Deviation (7 page)

There had to be a way, he thought as he was deposited in a small, two-seater travel ship. There had to be a way to bring Matthew around.

He struggled to remember what Matthew enjoyed, but it had been almost seventeen years since they'd spoken.

Finnegan settled into the pilot seat and began the pre-flight preparations to take them to Earth. From the passenger seat beside him, David watched. He realized in a numb, disjointed sort of way that this was his first trip to Earth in nearly six years.

***

"Magnify," Hedric said.

The MEDS screen zoomed in on the rectangular, half vacant marina in the distance. He could feel the awkward bob of the ship as it rested in the ocean, forcing him to lean against the side of his seat. The instructions his mother had loaded into the Lothogy mainframe flaunted against the corner of the screen, making less and less sense to him. Apparently the next step was to hide the ship somewhere along the coastline, which was problematic on several accounts.

One, there were several open beaches, all heavily populated by scantily clad young people. It had not escaped his attention that half the skin he was seeing was female, which shocked and repulsed him at the same time. The rest of the cockpit was in the same state of eyebrow-raised disbelief.

"What the hell am I looking at, Boss?" Jellison asked. "Eden?"

"I was given to believe Eden was supposed to be tropical," Myron said. "Incoming communication, Captain."

"Finally," Hedric leaned over and punched the commands to accept the communication. The screen went into a static, crackling with white specks that barely began to form his mother's image. "Myron, see if you can clean that up."

"Don't bother," Celeocia said. "Listen carefully. I'm relaying two different coordinates. One will take you to another ship for supplies and repairs. The other will send you to Caresse Zimmerman."

"I need some explanations, mother."

"There's no time," the image flickered and he lost part of her words to the jumble of static. " - in a crate labeled 'acquisitions'. Find Zimmerman and start the journey home."

"I'm not doing anything until I have answers. Where the hell are we? Who is Zimmerman? What the hell is going on?"

"She's important, Hedric." The feed twitched and he cursed before she spoke again, "-Prophet. Remember, Hedric. I need Zimmerman alive."

The image went out, the screen switching back to the teeming, crowded flesh on the coastline. He stared at it for a moment, frustrated because he was so damn blind in this mission, angry because he'd just had to strike Keats - something he'd never done before, at least not to Keats - and more than a little uncomfortable with the suspicions eating away at the back of his mind.

"Jellison, go see what's in the acquisitions box," Hedric turned away from the screen. "Myron, set a course for wherever the other ship is. It probably has enough cover for us too," he pressed the intercom button. "Freeman."

"Thought you'd forgotten about me, Cap'n," Freeman's voice called through the speakers.

"Inspect the ship for any leaks or damages and report them to Keats."

"Roger that."

The intercom went silent and then the room surged to life, Jellison headed out of the cockpit and Myron making the necessary adjustments to their course. Hedric squinted at the screen, trying to make sense of the last half hour. He was partially relieved that his mother hadn't sent him to his death, but even more troubled by what their surroundings could mean. Had the Novo Femina made a secret colony for women? Well, men and women, he thought as an image of a bare-chested male youth crossed the screen.

The complications that went with this line of thought were overwhelming. If the Makeem ever found this place the Novo Femina temple would be razed, its followers executed for gross blasphemy. After the Mavirus Carcinoma had nearly obliterated the female population, the Makeem had risen to power, making a fairly convincing argument that God had chosen to punish women for their vanity. Their proclamations were strengthened when Makeem scientists came up with the only way to save the human race - a genetically altering vaccine that could combat the Mavirus.

But the vaccine came with a price. Mesa had been a prime example of this. She'd been born with only half of her left arm. By the time he'd met her, she had already undergone the surgery to replace the limb with robotics. There were other women, like his mother, who had less fortunate birth defects and were more machine than human anymore. According to the Makeem, this was the natural price that women had to pay. It had always seemed like a jump to Hedric, but Makeem factions were everywhere and quite popular, so he'd never questioned it out loud.

