by Astrid Amara
“Go to the far end, we’ll meet you in the middle,” Lourdes instructed.
Cruz rolled his eyes. “Mom, there is no way we’re going to be meeting in the middle at any time today.”
“Positive attitude!” Lourdes snapped. She looked thrilled by the harvest, her fingertips stained black from the pollen on the blooms.
With a dramatic groan, Cruz dragged the preserver to the far reaches of the crop. He gave Tover a quick lesson in blossom harvesting. The preserver did much of the work, but they had to individually snap off each blossom at the base, careful not to spill the powdery pollen out of the bud. They could then throw the whole thing into the hovering preserver.
By the middle of morning, Tover had worked up a good sweat, his body tired, but in a healthy way. He felt good, actually. His body obeyed his commands, his legs didn’t hurt, and he used his muscles in the oldest way the human body had ever been used for. After months away from the gym, it pleased him to again feel that rush of endorphins he got while working out.
But despite the physical activity, he somehow only managed to gather half the amount of blossoms Cruz had, on the other side of the row. Tover decided not to view it as a competition. Cruz helped him finish his side then turned off the preserver, declaring it time for more food. They walked back toward the house through the neck-high plants.
The two Pulmon Verde guards, Chucho and a shy woman named Inez, had dropped their weapons at some point to help out, and were now at the opposite edge of the field, gathering the blossoms carefully in baskets to be dumped into Lourdes’s processor.
They were busy and not looking in Tover’s direction, so he reached out and furtively grabbed Cruz’s hand. It was silly and romantic, and he would have been embarrassed if Cruz hadn’t squeezed his hand back. He too checked the location of the guards, then grasped Tover by the shirt and pulled him down to the ground, in between the tall rows of plants.
“All these flowers are making me horny,” Cruz said, and he kissed Tover.
Tover laughed. “You sure you’re not straight?” He pulled down one of the weird flowers, inhaling its saccharine scent. “Looks sort of vaginal.”
Cruz raised an eyebrow. “How would you know?”
“I’ve had to put on an act my whole life. Sometimes I wasn’t able to get away with kissing a girl and leaving her at the door.”
“So you had a beard,” Cruz clarified.
“Is that the term for it?”
Cruz snorted. “I don’t know how you do it. Pretending to be what you’re not.”
Tover gaped. “Are you kidding? You were a spy for five years.”
“I was a gay spy. I still didn’t sleep with people I didn’t want to.”
“You had to breathe oxygen though.”
Cruz grimaced. “Don’t remind me. I did hate those drugs. Remember that night we fucked in the bathroom of the grav-cross arena and I started to choke?”
“Oh yeah! I’d forgotten. You said you had asthma.”
“I did. I had I-don’t-breathe-this-atmosphere kind of asthma.”
Tover laughed. “It was a fun night though.”
“Yeah.” Cruz unstrapped his wristpad and reached out for Tover’s arm. He strapped the wristpad on and called up several images. “Probably a stupid fucking thing to store here, but I couldn’t bring myself to delete them.” Tover used the dimensional projector to flip through several bright-colored images of the two of them at the grav-cross game. A shot of them together, taken by one of Tover’s fans, ended up being a fantastic photo. They both looked attractive, excited and—Tover noticed for the first time—in love.
“Worthy of framing,” Cruz commented.
Tover nodded. “Still, it was a different life.”
“Same feelings though,” Cruz said. He closed his eyes.
Tover smiled, resting his head on Cruz’s chest. The wind felt marvelous on his sweaty skin, and he liked the feel of Cruz’s chest, slowly rising and falling with each breath.
“Your mother is going to be disappointed in our level of effort,” he said with a yawn.
Cruz smiled but didn’t open his eyes. “Too bad. I deserve a break. It was her crazy idea to plant all this shit anyway.”
Something shifted in the universe.
Tover lay very still, his senses on high alert. A fold of space had been created, very close, and he reached out his senses and took in the area around them. There were people. And a starship on the way.
