Depths Of Desire

by Ruth D. Kerce

  “I’ll explain it all to you later. For now, we need to figure out how to let the Ice Moon know that we’re down here so they can get us out.”

  She didn’t like being put off. She wanted answers. But Pitch was right. Their first priority was to get to the Ice Moon and reunite with their people.

  “We’ll also need to scout out some food,” Alexa said. “We don’t have much left. The Def’mal have to have supplies somewhere.”

  Tara nodded. “That’ll be a priority.” They needed to keep up their strength as much as possible. Especially Alexa, so she could continue to care for the babies.

  “How many of them are down here?” Pitch asked her.

  She shrugged. “I have no idea. I was kept isolated. I only actually saw two men and one woman. They kept disappearing, so I’m thinking there were more, maybe a camp elsewhere, especially since the area where I was kept had no supplies or bedding other than what they gave me. Nothing indicated that they lived at that location.”

  “They had to have moved permanently into the caverns from the forests after the attack,” Pitch said. “We must be deep enough not to be affected by the above ground atmosphere. Also we’ve noticed they have their own ventilation system. Ingenious. I never would have believed it. They’re rumored to keep their winter supplies down here from what I’ve heard. We’ll look around and see what we can find.”

  Alexa pulled her toward a small fire positioned directly underneath the venting. “Come. Sit down. Meet your nieces and nephew. Rest. Then we’ll talk strategy.”

  “Nieces and nephew? You had three?” A super-breeder always had multiple children. They’d expected two. Three would be a handful but very revered. Braden must be ecstatic, but also deeply concerned as to their whereabouts.

  Chapter Three

  Deep Space

  Torque glanced at the activity around him. Brianna had just exited the EPS—a waterless power chamber used for showering—and was explaining to Sam how it worked. After the man entered, she headed toward the electronic whiteboard to look over their plans. At the other end of the orbiter, Halah was busy preparing the equipment they’d need for when they reached Earth. Casually he sat down next to Leila in the back of the ship. “What’s wrong?” he asked in a subdued voice, not wanting to draw anyone else’s attention.

  She looked up from the vials she was packing into a case. Surprise entered her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.” When she didn’t respond, he continued. “You’re agitated. I saw you go pale and now your hands are trembling. What’s happened?”

  She clasped her hands together then shrugged a shoulder as she stared unfocused at the vials. “It’s…nothing.” When he reached over and squeezed her thigh, her gaze met his. She leaned a little closer. “All right. Something is wrong,” she admitted in a low voice. “With Erik.”

  Special circuits in the brain chip, implanted in Xylons at birth, connected mates after the male branded the female on the back of the neck during their joining ceremony. They could then sense each other’s location, feelings and oftentimes thoughts.

  Torque glanced toward Halah. She seemed fine, so Kam wasn’t affected, which meant it probably wasn’t any sort of devastating attack. Though Halah and Kam were only half-Xylon, and the branded connection often failed when other genetics were involved. Braden and Alexa had similar problems due to Alexa’s part-human genetics. “What is it? Can you tell?”

  “I’m not sure. I think it’s emotional, not physical. But it’s bad.”

  “Emotional…like a loss?” His heart skipped a beat at the thought of what that might mean.

  “That’s what I’m thinking.” Worry filled her eyes. “Should we say something to the others?”

  He thought a moment before answering, hiding his own troubled feelings as best as he could. “No. There’s enough shit flying around right now. We don’t need them speculating and making themselves crazy over it. Especially since we can’t do anything about it.” They needed to concentrate on staying alive and completing this mission.

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I should have kept it to myself. You don’t need to be speculating either.”

  He patted her leg. “I’m glad you told me.” Even though she smiled slightly before returning to her work, Torque could tell that she was still bothered. So was he. Erik was only really close to two other people besides his mate. If he was so affected that Leila could feel his despair and have it physically affect her, even while preoccupied with this mission…

  He pushed aside the thought. Erik was probably just missing Leila and she’d interpreted it as more than it was. He hoped. The possibilities were too vast to jump to dire conclusions without more information.

  “Torque?” Halah called from one of the control seats.

  “Yeah?” He stretched as he stood, trying to ease his tense muscles and thoughts. He walked over to sit next to her. “What’s up?”

  “I’m reading very minimal traffic ahead.”

  “So?” He looked at the screen she was studying. “We were expecting traffic. Supply ships going back and forth and the Egesa are out here somewhere and probably some other ships too.”

  “That’s just it. I finally picked up the Egesa. This cluster here.” She pointed to the screen. “They’re not even cloaked anymore. Arrogant bastards. Then there’s a group of ships that looks like supply vessels but their energy readings are too high. I’m checking into that. Here is Earth’s space station, various satellites, and what looks like some sort of low-tech shuttle. Then from the space displacement that I’m seeing, it looks as if there’s a small group of cloaked ships over here.”

  “Who would be cloaked if not the Egesa?” he asked, studying the area. “Are you sure that’s not just empty space? I don’t see anything that would indicate a ship.”

