Determinant -Guardians of Vesturon [3] (33 page)

By now, the alarm bells were accompanied by flashing lights and sirens so I physically forced myself away from her mouth.

I kissed her face, her cheeks, taking the last traces of her tears away. I softly pressed my lips to her eyes, and traced the shell of her ear with my tongue. I moved to her neck and found myself becoming intoxicated by her scent. My hands fisted in her hair, feeling the silken strands sliding around my fingers.

“Heaven help me you are so beautiful. Your skin is flushed with desire and your lips are so soft I can barely keep from kissing you.”

“Rykerian can we,” she put both of her hands on either side if my face and asked, “Can we, you know, make love?” Roses bloomed in her cheeks when she asked me, but she didn’t look away from my eyes. I could relate to her shyness regarding this subject so her attempt at boldness warmed my heart.

“I would love nothing more and heavens above you push me to the edge, but you know of our ways. We cannot until we unite.”

“Then let’s do it! Get married I mean! Tonight!”

“Wha... what? Are you serious?”

“Yes! We can do it however you want...here or on Vesturon. I don’t care. I just want us to be together forever!”

“January, you are not just saying this are you? Because you are afraid of losing me? If that is the case, have no fear. I am going nowhere without you.”

“No! That’s not it. Well, I would rather die than lose you, but I want us to be married. I want to spend the rest of my life with you so why not just get married? I don’t care about a fancy wedding or anything about that. I just want us to be together.”

“My family is...well we are the First Family of Vesturon and therefore we must have a public ceremony, announcements along with all the formalities.”

“Let’s do what Maddie and Rayn did. Let’s just get married and then have all that later!”

“You are sure about this?”

“Absolutely sure.”

“Come with me.” I pulled her to her feet and guided her into my bathroom. I took a cloth and moistened it with warm water and wiped her face and eyes. I then filled a glass with water and handed it to her to drink.

“Thank you,” she smiled as she handed it back. I should not have looked at her because she was so beguiling my arms automatically reached for her and we found ourselves kissing again.

“Hmmm. When we are united, this may present a huge problem for us.”

“What do you mean?” My comment had puzzled her.

“I will not be able to keep my hands off of you for any reasonable length of time.” She must have been happy with my explanation because when I looked at her she was beaming.

When we arrived back on the terrace, the green monster of jealousy had crept its way back into my gut, and I felt myself bristling even before Jurek Herdekian came into view.

January smiled at him and the green monster nearly engulfed me. The feel of her hand squeezing my arm was the only thing grounding me.

I leaned into her and placed my arm around her announcing to all present that she was mine.

Rayn was detailing to Jurek the events of what had taken place on Xanthus. He showed no signs of anger or remorse about the death of his father, which was quite puzzling to me.

“Well, then, it is imperative we contact Therron immediately. Should I go to Xanthus?” Jurek asked.

“I do not think that would be wise. It could compromise our entire operation there. Let’s wait to hear from him. Knowing Therron, he will contact us as soon as he possibly can. He knows the importance of this mission,” Rayn informed Jurek.

“I understand.”

“We should go to Vesturon in the hopes of hearing from Therron soon. Then you can be rejoined with your sister there,” Rayn was saying.

“Really?” January asked me. “Are we going to Vesturon?” Her eyes were bright as she spoke.

“Yes. We thought it best to have Zulietta sent there until Jurek can collect her. We have yet to hear from Therron though since the situation is so terrible on Xanthus. You also need to be introduced to Vesturon,” I said, the corners of my mouth turning up. It pleased me to see how excited she was about our upcoming voyage.

“When? When do we leave?”

Jurek interrupted our conversation saying, “I would prefer to travel by my own means and Tak and my men will accompany me.”

“As you wish,” Rayn responded.

“When and where shall we meet up?”

“We can meet tomorrow afternoon at the Guardian Headquarters in Aurora. Do you know it?”

