“Who are you really?” she asked softly. “What do you really want?”
His lips curled in a tight smile. “To some, I can be the worst enemy they could dream up. To you, I’m trying to be your friend.”
“At a heavy price, no doubt.”
He shrugged, a careless action that did nothing to set her mind at ease.
Odessa backed away. Her spine hit the solid wall behind her, preventing her from moving further. There had to be something else on his mind. He simply couldn’t be made from cold, lifeless metal. Why had she been so stupid as to agree to come with him?
He planted a palm against the wall on either side of her head, trapping her. “All I want is information. I want to know where Roland Baylon planned to go after he landed here.”
“I told you, I have no idea. He simply ditched me here.” She squared her shoulders and barrelled on. He was in a position to help her. If only she could impress upon him that she was telling the truth. “He sent me off on a wild goose chase. When I got back from trying to deliver the package, the ship was nowhere in sight. So I was on my way to find the Air Controller’s offices, and see if he’d docked elsewhere.”
She stretched her arms above her head, dislodging his light hold. “He likes to play jokes. One day, he hid in the ship’s engine room, a place I don’t exactly care to go. It’s got too many conductors and infrared sensors and what have you to make me comfortable. I don’t even pretend to understand all the gizmos spaceships run.
“Roland and I were alone on this small ship. What would have happened if he’d fallen ill? I had no clue as to how to pilot a starship. I almost scared myself to death thinking all these bad things could happen. Then, he jumped out and yelled, ‘Surprise’! When I demanded to know what he had been up to, he blithely replied he had been bored and needed a distraction. Imagine that.”
“Imagine that,” Harley repeated, not moving. Abrupt anger flashed in his eyes.
Odessa blinked. The unspeakable rage lingered. She blinked again, uneasy with the thought of being alone with him. Was he as moody as Roland had been?
He didn’t realise his expression had changed until her face paled. He didn’t want to frighten her, but he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to intimidate her to get the information he so desperately wanted, or whether he wanted to kiss her. The thought frightened him, and he wasn’t a man easily made afraid. Trying to ease the brittle tension, he asked, “What kind of errand did he send you on?”
“He gave me a small brown packet to deliver to Spoke Nine, but I searched forever for the address he gave me. I came to the conclusion it didn’t exist.”
“What was in the packet?”
“I don’t know, and I never got a chance to take a look because you came along, and then we got shot at.”
“What happened to the packet?”
“What is this? The Inquisition?”
“What did you do with the packet?”
“I told you, I lost it.”
Was it too late to search for the package? What could have been in it? Quite possibly, Baylon had treated Odessa as his drug carrier. “Do you remember what address Baylon sent you to?” he asked, keeping the simmering rage from his voice when he mentioned the man’s name.
“Spoke Nine, room three-twelve.”
“I want you to show me where you went.”
“Don’t you get it?” she asked, her voice rising. “There is no such room.”
Was she toying with him again? “How heavy was the packet?”
“I refuse to answer any more of your questions without a lawyer present.”
He watched as she lifted her pert nose in the air. “There are no lawyers on Romaydia. The judge and jury are all one man.”
“Lord Pardua,” Odessa breathed.
“So if you want to talk to him instead of me, then go ahead,” Harley bluffed. He didn’t want to scare her. No, he’d much rather lift her chin and kiss her eyelids.
She gnawed on her lower lip, enticing him to her as surely as the Murrach snared those who were hungry for more drug-dealing money. “Forget what I said about the lawyer. How do I get off this piece of junk metal?”
“I want you to show me where Baylon sent you.”
She pointed a finger in the general direction of where she remembered Spoke Nine was. “Over there.”
“Show me.”
She waved goodbye to Eyani, said “Thank you,” and she marched off towards the spoke’s entrance. Harley raced after her, casting a glance over his shoulder. Was anyone spying on them? It was hard to tell in the thick crowd, but no one stood out as suspicious.
He wondered again how Odessa had managed to heal the bullet wound in her stomach so quickly. Was it conceivable she was not wholly human? Baylon couldn’t have made a better choice than to engage a robot who appeared to be a woman to run drugs for him? Had he left her here to run interference while he travelled elsewhere, to sell the drug shipment he had so neatly stolen from Pardua?
They were about to pass a Delorican and a human when Harley heard a snippet of their conversation. “I was told they’re shutting the station down at two, standard time. It’s a precautionary measure, I think.”
“Against what?” the human asked the Delorican.
Harley tugged on Odessa’s arm and halted her, placing his index finger against his lips in a shushing motion. She stopped suddenly; her hair swirled enticingly in a half arc before resting against her shoulders. She glared at him. “I thought you wanted to retrace my route.”
He nodded in the direction of the conversation.
The Delorican continued. “There seems to be some kind of viral infection they’re scanning for.”
Odessa gave a little squeak, and her eyes went as wide as a half dollar.
“How did you learn about this?”
“A written message was sent to our ship.”
“Really? I don’t understand. The station master doesn’t normally send anything as a written communiqué.” The human guffawed. “I didn’t think they knew how to write on his station.”
