Desert World Rebirth (35 page)

Chapter 31

TEMAR shifted from foot to foot, unable to stand still as he watched the pressure gauge approach normal. As the number clicked over into the green, the doors slid open with a puff of air as the two sides finally equalized.

“Shan!” Temar ran to Shan’s side, going to his knees next to him. Verly had hooked a machine up to his chest, a band going around his body. Another machine encased Shan’s entire arm, displays showing numbers that made no sense, and his stomach was covered with a white bandage, the edges turning pink. Even his face was covered with a clear plastic mask that hissed air as regularly as Temar breathed. Temar grabbed Shan’s free hand, twining their fingers together.

“I take it you’re more than friends,” Verly said. Temar ignored it. These people and their stupidity didn’t matter to him… not now. “That must have gone over great with the AFP bigots.” Verly touched some controls on the arm. “His blood pressure is barely holding, and the fluid replacements are keeping his heart and brain oxygenated.”

“How long until we reach your people?”

“I couldn’t tell from here. I’ll go check the system for hails from PA ships.” Verly stood up, his white space suit streaked with blood, and hurried out of the room.

“Seriously, Shan,” Temar whispered, “you have to stop this. First it’s drinking pipe juice to get off the desert and now it’s getting blown up in space. I should take you home to the farm and make you stay there until you learn to not do this. You’re going to give me a heart attack.” Shan’s hand was limp in his, and Temar’s face hurt from the effort not to bawl like a baby. Instead, he held Shan’s hand tightly and whispered to him, promising all sorts of things if Shan would just wake up: a bike ride out to Blue Hope, a lazy morning sleeping in and kissing until they fell asleep again, breakfast in bed. Temar would have kept promising things until he gave Shan the world, only Verly returned.

“I was right. A ship is coming out, eleven minutes to contact, thirteen to emergency docking. The captain wants to talk to you.”

“Me?” Temar looked up.

Coming closer, Verly crouched down and looked over the display numbers on the machine around Shan’s entire arm. “I told you I’ve made some bad calls and cost some people their lives. That happens in war. It also happens that when you do that, you aren’t particularly popular, not even with your own side. They want to hear from you, Temar.”

Temar frowned. “They think you screwed up.”

Verly nodded. “They do.”

“You saved Shan.” Temar didn’t leave any room for doubt in his statement. Shan would be okay. Temar wouldn’t accept anything less.

“Thank you for the vote of confidence. Now go talk to the commander and the captain.”

Temar stood up and paused, hating that he still didn’t understand these people. “Should I tell them this was my plan?” he asked, not wanting Verly to suffer after he’d saved Shan.

Verly gave him a crooked smile. “I appreciate the offer, Ambassador, but it would probably be better if you told them the truth. I came up with the plan and told you that it was not only stupid but that it came with about a 20 percent chance of working at all.”

Temar nodded. He could shade the truth that way. “Thank you for the 20 percent chance,” Temar said, hesitating at the door. “Call me if he wakes up or….”

“I’ll call,” Verly promised. “Go on.” He gave Temar a smile that carried some emotion Temar couldn’t quite understand. “I promise to take care of your Shan.”

Temar headed into the control room to use the communications screen. He flipped the switch, and he could see a woman sitting in the center with a man standing close behind.

“Ambassador Gazer?” the woman asked. She sounded unsure.

Pulling himself together, Temar nodded. “Captain?”

“Yes, I’m Captain Flores of the
Athene
, this is my first officer, Commander Kennedy. We understand you have an injury on board, Ambassador Gazer.”

Slightly annoyed by the woman’s nonchalant tone, Temar struggled to focus. “Ambassador Polli of Livre was caught in the cross fire between a group of terrorists and the Alliance of Free Planets. He’s badly wounded.”

“After an attempted rescue?” The captain was fishing, and she wasn’t particularly subtle about it.

“Yes,” Temar said. “Captain Helgen of the
Brazica
refused to take any measures to save Ambassador Polli. I then asked Lieutenant Commander Black’s help. As I explained to him, my people will go to extraordinary lengths to save our own, and I don’t care if it’s a sandstorm or a terrorist.”

“Does blowing up a ship and risking war seem reasonable?”

“Yes.” Temar stared at the woman, not flinching when she traded an unsubtle look with her second-in-command. Lilian would eat this woman alive and spit her bones out to bleach in the midday sun.

Captain Flores broke the silence first. “We’re coming up on emergency docking procedures. Our doctors tell me they have secured the transmission from Ambassador Polli’s emergency resuscitation, and while his wounds are critical, they believe he is holding strong for now.”

“Not bad, considering that Black argued against it, offering only a 20 percent chance of success.”

“Did he?” Flores was trying to sound nonchalant.

“He did. Of course, he also said there was a greater chance of his dying out there than of both of them getting back alive, and he doesn’t have a scratch on him.”

“And if he had been killed?” Captain Flores leaned forward. “That would have left you at the mercy of an AFP ship you had ordered him to bomb.”

“If the lieutenant commander had been killed, I would have gone back to the
Brazica
.” Temar smiled sweetly. “Captain Helgen was very understanding when we talked after the explosion. In fact, I confirmed our trade agreement just to make sure there weren’t any misunderstandings.”

Temar could see the reaction in the faces of both officers. Again, too much heat in one direction. “I would have preferred to postpone our meeting with the PA, since most of our trade goods and samples are either in transit to one of AFP stations or blown up on the ship. We don’t have a single piece of optic glass to base a trade deal on.”

