by Nina Croft
What was he supposed to say? He had no clue about that either, so he kept his mouth shut.
Rico had no such problems. “How long in the future?” he asked, strolling into the room.
Saffira turned to him, her eyes wary. “I don’t know.”
“Is it likely to be anytime soon?”
She shrugged. “The future is not set.”
He turned to Devlin. “You might want to go wash up, just to be prepared. You’re a little…” He nodded at Devlin who glanced down at himself. His clothes were stained with blood from where he’d knifed one of the flying things.
Rico was trying to wind him up, and he refused to be wound. “Can we get back to the fucking point here?”
“Good idea, lover boy,” Captain Tannis said as she entered the room with Callum at her back. “Let’s get to the point.”
The captain looked none the worse for her experience. In fact, she looked vital and alert and just a bit weird. He’d liked her yellow eyes; they’d made her different. He wasn’t so keen on the new color—but then he hated the Collective almost as much as he hated the Church. If it hadn’t been for the Collective downgrading genetically modified organisms, or GMs as they were known, to animal status, the Church’s purge would never have been allowed, and his parents would never have been murdered. Even if Callum had not personally passed the law, he was still responsible.
First the Church and afterward the Collective. That had always been the plan. Though he really didn’t want to have to kill Tannis. And he reckoned she would fight to protect her man, so it looked like he wasn’t killing Callum either.
Callum followed her into the room and seated himself on one of the huge chairs specifically designed with wings in mind. “Why don’t we all sit down and we can find out what else our visitors have to say aside from the fact that she wants to screw Devlin. Which is a little worrying.” He studied Saffira, his head cocked to one side and a small smile on his face. “She doesn’t look deranged.”
“Ha, ha,” Devlin said and flung himself on a chair opposite Callum.
Rico took the seat beside him and pulled a flask from his inner pocket. “Here.” He handed it to Devlin. “You look like you need a drink.”
Devlin unscrewed the top, took a large swallow, and nearly choked. He wasn’t used to Rico’s whiskey yet, but it did have a soothing effect on his nerves. Taking another gulp, he settled back in his chair, let the warmth wash through him. His gaze strayed to the girl. She was extraordinarily pretty with that red hair and creamy skin. Perhaps he should just accept it, go with the flow. Who was he to argue against fate?
“Maybe you’ve had enough,” Rico murmured. “You’re beginning to look like you think it’s a good idea. And we really need to talk to her first.”
“Fuck you.” But he felt quite mellow now. He handed the flask back, and Rico took a swallow and tossed it to Tannis. She took it with her as she sat beside Callum, one hand resting on his knee.
“Sit,” she said to the two still standing.
Saffira and Thorne took the seats next to Devlin, but the big guy made sure he was between them. He obviously wasn’t too keen on the whole lover thing. Devlin glanced past him to where the girl sat, hands clutching the armrests as though she had to keep herself from moving. She turned slightly, raised her head, and gazed into his eyes.
He shifted in his seat. He’d never seen such a look. He’d had plenty of women want him, but this was more than mere lust. This was…he didn’t even want to think the word.
Something fluttered in his belly—hopefully the whiskey.
No, it was a really bad idea after all.
Chapter Three
This close, Saffira could see the gold flecks in his turquoise eyes and the dark green rings around the irises. A scar stretched from his mouth to his eyebrow, pulling the skin and giving him a perpetual sneer. Her fingers itched with the need to stroke along the old wound, wipe away the pain. And she wanted to burrow her hands into his black and gold hair, discover if it was as silky soft as she remembered from her visions.
Thorne snapped his fingers under her nose and she scowled. He leaned in close. “Try not to be too obvious,” he whispered. “The man looks ready to bolt.”
He did have a slightly panicked air about him. But she was sure he’d get used to the idea. The lover of her dreams had been sweet and tender…
“And get that dreamy expression off your face and decide what you’re going to tell these people.”
“The truth,” she said.