“I believe it’s meant to be as top secret as possible, so as not to throw everyone into a panic. You know how it is. Everyone aboard Romaydia would desert the station in favour of their ships.”
Harley had difficulty believing his ears. As Pardua’s lieutenant, he was privy to whatever went in the station before Romaydia was aware of it. For some reason, he’d been bypassed. Why would Pardua declare a general emergency and close down the station without consulting with his staff? Something was wrong. Uneasy alarm clenched his gut.
“Continue,” he said in a thick voice to Odessa. If it hadn’t been for her innocence, he would have been even more afraid.
“Are you ordering me?” she asked, scowling. “How dare you?”
He couldn’t afford any histrionics. They had to stay low-profile until he found out what was going on. He leant forward and whispered in her ear, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make a scene. There’s something wrong here, something I can’t quite place my finger on.”
“Everything is wrong here,” she snapped. Tears welled up in her eyes, and the ice lodged around his heart cracked a little. If she was telling the truth, he vowed, he would get her and Violette away from Romaydia. “All I want to do is go home. If it’s true they’re shutting down the station, how long will we be trapped?”
Harley shrugged as nonchalantly as he could. He had never heard of Romaydia being shut down, and opted to believe the viral infection was a story concocted by Pardua, spread by his staff to thin the population out.
“Apparently I’ve outlived my usefulness to Pardua.” He didn’t have the heart to tell her they might never get away from Romaydia. Not alive, at any rate.
Her cheeks flushed pink and annoyance flashed in her blue eyes. He wanted to kiss her, to hold her tight against the seething turmoil around them. “When you were searching for room three-twelve, did you notice if anyone was following you?”
She pressed he
r lips together. “Not at first. It wasn’t until later when a woman accosted me.”
Violette. Was she somehow connected with Pardua, and not with Baylon and Odessa as Harley had originally thought? He realised he no longer had a sure-fire means of getting her to safety. He had been allowed access to every part of Romaydia and could even have travelled off-station if he’d wanted to, but he doubted that was the case now.
“Did she speak to you?”
“She told me I’d never get away now that I was stranded. She suggested I go with her.” Odessa placed a hand on his arm. “I don’t think she meant to harm me, but I can’t tell. Romaydia is like the devil’s lair. I don’t know who to trust.”
Yet Violette had told him where to find Odessa. Why would she do that if she’d wanted harm to come to Odessa?
“Do you swear you don’t know where Baylon is?” he growled.
She blinked in surprise. “What? Is it in your best interest, all of a sudden, to believe me?”
“We can’t talk here. Are you fully human?”
Odessa frowned. “What on Earth are you talking about?”
“You’re in a lot of trouble because Baylon decided to desert you. If you’re human, you have no way of protecting yourself like Eyani does. If you’re not human, you might have some built-in method of protecting yourself that I can only guess at.”
“I don’t understand. One minute you’re kissing me, the next you’re accusing me of being non-human. What’s your game?”
He understood her puzzlement and kept his voice low, so the straggling passers-by wouldn’t overhear. “I’m not playing games. I want to be prepared for whatever is coming. I want to know what makes you tick. It might save both our hides.” Along with his quick thinking.
“I want to go home,” she snarled, grabbing his jacket’s collar. “Why don’t you find a way home instead of playing games I won’t ever understand?”
Her innocence showed through again. He couldn’t deny she had a firm grip, and a temper to match. He seized her wrists. “Listen carefully, Odessa. I’m only going to say this once because we’re rapidly running out of time. I’m not playing games. I’m trying to save your life.” And mine, he added.
She snorted derisively. “Of course you are.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Pardua’s soldiers gathering. The commander of a group of ten uniformed men hadn’t seen them yet. The hairs on the back of Harley’s neck rose, and fear prickled along his spine. “I don’t want to go home in a body bag.”
“A body bag?” Odessa’s pulse picked up in the hollow of her wrist.
“You ever heard of one of those?” he asked facetiously.
“Of course! Dead people go home in them.” Against his fingers, her pulse skipped a beat as comprehension hit her full force.
Her sharp intake of breath told him his words had sunk in. He didn’t have a chance to say more as he pulled her along with him at a dead run. Now there was only one way off the station.
In the years she’d been on Romaydia, the station had never been fully shut down. Concourses and corridors had been closed temporarily for minor repairs, but the station had remained operative. Violette stood in the dark shadows and watched travellers and residents alike debate what the hell was going on. She herself had no idea, but she suspected Pardua’s patience had begun to run out with one of the men he’d valued. Either that, or there really was a virus running rampant. However, she doubted that was true.
As she studied Odessa and Harley, she noted how compatible they were. She stood shorter than he by several inches. He was leaner and as fierce as an Araduan jungle lion. They were meant for each other—if they could get off Romaydia alive.
Chapter Thirteen
Brody sat at the dining table, his head resting against his palms. He had run out of ideas as to how to get aboard a starship. At any rate, it would take three months to get to the nearest station, a place he had learned was named Romaydia. Could Odessa be there with the redheaded jerk? Had his baby sister tired of her little adventure and now wished to come home? Or was she safe and happy, and enjoying herself while he worried himself sick?
