Desert World Rebirth (34 page)

Verly turned off the animation and turned the chair around to look at Temar. “I need to tell you that I don’t have the best reputation for plans. My plans… at least one of my plans… is rather infamous for going horribly wrong, leading to a lot of innocent deaths. This has less than a fifty-fifty chance. I’d put the odds at about 20 percent of us both getting out clean and 20 percent that we both die horrible deaths.”

“And 60 percent chance of something in the middle,” Temar finished, his voice weak. He didn’t want to make this call, but Verly kept looking at him as if he expected an answer. How could Temar make this choice for Shan? What if he made the wrong choice? What if he did nothing and these people shot Shan in the head? Temar’s stomach roiled with fear until he felt on the verge of throwing up on Verly’s nice, clean floor. All these people had such clean floors. Staring at the metal seam that ran along the decking, Temar knew that he had lost the train of logic somewhere, but his brain balked at the idea of considering anything more significant than space-people’s obsession with clean floors.

“It’s a hard decision. If you want me to make the call—”

“No.” Temar looked up. “No, he’s my… friend. If someone is going to make this call, it’ll be me.” Temar didn’t add that if it turned out badly, he’d be the one living with the guilt, but from the sympathetic look on Verly’s face, Temar was sure he knew it. Shan had told him once that it was horrible being the survivor, being the one who hadn’t been hurt. Twice in his life, Shan had been the one who escaped a horrible fate unscathed, and Temar could admit that he hadn’t understood. He’d called Shan lucky. Maybe he hadn’t said that to Shan’s face, but he’d thought it. Shan hadn’t been raped. He hadn’t been tied up and abused. He hadn’t died even when armed hunters had chased him through the desert. It was as if his God had shielded him and let everyone around Shan suffer. Naite, him, even Ben… how many victims did Shan know?

Now Temar knew how Shan felt. When someone hurt you, you knew you had to reach inside and survive. There was this stubborn determination to put one foot in front of the other and just keep pushing through until something changed. But in some odd way, there was a power there. Temar had manipulated Ben on the good days. And when he came too close to relaxing into a life that was hell, he’d manipulated Ben into having bad days. When he could feel that rotting center in his soul start to feel good when Ben touched him gently, Temar would aggravate Ben into picking up a whip and laying into him. It reminded him to cling to hate. The power was sick and twisted—the rot in his soul sometimes stunk so bad that he wanted to gag, and other times the sweetness of that rot drowned out everything else. However, no matter how corrupt, there was a power there.

But now Temar didn’t have any of that power. He couldn’t make the choice to try and placate his captor or aggravate him into violence. Trapped on the outside, he could only sit and watch. The pain left him almost unable to think straight, and now… now Temar understood what Shan meant when he talked about how the ones who weren’t hurt still suffered. Temar would give anything to be in there, to be at Shan’s side, and he couldn’t be. He could, however, make this choice.

“Do it,” Temar whispered.

“I’ll get the equipment ready. I’ll be back in about twenty minutes to see if you want to still do this.”

Temar nodded mutely.

Verly stood, but then he stopped. “You have good instincts, Ambassador Gazer. In the service, we always say there are watchers and flailers. Watchers stand back and gather intel until they understand a situation. Flailers go flying into a situation half blind. I’ve done my share of flailing, but you’re a watcher through and through. So, if you pull the plug on this, I’ll follow that order, and I won’t question it.” Verly turned toward the hatch.

“Lieutenant Commander?”

Verly turned around, and Temar took a deep breath as he tried to control the pain that ripped at him. “Can you think of any other plans?”

For several seconds, Verly looked at him, and then he shook his head. “No.”

Dropping his gaze, Temar stared at the seam in the floor. He wouldn’t lose Shan. He wouldn’t. “Do it. Tell me when you need me to come down, and I’ll learn how to operate the winch, but I need a few minutes up here first.”

“Yes, sir,” Verly agreed before he headed off the bridge.