  “For several years, I’ve been working on detection-tracking software that would reveal the path of cloaked vessels when they’re farther than collision distance and they’re in motion. It gave me something to do while I was stuck on Marid. I had copies saved on and off planet and was able to access the software through the ship’s computer, so one of those systems, probably the one on Sunevia, must still be functional. I plugged it into the ship’s databanks and that’s what it’s showing.”

  Torque was impressed. An important discovery, if she had truly been successful. But questions loomed in his mind. “Daegal gave you access to their high-level computers and that kind of data to manipulate?” Halah always had been a wildcard and not always a friend to Xylon. Trusting anyone who’d received favors from Daegal was nearly impossible for him.

  “Not exactly. But all of that’s irrelevant at the moment. The fact is that I have no answer for who it could be out there. And not only that. Nobody else is in this whole system. There should be a lot more incoming and outgoing supply vessels other than that one group.”

  Torque scratched his chin. “Like they’ve cleared out.”

  “Exactly.” Halah’s eyes widened. She tapped her earpiece, then swiveled in her seat and started punching buttons.

  Before Torque could ask about her reaction, Brianna came up behind them. “What’s going on?”

  He turned. “The Egesa have reached Earth and most other ships normally in this area have taken off. They probably heard about what happened to Xylon and panicked when they saw Daegal’s fleet.”

  “But there’s good news,” Halah said, swiveling her chair back toward them. “I picked up a partial grid channel.”

  “From the Ice Moon?” Brianna asked, excitement in her voice.

  “Looks like it. It was just for a minute. They must be close to reestablishing the communications grid.”

  * * * * *

  Planet Earth, State of Colorado, U.S.A.

  Underground Tracking Facility

  Jaeda Spargo, currently in charge of the advanced tracking facility in Colorado, watched the main monitor from her station. She shook her head. This was not good.

&n
bsp; Kirk Logan, her second-in-command, sat beside her. “Two clusters.” He tapped the screen. “This one looks like supply vessels, though I can’t pinpoint their origin. The other one…unidentified. Neither are responding to hails.”

  Nor would they. Jaeda knew fighter ships when she saw them. They hadn’t even bothered to cloak themselves, which meant they didn’t fear an attack. “Get the markings off this group.” She should be able to identify them easily enough. Or rather, confirm whom she already suspected they were. As for the other group, if they were supply ships, they should have a record of their arrival.

  “The computer is gathering what it can,” Kirk told her. He checked the traffic screen. “Where is everyone? It’s like they’ve all disappeared.”

  “Contact anyone still up there to give us a visual report.”

  “I’ve been trying. No one is answering or even showing up on tracking.”

  She checked the traffic herself. He was right. All registered ships had left orbit and they weren’t picking up anyone else nearby. However, she knew whom to contact. Someone no one else knew was up there. She’d made certain they hadn’t shown up on the tracking reports. Not only here, but at their sister facilities too. “I’ll handle it. Keep monitoring. I want a report sent to my terminal every fifteen minutes.”

  Right now, she needed privacy to send a message. There was only one place that had the necessary shielding to hide her comm activity from the facility probes, but would still allow her to transmit and receive on the channel she needed to use. She stood from her chair. “I’ll check with our other facilities and find out what data they have. I’ll do that from my quarters.” A lie but it would have to do. “If there’s a major change, or you get more information that requires my attention, let me know.”

  “There is one more thing, but I don’t have much on it yet.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m getting in reports of some unusual meteor activity.”

  Tracking meteor paths wasn’t something they normally concerned themselves with. That was the responsibility of Earth’s space agencies. “Pertinent to our situation?”

  “I don’t know. We normally get in a report well in advance if such activity is pending. I don’t like coincidences.”

  “Well, let me know when you do know something, if it’s going to have an effect on what we’re doing. Otherwise hand it off to the proper facility. I don’t need to know if it’s not relevant. We’ve got enough going on as it is.”

  She pushed back her chair. She rarely left the control room during an alert or when unanswered questions loomed and she could see the concerned look in Kirk’s eyes. She stood and walked from the room, hoping he wouldn’t catch up with her and start asking questions. He knew her better than anyone else she worked with and she’d always had a hard time lying to him. He had been briefed about most everything the facility was involved with, its operations and projects, but a few things were still known only to her and a very select group of others.

  As quickly as she could, she made her way to the nearest elevator and punched the privacy setting so the elevator wouldn’t stop to allow others on. Then she set the primary destination for the top level and the secondary for the bottom level of the facility to keep the elevator in motion so it wouldn’t register as stalled—a procedure she’d used more than once lately.

  Earlier, when she’d been unable to make contact with her primary source, she’d called those whom she knew best. The news they’d delivered had been devastating. And though trained for this very possibility, frankly, at the moment, she was at a loss about what to do—an unfamiliar and unsettling feeling for her. She’d never truly believed this time would come.

  She took out a special comm device and flipped it open. “Dia dhuit. Deh? Jaeda Spargo. Ta me i gcruachais anois.” The elevator stopped, then changed direction, starting its descent. Jaeda barely noticed. As she listened to the man on the other end of the comm, her frustration rose. She shook her head. “Eistigi liom!”

