Jack widened his eyes, looking like a man who was suddenly overwhelmed with a very bad feeling.
“What? It's bright in here. Besides, you're just being paranoid because of your pain meds,” Ellie said, immediately defending herself before any accusations could be thrown.
“I'm fine,” he said, dropping wearily onto the chair behind him. He was still looking quite spry for a man who nearly died three months ago. “Kitten—I worry about my girls, and so don't take too much offense to what I'm going to do.” He snapped his finger towards the guards behind him. “Guards—remove the girls and lock them in solitary for the rest of the evening.”
Penny's face contorted and she pushed her sunglasses to the top of her forehead. “That's bull! I didn't do anything—I just got here!” She was suddenly lugged over the hip of an ogre-like Swarii. “Damn it, Ellie! Damn it! Make this thing put me down.”
Ellie, as she was hoisted over another guard's shoulder, looked at her brother and exchanged a silent word with him. Jack couldn't decipher what it meant, so he went up and looked over at Michael. “Captain Jonas,” he said, using the too-young-to-be-a-captain boy's new title. Michael Jonas, recently instated by the emperor for his work on 'Jonas Warp' and leading the project in Ellie's absence, had actually became a captain, of all things!
He was the youngest in Swarii history, beating out only Jack's own son. “Do you have a flight you should be boarding about now?”
“Yes, Sir.” He looked at the direction Ellie and Penny were being carried off to. “Just came to say good-bye to my sister. And I meant to talk to you about the battle plans—”
“You put us in the back, Admiral,” Tom said frankly, hurt in his tone. “We're not going to see any action there.”
“I certainly hope not. Besides, the emperor can give you a title all he wants. I'm the one assigning the ships. You've got a small one for a reason. I don't want you thinking you can muscle in there. If there's trouble, I want you to hang back.”
“Do you also want us to grow a vagina while we're out there? Since you're treating us like women, anyway!” Tim cried. Jack gave Tim a glare that made him swallow and add, “…Sir.”
“Michael—in Swarii years, you're only eighteen. You'd be in boot camp if you grew up here. You're young. Tim and Tom are—”
“We've kicked so much ass, though! We don't need a damn car seat, Admiral. We're big boys. We've done a lot at our age. We're not Swarii. We're something else. We're not your average kids.”
Jack brushed his fingers wearily against his bandages, sighing. “Boys—I think you're all going to be admirals one day. But I really want you to take it slowly so you don't slip and fall on your asses. Now do your assignment or else I will put you all in solitary as well. You can spend the evening there with the girls. I don't care.”
Michael's face was turning as red as his hair. “After all we've done?”
“I like you, but I don't want to worry about you,” Jack admitted, his voice firm.
“Well, do us a favor and stop liking us!” Michael snapped.
“Watch your tone with me, boy. You're on thin ice!” the Admiral snapped.
Michael pursed his lips.
Tim, seeing the expression on Michael's face, slapped his hand over his face, sighing under his breath, “Solitary, here we come…”
* * *
“And then I told him to go and where he would be obliged to shove his orders once he got there!” Michael retold to his sister as they all sat in solitary while the battle was going on outside of the ship. His face contorted as he had to twine his arms around the bars to reach the door lock with Penny's hairpin. “It didn't go over very well,” he added.
“Jack belted him,” Tim added, still sounding quite shocked.
Penny gasped, but then she let out a single, loud laugh. “He didn't!”
“He didn't,” Michael snapped. “He looked like he was gonna, but it wasn't easy with the injury. He couldn't catch me before I got my ass out of dodge. I could have defended myself, sure. But against an older man with a stomach wound? Didn't seem very sporting.”
“Mike nearly wet his shorts,” Tom snickered. “Mike's no longer the biggest guy in the room, and I'm loving every solitary moment of it. Ha! The whole deal was priceless. It's almost worth missing the battle of the millennium while Mike fumbles with the damn door lock like he's a cat trying to figure out the doorknob.”
“You're an asshole,” Mike grumbled.
“Seriously, Bro,” Ellie grumbled. “Are you gonna open the door this century? Graham and Thorton are out there, and they need us.”