The vanity that the Makeem preached against was evident on the screen before him, seeming to solidify everything he'd ever heard. But then, with sudden faltering shock, Hedric realized what was really bothering him about the display. The women, all of them, were perfect. There was not a glint of metal on any of them. No deformities.

Perfect flesh and blood.

The hair on his arms stood stiff. He was fairly certain he'd heard his mother use the word 'prophet' in that last transmission.

"I've located the other ship," Myron said. "It's not far."

"Good," Keats said from the ladder, "Because I'm going to have to gut it in order to make this ship flyable again."

"Borden got us pretty good in the belly," Myron frowned as he began maneuvering the Lothogy. "Sorry about that, Captain. I did my best."

Hedric saw the beach scene slide out of view as they headed for a dense thicket of trees. They were still far enough away that no one on the beach had seen them. Myron was smart enough to know that if they were moving to hide, he had to avoid contact with any other vessels along the way.

"Yes, well, half the damage could have been prevented by keeping the ship airborne," Keats' snarky tone caught his attention.

"If we'd stayed airborne they would have killed us," Myron said.

"I meant the continued dive. The dive I demanded we not do, the dive that nearly crushed the ship."

"Keats," Hedric turned from the screen and faced the engineer. "Shut up and fix my ship."

"She's my ship too."

"Not today she isn't."

Whatever argument Keats was about to make ended when Jellison gruffly pushed his way to the top of the ladder. The soldier grunted in effort as he lowered a large, bulky crate onto the walkway and crouched behind it. Jellison looked baffled at the crate, which sent Hedric's alarms off again. With another frown, he watched Jellison pull out packages, all labeled with their names, and begin to hand them out.

Fueled by his growing irritation, Hedric ripped his package open, tearing through the vacuum sealed plastic with relative ease. Given the restrictions on uniforms for people of Hedric's stature, he was taken off guard - yet again - by the civilian garments he pulled from the plastic. Faded blue pants in a material he hadn't encountered, and a nondescript black shirt, both in his size. There was one weapon, a fairly archaic looking 9mm with no serial number and a handheld GPS unit. He recognized the GPS device from history class and choked on the final realization of the day.

Whatever wormhole his mother had sent him through had landed them somewhere in the 21st century. It was the only explanation that fit, as impossible as it was.

The GPS powered on in his hand, acquired satellites and began directing to a preloaded location. He lowered the GPS, not needing to ask where it was leading him. His mother had preloaded the program and she was after one thing; Caresse Zimmerman.

***

"Ack!" Reesa stopped walking, rifling through her bag and muttering.

Kate paused with her, watching in amusement as her friend lowered the shoulder bag in defeat. In her opinion, the wide patchwork fabric
thing
that Reesa carried could never be called a purse. It was too big, with straps long enough that it could be worn crisscross over the chest. With a sigh and a shake of her head Reesa handed Kate the keys to her apartment.

"Let yourself in," she said. "I left my voice recorder in the car."

Although a voice recorder was not something Kate would have taken the time to go get, especially when the trip required another three story climb to Reesa's apartment, she just laughed and took the keys. Dubbing the girl's strange compulsion as just another quirk of being an author, Kate turned and carried her luggage to the apartment door. She'd been there enough times that she knew Mrs. Bergum from apartment 302 wouldn't be alarmed at her presence. Most of the time the little widow would open her door a crack and check who was coming - she said she never could see through the peep hole - but today she didn't.

The lock was loose when Kate used the key, which made her frown. But the handle turned and the door swung open, so she thought nothing of it. Until, of course, she stepped in to find three men standing in the middle of Reesa's front room. She paused, luggage half in the doorway and blinked twice, hoping her imagination was getting the better of her.

Sunlight pushed in through the sheer white curtains of the bay window just to her left, silhouetting the bodies of the men before her. At most she could make out the height and build for each, which ranged from trim and tall, to bulky and an inch or so above her own five foot ten. Her heart lurched as she recognized the distinct shape of a weapon in the hand of the closest man.

Burglar - was that term used anymore? Reesa used the word "assailant" a lot in her work and for some reason it seemed to fit the situation so she stuck with it.