Sitting at the navigator seat, Temar stared out into the black. The ship was turned the wrong way for him to see the
Brazica
other than in the vid displays, but Verly’s animation haunted him.

“God, you’ve protected him this long, please don’t take him away from me,” Temar prayed, the words little more than a rough whisper, but that was all he could force out through his painfully tight chest. “Please save him. Please don’t take him, not yet. We need him here. Oh God, we need him here.” Temar could feel the cold tracks from tears sliding down his face, but his hands shook so badly he felt like he had to hang on to the arms of the chair to keep from breaking apart. “God, please. Please.”

Temar kept whispering his plea as emotions rolled through him. He would have to pull himself together to play his part in the plan, but right now, he cried and prayed and hoped that Shan was right about someone listening.

Chapter 30

“ARE you clear?” Verly asked. His voice sounded strange coming through the communicator built into his space suit, like he was standing in a very small cave with sounds bouncing around him.

Temar nodded, touching each control in turn. “Release, let more line out, retract the line, speed.”

Verly nodded. “Repressurization?”

“Three dials.” Temar gestured toward the wall.

“Emergency autopilot?”

Temar gave Verly a cold look.

“Right, you know. Try to avoid letting me die out there, okay?”

Temar nodded. “Wait,” he blurted. “What about the other assistant?” Guilt rose as he realized that he’d forgotten there was another person in that room they were about to blow up. Temar had no problem with Pentalia dying, but they hadn’t talked about the other assistant.

Verly turned awkwardly in his bulky suit. “He’s shot, Temar, probably dying if not dead already. And as soon as Pentalia is done, he’ll be dead. You aren’t changing his fate by trying to save Shan.”

Temar clenched his teeth, but he couldn’t disagree with the logic.

“Your call, Ambassador.”

“Go,” Temar said as firmly as he could. Verly nodded and walked toward the open door into the airlock, clicking the retractable line to his belt and pulling on it before he closed the heavy door. Temar could only wait now. He watched the screen while Verly floated out into space, his dark space suit almost invisible except for the tiny pinpricks of light that appeared as tiny thrusters nudged him first one way and then the other. Slowly, he approached the giant
Brazica
; until Temar watched a human form approach the ship, he’d had no idea how truly massive the
Brazica
was. Everyone in Livre could probably fit inside without spending too much time stepping on each other’s toes.

The pulley attached to the retractable line gave three long beeps. Verly had signaled.

Temar turned on the communicator. “This is Ambassador Gazer calling Captain Helgen.”

It took several seconds before the captain’s voice answered him. “Ambassador?”

“I’m getting Shan back, Captain.” Temar turned off the communicator and gave the pulley’s retract button one quick push to let Verly know he had warned Helgen. Verly had actually argued against that, claiming the terrorists were monitoring the communications. They probably were, but Temar didn’t want to blow a hole in someone’s ship without at least some warning. It seemed rude.

With his hand hovering over the pulley controls, Temar watched the screen as Verly’s barely visible body slid closer to the main, cylindrical part of the
Brazica
. The explosion was silent, which seemed odd, but one second the flat wall of the ambassador’s quarters were there, and the next, debris spilled out into space. Verly’s suit flashed as he maneuvered closer to the field of rubble, reaching out. Temar held his breath, his fingertips tingling as fear rushed through every cell. Verly caught at something, and as it rotated, Temar could see the blue of a shirt. Temar gasped, desperate to hit the retract button, but if Verly hadn’t secured Shan to his own body first, he might lose his grip. Instead, Temar watched the controls, his hand shaking now.

Three long beeps. Temar pressed the retract button so hard that for one second he had an irrational flash of panic that he’d break it and be forced to watch on screen as Shan died. He didn’t. The cable pulled the two of them in much faster than Verly had gone out, but suddenly everything changed direction. Verly and Shan flew off the side of the screen and debris soared across the scene. Temar’s mouth fell open as most of the arm that contained the ambassador’s rooms disintegrated, chunks of metal radiating out into space and toward the
Brazica
and through the area where Verly had Shan in this ridiculous attempt at a rescue.