“You would trade with us after trading with the AFP?” Flores spoke as though she couldn’t understand her own words. The whole ship shivered as something bumped it, and Temar looked up. “We’ve caught you with a grapple, and we’re pulling you in for an emergency docking,” Flores explained. “Expect another jolt like that went the docking ports lock on.”

“Understood.” Temar looked at the captain for a second. Getting a formed piece off the rod was always the hardest part, and he struggled to find the right words to reach her. Right now, he was pretty sure that she thought he was sun-maddened. “Captain,” he said slowly, watching her reactions. She was easily read, but that didn’t mean he understood which side to apply heat to or how far he could push her before she warped under the pressure. “My people have survived a lot, and part of that is because we’ve learned to not trust words. Both alliances have many words to describe the other. We have only seen both sides treat us fairly. Until that changes, Livre only has a grudge against the
Freedom for All
group. If any of them come to our world, they would, without a doubt, be sentenced to exile and death.”

“Death?” Flores sat up straighter, and Temar could see the horror in her face.

“We don’t impose death often, but like I said, my people believe in actions.”

“The Alliance has a strict policy against capital punishment,” Flores said as the whole ship shivered again as the docking finished.

“I suspect we do many things you have a policy against. I know we certainly broke more than a few of the AFP’s policies.” Temar shrugged as if it made no difference to him. “Once Ambassador Polli is awake and healthy, we can discuss trade and the many ways our two peoples won’t like each other,” Temar offered.

“Ambassador—”

“I hope to see you soon, Captain,” Temar said, hitting the button to turn communications off as he spotted movement in the airlock. He didn’t have the energy to play ambassador right now, and the stakes were too high if he said something wrong, so the captain would have to wait.

The airlock was crowded with men and women in light blue uniforms who swarmed over Shan. “Medical crew,” Verly offered as he slid along the wall toward Shan, careful to keep out of the way. Temar could see his first glance of a PA ship through the open door to the
Athene
, and it looked remarkably identical to the
Brazica
.

“Is he okay?” Temar trusted Verly’s assessment more than the captain’s.

“As far as I can see, he should recover. There was no interruption of oxygen to the brain. Of all the organs, the heart and brain are the only two organs that really can’t be brought back to full recovery. Both are in perfect condition and the rest… it can be fixed. I’ve seen men with worse going out to get drunk with their buddies four months later.”

Temar thought about Shan’s insides lying outside the skin. “If you’ve seen worse, I wouldn’t want to have your memories.”

“War is never pretty.”

Temar nodded.

“They’re going to want to talk to you.”

“Who?”

Verly looked around the room for a second before answering. “Either the diplomatic corps or the security corps, depending on what kind of impression you made in there.”

That didn’t sound promising, and exhaustion pulled at Temar so sharply that he wanted to sink down to the floor and never get up again. “Can I ask that you come along?” Temar asked. He might not know Verly well, but the man had offered help when no one else would.

“I’ll be answering questions from the security corps,” Verly said. Temar must have looked alarmed, because Verly shook his head. “It’s standard operating procedure to share information after a mission. They need to know that you’re crazy enough to walk into an AFP ship with your male lover and smart enough to walk out still on good terms with the bastards.”

“Wait, you know?” Temar looked at Verly. He hadn’t said Shan was a lover.

“It’s not exactly hard to see.”

The medical people lifted Shan, and the whole chaotic knot of humans rushed down the corridor. Temar was wrong. The PA ship wasn’t identical to the
Brazica
. This ship had much larger corridors.

“Ambassador, it was good to work with you.” Verly turned to him and offered a salute. Not sure what he should do, Temar stared. Verly dropped his hand to his side. “If all your people are as stubborn as you two, trying to talk a terrorist down at the point of a gun and authorizing a rescue by blowing a hole in an ally’s ship, you should make this an interesting piece of space to patrol.”

Temar gave a huff. “We’re nothing. They wouldn’t send Naite for fear he’d offend everyone, and we were afraid Lilian would try to take over the universe, and we didn’t want to have to run it after she did.” Temar was almost sure he was reaching that point of fatigue where hysteria made everything mildly amusing.

Verly smiled. “Good luck, Ambassador Gazer.” Turning, he headed into the corridor.

More men in blue uniforms were coming down the now-empty hall, and Temar watched as Verly stopped to talk to them. They exchanged a few words that looked civil enough, and then Verly headed past them and the two men came to meet Temar. Pushing himself away from the safety of the wall that was holding him up, Temar met them at the door. Before either of them spoke, Temar started. “I am entirely too exhausted to handle negotiations right now. I need a place to get Shan’s blood off me, updates from his doctors, fresh clothes, and a place to sit down before I fall on my face, because I’m pretty sure I have adrenaline poisoning after the last few hours of hell. It is hard to be the one watching instead of the one getting kidnapped for a change.”

Sure enough, Temar’s rush of words left the two blinking at him and looking at each other for some sort of reassurance. Temar might not trust words, but they were as useful as fire.

“The chair should probably come first, unless you want me to fall on my face,” Temar prodded them.

“Of course, right this way, Ambassador,” the shorter man offered, waving a hand toward the corridor. The taller man headed back the way they’d come, and Temar followed.

“Is there any word on Ambassador Polli yet?”

“No, sir. We’re monitoring medical, but there’s no reported change on his condition.”

Temar nodded. He’d done everything he could, and he was back to waiting. No matter how exhausted he was, he suspected he wouldn’t be getting any rest anytime soon.

Chapter 32