“I’ve got some jerky,” one of them slowly admitted.
“That’ll do,” Rys assured him eagerly. “Oh, and something to drink. Something sugary would be great.”
Both of them nodded reluctantly and headed back inside the building.
Without waiting for them to fully enter inside, Rys started hauling Erksome away at high speed. Snails easily kept up with them. Okay, let’s move. I want to be well gone by the time they’re back out.
Rys ran with every ounce of speed he had, only slowing a little to make sure that he had his full team with him. He tried very hard not to think of the after action report he’d be forced to write about this later.
At least they got the data they came for.
Results were what mattered, right?
Chapter Sixteen
Rys stared at the laptop in front of him and scowled, but the blank page that stared back at him refused to change. In fact, he’d swear the cursor was laughing at him.
This did not look good.
The recon mission yesterday had been a success, yes, but Rys still had this pesky after-action report to write. He’d given Admiral Bloch the bare bones of it this morning, of course. He’d just left out a few things. Like…crushed cars…and heavy machinery left running all night…minor details, really.
He’d kept a close eye on the news, just in case he needed to do a quick explanation to his chain of command, but so far the news report stated only that “a few drunk teenagers had taken some construction equipment for a joy ride and damaged a nearby office building.” The cover up had apparently worked as Rys intended to. He had time to write a full report (and probably get reprimanded for it) but…he didn’t quite know how to phrase it in such a way to mitigate the damage. He had rather jumped the gun on this one.
Not having any real action for nearly two months had obviously made him twitchier than he’d suspected.
Rys reexamined the information he had from the Novan analyst’s office, the foreboding growing steadily. We might have to step in soon. Bijordan hasn’t had enough experience with Nova to appreciate just how devious and ruthless they can be when they want something bad enough.
Still, I hope for everyone concerned that it doesn’t come to that.
“Arystair!” Sara’s voice had a distinct edge to it that made him freeze. As the mother of five children, and the wife of an Admiral, Sara Bloch was not easy to rattle.
Rys pushed off the laptop onto his bed and hurried downstairs on the double. As he cleared the last step, he caught sight of Anne standing just inside the front doorway, tears streaming uncontrollably down her cheeks. Shock followed by a triple stage alarm instantly flooded his system and shot up his spine, as if he were tensing for an unanticipated battle.
“Anne?!”
Without a word, she launched herself at him, arms latching instinctively around his waist. Rys wrapped a supporting arm around her shoulders, but his attempt to lift her head from his chest so he could look at her was a study in futility. “Anne, what is it? What’s happened? Who died?”
She shook her head helplessly smearing tears across his tee shirt, words impossible through her sobs, and held on all the tighter.
Obviously this mystery was going to take a while to unravel, and a great deal of finesse. Rys bent forward enough to swing her up into his arms, and headed straight for the back porch. He didn’t need any distractions from well-meaning family members while trying to help his friend regain her composure and get her talking. She didn’t offer an ounce of resistance while he was carrying her, which only deepened his foreboding. Anne was a very forceful, independent woman; normally she would have handed him his head for trying to carry her like an infant.
It…surprised him, too, how light and insubstantial she felt in his arms. Anne possessed such a powerful, self-assured personality that he just could not think of her as vulnerable. No, somehow that wasn’t the right word. All he knew was that every protective instinct he had just abruptly come online.
He sat down on the loveseat outside, Anne now in his lap by default. Feeling completely helpless, he stroked her hair, and rubbed soothing circles on her back. “Anne, please, I am going crazy here. None of my training manuals covered any techniques to deal effectively with a crying woman.”
That made her laugh, briefly, but the tears didn’t subside.
“At least tell me what’s wrong!” he pleaded. “I can’t put a fix on it if I don’t know what’s wrong.”
For some reason his choice of words made her cry all the harder.
Rys pulled up short; this was only making things worse. He didn’t have a clue how to reach her and open up a line of communication. Perhaps the best approach was to be patient and simply to let her purge it out of her system through her tear ducts. So that’s what he did; he held her gently, with her forehead resting on his neck, rubbing her back until she could get a grip on whatever had pushed her over the edge.
It was probably a good fifteen minutes later when the back porch door opened. Rys wasn’t that surprised when he looked up and Vice Minister Daniel Dorian stepped into view. Dorian took in their companionable position and a dark glower, like an approaching thunderstorm, swept over his face. “Captain Savar, what exactly do you think you are doing?”
“I am attempting to calm your daughter down so that I can get an intelligible word out of her,” Rys snapped back. “Perhaps you could tell me what has shaken her so badly that she can’t seem to do anything but cry?”
Dorian looked a little taken aback by this hostile attitude. Rys had always been unfailingly polite to him, but he wasn’t in the mood to be polite right now. Anne was wounded, and upset, and that made Rys’s blood run cold. He gathered from the guilty look on his face that Dorian was indeed the root of the problem, and he intended to get to the bottom of it by the shortest route possible. Polite would have to go wait in line.
“It’s a family matter,” Dorian replied stiffly, dismissing his question.
“H-he’s tr-trying to m-move us to the other side of the world!” Anne managed to get out in between sobs, apparently energized by her father’s words.
