Three Worlds 01 - Seduce Me In Dreams (3 page)

Tari was one of Justice‟s favorite places. She had grown up on one of its platforms—a middle-class upbringing in a place that, to be frank, had been flat, cold and gray. Still it had had more than its share of dangers for a young girl. A contrast to platform life, the wilderness on Tari held a wild, colorful appeal for her. It was a matter of honesty, she thought. At least when you went to the Tari plains and rises, you knew you were headed into blatant dangers, unlike space colony life, where you thought you were safe, yet good faces held hazards in camouflage. Justice had always preferred the honesty of knowing you were in constant jeopardy.

Rather like her career choice.

She had enlisted in the IM right out of school, letting them teach and train her, letting herself be the perfect lump of clay for them to mold into the perfect soldier. Now she was one of the top five pilots in the Special Forces communities; she was one of only ten female ETF

officers, and she was on Commander Bronse Chapel‟s First Active ETF team. Chapel was a legend in his own time, and there wasn‟t an ETF soldier who wouldn‟t give his right arm to be on his elite team. Justice had been in her exalted position for three years now, and she had thrilled in every minute of it.

“Out of atmosphere; out of orbit traffic, Commander,” she reported automatically as they pulled away from Ebbany and headed fast toward Ulrike.

“ETA?”

“Thirty-two hours, sir.”

“That long?” came the sharp demand.

“This is only an XJL transport, sir,” she reminded him with gentle respect. “I don‟t have any zip. Just handling for best travel and evasion on the planetary surfaces. I can do only thirty-two hours at top mach.”

Bronse‟s jaw clenched, and Justice could see a nerve tick angrily in his temple. The one thing none of them ever had to doubt was that their best interests and safety were at the heart of Commander Chapel‟s every motivation. The entire team trusted their lives to him, and with good reason. They had seen Chapel do much more miraculous things to save the lives of his crew than humping out a kid with a six-inch blade in his belly, over black sand, in hostile territory, and a sand hurricane nipping at his heels.

Justice tired of watching her commander in the disc. Now that they were in the void of space, she flipped on her autopilot and swung out of her chair as if she were dismounting a horse.

She strolled back to the supplies chest secured against the rear deck plates, and unlatched it with a hiss as it released its airtight seal. She fished out a first-aid case and resealed the chest. Then she walked up to the commander, who had gone back to typing his report, the blunt tips of his fingers dashing over the electronic keyboard of the handheld VidPad. She opened the kit and, without bothering to ask for permission, she began to tend the wounds he had sustained in his fight.

He had a cut over his left eye that would need knitting, a great deal of generalized bruising that a heal patch would take care of over the next twenty-four hours, and a bitching case of sunburn that was already beginning to blister. He had apparently lost his protective headgear in the fight, which had left him exposed to the sun. Justice would bet he had a hell-acre of a sun-induced headache as well. He had the misfortune of having coal black hair, and, like the black sand, it had absorbed every ray of brutal sun that had beaten down on him. Justice selected two heal patches from the kit and slapped one on Bronse‟s left arm and the other under the hair on the back of his thick neck. When she pulled back, he was looking at her, a brow quirked up in curiosity. A light scar cut through the peak of his brow, accentuating the arch.

“Two?” he asked dryly.

“Yeah.” She grinned, pausing briefly to nibble on the gum between her back teeth. “One for reabsorption and swelling reduction.”

“And the other?”

“To cut the pain of the headache and sunburn.”

She looked studiously into the first-aid case as she spoke, so she could only feel the narrowing of his eyes on her at first. Not one to give in to cowardice, not even in the face of Commander Chapel‟s disapproval, she smiled sweetly at him as she looked up.

“You gave me a narcotic?” he growled dangerously, reaching for the patch on the back of his neck. He looked up in surprise when she caught his huge fist in her palm, staying his actions.

“Back off, Captain,” he barked shortly.