“It's not easy to do from this angle.”
“Then you should have stuck to the original plan and been on the other side of the door,” Ellie replied.
The door suddenly swung open. “Patience is a virtue, Brat,” he reminded Ellie tersely. He cracked his knuckles. “Alright, guys—down to business. Let's get fired up. Tim and Tom—you're on guns. Penny—you and me are on piloting and navigation. Freak—you're on engines,” he said as the group marched down through the holding cell to the ship docks. The hallways were as empty as a ghost town. Every man who could fight was out doing it.
“I think I'm the least 'freaky' of all of you. And they made you Captain? That is the all-time unfair,” Ellie grumbled as she followed closely behind Mike, lowering her sunglasses. “Alright—so I want this to be like an evening at Duke's. I wanna get in there—hit 'em hard, have fun, dance a little, then get home early.”
“Hey—I get to make the orders around here.” He looked over at Penny, who was chewing her fingernails. “What's wrong, Pen?”
“Nothing,” Penny sighed. “I don't know why you want me along. I like to think I could help—but Thorton…”
“Is a moron,” Mike finished. “Penny—you've been driving cars since you were five. You designed the damn system. This ship is like an extension of your body. You're a better driver than I am.”
“Mr. Magoo is a better driver than you,” Penny responded, her smile wavering. Her confidence was slowly beginning to build. It wasn't just Thorton and Graham out there. It was her brothers, Mike, and Ellie, and Penny was the best driver. “Thorton would just be pissed if he found out we're out there.”
“Look, we'll get you girls back before your big, bad, insane husbands are done with their part. I promise—we're never the last to leave a party. He doesn't have to know” He tugged on Penny's braid as they entered one of the last ships in the dock.
* * *
Penny suddenly snapped her head up and wiped away something trickling down her chin. It was blood. “Penny! Penny, goddamn it—wake the fuck up!” someone was saying behind her. She had passed out during the battle at one point, but only for a moment. Still, for a second she was dazed enough to think, 'Why the hell haven't I left this party yet?'
In the movies, space battles lasted a whole ten minutes. Somewhere, deep in her mind, she sort of thought it would be the same way in real life. She was so wrong—the battle had raged on for ten hours.
She looked down at the controls and immediately straightened out the ship. They had been hit, and were spiraling, but she pulled it back up. “Mother fucker!” Tim said queasily behind her. “Crazy woman driver!”
“Is Ellie okay?” Penny asked, looking around behind her.
“Remind me to throw up a lot when we get home,” she heard Ellie wheeze from somewhere in the ship. The ship smelt like smoke—probably because of the small fire Mike had just put out.
“Thanks for saving our ass, pilot…” Penny heard someone through the radio say elatedly. For a moment, she was confused. The next, she remembered that she had come up behind another vessel and rescued them with backup firepower. It would have worked perfectly if a Frian's hit hadn't jerked the ship so roughly.
Penny didn't respond to the pilot; it would be easy for them to tell it was a woman on the other line. “Did we have enough adventure, you think?”
Mike sat down in the chair next to her. Hi
s shirt was half burnt off and he was sweating profusely. “See, if we had followed orders, we wouldn't have had nearly this much fun,” he said, flipping some switches over her head. He looked straight ahead. “Those guys are in some shit,” he said, pointing towards some very large battle vessels straight ahead. “Why don't you give 'em a dose of the 'mosquito'.”
Penny grinned and pushed the steering wheel forward. Tim had named her move 'the mosquito' about five hours ago—the idea was that since they were driving in a very fast, but very small vessel, with a lot of gun-power, they could provide a good distraction, zipping out of gun-shot while the larger Swarii ships were able to rain the heavier firepower in on the Frian ship they were busy distracting.
“I'm dropping you ladies off when all's said-and-done,” Tim called out from the back, “but I'm fucking owning up to this shit. I don't care if they flog me a little for disobeying—I will get so much pussy. Actually, I hope they do flog me… Chicks dig scars.”
Penny groaned and grinned. “You're already getting pussy, Tim,” she reminded. Although the mass quantities of human women suddenly on the Swarii ships were causing a stir. Swarii bachelors who thought they'd never find a mate suddenly found themselves infatuated with a human temptress… or three. Before the battle, morale had been very high, indeed. Tim's especially.