And Temar couldn’t do anything.

Nothing.

He could only watch an empty screen with bits of floating trash and pray. Air refused to come all the way into his lungs as Temar divided his time between looking at the screen and staring through the thick viewport into the airlock.

Verly’s back appeared first, the belt tight and his body bent from the force of the pull. It took Temar a half second too long to turn the pulley off, and the momentum and the artificial force of the ship’s gravity combined to make Verly slam into the wall of the airlock, his body collapsing over Shan’s own. Temar hit the airlock doors, triggering the oxygen supply before the doors were even fully closed. He knew they had to depressurize slowly, but he turned the dial to the maximum setting Verly had shown him.

With a hand pressed up to the door and his nose on the viewport, Temar watched as Verly pulled his helmet off. That was the first time he noticed the blood.

Temar hit the switch on the door. “Verly, are you okay?”

“Shan caught shrapnel from the secondary blast. It’s bad,” Verly yelled. He moved, and Temar could see Shan’s limp body, his pants red from blood and his face slack.

“Is he….”

“He’s hurt. I can only control the bleeding. Get us out of here, Temar.” Verly pulled off his gloves, throwing them to the side before ripping open Shan’s shirt. Bits of his insides lay under the fabric, and Temar gagged once before turning and racing for the bridge.

The emergency autopilot was designed for a dying pilot to be able to hit one button and have the ship automatically find its way home. It worked just as well for someone who didn’t know the first thing about ships. Temar flipped open the small cover and turned the switch. Engines rumbled below him, and Temar sat down in the copilot’s seat and hit the communications controls. He was getting familiar with those.

“Ambassador Gazer to Captain Helgen.”

This time, Temar got a visual on the captain. “Ambassador, do I take it that you blew another hole in my ship?” The captain did not look amused.

“We got Shan out,” Temar said, refusing to apologize, even though he was seriously running out of backbone. He desperately wanted to curl up in a ball and let someone else handle things for a while. “Shan was seriously injured in that second explosion, though. We’re heading to Lieutenant Commander Black’s ship for medical help right now.”

“The second… that large explosion wasn’t you?”

Temar jerked back, shocked that Helgen would ever suspect him of putting everyone at risk like that. “No. That was whatever the terrorist had in the room with them. We just blew a hole in the wall so we could grab Shan.”

The captain blinked at him for a second. “You took him out through space? Without a suit? I’m rather inclined to believe you when you say your people are a little irrational.”

“All people are, Captain. We just admit to it.”

“Ambassador, come around and our medical teams will help.”

Temar shook his head. “You have your own injured, and it will be at least twenty minutes before Verly and Shan are depressurized. Verly says that ships should already be heading this way from Minga because of his earlier messages, and we should meet them on the way. If Shan is going to survive, we need their medical equipment.” Verly had been honest about most everything else, so Temar really hoped that he’d been honest about his alliance’s medical capabilities.

“The bastards are good with technology,” Captain Helgen admitted unhappily. “Good luck handling them, Ambassador. I’ll tell command that we have a deal, and that you’ve approved Officer Aral as a liaison.”

“Thank you,” Temar said. He had a lot to thank the captain for, first and foremost not shoving him in a closet.

“Travel safe, Ambassador,” Helgen said, and then the screen went blank.

Temar sat in the chair, shaking so badly that he wasn’t sure he could keep his feet under him if he tried to climb the ladder down to the lower deck again, but that’s where Shan was and Temar intended to be there when the airlock repressurized. Shan had seen him bruised, tied, gagged, and humiliated. He could handle seeing Shan injured. Maybe. Temar’s stomach rolled in warning, but he ignored that as he headed back down the narrow corridor to the lower deck.