One of the men - assailants - made a startled sound, something like a gasp and a grunt, and the weapon faltered, lowering a fraction.

"I really hope you guys just have the wrong apartment," Kate said.

The gun was just within reach, the sleek barrel of silver telling her that the caliber was something like 9mm, but it didn't look like any of the weapons she'd encountered before. It was smoother somehow, more curvy than blocky. What truly alarmed her, however, was the way the man held it; two-handed, military style, his shadowed features gazing down past the muzzle and aiming at her.

Trained, she thought and lifted both hands slowly. Her luggage dropped at her left foot, teetering until it leaned against her leg. That would be a problem when she made a move but she turned her palms outward, proving she was unarmed, and took a deep breath. In the back of her mind she knew that something should have happened by now. The general shock in the room seemed to intensify rather than fade.

"Mesa?"

This came from the assailant with the gun. There was an odd accent to the name but she recognized it at once. Mesa Prosser from Reesa's books. Only the way he'd said it made it sound more like May-zah than her own translation of Mess-ah when she'd been reading.

"Kate," she said and calculated the distance between her hand and the weapon.

She knew she was facing a set of deranged Lothogy fans and dearly hoped Reesa would show up to put an end to the standoff. But as the men glanced at each other Kate remembered how the last fanatic had gone out, blowing up an entire store front to get Reesa's attention. Kate frowned, determined that she would not be on the evening news, and took matters into her own hands. She'd been in the Army for four years, had bullets fly over her head, she was an instructor at Kenpo International Karate; she could do something about this.

The startled man in front of her lowered the weapon a fraction more and her body reacted, sliding in close enough to take control of his wrist. Redirecting the gun upward, she slammed her heel down onto his instep, felt a reassuring crunch under her soft-soled shoe, and followed the attack with a knee to his groin. Two shots fired as he doubled over, hitting somewhere high on the wall. Kate slid her hand down his arm, grabbed the gun and started to wrench it away.

Strong arms grabbed her from behind, bear-hug fashion, and pulled her back.

"Mesa, please, calm yourself," the man holding her had a thick voice. It rumbled next to her left ear, his breath disturbing the hair intimately close to her face, and she registered that his arms loosened a bit. "There now, it's all right. We've come to take you home."

"Home?" Kate suddenly wished she'd paid more attention to the novels. It was obvious that these fans had mistaken her for the main female protagonist in Reesa's books, but her friend had been writing for too many years now and there were so many plot lines and details involved that Kate was lost.

What she could remember was that Mesa Prosser was dead. That much of the storyline hadn't been lost on her.

"Boss," the assailant with the gun straightened. "If this is Mesa, where's the Zimmerman woman?"

The words were directed at the man holding her and she suddenly knew who he was pretending to be; Hedric Prosser, Reesa's jaded and happily flawed main character. For reasons she couldn't understand, that realization pounded the danger of her predicament into her awareness. Kate took a deep breath and threw her head back; connecting against Hedric's face with enough force that she saw sparks of light behind her eyelids.

His arms dropped away from her and she shoved her elbow into his solar plexus. She half turned, keeping Hedric in view as she ducked the swing of the second assailant. He had heft to him, so she was mildly alarmed at the speed in which he moved. No sooner had he missed her head than he was swinging again, this time low. Swiveling to avoid the jab at her kidney, Kate spotted Hedric's move for her left side and leapt away.

Only her move crashed her into the door, which bashed against her luggage and sent her springing back into the fight. Hedric was closest, his face smeared with blood from his freshly broken nose, and he seemed intent on grabbing her rather than hitting her. Kate noticed this because he reached out to her, somewhat mimicking the grab she was conducting herself. One hand on the collar of his lapel, the other on his wrist, Kate used her momentum to turn, her body performing the hip throw before she'd even decided to do it.

Hedric flew over the right side of her body, toppling into the second assailant and falling headlong into Reesa's couch. The old, flowery bit of furniture screeched across the hardwood floor and struck the wall with enough force to knock a painting down. It was such a clamor that she hoped someone downstairs might hear and investigate.