  A shrill alert sounded, drowning out the man’s voice right before the connection died. The alert repeated three times, paused, then repeated three times again. “Shit.” That was a grade one. She flipped the comm device closed and stuffed it in her pocket. She needed to head back to control. A grade one was even higher than a priority alert and required all personnel to stay at their stations and for the facility to be locked up tight. Something major was going down.

  She switched on the intercom. “What’s happening, Logan? Kirk?” All she heard was static. “Fuck!” She slapped the comm grate and the elevator came to a jolting halt. She looked up at the floor indicator. “Damn it.” She was stuck between floors. “Not now.”

  These damn elevators hadn’t worked right for as long as she could remember. Whenever the facility had a surge of electrical activity they went down. She pressed the emergency button, opened the side panel and lifted the phone. “Hello?”

  Nothing. Dead. The alarm stopped and everything went silent. She strained to hear—anything. Her heart raced. Had the facility been hit? Was that what the jolt had been? Just as the thought crossed her mind, another jolt rocked the elevator.

  She had to get out of here. She looked up and saw the trap door. Though taller than average for a woman, she was still too short to reach it. Her eyes returned to the doors in front of her. She splayed her palms on the metal and tried to push them open. “Crap!” Not strong enough.

  Another alarm sounded. A fire alarm. They must have been hit. Being underground, it had to have been a direct hit in a vulnerable area. She glanced up. The trap door was her only hope. An escape ladder had been built into all shafts, along with separate, emergency door controls for all floors except their security and weapons sections. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she stretched her arms toward the grating.

  * * * * *

  Deep Space

  “Are you seeing this, Halah?” Torque asked. His heart raced and he went into full battle mode. He flipped several switches, until a satellite view of Earth appeared in front of them against the portal.

  Sam came up behind them. “What’s going on?”

  “The Egesa are pelting the planet with sling rocks,” Torque answered. It’s started. Earth would never be the same now. He just hoped they ended up faring better than Xylon had.

  “Rocks?” Sam asked.

  Brianna looked over at him. “Sling rocks. It’s an old tactic used on less technologically advanced societies. Earth will think they’re meteoroids. It’s a distraction. Do a quick scan. What are they masking?”

  “Scanning now,” Halah responded. “Got it. They’re sending in d-orbs.”

  “How many?”

  “What’s a d-orb?” Sam asked.

  Leila stepped up beside him. “It’s an unmanned orbiter, programmed for detonation. Basically a navigational bomb. Extremely deadly and destructive. It can take out a whole city.”

  “I’m tracking five d-orbs,” Halah reported. She brought up a visual on the screen. “The blinking red dots show the impact points.”

  “Can you zoom in a little more?” Sam asked.

  Halah adjusted the visual.

  Torque saw Sam’s face pale. “Are they random or targeting specific points, Briggs?”

  “Specific.”

  “Anything important?”

  Sam pointed to each one as he spoke. “Beijing, London, Jerusalem, Moscow and Washington, D.C.—major capitals. Can Earth track these and destroy them?”

  “Track them, yes,” Brianna said. “Destroy, no. The sling rocks will mask the orbs so they aren’t detected in time to be destroyed. By the time they do pick them up on their systems, they’ll be coming in too fast.”

  “Can we do anything?”

  “We’re still out of weapons range,” Torque said. “I can’t push the engines any harder.”

  Sam turned and began to pace. He mumbled something under his breath then let out a sound of frustration.

  Halah flipped a few switch
es. “I’m getting intermittent grid signals again.”

  “Keep trying to contact our fighters,” Brianna told her. “I hope they’re on their way.”

  “They are,” Leila said.

  Everyone turned and looked at her. She tapped the side of her head. “Not Erik personally, yet. But others. I’m pretty sure.”

  “Even so,” Torque responded, “they can’t help us now.”

  “There might be another way.” Halah turned to Torque. “Those cloaked vessels. Odds are they’re fighters, otherwise why cloak yourself. Agreed?”

  “There are cloaked vessels out there?” Brianna asked. “Why wasn’t I told?” She squinted at the screen. “Where?”

  “Here.” Halah pointed.

  “How do you know? That looks like dead space.”

  “It would take too long to explain.”

  “If they’re even actually there,” Torque began. “It’s only speculation on Halah’s part. If so, we don’t know if they’re friendlies or not. If they’re Earth allies and have fire power, they would already be helping. I’m not registering any change in energy from that section of space.”

  “Maybe they’re hesitant to expose themselves to so many Egesa ships,” Brianna said. “If they know another fighter is on the way to help, they could engage.” She picked up a headset and nodded to Torque.

  He flipped a switch. The message wouldn’t even go through if the grid was still cutting in and out. But he could see that his sister was determined to try. “You’re going to give away our position to the Egesa.”

  “If I don’t and the orbs hit their targets, those major government centers on Earth will be destroyed. The result will be mass panic—the perfect setup for Egesa troops to take advantage of. They’ll storm in and enslave or kill whoever’s left before we have enough warriors here to stop it.”