He bolted upright.
Cruz followed, looking alarmed. “What’s wrong?” His hand went to his bolt pistol.
“The house is surrounded by people.”
Cruz jumped to his feet. Tover couldn’t move as fast. Cruz reached down and yanked him up to a standing position.
Cruz frowned. “I don’t see anything.”
Tover froze, trying to gather the sensations as they changed. “They’re on the other side. Human. And metal. PK suits. There’s also a ship—”
He suddenly sensed where the ship would appear.
“Ana!” Tover croaked. He didn’t think. He opened his mouth and created an orbifold around himself. He jumped across the large field to Ana and pushed her to the ground as the vessel appeared out of thin air, engine shrieking as the hover motors whipped the insulin field apart and shredded the crop.
They both lay on the ground, inches from the motor. Ana screamed beneath him. The noise of the engine overwhelmed Tover’s senses, and he gritted his teeth against the pain in his head. He felt the presence of nearly a dozen soldiers unloading from the ship.
“Everyone freeze!” someone yelled from a speaker.
“Stay down!” he told Ana. He lifted his head in time to watch a peacekeeper round the corner of the Arcadio house and take aim with a velocity rifle at a very startled Lourdes.
Tover created an orbifold and jumped again. Electric ammo slammed into his shoulder, and Tover collapsed backward onto Lourdes, convulsing from the shock. His heart stuttered and he gasped in pain.
“Tover!” Lourdes cried. “Oh God, are you all right?” She clutched his shoulder.
Soldiers pushed their way through the tall plants, rifles humming, faces hidden behind darkened respirator helmets. Tover heard the Pulmon Verde soldiers shouting, heard them running toward their weapons.
Tover tried to sit up, but the voltage reverberated through him and he remained stunned, head in Lourdes’s lap.
Soldiers pushed through the plants and surrounded him and Lourdes. Tover sat up wincing, holding up his hands. “Don’t shoot!” he croaked. “I’m a navigator!”
“We have him, sir,” one of the soldiers clicked on his speaker.
Two other soldiers had their rifles pointed at Lourdes, who’d gone completely still.
“Don’t shoot!” Tover cried. “Don’t hurt her!”
“We’re here to help you, sir,” a soldier said. His voice sounded detached, mechanical, coming from his suit. His impossibly long body moved in an alien way.
“Don’t hurt anyone,” Tover gasped, breathless from the electric ammunition and the two jumps. He saw movement in the tall blades off to his side and knew Cruz leapt through the blossoms, running straight toward them.
Another soldier shot Tover directly in the chest. Lourdes screamed. Tover glanced down at the dart protruding from his shirt.
“You fucking asshole!” he roared. He tried to stand but already the drug was taking effect. The world seemed to shift.
The space around him shuddered. Someone made him an orbifold. He fought it, shifting the space back, shrieking with his unused navigational cords. But the drug was too powerful. He stumbled and the fold completed. Another improvisational navigator—Christopher Forlan, someone he hadn’t seen since training days—clutched Tover in his arms and made another orbifold.
They both shot forward through the wall of the
vessel and into the starship. Tover collapsed on the floor, weak from the dart and losing consciousness. He struggled to his feet and looked out the starship windows as Chucho fired his bolt gun at a PK soldier. The soldier, armed not with a crowd control rifle, but plasma ammunition, returned fire.
Lourdes stood up in the midst of the crossfire. Tover watched, unable to move, as lightening ripped through her body and burnt holes into her flesh.
“No!” he wanted to scream, but his voice came out hoarse and wispy, and he felt pain as his injured shoulder made contact with the floor of the ship.
Chapter Fourteen
White cotton sheets. A pillow. Home.
Tover blinked.
“Navigator? You awake?”
Tover blinked again, registering his surroundings. His drugged thoughts came slowly. He saw he was in the very hospital he’d been visualizing for three months.
He was on DK Station. He was home.