“Yes, I am familiar with the city so finding the headquarters should be an easy thing. Until tomorrow then.”

I thought he would immediately flash himself home, but instead he approached January and bowed deeply to her.

“All is well with you?” he asked, giving me a scathing look. “The Guardian was kind to you?”

“Yeah... I’m fine Jurek. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Then I received the yet shock of a lifetime. January all but threw herself at him and said, “Take care of yourself. I’m gonna miss you!”

He grumbled something back in her ear and right before he vanished, she stuck her tongue out at him.

When she spun around to face me, I knew she could see the storm clouds brewing in my eyes.

“Rykerian,
please
let me explain things. I don’t want to fight about this but you have to let me tell my side of the story. Please?” she pleaded with me.

I nodded curtly and looked at Rayn, silently telling him to leave us.

“One thing before I leave you two alone, do you wish to teleport or travel by Space Transporter.”

“Space Transporter. I wish to show January the universe.”

“Very well. I shall make the arrangements. And January, it is good to see you again. Welcome back.”

January took a seat on the couch and I pulled up a chair so I could face her. Then she told me this incredible story. I didn’t know if I wanted to thank this Jurek or if I should kill him.

“You don’t really feel like you want to kill him do you?”

“Oh January, I am at great odds. On the one hand, how can I not be grateful for what he has done for you? And for me? But it has come at such a huge expense. And if he had not abducted you in the first place, we would not be having this conversation.”

“I know, but his story is such a sad one. We related on that level and when he told me about his species, I felt so sorry for him. And then the whole thing about how he made me confront my feelings for you. We just sort of became friends. I don’t expect you to understand nor do I expect you to like it, but there is some kind of connection between us that neither of us can deny nor explain. Before you get all mad at me again, it’s not
that
kind of connection. It’s more like friendship or even family.” She rose to her feet and started wringing her hands.

“I don’t want you to be upset by any of this. I swear my heart and soul lie with you and always will.”

“But January, can you not see how twisted this whole thing is? He destroys half of humanity on Earth, then comes here and threatens us and abducts you. He holds you prisoner for weeks with demands of saving his family and if we fail, he says he will kill you. Yes, he allowed us to communicate twice, but other than that I didn’t know if you were alive or dead. Can you try to understand how I feel about this? I assure you I am having great difficulty in tempering my thoughts of him.”

She came to me and knelt between my legs as she grasped my hands. Her pale ice blue eyes held mine as she spoke.

“I know it’s completely strange. I’m not sure how I’d handle it if the shoe were on the other foot. I am so mad at him about what he did here on Earth, but he also protected me. He did what he had to do for his family. He felt he was given no other choice. I was not harmed at all while I was there. I really don’t think he would have killed me. He was just saying that. And he forced me to look deep within myself confront my own demons. He understands how I couldn’t let myself open up to you because he’s been through much of the same things. We are so much alike in that regard. I’m not asking you to like any of this, but I am asking you to accept it for what it is.”

“Where did he take you January?”

“I honestly don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. We were somewhere out in space in some kind of space station or something. I stayed in one room that would convert itself into whatever room I needed it to be.”

I nodded, trying to digest everything she was telling me.

She hadn’t moved from the place between my legs and her beautiful face was imploring me to understand.

“I missed you so much.” It was the first thing I thought to say.

“Not as much as I missed you,” she whispered.

I picked her up and set her in my lap, refusing to let her go. She laid her head on my chest and spoke again.

“I want you to get to know him Rykerian. He could be a great ally for us in our war against the Xanthians.”

I smiled at her words, saying, “Spoken like a true Vesturion.”

She sat straight up, looked at me and said, “I know, right?”

“Look, I will do my best to have an open mind concerning your friend, but I cannot promise I will like him.”

“That’s more than fair, and more than I can ask.”

January and I decided we would finalize the issue of Jurek’s sister before we would approach the idea of getting married—as she called it. We didn’t want to add any more stress than necessary to my family.