Rys went taut as her meaning reached him. Part of him was surprised by the news, but there was another part that was quickly heading over the border to irate. I’m beginning to understand the real problem, here. His eyes bored into Dorian’s. “Is that true?”
“I expect to be in Chapel for the next few months on urgent business. I have no intention of leaving my daughters behind during my extended stay.”
Rys didn’t need to be clairvoyant to know what Dorian really meant by that. “Anne, I am going to need a minute with your father, alone.”
She sniffed, wiping at her face with a shirt sleeve, her shoulders still shuddering at irregular intervals. Her eyes darted uncertainly from his face to her father’s, but she finally nodded in acquiesce and climbed off of his lap. “Just no throwing punches, okay?”
Rys gave her a questioning look, not expecting that to be her first coherent sentence. “Why would you say that?”
“The last time I saw you this mad, you were ready to hand someone a comprehensive pounding,” she answered without a pause.
“I see. Well, I have no intention of hitting your father.” Although it may well come down to that.
She didn’t look entirely convinced, but headed back into the house, casting a dark look at her father as she passed him.
Rys waited until the door was closed before standing and facing Dorian squarely. “I worry you, don’t I?”
Dorian’s jaw set, he was not ready to concede anything. “I never said that.”
“Dorian, don’t underestimate my intelligence or my instincts. Nova made that mistake.”
The Vice-Minister shook his head roughly. “I don’t think that. I couldn’t think that. I’ve seen too much to believe your behavior could be irresponsible or foolhardy. But I don’t know how to interact with you on a personal level, Savar. In some ways, you act like your chronological
age. But in others, you’re a mature adult, with more life experience than any ten men I can think of. I am not sure if you can understand what brought me to this decision.”
“You’re afraid that your daughter is far too intimate and involved with me,” Rys stated flatly, casting caution to the wind. The way Dorian froze told him he was right on target, a direct hit. “You think that as soon as you deploy on your extended tour of duty, she will find a way to encourage me to be closer still. You believe that with a little distance, and time, our relationship will cool and fade. Have I missed anything?”
The practiced neutral mask of a career diplomat locked into place over Dorian’s face. “Apparently I was mistaken. You do understand my concerns.”
Rys really wished that he had been wrong in his assessment of the issues. In sheer frustration, he ran a rough hand through his hair, fighting to remain professional and objective. “Dorian, for guardian’s sake…what makes you think that I would ever do anything to hurt Anne? I would never ask her to compromise her standards, or to go against her parent’s wishes. After all that has happened, you should know that truth is engraved in stone!”
“Yes, I know that,” Dorian snapped back, genuinely surprised by his own tone. “Or I should say I know that you believe that now, while your head is firmly in control of your actions. But I am not blind, Captain, and I can read the signals right in front of my eyes. You’re too close to her to be able to remain just her friend indefinitely, and things can evolve rapidly.”
Rys shoved his hands into his pockets, resisting the urge to shake some sense into the man’s head. How could he begin to answer this? With a politician of this caliber…how about starting with the absolute truth?
“Vice-Minister, I know that you have read my file, and since I have become friends with Anne, you have probably read it more than once.”
“Yes I have,” Dorian responded cautiously. “Where are we going with this?”
“Did you read my last Psyche Evaluation?”
His blue eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Yes I did. Why?”
“Do you recall the last part of it? The part that says, ‘Captain Savar shows a great deal of uncertainty when it comes to his loyalties. ”
Dorian almost choked, and dissolved into a fit of coughing. “You shouldn’t be aware of what that evaluation says!”
Rys just looked at him, brows twisted, and shook his head. “Sir, surely you are not naive enough to believe that I won’t access any information that pertains to me. Any information, reports or evaluations that pertains to a member of the Special Forces 01 is going to be seen by us, all of us, but I think that you already know that. If you really thought that you could protect such sensitive reports, you would not have assigned such a ridiculously high security protocol to our files.”
He opened his mouth to protest, apparently thought better of it, and changed the direction of his next sentence. “Fair enough, I’m not touching that one. Yes, I remember the statement. How does this relate to Anne?”
“Sir, where I am concerned, everything relates to Anne in one way or another. Allow me to give you some background information before I proceed.” Rys paused, ordering his thoughts before leading off. “From my earliest memory, I was taught to protect Fourth Colony. You could almost say I was indoctrinated to protect that colony. That’s what I lived for; it was my whole purpose in life. That was the complete focus of my work, my training and my sacrifices. I would have gladly given my life to achieve my goals. Can you imagine how hard it was to realize that no matter what I did, or how well I did it, I could never fulfill that duty? Not successfully. In spite of everything we could do, or even dream up, Fourth Colony was lost to us.”
Dorian shifted uncomfortably. “Your actions saved the population.”