“I really wish you’d rethink that.” But he sighed and sat back.
“Are we ready?” the dark-haired woman opposite spoke, her voice tinged with sarcasm. “Can we move on?”
Saffira nodded.
“So, introductions. I’m Tannis, captain of the Blood Hunter, and what I say goes. Lover boy over there is Devlin Starke, temporary engineer, Rico is the pilot, and this is Callum Meridian.”
“Who doesn’t do anything useful,” Devlin muttered.
Beside her, Thorne went totally still. Was he feeling the same shock that had gone through her at the sound of the name? Callum Meridian. The leader their ancestors had almost worshipped.
“The Callum Meridian?” Thorne asked.
“The one and only,” Devlin said dryly.
Could he be the same man? She was pretty good at guessing the ages of the Others and he appeared nowhere near old enough. He’d be over ten thousand, and he just didn’t have that power. He’d be even older than Thorne, the first of their people to be changed, yet the Wardens had knocked him out as though he were not much more than a newbie. She glanced at Thorne and saw the same thoughts flashing across his face.
Where had these people come from? How had they gotten here? Maybe…
“And you are?” Tannis interrupted the frantic scrambling of her thoughts.
“I am Thorne. And this is Saffira.”
“Well, I suspect we’d all be dead right now if you hadn’t come to the rescue so…thank you.”
“I bet that hurt, didn’t it?” Rico drawled.
“Fucking right. So now the hard bit is over, let’s get to the more interesting stuff. Why?”
Saffira left it to Thorne to answer.
“Why what?” he asked.
“Why save us?” Tannis waved a hand at Thorne. “Looks like you’re the same as those things that attacked us, so why step in and save us ‘abominations?’ And just for the record, why are we abominations?”
“The fifty-eighth protocol—”
“Don’t give me any protocol shit,” she snapped. “Just give me the reasons.”
Thorne nodded but shifted in his chair. Saffira was guessing he wasn’t comfortable around such straight talk. When you lived forever, or at least had the potential to, why do anything fast? He was used to talking his way around everything and taking his time about it—it drove her crazy.
“You’re female,” he said. “It’s forbidden.”
“Why?”
Thorne settled himself into his seat and she groaned. “A long time ago—”
“Maybe I’d better take this one,” she interrupted. “Or we might be here all day. We don’t know it all—just what Thorne’s been able to glean from the Old Ones’ minds. But one part of it is they’re immortal or just about. At first they bred like people, you know, sex…” She cast a sideways glance at Devlin, but he was staring fixedly ahead. “And they multiplied and the numbers grew. There was a lot of stress and a big war and they nearly wiped themselves out. So they decided—no more sex.”
“Not ever?” Rico sounded totally shocked at the idea.
“Not ever. And to make that happen—no females were ever changed.”
“So they don’t reproduce?”
“The ‘Change’ is a secondary form of reproduction, but they only use it to maintain numbers. The Others don’t die as such, but they can choose to…leave. When that happens, one is selected from our population and changed.”
“But always a
man? Fucking sexist pigs,” Tannis muttered.
“Yes, always a man.”
“Why didn’t they just spread out?” Callum asked. “Colonize new planets?”
“Because they don’t like change. In fact they hate change.”
“No sex and no change,” Rico said. “I think I’d rather be dead.”
“Some of the Others feel that way. Thorne is one of them. That’s why he joined us.”
“And who exactly is ‘us’?” Tannis asked.
“We’re the Rebel Alliance for the Liberation of Espera.”
“Espera being that shithole of a planet I presume? And what do you want to be liberated from?”
“The Others, of course.”
“And afterward? What happens once you’re liberated?”
This part she knew well. “There has been a prophecy for ten thousand years that one will come who will save the people and return them to the Promised Land.”
Devlin turned his head to look at her. “And that would be you?”
She nodded. “My people knew the time was approaching when the spaceship appeared in the sky five hundred years ago.”
“Spaceship?”
