Kidnapped (21 page)

Neither of them even turned their heads when the door opened and Veronica entered. They were both watching the planet, both lost in thoughts, only no doubt of completely different things. She was suffering a bout of homesickness, and he was probably wondering what it would be like to live on a planet, to always have solid ground under his feet instead of the hull of a ship.

"You're in my chair." The Supreme Commander didn't exactly sound offended, but it probably was enough of a principle to the other woman to motivate punishment if she didn't move. She struggled to her feet, wondering silently if she'd look like an elephant in another few weeks. She felt huge already and couldn't imagine what it would feel like before the baby arrived. A couple of days earlier she'd voiced the elephant-thought, but Travis had just laughed softly, telling her she was cute and silly.

*****

It was hard to fly with a girl in his arms, but Travis still reached out for Patricia and pulled her onto his lap, thinking it served a double purpose. He liked having her close, and the gentleness they showed each other had to irritate Veronica. The Supreme Commander did raise an eyebrow, and made a face as if seeing them repulsed her, but when she spoke, she just asked, "Did they see us?"

He answered calmly, "No. They're on the other side of the planet, and our angle of approach hid us from their sensors."

There was, of course, the fact that the Redeemer had been waiting for them for days, but that was a completely different matter.

Veronica looked like a cat that just caught a mouse when she mused, "Good, that's some good news for once. If you keep this up, maybe you'll even see your child being born. I think it's a boy."

If anything, those words just deepened his resolve that this was one baby she would never lay eyes on. He had no illusions of either of them being allowed to live past Patricia giving birth, but at least a girl wouldn't be taken to the corps. If he fathered a boy and Veronica got her hands on him, his son would be condemned to the same life he'd led, and that must not be allowed to happen. He wanted his child to
live
, not to spend his days as a well-programmed flesh and blood machine.

She was watching her nails and didn't see the hatred that darkened his eyes for a moment, and when she looked up again, he had his feelings back under control. He said evenly, "I'll land and you and I can go and trap them in the complex, just like you planned."

Veronica smirked, "You'd like that, wouldn't you. Oh no, we're all going, and your little girlfriend is coming with me."

Travis shrugged. He had counted on that, but it had been worth a try.

*****

Patricia didn't want to leave the ship, but she had little choice. The surface was hot and humid, and reminded her of the last planet she'd been on. The one where she'd almost been kidnapped by the indigenous population, and then nearly died from a virus. Back then, she had still seen it as an adventure, and she hadn't been pregnant. Now she was out of shape after all those weeks confined to small rooms on spaceships, her clothes were sticking to her body after just a few steps, and she wished they had left her behind on the air-conditioned bridge.

There were thick webs hanging from the trees, and she looked around cautiously, trying to imagine the size of the spiders that could have made them. Then, she saw one and jumped with fright. The creature was the size of a cat, with thick furry legs and four eyes attached to its back.

She murmured, "Oh no," and Travis asked immediately, "What?"

Sighing, she confessed, "I'm just really afraid of spiders."

Veronica rolled her eyes, grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her along, muttering, "Silly little goose, I can't understand what he sees in you."

Travis went the other way, and when denied his protection, Patricia's imagination painted out spiders everywhere, sneaking up on her and waiting to get her. Whether that was true or not, there seemed to be a lot of them. She kept looking at them, and the Supreme Commander finally snapped, "Stop that, they're not anywhere near you. Now, we've got to hurry if we're to meet up with Travis. The point is to catch William's men between us, and you have to move faster."

It might not be the best time to complain or criticize, but the words still jumped out of her mouth. "Why don't you just bring a lot of men instead of trying to trap them yourself?"

She expected Veronica to be offended, but the other woman just rolled her eyes. "Bring along more idiots that can screw this up? It's enough with one of them. Besides, this glory is mine."

Patricia slowed down instead of speeding up; she didn't want William's people to be caught. With the exception of Garth, she counted them all as dear friends. She couldn't believe Travis was really working on ambushing them, not after all they had done for her. Maybe he had a plan. He had asked her to have faith in him, and that would have to be enough. If she couldn't have faith even in him, she might just as well give up right now, and just sit down and die. There would be nothing else for her in this alien world.

Chapter Twenty-One

Travis had counted on his girl falling behind; he knew she wasn't in shape for something like this. He had started in the right direction, pretending to follow the plan, just in case someone was checking up on him, but he soon double-backed to follow the women instead. He saw Veronica hurry through the forest, unintentionally increasing the distance to Patricia, and he smirked. He knew her well.

Patricia didn't hear him approach when he snuck up on her from behind, she just felt him put his hand over her mouth to keep her from yelping with surprise, and he whispered, "Be really quiet, Sweetheart, and hurry. We have to hurry."

When she nodded, he took her hand and led the way back through the woods, towards the ship. He was running too fast for her, he knew that, but there wasn't any time to lose. He explained over his shoulder, "William will try to keep her occupied, but we don't have much time. Odds are she'll discover you're gone before she even gets to them. I'm gonna ask you to be very strong for me, can you do that?"

Her "Yeah," sounded choked, and he realized she was panting, fighting the thick air. He paused long enough to throw an arm around her, more or less dragging her along, "I'm sorry, Sweetie, it's just a little further, okay. When we get to the ship, I need you to go to the bridge and start the engines up, right away. You remember how to do that, right?"