The next day we boarded the Space Transporter and headed for Vesturon. Rayn was at the helm, which allowed me to explain all the sights to January. Other than the usual first time side effects of space travel, January was seemingly intrigued by it all. She couldn’t stop asking questions.

When we made the jump to hyper propulsion, her curiosity presented itself.

“What happened to all the stars?”

“Oh, they’re still there. You can’t see them because we are traveling faster than the speed of light.”

“Okay, where I come from that would be an impossibility.”

“That is correct. But where we come from it is a way of life.”

“How so?”

“Rayn, would you care to answer? I let him answer this kind of thing as he’s the family genius,” I joked.

“I’ll do my best. January, we learned a long time ago that you can cheat astrophysics.”

“How can you do that?”

“Okay, cheat may be too strong a word. How about this...we take shortcuts.”

“Can you explain?”

“Let’s see...well the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, correct?”

“Duh! Yeah!”

“Hang on a moment and this will all make sense. What we do is take the space-time continuum and fracture it into sections, much like your string theory. If you bring the ends of the strings together and move from end to end, in that fashion, your distance is shortened significantly, correct?”

“Yeah, but...”

“Stay with me for a moment. We bend the trajectory on which we want to travel in a loop formation—much like a switchback on a mountain road. Except for a major deviation. We don’t follow the road.”

“Huh? You lost me on that.”

“Okay. Imagine a straight path, but take it and bend it like this,” Rayn said, taking his finger and drawing an imaginary curved line.

I went to the screen and using my glove, I drew the line that Rayn was describing.

“Like this January. We start with this and change it into that.”

“Okay, but you still have the same length, except it’s not straight.”

“Ah, you are correct. But there is a big difference. We don’t follow that trajectory. We leap from one section to the next using a sort of loophole method,” Rayn finished.

I gestured with my hand at the line I had drawn saying, “Like this. We jump from point A to B to C and so forth. So in a sense, it is a shortcut because we cheat the space-time continuum. If you were to stretch the trajectory out, it would be the total distance traveled, but our method makes it only
seem
much shorter. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, in theory. But how does it really work?” January persisted.

“Now that is a question for our astrophysicists and engineers! I can only describe the theory but not the mechanics,” Rayn said.

“Do not believe him January. Rayn could build this Space Transporter if he wanted. He is brilliant and the brains in the family,” I quipped.

No sooner had the words left my mouth when the ship’s screen lit up like a Christmas tree.

“What was that?” January asked, her eyes popping out of her head.

“Rykerian, strap yourselves in, and fast. We have company...and not the good kind,” Rayn shouted.

I threw January into a seat and fastened her harness and barely got myself strapped in when Rayn threw the ship into an evasive maneuver. Unfortunately, we were in a Space Transporter and not a Star Fighter, so our capabilities were limited.

“Rayn?” I yelled.

“The ship has Xanthian markings. I’m getting Xanthian readings from my probe too.”

“Can we outrun them?” I inquired.

“Doubtful. Start stripping the ship’s data but be careful. Our ride is about to get very bumpy!”

“Can I help?” January shouted.

“No!” we both retorted simultaneously.

“Stay put. I do not want you to get injured,” I told her as I moved toward the ship’s compsys.

My fingers flew across the board commanding the compsys to transfer all data to my shadar.

“How long?” Rayn asked.

“A few minutes. How much time do we have?”

“About that much. We will be cutting it close.”

“Your veil is up right?”

“Yes, but they tracked our heat trail. They cannot see us but they know where to fire.”

“Fire? What do you mean fire?” January asked.

“They are preparing to fire on us,” I told her. “Rayn, teleport her to the space dock right now. I would feel better knowing she was there.”

“What about you?” she asked.

“We will follow as soon as we strip all the data on board. It cannot fall into Xanthian hands. We can sacrifice the ship but not the data.”