“I’m guessing she means the Trakis One,” Callum said. He was studying Thorne, his brows drawn together in a small frown.
Tannis jumped to her feet and paced the room. “I’m not getting something. I mean, we’re in this alternate universe, right? What are the chances that we find humans”—she waved a hand at Saffira—“ here? Why aren’t you little green men with tentacles or something? It just seems like a pretty huge coincidence to me. And you speak English.” She eyed them suspiciously.
Rico shrugged. “If we came through the black hole, why couldn’t someone else?”
“Yeah, good point, but there’s something wrong with that argument. You heard her—they’ve been here for over ten thousand years. The Trakis system was only populated five hundred years ago.”
Saffira’s mind had been racing since she’d heard Callum Meridian’s name. The facts were settling into patterns. Patterns that seemed inconceivable. But at the same time, so obvious. Why had it never occurred to her before? She’d heard the stories of the spaceship appearing, and she knew the history of her people.
Tannis halted in front of her and stood with her hands on her hips. She was dressed in tight black pants, boots, and a scarlet shirt, her spiky hair damp and her mouth turned down in a scowl of concentration.
“I hate it when I have no fucking clue what’s going on.” She eyed Saffira from her canvas shoes up over her sand-colored jumpsuit to the top of her head. “Your story makes no fucking sense, so I suggest you try again.”
Saffira licked her dry lips as her mind finally accepted a truth that had never even occurred to her. Or to any of the time-mancers who’d come before her. Why?
She rose to her feet, restless, as the thoughts whirled in her mind. They’d spent centuries studying the wormholes that surrounded this treacherous planet—if only from afar. In theory, they knew that the wormholes connected time and space, and they’d developed intricate equations that proved the viability…again, in theory. They’d never actually been able to prove any of it. Had they had the proof right in their grasp the whole time? Were they in fact the proof themselves?
A deep sense of rightness, truth, welled up inside her.
“What is it?” Thorne asked.
“Oh lord, it makes perfect sense.”
“To you, perhaps,” Tannis muttered.
Saffira took a deep breath. “It makes sense…if we traveled back in time.”
“Okay,” Devlin said. “Let’s have a reality check here. Time travel is not possible.”
Saffira stared at him blankly, her mind still coming to terms with the enormity of her conclusions. “Of course it’s possible,” she said. “We’ve proved it theoretically over and over again. We’ve just never done it. Or thought we hadn’t.”
Devlin shrugged and addressed the rest of the room. “This is a load of bullshit. For whatever reasons—they’re lying. We should say thank you nicely and drop them on the planet, get the fuck out of here, and go back to where we belong.”
“They’re not lying.”
Saffira whirled around at the sound of the voice, deep and low and ringing with conviction. Callum had risen to his feet. Now he strolled across the space between them and came to a halt in front of Thorne.
“What the hell—they’re not lying?” Devlin said. “How would you know?”
Callum cocked his head to one side and studied Thorne, his eyes narrowing. “Captain William Thornton?”
Thorne’s eyes widened. “You remember me after all these years?”
Callum’s lips twisted into a wry smile. “It’s been six months.”
Saffira had expected something similar, but hearing it spoken aloud sent a jolt of shock from her head to her toes. She stumbled back, sank into her chair, and cast a quick sideways glance at Devlin. His brows were drawn together in concentration. “Wasn’t that the breakaway colonist group?”
“That’s right,” Callum said. “They didn’t like the way things were done, thought the Collective were immoral and immortality went against God—”
Tannis scowled. “Shit. More fucking religious freaks.”
“Actually, they also believed the Church of Everlasting Life was immoral as well. Wanted nothing to do with either faction. But instead of trying to blow everyone they didn’t like into tiny pieces”—he raised a brow in Devlin’s direction—“they actually sought a peaceable solution.”
There was definitely no love lost between these two. But to Saffira’s surprise, Devlin merely grinned. “They ran away.”