Mike and Tom were still struggling just to make eyes with a female; they had been in a sea of harem-girls and didn't know what to do with themselves. They normally had used their wits to get ahead with the ladies—but since so many of the human girls were raised in captivity, they didn't care much about intellectual nonsense.
But they might care about a war hero. “Here here,” Mike and Tom agreed proudly at the same time.
Their ship began to pick up speed. “Hold on to your butts,” Penny advised. “One more, and we're going back. You can get your accolades, Ellie and I will pretend we had nothing to do with you.”
“I don't know about that for me. What are they gonna do? Flog a pregnant woman? Besides, Jack's a softy,” Ellie snorted, and Penny realized she was probably underneath the switchboard. “Anyway, can you let me know before you do any more roller-coaster drops? It felt like my stomach was gonna come out my eyeballs.”
“No promises. Alright boys,” Penny announced, wanting to come into the action with her guns firing from all directions. “Let's rock and roll.”
“We gotta teach you how to talk more bad-ass,” Tim noted decisively as he fired all of his guns. “'Let's rock and roll'? Pshh. So eighties.”
“Give her a break. She's eighteen and hasn't seen nearly as many Schwarzenegger movies,” Tom replied. After that, Penny heard nothing except, “Whoah!” “Raah!” noises like her brothers were wont to do when Penny was trying her best to avoid getting hit by a barrage of oncoming fire.
“…Penny?”
Penny heard the voice from the radio, but had to ignore it. Still, she felt her stomach rise to her throat. The voice had been Thorton's. Thorton was okay—he'd survived the chaos!
BLAM! BLAM! What sounded like cannon-fire boomed through the empty space around her ship, rattling Penny's tiny ship. The Frian ship they had been distracting mostly lit up into flames. Penny pulled back, turning towards the window of one of the ships below her.
Thorton stood—he was a long ways off, but she knew it was him standing in front of the large window, looking back in her direction. She couldn't see the expression on his face, and she didn't hear her name again through the radio. Hearing it once was enough. She had to get home.
“One more job?” Mike begged; he was amped from the battle, blood thirsty in a way.
She shook her head. “No…” she said, a guilty sense of cold creeping over her. “We should head back.”
“Agreed,” Ellie chirped, sliding out from underneath the consol. She looked quite green in the gills.
Mike grumbled but agreed. They warped back to the mothership, disappearing into the ether of space, but when they returned they immediately realized that they wouldn't be able to sneak in as well as they had snuck out. Their absence had been noted.
The landing dock was filled with half-decimated and smoking ships that had gotten back from the battle before the Jonases had.
Jack was waiting for them when they'd landed. “We’re in serious shit,” Ellie said frankly.
“You go first,” Mike told Ellie, staring out the window at the very serious-looking admiral outside, pointing at the ship's entryway.
“It was your idea, Indiana Jones!” Ellie snapped.
“My ass. It was your idea, I just had the balls to let you pull it off on my ship.”
“You begged me to come along, you dick.”
“I never wanted to come to space in the first place,” Mike reminded.
Penny groaned and left the ship, killing the argument in her wake. Strangely, there was applause around her ears as she slowly and carefully exited the ship. At first, for a long time, she thought there was something wrong with her ears. But she looked around and saw that, most people on deck, were clapping.
Jack wasn't, though. He was still pissed. He pointed at her. “You. You are dead meat,” he hissed. He then grunted and put his hand up to the side of her head. “You're bleeding. We're getting that looked at. YOU—” he said at the three boys that were trying to sneak around him. “Stay right there.”
“What's wrong with everybody?” Penny asked, looking around at the people staring at her.
“You have stupid, idiotic, and moronic fans,” Jack spat, “who seem to think that you all doing one stupid maneuver after another was heroic in some way.”
“Stupid, idiotic, and moronic means the same thing,” Tom mentioned quietly, putting his hands in his pockets.
Jack snapped his head in Tom's direction and stared, hard and long. Tom lowered his eyes until he was focusing on Jack's torso. “Do you know where you're all going?”