“Navigator?”
Tover glanced up. He didn’t recognize the doctor standing beside him, but he noted the uniform and knew he was in Harmony’s private ward of the station medical center.
“Can you hear me, Navigator?” the doctor repeated.
Tover nodded.
Breathing without a respirator felt so much easier, but the dry, processed air lacked smell or thickness. He felt lighter, freer in the thinner gas, yet he also felt untethered, and dizziness rocked him as he sat up.
The doctor shook his head. “Those damn soldiers narc their darts too strong. You’ve been out for hours.”
Tover’s shoulder felt tight, and he winced as the skin pulled.
“You have an ammo burn on your shoulder. We applied nu-skin, and you should have no long-lasting damage,” the doctor explained. He raised an eyebrow. “Although judging by your body scan, it looks as though you’ve had a turbulent three months as it is.”
Tover closed his eyes. The fact that he was here, after wishing fervently for it for so long, seemed unreal.
Then he remembered how he got here, and his eyes shot open. “The woman! The woman who was shot when I was rescued, is she all right?” Tover croaked.
The doctor frowned. “I don’t know anything about that, sorry. You can ask Captain Dwyer if you wish.”
“Yes. Please. I’d like to find out…” Tover hesitated. The realization that he might have gotten Lourdes killed rushed through him, and he felt like puking.
“Navigator?” The doctor touched Tover’s arm. “You all right?”
Tover leaned back against the pillows.
Harmony Port Operations Chief Peter Owens burst into the room, looking thrilled. “Tover! Thank God, we finally found you!”
Tover shook Peter’s hand.
“We’ve been frantic, searching everywhere,” Peter claimed. “Forlan came in from Earthport, we had him searching in his free time, we had fleets trying to find those bastards who took you. How are you feeling?”
“I’m all right. I’ll be fine.”
“Thank God! The doc says those bug lung sons of bitches did a number on you.”
“It wasn’t the Caridans, but yeah. It’s…it’s been a rough few months.” Tover covered his face in his hands and wept. Peter Owens stood aghast, as did the doctor, and Tover wished one of them would tell him to stop, or at least say something comforting. But the men only watched in awkward silence, so Tover tried to pull himself together.
When he glanced up again, Peter Owens looked genuinely concerned. He patted Tover’s arm. “Listen, you’re safe now. If you need anything from us, anything at all, give me a holler. I’ll see to it personally. We’re very, very glad to have you back in one piece.”
Tover nodded.
“Is there anything I can get you now, while you’re in here?” Peter asked. “Something to watch? Eat?” He leaned closer. “A little female affection?” he smirked.
“No, thanks.” Tover tried to smile back. “I need to rest.”
“Okay. You take care. I’ll check in tomorrow and see how you’re doing.” Peter turned to leave.
“Hey, Peter.” Tover glanced up. His voice broke and he cleared his throat. “Actually, there is one favor you could do for me.”
“Anything,” Peter said solemnly.
“You’re high up in the Harmony executive circle. I would like to meet my parents. Could you find their contact information for me?”
Peter didn’t say anything at first, but the sudden shock and cold fear of his expression told Tover more than words. The Arcadios had been right. His parents weren’t fine in some Arlandian city, happy with their decision to give up their five-year-old son.
“I’ll…see what I can dig up, Tover,” Peter said at last. He rubbed his hand over his face as if exhausted. “It was a long time ago, but I’ll see how far the records go back.”
“Thank you,” Tover said. But he didn’t think there was any chance Peter could help him now.
Tover slept.
He dreamed of choking on blood, the helmet mouthpiece thrust down his throat. Every time he awoke he was alone in the hospital room, yet safety seemed elusive.
In the morning, Tover’s personal physician stopped by to give Tover a physical. He expressed amazement at how well Tover’s injuries had healed. Tover tried explaining that he’d been under a doctor’s care for over two months, but Arvish seemed distracted and walked away, informing Tover he’d be able to leave the medical center that afternoon.