He didn't wait for her to answer, he just continued, "Start the engines, but don't close the outer hatch, I'll take care of that. When you hear me calling for you to go, you take off. Just go straight up, nothing fancy, and close the hatch if I haven't done it. Once you're clear off the planet, if I'm still not on the bridge, plot a course anywhere, but don't stay here."

They had reached the clearing where the ship stood waiting, and he stopped just outside it. Patricia was bending over, coughing and trying to get some air down her lungs. He ran a hand over her back, and the urgency in his voice when he asked, "Can you do this, Sweetie?" made her straighten up, nod, and hurry inside the ship.

Outside, Travis ran his hand over his face. He knew exactly what was coming, what he would have to do, and he didn't look forward to it. Patricia must have reached the bridge already. The ship was powering up, and it was a good thing he didn't have any time to lose. If he'd had time to think about it, he might have lost the courage to do it.

He pulled a laser-knife out of his pocket and thought he was lucky to be left-handed. He steeled himself for the pain to come. An energy beam made up the blade, and it seemed eerily blue and ominous when he turned it on.

With a tool of this calibre, it only took one quick attempt to get through his arm, just below the elbow, right above the prosthetic part. The pain was sudden and immediate, and it almost brought him to his knees. The only thing that kept him staggering towards the ship was the knowledge that Veronica was right behind them, and that Patricia and the baby needed him. The baby, that was it. He had to go on if he was ever to see the baby.

Afterwards, he wouldn't be able to remember how he made it into the ship, but he did remember seeing Veronica come running into the clearing when he looked through the hatch and called to Patricia to go, to hurry up and go.

The heat from the blade had cauterized the wound, and he wasn't bleeding, but it felt like his entire side was on fire, and he sank down on the floor, knowing that for now he had done his best and maybe it was okay to rest, just for a minute. He had worked hard for a long time, he had tried his hardest, and in this shape, he wouldn't be able to remain standing as they took off anyway.

He felt the ship moving under him, and saw the hatch starting to close, and then the world became mercifully black for a while.

*****

Patricia understood what was going on, they were running for their lives, and she had a notion of what he might be up to, but she tried to push the thought to the side and focus on what he'd asked her to do. Sitting on the bridge, she struggled to remember which control did what, muttering, "Having me fly the ship, what a joke."

She heard Travis's voice echo through the intercom. It sounded oddly strained, and she tried not to think about it as she slammed the controls.

When they started to take off the floor turned transparent, and even though she knew it was the work of cameras outside, that it didn't really change from metal to glass, the illusion was so fascinating she had to look. She blinked a couple of times, and wanted to rub her eyes when she saw something black resembling a hand laying on the ground, just beside the spot they had just lifted off from, and then Veronica came into view. She was entering the clearing, fumbling with something, and a second later, the world under them turned into flames. The ship rocked from the shockwave of the explosion, and she had to turn her attention back to what she was doing.

It was the first time she piloted the ship on her own. He had let her try to fly it in space, but that was months earlier, and she hadn't been very good at it. She could drive anything with wheels, but this thing didn't even have wings. She had never taken off, or landed, and she was terrified.

Still, somehow, she remembered most of the things he'd told her, and even though it was a rocky ride, and they lost most of the radio equipment because she was going too fast through the atmosphere, they made it to orbit.

When she felt the stabilizers and artificial gravity kick in and knew they were free from the planet, she drew a breath of relief. Her hands were shaking, and she was almost crying. Travis had told her to plot a course and get away from the planet, away from the system, and even though she didn't want to, her lover knew best.

Plotting a course implied having a place to go, and she was clueless. She didn't know how to navigate, or where they wanted to go, and even if space was vast, the risks of flying into something were surprisingly high. He had attempted to explain astronavigation to her during one of their long periods in space, but it had gone right over her head. She didn't have the math skills needed to figure out how it worked. Everything was constantly moving.

Unfortunately, the computer couldn't help her either. She didn't even know enough to get it started on working it out for her. She wanted to go look for Travis so badly, wanted him to sit right next to her and make all the decisions, and she slapped herself to snap out of it. The longer she lingered, the greater the danger.

She punched in some random numbers and hoped for the best, felt the ship cringe as the computer took over, and decided to be satisfied with the fact that they were going
somewhere
. She hoped she wasn't steering them right into some nearby planet, got to her feet, and almost flew down the corridor.

Her lover still lay on the floor just inside the door, and tears started rolling down her face when she saw his right arm now ended in a blackened stump. She mumbled, "Oh My God, what did you do," but knew just as he had that it had been the only way. Veronica had indeed triggered the explosives in the mechanical limb. She had seen it herself through the floor of the bridge, even if she at the time had refused to think about what it meant.

She knelt on the floor next to him, uncertain of what to do, trying to remember something, anything, from the first aid lessons back in school. Stop bleeding, that was the most important thing, but it wasn't bleeding. It was burned, hurt, and smelled like burned flesh, and she felt like she might pass out, or maybe throw up. She slapped herself again, hard enough to hurt. It always worked on people in the movies so why not.

Blinking a couple of times to try to focus, she told herself to get it together. She wasn't the one in need here. Shock, she remembered something about shock that could make a person's heart stop, but what was one to do about it?

She reached out to touch his hand carefully, and said his name without much hope he'd respond, but she underestimated him. A lifetime of hard training and enduring pain had hardened him, and as soon as she touched him, he opened his eyes and grabbed her arm in an iron grip.

*****