“Please say the cafeteria?” Tim hoped innocently.
“My office. Right now. Move it,” Jack barked.
The boys scrambled away with no further ado, as if they figured standing there for any longer was going to make Jack's stare actually turn lethal.
Ellie moved down the ship's plank very slowly and gingerly. Jack walked up to her and met her. “You okay, Babygirl? Are you injured?” he asked her in a very loving yet very gruff way.
Ellie shook her head. “I'm okay.”
“We're getting you checked out. Not just to see if you really have mush for brains, either,” Jack decreed. “I don't know how you thought this was going to end, but—”
“With applause?” Ellie said hopefully.
Jack gritted his teeth and snapped his fingers at Fie, who wondered away from where he was finishing up bandaging a soldier's head and dutifully came to Eleanor's side.
Penny stayed around while Ellie was led off. “Are you still there?” Jack asked, turning towards her.
“I just want to say how sorry I am… Sort of.” Penny twiddled her fingers in front of her. “And if you could do me a favor and not tell Thorton about where we were—because he didn't get THAT good of look at me—that would be so cool of you.”
“You were hit in the head hard,” Jack growled, leaning on his cane with one hand and grabbing her upper arm with the other none-too-gently. Penny inwardly groaned. She was still deciding whether to be proud or sick with worry for herself. She didn't think those two emotions could coincide before now, and she wasn't feeling too great about the discovery.
* * *
Penny sighed and settled in for a quiet moment alongside Ellie in her and Thorton's apartment, where Fie told them to wait for the moment their husbands returned from battle. “I told him not to go without me. That's all I wanted. I didn't want to sit here, alone.”
Ellie glanced over at her, her eyes dull with contemplation. Eventually she just shrugged her petite shoulders and rubbed her fingers over her slightly-swollen stomach. She was just beginning to show. “I dunno why I decided I needed
to do it, myself… I don't think it was about the glory or anything. Sometimes… I just like to break the rules a little, I guess. Since I married Graham, there's been this voice deep inside of me that tells me to be good, to submit to him, to do what a good wife should.”
Ellie rolled her eyes at herself before huffing with frustration, “But I'm a Jonas, so I can't! I have to spit in his eye. I have to prove him wrong sometimes—it's just this part of me… This part of me that makes me miserable…”
Penny knew what Ellie was talking about. She knew that voice, too. But she had blocked it out—she hated that she was so angered by Thorton but loved him so damn much at the same time!
She wouldn't submit to him, either—but not because the voice inside her was nuts, it was because she knew better. Penny wanted him to prove how much he loved her, if he truly did love her at all. She kept starting fights so he could put her mind at ease that he might actually stick with her through all odds. She sometimes flirted with other men just to make sure he was still interested enough to pull her away from them. Somehow, she still felt that any second, if she didn't stay interesting, he would leave her.
“Sometimes I don't understand how he can love me at all,” Penny admitted, nodding her head, joining in Ellie's lament. “And at the same time, I don't understand why my safety is such a big deal. Is it all the Union? Is that all it is?”
Ellie shook her head. “No, that's not all it is. You've seen Thorton's tattoo before, right?”
Penny raised an eyebrow. “Hard to miss; it covers half his body.”
“Yeah, but did he ever tell you why he got it?”
Penny shook her head.
“Imagine losing me, Tim, Tom, Mike, and everyone else all within two weeks of each other. Then imagine fearing that there would never be anyone to help you fill that hole left behind. They thought the memory of Graham's sisters and their mothers was all they had left. So Thorton got this tattoo to help them to remember. Supposedly, it's sort of a traditional ancient Swaraan term from thousands of years ago—means 'Alone'. Thorton never thought he could rebuild a family, he didn't think he'd be chosen for the festival, and then when he did go, he came back empty-handed. All he's ever wanted is someone to live for. And then you came along.” She shrugged. “Of course he's head-over heels for you. They're thankful to have us… And good thing, too, because you're as shitty a wife as I am,” she gave a wry little chuckle as she said that.
Learning to Blush: Swarii Brides, Book Two Page 31