But Tover’s entourage couldn’t wait. They burst into his hospital room with cheers and gifts. Almost every staff member of Harmony Port swung by to wish him a speedy recovery, and Gull had painted him a card with a barn owl on it, which he displayed prominently on his bedside table. Others brought gifts of wine or candy. A soldier whom Tover had slept with years ago and who’d been part of his rescue mission checked to see how he did, and Tover grilled him for details about those left behind on Carida. But the soldier couldn’t confirm anything, and Tover was left guessing how things had ended after his departure.
Tover was relatively confident Cruz had survived. He was a solider and knew how to take care of himself around peacekeepers. And Ana had been out of immediate danger, hidden in the violet field under the starship.
But that last image of Lourdes falling to the ground made him sick with worry.
Tover asked to see the peacekeeper captain who had rescued him, but apparently he was off the station on another mission. He then asked to see Christopher Forlan, his temporary replacement, but Forlan rebuffed his request, telling the poor port intern that he had no interest in spending a second more with Tover Duke.
Tover was stunned, then remembered he deserved it. He’d been an asshole to younger trainees in the navigational institute. His own abilities fueled his confidence, and his arrogance had set him apart all those years ago. Now, when he needed to discuss his concerns with a peer, someone who truly understood what it was like to be a navigator, he was dismissed.
So Tover had to figure out how to handle his navigating issues on his own. At least he knew he could navigate—he had done so twice on Carida. If he didn’t think about it, the ability naturally returned. But those were unusual circumstances.
“Tover!”
The smiling face of Alexey Jade, Tover’s publicist, filled the doorway. He bounded in, arms bursting with gifts.
“I’m being inundated.” Jade laughed. He plopped the boxes onto the table beside Tover’s bed.
“How are you?” Tover asked.
“Fine. Missing my number one client, however.” Jade reached over and patted Tover’s shoulder. It hurt, but Tover didn’t say a word. “It’s good to have you back.”
“It’s good to be back,” Tover said, but as he did so, he wasn’t sure he felt it yet.
“So you ready to talk business, or do you want me to baby you like everybody else?”
<
br /> Tover grinned. At least he could trust Jade to tell the truth. “Let’s talk.”
“Your story is the hottest thing hitting CTASA air waves. Every single newscast wants to run an exclusive on you,” Jade said. “They’re willing to pay a small fortune for the rights. And Harmony execs are in full support of you publicly admonishing the bastards who did this to you. So who do you want to tell it to?”
“No one. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Jade looked struck by lightening. “Why the hell not? Tover, this is your chance to get even with those bug-lung bastards. We—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Tover said again.
“What about Jemma Rose? You once told me the two of you were friends, and that you thought she was a great journalist.”
“She is,” Tover conceded. “But I don’t want to talk to anyone. I mean it.”
Jade sat there, clearly regrouping his thoughts. “Okay. Well, here’s the shitty part. The press have taken over DK Station, my friend, and they’ll follow your every step unless you give them something to work with. Someone as famous as you doesn’t get taken hostage on a live newscast and disappear for a quarter of a year and not say anything about it.”
“How much do they already know?” Tover asked.
Jade shrugged. “They know you were taken hostage by a Pulmon Verde terrorist, and rescued from armed rebels on Carida. And someone here leaked you were mistreated and had all the bones broken in your body.”
“That isn’t entirely true,” Tover said hoarsely. He began to feel queasy.
“And that scar around your neck will attract attention.” Jade shook his head. “If you don’t set the record straight, the press will invent truth for you. Whatever you are afraid of revealing, be prepared for the lies they invent to be more damaging.”
“Right now I only want to go home and sleep.”
Jade nodded. “I’ll try to keep everyone calm for as long as I can. But you can’t hide your head in the sand. You’re Tover Duke. You’ll have to face them at some point.”
Tover didn’t respond. Jade bent over the bed and stared into Tover’s eyes.