“Uh … with all due respect … bite me, Commander,” she retorted with lazy, unconcerned wit. “It‟s only a low dose, meant to counter the dip when your adrenaline

plummets. Which will be any minute now. When it drops, your pain will kick in. I‟ve been around this block enough to know. If you want to stay lucid, you have to let me cut away at your nerves a little. Otherwise, you won‟t be able to focus and stay alert with us.”

“I don‟t like my reflexes being diminished or my perceptions screwed around with,” he argued predictably.

“That‟s why it‟s a low dose,” she reiterated. “And that‟s why I used a patch and not a hyperspray. If we run into trouble, you just yank it off and you‟ll be right in ten minutes, fifteen tops.

“I know.” She held up a hand to forestall his coming argument. “A lot can happen in ten minutes. But you have to trust me. I‟d rather you be half-narced without pain than blinded by the agony that we both know is coming. If I let the medic look at you, he‟d lock you in medbay. At least this way I can tell him I gave you first aid and he can focus solely on Trick. Don‟t you think I know that‟s why you ran out of medbay—before the medic could get a look at you?”

“Fine. I‟ll leave it for now,” he acquiesced as if it were a heavy travail. “But next time, ask and present arguments before just doing it, okay? I‟m not ignorant. I can listen to reason.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“Jus, I want you to stay at the stick for a while. I know you‟re tired and the autopilot could get us there in its sleep, but I have … I have a strange feeling. Let‟s just keep alert, okay?”

“Roger that, sir.”

Justice put away the case and slung herself back into her seat, keeping her eyes on her monitors.

Despite Bronse‟s worries, they reached Ulrike without mishap or event. Justice swung into port on the IM space station that rotated in Ulrike‟s orbit with smooth grace in spite of its enormity. Thousands of troops moved in and out of the station, known as Station Zero, every day, at all hours, and the time of their approach was no different. Since IM acted in the role of law enforcement as well as militia, personnel were constantly shifting. Station Zero was a major exchange port, situated equidistant from Tari and Ebbany and practically on top of Ulrike.

Shortly after the XJL landed on the tarmac, the doors of the cargo hold lowered to reveal the entire squad standing at the ready. Trick was supported on each side by two team members, their arms linked to form a human sedan chair of sorts to support their injured comrade. Justice and Lasher stood on the right, Bronse and Ender on the left. Bronse was, of course, in front, his thick wrist and forearm linked beneath Trick‟s thighs with Lasher‟s equally powerful grasp. At a soft sound from their commander, the team strode forward in a perfectly timed march, cushioning Trick, yet precise and proud in step so no one could mistake them for anything but the mighty warriors they were. Wounded team members of the ETF had always been brought home in such a manner, their heads held high, keeping them from being the object of pity or dismay, something every soldier dreaded in moments like this.

Silence fell over the soldiers crowded around waiting for their departing flights. A respectful silence. All braced their legs and linked their hands behind their backs in honorable attention as the ETF officers carried their injured man past them, heading for the station medical facilities.

Masin “Lasher” Morse was not famous for his conversation. He was even less renowned for actually initiating one. So when Lasher asked Bronse a leading question, the commander blinked at him in surprise for a long moment. They were sharing a meal in Bronse‟s quarters, something they did often when they weren‟t in the mess with other bored officers who were on downtime, or when they weren‟t in the mood to search for more intimate company. Bronse‟s fork hung suspended between his plate and his mouth, the rich juice of the steak he was enjoying dripping with little plops onto his potatoes.

“I‟m sorry,” Bronse murmured after a moment, blinking and refocusing his disbelieving attention. “Could you repeat the question?”

Unperturbed, Lasher did so, grinning the entire time. He knew full well that Bronse had heard him and comprehended. “I asked you what you were thinking.”

Bronse laughed suddenly, half with humor, half with that same sense of disbelief. “I am suddenly having a flashback to my marriage. Liely asked me that question a hundred times a night when I was off-mission. Do I have to worry that we‟ve been on-mission together too long?”