“You could always call the President. See if he has an extra shuttle around he might be able to spare.” Jason patted him on the shoulder as he came in and took a seat beside his brother.
“What’s the point? I can’t fly the thing.”
“He’ll get one of his Joe Ace pilots to fly it for you. That’s the perk of being a President and being rich.”
“It’s not like Odessa’s the first girl to get lost in space. Now I’m going to say, ‘Mr President, I think my sister ran off with a no-good redneck and I think she might be in danger’. He’d hardly send out a commando team for her.”
Jason stuck his elbows on the table. “Didn’t you say you were going to clean up this place?”
“Don’t put your elbows on the table, Jas. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“You didn’t tell me in the first place. Odessa did. Remember that time I was dating Beth and Odessa made dinner ‘specially for us?”
“Yeah. She set two candles in the middle of the table and made a mouth-watering pot roast with baby beans and mashed potatoes.”
“Not to mention Beth was thrilled someone had cooked her a decent meal. I was kissing that gal when I thought we were all private, and Odessa comes marching in, yelling, ‘Surprise!’ at the top of her lungs. She’d made us a cake to celebrate our ‘togetherness’, she called it.”
“Yeah. And she told you to get your elbows off the table.” Brody laughed. “I just can’t help wondering what happened to her.”
“I was wondering the same about Beth. I had my elbow on the table because I was French-kissing the gal. Gosh, she tasted good, and I know she was about to take her bra off.”
“Too bad Odessa ruined your fun, huh?”
“Yup. I guess I deserved that, though. How many times did I interrupt her when she was playing hot foot with that Rooney fellow?”
“How many times did you get slapped for it?” Brody couldn’t keep the poignancy from his voice.
“And how many times did I follow her when she climbed out her bedroom window when she thought we were all sleeping?”
“She always said she went out to smell the roses. But that’s kind of hard to believe in the middle of winter.”
“Yeah. If she came back, I wouldn’t follow her anymore.”
“Me neither.”
“I’d let her see any geek she wanted to.”
“Right.”
“Long as she didn’t make out with him.”
“Right. Or kiss him.”
“You boys are a hell of a lot of fun. Doesn’t misery love company?” Uncle Peter stormed into the kitchen, his pipe between his lips and a coffee mug in his right hand. He headed towards the coffeemaker and poured himself another cup.
“Isn’t that stuff going to kill you?” Jason asked. In a whisper, he added to Brody, “I wonder how many more cups of coffee he can drink without drowning.”
“Naw. It’s got plenty of caffeine and I need as much as I can get so I can stay awake to watch Joanna Petrocheeni on TV tonight. She’s got a special on, you know.”
The brothers groaned in unison.
“So which of you lunkheads is going to call the President to enquire about a free spaceship to get your sister?”
“Neither of us,” Jason responded.
Brody wondered how his uncle had heard about his idea. He must have his hearing aid turned up high.
“Shame. You should ask the President if he wants to go with you. Can’t be easy in his position, governing all day and half the night.”
“Yeah, he might want to go with Joanna Petrocheeni if she went along.”
“Nope. Not with my Joanna. If we get a spaceship, we’re going to have the sucker all to ourselves.”
Brody nudged Jason.
“Ow, cut that out,” Jason yelped, planting a hand over his ‘injured’ wrist.
“I didn’t touch you,” Brody responded, knowing his brother was playing with him.
“That’s right, boys. Stop fighting. You’re not in college at those frat parties any longer.” Uncle Peter’s eyes twinkled. “I got to meet Joanna Petrocheeni. She’s the love of my life. Maybe I can die happy if I can set my world-weary eyes on her and her legs.”
“We want Odessa back. Do you think Joanna can help?” Jason asked.
Brody gave him a look that would have withered a healthy rose in mid-summer.
“Not unless she can talk to the President. He’s got clout, although I’ve heard he doesn’t have as much as he used to in outer space. Too dark to have much clout, I heard.”
Brody shook his head. “Unc, you’ve got to get a better understanding of space. It doesn’t matter if it’s dark or not. You can still do stuff.”
“Sure it does. Don’t know if the enemy is about to attack or not. In my time, dark didn’t mean sleep. No, sir. It meant it was time to attack.”
“This isn’t getting Odessa back,” Brody muttered, placing his head back against the heels of his palms. He couldn’t think or sleep or eat, worrying about where she was. His baby sister might need his help, but there was no way to get to her quickly, assuming she was on the nearest space station.
“Can we call the station?” Uncle Peter asked. “Nothing like old-fashioned communication to ask questions.”
“Like a telephone?” Jason nodded in disbelief.
“Yeah, son. Where’ve you been all your life?” Uncle Peter walked out with his steaming cup of coffee. Seconds later, Brody heard the rocking chair sliders creak out on the porch.
“Probably cost a fortune, but let’s see if we can’t call Romaydia and talk to someone there. See if Odessa is there.”
“They might not speak the same language we do.”
“Translators will take care of that,” Brody said, snapping his fingers. He wouldn’t be deterred by a lack of communication.
“What’s the best way to make that call?”
“Use the phone, son,” Uncle Peter called out.
Whispers in the Dawn Page 10