“We sought a new world of our own making,” Thorne said, and his voice held an edge of anger. That surprised her; Thorne never lost his temper. He turned to glare at Devlin. “And you are?”
“None of your fucking business,” Devlin replied.
“Didn’t you recognize the name?” Callum said with a grin. “This is the great Devlin Starke, leader of the Rebel Coalition, murderer of anyone who doesn’t agree with him, and all around general asshole.”
“Don’t forget miserable bastard,” Rico added from across the room.
Devlin’s lips quirked and she caught a fleeting glimpse of the man of her dreams. The smile softened his harsh features. “Much as I really enjoy talking about myself—could we perhaps get on with the whole time travel thing? Because I’ve yet to be convinced.”
“Me too,” Tannis said. “Come on, Callum, what’s going on?”
Callum nodded. “Six months ago, I met with Captain Thornton. We had a very civilized discussion and I offered to support his colonization of one of the outer planets. They would be free to govern themselves and worship whichever phony god took their fancy. They set off a few months later on the Espera, a colony ship with five hundred people and everything needed to make the planet habitable. I’m guessing they didn’t make it. Captain?”
There was silence and Saffira turned to study her mentor. Thorne had a dazed expression on his face. She reached out and rested a hand on his knee and squeezed. “Thorne?” she said softly.
He shook himself as if coming back from far away. “Sorry?”
“What happened?” Callum asked.
Thorne took a deep breath. “Forgive me, it’s been a long time.”
“How long?” Devlin asked.
“Ten thousand years.”
“Shit.”
Thorne ran a hand through his short hair, pressed his fingers to his skull. “We were leaving the system. Just passing Trakis Seven, when there was an explosion. Stronger than anything I’d ever encountered. The whole planet went up in a ball of flame. We were directly in the path and pummeled by debris from the planet. Our systems were knocked out; the ship spiraled out of control. It was over. Then we were caught in some sort of hold, sucked into a tunnel…”
“A wormhole,” Saffira added.
“We know that now, ba
ck then it seemed as though we were heading straight to the depths of hell. And maybe we were. It went on for a long time. We don’t know how long—the clocks had stopped with everything else. Finally, we were…spat out the other end and we found ourselves here. The ship crashed onto the planet’s surface. And we met the locals—sort of.” He went silent and sat back in his chair. “We believed we had come through some sort of portal in space. It never occurred to us that we had also shifted in time.”
And perhaps it should have. Saffira and her ancestors knew this universe was riddled with wormholes and black holes and probably other things that didn’t even have names. They linked places and times and maybe other dimensions not even recognized by mankind.
“Do you believe this crap?” Devlin asked.
“Can you come up with a better explanation?” Callum asked, his tone making it clear that he believed it highly unlikely.
“Hell, yeah. How about they came through the black hole same as we did. And they’ve been here for months, not ten thousand unbelievable fucking years.”
“And how would you explain the wings?” Callum asked. “It took five hundred years for any of the Collective to grow wings.”
“Maybe things happen faster here. Look, I’m not saying there’s an obvious answer, just that there is one…”
“Of course there isn’t,” Rico said. “Occam’s razor—the most probable answer is likely to be the answer. Shit, time travel. Fucking marvelous. Did I ever tell you about my favorite TV program from back on Earth—”
“No,” Tannis snapped. “And perhaps we could leave it for later.”
Saffira glanced at Rico. Had he just said he’d been on Earth? How was that possible?
Thorne rubbed his head. “So the same world is still out there. The same mess.”
“Actually, it might be in a bit more of a mess than when you left,” Callum said. “There have been a few changes.”
“But we don’t have to be part of that.” Thorne jumped to his feet, wings twitching. “We could go back. Our planet is still there waiting for us. I need to think on this.”
“And I need to go check if Daisy is okay flying this thing,” Rico said. He strolled out but paused after a few steps and turned toward Devlin. He tossed him the silver flask and grinned. “I’m betting you’re going to need this more than me.”