Lasher responded by throwing a bread roll at Bronse‟s head. It hit him in the center of his forehead when he couldn‟t be bothered to duck, then bounced off and slid under the table. “Don‟t be a jackass.” Lasher grinned, making his companion laugh. “I only meant to say that something is bugging you, and I know enough after all these years that it‟s a good idea to get a handle on your thoughts if I want to protect my own ass. Your instincts are uncanny and rarely wrong.”

“We‟re on downtime, Morse. My instincts are going to kick back and relax until such time as we go on-mission again.” Bronse set down his fork and leaned back with a deep sigh and a long, casual sprawl of well-muscled legs. There was hardly a trace left on his body of the fight he had been in, or the trek he‟d been forced to make. Masin‟s boss was freshly shaved and showered and even wearing civilian clothes. That in and of itself was strange, come to think of it.

Bronse never wore civvies on the station. He always waited until he was planetside. It was allowed in the privacy of their quarters, of course, where they were now, but once they crossed the threshold into public areas, they were expected to be in uniform unless briefly traveling for social purposes from one place to another.

“Are you going out somewhere?” Lasher asked, again surprising his commander with his attempt to generate a conversation. Or, in this case, an information-gathering session.

“Am I being interrogated?” Bronse countered.

“You are being observed as acting out of normal character by a man who has been by your side since enlistment ten years ago. And before then, if you count officers‟ college. If you didn‟t want me to know that something was going on, you wouldn‟t have invited me to dinner dressed in civvies, partner. Why in hell are you toying with me? Save the head games for the enemy, friend.”

Bronse fixed his unusual eyes on his second in command for a long minute. Lasher met his stare dead on and with no hint of his previous humor. Neither man blinked. The disconcerting thing about Bronse‟s eyes, Lasher noted wryly, was that they were an unexpected periwinkle color. A cross between light blue and light lavender. Like hazel eyes that switched between green, gold, and brown, Bronse‟s eyes would shift between sky blue, light violet, and the periwinkle or lavender combination of the two. They were like a woman‟s eyes, some would say, for their sheer prettiness.

Actually, no one would say that. They wouldn‟t dare.

But their lightness and the habitually perceived gentleness of color gave Bronse an unsettling edge when he fixed his eyes on strangers. They would be so busy trying to wrap their minds around the incongruity of a mountainous, deadly man with forget-me-not eyes that they would end up blabbing all kinds of information without even realizing it.

Lasher, however, was no longer unbalanced by Bronse‟s delicately colored eyes. That wasn‟t to say that a warning or smoldering threat that could be seen from time to time did not give Lasher pause. He was, after all, a very intelligent man. But at the moment there was only reluctance warring with confusion in Bronse‟s gaze, and Masin knew that he simply needed to exhibit patience and persistence.

“I don‟t think I can explain it,” Bronse said at last, the words coming in an uncontrolled rush, as if he were unburdening himself of a great secret. “I‟m afraid if I start to, I will sound like the Ebbany sun has fried my brain.”

“Maybe it did,” his second speculated with a crooked grin as he reached casually for his beer and took a swig. “I‟m not used to you prevaricating, so it would make me wonder.”

“I know,” Bronse grumbled with dissatisfaction.

“But crazy people never think they‟re crazy. You‟re sane just by virtue of the question.

So, what are you thinking? Spit it out. Let‟s see if I can do anything for you.”

Bronse‟s troubled gaze flicked up to Lasher‟s with penetrating lavender pupils.

“One of us is going to die.”

“Just what exactly does that mean?” Lasher asked, all traces of humor vanishing. “Are you talking about Trick? You heard what the doctors said—”

“No. Not Trick. Not now at least.” Bronse exhaled sharply, running frustrated hands over his face and through his jet hair until the short cut spiked up even though it was slightly longer than military length at the moment. “I don‟t know who, or how, or anything else. I just have a sick gut feeling that we‟re going to lose someone on an imminent mission.”