can plant them on her lips.

Despite her scanning, however, they are soon to be interrupted yet again, even though they are the only living souls in the room. A computer voice that has not uttered a word in over two-thousand years is beginning to stir itself.

It begins as a slow rumbling, almost too low to hear, then slowly raises its pitch. Upon reaching a level reasonably approximating the human baritone, it holds for a second before stopping. The tone is ignored completely by the two humans locked in each other’s embrace, both assuming it’s just some machinery somewhere turning on. But the voice that follows it is not to be ignored.

“Specimen found worthy. Begin launch sequence in ten. Welcome aboard.”

Startled from their romance, Gavitte realizes where he is: standing ten feet before the orb that was the focus of the presentation yesterday. The structure, which had been so dark when they’d entered the chamber that it blended into the shadows behind it, is now beginning to glow, with lines of white fire spreading across it. Somewhere deep in the bowels of the mountain, a low rumbling begins, causing the entire mountain to shake and resulting in the automatic lockdown of the entire base. The voice is not done:

“Living areas secure. Launch sequence begun.” It begins counting down, leaving both Gavitte and Angelina to stare dumbfounded into the dancing flames covering the orb’s surface. They hang on to each other a little bit tighter.

Feeling like the plot is unresolved?

Seeds to the Wind, part two of the Medicean Stars Saga is out now.

Land Fall, part three of the Medicean Stars Saga is coming soon.

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