“And for that, we are very proud and grateful, sir. Please don’t misunderstand that. But the colony itself is still gone. And when it was lost, we became lost along with it, because we lost our purpose. What were we to do, if what we were engineered and trained to protect no longer required our protection? Where did that leave us?” Rys shook his head, unable to face the unhappy realization reflected back at him in those blue eyes. Dorian’s eyes looked too much like Anne’s. “For the first few weeks I was here, I was still lost, still trying to understand what I was supposed to do with myself. I focused on settling my men in good homes, looking after them, and attempting to assess how to assimilate into this culture. I am a soldier, but on this world, I am too young to serve as I have already served for almost a decade. I remained adrift, like a piece of debris from that last engagement with Nova. I was still without a worthwhile purpose. And then I met Anne.” Without meaning to, he smiled and looked up. “Your daughter taught me a truth so profound that I can still feel the echoes of it resonating in my soul.”
Dorian was completely still as if he were afraid the slightest motion might disturb and derail this moment. “What truth?” he breathed, leaning forward, unaware of his action.
“That home is not a location. Home is people. The real estate that comprised Fourth Colony might be lost to me forever, but my home is wherever I choose for it to be, with the people that I love best. I love your daughter very much. I can’t begin to describe how precious she is. Wherever Anne is, that is home for me. And that’s why I would never choose to be separated from her, Vice-Minister Dorian.”
From the direction of the doorway, there was a sharp intake of ragged breath. Rys had known that Anne was probably standing nearby, but he thought what he had to say she deserved to hear, which was why he said it anyway. He looked up at her—and was startled to see a tear tracing down the contour of her cheek.
Fearing another deluge of tears, he jerked his hands out of his pockets and quickly went to her. “Anne?”
She was already wiping the tears away on her own as she smiled at him, seeming to glow from inside with unshed tears still standing in her eyes. “You’ve never said that before.”
“My mistake, then,” he murmured to her, folding her into a close embrace. “I assumed that you surely must already know how I felt about you.”
“I didn’t,” she protested, energetically hugging him back. “But I’m glad that you feel that way. I feel the same way about you. I especially liked the way you said it. I never suspected that the soldier possessed the soul of a poet, Rys.”
He ran his own words back through his head and frowned in evaluation. “That was poetic? It just felt like the truth to me.”
“Very,” she said emphatically.
“I didn’t intend that to be lyrical.”
“Which is what makes it all the more meaningful,” she noted. “I want you to download a copy of that onto my laptop,” she added firmly.
He felt a little bemused, and certainly embarrassed, wondering how many times she might replay it in the future. “If that’s what you would like.”
Anne pulled back enough to glare at her father. “This is why I refuse to move—this man in my arms. He’s the first, best and most loyal friend I’ve ever had. I consider all of the 01 my friends, as well. You’re asking me to leave them all behind and move because you are concerned that I am getting too close to them, too close to Rys? You are too late; close doesn’t begin to cover it. I will not be going with you to Chapel. I am staying right here with Rosalita and Candice and Rys. If you try to force the issue, I will have myself declared an emancipated minor and move out on my own.”
“You are not thinking rationally, this is not your decision to make,” Dorian gritted out.
“No, but I believe it is at least partially mine,” a cool female voice sounded from behind them.
Rys looked up and around Anne to see Angela Dorian standing in the doorway, right behind him. Oh good, she’s home too? From experience, Rys could decipher the clear icy edge to Angela’s expression—her daughters projected the same look when they were in the process of gearing up for a major beat down. Worried about being caught in the crosshairs, he backed up a few feet, dragging Anne
with him.
“Candace just informed me about the pending move,” Angela continued in that same chilly, deliberate manner. “Daniel, the girls and I will not be moving to Chapel for this assignment.”
Anne perked up at her Mother’s unexpected pronouncement, a hiss of triumph escaping her throat.
Dorian could be heard audibly grinding his teeth. “Angela, surely you can see why the girls need this move, this is getting totally out of control.”
“I can see that you’re being an overprotective father,” Angela returned calmly. “And if it were any other young man, I might agree with you. But I find that my daughter has excellent taste in men. This young man, especially, has proven to be trustworthy. I have no qualms about entrusting my daughter’s safety and wellbeing to his capable hands.”
Rys let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he was holding until that moment. He felt honored and humbled after hearing her opinion of him.
Daniel’s hands clenched his into two tight fists, the knuckles stark white from the pressure. “Angela, I think we should go home and discuss this.”
“You are right about that.” Angela waved her husband through the door with her palm open, and a slight bow. Before she followed him out, she gave Rys a covert wink and a confident smile, self-assured of her inevitable victory.
If Angela were anything at all like her daughter, Rys had no doubt that she would prevail in the upcoming discussion; the Vice Minister had no chance. He nodded curtly back in solemn acknowledgement, struggling not to return her smile.
Anne produced a phone from her pocket, punching in a number so rapidly her fingers were a blur, before putting it to her ear. “Candace? Relax, we won’t be moving.” She beamed at whatever response this bit of news brought her. To Rys, it distinctly sounded like cheering. “No, really, I’m sure. Mom just dragged Dad out of here to go home and talk about it. She had her scary face on, you know the one I am talking about. I would be willing to bet my allowance for the next year that we’re staying put.” She threw her head back and laughed in relief. “I know, I know! It’s awesome, isn’t it? Yeah, okay, I’ll see you later. Bye.”
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